The Survivors

TrekToday · March 28 2008, 10:37 PM

Plot Summary: The Enterprise receives a distress call from a remote colony on Rana IV, where it appears that the entire planet has been devastated except for a small patch with two inhabitants - the sole survivors out of more than 10,000. The elderly couple, Kevin and Rishon Uxbridge, are shocked to learn that they are the only people remaining on the planet but they insist that they want to stay in their home. Meanwhile, on the ship, Troi begins to hear the music from Rishon's music box, which begins to drive her mad. The ship that attacked the colony returns and Picard orders the Enterprise to take a defensive posture, but as soon as the Uxbridges believe that the Enterprise has departed, the aliens vanish. Picard begins to suspect that Kevin is controlling the attacks. When the warship returns and destroys the Uxbridges' house, the captain insists on surveying the planet until the house - and the couple - reappear. Troi is under heavy sedation yet still in agony, unable to read Kevin's emotions. Under questioning, Kevin admits that his home and his wife were in fact destroyed in the first attack, but he is a powerful, immortal being called a Douwd who survived the battle, although he would not defend the planet because of his pacifist beliefs. In his grief over the death of Rishon after the attack by the invading Husnocks, Kevin destroyed all the Husnocks in the galaxy...billions of individuals. Picard tells Kevin that he is in no position to judge a crime of such magnitude, and returns him to his private hell on the devastated Rana IV.

To read the full reviews, please click here.

AntonyF · March 28 2008, 11:05 PM

I really loved this episode. I loved the mystery, I loved the lonely house on the planet, I loved the eery music box that led to one of our characters being sedated.

I don't know if I can share Michelle's hatred of Kevin. People are prone to doing bad things in a fit of fury. It just takes one split moment, and they can do something bad. But what if you have greater power, and your damage is greater in return? The guilt that one person can feel over a fit of madness woudl be amplified thousands of times for someone like Kevin. A burden that no one could understand. I think that's the stance Picard too, and I did too.

Maybe it's all very easy to speak like this without knowing the other race. If we'd seen them, their families, who they were maybe it'd be a different story. But at the end of the day I felt it was a good story, and played out well.

startrekwatcher · March 28 2008, 11:44 PM

I love "The Survivors". The mystery was strong. I had no idea what was going up until Picard spelled it out. The actors portraying the Uxbridges brought themm so vividly to life which was essential in pulling off the tragic ending. TNG used battlescenes sparingly but the engagements between the Enterprise and the marauder were exciting.

It was also one in a line of many TNG Twilight Zone-inspired episodes with the bizarre and cool image of the lone tract of green land with a house in the middle of a barren wasteland or the maddening music that tormented Troi to keep her from seeing who Kevin really was.

It is an A episode and one of my favorites.

vulcanpastor · March 28 2008, 11:56 PM

The Survivors wasn't my favorite episode, but I also know don't think I could hate the character of Kevin as much the reviewer did. The fact is, his guilt of having committed such an extreme crime and having to live with that alone on a planet seemed like hell enough. I could be disgusted that he refused to help the planet fight off the invaders and angry that he killed off an entire species, but the fact that he knows that it was wrong and living with that guilt in his hell, well that's punishment enough in my book.

StarMan · March 29 2008, 01:46 AM

Can't say I agree with the review. Jammer's review is one I'm more inclined to agree with.

JNG · March 29 2008, 02:47 AM

From the review:

Kevin's actions are as close to pure evil as we ever witness on Star Trek

LOLWUT

The Husnock attacked the apparently near-defenseless colony. What is "evil" about Kevin's understandable, if uncontrolled, response of wiping them out when they did what they did? Isn't it, gosh, I don't know, maybe the Husnock who were evil?

dajames · March 29 2008, 04:03 AM

I'm a little surprised by this review. surprised and a little...annoyed.

this episode is really just about perfect. and although everyone is entitled to an opinion, i have to assume the reviewer is so young as to never have acted rashly in the name of love.

i always took (and take) picard's address to kevin at the end at as wisdom...a knowledge that the scope of the crime is beyond human justice...as it is.

he could make speeches and pitch a fit, but the reality is this: kevin destroyed an entire race of people everywhere in the known universe.

