“Angel One”
Written by Patrick Barry
Directed by Michael Rhodes
Season 1, Episode 13
Production episode 40271-115
Original air date: January 25, 1988
Stardate: 41636.9
Captain’s Log: The freighter Odin—missing for seven years—has been found destroyed, but while investigating, the Enterprise discovers that three escape pods were launched. They track them to Angel One.
Initial diplomatic contact with the women who run the planet is tense, as they don’t trust the Enterprise crew, but they eventually reveal that four survivors did land seven years earlier. They are also fugitives, and the Elected One, Mistress Beata, agrees to cooperate with the away team only if they promise to take them away.
Data learns that the planet has no platinum, so a search for that metal reveals the survivors’ location. Riker stays with Beata while Yar, Data, and Troi find Ramsey, the leader of the Odin survivors. He does not wish to leave—the four of them have settled on Angel One and made lives here. They don’t like the way men are treated, but they don’t wish to leave, either. Beata, therefore, condemns them to death.
Meanwhile, the Enterprise has problems of its own. The ship has been requested to travel to the Neutral Zone after their mission is done, as there has been Romulan activity. Unfortunately, a virus has spread throughout the ship, which incapacitates the entire crew, one by one.
Beata finds Ramsey and his bunch by following Mistress Ariel, another of the ruling council, who has secretly married Ramsey. Riker’s plan to take Ramsey and his people to the Enterprise is curtailed by Crusher declaring a quarantine, so Beata condemns them all to death.
Riker pleads before they are put to death—not for mercy, but for common sense, pointing out that in death, Ramsey becomes a martyr. Beata considers, and changes the sentence to exile.
Crusher finds an innoculant, and the crew is cured, in time to head to the Neutral Zone.
Thank You, Counselor Obvious: “There was much fear in that room.” “Paranoia, I’d say, but of what?” “I cannot say.” So Riker consults the counselor who doesn’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know from reading body language. Why have the empath again?
What Happens on the Holodeck Stays on the Holodeck: A snowball from the holodeck seems to cause the virus, which is a neat trick, especially since “The Big Goodbye” made it clear that any holodeck matter—like the snow—would disappear after leaving the holodeck. This leaves the question of how it was able to stain Picard’s uniform .
No Sex, Please, We’re Starfleet: Riker dresses like one of the locals, which involves tight pants and a shirt that reveals most of his chest hair. Dress like a rent boy, get treated like a rent boy—Mistress Beata immediately takes him to bed. I’m not sure, but I’m fairly certain that that’s an ethics violation .
If I Only Had a Brain : As the only person immune to the virus, Data winds up in charge of the Enterprise all by himself.
The boy!? This time, Wes is the one who endangers the ship, as the virus seems to start with him and his friend, and move onto Picard and Worf, who were hit by his snowball.
There is No Honor in Being Pummeled: Worf and Picard are among the first to get the virus, which leads to some entertaining sneezes from the Klingon. He also gives La Forge command advice, which makes you wonder why La Forge was put in charge when “Lonely Among Us” established Worf as fourth in command.
Welcome Aboard: Karen Montgomery and Patricia McPherson are particularly uninspired as Beata and Ariel, and that’s as nothing to how spectacularly boring Sam Hennings is as Ramsey .
I Believe I Said That. “I’m sorry, I’m getting sick.”
“I’m sure half the ship knows that by now.”
Worf apologizing for a sneeze that shook the ship, and La Forge commenting on it.
Trivial Matters: This is the first time the Romulans are mentioned on TNG, though they are not seen, and the end result of the movements in the Neutral Zone are never revealed.
Make it So: This episode manages the remarkable feat of being one of the most sexist episodes of Star Trek ever produced under the veneer of feminism.
It starts with Picard’s moronic suggestion that Troi make first contact because it’s a female dominated society. Right. By that loopy logic, La Forge should’ve made the first contact in “Code of Honor.” It’s followed by Picard describing their culture as an “unusual” matriarchal society—this right after Troi described it as reminding her of Betazed.
It doesn’t get any better. The women of Angel One fall right into bed with the first “real men” they meet—Ariel with Ramsey, Beata with Riker—and the society is portrayed with embarrassing simplicity. The virus subplot is filler, and boring filler at that. (Well, except for Worf sneezing .)
One of the absolute low points of the show.
