Final holodeck episode of the series. It's another for-fun episode and more stretching of the imagination for Star Trek but it's also another demonstration of concept recycling. It's kind of like the episode Quality Of Life with the exocomps only on a larger scale.
It begins on holodeck with Picard observing Data as he enacts a portion of The Tempest, playing Prospero. It's too dark to see anything and Picard calls Data's attention to it. Realizing he had designed the set too literally, he increases the light and they begin to parse the character of Prospero and what his character signifies in Shakespeare's work. They're interrupted by a train headed towards them. At first Picard is only confused and asks if it's part of the program. Then Data realizes that it's not going to stop and pushes the captain out of the way. He's scratched up a little, which is alarming since it indicates the safeties are off, but he's more interested in finding out what that was all about than his scrape. Data checks the holodeck and determines that the train is from Crusher's Orient Express program. A glitch had linked the two programs together. He has Data shut all the holodecks down to be safe until it's fixed. He then goes to Sick Bay to get his scrape healed up and Beverly eagerly tells him about the historical significance of the Orient Express. She encourages him to take a ride on it sometime to meet fascinating people. He's only moderately interested and goes to the bridge at Riker's bidding to continue with a routine survey. Without warning the Enterprise jumps into warp speed. They appear to be on a random heading and they can't get control of the engines or the override controls. Geordi offers to do an emergency core shut down which will leave them without warp power for a week. It's inconvenient but they don't seem to have a choice so Picard okay's it. When the ship comes to a stop he compliment's Geordi's efficiency, but Geordi admits that the ship stopped on its own since he didn't have time to complete the shutdown. Later they discover another mystery on top of the this first one. If the ship hadn't warped away when it did, the warp core would've been ruptured by a distortion that had been building up around them. It was a distortion that the sensors weren't designed to detect, and the rupture would've destroyed the Enterprise. So Data and Geordi set off to investigate and as they're crawling through a Jeffries Tube puzzling over whether the warp jump was luck or not they open a panel and discover strange, brightly lit complication inside. It's a new kind of circuit node that is attached to the sensors and several other systems on the ship. They try to take it out of the panel but it generates a forcefield.
They discover that the nodes are responsible for the warp jump that saved the Enterprise from destruction. That was a good thing, but the nodes are spreading throughout the ship, protecting themselves with forcefields, and making it harder for them to control the systems. The connections all intersect at holodeck 3 so they decide to go down there to see if they can disable the nodes permanently. When they get there, they discover that a program is running in spite of the fact that the holodecks had been disabled. When they enter they discover at least seven different programs running at the same time. A strange assortment of people are riding on Crusher's Orient Express including a knight in plate armor cutting paper dolls, a farmer, and several gangster era people putting a puzzle together with a picture on it that resembles the nodes. A conductor comes through asking for everyone's tickets and they listen as they talk about their destination, Vertiform City. Data locates a large concentration of nodes behind a wall and they begin to depolarize the holodeck grid. At that point the conductor asks them for their tickets. He's aggressive when they don't have any and asks them to leave. An engineer comes out and tries to tell them that the strange people are only trying to help but he's shot by a gangster who claims that he's driving the train. At the same time a panel explodes at Geordi, overloading the navigation. On the holodeck, the conductor pulls a cord which causes the train to lurch and the Enterprise to jump to warp again. Data notices the train has changed directions and the conductor confirms that they're on the right track now. The gangster retrieves a gold brick from the dead engineer while they both urge Riker and Data to leave in a threatening manner. The safeties are off so they comply.
