STTNG The Neutral Zone S1:E26 Close Reading

 The show opens with Captain Picard away from the ship, summoned to an emergency conference.  This is the first cycle opening with the tension of the emergency  conference and Picard away.  From the very first note, we sense that something is wrong:  What is the purpose of this emergency conference?

The b-plot is announced in the same moment.  The ship has happened upon a capsule of Earth origin.  If left to its own devices it will eventually be destroyed, but Data wants to investigate while the ship waits for the captain.  So a second cycle of tension is begun: What is the story of the capsule?

Onboard the capsule, Worf and Data find life capsules, many have stopped working but some still contain viable humans.  The cycle continues by answering one question:  this is some kind of mini-ark ship.  But it introduces the obvious question, why are the occupants on board?  And further, What should we do with them?   We can't leave them to eventually be destroyed, Data concludes, and he brings them back to the Enterprise.

Picard returns to the ship and intends to depart immediately.  Whatever happened at the emergency conference, it has prompted decisive action.  The captains new heading will take the ship into the Neutral Zone, further heightening the tension.  Picard calls for an immediate conference, ratcheting the tension even further.

Picard doesn't wait to disclose his news to the staff.  Several outposts and star bases have gone silent along the border to the neutral zone, and the Romulans are the obvious suspects.  The stated assumption is that the Romulans are spoiling for a fight, eager to test their military capabilities against the Federation.

In a way, this is the end of the first cycle.  The first tension was,  What was the purpose of the meeting.  And now we have an answer.  We went from an uneasy waiting to getting under weigh.  The first cycle is complete  using the first story beat: Outposts along the neutral zone have gone silent.   Now the second cycle begins:  What will we find at the neutral zone?

Back on the B-plot, Crusher calls Picard to sick bay to discuss the three capsule survivors.  They were frozen after they died, having succumbed to terminal illnesses, but Crusher was able to revive and cure them. Picard is annoyed, first because he knew nothing about them, and second because he is distracted by the coming conflict in the neutral zone.  He, Data, and Dr. Crusher discuss the morality of bringing them onboard.  They wake up the first survivor, who seems normal, but when she catches sight of Worf, she is overwhelmed and passes out again.

The first B-cycle has completed.  We know what's in the capsule, and we've brought the survivors back to life.  Now the second cycle begins:  what to do with them and who is responsible for them?  The story beat is "Thawed out survivors."  They have a lot of things to adapt to in the 24th century

While Picard bows out and leaves the problem of the survivors to others, Riker, Crusher, and Data attempt to explain the situation to the people who are nearly 400 years displaced in time.  We hear their stories, and learn that they are normal people who left behind normal, if colorful, lives.  PIcard sows the seed of further tension with an ominous warning, "Keep them out of my way."

The tension is heightened as we wonder how we are going to deal with these fish-out-of-water characters.  

Back on the bridge, Deanna gives us explication about the current Romulan state.  They are fascinated with humans and are likely to be "counter-punchers".  Back in the lounge, the survivors are busy being colorful, but are beginning to insist on meeting the Captain.

We see that the B-plot is heading for a collision with the A-plot, since Picard is busy right now preparing for an impending conflict.  Data re-states the problem, "What are we to do with them?"  This is the classic comedic break in the action.

Picard is discussing possibilities with his staff when he is interrupted by one of the survivors.  He has a long discussion with them and their feelings of frustration and isolation.  He shows patience and instead of doing anything authoritarian, he sends Counselor Troi in to deal with them.  One of the survivors is a mother and she is thinking about her children.  We get a more personal and more sympathetic view of the survivors situation.

Realistically, while we have increased the tension by making the survivors more relatable, we haven't changed the circumstances of their situation.  We add several internal cycles for each of the survivors, giving them small mini-arcs.  The mother wants to find her family, The financier realizes that he has no power left in this new time, and the singer just wants to pick up partying.  One of our questions is, which of these will actually be able to pick up their lives and carry on.

Back at the A-plot, the Enterprise has reached the first outpost, which they find to be totally destroyed.  It wasn't attacked by conventional weapons, according to Worf.  It is as if it has been "scooped off the face of the planet".  Picard orders them to continue to the second outpost.

