125. Home SoilFORMULA: Devil in the Dark x 0.00000000001
WHY WE LIKE IT: UGLY BAGS OF MOSTLY WATER!
WHY WE DON'T: A bit of a talkie.
REVIEW: While character-driven stories are always better, Home Soil provides an ok murder mystery, followed by a good scientific mystery. I found myself enjoying the procedural take on identifying the "microbrain" as a life-form, and subsequent efforts to communicate with it, then appease it. Of course, the episode is constantly in danger of having our attention wander as talking scenes follow one another. And when your antagonist is a tiny light in a jar, well, there's not a lot of charisma on screen.
Speaking of lacking charisma, the guest stars range from ok speech-makers (Mandl) to just horrible (Luisa Kim). I couldn't really get interested in their problems, and they were little more than red herrings at first, and exposition machines later. Oh yeah, and we need Mandl to reveal the final irony. Uhm... no we don't! The microbrain is at least an interesting life-form, but I've had to turn the subtitles on in spots (always annoying). I do think that if you're gonna riff off the old series (this is strongly indebted to Devil in the Dark), don't ignore that series. Here, they ignore the many inorganic life-forms the original crew encountered, not to mention the ones they themselves found (can anybody say Crystaline Entity?).
LESSON: Beauty is in the... uhm... eye... I guess... of the beholder.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: Home Soil is different enough from Devil in the Dark to merit its own viewing, though it doesn't quite reach that level. A good setpiece for the exploration aspect of the show, though it can be slow, especially when you know the answer to the big mystery.
Comments
It was a funny comment that they called humans ugly, but at their very first utterance that was translated? And they're so pissed/attacked as to declare war? I kind of wish they had said "barbaric bags of water" or "cowardly bags of water," something to denote they viewed humans as violent aggressors.
BTW, I am rewatching the whole TNG series for the second time, and I just wanted to let you know I come here after each one and appreciate your thoughts.