Message Episodes (where the message gets lost)

[TommyR01D]

I've already made this thread for one franchise, now here it is for another.

Sometimes an episode of a TV series is just an episode of a TV series. Other times, there's something more important afoot. It's a metaphor, an analogy, an allegory for some burning issue of the time. The story is a groundbreaking, award-baiting message about... something or other.

Thing is, while lots of writers want to do a message episode, they can be difficult to get right, in the sense of effectively conveying the intended moral while also being an entertaining installment of the franchise. Some writers can do both well, some can do neither.

An early example of this is The Outcast. It features Riker courting someone from a species which officially is genderless, but some of whose members (including her) feel themselves to belong to one gender or the other. This is apparently supposed to be a proof-by-inversion allegory about homosexuality, but the veiling is so thick that it becomes, according to one apocryphal comment, "one woman's struggle for cock in the face of lesbian tyranny.".

A later installment is Critical Care. The Doctor gets stuck in an alien hospital where medicine is allocated not on the basis of a patient's needs, but on society's need of that patient. I think it's supposed to be a takedown of profit-driven healthcare leaving the poor to die, but then it also seems to be government-run and could be seen as a satire of "death panels" as envisioned by so many GOP talking heads. What's more, it seems that the hospital actually has limitless medical resources, which then raises the question of why there need be any debate over allocation at all.

 

[Farscape One]

I like this thread idea. STAR TREK has done a lot of message episodes... it's been its bread and butter since the franchise began in 1966. Some do better than others.

One that springs to mind is DS9's "PARADISE". The cult of personality is a dangerous thing, and the episode really shows how dangerous that is. But the one thing that the episode failed in was the ending. I find it absurd that NO ONE wanted to leave with Sisko and O'Brien at the end. We only get a final shot of two children looking at the hot box, implying that they are thinking of being out there with them. I think the message got lost because of the ending.... everything up to that point was great. It basically said that it was okay to maroon people and lie to them for 10 years, just as long as we all did it together. I call bullshit on that. There is no way that at least a few of them would not only want to leave, but would likely want to beat Alixus and her son senseless. The ending sent the wrong message that the rest of the episode was trying to convey.

On the flip side, DS9's "COVENANT" showed just how easily religion can be twisted into a bad thing. (Full disclosure: I have always been against the idea of religion because, fundamentally, it has caused a massive amount of harm in history and very, very little good has actually come from it. And to be clear, I have no problem with faith. That is a completely separate thing from religion. But that is for another topic, if a discussion is wanted.)

Dukat used his power of personality to lead the pah-wraith cult, and damn near got everyone to do a 24th century Jonestown. He ended up dethroned from his cult, but the episode really worked because it didn't shy away from showing just how far religiously duped people will go to make excuses to justify their actions.

Both episodes had a similar message, but one succeeded more than the other in conveying what they were trying to say. In the former's case, it proves that the ending can make or break an otherwise well crafted message episode.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

I like the episode Paradise a lot, partially because it has such a frustrating ending, to both us and the DS9 characters. I didn't get the impression we were supposed to believe that Alixus had a point any more than we're supposed to believe the Borg Queen has a point when drones immediately want to return to the collective after being disconnected. Everyone on that planet was a victim in need of some kind of therapy.

The problem I have with it is that there's not a scene at the end confirming that the Federation's sending people to check the survivors out and give them any help they need. I wanted that tiny bit of hope that those kids might someday get the chance to live a different life if they want to.

 

[The Wormhole]

Voyager's Nothing Human. Just because the Doctor creates a holographic assistant based on a Cardassian war criminal, a whole ethics debate about having the biology knowledge in the computer is launched ultimately ending with it being decided to delete the stuff. Thing is, nowhere is it stated the stuff in the computer is from that Cardassian's research, they only created a hologram based on him. So they're erasing life saving data, all because someone thoughtlessly created a hologram based on a war criminal. Seriously, if they had created a hologram based on anyone else, all that hand wringing would have been avoided.

The episode also has the weird subplot about the Bajoran engineer who threatens to resign over the Cardassian hologram and the biology data. He's against the idea of using the Cardassian's likeness for a hologram so much that's he's going to voluntarily leave the ship and therefore stay in the Delta Quadrant the rest of his life and never seen his home and family again?

 

[TommyR01D]

Attention raffle , do not miss, details here

That must be one of the shortest-lived accounts ever. Did he really make Lieutenant Junior Grade within a single day?

Edited by me. Don’t quote obvious spam links!

Thanks

 

[Oddish]

I saw an account that got shut down after one flagrant spam post. 1001001 was on his game that day.

I see "Man of the People" as an episode like that, actually. An essential aspect of Picard's actions is the value of the rights of the individual, as opposed to the utilitarianism inherent in the alternative. Picard was ready to derail the negotiations and throw countless people under the bus to force Alcar to stop using Troi as a "receptacle".