The same question hangs over us:  What is happening at the neutral zone?  We've learned a few things but the tension is only increased.

On the bridge, they begin to pick up signals that the Romulans are in the area.  Meanwhile, the financier finds his way to the bridge and disturbs the crew just as the Romulans de-cloak and appear before them.  It quickly becomes clear that the Romulans were not responsible for the destruction of Federation Outposts, having lost colonies of their own.  During the tense exchange with the condescending Romulan captain, Picard urges them to not start off their relationship with misapprehensions, to which the Romulans respond with an ominous, "Your presence is not wanted. Do you understand my meaning, Captain? We are back.".  The episode ends with this hanging in the air, while we transfer the survivors to another ship bound for Earth.

The challenge here is that the central question we've been working on - What happened in the neutral zone - remains unresolved.  This is now a 2-parter, except that there is no second episode.  This is the season finale, and the next  episode after the summer hiatus doesn't address the neutral zone problem at all.  The ending feels unsatisfying.

The resolution of the B-plot is equally flimsy.  To answer to the question we've been repeating throughout the episode ( What will we do with the survivors), we simply say, "They'll be fine."   The way this tension is resolved is not responsive to the beats laid down (the mother finds a distant relative, the financier has no money, the country singer "will be just fine.")  And again, this is the season finale of the first season.  For a show that needs to bring audiences back next season, this resolution is particularly weak.

This is a recurring problem with TNG.  There was an awareness that they needed to include family oriented content to keep primarily female viewers interested, and for the most part they were successful.  The colorful secondary characters were there to engage all facets of the audience.  The weakness of this approach is that the two plots were almost entirely unrelated to each other, and neither plot was adequately resolved.  The B-plot had no real tension, with nothing at stake.  The survivors were always going to be shipped back to Earth, and nothing they did could alter that fate.  Indeed, that was presented as the best possible outcome for them anyway.  As a result, their dialogue was meaningless, and their scenes felt staged and phony.  

The other glaring problem with the survivors' story is that it is insufferably preachy, a problem all of Star Trek is prone to.  We take these three refugees from 21st C Earth and then laugh at them mercilessly.  Riker gets in the first dig, "Well, from what I’ve seen of our guests, there’s not much to redeem them. It makes one wonder how our species survived the twenty-first century.”  One is too greedy, overcome with a lust for power.  The next is too hedonistic, to the point where it drove him to liver failure.  The third is too tied to her family, an outdated concept in the enlightened future. 

And we're convinced that none of them really deserve this second chance they've been given.  None of them have a justifiable reason for this exceptional measure they've taken. They're all kind of absurd, actually, and the crew are totally justified for not taking them seriously.  Why didn't you just leave them, Data? Picard asks at one point. Among a crew of over a thousand, no one could be found to take care of them, listen to their obvious discomfort and begin to help them re-orient to their new situation.  In fact, Deanna gets special brownie points for reaching out to help the Mother. 

For all of that, it still had interesting elements.  For example, reviving the Romulans as a traditional antagonist was an interesting move for the series as a whole and this show introduced their menacing ship design and showed a few Romulans, with their characteristic haughty condescension, in an initial interaction.  We also get a few examples of Picard's character, as he shows restraint, both to the survivors and to the provocative Romulans. The writing of individual scenes was entertaining.  The vignettes of the Mother finding meaning in her extended family, and of the tense meeting with the Romulans were fun as stand alone short stories.  The character of the country playboy was vivid, if a little shallow.  But assembling these individual elements into a larger story was poorly supported and the overall storyline failed to deliver.

Its only at the end that you realize that the story had no resolution of either of the central conflicts.  It had no discernible theme across either of its plots.  The result is a weak story with an unsatisfying ending that leaves audiences questioning, with an uneasy feeling. The Romulan plot was substantial enough that it could have stood on its own, given more time and effort to develop the plot.  And the survivors story would have been interesting, interwoven with a less chilling story - about the Ferengi, for example.  Throwing the two together is what seemed ill advised.

 

 

What is a Good Story?

 

 

You need to be constatly striving to learn the theory and to understand What is it that makes a great story great? 

