Star Trek TNG Aquiel

One of the few "strike-out" episodes of the latter seasons. It was another failed attempt to give Geordi a girlfriend to the backdrop of another lackluster murder-mystery. The Star Trek writers weren't very gifted murder-mystery writers. Even the mystery I liked in Matter Of Perspective wasn't all that great... it was the use of the holodeck that made it fun. And poor Geordi... his personality just wasn't suited to romantic entanglements and his relationships could never hook me.

The Enterprise is taking supplies to a remote communications relay station near the Klingon border and when they try contacting them before hand they get nothing. So they send the standard away team down there: Riker, Crusher, Worf, and Geordi. No Data this time. It's a station that's only manned by two people, Aquiel Uhnari and Keith Rocha, but it's abandoned. They hear noises coming from the subspace monitor which is a mess and several messages are playing at once. There is blood and cellular residue and a thumping noise in the next room. The thumping turns out to be a friendly dog sitting in a service duct. After some more examination they determine that the blood belonged to Aquiel and they also assume the cellular residue burned into the floor is hers as well, but decide to cut that section away to take it back and analyze it to be sure. Geordi notices that some of the subspace messages have been tampered with so Riker and the others leave Geordi down there with the dog to sort through it all.

Geordi finds Aquiel's quarters and begins to run her personal audio logs since he can't get any visual ones yet. He's intrigued by her voice and works at the console while she complains about not having the equipment she's asked for as well as the personality of Rocha in a personal letter to a friend. She also relates a dream about her mother. Meanwhile in sickbay, Crusher determines that a high level blaster killed Aquiel. They consider that it may have been a Klingon disruptor and since they're so close to the border it seems reasonable. The shuttle craft is also missing. But Picard has faith that the peace with the Klingons is steady enough that there wouldn't have been a Klingon attack on this station and wants more to go on before he bothers the Klingons. He soon has more. Geordi is still fiddling with the computer on the station trying to get the visuals to work and finally does. Aquiel's face appears and Geordi is smitten. The idea for this script was taken from a movie called Laura (1944) in which a person who is investigating a murder falls in love with the murdered woman. I've not seen it however it sounds like an interesting premise if done correctly. But I wasn't feeling it in this episode. You do see that the dog belongs to her as she's sitting next to her in many of the visual records. Geordi continues to examine her personal effects and continues to watch Aquiel's personal letters to a friend named Shianna, homesick, singing strange song, and complaining more about Rocha. Then after she gives another recount of the bad dreams she has about her mother she explains that it must be because of a Klingon named Morag who had been visiting the station and harrassing them. That he'd even aimed his disruptors at the station at one point. So Geordi reports this to Picard who then asks the local governor Torak about Morag. He has to use his pull with Gowran to get him to cooperate with his inquiry but Torak agrees to come aboard and discuss the situation.

