To me, this episode has always been the absolute nadir of the series. It's just dreadful. It makes "Sub Rosa" seem like "The City On The Edge Of Forever".
Like many episodes, this one is structured such that there is a main story, and a secondary story. The main story is about the Enterprise's big-deal mission to the Romulan neutral zone to find out what happened to its lost outposts. The secondary story is about a few cryogenically frozen humans who they discover and revive. *Both* of these stories have deep flaws.
There are actually a couple problems with the secondary story. The first is that it swamps and dwarfs the main story. A crisis with the Romulans *ought* to be a big deal, and yet the story focuses mainly on these three 20th century people. And frankly, who cares? While it's sort of interesting seeing how they deal with waking up centuries later, the fact is that we the viewers already have the meta-knowledge that these people aren't important and we're never going to see or hear about them again. There's really no story about them, no plot, just watching them react in their different ways to their new lives. It all really goes nowhere.
The other problem with the secondary story is the overt smug preachiness of it. One of the 20th century humans is this straw-man caricature of a businessman, a typical leftist stereotype that serves as a tool for typical leftist bashing of business and capitalism. Sadly, the series specialized in this sort of thing in this era. The original Ferengi were exactly the same thing.
And yet, for all the problems with the secondary story, the main story is *worse*. Why? Because there *is* no main story! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAPPENS. They journey to the neutral zone, find nothing, the Romulans show up and say "We're back!", and that's it. Done. Absolutely *nothing* happens. There is no story. There is no plot. The whole thing is a ludicrous waste of time.
What damns this episode to eternal Star Trek hell is the fact that it was clearly written to be some kind of big cliff-hanger, except the next season's opener did not pick up and finish the episode. There was no resolution, nothing went anywhere with any of this. Had the next season picked up where this one left off, and had the Romulans actually *do* something, had the big-deal dramatic "We're back!" actually *led* to something, then the episode might not be quite so vile. But it didn't. And so I always remember this as the episode where absolutely nothing happened. And I detest it for that.
Like many episodes, this one is structured such that there is a main story, and a secondary story. The main story is about the Enterprise's big-deal mission to the Romulan neutral zone to find out what happened to its lost outposts. The secondary story is about a few cryogenically frozen humans who they discover and revive. *Both* of these stories have deep flaws.
There are actually a couple problems with the secondary story. The first is that it swamps and dwarfs the main story. A crisis with the Romulans *ought* to be a big deal, and yet the story focuses mainly on these three 20th century people. And frankly, who cares? While it's sort of interesting seeing how they deal with waking up centuries later, the fact is that we the viewers already have the meta-knowledge that these people aren't important and we're never going to see or hear about them again. There's really no story about them, no plot, just watching them react in their different ways to their new lives. It all really goes nowhere.
The other problem with the secondary story is the overt smug preachiness of it. One of the 20th century humans is this straw-man caricature of a businessman, a typical leftist stereotype that serves as a tool for typical leftist bashing of business and capitalism. Sadly, the series specialized in this sort of thing in this era. The original Ferengi were exactly the same thing.
And yet, for all the problems with the secondary story, the main story is *worse*. Why? Because there *is* no main story! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAPPENS. They journey to the neutral zone, find nothing, the Romulans show up and say "We're back!", and that's it. Done. Absolutely *nothing* happens. There is no story. There is no plot. The whole thing is a ludicrous waste of time.
What damns this episode to eternal Star Trek hell is the fact that it was clearly written to be some kind of big cliff-hanger, except the next season's opener did not pick up and finish the episode. There was no resolution, nothing went anywhere with any of this. Had the next season picked up where this one left off, and had the Romulans actually *do* something, had the big-deal dramatic "We're back!" actually *led* to something, then the episode might not be quite so vile. But it didn't. And so I always remember this as the episode where absolutely nothing happened. And I detest it for that.