Lwaxanna Troi comes aboard the Enterprise and announces that she's about to be married to a man she met on space-eHarmony and wants the ship to host the event, with Picard filling the role of father-of-the-bride and give her away. Picard is only too happy to comply.
The man, whom she has yet to meet in person, is from a highly organized and structured society and, of course, Lwaxanna is anything but. This plays in contrast to Worf and Alexander as they continue to clash with one another, Worf being the typical, rigid, military dad and Alexander being a typical grade-school aged child wanting to play and not being keen on obeying.
Lwaxanna befriends Alexander and seems to more-or-less encourage his rebelliousness, as the wedding plans continue. The wedding, much to Lwaxanna and Deanna's annoyance, will feature Lwaxanna in a wedding gown in contrast to Betazoid customs. It soon becomes more and more clear that the groom may not be a good match for Lwaxanna, especially after the groom comes aboard with valet Alien TV's Frank; who's job seems to be to more-or-less keep the interactions between the groom and Troi structured and regimented.
Lwaxanna's interactions with Alexander only continues to cause the arguments between him and his father to mount as she encourages Alexander to pretty much do what he wants.
In the end, Alexander helps Lwaxanna realize that the groom is not a good match for her and she shows up to the ceremony in her birthday suit causing the groom to be lead-away with a huffy Alien TV's Frank. Alexander learns.... Ummmmm. Well, Worf learns to.... Go to the holodeck and enjoy a mud-bath?
Meanwhile, following the destruction of an asteroid about to crash into a planet the ship has picked up a microorganism that's going around the ship eating a critical alloy in ship components and leaving behind jellied alien microorganism poo. Life support systems diminish and the warp core nearly reaches a breach point. But the crew, mostly with help from Data, is able to deposit the microorganisms back to the asteroid field around the origin-system and begin repairs on the ship.
Sigh...
There's not really much to say about this episode. It's weak, it's silly, it's dumb. It's more-or-less an episode where it relies on certain tropes common to the franchise and one that's used more and more as TNG marches on and was used heavily in Voyager where the ship meets up with a critical situation that nearly kills everyone only for everyone to be saved in the last moments by someone on the ship more-or-less immune to the disaster being caused. (In this case, Data is unaffected by the microorganisms and naturally the loss of life-support on the ship, in Voyager it was often Seven's Borg nanoprobes that made her resilient to the crisis or to have the solution.)
It also seems to ignore the effect that's going on here when concerning the ship's passengers which currently includes two dignitaries from separate worlds. (Lwaxanna from Betazed and the groom from wherever the hell.) It's an episode that wants to have things two ways, it wants to have this sort-of fun little story with Lwaxanna and her unmatched marriage and with Alexander and him clashing with his father but it also wants to have this "crisis of the week" episode that puts everyone in jeopardy and the two stories don't work or fit together and neither has much merit on their own.
There's plenty of times in TNG where there's a "crisis of the week" going on that's often going on and is solved by technobabble and nonsense but it doesn't matter since the bigger message is what's going on with the human characters on top of the crisis. See "Deja Q" where the crew struggles in the episode with trying to prevent an asteroid from crashing into a planet. A lot of talk about tractor beams, deflector fields and technobabble. Irrelevant since the episode is more about Q's exploration of humanity and the asteroid stuff plays as a back-drop.
Here? The story of the parasites is just there to pad out the episode since the "A" story isn't strong enough to carry the episode. And it probably *could* have been as there's some degree or two of merit there in how Worf wants to raise Alexander, how Deanna is using her professional teachings in order to help Worf and Alexander work together and Lwaxanna offering her own wisdom in how Alexander should behave and how her parenting methods obviously worked on Deanna.
There's also a nice contrast here to how Lwaxanna is dealing with Alexander and his problems with Worf and with the man Lwaxanna is about to marry, a man who's very orderly and structured to the point where he and his valet expect Lwaxanna (his finacee and future wife) to not address him in the familiar.
There's potential here! But the episode doesn't seem to completely grasp it and go into the end-zone with it and instead it fumbles the ball on the 30-yard line. It's OWN 30-yard line.
Lwaxanna seems to change her mind on her finacee and goes to the wedding nude almost without much clear motivation other than maybe the incidental conversation she had with Alexander and the arguments earlier in her quarters. And there's never a resolution to the story between Worf and Alexander. If anything, the end of the episode seems to want to put Worf in the wrong (him being Groom Tightass in his storyline) even though he seems only guilty of wanting Alexander to pick-up after himself and to eat his damn dinner.
Alexander isn't given much of a lesson here, at the very least there could have been a conversation between him and Lwaxanna where she basically tells him that he can have fun and be free while ALSO respecting his father and doing what he can to make him happy. But, no, Alexander doesn't get to have a lesson here, he gets to act like a brat and not pay for it.
Majel Barrett-Roddenberry does a decent enough job here as Lwaxanna and even though she's not quite her "Quality of Life" self here where she does a great job she's not nearly as bad or as annoying here as she was in Mrs. Troi's first two appearances. She does give off a good vibe as the fun/cool grandma/aunt to Alexander.
And please, God, tell me the holodeck planet they were on isn't a simulation of a real, actual, place somewhere in the Trek universe because the planet is far too goofy and silly to be taken seriously and considering all of the planets we know of in the Trek universe between all of the series that's saying an awful damn lot. I just hope the planet is part of some child-centric bit of popular culture and Troi just asked for the program in a "this is a real place" sort of way for Alexander's benefit. Sort of like you wouldn't ask the holodeck to give you "a simulation of the TV series Sesame Street" but rather, "Sesame Street from 20th century Earth" and the computer gets what you mean and provides the simulation.
It's sort of funny to me how the computer responds to Lwaxanna's knocking on the bulkhead to input a command to holodeck, rather than touching the control panel or just talking directly to the computer. And I guess it's a "ha, ha, old people and technology!" thing, but is using the replicator really that hard? We hear Lwaxanna tapping at the controls a lot before trying to order and fussing over not knowing how to use it. Is it really that hard to use a replicator? Is it that hard to understand "tell it what you want and it'll provide it."
Anyway, this episode is just a bore.
What's next week? (looks it up) Ahh, much better.
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