The Enterprise is playing host to a recently encountered new species, Commander Riker and Counselor Troi are assigned to escort two of diplomats around the ship and introduce them to Federation culture and society while Picard travels with a third -via alien shuttle- to their homeworld to partake in his end of the culture exchange there. Things end up not going quite to plan.
Right out of the gate one of the ambassadors dismisses Commander Riker as his escort and demands, instead, for Worf to be his guide. Worf, reluctantly, agrees. Picard and the alien pilot leave via the shuttle.
Troi and Worf begin with a reception in Ten-Forward where Troi's ambassador quickly becomes curious about the buffet table presented before them, noticing Troi hasn't selected any food items. Troi informs him she's only getting desert, a concept he's unfamiliar with as his species only eats for nutritional reasons and not for pleasure. Troi introduces him to the dessert section, including a chocolate mousse.
Worf's ambassador remains hostile and stand-offish, quickly rejecting his food and demanding Worf get him a new plate with better choices. Worf does his best to maintain appearances -again, he tries- and goes to get more food while grumbling and aggressively carving a roast with a knife while Data implies that Worf and the ambassador share similar qualities by being arrogant and stand-offish.
As the days progress, Troi grows weary of escorting her ambassador as he seems obsessed with experience various forms of pleasurable activities rather than learning about Federation society in general and the various areas of the ship, he even tests Troi's limits when it comes to enjoying chocolate.
Worf's ambassador continues to press buttons, not-so-subtly insulting Worf's intelligence when he fails to answer and engineering question and maintaining a hostile demeanor. After a quick senior-staff meeting, Riker suggests the three of them and the two ambassadors meet for a round of poker to ease everyone's tensions.
During the poker game, Worf catches his ambassador stealing some of his chips and attempts a diplomatic correction before the ambassador challenges Worf's integrity which is enough to push Worf over the edge and he engages in combat with the alien who's able to return the blows. Once the alien is knocked prone, and Worf is restrained by Riker, the alien hops to his feet and gleefully thanks Worf for his help and announces he's off to log his findings. Everyone looks on with bewilderment.
Meanwhile: On the alien shuttle, Picard's alien pilot is cold and standoffish during the trip, much to Picard's annoyance. (Remember, this is the man who did the same thing to Wesley in a S2 episode.) Abruptly, the shuttle experiences an engine failure and has to make a crash-landing on a nearby Class-M planet (though I'm guessing on the edge of this class.) Picard wakes-up and finds the alien pilot severely injured and makes him comfortable while he goes for help at a nearby structure he's located with a tricorder. Enroute, Picard is knocked out by [lightning], when he wakes he's in an crashed spacecraft with a device attached to his abdomen and a strange figure watching over him.
The figure turns out to be a human woman named Anna who was a passenger on the alien freighter and the only who survived when it crashed there seven years earlier. She's informs Picard the alien pilot succumbed to his injuries and is surprised at how much time has passed but is hopeful that Picard is able to help the both of them escape, though Picard is limited by some broken ribs being treated by the device attached to him. Anna offers to any errands Picard needs for their escape, first-up is to retrieve a piece of the shuttle that Picard thinks he can use to send out an emergency beacon.
Anna returns with the device but it's destroyed as she had to use a phaser to aid it's removal from the shuttle, Picard isn't dismayed and still is hopeful he can find a way for them to escape. While Anna is off getting them food, Picard is able to salvage a power-cell from the crashed freighter he thinks he can use to "jump start" the crashed shuttle, but time is critical as the power-cell is corroded and may not last much longer.
Anna expresses her love for Picard, who believes she's not sure of her feelings and is simply overreacting from her joy of finding hope. Once the power-cell is ready, Anna makes excuses on why they cannot leave to try and to restart the shuttle and Picard begins to get more suspicious of her claims.
He removes the medical-device to find his ribs are not broken and Anna expresses she's failed to make Picard love her and flees the freighter. The door locks from the outside, so Picard is trapped but soon hears the calls of the alien pilot who makes his way into the freighter, he says he was probably mistaken for being dead as his species goes into a deep hibernation state in order to heal from injuries. He says he saw the woman flee the ship and head for a nearby cliff, Picard and the alien go in search of her, at the cliff's edge the split up to cover more territory.
Picard finds Anna at a precipice and threatening to throw herself off the edge as she's failed to make Picard love her, she says she'll come back with him he promises to do so. Picard notices on her a necklace that had fallen from her neck before she left the freighter, he confronts Anna on this who touches the necklace, deactivating an illusionary field around the alien pilot. The alien pilot says he's another ambassador and him and the others are from an alien race that doesn't have many of the emotional concepts that humans have.
They found the crashed freighter and read through the original Anna's logs and found emotional concepts (anger, pleasure, love) they were unfamiliar with and sought out humans in order to explore these concepts. The original Anna had been trapped on the planet for seven years before a human male crashed ont he planet, she nursed him back to health, they fell in love and were able to escape the planet.
Picard says that something like love isn't something humans express or give into so easily, and questions the actions the aliens took for their research. They leave the planet on the shuttle, which was never damaged.
Riker, Worf and Troi see their ambassadors off, Worf and his ambassador having seemed to bonded well using Worf's combat holodeck programs and Troi welcoming some of her ambassador's blander food. Picard says to his ambassador that he thinks he understands the aliens' motivations as sometimes emotions are something humans may take for granted and how when analyzing one they can certainly be a unique experience.
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Overall, I guess, not a bad episode. Certainly an interesting one and one of the "more unique" alien races we come across in the series. It's usually interesting when Trek explores ideas like this, aliens not having a concept of some aspect of humans and needing to delve into it deeper.
The interactions with Worf and his ambassador are pretty fun and it's neat how the two seemed to have reached some-sort-of kinship by the end in partaking in Worf's calisthenics program.
The "Misery" story with Picard is probably a more "dragging" point of the episode in just how odd it is, though it does get is some good line delivery from Picard, (when challenging "Anna" over some of the happenstances of the last few minutes: "It's sort of convenient don't you think?!", after realizing she left the freighter shortly before the alien pilot showed-up and him and the alien pilot separated shortly before Anna was found.)
I guess my biggest problem is how hard "Anna" tries. In hindsight it makes sense given that the alien likely wouldn't know how to express love or the desperateness Anna has, but it's still comes across as the woman not knowing how to act or being poorly directed. It also adds an odd wrinkle when you think this is the alien "male" doing this and apparently he's able to mount and force-kiss Picard which seems "out of character" for the otherwise pretty stiff and almost Vulcan-like unemotionalness of the aliens. It can also create odd visuals in one's head (like that scene in "Ghost" where Patrick Swayze's character (a ghost) possesses the body of Whoppi Goldberg in order to have a romantic dance with Demi Moore. The scene plays with Swayze dancing with Moore but in "reality" this is Whoppi Goldberg and Demi dancing and by the end of the scene -soon interrupted by the best-friend character- Demi and "Patrick" are pretty much DTF.
It's an episode I rate a "Meh." As far as Season 7 episodes go it's on the "good" side of the line. Hell, I might say this *is* the line. Every episode from here on out is either better or worse than this one.
Don't hold me to that grading system.
