Fun, tense, and creative episode. Classic inspiration and fixing of old boondoggles. It's an episode I always love to watch.
And this is one of the many reasons the ladies like Picard... he falls asleep reading at the beginning of the show! *love sighs* But unfortunately he gets probed and kidnapped and replaced with a duplicate.
It all happens so fast that by the time they detect a strange energy surge in his quarters and send Worf up there to check it out, Picard greets him at the door and it seems as though it's all been a mistake.
This episode has been compared to an episode of The Twilight Zone called Five Characters In Search Of An Exit, in which an army major wakes up trapped with four others in a cylinder. They work together to escape only to realize they are figurines in a little girl's toy barrel. Not the first time Twilight Zone was drawn on for inspiration. Picard is whisked away to a locked room which at first only contains two others with another to arrive later. This episode is a reworking of the concept behind Where Silence Has Lease in the second season, which I had a lot of problems with. In that episode the Enterprise was being experimented on like lab rats by an alien presence, but it was beyond the scope of believeability and included a lot of whining and melodrama. This episode takes a more focused approach to the concept. Only one character, Picard, is snatched up for specific behavioral experiments in a laboratory situation. The experimenting is definitely more controlled and conducted more scientifically compared to that ridiculous face in space that was just a tool to complain about the inferiority of humanity.
It also fixes yet another mistake made in one of my most often complained about episodes from the first season, Lonely Among Us, in which Picard is possessed by an alien force and begins to behave strangely. In that episode he was creepy from the word go, and even goes as far as admitting that he's an alien being while everyone just worries and waits it out without any attempt to rescue Picard or themselves. In this episode, the doppelganger Picard doesn't go out of the way to act abnormally at first. He gives orders to change course, which nobody considers to be a big deal. What's unusual is that he starts to explore what everyone's reaction is to his actions as he goes on.
Anyway, after all of the subjects are present in the locked room, they soon discover that the most violent and dangerous person can't eat the food stuff that is provided to them so they have to open the door somehow. The first person that Picard talked to, a Mizarian named Kova Tholl, had been there the longest and knew that there would be a punishing ray that would discharge if any attempt was made to open the door so he doesn't cooperate at first.
Slowly but methodically over the course of the episode, Picard works out what they all have in common - they all respond differently to authority. The violent Esoqq, being an anarchist, believing in no authority; Tholl, a pacifist, yielding to all authority; a Starfleet cadet, Haro, bound to obey authority, and Picard, a Starfleet captain, the embodiment of authority. It's a smart and fun bit of puzzle solving.
The ingenuity of the writing is that the same experiment is taking place in both places with the Picard double crossing the authoritative boundaries that the real Picard would normally not overstep, both professionally and personally. This is the only time he interrupts the poker game until the series finale and he looks and feels out of place to everyone, coming to personally ask for system improvements from Geordi. He has a date with Beverly and now we see a more realistic portrait of their relationship. From the idiotic and baseless flirtation in the first season, to mature people who have an attraction to each other, but also a past which had rendered them just friends making this sudden interest on Picard's part strange and unseemly. Once again as in Lonely Among Us, it's awkward and a little creepy, but not too much.
In Lonely Among Us, they wait until it's almost too late to take action with a knowingly compromised Picard. In this episode, they suspect that something may have happened with that unexplained energy surge, but there's not enough evidence of any kind to support the theory that something is wrong with him. They have to seriously weigh the options of a potential charge of mutiny that would result from relieving him of command if they were wrong. This isn't whining and melodrama. They've found themselves in a genuine pickle this time, so all they could do is watch and wait at this point.
The imposter Picard finally goes too far when he engages Ten Forward in a round of drinks and singing of an old battle song. This is so funny and uncomfortable all at once. Kudos to the creative team. It's truly an epic moment. It's still not enough to relieve Picard of duty, but now the crew are all on the same page when the time comes. The phony Picard starts to endanger the lives of everyone by ordering the ship to be flown too close to a pulsar star. It seems like a malevolent act, but it's presumably another test of the crew's reactions. Even Worf abandons his loyalty to Picard for this folly.
Back in the locked room they discover when the four of them work together, they can open the door successfully... only to find another door. Of course, being a Picard episode, his brilliance is on display as he finally figures out that this is a lab experiment. I personally like the way the writers proceed as though the other episodes just never happened. They rework them and improve upon them and it's like a redo; a reset.
He cleverly leads the Starfleet cadet into talking about a classified mission that a low ranking cadet wouldn't know about. He announces to everyone that they're being studied and that Haro is the one observing them and then formally refuses to cooperate anymore. Once the jig is up Haro transforms into her real form and two others of this race of aliens appear to tell them that all of them that had been taken had their duplicates left in their places. Picard is outraged but proud to know that his crew had figured out the deception as well and that Riker had already assumed command of the ship. Since the experiment is a bust, they each grab a hostage and return them to where they came from.
Naturally, the only person who is followed up on is Picard, which makes for another fist-pumping, gotcha ending that was almost as much fun as the ending of Ensigns Of Command so I'll just paste it in here. No philosophical ranting. No conceding the inferiority of humanity to anyone just because they had the ability to gain the advantage over them. It's only a little sloppy with the quickness and simplicity of the aliens being unable to bear captivity as a point of irony, but it's easily forgiveable. It not only displays how cool Picard is *again* but we get to see the crew's precision teamwork on display again and that's always cool as well.
It doesn't quite have the depth and personal connection for five stars but I have no complaints about it and it's one of my favorites. Four stars
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