Star Trek 128: The Arsenal of Freedom

128. The Arsenal of Freedom

FORMULA: Let This Be Your Last Battlefield + Requiem for Methuselah + Angel One

WHY WE LIKE IT: Geordi gets a good turn at commanding the ship. The Echo Papa drones look cool. The good ship Lollipop references.

WHY WE DON'T: Patchy story structure. The Echo Papa drones went to Stormtrooper University.

REVIEW: There are some nice moments in The Arsenal of Freedom, including the lines Riker feeds to "Paul Rice", the look of the alien weapons, and what little we learn of Beverly's past. But the real reason to watch this episode is Geordi's command of the Enterprise. It's quite normal that he be nervous about his first real command decisions, but there are some moments in that plot I could have done away with. Troi's little pep talk, for example, didn't seem necessary. But on the whole, Geordi succeeds without making it look easy, and the conflict with Logan adds some power to that success.

However, the structure of the piece is severely flawed and doesn't make Geordi's part in it memorable. For one thing, the crew is split up in three, which appears to be too much. The stuff with Riker, Data and Tasha in particular has no tension whatsoever, with these supposed super-weapons never hitting anything (except for the stasis field early on). This kills any urgency we're supposed to feel when Picard finally turns the weapon off. And what's with the order of sequences? Picard turns it all off, and then Geordi destroys the orbital weapon. Shouldn't it be off by then? These resolutions were apparently reversed.

Speaking of resolutions, it would have been a much stronger ending if Picard had thought of buying the weapon before being prompted by the hologram. Felt like a role-playing session where the players are a little dense about how to resolve the danger, with the gamemaster having to put the solution in an NPC's mouth. Were I to remake the episode, I'd have Picard be more proactive, spend more time with Crusher (though perhaps not play so much with hints of her attraction to Picard), and have Tasha get shot by the Echo Papa ;-).

LESSON: Never demonstrate a weapon on yourself.

REWATCHABILITY - Medium: What works here is worthy, but don't look for much suspense from the planetside material. Even the Geordi stuff gets a little cloying at times, so diabetics need not apply at all.