Warp factor rating: 2.
Keith R.A. DeCandido has a new novel out: the Dungeons & Dragons tome Dark Sun: Under the Crimson Sun. You should buy it. Really. You can follow Keith online at his blog or on Facebook or Twitter under the username KRADeC.
aw this I Barely remember but it is more proof that people join starfleet becuase the univerese dresses tacky.
Sigh. I’d almost managed to put this episode out of my memory, so much so that the only scene I remembered was the snowball hitting Picard.
I’ve always liked to think that “the end result of the movements in the Neutral Zone” were somehow related to the Romulans’ reaction to the loss of their border colonies, revealed in “The Neutral Zone” and ultimately (though not unambiguously) laid at the feet of the Borg — but I suspect, as Keith suggests, it was just a sloppy loose end.
The less said about “Angel One,” the better.
Sometimes I wonder how much the creepy vibe certain Star Trek episodes give off about women was due to Roddenberry, who seemed to have a real thing for “Sure, women can be strong and all, but they’re best when they’re HUBBA HUBBA” fixation.
@3 I don’t think we’ve been introduced to the Borg yet, and I think canon has them not poking their olfactory prothesis into the “local” neighborhood until Q introduces the enterprise (and a slice of of the saucer section) to them.
As for the whole “troi, you talk to them” bit, I could rationalize it as falling under diplomacy–a gender-caste society would probably respond better to entreaties by the same gender. They’re there for a rescue mission, not diplomatic talks, so its not the captain can’t delegate this if he feels they’ll be more responsive to a woman asking “have you seen our peeps?”
Of course, the rest of the episode is utter sexist tripe.
This episode has one thing going for it – a really good title. I always wanted to write a story that was more deserving of it.
I don’t know “Angel 1” just sounds like a spaceship to me
I saw Beata sleeping with Riker are more a comment on the fact that they used men almost as playthings, with little regard for them as individuals (an extremely unsubtle commentary on the reverse situation often seen in our world, e.g. male boss sleeping with some girl low down in the office heirarchy – it’s a power thing), rather than them suddenly swooning over off-world men. Tha Ariel/Ramsey thing was more like swooning though.
One woman I know enjoyed the “unsubtle” role reversal. That said, this episode is, for me, an example of why–at the risk of being equally sexist–men writing about feminism (real or veneer) is a pet peeve of this man’s.
According to this episode’s wikipedia page, “in her book Sexual Generations: “Star Trek, the Next Generation” and Gender (University of Illinois Press, 1999), Robin Roberts points out that a similar plot was used by Walter Besant in his 1882 anti-feminist dystopia, The Revolt of Man.” I think I remember reading in one of the Okuda books that another Roddenberry project had a similar theme.
Oh, by the way: how many times was a dread virus used as a plot complication? And yes, that holodeck had a few bugs in it!
Finally, a podcast suggestion: how about an episode centered around “planet of women” episodes such as this? (It could cover other such wonderful stories as “Spock’s Brain” from TOS and “Favorite Son” from VGR!)
well being kind maybe EVERYTHING on the holdodeck is not a hologram ice is esay to make
Interesting how some things you just didn’t give much thought to when you were a kid now seem so….silly….I mean, a holodeck snowball causing a virus?????? *sobs* I had totally forgot about that, or more accurately, just never gave it a second thought when I first saw it, all those years ago!
But one thing that I’ve always loved about Dr. Crusher: she was the only one who could send Picard to his room! :P (due to no longer being fit to commmand the ship ’cause of medical reasons) And Picard being the srtong character that he is, that fact alone elevated Crusher’s cool factor in my eyes tenthfold!! She was the strongest female character on the show :D
I was under the impression that the holodeck works by creating virtual images for stuff far away / stuff you’re not going to touch, but for things you interact with it synthesises them useing transporter technology in the same way it synthesises food, but that at the end of the program, said objects would be turned back into energy by the reverse process (ultimate waste disposal!). Thus, a snowball (for example) thrown off the holodeck would be real in all senses, and since it left the holodeck, the computer wouldn’t re-absorb it (wouldn’t choose to? I wonder how that applies to characters, e.g. in The Big Goodbye – I guess they’re not real like a snowball is real.). (This just led me to thinking how easy it would be to clean stuff if the computer can just convert matter into energy as required – maybe that trick only works on the holodeck.)