The "have cake and eat it" nature of the finale saved us a gut wrenching ending, but it dulled the message a bit.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I believe that "Fury" was at some point supposed to be about ageing and senility. Unfortunately it comes across more as KES MAD BECAUSE WHATEVER.

He's against the idea of using the Cardassian's likeness for a hologram so much that's he's going to voluntarily leave the ship and therefore stay in the Delta Quadrant the rest of his life and never seen his home and family again?

Have you met real life humans? Some of them are willing to throw everything away over wearing a mask in public.

 

[TommyR01D]

I believe that "Fury" was at some point supposed to be about ageing and senility. Unfortunately it comes across more as KES MAD BECAUSE WHATEVER.

If we ever get around to a thread on "episodes where the entire plot fundamentally doesn't work", that would be one of the first submissions.

 

[Pikirk_Janesisko]

One that springs to mind is DS9's "PARADISE". The cult of personality is a dangerous thing, and the episode really shows how dangerous that is. But the one thing that the episode failed in was the ending. I find it absurd that NO ONE wanted to leave with Sisko and O'Brien at the end. We only get a final shot of two children looking at the hot box, implying that they are thinking of being out there with them. I think the message got lost because of the ending.... everything up to that point was great. It basically said that it was okay to maroon people and lie to them for 10 years, just as long as we all did it together. I call bullshit on that. There is no way that at least a few of them would not only want to leave, but would likely want to beat Alixus and her son senseless. The ending sent the wrong message that the rest of the episode was trying to convey.

That ending was awful, it undermined everything that was said in the episode.

There's "The Omega Glory" with that awful allegory about the Cold War. What was that supposed to mean anyway? That the Americans were being repressed by the communists? I cannot recall very well. It's worth it just for the hillarious scene with Kirk reading the constitution of the United States.

 

[YetAnotherSubspaceAnomaly]

While The Outcast absolutely failed to work as intended, I think it plays better today than it did 25 years ago as we’ve developed more of an understanding of gender diversity. As a gay allegory it’s terrible. As a trans / non-binary allegory it’s actually pretty darn good.

 

[Oddish]

The Trill are the ultimate "non-binary" allegory, IMO.

 

[Orphalesion]

The Trill are the ultimate "non-binary" allegory, IMO.

And yet 90s Trek failed to use them like that.

 

[Oddish]

In the 90's, if you didn't feel a strong association with either gender, you just identified as whatever you were physically. With a joined Trill, that simply changed periodically.

Of course, gender nonconformity was a much bigger issue back then. I remember getting upset every December because I couldn't look at the gingerbread houses in "Good Housekeeping", since my mom thought it inappropriate for boys to read it.

 

[Sakonna]

The worst example of this for me is the entire first season of Picard.

We're set up with a central moral conflict of refugees -- Picard argues for the moral imperative of aiding refugees, and his antagonists want to turn their backs and say it's not our problem.

And then all the ultimate plot reveals vindicate the anti-refugee stance! It turns out it was, in fact, the very people the Federation thought they were helping who returned that kindness with the attack on Mars. The Federation is also shown to not really have the capacity to help the Romulans, so "it's unfortunate, but we just aren't capable" ultimately feels like the wiser position. All the tragedies of that season probably would have been avoided if the Federation had just taken a pass and left the Romulans to their fate.

It was just so weird to me that what it landed in a place of "if you take in refugees, they will become a threat to you." They were reaching for the right theme -- they state it directly, in Picard's climactic speech about how it's all about everyone needing to save each other -- they just did not plot a story that supported that conclusion.

 

[TommyR01D]

The worst example of this for me is the entire first season of Picard.

We're set up with a central moral conflict of refugees -- Picard argues for the moral imperative of aiding refugees, and his antagonists want to turn their backs and say it's not our problem.

And then all the ultimate plot reveals vindicate the anti-refugee stance! It turns out it was, in fact, the very people the Federation thought they were helping who returned that kindness with the attack on Mars. The Federation is also shown to not really have the capacity to help the Romulans, so "it's unfortunate, but we just aren't capable" ultimately feels like the wiser position. All the tragedies of that season probably would have been avoided if the Federation had just taken a pass and left the Romulans to their fate.

It was just so weird to me that what it landed in a place of "if you take in refugees, they will become a threat to you." They were reaching for the right theme -- they state it directly, in Picard's climactic speech about how it's all about everyone needing to save each other -- they just did not plot a story that supported that conclusion.

There's a similar issue in the counterpart Doctor Who thread - we're clearly supposed to sympathise with the Zygon refugees and believe that most of them are harmless, but what's actually depicted onscreen makes clear that the whole situation is not sustainable and the terrorists (ISIS expies) are a deadly threat to everyone.

Strange that the episode which prompted my 200th post now gets my 800th as well.