love makes us behave badly, and sttng took this madness to a new level.

i hold this episode in very high regard.

dj

Unicron · March 29 2008, 04:47 AM

To be fair, though, one could argue that a being as powerful as Kevin had other options at his disposal - once it became obvious that his illusions couldn't fool the Husnock, he could have teleported them away Q-fashion. Or taken some other action that wouldn't have violated his pacifism.

startrekwatcher · March 29 2008, 05:17 AM

I rarely agree with this viewer. She has a bad habit of going off on tangents and missing the whole point of the episode. Kevin isn't evil. In a moment of overwhelming grief and guilt he lashed out and being a superbeing that act was extreme. But he had just lost the one woman he had spent a lifetime with. I did agree with Picard that sometimes there can be nothing worse they could have done to Kevin than him living(presumably forever given he is a superbeing) with his own guilt of not helping Rishon and annihilating an entire species. Afterall this person isn't a cold-blooded monster with no conscience.

Jack Bauer · March 29 2008, 05:22 AM

I really loved this episode. The guy playing Kevin did a fantastic job. The actor's wife had died shortly before they made this episode so I think it enhanced his performance in some way.

Jack Bauer · March 29 2008, 05:24 AM

One other thing...I don't see how anyone can view this episode and think Kevin was evil. There's really nothing I can recall that would lead to that conclusion.

Brutal Strudel · March 29 2008, 06:39 AM

I like this episode--it used to be one of my favorites--but damn if MEG doesn't have a point.

Geck · March 29 2008, 07:02 AM

One of my top 10 TNG episodes; I've always considered it a vastly underrated and oft-forgotten gem.

I've been enjoying MEG's TNG reviews (generally), but agree with others who believe she completely missed the point of this episode, especially the ending. She's seeing it as far too black and white, though at least she seems to admit that in her closing lines. Kevin's confessional scene is heartbreaking and still brings a tear to my eye even after a dozen viewings thanks largely to the actor's devastating performance. He is clearly not an evil man; he made a mistake, albeit a grave one, in a fit of temporary insanity caused by his passion and love for his wife. It's tragic, sad, and beautiful all at once.

Brutal Strudel · March 29 2008, 03:00 PM

But reading the episode the way we are meant to means that we have to be willing to let Kivin off the hook for genocide. The episode stracks the deck by telling us that the Husnock are the most vicious and brutal race in the Trek universe and suggesting that, had Kevin not wiped them out, the Federation would have a big problem on its hands.

I always got the sneaking sense that real reason Picard doesn't come down harder on Kevin is because he is secretly grateful the Husnock won't be a problem.

Pioneer · March 29 2008, 03:29 PM

Brutal Strudel wrote:

I like this episode--it used to be one of my favorites--but damn if MEG doesn't have a point.

Really? And what, I wonder, do you and MEG think would have been a fitting punishment for Kevin? Hmmmm?

What would you have done in Picard's place? What would you have done if you had more power than Kevin(if you were a Q, say)? Consider your answer carefully. Then tell me again about the nature of evil and justice.
Who gets to be judge, jury and -- dare I say it? -- executioner?

I can't wait to hear your answer.

Brutal Strudel · March 29 2008, 04:01 PM

Pioneer wrote:

Brutal Strudel wrote:

I like this episode--it used to be one of my favorites--but damn if MEG doesn't have a point.

Really? And what, I wonder, do you and MEG think would have been a fitting punishment for Kevin? Hmmmm?

What would you have done in Picard's place? What would you have done if you had more power than Kevin(if you were a Q, say)? Consider your answer carefully. Then tell me again about the nature of evil and justice.
Who gets to be judge, jury and -- dare I say it? -- executioner?

I can't wait to hear your answer.

If I were Picard, I would have made it clear that no amount grief over the death of one woman*--a woman who died because Kevin was too proudly wed to his own moronic code to do something non-violent to rectifty the situaution, like, say, teleport the Husnock into a sparsely inhabitted galaxy or even put all their star systems in the galactic void beyond the Virgo Supercluster where they can go on living as miserable fucks and never hurt anyone--justifies a genocidal hissy fit and then invited Kevin off the ship. If Kevin is such a tragic figure wracked by guilt, he'd go quietly. But no, Picard was in no position to do anything. Doesn't mean he needs to keep silent about the magnitude of Kevin's crime.

