Nerding Day: Star Drek - "Conspiracy" (Patreon)

Last time on Trek Drek, we discussed the Next Generation episode “Hide and Q,” a parable about the downsides of being granted absolute power. The episode tried to pretend these were myriad and self-evident, but outside of Riker’s stupid usages and Geordi’s constant perving on whatever was magically summoned, there kinda were No Cons to Absolute Power. Thus, I titled the column in question “NoCAP.” That all makes sense; that all tracks and has always been true and you can go check. The trouble is, now I’ve sort of painted myself into a corner and have to devise a cheeky, Zoomer-friendly name for this week’s episode about the Cons of Piracy!

So if you have any good ones, please, comment below! This is the internet, so I can always go back and change it later. I’m desperate on god frfr. We NEED Zoomers to read these or we’re fucked. The future of the 1900HOTDOG business model is all Zoomer-based; Seanbaby was titty-twistingly clear about that. The phrases “cover the spread” and “vig on what I owe” were muttered. Minecraft was there.

So yeah - sorry to hang so many of my opening jokes off of Gen Z tropes! I guess I’m still thinking about death a lot since my MRI came back with a big blotch in my occipital lobe. Doctor’s still looking into it, but I have a bad feeling. But enough doomer Boomer tumor rumor Zoomer humor - there’s Star Trek to trash!

Much like at the start of our last adventure, the crew is…going on vacation! In space!

We’ve talked before about how lots of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes start “between missions,” and how this is part of what makes the show inherently, wonderfully boring. With the episode “Conspiracy,” the network executives wanted to pitch the TV audience on a new kind of TNG episode - one stuffed with action and evil aliens and pew-pews. So by “new” I guess I mean “old,” since it was Gene Roddenberry’s subversive vision of a stodgy, fuddy-duddy space explorer that gave The Next Generation’s Captain Picard such a unique vibe. The exec who by all accounts most often fought for “the old ways” was named Maurice Hurley…some Trek fans called him the Space Cowboy, others just “Mr. Vomit-sound.” Maurice loved to mess with Gene’s show, and many of his ideas were profoundly stupid.

The ideological battle between Maurice and Gene is most evident in the fact that TNG’s season one finale - “The Neutral Zone” - is a brand-standard tale of subtle tension, realpolitik, diplomacy and philosophy, while “Conspiracy,” which aired directly before it, plays out more like the unhinged first part of a two-part alien invasion story abandoned with embarrassment the second credits roll. Hurley’s oafish fingerprints are all over “Conspiracy,” starting with the fact that William “Kirkboy” Riker gives the opening log and starts the ‘sode in command of the Enterprise.

The next offer we get is Geordi trying to teach Data a dirty joke we only hear half of. You might notice this means there’s no joke to laugh at. Sci-fi nerds who write primetime space opera aren’t that funny, and it’s very old-school Trek for them to simply fall back on a “joke-shaped line” instead. It’s perhaps understandable then when Data struggles to give his pal the validation he craves.

At his best, Data is The Next Generation’s standout character, and carries moments of both terrifying robotic detachment and startling humanity. At his worst he’s specifically this one observation, over and over, ad nauseum. Computers don’t get jokes! Like, I agree, they don’t, but that in itself is not a funny joke the fortieth time. Season one Data honestly feels like he’s inhabited by the soul of an older, simpler sci-fi robot like Robby the Robot from Lost in Space. He stumbles through over-literal interpretations of human aphorisms like Pinocchio after a couple big huffs of wood varnish from Gepetto’s workbench.

Dude, you went to Starfleet Academy! You’ve served in the space navy for over twenty years! If Data can’t grasp the basics of irony and metaphor, I’m not sure he should be in control of the galactic hegemon’s flagship’s vessel’s photon torpedo controls. Hurley and his minions were also famously cavalier about tossing in lines that imply huge swaths of lore no other writer intends to honor or pick up in the future. It’s almost as if they were writers from an earlier era, when it didn’t matter if you casually implied a whole race of aliens never bathed.

Fifteen seasons later, that man will be regularly fucking Jadzia Dax so hard her bones break, and thanks to Maurice Hurley when I masturbate about that I also have to imagine a mind-bending stink.

See this smoke she’s wreathed in? That’s not sexy-steam, that’s stink-steam! I have to think about that when I masturbate about it! Not complaining, just connecting dots. Speaking of which…

…I guess…

…I should explain…

…the deal with…

…all the 47s.

Although as a quick aside…”disturbed”? Man, if I slept two feet below a window looking out on the depthless black of the void I’d go insane so fast.

