Star Trek: Liaisons
WARNING: The following article contains spoiler information regarding this
week's TNG episode, "Liaisons". Those not desiring a liaison with spoilers
should probably jump over this article now.
In brief: Very nondescript. The story had some potential, but it didn't
look to me like anyone really had their hearts in this.
It also appears that the preview designers haven't gotten any better since
the season break -- but that's less to the point. Before I go any further, a
synopsis follows. (And for those who missed it last week, I'll say again
that in response to requests, I now finish the synopsis with a line of ten
dashes in case you want to skip over it completely.) Anyway:
The Enterprise is receiving a delegation of ambassadors from Iyar. As Picard
prepares to return with Voval, the Iyaaran pilot, to meet with the head of
state, the two ambassadors, Loquel and Byleth, stay behind to explore the
human culture. Loquel works with Troi, and Byleth works with a very
reluctant Worf.
Things quickly take, if not a negative turn, at least a decidedly strange
one. Loquel quickly becomes fascinated with desserts, a foreign concept to
his world, while Byleth appears to be one of the only people who has fewer
social graces than Worf, who does not respond well to the treatment he
receives. Meanwhile, Picard's trip is rudely interrupted when the power to
the Iyaaran shuttle fails and they crash-land on a deserted planet. With
Voval wounded, Picard leaves to try to find help, but is struck by plasma
lightning and dragged away unconscious.
He wakes to find himself in a crashed Terellian freighter, with only one
rather bedraggled woman for company. The woman, Anna, seems somewhat
unfamiliar with speech, and claims to have been a passenger on the freighter
when it crashed. (Almost as an aside, she also mentions that Voval is dead.)
They both find out that she's been on the planet for seven years, and she
reacts very badly to the news. Picard, trying to be as reassuring as
possible, says that if they work together they can manage to leave the world.
She is grateful, but cautions him not to exert himself or even move very much
-- he has several broken ribs, and the restricting field she's placed on him
to help the bones knit will impede his motion. She offers to go to the
crashed shuttle and pick up equipment they can use, and then leaves him
alone, locking the door from the outside.
When she returns, she insists that the door had to be locked for his
protection, and Picard then finds that she accidentally damaged the equipment
she was getting beyond repair while extracting it. She is despondent at this
new setback, but Picard reassures her that things will still work out. Anna
then surprises him by saying that she doesn't ever want to be alone again --
and that she loves him.
As he works on a power cell they might be able to use, he tries to convince
her that she's simply a bit confused about how she feels. Meanwhile, on the
Enterprise, Riker decides to ease tensions by inviting both ambassadors to a
friendly poker game. Unfortunately, Byleth steals chips from Worf, and the
tensions rapidly escalate into a fight between the two. They seem evenly
matched, but Byleth stops abruptly, thanking Worf for a wonderful
"demonstration" and leaving to "write up this experience."
As the power cell is finally charged, Picard tries to get ready to return to
the shuttle, but Anna stops him, saying it's too dangerous. In the ensuing
argument, he removes the restraining field on himself and finds that he never
had any broken ribs at all. Now quite annoyed, Picard accuses Anna of
holding him captive. She says merely that she wants him to love her, and
jumps him. He, however, continues to resist, prompting her to get very
depressed about having "failed". She leaves, locking Picard in the freighter
again. As he attempts to get out, someone else approaches, yells hello, and
enters.
It's Voval, who only appeared dead. He quickly brings Picard up to date on
the situation, and then encourages Picard to go search for Anna before she
does herself harm. The two search a nearby cliff, and just after they
separate Picard finds Anna, ready to jump unless he loves her.
He, however, spots a necklace around her neck which was broken when she ran
out of the freighter, and realizes that he's being manipulated. He refuses
to love her, and Anna reverts back to her true form -- that of *Ambassador*
Voval. Voval informs him that after finding records of a crash survivor on
this planet, three representatives were sent out to experience the concepts
of pleasure (Loquel), antagonism (Byleth), and love (Voval). While Picard
points out that their actions are technically criminal, he is content to
merely return home. They return, and Picard calls it "intriguing" to see a
race that experiences a concept to such an extreme.
----------
That takes care of that. Now for some commentary.
As I said, the story idea here had some interesting concepts in it. Picard's
right, in that it _is_ somewhat interesting to see a race so interested in
taking an experience to its limits. Given the right framework and execution,
"Liaisons" could have been very interesting indeed.
However, neither the setup nor the execution really worked very well. For
starters, amazingly enough, the acting from nearly all comers seemed
*incredibly* off, especially from Stewart. His final speech to Anna, about
being manipulated and how all the timing seemed convenient, felt like someone
trying to pull off an _impression_ of Patrick Stewart rather than the man
himself. I haven't gotten that impression about his Trek work in almost two
years, and I'm not thrilled to have to say it now.
