[7.4/10] I like the beginning of “The Survivors”. I love the end of it. It’s the middle that gives me heartburn. An intriguing, almost disquieting mystery opens things up. A poignant combination of science fiction and character building brings it to an end. And a bewildering set of choices unites those two pieces of the episode.
But let’s focus on the positives. The word “Lynchian” is thrown around all too easily these days (including by yours truly) to mean anything that’s kind of weird. But it has a more specific meaning, not just pertaining to the distinctive stylings of David Lynch and his method of extracting an elliptical sort of profundity from the bizarre and unknowable. I tend to think of it in terms of its deployment in Twin Peaks, where the pristine veneer of domestic bliss is slowly chipped away to reveal something strange and horrible beneath.
That’s the atmosphere “The Survivors” creates when the crew of the Enterprise visits the titular last surviving couple of a planet that’s been decimated in a nuclear attack. Kevin and Rishon Uxbridge seem like a kindly old married couple, offering the Starfleet officers tea, displaying a family music box, making visitors feel welcomed and comfortable in their quaint family home. They waltz and nudge one another and generally seem like a couple of amiable grandparents, almost to the point of falling into familiar archetypes.
But something’s not right about this whole situation. It’s not clear why they are the only two survivors of a nuclear holocast, with not only their lives, but their homestead intact. As inviting as Roshin is to Picard, Riker, and others, there’s a reservedness and a resistance to Kevin, one that could be chalked up to the usual homesteader’s curmudgeonliness when told to leave his land by strangers, but which suggests something more hidden and sinister. And he seems to have an undue amount of confidence that the warship which destroyed their civilization won’t return to bother them again.
It creates a general sense of eeriness despite the bucolic splendor of the Uxbridges’ little slice of paradise. It’s that contrast, between a happy, traditional, Norman Rockwell-like scene, and the unshakable sense that there is something hidden and sinister at play that makes the episode worthy of that Lynchian designation. Honestly, I’m impressed at how long the episode carries that vibe, as these shows have a tendency to spill the beans by the midway point. “The Survivors” lets the audience in on the fact that the Uxbridges know more than they’re saying, and have more agency in this situation than they let on, but doesn’t explain things until the end.
The other element of the episode that feels Lynchian is the psychic torture that Counselor Troi suffers from when in proximity to the Uxbridges’ planet, Rana IV. There’s genuine horror to the melody of their music box echoing in her head, with expert sound design that makes that simple twinkly melody feel like the onset of madness. That same sense of a supernatural trauma inflicting itself upon an innocent that can’t be exercised gives it the feel of David Lynch’s terrors.
But here’s the problem. Picard doesn’t seem to know any more than the audience does about the situation, just that there’s something weird going on. But he proceeds to 1. Diagnose the situations, seemingly magically, thorough just a couple of conversations with the Uxbridges, and then 2. Put his ship and his crew at risk based on that hunch without having fully run his theory to ground and, most importantly, without letting his senior officers in on it.
I can understand that sometimes television shows have to do this silly little dance where a character knows something but doesn’t say it out loud because the storytelling requires saving the reveal for a choice moment. And I’m not a Holdo truther either -- sometimes there’s good reason for leaders not to tell their subordinates certain details. But this isn’t one of those situations.
Picard thinks that Kevin Uxbridge is in control of the situation and just wants the Enterprise to go away. He thinks the unstoppable and inescapable warship that attacked them is a projection of Kevin’s and not an independent actor. And he believes that Kevin is a committed pacifist, who no matter his ruffled feathers over Picard’s intrusion, wouldn’t use force against them. How does Picard glean all of these things? The episode doesn’t really establish that. Just a few suspicious conversations and a couple of deductions that require some sizable leaps for Picard to reach the level of certainty and detail he arrives at.
He is, of course, right about all of this, because the script needs him to be. But why he doesn’t take his senior staff into a room to explain this theory, even if the audience isn’t privy to it, during the hour between the Enterprise’s departure from Rana IV and its return, is totally beyond me. He makes seemingly crazy decisions, ones that put the whole ship at risk on a hunch, and doesn’t have the consideration to let his senior staff in on it for no reason other than that doing so would spoil it for the audience.
I get that, to some extent, because it’s a good reveal! There’s something harrowing about the true story that Kevin finally spills. It comes at the right time in the narrative, to leave the audience chewing on it as the credits roll and to deliver that big monologue at the end that puts everything into focus. But it requires a lot of uncharacteristic close-mouthed B.S. from Picard to get to that point.
The end of the episode feels less like something out of David Lynch and more like something out of The Original Series. It turns out that Kevin is an immortal being with god-like powers. He’s thousands of years old and avoided the wrath of the force that destroyed Rana IV because of his inability to die. But his wife, Roshin, chose to go against his pacifist views and was killed for it. So he recreated a small sliver of their life, including remaking her and their home, to help cope with this grief.
