1x14 11001001

[7.3/10] Consider the angler fish, a type of sea life that suckers in its prey in with a shiny, eye-catching lure, and then once they’re close enough, chomps the hell out of them. For attracting other fish, the angler uses bright lights and intriguing color that grab their attention. And if you wanted to lure in Commander Riker, it’s hard to think of a better lure than a sparkling conversationalist in a slinky red dress who likes jazz.

And I’ll confess, the awkwardly but appropriately named “11001001” suckered me in a bit too. I remembered the “Riker falls in love with a hologram” part of this story but not the “Picard and Number One save the ship” element. So they caught me by surprise, in a good way, when the episode turned into a low key Die Hard-type situation (something the show would pick up again in earnest down the line).

That’s a good thing, because the first part of this episode is the pits. Sometimes shore leave episodes can be the best ones in Star Trek, because they allow the writers to dispense with the plot of the week storytelling and just dig into some character moments. That’s what “11001001” seemed to be going for in the first couple of acts, with meager results.

For one thing, Riker is a jerk to Data and Geordi in their efforts to try something creative together in the form of painting. Dr. Crusher’s excitement over meeting a cybernetics professor is amusing but slight. The same goes for Tasha and Worf playing pickup basketball, or its futuristic equivalent, against the mechanics of the starbase where they’re docked. There’s not much to these glancing little scenes we see as Riker waits for something interesting to come along. The only real bit of substance we get is the typically stuffy Picard seeming downright pleased and congratulatory to his crew over how their first tour of duty has gone, even giving his Number One a firm attaboy.

But once Riker hits the holodeck and becomes enchanted with “Minuet”, the virtual femme fatale meant to ensnare him, I feared we were headed for a tale of “What did you do over Spring Break, Will?” “I basically stayed in the whole time and watched porn.” Even if the episode had stuck more closely to that setup (or gotten less horny over the whole thing), much of the turn here hinges on the novelty on a lifelike hologram. As in “The Big Goodbye”, that puts a damper on things for longtime fans who’ve seen The Doctor and other complex holograms, characters who make it hard to relate to the sort of awe Picard and Riker seem to have for the unexpectedly realistic digital dame.

Still, from there, the episode takes a dramatic shift. The Binars, the diminutive, binary-speaking computer whizzes meant to upgrade the Enterprise’s computers, instead commandeer the ship and point it toward their home world. Most of the crew evacuate due to a supposed antimatter containment, but Riker and Picard are too wrapped up in their holo-fantasy. The two realize something’s wrong when Minuet will do anything to keep them entranced rather than investigating what’s going on with the ship.

What follows is a nice bit of excitement and mystery. Picard and Riker don’t know what precisely is going on, where their crew is, or where they’re headed. Data and the rest of the ship’s officers don’t know why they’ve been hoodwinked or how to stop the Binars. And the audience has more hints as to both, but isn’t entirely clear what the Binars’ plan or purpose is.

What follows is some classic Star Trek problem solving. Picard and Riker have to figure a way to stop the Binars and regain control of the ship, the tension of which is heightened when they initiate self-destruct as a failsafe. Data and the Starfleet Commander have to determine how to render aid with ships scattered and little certainty over what’s happening. There’s an urgency and resourcefulness present in the back half of the episode that’s missing from the much more slack first half.

It’s nice to get to see Picard and Riker work as a team in that regard. The show’s included some playful or professional banter between them up to this point, but this is the first joint story we’ve gotten for the ship’s two most senior officers since the pilot. In that spirit, with TOS vet Robert Justman moving on, this episode is a coming out party for the next regime, and they do their best to compliment the way the show started while charting a path forward via the series’s two biggest characters in the early going.

And yet, what’s most compelling about their retaking of the ship comes down to the Binars’ motivation. I had assumed, given their furtive conversations and fascination with computers, that the Binars simply wanted to consume or otherwise absorb the Enterprise into their homeworld since it’s apparently renowned as the biggest and best “mobile computer.”

Instead, they’re simply trying to stay alive, to preserve their planet, in the face of a miscalculation and supernova that otherwise threatens to destroy their way of life and the supercomputer that keeps them functioning. The notion that they basically just wanted to back up their planet’s master computer on the Enterprise so that it could be restored after a temporary reboot is the IT master’s dream story, and it makes the duplicitous little data sprites more sympathetic than malicious.

The resolution isn’t perfect. There’s something pretty facile about the notion that the Binars are so binary that they couldn’t just ask for help because they couldn’t comprehend the nuance between “yes” and “no.” Likewise, the show rushes the “What’s the file name and password for the backup files?” bit, with Picard and Riker figuring out the answer arbitrarily. (Honestly, it feels like a more detailed setup and payoff was cut for time; I assumed the file name and/or password was going to be “Minuet.”) And there’s a little too much back-patting going on through the whole thing.

But the other side of the coin is that TNG takes a slow start and turns it into a dose of exciting suspense, intriguing mystery, and a solution that requires cleverness and empathy. That’s what I think of when I think of the best episodes of this series. “11001001” doesn’t reach those lofty heights, but it’s an encouraging sign as the show starts a new chapter and suggests there’s plenty more thrilling adventures to lure us in, yet to come.