If I were the Q, I'd fold space-time back upon itself or reverse the chronitonic flow or bippity bobbity boop the glayvin and intervene to save the Husnock and then put them out past the Virgo--well, you get the idea.

Or, If I could not, for some entirely arbitrary technobabble reason, do that, I think I might just have to send Kevin off to join his wife, the other colonists and the Husnock. If he's so grief-stricken and guilt-ridden, it would be a mercy killing, no?

Look, I still think its a good episode, I just think we--Picard, myself--let Kevin off too lightly for what was ultimately the result of his own selfishness, much as we are required in SW to forgive Anakin Skywalker his countless murders because, in ROTJ, he kills SDidious to save his own son.

*Of course, his pacifism was oh-so-admirable so long as it was other men, women and children dying.

Brutal Strudel · March 29 2008, 04:57 PM

Since, for some reason, I can't edit, i'll have to make do with another post: Like MEG, I have a problem with these advanced-beings-just-wanna-be-human stories. As much as I might like to experience a few hours running through the wilderness as a cheetah or soaring through the air as a hawk, I'd never want to spend my life as one and I'd surely never "fall in love" with a female, not if I--as the Trek gods always do--still have access to my human frame of reference. So why is it that we constantly see god-like beings--beings which, like the Organians, stand as far above us as we do the amoeba--desiring to be human, falling in love with humans, getting told off by humans? Talk about parochial story-telling.

Really, Kevin should have felt no more loss at the death of his wife than I feel when I flush a goldfish.

CaptainWacky · March 29 2008, 06:39 PM

"Good tea. Nice house."

ancient · March 30 2008, 02:04 AM

I think a large part of the POINT was that even in extreme cases such as this, a black & white OMG EVIL!! worldview is terribly inaccurate.

Kevin's worldview, as a superbeing, is essentially the whole buddist monk (or whatever) viewpoint: Cause no harm to anything, no matter how small & evil. Ie, don't step on the bugs. Even the nasty nasty bugs. But that cost him dearly and he essentially got really pissed, something snapped...and he stomped on the nasty bugs.

When one gets really pissed one doesn't tend to stop and say...Hmmm, these evil, horrible little creatures just killed my wife and destroyed my life...what are my options here? I think I'll make a list of alternatives... No. The whole point is that it wasn't a rational choice. Kevin made a mistake and it caused him to do something 'evil', but that doesn't make him 'Pure Evil'. That's Pure Nonsense.

Ptrope · March 30 2008, 03:18 PM

Well said, ancient. MEG completely missed the point of the story and the character, as she is usually prone to do, turning yet another "review" into a personal diatribe that rambles on and on and in the end has no value.

"Why didn't Kevin do this technobabble thing? Why didn't he do the 'right thing' that I'm so clearly right about? Why, why, why am I soooo much smarter than the writers of this misbegotten piece of crap?" It's an allegory! It's a tale of absolute power corrupting absolutely, no matter how much its possessor tries to avoid it, if only for one brief instant of grief and terror and loss. It's not about a superbeing wanting to be more human - it's about a superbeing falling in love with someone whose greatest power in return is only love itself, and the superbeing sacrificing his potential - since he can't sacrifice his actual power - in order to love that person on a more equal level. It's about the mental anguish of knowing that you can destroy on such a ghastly level - and maybe that's the only way you can respond, so you make a conscious moral decision to remain a pacifist out of fear and concern for the victims in the eventuality that you do lose it, and despite a heroic effort at self-control, having your greatest fears come true at the same time: loss of the love of your life, and as a result, loss of your self-control, with the resulting unleashing of a terrible power.

We don't know that Kevin's 'unlimited' power could do anything but what it did. If he could turn back time, surely he would, given his immense guilt. But this is fiction, and as we've seen on Trek itself many times, reset buttons do not make good stories. Kevin had to live with the consequences of his actions, and it was wisdom on Picard's part, not stupidity, that left him in the peace of his own guilt - getting up in his face would've solved nothing, as it might have if Kevin had been entirely without conscience.