By 
Title: Symbiosis
Airdate: 4/18/1988
Plot Summary
The Enterprise stops to help a ship of Onarans who are completely inept in knowing how to work their own ship. When the Enterprise has to rescue them, they send over cargo before they send over themselves. It turns out the Onarans have just bought some medicine from the Brekkians to continue combatting a plague.
As Crusher examines the Onarans, she realizes that there is no plague, the Brekkians cured it centuries ago and now just keep the Onarans hooked on a drug. This outrages her, but there’s nothing Picard can do to stop it as the prime directive prevents him.
Make It So
Picard makes the decision to use the prime directive against the Brekkians in a beautiful turnabout that gives them whiplash.
Number 1
Riker gets nearly barbecued by T’Jon.
Fully Functional
Data mostly sits at Ops and gives info when needed.
Today Is A Good Day To Die
Worf is in this somewhere I think. Mostly to tell everyone what’s going on with the sparkly consoles.
Phase Inducers
Geordi sets course at the end for the Opraline system for no other reason than they’ve never been there. Picard gives him carte blanche just to get the hell away from this system.
Counselor Cleavage
Troi gives some insight into the Brekkians and Onarans not giving two shits about the two people that were lost.
Dancing Doctor
Crusher figures out what’s going on with these people and that they are addicted to a narcotic. She argues with Picard vehemently against giving the “medicine.”
Security Chief Dead Meat
Yar has a talk with Wesley to grind the episode to a halt with an impromptu ABC Afterschool Special. You can practically feel the sledgehammer come out of the TV and crash down on your head.
Shut Up, Wesley
Wesley has little understanding of why people do drugs. Yar provides the aforementioned sledge hammer.
Canon Maker
The Prime Directive is used most effectively here and really fleshed out in ways the original series only hinted at. Hell Kirk wiped his ass with it most of the time. Here we get the first real definition of what they can and can’t do. The fact that the Onarans are space faring and include the Brekkians means that the warp requirement seems to have been met, though it’s unclear. The fact they have transporters would seem to point to that, even though they are different technologies.
Even so, the Prime Directive gets real muddy when discussing space faring races vs some primitive race in the equivalent of medieval times. It’s easy when they are that far back, just don’t contact them. But with space faring races, it’s inevitable that contact will happen. Helping fix spaceships really doesn’t break the rules, but in this case, the Onarans have become completely inert. Natural progression would mean they would have hit this wall at some point. Picard recognized this and made sure it would happen.
Wesley sits at bridge stations analyzing things rather than at the helm or ops. This makes way more sense for a teenager learning.
Canon Breaker
I actually couldn’t find much that broke canon.
A Little Bloody Nose
Two people died on the freighter but at least they saved the drugs.
Technobabble
Control coils can get misaligned. This appears to be the simplest most basic thing you should know about a ship, like getting a new battery for your car.
Please Repeat You Communication
“Beverly, the prime directive is not just a set of rules. It’s a philosophy and very correct one. History has proved again and again when mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous.” — Picard elegantly explaining the purpose of the prime directive.
Library Computer
Maurice Hurley, the first showrunner, forced that “just say no” speech into the script over the cast’s vehement objections. Later on he realized it was a mistake. No shit. No one liked it even then.
I Know That Guy:
We get a Wrath of Khan reunion with Judson Scott and Merritt Butrick playing Sobi and T’Jon respectively. Sadly Butrick would pass away less than a year after this aired.
Richard Lineback plays Romas. He would appear in 90s blockbusters Speed and Twister. He would also return to Trek in DS9 and Enterprise.
Kimberly Farr plays the slimy Langor. I couldn’t find much about her but she did a great job of one of those people who smile without smiling, if you know what I mean. There’s nothing genuine about her.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
This is a pretty good episode and probably the second best episode of this season. While the anti-drug message is shoehorned in, the problem is this is NOT an anti-drug story. At least not the main point. This is a prime directive story and a pretty good one.
There could be any number of reasons one planet could be taking advantage of another planet, in this case it happens to be drug addiction. The point is showing how the prime directive can cut both ways. Picard cannot stop the Brekkians and Onarans from doing what they’ve always been doing. But he does recognize that fixing their ships will stop what must happen: the Onarans finally breaking free of the drug.
What Picard understands is that if they do it as a third party, there could be all kinds of unintended consequences that could draw the Federation into all kinds of trouble, not the least of which, war.
And what if they are wrong? I don’t doubt Beverly’s medical skills, but let’s say the Onarans get off the drug, only for the plague to reappear because the constant medication is no longer available? You could end up with two dead planets, worse case scenario.
What Picard says is true, that you have to let things play out naturally and hope things improve for both societies when it’s all said and done. I do have my issues sometimes with the Prime Directive and how it’s misused but this episode is not one of them.
My biggest problems are the scene with Wesley and Yar, and the bio-electric charge the two races had. Not that they couldn’t have that power, but what was the point? It really had zero impact on the story.
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