But isn't a good story entirely subjective?  Doesn't it vary from reader to reader, from audience to audience?  The answer is that while the preferences of each reader can vary widely, there remain both objective and subjective criteria that are characteristic of well written stories.  A well crafted story is likely to result in a great story, while a story that ignores any literary criticism can still be loved by a particular audience while remaining poorly written.

Let's start with our definition of a story.  A story takes a character and places it in a setting, from which a conflict arises, which develops and then resolves.  A story uses arcs and themes to convey a message.

Note right away that there are two parts to this definition of story, the structure and the purpose. First, there is the structure of the story, which consists of identifiable elements, all of which need to be present for a complete story to emerge.  Leave out any of these elements, and the story falls apart. Without each of these elements you have something less than a story; you may have a narrative or vignette or character study, you may call it "an account of events," but you don't actually have a story any more.  

Try to create a story without a character, or without resolution of the conflict and you will see how weak and unsatisfying the resulting writing becomes.  The obverse is often true as well.  Analyze a movie that you found disappointing and you'll often discover that one of these foundational elements was poorly developed or left out entirely.

Second, a story is something that is designed and crafted to convey meaning.  It is not simply a retelling of a series of events.  Instead, you have something that was designed to communicate an idea and leave the audience with a sense of completeness or satisfaction. A story is a construction of elements, brought together in a conscious way so that they relate to one another and work together to deliver the meaning to the audience.

A satisfying story doesn't have to have a happy ending.  Stories can be about the tragedy of loss, the futility of war, the oppression of tyranny, but if these are the meanings behind the story they must be included with intentionality.

A story is built.  It is not the result of happenstance.  The job of the author is to shape and mold each of these elements to serve a particular purpose and convey the meaning that the author intends. And more specifically, to take each of the elements and relate them to each of the other elements so that the work together to communicate.

Plot:  the sequence of events and elements that lead the audience through the story.  Does not have to be chronological if the story contains flashbacks.  An event is something that happens.  An element refers to feelings, emotional states.

Audience Satisfaction

The objective of a story is to convey meaning to an audience in such a way that they feel satisfied with the outcome.  Many things contribute to creating that feeling, but repeatedly when critics talk about their overall impressions they use specific phrases.  They may say, the ending didn't feel supported, didn't feel justified, didn't feel earned.  They talk about laying the groundwork for later developments, or talk about set-ups and payoffs.  Conversely, they may complain that things happened "out of the blue" or felt like a "deux ex machina" because support for later developments was not put in place early.  

All of these concepts are referencing the idea that a story is not a random series of events, but a carefully constructed narrative in which each of the elements must be related to every other element.  Later developments in the story must be placed on a supporting foundation that was written into the story earlier.  With out this supporting foundation, the story loses its feeling of cause and effect. At best, this feels like the world the author has created is inconsistent and unreliable, which means that the audience can't relate to it closely.  In a world of random cosmic magic, it's hard to know which events in the plot are a challenge, or a conflict, or even a win or loss.

A story consists of events and elements that are all interrelated.  The pieces of the story appear to fit together, appear to be building toward a logical and reasonable outcome. We say that early elements support later events.  Writers use tools like foreshadowing and development to create relationships between story elements.  Is there competition between characters, camaraderie, or antagonism?  If that becomes a plot element later in the story, it must be introduced earlier for it to have any meaning.  Audiences place greater weight on elements that are supported in the narrative, that are set up early and paid off later.

ST:TNG 1 Symbiosis S1:E22

 Synopsis

The Enterprise is in a star system to observe a particularly active star when they receive a garbled distress signal from a cargo ship in a decaying orbit.  While Picard struggles to communicate with the captain of the vessel, Riker and Lt Yar attempt an emergency beam out of the crew.  They are surprised that instead of beaming to safety, the crew sends their cargo across first before eventually beaming over themselves.  Within seconds, the wounded vessel is destroyed in the atmosphere.

Along with the crew, there were also two passengers.  These are merchants involved in a trade involving the contents of the lost cargo ship and several metal cylinders that the crew transported to the Enterprise.  The cylinders contain a medicine that is necessary to treat a plague that is raging on the freighter's homeworld of Onara. The merchants are immune to the plague and come from another world, Breka, who supply the medicine in exchange for the necessities of life manufactured by the Onarans.  With the loss of the goods on the freighter neither side is willing to yield their rights to the medicine in the cylinders.

