https://twitter.com/StarTrek/status/843975604533956610 Star TrekVerified account @StarTrek 10m10 minutes ago 28yrs ago today, we watched Picard & his crew beam down to Iconia in efforts to save the #Enterprise. #StarTrek #TNG http://bit.ly/STContagion Firstly..I can't even believe it's been 28 years..wow! It came at a point after a hiatus. I remember the season had been generally underwhelming to this point, then this gem of an episode aired. The Iconians have since been used in every major media version of Trek, including fan films and DS9.
Contagion is one of my most unsung episodes of the season. Not a lot of people talk about it but when I watched it originally on DVD, I was excited by what was happening. Also seeing the Yamato explode was kind of chilling.
The standard complaint was they rebooted the computer to fix a virus...Well true, though this is alien tech and we don't know why it behaved as it did..but fair enough..its a good criticism, it's just not a deal breaker in my book, especially since it was 4 years before the WWW made people more aware of computers.
I loved the sense of the Iconian tech being both extremely ancient and almost too advanced to understand. It pre-figured concepts like 'Stargate' by and fair margin, too. The Yamato exploding is truly a shocking moment too. We always kinda expect our hero ship to survive every encounter (on TV at least ) But seeing one of her almost identical sister ships so utterly decimated by forces unknown is a great way of amping up the mortality of our own ship as well. I love that feeling of high stakes that brings with it.
It was alien technology though. Who knows how or why it worked the way it did. If there was a pet peeve I had with later Star Trek it was things were too easy to figure out. In this episode it was actually a challenge to figure out what was happening even if the answer was obvious. Also this episode uses the romulans better than Neutral Zone did.
This episode has some great lines. Data pulls La Forge away from a computer access panel that is shocking him, causing him to fly through the air and land on his face) "Data?" "Yes?" "What happened?" "Any answer would be mere speculation. This is yet another example of how our actions have random results." "Thanks, Data... I noticed." - Data and Geordi La Forge "Fate: Protects fools, little children, and ships named Enterprise." - Riker
yes i agree completely. I remember being a little bit shocked at the destruction of the Yamato and then the Romulans showing up in the aftermath of her destruction was kind of unsettling. Great episode!
Great scenes and very true. I just love when Geordi's electrocuted and Data's kind of like "Whoops! Don't think I should've done that!"
They didn't just reboot the computer though, they wiped the memory and restored to factory original state. More suspect than that to me is that a virus could affect any random computer it comes across, but that's how viruses work in sci-fi.
I was born three days before this episode aired back in 1989. Almost thirty years since the beginning. I have watched season 1 again, I do like the first two episodes, and episode 6, 20 Arsenal of Freedom.
An interesting reaction was raised. The Yamato destruction. After having been indoctrinated before the show aired at how magnificent and advanced this ship was, it WAS quite a shock to see the D's sister ship destroyed almost casually. The investigation into the logs mitigated this somewhat, showing us it was a long time build up over time.
On a similar note, seeing the Odyssey destroyed in DS9... where a Jem'hadar makes a kamikaze run right into the secondary hull, consequently causing one of its warp nacelles to fling outward and slam into the Odyssey's starboard nacelle that incites a violent explosion destroying the entire ship. The severe despair on everyone's faces from the runabout as they look on... You can't help but feel the same way. Same Galaxy Class starship as the Enterprise D. Completely and utterly destroyed, with all hands lost.
Well, most Trek fans of the time would have been SLIGHTLY desensitized to the loss of a Galaxy-class starship by this episode, as in TOS there were several sister ships of the Enterprise also lost. On the other hand, the Enterprise of THAT era was arguably less "special" in her fleet as she was out cruising with at least 11 sisters, and to the point of this TNG episode we hadn't seen any other sister ships of the E-D *except* the Yamato, let alone any other ships of the TNG-era, as all the other Starfleet ships seen "live" to that point were re-uses of existing models (or parts thereof). The Galaxy-class starship was somewhat more of a Big Deal in the Starfleet of this show. And indeed, whenever seen or referenced in the TNG era, the Galaxy-class ship was shown with a measure of reverence. "No science modules... No communications system... And enough computer capacity to run a Galaxy-class starship." "She's not as big as a Galaxy-class ship, but she's quick and smart." "Someone told me that ship out there is twice the size of a Galaxy-class starship and three times as strong." Not even the Sovreign-class was mentioned in such context. Or at all, really, but that was a producer's thing. Mark
One of the things that I think "Contagion" does particularly well, is that after the Yamoto goes down, there's a suggestion that the Galaxy Class herself may have some kind of unknown, fatal design flaw that has allowed an unstoppable computer virus to wipe her out. If I recall correctly it's only a throwaway line, but it serves to open up the tension that the crew must be feeling, as well as driving home to the audience that the even the 'hero ship' isn't necessarily invincible.
It's nice that they acknowledge the ship's recent launching and the potential of unknown design issues, but I didn't really think there would any flaws.
Yeah, some great lines. I like the one where Data says, "this appears to be manual override" and starts pushing buttons. Then, after the energy discharge turns to Picard and says, kind of sheepishly, "that was not manual override."
Happy they put Toronto City Hall in episode. I spent a good cpl years as a youngin . mom worked for one of the councillors. Huzzah!
^^this To the OP, "Contagion" being in season 2 - since everyone hates seasons 1 and 2 because they're pre-season 3 - is probably why it gets overlooked. Season 2, conversely, is one of my favorite TNG years. Has a proto-DS9 quality in terms of building up threats, unknowns... danger - in space!, Dr Pulaski (her scene with the splint is fantastic and is exactly the sort of well-versed doctor the show needed), and so on. "Contagion" has the self-unassured rocks line thrown out by Riker, but is otherwise very much unsung. And, yeah, we viewers knew the solution - but the characters didn't, so it was nice to see them have to think things through the way we have to in real life.
This also stuck out as one of my favorite episodes when I first saw it. I remember watching through the TNG DVDs and seeing another Galaxy class blow up on screen for no reasons was a pretty big shocker as season 2 had been mostly tame up to that point. Concindentily, didn't the jem ha'dar (sp?) make a suicide run at the Oddessy in the S2 finale of DS9? What is it with galaxy class starships blowing up in Season 2 episodes of Star Trek?