Another great Beverly Crusher episode. I love Beverly Crusher... she's the best woman of this series.
I've mentioned before that between her and Deanna, Beverly always gets saddled with the hardest decisions and responsibilities. Like the last episode, this one is another that leads conversations with a "what would you do?" situation. I'm fully aware that it was one of their first obvious pushes for the normalization of homosexuality within the culture, but things get weird even before that point and it would almost be too much to take seriously except that Gates McFadden brings the story to life. Crusher is really one of the best Trek characters ever made and I think she is often overlooked since she had no "gimmick" other than being the ship's doctor. Anyway, the beginning personal log entry is hers which delivers the setting for the episode, a reminder that Wesley is away but not forgotten, and that there's someone new in her life. They're at a planet to help arbitrate a dispute between two moons of a planet and Beverly is seen in a burgeoning romance with the ambassador that is along to be the mediator. His name is Odan and he is, developmentally, the first Trill character of the series.
The visual differences in this Trill and what the Trill eventually are developed into in DS9 are easy to spot as far as the makeup goes, but the core concept is the same as we're shown that Odan has a bulging secret in his belly. The other differences are mostly scrapped when they redevelop the Trill later on. For example this secret appears to be a burden and something of a medical condition. He applies a hypospray to relieve tension.
The negotiations are supposed to take place on the planet and Odan insists on going down on a shuttle craft rather than transporting. That marks another difference in the way the Trill were written - transportation can kill the Odan symbiont in this episode and it's not even called that yet. There's some concern for this course since there are radical groups that would be interested in stopping the talks with violence. Troi is sensing mixed emotions from him, but of course, nobody knows what he is yet. She gets in a little girl time with Beverly who normally doesn't hang out doing beauty rituals but, of course, she's in love and they talk happily for a few minutes. Odan thanks Picard privately for help with the negotiations and wants to talk to him about Beverly as well. This is such a huge improvement over the first two season...these moments are much like the beginnings of a teenage romance which caters to some of the younger audience demographic but it's not at all juvenile and silly as it would've been early on. You see that both of their feelings are real and true, no matter what that bulgy medical condition may be.
They say goodbye as he prepares to get on the shuttle craft, piloted by Riker. It should be pointed out here that this gives credence to the claims made by Geordi in a later episode that Riker is the best shuttle craft pilot on board. They don't get very far when the shuttle is fired upon and Riker just barely gets back in time. Then Beverly is informed of the worst news - that Odan is badly injured. But when she goes to sick bay to examine him, she discovers that mortal wounds are not the worst news. She notices what looks like a parasite and Odan wakes up long enough to tell her that the parasite is who he is and that his body is only a host. He informs her that the being in his body must be saved, not necessarily him. If he dies, his people will send a new host body. This is the simplest version of how the Trill race works. Luckily the episode moves so fast you almost don't have time to wonder about the conscious and personality of the host's body. After all, you see at the end that they're not zombies waiting to be inhabited by these parasitical creatures. It was a concept that needed work if it was to be done again, but like so many other things in this series, I think they'd never really planned to use it again and the fact that it took on a whole new life later on was yet another beautiful accident.
Odan dies shortly thereafter and Beverly saves his symbiont. The new host won't arrive for two days but the dispute between the moons is volatile and needs to be dealt with. Riker volunteers to host Odan's symbiont and although a human has never done such a thing before a little research shows them that it can probably be managed for a short period of time. The surgery is a success. Riker wakes up and calls Crusher by Odan's pet name for her, "Dr. Beverly" and again her world is upended.
