I love this episode. It's in my list of top favorites. I always love the mind bending episodes.
Beverly is my favorite female from this show. She had a pretty unique character and it was improved on when she came back in the third season. She balanced the role of a very nurturing and loving mother with that of a competent doctor. And up to this point they'd used her in those two roles. You see the mother thing all the time with Wesley and you see her medical skills on display frequently when there's a mystery to solve. This episode stretches the boundaries of her character a little. It starts out harmlessly enough. She's escorting an old friend, Dr. Dalen Quaise, who is visiting from the starbase they're parked at to his quarters. They're having one of the most natural conversations that anyone who's lived into adulthood a little has had. Quaise is a recent widower who is retiring and is generally sad at aging and watching old friends die off. They talk about not taking anyone in your life for granted and that makes her want to go see Wesley on an impulse.
But Wesley is stressed out in engineering with Geordi breathing down his neck to stop with whatever experiment he's working on so he can get the warp engines back online. Beverly stands aside saying that she doesn't want to bother him, so he goes back to punching buttons. There's a bright flash and something goes wrong with what Wesley is looking at on the screen but he can't figure it out. He looks up for his mother again but she's not there and it's assumed that she walked off. After all, she said it wasn't important and he was very busy. He didn't really even have time to wonder why she was there in the first place. It's a slippery first scene because there's no indication that anything is wrong.
Especially when nothing appears to be actually wrong. Even if you started thinking that Beverly disappeared in the flash of light you next see her going back to Quaise's room only to find Quaise missing. And it's not an out of the realm of possibility given all of the things that she starts listing could've happened to him... he was old and melancholy... he could've gotten lost or changed his mind and transported back to the star base before they left. Nobody remembered him coming aboard but a lot of people get on and off at star bases and nobody knew him personally except Dr. Crusher. So when all of their searching comes up empty it poses a mystery. It's proceeding like a typical episode at this point. Then she starts losing medical staff who Captain Picard doesn't remember every having on board as he now also doesn't remember ever approving a visitor named Dalen Quaise weeks prior. But he's happy to indulge her in any kind of investigation she wants because he's known her so long and trusts her judgement. Wesley thinks that his experiment may have something to do with the disappearances and it certainly seems like it may when Beverly is alone and a vortex opens up and tries to suck her inside.
Everything happens really fast. Before she knows it she's the only Doctor on the ship and the ship's entire population is down by 800 people. None of this seems strange to anyone but her. But they keep investigating and exploring different theories for her sake. Then you know things are terribly wrong when she mentions Lt. Worf and Picard has no idea who she's talking about. The intensity escalates very quickly now and everything starts to snowball. And the episode is only half over.
She begins to seriously wonder if she's losing her mind. She goes to find Wesley, determined not to let him out of her sight but he disappears while she's leading him back to their quarters. She goes back to the bridge to find that she and Picard are the only two people left on the ship.
She points out the obvious insanity that they're the only two people on a ship this size roaming through the galaxy together. Yet none of this seems strange to the captain who is now worried about her and visibly a little tired of indulging what seems to be her fantasies of missing crew members. He indulges her one last time allowing her to monitor his life signs until he disappears as well. The vortex opens again and it makes it seem like this is how everyone must have disappeared. But she isn't so distressed by the situation that she gives up and allows herself to be sucked in... why would she? It is a natural instinct to avoid something that looks so dangerous.
But this time the story follows the vortex to the other side to see that Beverly is the only one missing and the vortex keeps opening because Geordi and Wesley keep opening it in attempt to give her a way back into their universe from the parallel one that Wesley accidentally created with the warp bubble. So it is the experiment after all, but not how it originally seemed. Go ahead and be a snob and say you knew it all along, I don't care. This was one of the coolest plot twists in my book and I loved it. And it could absolutely take anyone by surprise who isn't into the technical end of the science fiction.
This episode was also exactly the sort of thing I'd hoped that they'd do with Wesley throughout the entire show. And it makes me even more frustrated to look back on it now. They should've been doing stuff like this with Wesley from the moment they made him a bridge officer in Where No One Has Gone before in the first season. He has a connection with the Traveler and he comes to Wesley's aide by instinct because sending a message to his remote planet would take too long.
Working together they reopen the warp bubble. Even Wesley phases with the Traveler this time. This special ability of his was never expounded upon in that first episode he was in and it was never developed in Wesley. They could've been having more episodes of him discovering more and more of these strange powers instead of writing him as having crushes on girls, botching science experiments, or being saddled with the responsibility of leading a research team. The abilities could've been present in Jack Crusher before his life was cut short, handing them down to Wesley. The mother-son relationship would've been much more interesting too if they'd made his character into an evolving being of some kind as Beverly would be watching her son's life unfold in a very different way than anyone ever expected. They could've written an entirely different history and taken advantage of Wesley's presence in the cast. What's done is done, I guess, but this is Wesley's finest moment on the show, in my opinion. And I'll always be angry they didn't go in this direction with him from the very beginning.
While they're working on that end, Beverly is displaying her intelligence and cool under pressure. All alone now, she starts talking to the computer to try to hypothesize her way into a solution. This is not a medical mystery. This is entirely different and nothing that Wesley and the Traveler did on the other side would've made any difference if she hadn't figured out what was going on for herself. It's thrilling to hear the computer talk about the universe being only about as big as the ship amid other odd answers it starts to give to her questions. This is such an exciting and well written episode.
She connects the dots between Wesley's warp bubble and the dimensions of the universe and then goes back to engineering where it all started to jump into the vortex that she'd been running from through the entire episode. It shows her bravery. More so than in any episode where she's been a focal point at all up til now. It's kind of a shame (but understandable) that Beverly was limited to medical officer and didn't get to extend her character as much. She has other moments where she shines and I'll always point them out because I'm a Beverly fan.
She thanks the Traveler but he credits Wesley which should've been a turning point for Wesley (no, I will never, ever stop bitching about this!) and it flows into a happy ending to a really excellent episode. Five stars all the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment