The Perfect Mate (⭑⭑⭑⭑)

I have always loved this episode. My fondness for it has never blinded me to the problematic aspects of its premise, which do need to be factored into any overall evaluation of it—and also, on a completely separate note, the bits having to do with the two Ferengi are awful, which hurts the episode as a whole. Still, this is an extremely compelling story on both an emotional and an intellectual level, and one of my favorite Picard character episodes. Warts and all, I absolutely treasure this one.

I’ll begin, though, by addressing those problematic aspects. So, the premise of the “empathic metamorph”—a woman whose nature it is to sense what a potential mate wants and then to become that for him—is messed up on several levels. This particular sci-fi metaphor is at considerable risk of functioning more as sexist male wish fulfillment fantasy than as social commentary. It’s also distressingly heteronormative, in that Kamala is consistently described as having a profound effect on men. And yet, despite the latter, it never seems to occur to anyone that maybe having her interact primarily with women would be an effective way to avoid “every man” constantly falling for her! (The ambassador says that he was chosen because he’s old and therefore less susceptible to “temptations of the flesh,” and Picard assigns Data as Kamala’s “chaperone” because he, too, will be immune to her charms. No one seems to think of placing (heterosexual) women in these roles, though. And in a related matter: Where the hell is Counselor Troi in this episode? Was there only room on the Enterprise for one empath/female sex symbol at a time, or what?) This is more than just a silly plot oversight, too; the episode’s failure to even consider female characters in this way exacerbates its premise’s existing tendency to grant primacy of personhood to men, while imagining women as fundamentally secondary and defined in relation to men. Now, to be fair, there is a line of dialog establishing that Krios has male empathic metamorphs too, and that they are, in fact, actually far more common than female ones. This is a nice attempt to mitigate the sexism of the premise, but the fact remains that the writers chose to present us with a “rare” female empathic metamorph, not a male one, and thus with a story that primarily reinforces, rather than subverts, patriarchal gender norms. And then, even shorn of the gender politics and the heteronormativity, the idea that the whole of an empathic metamorph’s nature/purpose is directed at becoming someone’s perfect mate is weird. Surely the ability to sense others’ wants and needs, and morph oneself into a person who can meet them, would have a multitude of uses! Admittedly, there is a suggestion that this may be cultural, not biological; Dr. Crusher, in raising objections to Kamala’s treatment, emphasizes that over and above her innate nature, she’s been indoctrinated to her “purpose” virtually from birth. Still, the overall impression left by the episode is that what empathic metamorphs are fundamentally all about is being “perfect mates,” which seems to make commodities of them (and/or to elevate the centrality of “mating” to life in general) in a way that doesn’t feel necessary. So, in short, this episode comes with some definite conceptual baggage, and requires that one look past the troubling aspects of its premise as a price of admission. If there are viewers who can’t get over that hurdle enough to find any value in the episode, I can appreciate that. Personally, I still do very much enjoy it, albeit not without mixed feelings. (I’m reminded, here, of this article.) Also, one mitigating thing that I’ll say is this: Something that I have always liked about this episode is how it does present us with this sci-fi concept and associated alien social custom that are guaranteed to raise sexism concerns for the audience (and has Crusher raise those same concerns within the episode), but also has Picard make the “well, what are we supposed to do about it?” non-interference, respect-cultural-differences point, and just lets those two things sit in tension with each other rather than telling us which one is “correct.”

Having said all of that, I do think that the intent of the episode is social commentary, and not chauvinistic wish fulfillment. The basic question at the center of “The Perfect Mate” is: What happens when someone who has been born and bred to become whatever will please others meets someone whose genuine wish is for her to discover her own needs and to pursue some measure of self-actualization? The scenario presents us with a paradox, since Kamala’s nature means that if discovering a “true inner self” is what Picard wants from her, then she’ll respond to his desires by doing just that—but if there really is nothing “there” beyond her ability to remake herself in others’ images, then is the person she becomes really any more “her” in this scenario than in any other? Or is she still, in the end, merely the woman Picard wants? This is a question that can’t really have an “answer,” and the episode (to its credit) doesn’t really try to provide one. But it does suggest that there’s something unique about Kamala’s response to Picard, if only in the degree to which she seems drawn to him. When Picard, making one final effort to avoid crossing lines and taking advantage, asks “Have I not done everything possible to discourage this?”, she replies: “Maybe that’s the perfect way to attract a metamorph.” And if, despite all his restraint, his questions about who she is and what she wants only turned her into an independent, self-actualized woman because that’s what he wanted her to be…well, is that actually such a bad thing? After all, it’s arguably the least selfish desire that one person can have about what kind of person someone else should become…and a pretty good model to be held up in terms of what we should all want for the people we love. And yet, at the same time, her becoming someone who is cerebral and restrained and loves Shakespeare (in contrast, say, to the party girl she briefly becomes amongst the miners in Ten-Forward, or the sensuous and sexually assertive woman who kisses Riker twice in an earlier scene) is clearly just her molding herself into our captain’s ideal in the same way that she does with any other man. And ultimately, being an empathic metamorph is just a metaphor for what we all do when, in coming to love another person, we truly let that person in and allow ourselves to change and grow in response to them. Every relationship changes us; the question is, how do we feel about the person that we become in the presence of, and in relation to, the other? And Kamala answers that question in a particularly dramatic way, by choosing to permanently “imprint” herself as the person she has become with Picard even though she means to go through with marrying Alrik of Valt, the person she has been “intended” for.