For all the early weirdness, that feels more like the sort of thing that Captain Kirk would typically encounter than Captain Picard. I’m particularly reminded of “Requiem for Methuselah”, where Kirk, Spock, and Bones meet a man named Flint, another immortal being, and his friendly ward, who turns out to be an android. Both stories tell the tale of a world-weary immortal, having forged a connection to something and trying to hold onto it, while the audience has to guess what’s amiss about the whole situation.
It’s a good formula to trot now and again (and it’s something TNG attempted previously in “The Schizoid Man” with less success.) But it works here because the performance of John Anderson as Kevin Uxbridge is so good. The whole episode basically comes down to a monologue where he delivers his backstory, telling rather than showing what led to all of this. And yet, it works really well because Anderson has such conviction in the performance, making you believe that this a man who never intended to grow attached to a human woman, and now finds himself incapable of existing without her.
The details he drops next make “The Survivors” the unexpected forerunner to yet another T.V. series -- the current hit du jour, WandaVision. Despite his pacificism, Kevin’s grief led him to an untenable position, where he not only used his universe-shaking powers to obliterate the entire species that killed his wife, but then created this fantasy world to avoid having to truly deal with the loss. Despite these interlopers, he just wants to be left alone, to play out his escape from the reality that he now finds too hard to bear.
It’s a piercing conclusion, one that brings Kevin down to an ironically very human stature. An immortal who lost his wife out of his refusal to kill found himself violating his sacred precept in exponential terms. The man who can seemingly do and make anything only wants the partner he lost, the one he was destined to lose given her mortality anyway. As Picard admits, the Federation can lay no claim to him, no matter his crimes. He is beyond our ability to cabin or punish. Instead, the mystery is solved; he cures Troi after having blocked her mind to avoid exposure, and he is left to stew on what he’s done and lost.
It’s bittersweet and satisfying, in the proud tradition of these episodes. I don’t know whether “The Survivors” fits best with something like the near-contemporaneous Twin Peaks series, or a forerunner like the 1960s Star Trek, or even something modern like WandaVision. Whatever it is, but for a questionable middle section, it would be a compelling mystery, riddled with an unnerving atmosphere, that ends with something piercing and sublime.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-03-03T02:46:18Z
[7.4/10] I like the beginning of “The Survivors”. I love the end of it. It’s the middle that gives me heartburn. An intriguing, almost disquieting mystery opens things up. A poignant combination of science fiction and character building brings it to an end. And a bewildering set of choices unites those two pieces of the episode.
But let’s focus on the positives. The word “Lynchian” is thrown around all too easily these days (including by yours truly) to mean anything that’s kind of weird. But it has a more specific meaning, not just pertaining to the distinctive stylings of David Lynch and his method of extracting an elliptical sort of profundity from the bizarre and unknowable. I tend to think of it in terms of its deployment in Twin Peaks, where the pristine veneer of domestic bliss is slowly chipped away to reveal something strange and horrible beneath.
That’s the atmosphere “The Survivors” creates when the crew of the Enterprise visits the titular last surviving couple of a planet that’s been decimated in a nuclear attack. Kevin and Rishon Uxbridge seem like a kindly old married couple, offering the Starfleet officers tea, displaying a family music box, making visitors feel welcomed and comfortable in their quaint family home. They waltz and nudge one another and generally seem like a couple of amiable grandparents, almost to the point of falling into familiar archetypes.
But something’s not right about this whole situation. It’s not clear why they are the only two survivors of a nuclear holocast, with not only their lives, but their homestead intact. As inviting as Roshin is to Picard, Riker, and others, there’s a reservedness and a resistance to Kevin, one that could be chalked up to the usual homesteader’s curmudgeonliness when told to leave his land by strangers, but which suggests something more hidden and sinister. And he seems to have an undue amount of confidence that the warship which destroyed their civilization won’t return to bother them again.
It creates a general sense of eeriness despite the bucolic splendor of the Uxbridges’ little slice of paradise. It’s that contrast, between a happy, traditional, Norman Rockwell-like scene, and the unshakable sense that there is something hidden and sinister at play that makes the episode worthy of that Lynchian designation. Honestly, I’m impressed at how long the episode carries that vibe, as these shows have a tendency to spill the beans by the midway point. “The Survivors” lets the audience in on the fact that the Uxbridges know more than they’re saying, and have more agency in this situation than they let on, but doesn’t explain things until the end.
