Samaritan Snare

They are smiley. They are pudgy. They are incredibly deadly. The Enterprise comes across a benign seeming race known as Pakleds. They have much technology, but they cannot make it go. Luckily, Geordi La Forge can. He can fix lots of things. So the Pakleds decide to keep him. Now the Enterprise has to get him back, and quickly. Captain Picard is on space station 515. He is about to die and he needs the help of the Enterprise. Can the crew save both men? Find out when the Mission Log gets caught in a Samaritan Snare A fun episode, unless you’re Geordi… or anybody undergoing surgery. Seriously, those surgical costumes were scary, almost satanic. I love the story in the shuttle — which of course becomes the basis for ‘Tapestry.’ If this ep has flaws, they’re largely due to the fact that the writers are struggling to make this a plot-driven story. Aha! Pakleds are menacing! Aha! Riker outsmarts the idiots. Aha! Pulaski shows up! It’s actually tiresome. It’s interesting to see how TNG slowly moved to a more confident style where the action stems from the characters’ interactions; ‘Tapestry’ being an excellent example. Worf recommends shields. Riker says, “Nah.” Worf recommends not sending the chief engineer. Riker says, “What can go wrong?” Troi says Geordi is in great danger. Riker casually calls over and asks, “How’s it goin’?” Yup. Multiple fails on so many levels. Love that fast trip to do surgery on Picard. The most capable surgeon was on your ship. WOW I’d like to suggest a moral/message for this episode. Beware pride. Picard’s pride almost cost him his life and Riker/Geordie got trapped by their own pride. I was sort of amazed that you barely alluded to what to me is the obvious key to understanding the Pakleds … the species is Star Trek TNG’s attempt to deal with another marginalized group as they occasionally do, in this case, people with cognitive impairment. They couldn’t be more obvious analogues to people with Down Syndrome. You can almost hear the writers and producers going down the checklist and saying, “This season, we really must do developmentally disabled people.” However, as so often happens on Trek, the attempt is deeply flawed. The Pakleds end up being a caricature, and as you both pointed out, depicted as deceptively dangerous. That’s a fine message to send about developmentally disabled people. They’re goofy. They talk funny. Their faces are weird. They’re not very bright. But beware, they aren’t harmless, in fact their very ignorance makes their dangerousness even worse! I’m not sure these messages are intentional. Actually, I’m pretty sure they are a result of sloppy, careless thinking about developmentally disabled people. But that just makes the whole thing more disgusting. It’s as if they decided to give a vote of confidence to black people by having Geordi talk in hip-hop slang. I don’t believe that this was intentional but, to my mind, that makes what you’re pointing out much worse. Very interesting perspective, Andrew. I can’t imagine that there was anything like that intentional on the part of writers/producers/directors for this episode, and it’s probably why we didn’t discuss it from that angle on the show. In the end, I could see the Pakleds as their own distinct species who evolved into what we were presented: users who didn’t understand the technology they craved. For me it was more about demanding power. I am a couple weeks behind and just finished listening to this episode and came to comment the same thing as Andrew that I was really surprised that the seemingly obvious references (especially speech and makeup) to developmental disability wasn’t addressed. It’s one of those things were if they were lizards or bugs it could be more easily passed off as the ‘not ready for power’ but with the design choices that were made I have always cringed a bit at the Pakleds. I doubt, if this episode were remade today, it would be done in the same way This is an episode when everyone, other than