We begin by underlining how the opening scene to “Conspiracy” entirely embodies why it’s a commonly held belief that the first season of The Next Generation is considered the worst. There are many criteria for this but don’t worry, we get to all of them.
Picard has the odd habit when being awoken to take a small glass of water and pour a small amount of water into an equally sized glass and drink from it. Then it’s revealed one can’t drink vodka directly from the freezer. Or at least shouldn’t.
Troi’s tendency is to report a dodgy character is hiding something, and this happens practically every episode.
This particular episode feels the most reminiscent of The Original Series as any in the first season of The Next Generation. The stilted dialogue shows the residue of season one jitters or uncomfortably. The odd pivot from intriguing science fiction mystery to 80s B horror flick is off-putting, to say the least. The writers were clearly using this episode to seed subsequent plot lines, but they never ended up exploring them in favour of a much superior nemesis.
There’s a good deal of trivia regarding the development of this episode and the direction of Star Trek in general. It becomes apparent that Roddenberry’s vision of prohibiting character conflict wasn’t tenable if the show was to continue developing. This episode bears an indelible blemish from that tyranny.
The alien’s intentions come into question. Why would they spend so much time infiltrating Starfleet to just start high-kicking people the instant they boarded the Enterprise. They seemed to be doing a great job. We try to clear it up. It’s up to you, dear listener, to decide if we’ve failed.
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