While more time is spent on Geordi watching Aquiel's personal letters, the investigation is moving forward. Worf finds Klingon DNA in the station which looks bad for the Klingons. Geordi also reports that although he's seen nearly all of Aquiel's logs, he's seen none of Rocha's as they appear to have been erased. It's not too bad of a mystery really. Maybe if they hadn't focused so hard on trying to give Geordi a relationship it would've worked better. Riker can't help but notice that Geordi is talking about Aquiel as if he knows her. In that way it's a lot like Booby Trap where Geordi "gets to know" the holographic Leah Brahms and instead of being romantic it only seems to pigeonhole Geordi into the type of person who has trouble interacting with real women. Kind of like Barclay only he's not neurotic. It's not very flattering for Geordi and Aquiel's personality as it's portrayed isn't attractive. At least to me. Most of her logs show her complaining about Rocha and being generally sad and discontented with her home life growing up and her work life now. Very "whiny" from my perspective and I can't see how people are attracted to that type of person when there's nothing to indicate that they're happy and well adjusted more often than moody and morose. It's a lot like what was wrong with the Anakin/Padme relationship in Star Wars. Geordi doesn't even like her choice in literature which would indicate that they probably don't have a lot in common. Anyway, with the discovery of Klingon DNA, the disappearance of Rocha's subspace communications, it continues to move in the direction of Morag when Geordi sees Aquiel's final log in which she hears someone banging at her door, asks if it's Rocha, and then the log cuts off as she gives a terrified scream. Picard tells everyone while they're waiting for Torak who he says he's brought proof that Morag didn't kill the girl. That's when the plot takes an unexpected twist - Torak comes aboard with Aquiel, alive and in person. Like I said, it had some potential as an interesting story. Aquiel tells them that Rocha attacked her and that she tried to access a weapons locker but then doesn't remember anything until taking the shuttle craft to escape and then being rescued by Klingons. She has a head injury that accounts for her spotty memory. She doesn't remember Morag on the station but they still want him brought in since Klingon DNA was found on the station. Torak is outraged of course, but sends for him anyway to allow the questioning. So they assume the residue on the deck plate is Rocha's now and continue to examine it. While they wait on Morag, Geordi visits with Aquiel and, like in Galaxy's Child with the real Leah Brahms, he knows more details about her than he should. But this time he fesses up right away and tells her that because they thought she was dead, they had to examine her personal logs. She understands and they talk about Rocha and why he may have attacked her and she assures him that she didn't want him dead. After examining the manifest they discover that Rocha was a model officer while Aquiel was insubordinate and reckless. There's also a missing phaser from the station that turns up in the shuttle craft and it's set to kill. So now it looks bad for Aquiel. When Morag shows up he admits to trying to hack the Starfleet priority messages, but that nobody was there when he got there. He only saw signs of blood and a struggle. Aquiel admits to Geordi privately that she deleted some of Rocha's logs because he was going to send bad reports about her back to Starfleet, but that she didn't kill him. He believes her and convinces her not to run away again and they kiss and stuff.  I just don't get the "stress-induced" romances. They don't seem like something that could happen in real life. Who wants to get romantic when their life is falling apart?

But Beverly actually solves the mystery shortly thereafter. The cellular residue that she's examining reaches out and touches her hand, then replicates it. She understands now that this is a coalescent life form that absorbs other organisms and takes on their form. So, they're not shape-shifters. They have to make this distinction now since a main character on DS9 is a shape-shifter. She looks at his records to see that he was stationed in a very remote location before this assignment and he could've been absorbed there. She speculates that the organism could survive longer in more complex beings than in simple beings so it would've needed to change in a week or two. That leads them to believe that either Aquiel or Morag could now be the coalescent being since this attack was brought about from the need to change bodies. While all of this is going on, Geordi is sharing a special moment with Aquiel in her quarters on the station. They are able to communicate telepathically with a device native to her species. He has to take the visor off for it to work, but he can see the thoughts she's giving him and it's kind of nice. But Riker and Worf come in to take her back so that they can all wait to see which of them is the alien intruder. Geordi goes back to his own quarters where he's been keeping the dog. He's upset about the situation and shooing the dog away as she's trying to get his attention with playful attacks. Then we see that the dog morphs into a kind of blob while Geordi's back is turned. It was another unexpected twist, although that blob wasn't one of their better effects jobs.

The strange blob moves in towards Geordi who turns just in time to see it. He has to turn his phaser up to its highest setting to kill it. This absolves both Aquiel and Morag. The Klingons leave happy and we learn that Aquiel's memory loss is do to the fact that the creature was starting to absorb her when it attacked as Rocha. It ends with Geordi and Aquiel in Ten Forward. He offers to pull some strings to get her assigned to the Enterpise, but she'd rather get there on her own merit and resolves to become a better officer in order to make that happen. Poor Geordi has to say goodbye again. I think it was entirely possible to write a romance for Geordi, but it would have had to have gone slow over the course of a few episodes with a recurring character so that it could've developed from a real friendship first. Some characters just aren't suited to passionate love affairs but rather more reserved ones. Ensign Ro may have even worked but it was too late in the series and they needed her rebellious nature to help push DS9.

So, I take back what I said about it being a lackluster mystery. The mystery itself wasn't bad, it just wouldn't have been able to fill an entire show alone and therefore wasn't the primary focus. That's ultimately what hurt this episode because even though it's a decent little mystery, we still come away feeling like we had to sit through the entire episode for nothing since so much time was devoted to setting up a romance that didn't have a lot of natural appeal and ultimately went nowhere. It's still part of the best years of this show and therefore its execution is superb as always. But I guess I have to go with three and a half stars on it.