Also, and perhaps I'm merely revealing myself as being completely unromantic
where food is concerned, but the Loquel/Troi angle of the ambassador plot
fell *completely* flat for me. I also have a little difficulty understanding
why Loquel focused only on food and dessert -- given that his mission was to
study _pleasure_, one would expect other aspects of the feeling to come into
play. (Sexual pleasure, for instance, might be a significant part of the
deal.) When someone says "pleasure" to me, "Yum, chocolate!" is not the
first idea that pops into my head -- or the second, or the third, or even the
tenth, for that matter. I can vaguely see why they might have wanted to
restrict the focus solely to food, but Voval's explanation really doesn't
hold up where he's concerned.
The Byleth/Worf plot was somewhat better -- probably the highlight of the
show, actually. Even though the line was telegraphed from kilometers out, I
will confess to laughing a lot in the banquet scene when Data reassured Worf
that common ground should be easy to find -- after all, *he's* "demanding,
temperamental, and rude", too. I also have to say that we got some cute
Worf/Riker interplay here, ranging from the gleeful denial of Worf's request
for reassignment to the "besides, you look _good_ in a dress" quip from the
teaser. This was fluff, but it was amusing fluff, and I've no objection to
being amused. :-)
I do have to say, though, that Worf's one line about ripping out Byleth's
esophagus rang false for me. Not because he wouldn't think about doing it;
certainly he would. I just think that when Worf is *that* mad, he wouldn't
use words with that many syllables! (I'd expect something more along the
lines of Klingonese for "I'll rip off his nuts and feed them to tribbles",
but I suppose this is still a family show...)
Then, there's the Picard plot, which was presumably the showpiece of the
episode. I didn't particularly dislike it, but I didn't particularly warm to
it either. This, much like "Liaisons" in general, left me feeling profoundly
neutral about the idea.
Barbara Williams, however, was fairly good for most of the scenes she was in.
Despite the fact that I knew from moment one that things clearly weren't as
they seem, she did a good job of presenting herself as someone who's been out
of human contact for a long while and as someone who now has no
self-confidence left, and who defines herself in terms of others. About the
only problem I _did_ have with her were in the climactic scenes, where she
jumps Picard and where she threatens to kill herself. Those were making me
cringe -- and naturally, those were the ones in the preview. Bah.
There were a couple of bits which made me wonder about how well the whole
idea was thought through, however. Firstly, it's awfully convenient that
Picard happened to be struck by lightning when he left the shuttle -- would
Voval have done something himself if he hadn't? Secondly, there's a major
dose of idiocy involved right after the crash. Picard wakes up, bruised,
crawls over to a badly wounded Voval, _moves him around_, then tells him
not to move because he might have a concussion. That's a directing error, I
think -- moving Voval around wasn't necessary and should have been cut.
That's about it, I think. The subplot with the ambassadors was pure fluff,
half of which worked; and the plot with Picard was generally solid and
competent, but pretty uninspiring and uninspired. Nothing significantly good
or bad about this show.
A quick short comment or two, then:
-- Once Worf and Byleth start going at it, Riker grabs him and says "That is
an order, Mr. Worf!" or words to that effect. WHAT is an order? I couldn't
hear any lines from him before that -- was a line dropped?
-- Just out of curiosity, why didn't Picard wear a dress uniform? From a
dramatic standpoint, I can see why they wanted the far more stylish jacket
ensemble :-), but given that he's going to see the premier of Iyar, you'd
think he'd want something more formal. Hmm.
-- Finally, having seen "Dave" over the summer, I have to say that Troi's
guided tour kept making me think of the White House tours presented in that
film -- "We're walking, we're walking..." Just a thought.
-- We saw virtually nothing of either Geordi or Data. I suspect that
"Liaisons" was a "sandwich" show, made almost to give the rest of the cast
something to do while Brent Spiner did the heavy lifting for "Descent, Part
II" and LeVar Burton worked on "Interface".
That's really it. So, to sum up:
Plot: Interesting premise, but not much development.
Plot Handling: Not good. Very little turned me off on the show, but nothing
turned me on _to_ it, either.
Characterization: Okay, such as it was -- but a lot of bad acting.
OVERALL: Call it an even 5. Very middle of the road.
NEXT WEEK:
Geordi tries to find his mother, presumed lost. The flip side of
"Birthright?" :-)
Tim Lynch (Harvard-Westlake School, Science Dept.)
BITNET: tlynch@citjulie
INTERNET: tlynch@juliet.caltech.edu
UUCP: ...!ucbvax!tlynch%juliet.caltech.edu@hamlet.caltech.edu
"Well, you're certainly not a Terellian, unless you've lost two of your
arms."