As for the virus, I thought Wesley or his friend had it (picked up on a field trip or something), and from them it was on the snowball and hence got on Picard – so it wasn’t the holodeck’s fault!
Somehow the point is “don’t send your kid to daycare. Grems are scary”
@euphbass: Well, I like your explanation! :D Certainly makes all the silly holodeck stuff…not so silly! ;)
There is a funny blooper when Riker and Beata are getting comfortable; she puts down the wine glass and you can see a stage hand grasping for it.
I always referred to this episode as Charlie’s Angel One. Because of the feathered hair. Definitely one of the worst episodes of season 1, which is saying something…
I was very confused at the end of this episode. When Data makes his calculations for how long they have until they need to leave for the Neutral Zone, he calculates the time at maximum Warp. He says there are 17 minutes left shortly before the away team beams back…so there are about 12 or so before they actually get underway. However Picard orders them out of there at Warp 6. Huh? Warp 6 is 392 times the speed of light, Warp 9.2 is 1,649 times the speed of light. So unless the Neutral Zone was only 0.012 light years (4.29 light days) away this whole time, I don’t think they’re going to make it.
The acting from our guest stars is at the level of a porno flick, no exaggeration. Engage. Apparently, McStar Fleet is allowed to interfere in societies if they are sexist, but not if the societies are made up of drug addicts (‘Symbiosis’). Make it snow.
Keith, this is only the second most sexist episode of STTNG, remember in “Too short a season”, Jamesons’ wife apparently didn’t have a job, and loved her husband as a breadwinner. But we shouldn’t judge these writers, after all they lived in the late 1980’s before the “civil rights” movement.
Sorry, i am still dripping with sarcasm at your “too short a season” review.
Having rewatched this again, I have to agree that Angel One is not a great episode. But, I have to say, Karen Montgommery is a total babe.
You missed the best exchange of the episode
Worf: I think I may sneeze.
Geordi: A Klingon sneeze?
Worf: Only kind I know.
Hands up anyone who, prior to this, was aware that Klingons had their own sneeze.
Hahahaha, I remember this one!! The acting from the guest stars in this one is reminiscent of the acting in a porn movie! It’s hilariously stilted.
And I’m shocked 1980s hair made a resurgence in the 24th century. I would have thought they would have realized all of the ozone damage hairspray does! haha
Ah, c’mon! It’s not THAT bad. Look, “Mistress Beatta” is uber-hot, and that alone makes this episode, well, almost worth watching. (Her hair is GREAT, by the way.) The thing is, and I’m not kidding, virtually every word in the previous episode, “Datalore”, exemplifies such incredibly lazy and stupid writing that “Angel One”, despite being ungreat, is almost a relief. You roll your eyes a few dozen times, but unlike the very worst episodes, it doesn’t make you sick to your stomach. If you like the series and the characters, it teeters on the edge of unwatchability, but doesn’t quite fall in.
I wrote a blog response to your review if you’d care to read.
http://thebahhumbugchrusplumbglumblog.blogspot.ie/2013/10/how-tng-episode-angel-one-is-not-as.html
I should say, I’m actually a newcomer to Star Trek. Or at least, I’m only now really sitting down to give the show a proper shot. I’d seen lots of episodes before. So no spoilers of any kind if you decide to respond please!
This wasn’t THAT bad. I’d take this over Haven or We’ll Always Have Paris any day. Also, this episode reminds me what I sort of like about Yar. She was tough, and who else would tell Riker he’s sexy?
People forget that before the ’88 Writers’ Strike, Season 2 was supposed to open with the Romulans and Federation joining forces to counter the threat from the species that became the Borg. So I think the “trouble at the Netural Zone” subplot in this episode was intended to help start that plot thread. The rest of the episode is cringe-worthy and barely watchable without several drinks of an alcoholic beverage.
A 2?! TWO!? This episode is bad it actually manges to forgive way to eden.
Many have spoken on the sexism issue. The inconsistencies on how holograms and holodeck technology works over the course of the 24th century shows are legion. What baffled me was how 24th century medicine was not only unable to detect an airborn pathogen, but one that apparently should have been detectable *by smell*. Not to mention that despite having at that point treated hundreds of patients, it wasn’t until Dr. Crusher went to look in on the captain that she even *noticed* it?