When one of the freighter's crew begins to display advanced symptoms of the plague, Dr. Crusher  discovers that the Onarans do not suffer from the plague but from withdrawal symptoms from a narcotic dependency.  The substance in the cylinders is not medicine but a heroin-like drug.  The Brekans are keeping the Oharans hooked on drugs, under the guise of supplying them with medicine.

Crusher is outraged at this discover and urges Picard to intervene, but the Captain invokes the Prime Directive and says he is forbidden from interfering.  The Brekans, however, have a problem.  If they don't keep the Onarans supplied with the drug, they will eventually work through their withdrawal symptoms and will end up no longer addicted to it.  Because of this, they suddenly change their minds and agree to provide the current drug shipment for free, thus tipping their hand to the fact that they knew about this predatory arrangement all along.  

At the end, Picard decides to deliver the drug to the Onarans but refuses to help them replace their destroyed freighter, ensuring that the trade between the two worlds will eventually break down and the drug addiction will be revealed and dispelled.

Analysis

There are three major problems with this episode, and the primary is one of pacing.  The first act, setting up the problem and bringing the squabbling merchants on board, takes entirely too long and consumes over a third of the run time.  This is something we should have achieved in the first 5 minutes of the show and a sense of urgency here would have set the tone for the entire episode. 

The freighter is breaking up in the atmosphere, while Picard and Riker are seemingly having a laugh at the competency of the freighter's crew.  We go back and forth trying to establish communication through the solar interference while hoping to make the audience feel the tension of an imminent catastrophe.  But the audience cannot feel a tension that the Enterprise crew does not display.  As it was, the lack of focus seemed to have cost two lives from the freighter's crew and made Picard to appear callous.

It's hard to exaggerate how inane the writing of this scene is.  Worf is very clear that the distressed freighter has mere minutes before it will be destroyed, and Picard is consumed with rolling his eyes, "Well, finally we're getting somewhere..."  With seconds to live, they are proposing to beam over a major engine component that the stricken crew are supposed to install and align, a clearly impossible task in the time available.  

They make a feeble stab at using the tractor beam, with the inevitable "Too much interference..." as the response.  No heroic efforts, no ingenious plan from Geordi or Data.  Just a shrug of the shoulders and a smirk from Captain Picard, who wastes more time with snide remarks, "How long have you been captain?"  Let that sink in a moment.  Picard actually spends time insulting the imperiled crew mere moments before they die, with a grin and a nudge to Riker standing beside him, all the while exhibiting incompetence of his own,  blaming it on sunspot activity. 

The storytelling here creates a disconnect between what the writers would like to convey, and the message that the audience is receiving.  The building blocks of story are cycles of tension and resolution.  The tension here appears to be the imminent danger to the freighter.  The resolution of the arc happens when we get the crew off the ship before it explodes.  So we actually resolve a different tension, the danger to the lives of the crew.  By deflecting this arc, the writer creates confusion: Were the heroes successful or not?  Since the ship exploded and we killed two crewmen, it seems that the heroes were not successful, which should create a reaction of its own; either dismay or regret, apologies or resolve to do better next time.  Instead, the writers completely ignore what just happened and move on, seeming to place the blame on the odd choices of the rescued crew.

As a development in this arc, we introduce a second tension.  The imperiled crew doesn't appear to be very competent, or particularly concerned for their own safety.  Why do they seem to make these non-sensical choices?   The resolution here is that we discover 1.) they are suffering from the plague, and 2.) they are actually behaving as drug addicts.  The trouble this cycle creates, is that the story never goes back and connects the initial irrational behavior with the narcotic addiction.  Dr. Crusher would have been ideal to make this connection, but she wasn't present on the bridge to observe the crew's communication. 

The audience can make the connection on their own in hindsight, but the initial confusion that this created in the opening scenes is never resolved and the audience is left with the ongoing feeling that Picard is an unfeeling jerk.  This becomes a problem later when Picard has to defend the prime directive, and the audience continues to think he's an unfeeling jerk.

