There are interesting aspects to the story, The plague ship is one, a species suffering such a virulent disease that other races have hunted them down to extinction to stop the spread of that virus, that’s a show in itself, unfortunately it saddled with a bad sitcom story involving the two squabbling and overbearing mothers.
Ah yes the mothers, this is the episode which introduces us to Lwaxana Troi, mother to Deanna Troi and very high up the Betazoid food chain in terms of her status. Indeed the Betazed people are portrayed here as having some sort of a class system or monarchy with Troi being betrothed from a young age, this staunch traditionalist stance not only runs counter to the behaviour of Mrs Troi but is also contains the patently offensive notion that Human parents (those of Wyatt Miller – the betrothed one) would consent to such an arrangement in the supposedly advanced 24th century!
Even more offensive is that Deanna shows absolutely no resistance to the idea, or to giving up her career (so early in the series – surely you jest!). At least Riker fires up and then spends the rest of the episode pouting in the holodeck!
It does have a few funny moments, one in particular provided by the gentle giant Mr Homm, Lwaxana’s binge drinking valet who serves to make most of her episodes bearable to the wider audience!
Weird moment #3
How could I go without mentioning the talking box! The talking box FFS, For those who haven’t seen it – they beam up a talking box which gives a big speech then spits out some junk jewellery! What, like a Gorilla Gram wouldn’t suffice?
Overall 3 stars, it’s watchable, contains some good parts and some bad parts but never really gels together into a cohesive whole, if the plague ship had come a bit earlier perhaps it would’ve been better but as it is it’s almost an afterthought tacked on as a deux ex machina in order to break off the marriage and hit the reset button accordingly!
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