132. ConspiracyFORMULA: Coming of Age + The Undiscovered Country + a bucket of ceti eels
WHY WE LIKE IT: It's suspensful, and the episode makes you paranoid.
WHY WE DON'T: Needlessly gory, and the ending will never ever pay off.
REVIEW: I seem to remember liking this one a lot more than I just did. Maybe I'm not as interested or shocked by the gore (actually, I'm quite shocked at how graphic it is even if I'm not actually disgusted by it - and also at how choppy the stop-motion effects are, eeech). Or maybe it's that while the concept of a conspiracy within Starfleet is both unthinkable and scary, it's not given an epic feel. Two episodes (since this follows Coming of Age) is scarcely enough to do the story justice. Starfleet is saved as quickly as it is taken over, and the consequences aren't addressed, especially with that magical ending where the parasites just disappear from their hosts.
But while it's going on, it's pretty engrossing. The mysterious messages and meetings, never quite knowing if Quinn and later Riker are actually taken over or not... It's all well executed, right up to the final beacon that feels like a season finale cliffhanger. That's another let-down of this episode: Nothing ever comes of it. Probably due to the backlash from the gore (in certain places banned), the bluegills never followed that beacon back to Earth. Just as well, but it's still an annoying loose end.
LESSON: To respect all forms of life... unless they're gross.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: Could've been great, but short-changed by the expeditive script and lack of vision (no long story arcs back in those days), and the effects don't exactly help it. Still, the paranoia it induces is excellent, and the main characters are dead on (though I could've done without Worf being knocked out while mere humans could shrug off Quinn's blows).
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