Devil’s Due (⭑)

Oof. There is probably no other episode of TNG that seems more out of sync with the rest of the season in which it occurs than “Devil’s Due,” which in some ways feels like a reversion to season-one POTW cheesiness, but mostly doesn’t feel like it belongs in TNG at all. This only makes sense, given that (as most fans doubtless already know) the episode is in fact precisely what it seems: a reworking of a story idea originally pitched for the abortive 1970s original-cast sequel series, Star Trek II. It shares this origin with one other TNG episode, but whereas season two’s “The Child” is a relatively par-for-the-course installment for the the show at a time when it was still struggling to find itself, “Devil’s Due” is just…wrong. “The Child” was dusted off in season two because of a writer’s strike; as for what induced the writers, at the height of the show’s maturity, to dip back into that well and come up with this piece of garbage, I can’t even begin to guess.

If I wanted to find something nice to say about “Devil’s Due,” I suppose I would acknowledge that it’s a minor miracle the episode hangs together at all and isn’t even worse than it is—a fact that only the writers’ and actors’ confidence in portraying the regulars, at this stage of the game, could have made possible. Every time that I have watched this thing, it has struck me primarily as a bizarre exercise in endeavoring to take a beyond-ridiculous premise relatively seriously. I mean, okay…to their credit (I guess?), the regulars are mostly portrayed as not being at all taken in by the supernatural claims of “Ardra”—but even putting these characters in the same story with a person making such claims (and an entire populace that has bought into them) feels insulting. It’s a clash of genres and tones that simply does not work. As such, I’m finding it a bit challenging to even attempt a detailed critique. I mean, Picard decides early on that Arda is a con artist and he never wavers from this conviction, which is good. But the relish with which he announces (to Data) that he intends to outwit the con artist at her own game feels more appropriate to a goofy story about our captain playing in the holodeck than to one in which the fate of an entire planet hangs in the balance. And yet, in moments when his demeanor is more serious and straitlaced, the clash between it and the story that he is in only feels all the more egregious. The story is just too dumb to be taken seriously, setting up a lose-lose situation in regard to how our protagonist relates to it.

Also, as has been pointed out by reviewers and commenters elsewhere, it sort of doesn’t work to present our heroes as rational skeptics in the face of Ardra’s “cheap tricks” on a show that routinely gives us characters like Q, who really do have “powers” that amount to magic. From a narrative point of view, the difference is that Arda presents herself as “divine” (or rather, diabolical?), and the story is about her exploiting the beliefs of a naive populace. But within the reality of the show, the regular characters’ differing reactions to Ardra vs. to the likes of Q really don’t make any sense. (Arguably, this reflects more on the inconsistencies in tone and premise throughout TNG as a whole than it does on this episode specifically.) On the flip side, though, this episode is much too impressed with its own imagined cleverness in regard to its “technology masquerading as magic” plot gimmick, which doesn’t play out in a particularly believable manner on any level. Cloaking device on Ardra’s ship or no, the Enterprise‘s tech should be able to detect things like transporter beams and holodeck projections right away.

It goes without saying that Ventax II, like so many planets of the week from the dark days of season one, is portrayed in a way that is not remotely plausible or compelling. Here is a planet-wide society (unified, somehow, despite having “turned its back on technology”) that has enjoyed a millennium of peace and prosperity, yet has devolved into total chaos almost overnight due to the apparently near-universal sudden adoption of a belief in an ancient myth about a literal contract with the devil—and a planetary leader who is immediately willing to surrender his position and turn his people over to the said “devil” the minute she arrives on the scene. It would be overly charitable to content myself with saying that this brand of fantastically reductive and broadly allegorical storytelling, which sort of worked in the original series, is wildly out of place on TNG, which normally strikes (even in its first season, most of the time!) a more serious tone and tries for something more closely approximating realism. That’s basically true, I think, but for my money, this particular premise is too hokey for any incarnation of Trek. That said, the scene in which Picard makes his case that the ancient Ventaxians buckled down and solved their society’s many problems on their own, without supernatural aid, does sort of work. Partly it’s just satisfying to watch him skewer superstitious mumbo-jumbo with humanistic rationalism, and partly it’s inspiring to imagine a society actually collectively pulling its head out of its ass, coming together, and enacting sensible policies to address its problems in the way that he describes. But also, it’s the one moment in this ridiculous episode that manages to grapple at all plausibly with the messy realities underlying the otherwise very simplistic and allegorical portrayal of Ventaxian society. Of course, it’s also worth noting that in his initial encounters with the Ventaxian leader, our captain seems incapable of even processing the notion that he takes the idea of Ardra seriously, and flat-out labels it “hysteria” and “nonsense.” I mean, I get it—but still…smooth diplomatic move, Mr. Culturally Sensitive Starfleet Exemplar.

Weirdly, there is a level on which, alongside the Ardra crap, this episode is also trying to be something of a Picard/Data character piece. We open, after all, with the two of them on the holodeck, revisiting the motif of Picard as Data’s acting coach that we previously saw in season three’s “The Defector.” Up to a point, the relationship between this scene and the rest of the episode is straightforward enough. Marley’s ghost enjoins Data-as-Scrooge to accept the evidence of his senses and believe in him, but “Scrooge” retorts that the senses are too easily deceived. This foreshadows the later confrontation between Ardra and Picard. But the ensuing Data-Picard conversation about acting, and about Data’s exploration of humanity, feels like it belongs in some other episode entirely. In particular, Picard’s comment about the significance of “the moment that you decided to stop imitating other actors and create your own interpretation” really feels like the sort of line that is meant to resonate with the larger themes of the episode in which it is uttered…but it just doesn’t, in this case. The captain does bring up Scrooge again later when talking to Data about how fear can influence people, but the connection is a fairly tenuous one. After that, Data’s part in the episode devolves into silliness as the writers try to mine his role as arbiter for dumb humor based around the idea that the android must strictly adhere to Ventaxian legal precedent, in a thread that (again) feels like it wandered in, lost, straight out of a first season episode. By this point, any pretense of thematic coherence has long been abandoned.

Speaking of things that are weird… Unaccountably, it appears (based on my perusal of other online sources) that my reaction to this episode does not even come close to reflecting any kind of general consensus. Apparently, there are quite a few people out there who actually like this thing (!?). Obviously, Trek fans are a diverse bunch, and not everyone looks for or values the same things that I look for and value in the show. Still… I just don’t get it. Depressingly, too, way too much of the debate that I have seen concerning this episode focuses on whether or not it is anti-religious, and if it is, whether that’s good or bad, in a very reductive and simplistic way that allows for little nuance. (Personally, I don’t see this episode as a remotely effective critique of “religion,” or even as having likely been intended in such a spirit—but I do think that its portrayal of the aforementioned naive populace is deeply patronizing.)

Finally, the less that is said about the story element of Ardra taking a personal interest in Picard and trying to sex him up, the better, I think. Here, too, there’s something very strange going on, in a way. I want to say that, like so much else about this episode, these scenes practically scream the fact that they were originally conceived with Kirk in mind rather than Picard; however, apparently the faux-devil character in the original script was male, and the idea of making Ardra a woman was a twist thrown in by Michael Piller while adapting the story for TNG. Weird. Be that as it may, though, these bits of the episode just feel really awkward and forced. They read sort of like a failed attempt to mimic Q’s interest in Picard, crossed with a (successful, I guess?) recreation of everything that is awful about Lwaxana Troi’s typical behavior toward the captain. No thanks.

This is easily season four’s worst episode.