The Host (⭑⭑)

Season four has some great episodes, and I think of it as a good season of TNG overall, but there’s no denying that its latter third contains a dismayingly long streak of mediocre-at-best episodes, beginning with “Night Terrors” and stretching through “The Host.” There are interesting things at play in “The Host,” but none of them are handled very effectively. In the background, we have a marginally serviceable diplomatic mission plot, albeit one that once again leans on the “there’s only one negotiator whom the parties to the dispute will accept to mediate their conflict” crutch (see “Sarek,” “Loud as a Whisper,” and “Too Short a Season”). In the foreground, we have the introduction of the Trill (significant in retrospect, but just an alien-of-the-week at the time), yet another unconvincing TNG romance, and an attempt to explore some big ideas: about the persistence of identity in the face of physical changes (ultimately including gender fluidity), and about what this means for a romantic connection and an individual’s ability to love. Alas, the Trill don’t make much sense in this initial incarnation, and the “big ideas” are not really handled very well at all.

Whereas I mostly looked past the unconvincing nature of the Lwaxana Troi/Timicin romance in “Half a Life” (because it ultimately didn’t matter all that much), I feel like “The Host” needs the Crusher/Odan relationship to feel compelling and real in order to work. Unfortunately, this fails for me. Their early scenes together mostly feel cloying and a little creepy, with Odan not even coming across as a particularly distinctive character, much less one who seems to obviously “fit” with Dr. Crusher in any particular way. So, I feel no investment in their connection to begin with…and then there’s the issue of him deliberately concealing his “joined” nature from her. She briefly gets angry about this later, and he offers a clearly disingenuous excuse, but the episode then drops the issue. This is a major problem, since the story is supposed to be about whether or not Crusher can look past the body-swapping and still love Odan, but the latter’s dishonesty introduces a confounding factor that the episode doesn’t adequately reckon with. Then, too, later scenes continue to be utterly unconvincing in their efforts to show any special understanding or connection between these two people who are supposedly head over heels in love with each other. (Also, somewhat mirroring a similar failure back in season three’s “The Price,” the attempt at a “girl talk” scene between Troi and Crusher is cringe-inducing.)

Obviously, fans of DS9 (of which I am one) will have something of a soft spot for this episode in that it introduced the Trill, but their depiction here is quite problematic. For the host to merely be a body that the symbiont rides around in, contributing nothing to the personality of the “joined” being, makes the concept both uninteresting and nonsensical. What sentient being would willingly agree to serve as a host in this way? What happened to Riker’s brain, and his consciousness, while his body was playing host to Odan? (Also…do we really find it believable that Riker would volunteer for this, even on a temporary basis? Yes, he’s a guy who is usually willing to take personal risks in service of “the mission,” but serving as a host for Odan involves surrendering his very personhood. Really?) Plus, there’s a totally ignored issue surrounding the ethics of Odan having a physical relationship with Dr. Crusher while occupying Riker’s body. Is that part of what he signed up for? And finally… This may be more of a nitpick than a serious criticism, but the idea that the Federation knows basically nothing about the Trill prior to this episode is not only inconsistent with later DS9 back story, but doesn’t seem to make a ton of sense within the context of this episode, either.

What I, and perhaps most others as well, have always remembered best about “The Host,” though, is the scene at the end when Odan’s replacement host body turns out to be female, and Crusher is unable to roll with this. On one hand, I do think that TNG deserves at least some credit for presenting, on network television in the early 90s, a character whose identity transcends a single gender. On the other hand, even at the time, I recall thinking that an opportunity had been missed when Crusher shuts the female version of Odan down completely. That her own sexuality does not prove flexible enough to pursue the relationship is perfectly plausible, but the disingenuous manner of her rejection (claiming that she just “can’t keep up” rather than acknowledging that she can’t summon romantic feelings for a woman) is a total cop-out. (Before discovering that the new host is female, she appears excited to see what “he” will look like, so her “I can’t keep up” comes across as a bald-faced lie.) Also, even if (as I said) I find it perfectly plausible that she feels unable to go there, I also have always felt that the writers could have gone another way with it. This was TNG’s chance to be the first television show to depict a same-sex kiss, just as the original Trek had given us TV’s first interracial kiss—but the writers chose not to go there.

This is another episode to which I anticipated awarding three stars, but that proved on re-watch to have more problems, and less that really works very well, than I had remembered. Alas!