Originally aired: October 12th, 1987
At first I hated this episode. It seemed so old fashioned. A guy from a primitive culture turns up on the Enterprise and acts all stunned at how progressive they are for having a female security chief. He says that where he comes from, women are only good for owning land while the men rule the land. I was already bored and thinking about skipping the episode.
It redeems itself a little though when it becomes clear that he's manipulating Picard by holding back on a vaccine for a disease that's killing millions in order to force Tasha Yar to fight his wife to the death so that he will inherit all her land and money.
Picard acts like it's a sticky dilemma, as he cannot interfere with their internal affairs because of the Prime Directive. Jesus, Picard - is it still an internal affair when they kidnap one of your bridge officers and force her to fight to the death? Just grow a pair and beam Yar and all the vaccine you need off the planet. I would have thought the illegal kidnapping of Yar would give you the justification you need.
But it turns out he's ready to manipulate them too - he orders Yar to kill the chieftain's wife, at which point they beam her aboard and resuscitate her. Shame some nameless mook gets killed from the poison on the weapons during the fight. Hope you sleep well with his death on your conscience Picard, since this whole fight was completely unnecessary.
Even though the chief's wife is not dead, apparently being dead for a little while is enough under their code of laws to end her marriage. I guess they take "till death do us part" very seriously. The chief is seriously freaked out by her being revived from the dead too. What the hell? They have their own transporters, but they've never seen someone revived after dying before? Who wrote this crap?
Long story short, the chief ends up as husband number 2 to the wife he tried to cheat, as she marries another man as number 1 and that guy gets all the land and cash. Picard, having handled all of this remarkably badly if you ask me, takes the vaccine and heads off.
I can see what they were trying to do with this episode but it just didn't work. The actors aren't comfortable enough with the characters yet to pull it off and the writers don't know what they're doing - in fact, I suspect it was a script recycled from the aborted attempt to revive the original Star Trek. It seems like it would have fitted that better. About the only thing Picard does well in this episode is treat Wesley as another person for once rather than as an annoying child, when he doesn't freak out at seeing him man a bridge console and promises him another chance in future. If I didn't know this show get's better before very much longer, I'd give up.
As it is, I'll take a break from Trek for a while. This show does not lend itself to watching in large chunks.
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