After a shaky start, we move onto a "just for
fun"episode. And not a moment too
soon. It's good to break up the momentum every now and then. Whether things are going badly like they had been or even when things are going good.
The Enterprise has some down time so the characters get to
engage in recreations. We never see
Geordi's interest in creating model ships again. However, they take the opportunity to expand
on Data's interest in Sherlock Holmes, which he is first seen dabbling in
during the episode, The Lonely Among Us.
This situation is more appealing and visually satisfying
than Captain Picard wanting to dress up as a gangster era detective. On the whole there are more references to
Dixon Hill than Sherlock Holmes, but I think Data's Holmes wins in the area of
fun on the holodeck. It's also appealing
to a 20th century audience in a way that The Big Goodbye wasn't. It begins exactly as one would think. Geordi takes Data to the holodeck to play out
a Sherlock story, but Data already knows the ending. It's a relatable situation to anyone who has
at least one friend in their group that is good at spoiling the fun in some
way.
I think what I like most about the holodeck episodes is
that it's a great way to get characters out of their normal uniforms and put
them in more familiar clothing without having to commit to a time traveling
story. It's one of Roddenberry's good ideas
that he couldn't develop in TOS, so they had to have some strange episodes that
included not only time travel, but planets where the aliens were just dressed
like normal people - which was always quaintly charming in the old series, but
would've been completely absurd and unacceptable in the new show. The holodeck was Roddenberry's greatest idea since Star Trek itself. I have to admit that he could really knock it out of the park at times.
Through Geordi, they also manage to make the point that I
was making the other day about the dynamic between Pulaski and Data. In trying to mirror Spock and McCoy, this
relationship was more delicate and Pulaski's chiding could be considered
bullying in comparison to McCoy just sounding jealous at heart of the superior
Spock. They note that the observations
that Dr. Pulaski makes about Data not being able to perform deductive reasoning
on his own without the complete works of Doyle to assist are unfair.
However,
that doesn't stop Geordi from trying anyway.
He programs the holodeck to create an adversary that can defeat
Data. In order to beat a machine you need to be a sentient being of course. And here is where everyone in the
Star Trek fandom happily leaves any pretense at reality. How can a computer create a sentient
being? We don't know and we don't care. It's
just a good, fun story. They make a
monster that is aware of the Enterprise and aware that the person who is
pretending to be Holmes isn't really Holmes.
You also see the first attempts at fixing the concepts from previous
episodes. The holo-characters can't see
Data's strange skin and Geordi's visor because they aren't real. This was a flaw in The Big Goodbye. It's all perfectly normal to all the characters
until the problem with Moriarty occurs.
And even his new knowledge doesn't call attention to the obvious. He knows Data isn't really Holmes but he
doesn't know why and Geordi's visor doesn't concern him at all.
Moreover, they made him charismatic. He's still deadly but his focus has changed
because he now knows he's not "real."
In The Big Goodbye, the characters are explaining to the holodeck
figures that they aren't real because of the safety accident and it's all very
awkward and silly. The characters have
no reason to care if they're real or not and shouldn't have the desire to do
anything but play out the Dixon Hill program. This episode lends a little depth
to the safeties on the holodeck going haywire.
Moriarty became self aware...oops.
But at least now the danger becomes a little more
intelligent and better science fiction.
Now that he knows he's a literary character he's no longer interested in
defeating Holmes or being a crime lord in London. He just wants to see the world that he knows
he's now a part of. Perhaps he had
nefarious intentions for this world as well; after all he's still Moriarty. But the newness of it all has him in awe and
it makes him likeable. It gave him a
sympathetic quality even though he was still a villain by nature, and grayed
the lines of black and white on what was the appropriate action to take. It was good writing. So he takes the whole ship hostage in order
to get their attention and his release from this holodeck world.
In the end they reason out that it's possible for Moriarty to
survive outside of the holodeck because that the technology wasn't sufficient
yet. Originally, Picard and Data make
that determination privately and are not honest with Moriarty on this point. They scrapped that idea because they didn't
want Picard and Data to be deceptive and it was a good move. They explain it to Moriarty and he agrees to
wait in their memory banks. It's kind of
a cheesy ending, but it's not entirely out of the realm of the possibility with
a character like that who, although evil, was also a refined gentleman who had to have a lot of patience to work a mastermind's intricate plans.
It's not a great episode and it has it's wasted moments like dressing Worf out in costume for no reason at all, but it's an improvement on
previous ideas and it was also a lot of fun.
Moriarty's interaction with Pulaski was charming. His character was believable. And seeing Data finally
being able to prove his abilities at deductive reasoning after Geordi's request
is granted is just plain entertaining.
It also had an open ending which they do follow up on later although I'm not sure they planned to. Normally I'd give an episode like this three
and a half stars due to an overall lack of complexity, but it really was fun
and it seemed to project a sneak peak of the greatness that the show would
develop in the following seasons, so I think I can go with four stars on this.
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