-- Jean-Luc Picard
--
Copyright 1993, Timothy W. Lynch. All rights reserved, but feel free to ask...
week's TNG episode, "Liaisons". Those not desiring a liaison with spoilers
should probably jump over this article now.
In brief: Very nondescript. The story had some potential, but it didn't
look to me like anyone really had their hearts in this.
It also appears that the preview designers haven't gotten any better since
the season break -- but that's less to the point. Before I go any further, a
synopsis follows. (And for those who missed it last week, I'll say again
that in response to requests, I now finish the synopsis with a line of ten
dashes in case you want to skip over it completely.) Anyway:
The Enterprise is receiving a delegation of ambassadors from Iyar. As Picard
prepares to return with Voval, the Iyaaran pilot, to meet with the head of
state, the two ambassadors, Loquel and Byleth, stay behind to explore the
human culture. Loquel works with Troi, and Byleth works with a very
reluctant Worf.
Things quickly take, if not a negative turn, at least a decidedly strange
one. Loquel quickly becomes fascinated with desserts, a foreign concept to
his world, while Byleth appears to be one of the only people who has fewer
social graces than Worf, who does not respond well to the treatment he
receives. Meanwhile, Picard's trip is rudely interrupted when the power to
the Iyaaran shuttle fails and they crash-land on a deserted planet. With
Voval wounded, Picard leaves to try to find help, but is struck by plasma
lightning and dragged away unconscious.
He wakes to find himself in a crashed Terellian freighter, with only one
rather bedraggled woman for company. The woman, Anna, seems somewhat
unfamiliar with speech, and claims to have been a passenger on the freighter
when it crashed. (Almost as an aside, she also mentions that Voval is dead.)
They both find out that she's been on the planet for seven years, and she
reacts very badly to the news. Picard, trying to be as reassuring as
possible, says that if they work together they can manage to leave the world.
She is grateful, but cautions him not to exert himself or even move very much
-- he has several broken ribs, and the restricting field she's placed on him
to help the bones knit will impede his motion. She offers to go to the
crashed shuttle and pick up equipment they can use, and then leaves him
alone, locking the door from the outside.
When she returns, she insists that the door had to be locked for his
protection, and Picard then finds that she accidentally damaged the equipment
she was getting beyond repair while extracting it. She is despondent at this
new setback, but Picard reassures her that things will still work out. Anna
then surprises him by saying that she doesn't ever want to be alone again --
and that she loves him.
As he works on a power cell they might be able to use, he tries to convince
her that she's simply a bit confused about how she feels. Meanwhile, on the
Enterprise, Riker decides to ease tensions by inviting both ambassadors to a
friendly poker game. Unfortunately, Byleth steals chips from Worf, and the
tensions rapidly escalate into a fight between the two. They seem evenly
matched, but Byleth stops abruptly, thanking Worf for a wonderful
"demonstration" and leaving to "write up this experience."
As the power cell is finally charged, Picard tries to get ready to return to
the shuttle, but Anna stops him, saying it's too dangerous. In the ensuing
argument, he removes the restraining field on himself and finds that he never
had any broken ribs at all. Now quite annoyed, Picard accuses Anna of
holding him captive. She says merely that she wants him to love her, and
jumps him. He, however, continues to resist, prompting her to get very
depressed about having "failed". She leaves, locking Picard in the freighter
again. As he attempts to get out, someone else approaches, yells hello, and
enters.
It's Voval, who only appeared dead. He quickly brings Picard up to date on
the situation, and then encourages Picard to go search for Anna before she
does herself harm. The two search a nearby cliff, and just after they
separate Picard finds Anna, ready to jump unless he loves her.
He, however, spots a necklace around her neck which was broken when she ran
out of the freighter, and realizes that he's being manipulated. He refuses
to love her, and Anna reverts back to her true form -- that of *Ambassador*
Voval. Voval informs him that after finding records of a crash survivor on
this planet, three representatives were sent out to experience the concepts
of pleasure (Loquel), antagonism (Byleth), and love (Voval). While Picard
points out that their actions are technically criminal, he is content to
merely return home. They return, and Picard calls it "intriguing" to see a
race that experiences a concept to such an extreme.
----------
That takes care of that. Now for some commentary.
As I said, the story idea here had some interesting concepts in it. Picard's
right, in that it _is_ somewhat interesting to see a race so interested in
taking an experience to its limits. Given the right framework and execution,
"Liaisons" could have been very interesting indeed.
However, neither the setup nor the execution really worked very well. For
starters, amazingly enough, the acting from nearly all comers seemed
*incredibly* off, especially from Stewart. His final speech to Anna, about
being manipulated and how all the timing seemed convenient, felt like someone
trying to pull off an _impression_ of Patrick Stewart rather than the man
himself. I haven't gotten that impression about his Trek work in almost two
years, and I'm not thrilled to have to say it now.