I can’t fault TNG too much for not predicting things in the next few decades that would make some of the technobabble sound particularly silly, but airborn infection vectors have been known for centuries! This isn’t just “Did Not Do The Research”, it’s “Critical Research Failure”.
Sad news:
Actress, producer and development executive Karen Montgomery died Dec. 4 in Los Angeles following a nearly decade-long battle with breast cancer. She was 66.
Montgomery started in showbiz as an actress, starring most notably as Princess Beata in a 1988 episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” She then moved behind-the-scenes role, working as an assistant to screenwriter Waldo Salt, director Hal Ashby and producer Bruce Gilbert on 1978’s “Coming Home.”
Throughout her career she worked in the development departments of indie film companies, with producing credits on films including “Row Your Boat” (1999), “‘Til There Was You” (1997) and “Diary of a Hitman” (1991), which was directed by Montgomery’s former acting coach and friend Roy London.
Following London’s death from AIDS complications in 1993, Montgomery and husband, director Christopher Monger, produced a documentary called “Special Thanks to Roy London,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2005.
Montgomery is survived by her husband; her mother Susan Nelson; and brother Carl Montgomery.
Just as a I failed to see how the planet of black people from “Code of Honor” was racist I fail to see how the planet of women in this episode is sexist.
I really liked Data buying slightly more time for the away team. This season had already over-used the gag where the robot goes into too much detail until someone shushes him so Data doing it to be genuinely helpful was nice. A step away from the camp sci-fi gag robot towards the fleshed-out character so much of the audience would rightly come to adore.
Wow, the racist and sexist elements in these episodes are not even subtext. They’re so blatant (and Krad mentions them explicitly), that I fail to see how someone can deny they are racist and sexist.
This is easily one of my bottom ten TNG episodes, maybe even bottom five, but I’d still take it over the even more blatantly sexist and intensely stupid Blake’s 7 episode “Power” which features not just the Battle of the Sexes but the War of the Sexes. That was a particularly painful viewing experience.
However, there are three moments from this episode that I love: the Klingon sneeze, Geordi getting a little ahead of himself and saying “Make it so” when he assumes command of the Enterprise and Deanna and Tasha’s reaction to Riker’s ridiculous outfit, both because it was a nice, small look at their friendship and because most of the audience, male and female, probably reacted the same way.
The biggest surprise, however, is that Wesley actually has a friend his own age. Who’da thunk it?
@33/GusF: As for Deanna and Tasha’s reaction to Riker’s outfit, I like his reaction to their reaction better – hey, it’s how they do things around here, so it’s common courtesy to conform. Even though he’s obviously uncomfortable. It’s my favourite moment in the episode.
I’m way late to the party but I’m doing a rewatch and enjoying everyone else’s comments so maybe there will be more after mine!
@31 Sexism can sometimes be a tough thing to see unless you’re right in the middle of experiencing it so I’ll toss out a couple of ideas to see if it helps with why this episode came across as sexist. For example, I work in tech. Anytime I go to a convention/gathering with my engineering team (who are all male) everyone there (mostly male) asks me who’s wife I am at introductions, or I am ignored completely. It’s totally sexist because the assumption is I’m the secretary or wife from my gender and could not have any interest in or knowledge of the topics at hand. Is it mean? Well, actually, it usually isn’t meant to be and most of the men if you asked them right then would say they are absolutely not sexist. It’s a cultural stereotype. Is it insulting and annoying? Yes. I correct it by throwing in some technobabble which makes everyone squirm for two seconds and then generally people accept my new role in their mind and we play happily ever after. Sometimes. So sexism can be quite subtle (and hurtful when you are passed over for things because…you must be a wife or secretary).
The scene with Picard and Troi was uncomfortable because the captain almost always makes contact (and that’s respectful to the other side as well). They hope other races are open minded and will accept whoever is in command (it’s possible lots of races didn’t want to listen to Janeway but that didn’t stop her from filling her role). I get that they might have more respect for a woman asking a question on this planet, but the hand off was sort of patronizing. For example, many orchestra members don’t like female conductors. A couple of times with young female conductors I’ve seen a man stand up and say “ok, now listen to her!” Who has the power in this situation? The man still does. The one that told everyone they should or could listen to the female. She’s in front, in charge…but not really. If power has to be handed off to you with permission, you don’t really have it. This scene would have worked better if Troi made the suggestion “Captain, I know you usually make contact but I’ve reviewed the history and they may be much more responsive to a woman asking for intruders to be found, I’d like to recommend I make contact.” Now Troi has the power. It still makes the women on the planet close minded, but that’s ok because many alien races might be and they just want their people back in this instance. Once they meet they can introduce that the men are equals and look how different our cultures are from each other. Cool.
