2x11 Contagion

[6.1/10] Captain Picard is the anchor of Star Trek: The Next Generation. So to some extent, as he goes, so goes the episode. Other characters get to be the protagonist for an episode or a subplot, but most of the show flows through him, especially in these early seasons. That makes his characterization, his approach, vital to the success or failure of the hour of television on display.

He feels strikingly out of character in “Contagion.” Gone is the thoughtful statesman who isn’t afraid to look danger in the eye but who also proceeds with caution and strategy. In his place is a reckless, quippy leader who dives into sticky situations without much of a plan or an exit strategy. I’m going to level one of the most serious charges a Trekkie can here -- in this episode, he feels more like Captain Archer than Captain Picard.

The challenge that provokes this heedless behavior is a malfunction on the Enterprise’s sister ship, the Yamato. (Riker and Worf beamed over to a brain-twisting fabrication of it back in “Where Silence Has Lease”.) Its captain was investigating the thought-be-mythical Iconian homeworld, which just so happens to be in the Neutral Zone, winning them some Romulan interference. When the Yamato suddenly blows up after a rendezvous with the Enterprise, Picard and company have to figure out whether the cause is a design flaw, Romulan sabotage, or something more mysterious. More importantly, they have to figure out whether the same thing will destroy their ship too when it starts enduring similar malfunctions.

One major problem, which seems to afflict a lot of these early episodes, is that the mystery of “What affected the Yamato and what’s affecting the Enterprise?” is pretty darn easy for the audience to figure out. They were messing with the remnants of some technologically-advanced ancient species. Their systems were malfunctioning in just the same way the Yamato’s were. And not for nothing, the episode is called “Contagion.” It’s not hard to surmise that the Yamato picked up some ancient virus from the Iconian remnants and transmitted it to the Enterprise.

Now in fairness, I assumed it was because of the Yamato debris hitting the Enterprise rather than the Enterprise downloading its sister ship’s logs. More to the point, the episode doesn’t spend that long on the mystery. But the “design flaw” and “Romulan subterfuge” options are obvious red herrings, and even after our heroes see footage of an Iconian probe blasting weird energy at the Yamato, it still takes a while (and a silly turbolift malfunction sequence with Geordi), for them to put the pieces together.

That sort of silliness is a problem because despite the theoretically ginormous stakes here, there’s very little tension from either the Romulan or Iconian threats. Geordi’s elevator ragdoll routine gins up laughs rather than scares (though at least his console blast scene with Data is meant to be funny), and Dr. Pulaski having to improvise in sickbay isn’t the dramatic mood-changer the episode means it to be.

More to the point, everyone seems to take this in stride. You can write some of this off as the crew of the Enterprise being professionals. In fact, the best scene in the episode comes when Wesley asks how everyone can be so staid about the thousand souls aboard the Yamato perishing. Picard talks to him about training and compartmentalizing but good officers still striving not to forget the value of human life. But there’s a lack of reaction from the characters to the theoretically ground-shaking events of “Contagion”, which provokes a similar lack of reaction from the audience.

Except one of puzzlement at Picard’s actions, that is. When the captain learns that the Enterprise’s issues aren’t the result of a design flaw or a Romulan attack, he doesn’t leave the Neutral Zone, but instead barrels in deeper. When he learns that the Yamato’s captain got into this situation in the first place by messing with Iconian tech he didn’t understand, Picard rushes to mess with that same tech rather than aiming to steer clear of it. Worse yet, his plan is to beam down to the Iconian control room and poke around until something happens that could tell them how to stop the digital contagion afflicting his ship. None of these seem like the right moves, or even plausibly good ones, and they seem to work out by fiat rather than by good strategies paying off.

The only excuses you can make for Picard here are two-fold. First, there’s the hint that he wants to make sure whatever powerful Iconian tech there is doesn’t fall into Romulan hands, justifying the further intrusion. The problem is, everything we see suggests tinkering with Iconian technology is just a recipe for getting your ship messed with and ultimately destroyed, so the risk rings false. Second, this is (I think?) the first time Picard mentions that he’s an archeology nerd (it’s also the first time he sees “tea, early grey, hot”!), so you also get a vague sense that he’s blinkered by the chance to explore the remains of a thought-lost, much-ballyhooed ancient civilization, regardless of whether it’s advisable.

There’s juice to the idea of a captain being blinded by personal hang-ups that could put his ship at risk (my mind drifts to Captain Kirk in TOS’s “Obsession”). But “Contagion” never really goes there, rather suggesting that for all his reckless, Picard’s right to clamber through the Neutral Zone and jostle alien tech because it all works out in the end. It has to, because he’s the captain, and he’s great, no matter how dumb he’s being about something -- thereby presaging (or following, depending on how you’d like to think about it) the adventures of Jonathan Archer.

The solution to these problems aren’t earned. Geordi sees that Data is fixed despite infection by the Iconian program by shutting down, purging the program, and booting back up. So he just does a system restore on the Enterprise off-screen and boom, everything’s fixed. Likewise, Data’s Iconian electrocution just so happens to give him the codes to destroy the Iconian planet, which he can communicate to Picard with a series of simon-like button presses. And Picard can conveniently leap through the Iconian gateways to taunt the Romulans and beam back to his ship with a quip and a smirk.

None of this feels like Star Trek and, more than that, none of it feels like Picard. However blinded he might be by archeological interests or the threat of powerful tech falling into the wrong hands, this doesn’t feel like his sort of approach, either before or after “Contagion.” The threat isn’t interesting or evocative enough to generate the sort of suspense TNG wants to build, and the solutions practically fall out of the sky rather than arise due to hard work and clever thinking. If I wanted narrative shortcuts channeled through foolhardy leader who wins by default rather than by earning his victories, I’d just fast-forward to Star Trek: Enterprise.