Title: Too Short A Season
Airdate: 2/8/1988
Plot Summary
A group of federation citizens including the ambassador have been taken hostage on Mordan IV. The leader of Mordan has been unable to negotiate with the terrorists and has asked the federation to send Admiral Jameson to talk with the leader as he was the peace negotiator for a hostage situation back when it was Karnas who took hostages 40 years ago.
Jameson is quite old now and confined to a wheelchair. He and his wife beam aboard the Enterprise and begin the journey to Mordan. On the way, Jameson has taken a de-aging drug which cures his disease and makes him very young, though not healthy as the overdose of the drug is killing him. It turns out that 40 years ago, he didn’t just negotiate the release of the hostages, he gave Karnas the weapons he wanted to win his war. What he didn’t tell Karnas is that he gave the same weapons to the other side, his interpretation of the Prime Directive.
This resulted in 40 years of war and while there’s peace now, Karnas wants revenge on Jameson, taking the hostages himself and using that to lure Jameson to Mordan once again.
Make It So
Picard is suspicious of Jameson from the time he walks to the helm, something he should never be able to do. But it’s his evasiveness with questions about Mordan that finally has Picard getting to the truth of what Jameson did 40 years ago.
Number 1
Riker basically plays second fiddle to Jameson.
Fully Functional
Data helpfully lets Picard know that the phasers are set on kill. Picard is quite familiar with the sound.
Today Is A Good Day To Die
Worf tackles Jameson to save him from a phaser shot and that’s pretty much his entire contribution to this episode.
Phase Inducers
Geordi steps aside to let Jameson fly the ship briefly. He also is on the away team to help find hostages, finding new walls and such with his vision.
Counselor Cleavage
Troi spends time being a sounding board for Jameson’s wife and gets Crusher to tell her the bad news about Jameson’s limited future.
Dancing Doctor
Crusher does her best treat Jameson but is not even able to make him comfortable when it’s all said and done.
Security Chief Dead Meat
Yar went down to the planet as part of the away team and gets some good shots.
Shut Up, Wesley
I don’t think Wes is actually in this.
Canon Maker
Admirals don’t take command of ships and it’s made pretty clear here.
Canon Breaker
Honestly couldn’t find anything that broke canon.
A Little Bloody Nose
Jameson dies but he did it to himself.
Technobabble
Phasers on kill have a distinctly different sound than on stun.
Library Computer
This was mostly the last time a model was used for an establishing shot of a city, from here they used matte paintings.
I Know That Guy:
Clayton Rohner plays Jameson. While he’s been working steadily, I only know him from the 80s movie Just One Of The Guys.
Marsha Hunt plays Jameson’s wife Anne. She was prolific in the 40s but was blacklisted in the 50s for being a dirty commie. Well that’s what you get. She only passed away in 2022 at the ripe old age of 104.
Michael Pataki returns to Star Trek as Karnas. He of course was the belligerent Klingon calling the Enterprise a garbage scow in The Trouble With Tribbles.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
Back in the 70s and 80s there was The Love Boat and some other shows much like it. The hook with those was that the main cast of the show are there to facilitate stories about each guest star. Who was on the ship and what adventure were they going to have or problems to overcome? It’s not that the main cast never had any stories but many many times they took a back seat to whatever guest stars were on that week.
This episode feels a lot like that. It makes sense, Love Boat went off the air as late as 1985 and certainly the habits of writers and various trends die hard. This episode really reminds of that. Picard and the rest of the crew don’t really have any action that moves the story forward, just along for the ride. So it’s hard to really enjoy it as the crew feel like guests in their own show.
Secondly is the acting by Clayton Rohner as Jameson. He’s not a terrible actor in general but this was way out his of range. He plays old like an asthmatic animatronic and young with too much histrionics. This story really depends on him and he’s just not up to the task.
The make-up isn’t doing him any favors either, some of the worst I’ve ever seen.
Finally we have the story and this is where I feel like this story is more of a missed opportunity than anything. I actually really like the idea of the Admiral coming back to right a wrong he made 40 years ago. But it really didn’t need the old-age sci-fi BS with it. It wasn’t at all necessary and the story would change minimally without it. He could’ve just gotten killed by Karnas at the end instead.
What I see is a possible spiritual sequel to A Private Little War. While Kirk didn’t arm both sides, the effect is essentially the same. Now both sides have weapons, what will happen? Kirk’s assumption would be that there would end up being a stalemate and peace would come soon. But what if it didn’t? What if, as happened here, 40 years of bloody conflict continued?
That is interesting to me. But it really doesn’t answer any of those questions. It really just becomes Jameson trying to fix a mistake he made 40 years ago and then dying of some weird youth medicine. Karnas got his revenge and only Picard can weakly point out that it takes two to fight. Jameson wasn’t only to blame for giving the weapons, Karnas picked them up and continued to use them. Ok?
A very interesting premise that might have been able to tie into the original series, only to be done in by bad acting, bad make-up, and worst of all, bad writing.