Back to TNG’s “thing” with the number 47. Cinephiles might be guessing it’s a reference to the C-47 code used to refer to wooden clothespins by film crews on set, and honestly it would be so much cooler if that was the reason. That’s right, the real reason is less cool than wooden clothespins. Imagine that!

In case you weren’t aware…because wooden clothespins don’t easily burn under hot lights and have a naturally variable grip-strength, they’ve been standard film equipment forever. So long, in fact, that there’s even debate over whether they’re named after a union order form or the military supply plane of the same designation. Whatever the true origin, the cryptic-sounding slang for such a mundane object makes “C-47” a great way to haze a new grip, or grip a new haze (...control diffusion sheet).

In Trek lore, however, the number 47 refers to an in-joke writer Rick Berman introduced into his scripts to honor a college club randomly devoted to the number. The 47 Society at Pomona College publicly maintains a belief that “all numbers are equal to 47, and that the number 47 occurs with greater frequency in nature than other numbers.” It means nothing, it’s meant to mean nothing, and that’s the joke. Get it? In reality, The 47 Society was most assuredly nothing more than a bunch of college friends drinking, experimenting sexually, and using a random non-sequitor as a signifier of their association. See? Told you it was less interesting than a wooden clothespin. You think you’re making your generational mark shouting “6-7!” at your red-faced assistant principal, but you’re really just exhausting a middle-aged woman at work.

In this instance, the C-47 transmission is a message for Picard’s eyes only diverting the Enterprise from a tropical vacation on an ocean planet to a hollowed-out moon where they used to mine borax or something. Fun! I bet all the kids who live onboard will take that news well.

Although not as ideal a vacation spot, Dytallix is devoid of all life, making it the perfect place for a covert meetup. Naturally, since Captain Picard just received a secret encoded summons from a trusted confidante who signed off with “Trust no one,” he openly discusses the situation with his bridge crew, including listing aloud which ships seem to be showing up.

Star Trek writers love using ship names and incidental characters to imply a larger world, and in this case we get a reference to a guy who helped push the American colonies toward revolt followed by an overt shout-out to Horatio Hornblower, the fictional naval Captain Roddenberry cited as his inspiration for Picard’s style and mannerisms.

The Horatio, by the way, will soon get blown out of the sky, as if to explicitly shit on Gene’s vision of a more prosaic sci-fi series. Oh, you want a show where they sit around debating morality in space-court? In my episode, THAT SHOW GETS A-SPLODED! But before it blows its horn, we further learn that the Horatio is captained by an old friend of Picard’s who may as well be named Lukesky McBoat.

It is! And he brought his fishman!

Which is to say: Picard beams down to Dytallix-B alone as requested, and is briefly two-factor authentication tested to prove he’s “himself.” This involves answering some questions about his past only he would know, like “which sector replicates the best paraben-free dome wax?”

Picard passes, and is quickly introduced to Tryla Scott, another conspirator who’s been invited onto the show for reasons of tokenism.

To clarify, I don’t think any attempt to widen inclusion in casting is “mere tokenism.” Each case has to be taken on its own and evaluated in context. In this case, Tryla is trotted out as an example of Black female excellence for one brief scene, then appears again at the end to eat worms on camera and get beaten and shot to death by Riker and Picard. It’s not quite Woke 3.

But she’s there, at least, and so is Walker Keel with a dire but extremely vague warning about “Starfleet brass acting weird.”

The trio of Captains all have anecdotes about officers suddenly acting like pod-people, and believe whatever’s compromising them has already made its way to Earth and Starfleet HQ - hence the secrecy. Picard remains skeptical, but agrees that information control is of the utmost importance. Whatever happens next must happen in darkness.

But also? Say hi to someone who shouldn’t be aware I was here or that this transpired!

This is the first, but far from the last, moment from an episode TITLED “Conspiracy” in which the writers don’t seem to know how one functions.Like, the very next scene after Picard agrees that secrecy is their only weapon against whatever’s rotting the Federation from within is him telling his therapist about it. Her advice? Probably tell everyone, yeah? Tell everyone about the top-secret conspiracy, get their takes?

“Hey, are you named Troi because you’re something that will kill me hidden inside what seems like a reasonable offer?” Picard knows better…

…or does he? Turns out Jean-Luc’s playing 4-D Chess here (3-D Chess being a mundane activity in The Next Generation), because as soon as he leaves Deanna he tells Data to access the computer core looking for patterns of aberrant behavior. In other words, he has the only android in the fleet poke around at a rate that identifies him as the user over an open network connected directly to the people he suspects. Mmmm, covert!