Beatta at some point says “You’re the first man I’ve really been attracted to this way” or something along those lines to Riker. That feels sexist because it suggests that all those women are unhappy because they don’t have men manly men (see what I did there) around that they are desperate or pining for (she jumps right in the sack after minutes of meeting him). Sounds like the planet of tough women is not working out so well – which implies it shouldn’t. The story could have been altered and gone much deeper. I’m thinking of a “Far from Heaven” plot where there are multiple difficulties when someone falls for a person society says they cannot be with (We’ve got “The Outcast” coming which has great ideas). Or even a story like from the 1950s where a man falls for a strikingly independent woman who says she’ll never marry and the difficulties it causes for both of them. It doesn’t say he was unhappy with the more traditional women he met, there’s just a big shakedown of cultural norms and the backlash from it. That’s interesting stuff. But…I guess we only have 50 minutes so I’m daydreaming a bit. But I hope that helps give another perspective on an endless topic of discussion!
Basically we are looking at a strawwoman version of a gynocratic culture. There’s no nuance and no depth to it. All men walk around all the time in the equivalent of clubwear and they are all airheaded sex objects. Try portraying women that way in even a period piece. And btw those were incredibly stupid and unsexy costumes on the men.
I used to think that Picard asked Troi to make the initial contact not because of her gender, but because she came from a similar society (“It sounds like my own planet”), which made her something of an expert. She really should have played a bigger role in the later negotiations, perhaps found some common ground with Beata and thus helped to resolve the situation. But that would have been a completely different story.
I always wanted to see more of Betazed, provided it had been written better than the society here. Most of the time the TNG writers seemed to forget that Troi is from a matriarchy.
Bad episode. And who ever thought it was a good idea to name the planet “Angel One”?
Troi’s father seems to have been perfectly happy on Betazed. Throughout history women have managed to tease out agency and power from patriarchal culture, no reason why men on Betazed shouldn’t have strategies for the same and be reasonably content with their place in society.
But seriously, look at that header image. Did Presidents on Earth have a sexy woman revealingly dressed pouting in the background as they engaged in official communications? An executive secretary in the old days night well be a very good looking woman but she’d be dressed much more subtly with just a hint of sex.
You know, this episode is really stupid and offensive. A Starfleet officer accepting the advances of a planetary head of state? No, Kirk did not do that. He behaved professionally unless circumstances like captivity made use of any weapon he had necessary. Decorative males all over the place for no discernible reason? And of course the whole Real Women want Real Men thing.
It doesn’t even obey its own internal logic. Data and Riker are interesting and attractive to the leadership, they suggest Data should “teach their men a thing or two” to become more intelligent, and Beatta jumps Riker’s bones immediately, but aren’t those exactly the things they want to put the Odin crew to death for: being more intelligent and free willed, having their own agency, and encouraging other men to be more like that too?
Also with all the dirty looks from the messenger boy/executioner without a name, I was expecting him to pull something against Riker, like he was working to be Beatta’s man. Worst he did was pop in with the gift later, when he was told to, I’m sure, but not brining it in the first place was just a plot device for that interruption to happen. No other reason given
@40/Lightbringer: “It doesn’t even obey its own internal logic.”
Isn’t that normal hypocrisy? The leaders play around with the idea of intelligent men, but feel threatened when they can’t control them.
I’m rewatching this while on coronavirus lockdown and the virus subplot kept me shuddering every time a character sneezed or touched his face.
Another episode I never commented on, somehow.
The idea behind this episode was your classic sci-fi role reversal to comment on our own society’s inequalities. The idea is to show the privileged group how the other half lives, to imagine how things would be for them if the roles were reversed — like in TAS: “The Eye of the Beholder” where it’s humans who are put in cages at the zoo, or in the original Planet of the Apes novel where it’s the apes conducting cruel neurological and behavioral experiments on humans. Angel One was meant to be an inversion of our own society at its most sexist, with women as the strong and dominant ones who looked down on men as fragile creatures that existed only to look pretty and be obedient servants and sex objects. It was supposed to be about teaching the lesson that equality is better, but it did so in an unsubtle way, and that kind of role-reversal story is always tricky because it can be interpreted as a warning that the group in question shouldn’t be given power, rather than that inequality in either direction is bad.
