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Star Trek TNG - Season 1 - Episode 18

Star Trek TNG - 1x18 - Home Soil

Originally Aired: 1988-2-22

Synopsis:
Data and Geordi discover a "microbrain." [DVD]

My Rating - 3

Fan Rating Average - 5.19

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Problems
- Apparently, unlike TNG: The Naked Now, nobody bothered to do a historical lookup, as everyone seems surprised at the idea of non-organic life even though silicon-based life was featured prominently in TOS: The Devil in the Dark.

Factoids
- This episode establishes (implicitly) that the Genesis device was ultimately a failure, as traditional terraforming techniques are used.

Remarkable Scenes
- Data dodging and eventually destroying the drilling laser.
- Worf, facing Geordi: "But is it alive?" Computer: "Probability high." Worf, facing computer terminal: "I wasn't asking you."
- The aliens referring to the crew of the Enterprise as "ugly bags of mostly water."

My Review
This episode, like the previous one, but less so, is dull and annoying. Plot-wise, it's fairly average, but some remarkable oversights drag this episode down a bit. Firstly, in an episode all about terraforming, I would have wanted to see some information about the Genesis device presented in this episode. Even though it was probably declared a failure and disregarded, for continuity's sake it would have been interesting to see it talked about. This is not necessarily a technical problem; it makes sense that the details concerning the events surrounding the testing and use of the Genesis device were probably classified and buried after the events of the original series films. More annoying is how surprised everyone was acting regarding inorganic life. Clearly the events of TOS: The Devil in the Dark are not classified. That episode should most definitely have been referenced. Beyond this, there is little to distinguish this episode. The acting of the guests was of unusually high quality and the overall idea behind the episode was interesting, if rehashed. However I tend to prefer TOS' version of this episode far more. The inorganic aliens of this episode, when they finally got a chance to play a role, weren't that interesting and I found the monotone translations of the universal translator unnecessary. Overall, this episode largely failed to live up to its potential.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

  • From DSOmo on 2007-06-03 at 1:52am:
    - Removing water from the crystal life form kills it. There is no salt water in the med lab. Shouldn't it have died as soon as it left the planet?
    - The woman terraformer told the away team that the planet has a balanced day and night. How does the crystal survive on the surface of the planet at night?
  • From CAlexander on 2011-03-06 at 6:09pm:
    Until the discovery of the microbrain, this episode was great. But I totally agree with you, I was annoyed by the lack of continuity. It wasn't just that they were surprised by the inorganic lifeforms, but they kept repeating over and over how unbelievable it was. And it wasn't just the Horta they were ignoring, but a long history of energy-based lifeforms. "Lonely Among Us", in the same season, featured a life form more alien then this; if it isn't even composed of matter, it certainly isn't organic! Equally annoying is that the technobabble about the capabilities and limitations of the organism is full of inconsistencies, such as those noted by DSOmo.
  • From Jeff Browning on 2011-09-19 at 7:46pm:
    Huge science problem. Geordi states that the light pulses from the microbrain consist of "positively and negatively charged ions". Light consists of photons. Ions are made from normal matter. Light cannot consist of ions.
  • From Inga on 2011-12-23 at 8:48am:
    -Why didn't Geordi switch off the power when Data was attacked by that laser drill?
    -Why did everyone leave the med lab when the aliens first tried to communicate with them?
  • From Azalea Jane on 2021-07-11 at 1:33pm:
    I'll always appreciate this episode for the phrase "ugly bags of mostly water."

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