Speaking of unsubtle, as we see dozens of files blink by too quickly to read, we spot some Klingon text and other identifiable in-universe stuff, plus one extremely notable slide that looks like a half-assed doodle, and is.

You probably can’t read it scrawled under his Mega-Perch of the Milky Way there, but this is a caricature of Gene Roddenberry entitled “The Great Bird of the Galaxy.” It’s his head on a parrot, like you might get if you told a beach boardwalk caricature artist your hobby was “parrot.” Again, there’s a long behind-the-scenes explanation for how Gene came to be called that and what different writers meant by it, but in the context of this one episode seemingly designed to pitch a different show against Gene’s will, it feels like a dig to me. Maurice often invoked the epithet when he was calling Roddenberry’s idea’s wacky or coo-coo bananas. Oh wait! We’re gonna miss Picard lying terribly to Beverly about something she clearly already knows even though the guy who told him to be secretive was also the one who told him “and say hi to Beverly.”

Just an awful lie, master diplomat. Just terrible. Anyway, secrecy thus vouchsafed, Picard runs off to tell his First Officer about the secret conspiracy involving compromised First Officers.

Not only does Riker take the side of the argument you’d clearly take if you were compromised, he further suggests they should fly the Enterprise straight to Earth and report everything to the Starfleet brass in the name of “clearing this whole mess up.” Eat your heart out, “we should split up to cover more ground!” I’ll see that and raise you “we should jump into the shark’s mouth to get closer to its vulnerable parts.”

Picard thinks that sounds good. A good, sound, good-sounding plan.

Which raises another question: if everyone is compromised, is it still technically a conspiracy? Like at this point, if it turns out Picard’s also a pod-person or alien, that would retroactively clear up a number of plot problems. Case in point: Picard now tells his entire crew about the secret pod-person conspiracy and hails Starfleet HQ, presumably to give them as much forewarning as possible so they have time to hide any pods, husks, or the like.

The triumvirate of old creeps who invite Picard to a private dinner at Inside Shark keep saying stuff like “preparations are already underway” and “you look diplomatic enough to eat,” which naturally sets Jean-Luc at ease. He even decides that Admiral Quinn (dude on the right in the image above) is “safe” to invite aboard and confide their concerns in.

Quinn beams aboard for a friendly visit, but not before taking his futuristic Airborne to reduce the chance of transporter-borne illness. In the year 2364 that means a stop-motion alien bug that takes control of your nervous system in a quest for galactic domination, which is deffo an upgrade from Airborne today because of the stop-motion aspect.

Quinn has Picard show him around personally, and either the character, the alien parasite inhabiting the character, or Maurice Hurley must have shouted “we never see enough girls on this show, bring out the girls!” like fucking Don DiMello because the corridors are suddenly flooded with those season one Starfleet skirts you never see again after this episode. I’m guessing Maurice took them home to deconsecrate personally.

Like, I don’t even have to draw a dotted line for that to remind you of a cartoon wolf lolling his tongue and popping his eyeballs out. Plus I’m pretty sure the lady in red below is the same lady from the first corridor shot, meaning they had her circle back and go again so Quinn could make a second sensor sweep.

Perhaps fittingly, Admiral Quinn covers for some earlier comments he made (before he was compromised) with a Boomer-esque complaint about too many alien cultures trying to assimilate into the Federation too fast.

I guess they’ve been getting over that border fence Q put up last column pretty easily. They’re a sneaky bunch, those “all other sentient races in the galaxy!” At this point, Quinn has finally acted strangely enough for Picard to see through him, and he assures Riker “that’s not the man I know.” The Captain beams down ready to walk right into a trap - as in, dinner at Starfleet HQ - but tells Riker to use the time to investigate further and subdue the Admiral.

The fight scene that follows is pretty rad, mainly because you can see an old man getting turgid at his typewriter as he punches out the stage direction “the young buck tries to swing, but no one beats Old Dad! Old Dad has man-strength, the kind America made in my youth in a big building downtown where you could drink scotch at work and smack your kids. It was fine. They expected you to.”

The whole thing reads like a hyperbolic Centrum Silver ad. Refusing to be a party to this farce, Riker-portrayer Jonathan Frakes demanded they use a stunt double no one could confuse for him even in passing.

Smart! Frakes also famously hosted Unsolved Mysteries, one of which must be how a man can be knocked unconscious by a roundhouse that fails to connect and pushes him onto a cushioned seat.

