February 8th, 1988, "Too Short A Season"
Fiver (by Marc)
Transcript
Memory Alpha
The Episode
Once again we find ourselves with an episode that is starting off with two strikes against it because of the sheer amounts of contrivance and bad Treknology that's being stuffed into it. There's some good character work here, but it still doesn't make the episode redeemable.
KARNAS [on viewscreen]: I am Karnas, governor of Mordan Four. A dissident group of terrorists have taken Federation Ambassador Hawkins and his staff hostage. They will not discuss terms with me. This is a crisis I cannot resolve. The terrorists are demanding a Federation negotiator. I feel there is only one negotiator with the skills to resolve the situation. The lives of the hostages will depend on Starfleet delivering this man to Mordan. Commander Mark Jameson. Admiral Jameson. The terrorists have given you six Earth days to bring him here, or the hostages will die.
So was bringing Jameson here your idea, or their demand? I feel an editor should've taken another pass at this script.
JAMESON: I am not simply an advisor. On any assignment I accompany, Starfleet has designated me Senior Mission Officer. I control the away team and all its actions. Is that understood? Of course, Captain, you command the ship, but the mission is mine. I trust you are in complete agreement.
Starfleet doesn't have to "designate" you that. You're an admiral; you outrank Picard already. I hate visiting dignitaries that feel comfortable throwing their weight around at the start of the mission instead of when it's actually relevant. It doesn't endear the captain or the audience to them.
KARNAS [on viewscreen]: They insist all discussions will take place here on Mordan. They refuse to speak to me, only to a Federation mediator.
One, Jameson is an admiral, not an ambassador. Two, did they demand Jameson and only Jameson or not? More desire for another editor...
ANNE: This ship is magnificent. It even has family quarters. Pity we didn't have them twenty, thirty years ago. We could have been together almost all of your career.
Yes, we get the feeling that this whole "large amount of civilians on starships" thing is a recent phenomenon, and it seems that Anne was never a member of Starfleet, but what about starbases? Aren't families allowed there?
CRUSHER: I found traces of chemical substances in his blood and tissue samples, but none of them are in our pharmacopoeia.
A "pharmacopoeia" is just a book of medications and their side effects. It just seems like an outdated term for the 24th century, "medical library" would do just as well.
CRUSHER: His red cell count is running riot. The cellular structure of his body is radically changing, but we can't make any decisions on that until we know what it's changing to. His DNA is skewed. Don't ask me how, but he even looks younger. And Captain, there are absolutely no traces of Iverson's Disease.
I still wonder about the pseudoscience that's supposed to be doing this, especially from the late '80s perspective.
JAMESON: There are no dissidents, are there? No terrorists. You have the hostages.
KARNAS [on monitor]: And if I have? You're coming to Mordan, Jameson, and you're going to negotiate for their lives. And I'm going to ask a very, very high price.
JAMESON: What if I refuse?
KARNAS [on monitor]: Then the hostages will die.
You have to respect a plot twist like that. It's a shame that we never really got to know Karnas as anything other than a spouter of exposition and bluster...
JAMESON: It wasn't my golden oratory that saved them, Captain. I gave Karnas the weapons he wanted.
PICARD: You did what?
JAMESON: I gave exactly the same weapons to his rivals. My interpretation of the Prime Directive. Let them solve their problems with those arms on an equal basis.
PICARD: And that decision plunged them into forty years of civil war.
Ah, we just covered this in "A Private Little War". It makes a little more sense here, since there's enough industrialization that the locals can reproduce the weapons and hide them from our heroes. Still doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, of course. And we're still in the "call all of Federation law the Prime Directive" era, I see. Wait a second...do the locals have warp drive? A previous mission could've given them a subspace transmitter, so that's no proof.
The Fiver
Captain's Log: We have been ordered to bring Admiral Mark Jameson to Mordan IV to resolve a hostage crisis there. If he is successful, the news will surely discourage our enemies everywhere from taking any more Federation prisoners in the future.
I get that you were going for sarcastic humor, Marc, but if one takes a minute to consider the implications (i.e. validating the "taking hostages means we get whatever we want" fallacy), it gets mighty dark from a real world perspective.
Jameson: Why don't you have an access ramp?
Picard: It's supposed to arrive next Tuesday.
Yikes, do we get a lot of mileage out of the Tuesday gag.
Picard: I'm surprised that Karnas isn't able to handle this hostage situation on his own. He is, after all, the one who unified the planet after forty years of civil war.
Riker: Perhaps he made too many enemies in the process.
Jameson: Quite possible. It's easy to dislike a man whose motto is, "Peace through superior firepower."
Ah, "The Arsenal of Freedom." Perhaps not the best Season One episode, but
far from the worst.
Jameson: I'm also benefiting from a trip I made last week to the famous Briar Patch Health Spa.
Picard: I've never heard of it.
Jameson: You will.
I suppose I should snark about how the Briar Patch probably wasn't discovered at this point in time, but a good punchline isn't coming to mind. I'll just bring up how much of a contrarian Trekkie I am by mentioning again that I prefer Insurrection to First Contact.
Crusher: He's putting his life in danger. There's no telling how far back he'll regress towards early youth.
Anne: You're not kidding. When I last saw him, the rascal was jumping up and down on the bed.
Are you going for some sort of record for the most references to other episodes, Marc?
Picard: Trading weapons for hostages is illegal and unethical!
Jameson: So? What's good enough for Oliver North should be good enough for me.
At the time of the Iran-Contra Scandal I was too young to know it was happening. I actually only know the guy existed in the first place because of the connection between him and Colonel West.
Picard: Admiral, I strongly disagree. You've made the Federation look like an arms dealer.
Jameson: I like to think of us as "the arsenal of freedom."
You already made an "Arsenal of Freedom" joke.I'm not sure if the repetition was justified here.
Picard: The policy of supplying weapons to one side in an alien conflict was discredited long ago by the "Tyree's Planet" fiasco.
I'm glad Marc also saw the parallels.
Picard: It really
is the Admiral, Karnas. He's using a youth serum he got from the people of Cerebrus II.
Jameson: It was my reward for negotiating the release of some hostages being held there by a radical faction called the Anti-Grup Liberation Foolie.
"Miri" too? Were we supposed to get "Trek episode BINGO cards" at the start of the fiver?
Jameson: Here is the proof of who I am! The scar from the blood-cut that sealed our bargain!
Karnas: This youth drug gave you back the body of an eighteen-year-old, but it wasn't able to heal a tiny little scar?
Jameson: Well, what do you expect from a rejuvenation treatment -- miracles?
You can just hear the bah-dum-chish of the offscreen drummer and the canned laughter, can't you?
Memory Alpha
* The Iran-Contra scandal connection is made obvious.
* The wheelchair cost twenty thousand dollars, but couldn't move like it had to. I hope whoever was responsible for that thing got fired. Even Christopher Pike's wheelchair looked more practical.
Nitpicker's Guide
* "Lonely Among Us" establishes that if the entire senior staff agrees the commanding officer can be removed, and yet this isn't done to deal with Jameson. Perhaps rules for admirals are different.
* Phil questions why Jameson's scar wouldn't be healed. I have my own theories to explain this one, but I'm neither a doctor nor do I play one on TV.