Saving "Ethics".
Great acting all around. Particularly Frakes... I think his scene with Worf was one of his very best acted in TNG.
This also happens to be the reason why Crusher is my least favorite doctor in the franchise.
The Worf subplot is eminently well-executed.
The doctors' bickering subplot, where the doctor of the week is increasingly written in a villainesque manner just in case nobody's allowed to have a middle ground in any of this*, just shows how 1D the show was slowly becoming. Add in plot magic with the ludicrous extremes they take Worf's built-in spare part collection there, and it becomes eminently laughable and losing any credibility. They needed this story to really be two parts as it has more than enough to maintain interest and intrigue, not so one-sided and one-dimensional and to let each side be allowed to breathe naturally (not making the guest doc become written as a caricature missing only a metaphorical mustache to twirl), and not contrive Worf's magical biological structure for the sake of the plot. It ranks up there with "I, Borg" changing character motivations to suit the plot as well. And people griped when Chekov was turned into a serious character for season 3 of TOS to suit certain scenes, after being a near-clownlike figure in season 2 and adding to the story except for a horrible wig that Davy Jones probably wore.
If it was anything more than a rumor that this was going to involve Dr Pulaski, I am sure as bleep glad that the episode didn't end up revisiting the character.
* Especially in an urgent situation where paralysis could quickly become a problem or even fatal. Much less any of the other ailments discussed. It's a very difficult decision to risk, true, with experimental drugs for an unknown that is showing to be deadly and spreading very rapidly, or wait it out. Imagine if this were the bubonic plague, and back then nobody had pills but anyone trying to save anyone would be called a "witch" - except this time those with the pills have had a near-100% success rate and to impugn their integrity would be a misplaced belief. But back then they wouldn't see exploits of the doc in increasingly contrived situations to tell the audience "Crusher is right, see how evil we're making the other one out to be? Nudge nudge tickle?"
I found a couple of the Masterlame scenes:
Hannah makes a great point. Also, her name is a palindrome - if you exclude the uppercase H, but nothing's perfect... Conor too makes excellent points, but the episode does gloss over some arguably easy questions. Then add this:
This scene alone could have made into an additional episode part to properly explore this unintended result, and possibly make up for the contrived nature of their society. But what's worse - annihilation or societal damage? And how come the episode didn't dive into solutions, just "wait six months" and other woolly fluff? Again, a two-parter could have probably improved this episode a lot. But what's easier to fix - a damage or a destruction? Or is that as glib as the episode's points? But the episode was contrived for everyone to be bred for a specific task, and without redundancy that would easily have prevented their problem - never mind how they genetically engineered all this to have each person be of a precisely needed type. (Given treatment-resistant strains of bacterial and viral infections, which was a known thing back in the dark ages of 1991, the premise of this episode is pretty daft as well, but it does get to a couple scenes mid-story that make up for it, but I digress...) After all, looking at evolution, humans still have that thing called "
appendix". Eventually it stopped serving its point, whatever that is and only theories exist. But it's still there as other systems and components do the same things. But people have them, until they get all big and bloaty and red and go boom and then you die from all the toxins it releases when going boom. Isn't that peachy?