The middle section of the episode was entirely static and at times felt almost boring.  We established the basic premise:  that the cargo ownership is in dispute, and that one side needs the medicine desperately.  And after 20 minutes, we are in exactly the same place, with no movement on either side, and the captain having done nothing.  We move locations from the transporter room to the sick bay to the bridge to the observation lounge to the guest quarters, but nothing essential has changed. We continue to replay the initial scene where we squabble over the cargo.

The development and resolution happens in the final 10 minutes of the episode and there was no reason why it couldn't have happened 35 minutes earlier.  There's an interesting moment when the anguished Onarans stun Riker with their personal electrical charge.  This could have been a pivotal moment where we see the desperation of the addicts and we come to terms with how their society is suffering. This could have been a catalyst for some kind of insight on the part of the Captain or any of the players.  Instead, it passes without incident.  Picard simply talks them down.  It actually proves the opposite of what the writers intended.  Instead of showing the hopelessness of the Onaran's dire situation, it functionally showed that their situation wasn't that bad after all.

The Prime Directive

The third issue with the episode is that this was intended to be a major discussion of the Prime Directive.  From the perspective of Picard, this was a clear case of non-interference that the Prime Directive demanded.  And this was the opportunity, created by the show, to demonstrate how it worked, and the underlying truth to it.  The problem here is that the writers couldn't present a really convincing argument.

There are two phases to the treatment in this episode.  The first was to define exactly what the prime directive is.  The second phase delves deeper into why the prime directive is such a good idea

 Picard offers us two statements of the premise:

 "It is not our mission to impose Federation or Earth values on any others in the Galaxy."

"I am bound by the rules of the United Federation of Planets, which order me not to interfere with other worlds, other cultures.  If I were to tell them any of this, I would violate that Prime Directive."

This was the clearest articulation of the Prime Directive that we ever get in Star Trek.  Humanity is not mandated to cruise the galaxy imposing their will on other cultures because of their superior technology. It prevents them from being a "bunch of meddling do-gooders" as Q would later remark. From a storytelling perspective, this can be a useful device because it presents an internal source of conflict or tension.  As writers, we can use this to cause secondary conflict, between bridge officers for example, or between Picard and his superiors.  It represents a serious change to the basic Walk The Earth model that Star Trek uses.  On the other hand, the crew of the Enterprise very often IS a bunch of meddling do-gooders as evidenced in show after show.

This definition is so broad that we find ourselves in violation any number of times. Interfering in other cultures, and imposing Earth values on others in the galaxy, "seeking out new life and new civilizations," is what they do in almost every episode. Later, to address this contradiction, we soften the issue by narrowing the focus to "pre-warp civilizations",

How do you  define "less developed", for example?  And what constitutes intereference?  To some, simply appearing in orbit would represent an interference of some kind.  And with how nosy the human explorers are, this rule has been violated any number of times.  For example, the planet Bajor from DS9 would appear to be less developed and yet the Federation doesn't have any problem jumping in to that conflict.

The second phase of this discussion is to try to defend the prime directive as being a good idea. Like Hercules, we travel the galaxy seeking new knowledge, but the actual heart of the stories clearly revolves around fixing things, understanding conflicts and moderating them. 

Beverly Crusher showed that this story was a clear example of one species exploiting another.  This was an example of Parasitism, not Symbiosis, as the episode title claimed. Picard was only able to walk away from this situation because he foresaw that it would correct itself in the near future when the Onarans shipping capabilities failed.  But if that were not the case, would Picard be forced to leave them in this clearly oppressive situation, by the prime directive?  For a show about overcoming adversity, this would not be a satisfactory storytelling model.

If we were to find this situation on the streets of Los Angeles in a cop show, we would absolutely feel that correcting the situation would be the honorable thing to do.  Yet here it is presented as more honorable to leave the exploited in their torment.  The writers set up this situation to fully discuss the ramifications of their choices, but when the time came, Picard was more dismissive of Beverly's arguments than meeting them with a well developed philosophy of his own.  This could have been a Measure of a Man moment in season 1.  Instead, it left the audience ambivalent and dissatisfied.

"Beverly, the Prime Directive is not just a set of rules.  It is a philosophy, and a very correct one.  History has proved again and again that whenever Mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well-intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous."