True, though I hadn't thought about that before. It actually does help redeem her character when you look at it this way. Although there were some good character moments between Crusher and Picard, I do wonder why Troi wasn't more suspicious of Crusher's unusual behavior. That is her job, after all.
Salvaging "Sub Rosa"
- Thread starter Zameaze
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True, though I hadn't thought about that before. It actually does help redeem her character when you look at it this way. Although there were some good character moments between Crusher and Picard, I do wonder why Troi wasn't more suspicious of Crusher's unusual behavior. That is her job, after all.
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It has its moments.
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Being her best friend, yeah. But then in "Man of the People" more people should have been suspicious of Troi's motives.
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I haven't seen Sub Rosa in many, many moons. Once Crusher is under Ronin's "spell", does she see Troi much, or at all? If not, we can forgive Troi for not being suspicious. If we read this episode as being analogous to domsetic violence, one of the things that abusers do is separate the victim from her friend, so that isolation could be happening here, so Troi doesn't get a chance to suspect there are problems.
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doubleohfive
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Forgive me... I don't generally hang out around this forum much so the new faces sometimes confuse me...
Are you guys just being prickly or did you just not catch the reference?
I don't know. I think they're just being facetious. But I have to tell you, I think Buffy is the perfect name for a cheerleader or a vampire slayer. The T Mobile girl is probably named Buffy.
doubleohfive
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I know! I just checked Facebook to learn that I'm within one degree of separation of not one, not two, but THREE different people (who know three different people I know) named Buffy.
Weird.
Weird.
He was better than both of those when he was a Visitor.
It was a mini arc on the V weekly series. He played 'Charles', a Visitor who comes to Earth to marry Diana and therefore force her to be shipped off back to the homeworld. He's eventually poisoned, and the Visitor who supplied the drug is sentenced to be imprisoned in his coffin - with his rotting corpse. 
Strange fact about "Sub Rosa." Some people believe that it was pseudonymously written by Anne Rice. The episode shares a number of features of her novel, The Witching Hour.
But that's like the belief that Harold Pinter appears in Doctor Who's "The Abominable Snowman" or that Kate Bush actually wrote Snakedance. (For the first, the answer is maybe. For the latter, the answer is no.)
But that's like the belief that Harold Pinter appears in Doctor Who's "The Abominable Snowman" or that Kate Bush actually wrote Snakedance. (For the first, the answer is maybe. For the latter, the answer is no.)
As somebody else said, I think the fact that it's so out of character is part of the point of the episode.
Sub Rosa is actually one of my favourite episodes of late TNG. I think there's a lot of interesting stuff going on in the episode. The way it uses tropes from romance novels isn't just to do a bodice-ripper in space episode. I think it can actually be read as a damning critique of the roles sculpted for female characters in those books.
The way I see it, the scene where Ronin "merges" with Beverly for the first time is quite ghastly. She screams 'no' and 'stop' repeatedly. From then on the entire relationship is coercive as he uses her for her energy and manipulates her emotional state. Because it's dressed up with all the fun paraphrenalia of a gothic romance, it feels like a love story, but it really isn't. It's abusive as Beverly is isolated from her friends and career and made completely dependent on Ronin. (I read a good 'fic once which dealt with what Beverly went through in terms of a drug addiction with Ronin as a pusher, which is another interesting analogy.)
It's also interesting coming in the wake of Attached, where Beverly completely failed to conform to the narrative and live up to her original sketchy character brief as just "Picard's love interest".
The episode's not perfect. I could have done without the headache of trying to work out the Howard name. Also "I did fall asleep reading a particularly erotic chapter of my grandmother's journal" may be the worst line ever spoken by an actress on prime-time TV. And I think the final scene where Beverly wistfully says that he made her granny happy falls a bit flat.
Still, in a series that was trying (if not always succeeding) to do better than TOS in not having women completely subservient to love, I think it's a clever story. It's not a comfortable episode, but it's not meant to be. I reckon the fact that so much of fandom comes away from it completely creeped could be seen as a point in its favour from that POV.
Interesting idea, but why would they write a damning critique of the roles sculpted for female characters in romance novels when romance novels are written for, and read by, mostly women? Apparently they like these female roles.
Ah yes. "They." The hive-mind and thoroughly homogenous demographic that is "Women".
I sympathize, but they do it to us all: men, women, teens, ax murderers....
SiorX, I enjoyed reading your comments about the episode. 
I think it's quite a mixed-message episode in some ways. Or we could call it layered. Gates looks lovely, which kind of indicates good things are happening. I enjoy seeing a woman of a certain age being shown to have a love affair; it's got a lot of gothic campery in it. And yet, contrasting to all this is the abusvie relationship Bev has become victim to, that preys on her and has preyed on generations of her family, and separates her from her friends and her careers. It's an odd episode. I like it. I always have.
Has anyone read "Sexual Generations"? I think that it will probably have some interesting things to say.
I think it's quite a mixed-message episode in some ways. Or we could call it layered. Gates looks lovely, which kind of indicates good things are happening. I enjoy seeing a woman of a certain age being shown to have a love affair; it's got a lot of gothic campery in it. And yet, contrasting to all this is the abusvie relationship Bev has become victim to, that preys on her and has preyed on generations of her family, and separates her from her friends and her careers. It's an odd episode. I like it. I always have.
Has anyone read "Sexual Generations"? I think that it will probably have some interesting things to say.
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