Okay, this one was just weird. I'm kind of torn because although Gothic, supernatural romances aren't my kind of thing at all, I'm a huge Beverly fan-girl and I think her character handles the situation remarkably. But it's undoubtedly an apple that falls quite a ways away from the Star Trek tree and isn't popular except with women who enjoy Gothic or supernatural romance novel types of stories. I can only guess that perhaps they made this one to air around Halloween.
It figures that they'd bury their more tolerant script accents in an episode that a lot of people probably wouldn't want to watch anyway. The funeral of Beverly's grandmother is a Christian funeral which I'm sure offends a majority of fans, but to me it indicates that for all the brow beating religion has always gotten on this show, the most hated religion by the writers still exists in the 24th century and it's not the focal point of conflict. It's just there displaying diversity within the Star Trek universe. Imagine that. Anyway, Beverly is delivering the eulogy and calling attention to the fact that Felisa Howard was a renowned healer. That was mentioned in the first season so it's always satisfying to see them keeping with the continuity. After the casket is lowered, the surrounding crowd begins to throw in handfuls of dirt except for one classical looking man who throws in a flower. He and Beverly lock eyes before he leaves with the rest. We then set the backdrop as Picard walks off talking with the governor of the Caldos colony, Maturin. Maturin mentions that the Caldos colony is one of the first Federation terraforming projects and is trying to convince Picard to stay longer than planned to look over their weather control systems since they're so old. Picard doesn't need much convincing. He finds the place charming replica of the Scottich highlands. Maturin confirms that this was the idea when it was founded and confesses that the setting is what attracted him to live there. It's another nice moment that probably put some fans off without realizing why, but as you can see Maturin is an alien complimenting the beauty of Earth. One of the underlying themes of Star Trek has been to portray the Earth and humans as being ignorant, barbaric savages who are part of the problem in the universe as a parallel to the way America is portrayed as the biggest problem in our world by the left wing media, entertainment, and political engine. Granted, Scotland isn't America, but just showing a moment's appreciation for anything of Earth displays another uncharacteristic highlight of true tolerance in this script. At least to me it does. Beverly goes back to her grandmother's house with Troi. They look at a picture of Felisa and a few of her belongings. Troi takes an interest in an old lamp. Beverly tells her that it's a very old family heirloom that her grandmother kept lit all the time under the symbolism of the enduring Howard spirit burning within it. Troi suggests that Beverly keep it and she decides that she will. Troi then leaves so that Beverly can be alone. She finds her grandmother's diary and takes it upstairs to read. Later she hears a noise downstairs and goes down to find the cemetary caretaker named Ned Quint snuffing out the candle and trying to take her lamp. She stops him of course and with a thick Scottish accent he gives her dire warnings about the lamp bringing bad luck to her grandmother and her family all of her days. He begs to take the lamp again but Beverly orders him out so he washes his hands of any responsibility.