Also, and perhaps I'm merely revealing myself as being completely unromantic
where food is concerned, but the Loquel/Troi angle of the ambassador plot
fell *completely* flat for me. I also have a little difficulty understanding
why Loquel focused only on food and dessert -- given that his mission was to
study _pleasure_, one would expect other aspects of the feeling to come into
play. (Sexual pleasure, for instance, might be a significant part of the
deal.) When someone says "pleasure" to me, "Yum, chocolate!" is not the
first idea that pops into my head -- or the second, or the third, or even the
tenth, for that matter. I can vaguely see why they might have wanted to
restrict the focus solely to food, but Voval's explanation really doesn't
hold up where he's concerned.
The Byleth/Worf plot was somewhat better -- probably the highlight of the
show, actually. Even though the line was telegraphed from kilometers out, I
will confess to laughing a lot in the banquet scene when Data reassured Worf
that common ground should be easy to find -- after all, *he's* "demanding,
temperamental, and rude", too. I also have to say that we got some cute
Worf/Riker interplay here, ranging from the gleeful denial of Worf's request
for reassignment to the "besides, you look _good_ in a dress" quip from the
teaser. This was fluff, but it was amusing fluff, and I've no objection to
being amused. :-)
I do have to say, though, that Worf's one line about ripping out Byleth's
esophagus rang false for me. Not because he wouldn't think about doing it;
certainly he would. I just think that when Worf is *that* mad, he wouldn't
use words with that many syllables! (I'd expect something more along the
lines of Klingonese for "I'll rip off his nuts and feed them to tribbles",
but I suppose this is still a family show...)
Then, there's the Picard plot, which was presumably the showpiece of the
episode. I didn't particularly dislike it, but I didn't particularly warm to
it either. This, much like "Liaisons" in general, left me feeling profoundly
neutral about the idea.
Barbara Williams, however, was fairly good for most of the scenes she was in.
Despite the fact that I knew from moment one that things clearly weren't as
they seem, she did a good job of presenting herself as someone who's been out
of human contact for a long while and as someone who now has no
self-confidence left, and who defines herself in terms of others. About the
only problem I _did_ have with her were in the climactic scenes, where she
jumps Picard and where she threatens to kill herself. Those were making me
cringe -- and naturally, those were the ones in the preview. Bah.
There were a couple of bits which made me wonder about how well the whole
idea was thought through, however. Firstly, it's awfully convenient that
Picard happened to be struck by lightning when he left the shuttle -- would
Voval have done something himself if he hadn't? Secondly, there's a major
dose of idiocy involved right after the crash. Picard wakes up, bruised,
crawls over to a badly wounded Voval, _moves him around_, then tells him
not to move because he might have a concussion. That's a directing error, I
think -- moving Voval around wasn't necessary and should have been cut.
That's about it, I think. The subplot with the ambassadors was pure fluff,
half of which worked; and the plot with Picard was generally solid and
competent, but pretty uninspiring and uninspired. Nothing significantly good
or bad about this show.
A quick short comment or two, then:
-- Once Worf and Byleth start going at it, Riker grabs him and says "That is
an order, Mr. Worf!" or words to that effect. WHAT is an order? I couldn't
hear any lines from him before that -- was a line dropped?
-- Just out of curiosity, why didn't Picard wear a dress uniform? From a
dramatic standpoint, I can see why they wanted the far more stylish jacket
ensemble :-), but given that he's going to see the premier of Iyar, you'd
think he'd want something more formal. Hmm.
-- Finally, having seen "Dave" over the summer, I have to say that Troi's
guided tour kept making me think of the White House tours presented in that
film -- "We're walking, we're walking..." Just a thought.
-- We saw virtually nothing of either Geordi or Data. I suspect that
"Liaisons" was a "sandwich" show, made almost to give the rest of the cast
something to do while Brent Spiner did the heavy lifting for "Descent, Part
II" and LeVar Burton worked on "Interface".
That's really it. So, to sum up:
Plot: Interesting premise, but not much development.
Plot Handling: Not good. Very little turned me off on the show, but nothing
turned me on _to_ it, either.
Characterization: Okay, such as it was -- but a lot of bad acting.
OVERALL: Call it an even 5. Very middle of the road.
NEXT WEEK:
Geordi tries to find his mother, presumed lost. The flip side of
"Birthright?" :-)
Tim Lynch (Harvard-Westlake School, Science Dept.)
BITNET: tlynch@citjulie
INTERNET: tlynch@juliet.caltech.edu
UUCP: ...!ucbvax!tlynch%juliet.caltech.edu@hamlet.caltech.edu
"Well, you're certainly not a Terellian, unless you've lost two of your
arms."
-- Jean-Luc Picard
--
Copyright 1993, Timothy W. Lynch. All rights reserved, but feel free to ask...
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