The other element of the episode that feels Lynchian is the psychic torture that Counselor Troi suffers from when in proximity to the Uxbridges’ planet, Rana IV. There’s genuine horror to the melody of their music box echoing in her head, with expert sound design that makes that simple twinkly melody feel like the onset of madness. That same sense of a supernatural trauma inflicting itself upon an innocent that can’t be exercised gives it the feel of David Lynch’s terrors.
But here’s the problem. Picard doesn’t seem to know any more than the audience does about the situation, just that there’s something weird going on. But he proceeds to 1. Diagnose the situations, seemingly magically, thorough just a couple of conversations with the Uxbridges, and then 2. Put his ship and his crew at risk based on that hunch without having fully run his theory to ground and, most importantly, without letting his senior officers in on it.
I can understand that sometimes television shows have to do this silly little dance where a character knows something but doesn’t say it out loud because the storytelling requires saving the reveal for a choice moment. And I’m not a Holdo truther either -- sometimes there’s good reason for leaders not to tell their subordinates certain details. But this isn’t one of those situations.
Picard thinks that Kevin Uxbridge is in control of the situation and just wants the Enterprise to go away. He thinks the unstoppable and inescapable warship that attacked them is a projection of Kevin’s and not an independent actor. And he believes that Kevin is a committed pacifist, who no matter his ruffled feathers over Picard’s intrusion, wouldn’t use force against them. How does Picard glean all of these things? The episode doesn’t really establish that. Just a few suspicious conversations and a couple of deductions that require some sizable leaps for Picard to reach the level of certainty and detail he arrives at.
He is, of course, right about all of this, because the script needs him to be. But why he doesn’t take his senior staff into a room to explain this theory, even if the audience isn’t privy to it, during the hour between the Enterprise’s departure from Rana IV and its return, is totally beyond me. He makes seemingly crazy decisions, ones that put the whole ship at risk on a hunch, and doesn’t have the consideration to let his senior staff in on it for no reason other than that doing so would spoil it for the audience.
I get that, to some extent, because it’s a good reveal! There’s something harrowing about the true story that Kevin finally spills. It comes at the right time in the narrative, to leave the audience chewing on it as the credits roll and to deliver that big monologue at the end that puts everything into focus. But it requires a lot of uncharacteristic close-mouthed B.S. from Picard to get to that point.
The end of the episode feels less like something out of David Lynch and more like something out of The Original Series. It turns out that Kevin is an immortal being with god-like powers. He’s thousands of years old and avoided the wrath of the force that destroyed Rana IV because of his inability to die. But his wife, Roshin, chose to go against his pacifist views and was killed for it. So he recreated a small sliver of their life, including remaking her and their home, to help cope with this grief.
For all the early weirdness, that feels more like the sort of thing that Captain Kirk would typically encounter than Captain Picard. I’m particularly reminded of “Requiem for Methuselah”, where Kirk, Spock, and Bones meet a man named Flint, another immortal being, and his friendly ward, who turns out to be an android. Both stories tell the tale of a world-weary immortal, having forged a connection to something and trying to hold onto it, while the audience has to guess what’s amiss about the whole situation.
It’s a good formula to trot now and again (and it’s something TNG attempted previously in “The Schizoid Man” with less success.) But it works here because the performance of John Anderson as Kevin Uxbridge is so good. The whole episode basically comes down to a monologue where he delivers his backstory, telling rather than showing what led to all of this. And yet, it works really well because Anderson has such conviction in the performance, making you believe that this a man who never intended to grow attached to a human woman, and now finds himself incapable of existing without her.
The details he drops next make “The Survivors” the unexpected forerunner to yet another T.V. series -- the current hit du jour, WandaVision. Despite his pacificism, Kevin’s grief led him to an untenable position, where he not only used his universe-shaking powers to obliterate the entire species that killed his wife, but then created this fantasy world to avoid having to truly deal with the loss. Despite these interlopers, he just wants to be left alone, to play out his escape from the reality that he now finds too hard to bear.
It’s a piercing conclusion, one that brings Kevin down to an ironically very human stature. An immortal who lost his wife out of his refusal to kill found himself violating his sacred precept in exponential terms. The man who can seemingly do and make anything only wants the partner he lost, the one he was destined to lose given her mortality anyway. As Picard admits, the Federation can lay no claim to him, no matter his crimes. He is beyond our ability to cabin or punish. Instead, the mystery is solved; he cures Troi after having blocked her mind to avoid exposure, and he is left to stew on what he’s done and lost.
It’s bittersweet and satisfying, in the proud tradition of these episodes. I don’t know whether “The Survivors” fits best with something like the near-contemporaneous Twin Peaks series, or a forerunner like the 1960s Star Trek, or even something modern like WandaVision. Whatever it is, but for a questionable middle section, it would be a compelling mystery, riddled with an unnerving atmosphere, that ends with something piercing and sublime.