On the Enterprise Maturin is discussing the weather with LaForge and Data. There have been unusual tremors and Data is detecting unseasonable storms rolling in. They offer to check out a number of their systems to keep them dry. Beverly meanwhile finds Picard and tells him of the shocking news that she found in her grandmother's diary - that she had a lover named Ronin that was in his mid thirties and she's sure that she saw him at the funeral, thinking of the man with the flower. Picard lets her know that they'll be hanging out around Caldros for a little while longer looking into their climate control so she'll have plenty of time to put her grandmother's affairs in order. That night she falls asleep reading her grandmother's journal. The old lamp next to her bed lights itself and she is awakened by a voice that calls her name and seems to physically touch her in a sensually pleasing way. She tells Troi all about it the next day confessing that when she fell asleep she'd been reading a particularly erotic passage that her grandmother had made. Troi is intrigued even though it doesn't make sense. A ghost seems unlikely, so she doesn't think it's a dangerous, but a rather amusing distraction and jokingly encourages Beverly to read two chapters to extend the effect. But first Beverly goes to the graveyard to try to make up with the caretaker since she can see that he loved her grandmother and was simply trying to be protective. She offers him the post of keeping up her grandmother's house after she leaves but he turns it down. He tells her that it's haunted, that a ghost lives in her lamp, and it's the ghost that's bringing the storms. He continues to warn her not to light it. She tries to tell him it's the weather controls causing the storms. But he gets frustrated again and leaves her to believe what she wants. A big storm does come in in spite of their attempts on Enterprise to stabilize it. Beverly rushes to her grandmother's house to get in out of it. The house is filled with flowers like the one that the strange man dropped into Felisa's grave. She calls out to see if anyone is in there. When she looks in a small mirror she sees a face appear behind her but nobody is there. She then starts to threaten to send security guards down. At that point, the voice speaks intimately to her and a presence seems to rush through her body. The voice introduces himself as Ronin and continues with his history of having been born in the 15th century in Scotland on Earth. She doesn't believe he's an 800 year old ghost but he causes waves of pleasure to rush through her body as he explains that he's lived with and loved the Howard women all down her line through the years, moving where they've moved, and that he loves her like he loved Felisa before her. She continues to resist, while her body is thrashing about the place in ecstasy. He tells her that they are becoming one as he continues to invisibly overwhelm her.
Troi can sense a change in Beverly the next day. Beverly tries to pass it off as having met someone, but Troi presses her until she confesses that she's met Ronin and that she's never met anyone so passionate about her. Troi is a little taken aback by the odd nature of the relationship but is supportive. She tries to warn her that romances that begin after a mutual loss are often not the real thing. But Crusher brushes her off by saying that she's not in love, just intrigued. Things then take a briefly comic turn as fog begins to roll in on the bridge. Nobody can understand why it's happening so Picard orders that the power transfer that they'd been engaging in be terminated. Data can't do it from the bridge so they go to the weather station where they find Quint under a console trying to dismantle a power conduit. He tries to warn them that "he's" trying to kill us all which has no meaning to them. Just then a green power surge hits him and throws him to the floor dead. Data and Geordi conclude that his tampering with the power conduit caused his death. But when Crusher examines him she discovers a residue at the cellular level that has the same anaphasic signature as the problems they were detecting from the weather station leading them to conclude that whatever is causing the weather issues is the same thing that killed Quint. LaForge and Data suggest scanning the colony for more of the anaphasic signature. Crusher asks for Quint's body to be taken to the ship for tests but will not be running the tests herself to Maturin's surprise. Of course, Beverly's not stupid. She knows that Ronin has something to do with it and goes to Felisa's house to find him. He won't appear at first and she's very upset about Quint. Then he finally appears and after seductively caressing her face, he has her back under his control. He tells her that she must light the lamp and keep it lit or else he will grow weak. She remembers Quint telling her that he lived in the lamp, but she's no longer bothered with Quint's death. He tells her to go back to the ship and light the lamp. He will travel along the power beam coming from the Enterprise and they will then be together forever. She hurries to her quarters and lights the candle in the lamp and waits in an agitated state, like someone in desperate need of a drug fix. He finally appears and tells her that he's going to become a part of her as he had with her grandmother and all of the Howard women before that. She's eager for this to happen and he turns in to a green mist and melts into her once again. Shortly after, she changes into regular clothes and prepares to leave. Picard catches up to her just in time to ask her why. She claims that she wants to go to Caldros to be a healer like her grandmother and that she's resigning her commission on the ship. She's firm on her decision and brusque with Picard as she gives him no time to even say goodbye before she transports down. Troi tells Picard about Ronin and he wonders if he has a strong enough influence over her to make her leave like this. Since Troi could only ever sense her passionate feelings, she says that he could be influencing her or they could really be in love.
