Okay, so, I come before you humbly to share my love of perhaps one of the most hilariously goofy and yet one of my favorite TNG episodes. I come before you humbly, fellow Trekkoids, Trekkies, Trekkers and Trekwhateveryouprefers, to speak of Masks.
I'm not here to tell you Masks is strictly speaking "good." It is, as previously stipulated, goofy as proverbial fuck. Its climactic act is essentially a LARP, its pacing is a little... uneven, to put it politely, and it feels somehow halfway between overstuffed and underdone. It's pretty lacking in tension (there's no real sense that Picard is going to break much of a sweat solving this particular mystery), and if you're not in a heavily overlapping Venn diagram of people who love Trek, people who love Mesopotamian antiquities and people who love watching Brent Spiner in particular exploring his range, I can see why it could underwhelm you. To judge by its overall reputation, that's most people. And, you know... fair. More than fair.
However. Hear me out.
Behold it for a moment through the eyes of someone who does hail from somewhere within that overlapping Venn diagram. There are riches to be seen. A long-lost alien culture from out of deep time: this is not the first instance of the "alien probe carrying the memories of a lost civilization" trope in TNG... but I would argue it's at the very least a more flavorful take on that idea than "The Inner Light." It is a Big Ideas episode in fine style in a similar register to "Darmok," and notwithstanding that it plainly suffered from time constraints, some of the resonance of those Big Ideas still comes through.
This comes with its own disappointments, to be sure: there's a part of the episode where the alien artifact has created a temple and Deanna says to the Captain "look at this!" as she seems to be looking out one of the temple's windows, and every single time there's a part of me that wishes we could get a glimpse of the lost alien planet this civilization came from out those windows. The Big Idea here could even have happened on the scale of a feature film, with the alien device being a kind of Genesis device that tries to terraform a whole planet instead of just a ship (this actually seems to have been the basic idea according to the production notes on Memory Alpha). But they had the budget and time they had, and even so, it still feels like we're glimpsing a tiny slice of something far vaster.
The story of Corgano and Masaka hints at the nature of the disaster that befell this world. The moon, Corgano, "no longer pursued" Masaka in the version of the culture recorded in the archive. Was their moon... destroyed? Was that the apocalyptic event that wiped them out and set all this in motion? It's a tantalizing hint that there isn't more time or scope to pursue in the episode's run time. To Picard and the crew it's a narrative detail, just a part of the puzzle... but it would be cool to see that angle fleshed out.
Meanwhile, watching Brent Spiner explore his range is always fun... but I've come to appreciate it all the more having learned that he delivered what he did here on literally a day's notice. Given that, the distinct personalities he offers up here are nothing short of amazing.
A profoundly imperfect and somewhat underbaked episode? Yes. But I still find it compelling. And I think my "hear me out" is that something like this would actually make interesting material for a feature-length sci-fi film, maybe? (Probably not a Star Trek film? But hell, you never know at this point. No version of my Star Trek bingo card for the current century had us getting a Pike prequel series that crosses over with an animated comedy and actually makes it work, but that happened. Who knows?)
Admittedly: that's not where I thought this post was going, but there it is. "Masks": a better episode than you might remember, probably better yet as a feature film, but hey. Give it a chance.
That's my "hear me out" episode of TNG. Just a starting-point, though. I'm sure other people here have their own; I'd love to hear yours.
I'm not here to tell you Masks is strictly speaking "good." It is, as previously stipulated, goofy as proverbial fuck. Its climactic act is essentially a LARP, its pacing is a little... uneven, to put it politely, and it feels somehow halfway between overstuffed and underdone. It's pretty lacking in tension (there's no real sense that Picard is going to break much of a sweat solving this particular mystery), and if you're not in a heavily overlapping Venn diagram of people who love Trek, people who love Mesopotamian antiquities and people who love watching Brent Spiner in particular exploring his range, I can see why it could underwhelm you. To judge by its overall reputation, that's most people. And, you know... fair. More than fair.
However. Hear me out.
Behold it for a moment through the eyes of someone who does hail from somewhere within that overlapping Venn diagram. There are riches to be seen. A long-lost alien culture from out of deep time: this is not the first instance of the "alien probe carrying the memories of a lost civilization" trope in TNG... but I would argue it's at the very least a more flavorful take on that idea than "The Inner Light." It is a Big Ideas episode in fine style in a similar register to "Darmok," and notwithstanding that it plainly suffered from time constraints, some of the resonance of those Big Ideas still comes through.
This comes with its own disappointments, to be sure: there's a part of the episode where the alien artifact has created a temple and Deanna says to the Captain "look at this!" as she seems to be looking out one of the temple's windows, and every single time there's a part of me that wishes we could get a glimpse of the lost alien planet this civilization came from out those windows. The Big Idea here could even have happened on the scale of a feature film, with the alien device being a kind of Genesis device that tries to terraform a whole planet instead of just a ship (this actually seems to have been the basic idea according to the production notes on Memory Alpha). But they had the budget and time they had, and even so, it still feels like we're glimpsing a tiny slice of something far vaster.
The story of Corgano and Masaka hints at the nature of the disaster that befell this world. The moon, Corgano, "no longer pursued" Masaka in the version of the culture recorded in the archive. Was their moon... destroyed? Was that the apocalyptic event that wiped them out and set all this in motion? It's a tantalizing hint that there isn't more time or scope to pursue in the episode's run time. To Picard and the crew it's a narrative detail, just a part of the puzzle... but it would be cool to see that angle fleshed out.
Meanwhile, watching Brent Spiner explore his range is always fun... but I've come to appreciate it all the more having learned that he delivered what he did here on literally a day's notice. Given that, the distinct personalities he offers up here are nothing short of amazing.
A profoundly imperfect and somewhat underbaked episode? Yes. But I still find it compelling. And I think my "hear me out" is that something like this would actually make interesting material for a feature-length sci-fi film, maybe? (Probably not a Star Trek film? But hell, you never know at this point. No version of my Star Trek bingo card for the current century had us getting a Pike prequel series that crosses over with an animated comedy and actually makes it work, but that happened. Who knows?)
Admittedly: that's not where I thought this post was going, but there it is. "Masks": a better episode than you might remember, probably better yet as a feature film, but hey. Give it a chance.
That's my "hear me out" episode of TNG. Just a starting-point, though. I'm sure other people here have their own; I'd love to hear yours.
