7x08 Attached

[7.8/10] It used to be that Star Trek: The Next Generation was awash in teases of a Beverly/Jean-Luc pairing. In the earlier seasons especially, the show would seemingly spend every other week with one or the other about to confess their feelings until a convenient emergency would come along to thwart them.

Somewhere along the line, the show moved away from that tack. Dr. Crusher would canoodle with the occasional Trill negotiator and Captain Picard would set his sights on Vash and Nella Daren, but gone were the hints that all it might take is the right moment, the right opportunity, for them to finally act on their feelings.

“Attached” is the closest we ever get to that opportunity (at least with the real Captain Picard). Jean-Luc and Beverly are kidnapped by the aliens of the week and joined with a virtual, brainstem-based tether that not only prevents them from venturing too far apart, but allows them, after a time, to read one another’s thoughts. That’s both a help and a hindrance as the duo break out of an alien prison and try to make their way toward safety.

In essence, “Attached” is a play on the old chestnut of “two prisoners are shackled to one another and must work together to get to freedom.” There’s an appropriately science fiction-y twist here. The shackle that binds Picard and Crusher is an invisible one, whose ties are more psychic than physical, but the principal and consequence is the same. These two people are bound together, mentally and physically, which provides them a chance to understand how each truly feels about the other in a way the two professionals otherwise keep guarded.

The aliens who hook them up (both literally and figuratively) are fairly stock, though. Another way in which “Attached” plays like a minor throwback to the early days of TNG is how it uses squabbling aliens to play the “My how far humanity’s come!” card. It’s not bad exactly, but as the show rounds the bend of its final season, the whole thing feels rote.

The planet Kesprytt wants to join the Federation...sort of. The Kes, who populate three-quarters of the planet, are ostensibly friendly and wish to become “associate members” of the UFP, while the Prytt, their planetary counterparts, are isolationists who want no part of it. It’s the Prytt who kidnap Picard and Crusher, out of an assumption that their “military alliance” with the Kes is a prelude to an attack on them. Again, pretty stock standard stuff when making new-ish contact with a species and learning their culture.

The twist is that however ostensibly friendlier the Kes may be, they (or at least their ambassador) is just as paranoid as the Prytt. In order to retrieve his captain, Riker has to overcome the suspicions of both sides. The trust of all of this seems to be that true advancement cannot come until there’s unity, and unity cannot come unless all sides set aside their paranoia and mistrust. But the takeaway is facile, and it mainly plays as a semi-convenient diplomatic speed bump to prevent this from being a simple search and rescue mission for two of the Enterprise’s senior officers.

The main event, though, is the interaction between Beverly and Jean-Luc. The most charged scene comes when Beverly realizes that Jean-Luc was in love with her when she was married to Jack. Picard admits to those feelings and gives a monologue that feels very him, about pushing aside feelings because it wasn’t right, either before or after the death of his best friend. The scene works because it feels true to who Picard is, with a connection to someone special, but also the sense of greater duties and loyalties that keep him from that kind of personal fulfillment. And for her part, Beverly acknowledges the attraction that’s long existed, but is floored by the depth of feeling she didn’t know existed within her dear friend.

And yet, it’s not the thing that compels the most about their back-and-forth in “Attached.” It’s the easy rapport between them. It’s comparatively easy to write a big emotional confession about love and the path not traveled. It’s harder to show two people understanding one another on an intuitive level, connecting in ways deeper than operatic lost romances and love triangles.

My favorite moment in the whole damn episode is Picard unwittingly confessing that he doesn’t like the big breakfasts that Beverly orders but never said anything because he thought she liked them, and Beverly admitting that she’s not big on them either, but didn’t want breakfast to get monotonous for him. Maybe it’s projection. My wife and I have similar back and forths over what to have for dinner when we’re each trying to pick what we think the other person wants rather than just saying what we want. So the game of mutual, well-intentioned accommodation is a relatable one. But it speaks to a lived-in quality to Beverly and Jean-Luc’s relationship, one with its own cute little traditions and kind, albeit slightly miscalibrated attempts to make one another happy.

The tether between them knocks down their efforts at courtesy, lowers the guards they put up even as close friends, and exposes something real. Jean-Luc laughs with Beverly over her smart mouth ruining a date in her youth, but also senses the way it masks her genuine regret at hurting a friend when she thought she was just being cute. Beverly senses the way Picard internally winces at thoughts he would never willingly vocalize. The fact that the two of them can read each other's minds means there’s a necessarily layered approach to their emotions, a distance between what they think and what they express that the episode can explore in a way that’s harder under most other circumstances.

It speaks to the universal and the specific. There’s parts of ourselves we all keep guarded, things we think but never say, insecurities or fragments from another life we hold close even from friends. “Attached” understands that in ways large and small, from the natural distance between thinking about food while not announcing you’re hungry to keep peace, to pieces of our pasts that are locked away. It’s relatable and real, in a natural way.

At the same time, though, it’s true to the specificities of Beverly and Jean-Luc. They have an easy rapport that conveys the sense of two people who’ve known one another for decades in a way that’s rare for on-screen stories. They can finish each other’s thoughts even before they experience a psychic link. Dr. Crusher was always one of the few members of the crew willing to push back in major, undeterred fashion on the distinguished captain, because she’s a peer in a way few are with the decorated Jean-Luc Picard. There’s a sense in which the mental tether is merely an extension of something that already exists.

But it also awakens something in each of them, deepens their connection and revives something they thought had been lost and packed away long ago. As a TNG viewer, I’m not sure I ever wanted to see the show pull the trigger on the two of them more than that romantic scene in the aftermath of their rescue and retrieval. It’s the two of them admitting that this feeling is there, that Picard is willing to brave the rough edges of duty in order to pursue it, that there’s something spiritual and transcendent between them that can’t go ignored for any longer.

And yet, as she did in “Allegiance”, Beverly turns Jean-Luc down, and tells him that she’s happy with the relationship the way it is. I’ll confess, I imagine this is more of an metatextual/pragmatic decision, where an episodic T.V. show in 1993 didn’t want to commit to a long term relationship between two of its main characters, even in a final season. Maybe it’s that they wanted to save that catharsis for a rainy day, whether a season finale that could explore more complications in that relationship, or later cinematic adventures. Whatever the reason, TNG pulls back at the end here.

“Attached” nevertheless remains the high water mark for the relationship between Jean-Luc and Beverly. This was no mere tease, no light suggestion that there might be something more between them, It was a deep exploration of why the two made sense together, what held them back for so long and persists to this point, and how their spiritual connection with one another is present and irrepressible even if the two professionals (or a set of writers) choose to let it wax and wane as is practical.

The best episodes of Star Trek take the fantastical and imaginative, and connect it with something real and true. It’s rare that tack comes down to something like deep romantic love, but in “Attached”, The Next Generation brings two of its signature characters together in mind, body, and spirit, and gives the audience a glimpse of the heartening connection neither the show, or they, could ever quite commit to as strongly.