In fact, “Riker” even does something Directors call “banana-ing,” which is to describe a wide, unreasonable curve while you flail around in order to get over to the mark where it was pre-decided you would fall and smash a glass table carefully placed for that purpose.

Perfect. Print, primarily because we only have one sheet of stunt-glass. Down on Earth, Captain Picard tenderly probes for information while drinking anything the suspected alien bug-people give him. Would have been a real easy way to kill or incapacitate him, alien bug-people, just sayin’.

“Say, Admiral…why did Walker Keel’s ship explode mysteriously?”

“Because he didn’t care enough. He was dumb at captain mistakes. Drink this?”

(Masterfully, biding time) “Yes please!” (Loud slurping sounds)

Security gets paged to Riker’s quarters, and even though Geordi isn’t Security he also goes, presumably because the old white man living out his power fantasy through this episode is hammering at his typewriter “...and he could even beat up every Black guy on the ship! It’s not racist, he’s just THAT STRONG! Liam Neeson roving around looking for someone to punish strong!!!”

Geordi is tossed through a door and Worf’s reputation as a warrior takes another hit, but we’re used to that by now. We might even like it?

Eventually Quinn is brought down by a phaser blast, and Dr. Crusher and Geordi rush in to contain the situation.

Geordi politely reminds everyone of his disability so they can reduce him to it. This is expected when a disabled person enters a room, even if they’ve just been hurled out of it; it resets.

Good Geordi, good! Crusher finds a little thingie on the back of Quinn’s neck that can be used to identify both who has been compromised and when your makeup department has run out of time and materials.

Not only did they just glue a rubber cone to his neck, they immediately cut from that very shot to a shot of people we KNOW are compromised with visible necks and no nubbins. Not that Captain Picard would have noticed if they were there - dude’s on his third carafe of white wine.

“Conshpirashees? I heard o’ them! There was a fishman there. Ugly sonuvabitch. Where wuzzat again? Mytalix - di - my - mytallicks D? Somethin’ like-at.”

“Fuck off Remmick, I’m talking about mytallix B!”

Just kidding. In fact, Picard gets a hail from Dr. Crusher informing him they’ve confirmed everyone at Starfleet HQ indeed has an alien bug in their brain and his only response is “well I didn’t bring my gun when I beamed down” before calmly and willingly going to sit for dinner. It’s never even implied what Picard’s plan was to escape the scenario, if any was ever conceived. It’s like he somehow knew the events on the ship would render those on the ground moot and acted accordingly. You might even call it “extreme negligence of the captain,” if the filmmakers didn’t masterfully distract you with a hard cut to a bowl of worms.

The filmic sleight of hand is truly Nolan-esque. Yo, they eatin’ worms in here! Subtlety be damned! Conspiracy be fucked! We’re eatin’ fookin’ WOOOOORMS! It’s about as loud and un-TNG as an evil old man smiling at you as hard as he can, jack-o’-lantern-style.

Seriously, put a candle in that man’s head. They even bring Tryla back to explain about race. You know, about the races?

Then she eats worms on camera to prove they made the actress really do it…

…then she’s brutally murdered. By our heroes no less! Yes, she’s really that good.

To make extra-sure you know ONLY the human woman Tryla Scott has died, we then see her stop-motion bug safely eject and scuttle away unharmed. Not sure why that was necessary.

With about three minutes left to process this vast, Federation-altering conspiracy, Riker and Picard stumble upon Remmick sitting in a rotating villain char, shoot him dead, and presume he must be “the queen” when a bunch of rubber bugs fly out of him like a birthday piñata.

“Oh no what’s that?! New life? A new civilization? BLAST IT! ORIGINAL SERIES FOREVER!!!”

The rest of the scene is very much “but we have Alien chestburster scene at home,” and quite a delight if you hate Remmick, which literally everyone who watches Star Trek does.

To cap this bullshit salad off, Admiral Quinn gets to outlive Tryla, Walker and Fishman, our beloved Fishman, despite all the havoc his body personally wreaked.

The titular conspiracy is resolved only in the sense that we shot and killed every alien in sight, and the episode ends with Data picking up a mysterious homing beacon the bugs triggered in order to pinpoint Earth’s location for an invasion force hidden deep in uncharted space.

So deep, in fact, that they’re never mentioned again in the entire run of the series! It’s like if Nick Fury showing up after the credits in Iron Man was the one and only appearance of Nick Fury. Goodbye forever, alien bugs - we hardly knew ye. We could tell you were morally compromised though…after all, you’re still on Twitter.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: John McCarthy, who tested negative for alien brain parasites and was informed that his application to Starfleet senior management would not be moving forward.

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