Just in general, it wasn’t a very good episode, heavyhanded and preachy and rather dull. But it was interesting to see Bill Theiss and Roddenberry take their “less is more” philosophy of female costuming and try to adapt it for men.
The Romulan reference here is contradictory, given that “Heart of Glory” 5 episodes later would say they hadn’t heard the name “Romulan” in some time, and “The Neutral Zone” established that the Romulans hadn’t interacted with the Federation for more than 50 years. I don’t think it was meant to set up any later plans; I think, rather, it’s a symptom of the revolving door of the season 1 writing room, with numerous producers coming and going so there was no consistent plan or vision.
@4/JohnREllis: “Sometimes I wonder how much the creepy vibe certain Star Trek episodes give off about women was due to Roddenberry, who seemed to have a real thing for “Sure, women can be strong and all, but they’re best when they’re HUBBA HUBBA” fixation.”
To an extent, sure, but that attitude was typical of his generation and the one after that. There were plenty of other ’80s shows and movies even more sexist than this.
The women of Angel One look like refugees from Rubicun III, which means they look like refugees from some publicist’s version of a Southern California Surfer Guy/Surfer Girl retro-paradise. Even without getting into the various “isms” this kind of thing brings up, it’s clear that they’re all straight out of a middle-class-white-boy frat-bro fantasy (“Yeah, strong women are cool as long as they look like Cheryl Tiegs [when she was young], they have silken sexy voices, they’re all thin and young-looking, and they like to use hunky white men as sexual playthings!”) . . . The matriarchy of the future, as envisioned by Hugh Hefner!
. . . and yes, I’m “sheltering at home” as well, and I agree that it’s pretty creepy right now to see how many of these episodes center around mysterious viral pandemics.
@44/jazzmanchgo: Show me any TV show in any era where the female characters — and most of the male characters — were not exceptionally good-looking as a rule. That’s so universal a practice that I don’t see how it qualifies as a criticism of any individual work.
I’m doing a quarantine rewatch, as well. So nice to have people to talk to!
Hasn’t anyone else noticed an odd similarity to Roddenberry’s Planet Earth? I had Trent pegged for a Dink as soon as they beamed down.
/\ /\
A synopsis from IMDb in case you missed it back in 1974:
@46/Fresnel: Nothing odd about the similarity. They’re just two of many stories that have attempted to comment on patriarchal society by inverting the gender roles, so naturally they have similar tropes. And of course Roddenberry was involved in writing and producing both stories.
@48 Of course, my use of “odd” was facetious because I didn’t think it was just a coincidence. I found this on TrekMovie.com:
@46, That’s the one where John Saxon gets Dian Muldaur roaring drunk?
I’ve never seen a realistic matriarchy yet. They always make all women powerful and all men powerless which is not how any society has ever worked. Class intersects with gender roles. In a patriarchy elite women have authority over some men. Also women fill many roles beyond sex object.
Rewatching. My favourite thing about this episode remains that they named a Trek character after Bea Arthur.
And only fitting she’d be running the show.
This is a pretty poor episode, but not the worst. It feels a lot like “Justice,” because of the stupid costumes and draconian and arbitrary application of the death sentence. The subject of a matriarchal society is a difficult one to play out; too often it resorts to either feminist or misogynistic stereotypes. I’d say Angel One manages to do both, to some degree. Really, that element of the story is so flawed, I don’t see any basis for meaningful discussion. You really just have to laugh this episode off; it’s too misguided to be any harm, and there are some pretty amusing moments. It’s fun to see Geordi take charge, and Worf give him some command advice (between sneezes). Ultimately, that’s not enough to make it worth watching; I’d only watch it for the sake of completeness. Oh, and the virus subplot feels so artificial and pointless, it might as well not be there. Crusher saves the day in the nick of time after she realizes the virus has a smell… sounds like somebody had an extra fifteen minutes to fill and handed it off to a temp. Or did they know most people would be switching channels well before the conclusion anyway? I won’t disagree with a warp factor two here, but I definitely feel like I’m rounding up.
