By 
Title: Angel One
Airdate: 1/25/1988
Plot Summary
Riker, Troi, Yar, and Data beam down to the planet Angel One, a society with a matriarchal government. The women are bigger than the men and generally run the planet. The away team comes in search of crash survivors. The leader of the planet is suspicious of the Federation but will cooperate if the crew agrees to take them away, but the crew survivors are in hiding. The Enterprise team is able to locate them but they don’t want to leave. While they like the planet and have even married some of its inhabitants, they don’t agree with how the women treat men. Beatta, the leader is dismayed to learn that the Enterprise cannot take people who don’t want to leave. Since they are considered subversives, she has no choice but to put them to death. Will Riker and the team be able to come up with a solution?
Meanwhile the rest of the crew is quarantined on the Enterprise as a virus runs through the ship, making the entire crew sick, starting with Picard. Crusher is working against the clock and the away team can’t come back as they’ll get sick too.
Make It So
Picard spends most of the episode in bed. Even though he’s better, his voice isn’t. The look on his face when he can’t manage to say “engage” and instead glares a death stare at Riker to finish the order is priceless.
Number 1
Riker does a 50/50 job on this one. On the one hand, he has a pretty good speech that saves the survivor’s lives. On the other, he bangs Beatta while negotiating with her. Not cool, man.
Fully Functional
Data is able to use the computer to figure out an element that doesn’t exist on Angel One, but may with the survivors. In this case platinum. He’s able to use that to locate the hidden group.
Today Is A Good Day To Die
Worf sneezes so hard, the ship jumps into warp. He also gives Geordi good advice on how to delegate and how to make good decisions when he’s in charge.
Phase Inducers
Geordi gets to command the Enterprise for the first time. He’ll get another shot. He does ok.
Counselor Cleavage
Crusher works overtime to cure the disease.
Dancing Doctor
Troi takes point with the female leadership on Angel One. She also is completely amused by Riker’s outfit.
Security Chief Dead Meat
Yar is actually a bit more subdued than I would’ve expected on this women in charge planet. She also is pretty critical of Riker wearing one of the traditional male outfits, though she decides it’s sexy. Or hilarious. Hard to say.
Shut Up, Wesley
Wesley starts this whole thing off as he caught the virus on the holodeck. Somehow.
Canon Maker
So we hear more about the prime directive and the fact that the federation citizens are not held to the prime directive. Nor can they be forcefully removed from someplace if they don’t want to go.
Canon Breaker
However that will turn out to be all kinds of bullshit. The prime directive applies to the Federation, not just Starfleet. Even worse, we’ll see not once, but twice the federation try to forcibly remove people from a planet. Even worse it’s their home planet. One of them was Federation citizens.
There is no way a disease could be conjured up on the holodeck. Once Wesley walked out of the holodeck, it should’ve disappeared.
Riker wearing the outfit as a sign of respect seems like it makes sense but almost nowhere else in Star Trek does that happen. They may wear the clothes to blend in as disguises but not in an official matter.
They send Data up to the ship since he’s not affected by the disease. The Naked Now asks “Are you sure about that?”
A Little Bloody Nose
No deaths but it was close, both for the sick on the Enterprise and the survivors on the planet. A vase got smoked though.
Technobabble
Escape pods are able to land on a planet apparently and not just burn up in the atmosphere. Good to know.
I Know That Guy:
Karen Montgomery played Beata. She did some tv and later produced some shows. This probably was her most known role. Sadly she died of breast cancer in 2015 at only 66 years old.
Sam Hennings played Ramsey. He played in a ton of stuff but nothing that really stands out or is memorable. Solid working actor.
Leonard Crofoot plays Trent. He’s mostly a Broadway performer but he would return again in TNG’s The Offspring and later on in Voyager. I swear I used to think it was an early role for Conan O’Brien.
Finally we get Patricia McPherson as Ariel. She retired from acting in the early 90s but us 80s kids know her as Bonnie in three seasons of Knight Rider.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
This is such a TOS episode. I can totally see Kirk going to down a woman controlled planet and banging the leader because even though there is no reason she would find a big masculine man attractive since evolutionarily speaking, that’s not how this planet works, Kirk is just that awesome. Now it’s Riker in that role and thankfully captains don’t beam down anymore so he doesn’t have to get humiliated in a stupid outfit.
They had no idea what to do with the rest of the crew so they gave them a bullshit disease to keep them busy. What’s really weird is that the big revelation is Crusher figuring out the smell is what gets people to catch the virus. Great. How does that cure it? It doesn’t and they never tell us how she figures it out!
Picard is so sidelined that he might as well not have even been in the episode. I guess Geordi gets to command which really consists of taking calls from the away team, sending maintenance to fix some shit, and then getting sick as a dog himself.
Meanwhile on the planet we have this ham-fisted theme of sexism or apartheid or whatever. Beata gives these invading aliens every opportunity to leave but they rather die. Even when she says you can take your families and you can all go, they still don’t want to go. This is shown to be some big stand against tyranny but it’s ridiculous. They are guests on this planet. If you don’t like the laws, get fucked. Now killing them is a bit much but damn, they were asking for it.
Then they are getting banished but can stay on the planet which makes everyone happy. Really? You could go to the futuristic, replicator driven, holodeck having Federation but you’d rather stay on this planet that’s stuck in the 20th century. Even worse, where are they getting banished? How do they know whether it’s even inhabited by modern people? Maybe it’s just a delay execution as they all die of starvation because they have no idea how to survive.
The stupid outfits, the dumb plot, and a stupid disease plot that really goes nowhere leads up to a crap episode.
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