Friday, May 25, 2012

Starship Mine

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Enterprise has pulled into the Remmler Array at Arkaria. The ship must be evacuated so it can be hosed down with deadly radiation to remove dangerous radiation. Yeah, you heard me. That's how bad ass Enterprise-D is. How do you like me now, barion particles!?

Commander "Hutch" Hutchinson of Arkaria Base is famously verbose. Picard suggests Data observe him to refine his small talk. But this is mostly a ruse to avoid talking to Hutch. Nobody wants to be stuck with the guy for very long, but once he and Data get into it they can't stop. Riker wonders how long two people can talk about nothing. 'Seinfeld' ran for 9 years, so I guess that's the answer.

Having avoided Hutch by leaping at the chance to go for a horsey ride, Picard is stuck on the ship fetching his saddle when the power goes down. A motley (some might call them diverse) collection of raiders steal some volatile trilithium resin out of the warp engine for a weapon.

The only man standing in their way is a crafty cop with no shoes: John McClane. I mean, Jean Picard. And he has shoes. Also Worf's bow and arrow. By the by, if you arrow a terrorist in the groin, as Picard does here, should it be called a Crotch-Bow?

Poor Hutch is gunned down by Arkarian malcontents and the senior staff is held hostage. Riker starts a brief fistfight so Bev can set off a hypersonic pulse from Geordi's VISOR, which knocks everyone out while Data runs for help. And Troi came along!

Commander-In-Thief Kelsey is not herself a terrorist, but hoping to sell the trilithium. Leaving aside who the buyer might be (although, actually, I have a pet theory), what does she need money for? Remember how humans now live harmoniously in a worry-free, shekel-free, story-free utopia? Is she planning on buying a summer home on misogynist planet Ferenginar?

"Starship Mine" sounds like the petulant screech of a four year old. My starship! Mine, mine, mine! It's hard to deny its energy- very solid action fun. Thank goodness Roddenberry is dead: he might have squashed it on principle for its un-evolved humans wasting each other for cash.

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