On Angel One sexual dimorphism is reversed, men are the smaller and more gracile sex. That being so I’d expect the women to be repulsed rather than attracted to large , hairy human men. But of course the point is women want ‘real men’ isn’t it?
@53/roxana: Not necessarily. Tastes differ, and some people are attracted to the atypical rather than repulsed by it. Personally, I love it when a woman is taller than I am.
Planet of the uptight white women with feathered hair.
While this episode is very bad indeed, it does have redeeming moments of humor intentional and unintentional: Riker dressing scantily clad and his crew mates laughing at his expense (intentional); Ramsey looking like McGyver (unintentional); Worf sneezing (intentional); the eye-rolling obviousness of Riker seducing and bedding Southern Californian blonde chick leader of the planet (unintentional); Picard protesting Dr. Crusher relieving him of command (intentional); Mistress Ariel emerging from the cave to embrace Ramsey before Ramsey says the away team is gone (unintentional).
Despite Picard proclaiming the women of Angel One being stronger than the men, they do not physically appear so, just taller and bigger hair.
I wonder if because the planet was called Angel One that the casting director made the association with Charlie’s Angels and proceeded to cast women with that late 70’s/early 80’s look?
@55/garreth: Nothing to do with Charlie’s Angels, just with wider trends of glamor and style that it and other shows reflected. Patricia McPherson looked about the same here as she looked when she was a regular on Knight Rider up until 2 years earlier.
And of course, Charlie’s was very, very far from the first work to refer to beautiful women as angels. It and “Angel One” were both reflecting the same far more commonplace things, rather than one being specifically a reference to the other.
Crusher should be commended for steadfastly refusing to beam up the Odin survivors and those who conspired with them. After all they might get sick. Better they stay down on the planet to be vaporized.
Seriously. WTF
@57: Right, they could have beamed up everyone and just store their transporter patterns until the virus was gone. Alternatively, beam them into one of the shuttles which is its own self-contained environment.
@58/garreth: Transporter patterns cannot be stored in the buffer for more than 8 minutes without fatally degrading, unless you have Scotty to rig a workaround.
Good point about the shuttles, though. I’m often frustrated when the main ship’s computer or warp drive or something fails and nobody thinks of using the shuttles as a backup.
@59/CLB: Regarding the transporter and the issue of patterns degrading, well then, I propose constantly beaming the Odin survivors to different points all over the planet to evade the Angel One authorities. I don’t think it’s ever been discussed how much of a power drain on ship’s systems that is so maybe it’s feasible. And maybe the technology on Angel One isn’t sophisticated enough tto catch people who are constantly beaming around all over the planet.
I think this episode is also a failure of casting based on the description of the Angle One inhabitants. The females are supposed to be physically bigger and stronger as Picard says in his Captain’s Log but as portrayed the females are simply taller and act sterner as if that’s supposed to convey “strong.” I guess it didn’t occur to the producers or they simply didn’t want to cast muscular or bodybuilder type women, think Spice Williams who was cast as a Klingon bridge officer in the following year’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Instead, main female guests in this episode appear typically feminine and glamorous so it’s a failure of imagination by the producers.
Not all men are bodybuilders or heavily muscled, so why should the women of Angel One be that type?
@62: Because this is an alien species, not humans. It would make this world seem more distinctive to us as viewers if there was an obvious distinction between the males and females of this world. And then it would be interesting to see Riker bed an alien female of a different body type than what we’ve seen him so far go for.
But bigger and stronger than what? As I recall, the female inhabitants of Angel One were considerably bigger than the male inhabitants. That they may not be bigger than a human male isn’t really relevant; they are bigger, and presumably stronger, than their own males.
Unfortunately, different body types wouldn’t change this episode from being dull as dishwater.
@63, Fair enough.
@65, Amen!
@64/costumer: I understand that literal interpretation. My point is, from the viewpoint of the audience, it would at least be visually interesting if the females cast for this alien world weren’t the stereotypically skinny Hollywood white women type but could at least be cast differently, like female bodybuilders as I mentioned.
@65/G.Spiggott: With that sentiment I agree with you 100%!
