So I was sitting in the living room, too tired to do anything
productive, too awake to call it a night, and after one flatulence joke
too many from Craig Ferguson, I grabbed the remote, whereupon I was
reminded of that glorious, albeit inconveniently late, time slot during
which Star Trek: The Next Generation is on WGN. So I settled in for Genesis,
an episode I’d never seen before. It features one of my favorite minor
players, jittery Lieutenant Barclay (Dwight Schulz), and it starts off
with the promising scene of Data (Brent Spiner) undergoing a
consultation regarding his pregnant cat, Spot.
Some of my favorite moments in the series involve this cat, including Data’s reading of his own poetic composition, An Ode to Spot, and his range of emotions concerning her fate in Star Trek: Generations,
so I figured her appearance was a good sign. And who can resist the
promise of kittens? Unfortunately, while Spot does play a key role in
the plot, we see very little of her, and even less of her and Data
together - and in one of those scenes, her appearance is decidedly
different. In high school, I witnessed the taping of a commercial
spoofing The Wizard of Oz that co-starred an iguana as Toto. The fact that it made no sense whatsoever added to the humor. It’s supposed
to make sense that fluffy Spot transforms into an iguana before the
episode is out, but it never really does. This is one weird episode. But
it’s very entertaining.
I was surprised to see that Genesis originally aired in March. It definitely struck me as a Halloween episode, sort of Treehouse of Horror TNG-style.
Beware the Ides, and beware the episode’s premise if you want to avoid
scratching your head in confusion or shaking it in exasperation. The
whole thing plays out like a spoof of cheesy horror movies as various
members of the crew begin demonstrating strange behavior before
undergoing startling changes to their physiology.
Deanna Troi
(Marina Sirtis) becomes unbearably chilly; Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes)
can’t hold onto his train of thought; hypochondriac Barclay becomes
hyperactive. Most noticeably, Worf (Michael Dorn) becomes unaccountably
surly, which is initially funny but grows worrisome as the episode wears
on. Even Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) is beginning to exhibit
symptoms of paranoia. Data alone is unaffected, and it’s up to him to
put on his Sherlock Holmes cap and figure out just what is going on.
Genesis goes in a much different direction than I anticipated. It’s one of the funniest TNG
episodes I’ve seen, in a campier-than-the-original-series kind of way.
I’m not sure it was supposed to be so silly, but really, once Deanna
sprouts gills, it’s hard to take anything that happens in the episode
too seriously. But boy, it sure made me chuckle...
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