Riker-Odan has a full plate now. He has to try to convince delegates from the planet's moons that he is actually Odan and not a Starfleet officer with his own agenda. Being a host to an alien creature is very hard on his body and he has to be medically monitored constantly. He keeps trying to reconnect with Beverly as well, because in this version of Trill, he is completely Odan. Later, each host had their own distinct personality. I'd really like to think that Riker didn't remember any of what he was doing when he was Odan since this is the area of the episode that's weird and hard to take seriously. This part of the script is also a tester to see if a future Riker/Beverly relationship would be appealing and I gotta say, I didn't find it so the way I was intrigued by the tester material for a Worf/Troi relationship later on. Mainly because Riker is behaving so differently from his usual self; a credit to Frakes' acting abilities, but the discomfort it brings to the character of Beverly is contagious and even though we can feel very sad for both her and Odan, we're a little alarmed and bothered by the fact that Riker is looking at her as a lover. It almost seems incestuous. And through it all Beverly is strong. Even after the death of her lover, the discovery that he wasn't who she though he was, and his transfer to the body of a colleague, she still has to be and adult. The adult. She doesn't have emotional breakdowns like Deanna does, not because this situation hasn't taken an emotional toll on her, but because she refuses to lose control of her senses or allow her emotions to drive her into doing something rash and it's one of the things I've always admired about Beverly Crusher. She doesn't come running back to Odan immediately without a lot of inner conflict.
But she doesn't hold out forever. Troi advises her, essentially, to go with the change which is another weird part to me. Throughout all of Riker and Troi's various affairs, the fact that they were once each other's true loves was never fully pushed aside. And even in the series finale episode when they tease that the Worf/ Troi relationship may actually proceed, Riker doesn't approve as easily as Troi does here. Is it because she's more gracious and he's a typical pig? I don't know. I think that's how most women would see it, but I just thought it was a little too weird that Troi was more accepting of this arrangement than Beverly. Perhaps she was thinking that it was only a temporary thing until the next host arrived. Riker is becoming physically weaker, but since the new host is still a little under a day away, he keeps plodding through. When Beverly sees that he's left the rose in her quarters that he'd given her before he got on the shuttle craft, she can no longer fight her feelings and finally gives in to Riker-Odan's advances.
He continues the negotiations as his health begins to fail in earnest and makes Beverly promise to save Riker's life even if the new host won't arrive in time to save his. It almost seems cruel doesn't it? Like, if he'd just left her alone she wouldn't have been in a heightened physiological state of love when she's at the point of potentially losing him all over again. But then the point Deanna made of enjoying their time together while they had it is also valid. Like I said, another great conversation episode. She turns to Picard to cry on his shoulder, adding another layer to their friendship that was critical to their relationship status later. It made the most sense anyway that Beverly needed an adult relationship with someone mature like Picard rather than Riker who is such a rogue or Odan who is as emotional as Troi. After six long hours Riker-Odan exits the conference room announcing that all the long work had paid off and then immediately collapses.
Crusher removes Odan from Riker as requested and they warp away quickly so they can meet the Trill ship carrying the new host before it's too late. Beverly and the audience get another surprise as Worf introduces the new host who is a woman. Once again it's all on Beverly. She has to preform the surgery that places her lover into the body of a woman. She couldn't take a break and have someone else do this... lol.. no, she's the CMO and the most capable so she has to just shelve those emotions and carry on. Beverly Crusher is seriously my hero. Then the inevitable awkward scene comes at the end when Kareel Odan comes to see if she can reignite the flame with Beverly again, but can quickly tell that the chill coming from her this time will be impossible to overcome. Beverly admits that she loves Odan, but that she's not used to all of the changes. The point where it seems to be trying to shame people into being okay with gay is where she becomes apologetic for not being able to keep up, calling it a human failing that humans can't just keep loving someone when this kind of physical change can happen, although they never actually say directly that the biggest problem is that Odan is a woman now. The subject would be tackled again later in the episode Rejoined on DS9 with a more complex look on the issue, but this one this one appears to end with the moral of the story being: isn't it a shame we can't all be bisexual? Sorry, I just don't think that's something to be ashamed of or a failing of humans. And it kind of ruined the ending altogether for me.
Still, it's one of the best episodes because of Beverly Crusher and the fact that it's told from her viewpoint and McFadden's dynamic acting. And Frakes' acting too, really... he was believably sick as Odan's host. Great for conversation with lots of thought and heart put into it. I give it four stars.
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