@67/garreth: Why should they be bodybuilders, though? The idea was to invert the gender norms of our society at its most sexist. Men are somewhat larger on the average than women, sure, but most men are not bodybuilders. I mean, Mistresses Beata and Ariel were political leaders, not athletes. How many political leaders can you think of with bulging muscles? Okay, there’s Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura, but I doubt either of them kept up their physiques once they were occupied with the business of government. The other women we saw in the background were either fellow Mistresses or security guards. Look at Starfleet security guards for comparison — they’re fit, but they’re not bulging.
Of TNG’s male leads, only Worf comes close to a “bodybuilder” physique. Riker is tall and strong, but in a lanky way, and the others are all fairly lean, with Picard being one of the slimmest of the lot. So if the male personnel of the Enterprise are not dominated by bodybuilder types, why should the female population of Angel One be? As costumer said, it’s enough that they’re taller on average than the men.
@68/CLB: The Angel One females don’t have to be bodybuilders. That was just one suggestion. You could give them rugby player builds. Again, the point I’m trying to reiterate is that the producers could have made this alien race more uh, alien, by portraying the females of this world other than as simply conventionally attractive, tall, human looking white women straight out of Hollywood. That doesn’t show much imagination to me. Portraying the women of this world with my suggestions would be visual shorthand to the audience that these females are bigger, stronger, and even more “butch” than the typical Angel One male.
And as I also mentioned before, since we know Riker will be written to romance and bed the Angel One leader, it would be more interesting if he got together with a woman that wasn’t his usual body type. This is similar to how it was a bit surprising that he developed an attraction for Soren in “The Outcast” as one could say she was not the typical type Riker would go for.
I feel like I’ve already put to much thought into this episode I don’t even like. Lol
@69/garreth: With a name like “Angel One,” it’s pretty clear that the dominant women were always meant to be beautiful and desirable by the viewing audience’s standards. That’s always been the norm for sci-fi plots like this, going back to ’50s B-movies if not earlier — the planet or culture of gorgeous Amazonian women who dominate their men but who just need a sufficiently virile man to come along and teach them the error of their ways. The title alone tells me that there was no ambition to make this anything very different from that. And of course Roddenberry did the same premise much the same way in his Planet Earth pilot, with Diana Muldaur as the leader of the female-dominant society who was won over by John Saxon.
It sometimes startles me to look back and realize how close in time early TNG was to cheesy stuff like Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Galactica 1980. Even season 1 was much smarter, more ambitious, and better made than most of the crap that passed for televised science fiction in that decade, but it still perpetuated a lot of the conventions, tropes, and attitudes of the era.
Come to think of it, Mistresses Beata and Ariel are a lot younger and hotter than most Real Life heads of state.
“Angel One” is like watching a porno spoof with all the sex scenes cut out. At least Flesh Gordon delivered on at least one thing. Uh, so I’ve heard.
I’ve got to give “Angel One” one thing: its matriarchy is better thought out than most other fictional matriarchies I’ve heard of. A surprising number of people seem to think a matriarchy is when women sit around giving orders while men do all the work, including military. I think this idea even made it into the Mass Effect games as a way of explaining why you never meet the female members of one alien race.
@17. crzydroid: “Picard orders them out of there at Warp 6.”
I was surprised by that as well. Not the biggest issue with the episode overall, sure, but a strange continuity error.
@74/Arben: There has never been any consistency to how warp speeds are portrayed onscreen, except that they’re always, always faster than the values alleged in the tie-in literature. Even the TNG tech books (and the 1980 Star Trek Maps and other references) say that the printed warp speed tables are just a rough baseline and that the actual speed varies depending on local space and subspace conditions.
I was just responding to how Data had previously indicated to Riker the cushion available before the Enterprise absolutely needed to leave factoring in top speed. If what you’re saying is that Warp 6 was the max at this point on the show, okay. I’d been expecting Picard to order them out at Warp 9-something based on Data’s calculations.
@76/Arben: No, even on TOS, warp 6 was just maximum cruising speed, with emergency speed being warp 7 or 8. In TNG, right off the bat in “Encounter at Farpoint,” they established that the ship could make it to warp 9.2 before crossing “the red line.”
I was responding more to the numbers crzydroid cited in comment #17, which can’t be expected to have any bearing on how warp speeds are actually portrayed. But I see your point now — if Data said it was based on maximum speed, then warp 6 is well below that.