Geordi tells Picard that they've found the anaphasic signature coming from the cemetery. He orders them to go check it out while he goes to meet Ronin. Geordi and Data track down the signature to Felisa Howard's grave and determine that it's coming from under the ground. At the house, Ronin continues to merge himself with Beverly. He turns into the mist and envelopes her in erotic pleasure once more. Picard comes knocking at the door and she doesn't hear him. He walks in to see her sitting alone in a chair, quivering in rapture. He gets her attention and she snaps out of her trance. She's upset by the disturbance and not polite when she asks him why he's there. He says that he just wants to meet the man who swept away her and her grandmother. She accuses him of being jealous, but he calls attention to the fact that nobody's seen this guy except for her. At that point Ronin appears from a doorway to present himself and also ask Picard to leave. Picard asks him personal questions like how long he's lived there when they're interrupted by Data and Geordi reporting that they found what they were looking for in Felisa Howard's grave and request permission to exhume the body. Ronin becomes very angry and insists that they can't do it. Picard tells them to ask Maturin's permission and when Ronin threatens to go to the governor himself, Picard calls his bluff. He doubts that anyone knows of his existence and continues with the personal questions about his life on this planet. Ronin disappears. When Picard tries to take Beverly by the hand to lead her away, he's knocked down by the green energy surge that hit Quint. Beverly immediately rushes to his aide with her medical bag. Ronin appears and tries to get her to come with him to stop the others from exhuming Felisa, but Beverly is too upset at the thought of Picard dying. She pushes him away and he tells her that he's going to stop them himself. At the grave, Geordi and Data have the casket transported through the ground and begin to scan Felisa's corpse. She's full of the anaphasic signature at the cellular level just like Quint but they don't understand how since she wasn't there when he was killed. Suddenly, Felisa appears to come back to life. She sits up and touches each of them, sending green energy surging through them. Beverly catches up in time to tell Ronin to stop it. It's Felisa's corpse that first tells Beverly it's going to be all right.
Then Ronin leaves Felisa's body and apologizes but tries to justify it by saying
that they were trying to stop them from being together forever. And honestly, this final scene is why I can't help but like the episode. It's all because Beverly is so awesome. Even under extreme emotional duress (and physical addiction) she keeps thinking rationally. Just like in Remember Me when her very sanity was in the balance. Aloud, she works out the fact that he's not some kind of supernatural being but an anaphasic life form and that anaphasic life forms need an organic host because they're unstable. She also tells him that she examined the candle and found that it was plasma based so she knows that he's been using it as a receptacle as well as her and all the generations of women in her family. He continues to proclaim that he loved them all as he loves her and tells her to put the lamp down. He has to send another energy pulse at Geordi and threaten to kill him before she puts it down, but she then immediately grabs Geordi's phaser and destroys it. While he's in shock at losing the flame she takes Geordi's com badge and tells Riker to close off all the plasma conduits of the weather system. She then tells Ronin that he has nowhere to go, but he does and he starts towards her. She fires at him and it doesn't work so she turns the phaser up all the way and when he runs at her she fires again and destroys him.
So, everyone survives and it ends with Beverly discussing it all with Troi. She explains that he must have found that one of her ancestors was compatible with his energy matrix and that he likely took human form to seduce her. She's understandably disturbed by the family tradition she was getting ready to become a part of but she's also sad because as she read through her grandmother's diary she couldn't deny that he'd made her very happy.
And that's where I get off the train ride. Everything about it is too weird. Nobody thinks it's unusual that her grandmother had a thirty-something year old lover. And they said "lover" not companion to ensure that everyone understands exactly how intimate they were. And then Beverly falls for him herself. Okay, I understand that his hold on her was more like a drug addiction than any real feelings on her part but it's still just incestuously abnormal. Also, if her feelings weren't real, then neither were her grandmothers and she had to know that even as she sat there lamenting how happy he made her according to her journal. Then there are other holes such as never getting a clear explanation of how he picked a Howard woman down the genealogical line and why most of them kept their name Howard if they had kids and grand kids, etc. I still love Beverly and I still love the way she kept her head and made the hard choices to stay with Picard and to kill Ronin . Because of these things I'll always enjoy the episode personally, but I think I'm going to have to give this three and a half stars anyway for technical merit and the fact that the story isn't a good fit for Star Trek.
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