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Star Trek TNG - Season 1 - Episode 14

Star Trek TNG - 1x14 - Angel One

Originally Aired: 1988-1-25

Synopsis:
The crew travels to a planet with a matriarchal society. [DVD]

My Rating - 3

Fan Rating Average - 3.15

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# Votes: 46 22 18 15 22 12 15 11 7 6 3

Filler Quotient: 3, bad filler, totally skippable.
- Pretty lame episode with no significant long term continuity.

Problems
- The Elected One greets the away team as "representatives of the star fleet Enterprise."
- When Riker and The Elected One are sharing an intimate evening together, a hand reaches out to grab her drink. In the remastered version released in 2012 this was corrected by reframing the shot.
- At the end of the episode they depart at warp 6. But Data timed their departure to the minute assuming they'd leave at maximum warp.

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Riker submitting to local apparel and refusing to consider it degrading over Troi's and Yar's objections.
- Sick Picard humbly and reluctantly obliging to the doctor's orders.
- Geordi in command and loving it. "Make it so."
- Worf sneezing.
- Riker's martyr speech.
- Data's facial expression when Riker gives him a pat on the shoulder.
- Picard's hoarse voice.

My Review
This is a pretty painful episode to watch for a number of reasons. Once again the aliens shown here are yet another alien race that looks exactly like humans, complete this time with characters who have western names like Ariel and Trent. They were so indistinguishable in fact that when the Enterprise wanted to find the Odin survivors, they had to resort to searching for an element not natural to the Angel One world rather than just using the sensors to find non-human life signs. The distinction that they evolved in such a way that their women are bigger and stronger than their men due presumably to millions of years of matriarchy altering the dynamics of their natural selection process is a reasonably plausible and interesting story idea to explore in an alien civilization, but whatever story potential there was in exploring such a premise was undermined considerably by its sexist portrayal, not unlike what happened in Code of Honor.

Another issue was the muddled portrayal of the Prime Directive. It isn't clear why the Federation maintains any sort of contact with Angel One at all given that it doesn't appear to be a spacefaring civilization. It was stated that the planet's location was strategically important, so perhaps the Federation made an exception to the Prime Directive when establishing diplomatic relations 60+ years ago, similar to what might've gone on in TOS: Friday's Child. But that isn't the only Prime Directive complication here. In contrast to how previous episodes defined the Prime Directive, Data and Riker make a big point about how it apparently only applies to Starfleet personnel, and apparently not to individual Federation citizens. This is a completely nonsensical distinction. A law like that would be as idiotic as if the Indian government passed a law prohibiting contact with the uncontacted North Sentinelese tribe, but only applied the law to agents of the Indian government, excluding ordinary citizens for some reason, which is not the case for fairly obvious reasons.

These wrinkles do much to wreck what is otherwise a fairly fun episode. The virus B plot and the Romulan C plot were both fairly compelling. A better episode would've focused on that exclusively. Plus how can we not be charmed by Geordi in command and loving every minute of it?

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

  • From DSOmo on 2007-05-31 at 11:45pm:
    - More matter leaving the holodeck, a snowball hits Picard as he is walking by.
    - When the Enterprise begins to search for the survivors, Picard orders Geordi to break fixed orbit. If the Enterprise is in fixed orbit, it would remain above a given location on the planet's surface. However, the shot before Picard's order shows the planet turning in one direction and the Enterprise flying in another.
  • From CAlexander on 2011-03-02 at 1:05am:
    I found the acting of the denizens of Angel One, and the shipwreck survivors, to be boring, and I didn't care about any of them. And the side plots weren't interesting at all - they get sick, they get better, they fly away. I was, however, amused by Riker going native, and his ending speech was good.
  • From Jeff Browning on 2011-10-20 at 8:43am:
    This is the first episode to feature Riker's propensity to be a manwhore. He has absolutely no compunction about jumping into bed with any reasonably attractive female. Of course, this makes him the stud of TNG, at the expense of Picard who is, in live stock terms, a "shy breeder". I.e., Picard has intimacy issues. Both themes get played out later in future episodes, e.g., TNG: The Game for Riker and TNG: Captain's Holiday.
  • From dubton on 2016-07-24 at 3:28am:
    Having sex while this episode plays in the background is, by far, my greatest fantasy. All criticism, in the interest of diplomatic relations, is forfeit. We have muuuuuuuuch to discuss and set phasers to sttttuuuuhhhhh-unnnnnnnnn
  • From Rick on 2017-02-23 at 8:06pm:
    It is my understanding that the Prime Directive does not apply to non-Starfleet personnel. The Federation is all about freedom and equality, so I do not think they would have this overbroad restriction on the liberty of all of their citizens. What right or jurisdiction would the Federation have over the actions of its citizens hundreds of lightyears away on non-Federation planets? None of course.

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