In the observation lounge they discuss how the nodes have taken control of most systems and that the ship is being controlled from the holodeck citing the evidence of the direction change corresponding to the warp jump. But it's more complex. The nodes resemble the make up of Data's positronic brain and are forming a rudimentary neural net on the Enterprise. Data explains that the ship is developing an intelligence describing it as an emergent property like consciousness - more than the sum of its parts. The sensors are the eyes, it talks with the communications system, etc. The holodeck is a processing center like the mind or the imagination as Troi likens it to and she volunteers to go in to see if she can find out what this new intelligence wants. Since there appears to be a new life form at stake, the priority now is to regain control of the ship without damaging the nodes. Data goes back with Worf and Troi. He asks them to distract the passengers while he works and they watch as the puzzle continues to form the picture of the nodes though nobody can say what exactly it's supposed to be. Pictures of the nodes also appear on playing cards. Troi is curious about the gold brick but the gangster tells her to keep away from it insisting that it's valuable and that he has to get it to Keystone City. When Data starts to make progress the conductor walks through again announcing that the next stop is Keystone City and once again ushering them off the train due to lack of tickets. The gangster takes the brick and gets off the train. They avoid more pressure from the conductor to leave since Troi wants to follow him off the train anyway to find out what's so important about Keystone City. They exit to an empty New York City street. I can't help but like this set. It has a touch of the cheesiness that I associate with TOS, but not overdone. It gives it a nostalgic feel. Data with tricorder out approaches a manhole that he can access the power grid from while Troi takes off after the gangster. Worf follows her. When Data attempts to start working on the grid a taxi appears around the corner and tries to run him down. Meanwhile Troi and Worf follow the gangster to a building that's still under construction. There is a brick wall with one brick missing from the center. The gangster places the gold brick in and it glows momentarily before blending in with the rest of the wall. His only explanation is that he's laying the foundation before he returns to the train. The laying of the brick causes activity in the cargo bay and Geordi goes down to discover a large node glowing in the middle of the floor.
Geordi suspects the replicator systems were used to form this thing. Meanwhile Data solves the problem of the attacking taxi cab by holding it steady while he works. Picard gives the order for him to begin depolarizing the grid which causes an earthquake in the holodeck and catastrophic failures on the ship causing it to lose integrity. So he stops and they regroup to discuss it some more. They ascertain that the ship was protecting itself again but that it was unaware of what's going on like an infant acting on impulse. Troi lists the different systems represented in the different personalities on the ship and confirms that their activity represents constructing or forming something. She wishes to go back to try and communicate with the intelligence on its own level to try and cooperate. They return with tickets this time which pleases the conductor. They also offer help so the conductor chooses Worf to come up to the engine and shovel coal so they can keep on schedule. His efforts to stoke the fire gets the warp drive working again and they discover they're headed for a white dwarf star. The ship modifies a tractor beam to collect vertion particles from the star, explaining why they call their destination Vertiform City. The object in the cargo bay begins to grow, but when the vertion particles are depleted, it starts to lose energy. On the train they're disappointed because this isn't Vertiform City like they thought. So the conductor changes directions again for New Vertiform City, causing the ship to pitch around violently. They can tell they're headed for another white dwarf star since white dwarfs are the only natural source of vertion particles. But the ship is also using up the life support to propel it onward. The star is 12 hours away and they only have 2 hours of life support left. Picard speculates with Geordi about creating artificial vertion particles. He finds a couple of choice spots along the way to launch a modified torpedo at and Picard leaves the decision of where to try it up to Geordi. In order to go where they want to, the crew members on the holodeck must gain control of the navigation of the train though. The conductor guardedly believes them when they assure him that they know a short cut to New Vertiform City and allows Data into the engine room to navigate the train. With his help they stop at a nebula Geordi was eyeing for the artificial vertion particles. They fire the torpedo which causes a stream of particles to flare out.
As the ship drinks in the particles, the systems begin to return to normal as the nodes deactivate themselves. Picard postulates that some species only exist to reproduce and that perhaps the only reason for the ship's intelligence was to produce this new life form. In the cargo bay, the life form glows brightly and floats up and away, flying out of the hull into space. In the holodeck the people on the train are celebrating with champagne and as Worf, Troi, and Data partake in the party the program ends. Later, Data goes to Picard to invite him to another Shakespearean performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream in which Miranda first has contact with other humans which he thinks is befitting of the situation. He notes that Picard took a substantial risk in allowing the Enterprise to finish completing the emergence of the new life form since it could be dangerous. But Picard is confident that since the experiences it drew from were human experiences, it has a good chance of being as honorable as they have been.
So, the Enterprise comes to life briefly to create a node creature and then, what, dies? That's kind of sad. You'd think the whole ship would cease to function if it wasn't "alive" anymore. I have to assume that being alive is what they mean by forming an intelligence. And it's equally confusing since it just spontaneously came to life after seven years. This is one of those episodes that you're meant to just sit back and enjoy and not think too much about it because it'll make less sense the more you do. And it is an enjoyable episode. The holodeck characters range from odd to funny and the crew's interaction with them is entertaining. The psychology of what's going on in there makes some sense. And the lighting and colors are pleasant to view. Although this episode is somewhat nonsensical I have nothing against it and the characters make it work as always. Four stars.
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