Alongside all of this, the interaction between Kamala and Picard also provides compelling character insights regarding the latter (who, after all, is our actual protagonist). Our captain spends most of the episode struggling to balance the competing demands made on him by a) his concern for the rights and well-being of a person who has been brought aboard his ship, b) his duty to carry out the mission and avoid interfering unduly in the affairs of another culture, and c) his own personal wants and needs, and there is just something irresistibly compelling and relatable about watching him navigate all of that. His signature reserve, which can sometimes be a somewhat limiting trait for a main character to have (and which, in still other circumstances, has occasionally been exploited for cheap humor at the character’s expense in ways that I have really disliked), serves both him and the story exceptionally well here. We see exactly what Kamala sees: “a man of deep passion and conviction, [but] so controlled, so disciplined.” He does everything he can to refrain from overstepping his bounds, only to be questioned by Kamala as to why he keeps putting up walls between them—which is a succinct encapsulation of so much about our captain, who constantly and instinctively retreats behind the screen of duty, and of the burdens of command that must be borne in solitude, as cover for an aloofness that actually goes deeper, and speaks to his fears of being vulnerable, or of giving in to his passions and losing his dignity and control, or even just of being seen. But of course, when he in turn asks Kamala why she keeps trying to push past his walls, she replies with what ought, given her nature, to have been the obvious answer: “Because some part of you wants me to.” Of course! He can’t give himself permission to let down his guard and be vulnerable enough to really connect with another person in the way that any “man of deep passion” would crave, and he will put up an impressive struggle should anyone try to force their way in, even—but underneath all of that resistance, for someone to keep persisting until they manage to punch through his walls is exactly what he desperately wants and needs. I don’t know that I consciously knew this about Jean-Luc Picard prior to this episode, but it suddenly seems completely obvious and logical upon watching this—and that’s character development at its most satisfying.

In the end, of course, the story is an ironic tragedy. Picard gets involved out of a concern to ensure that Kamala is not being forced into anything against her will, and the outcome is that she develops desires that she didn’t have to begin with, but sets them aside to fulfill, out of duty, a prearranged role that would otherwise have fulfilled her, had she not chosen to “bond” with Picard. And Kamala, in making the latter choice, dooms herself to forever be—just like Picard—someone who puts her sense of duty above her personal emotional fulfillment. Each was drawn to the other by the impulse to do, for once, exactly the opposite of this, but in the end, they each end up alone and unfulfilled, except by the knowledge that they are carrying out their respective duties. (I should acknowledge here that some of this only fully crystalized for me after reading Jammer’s review and some of the comments attached to it.) At the risk of betraying the extent to which, perhaps, parts of the episode do work for me as a wish fulfillment fantasy, Kamala emerges as a deeply appealing and compelling character, and her connection with Picard feels orders of magnitude more real than so many of the attempted romances that the show has given us over the years…so that, when Kamala says, for the third and final time in the episode, the words “I am for you, Alrik of Valt,” the line has gained so much emotional resonance, so much extra, tragic meaning. In these respects, “The Perfect Mate” is an exceptionally well-crafted piece of writing (though phenomenal performances by the two lead actors help a lot as well!), and just a really moving and thought-provoking episode.

Of course, that comment about the quality of the writing goes down hard when one recalls the idiotic nonsense with the two Ferengi that the writers resort to in order to set aspects of the plot in motion. Prior to this episode, it had (mercifully) been nearly two full seasons since we had last seen Ferengi on TNG. One had almost dared to hope that the show had finally given them up as a failed concept. Instead, “The Perfect Mate” became the first of two instances in which Ferengi would turn up as an inexcusably dumb plot device employed to bring into existence whatever scenario the writers were trying to get us to (in this case, releasing Kamala from her stasis prematurely and then “taking out” the ambassador so that Picard has to work closely with her) while making the regular characters look abysmally stupid and incompetent in the process. It’s incredibly lazy and frustrating, and one is left feeling that surely the writers ought to have been able to come up with something more plausible to maneuver Picard and Kamala together. From the feigned engine trouble and nick-of-time “rescue” via which they get themselves aboard the Enterprise, to the fact of their being allowed to roam the ship freely and even access a cargo bay that is supposed to be restricted to essential personnel, to their usual incredibly grating behavior, the bumbling clumsiness that leads to the stasis field collapsing, and the totally implausible accidental assault on the ambassador that somehow leaves him unconscious for most of the rest of the episode, literally nothing about the role played by the two Ferengi works for me at all. The only saving grace is that, all told, they take up very little of the episode’s running time, so that it is not too difficult, when focusing on all the things that make this an enjoyable episode, to largely forget about the taint of the goddamned Ferengi.

There might well have been a way to make this very enjoyable episode even better—as in, enough so to warrant a full five stars. Excise the Ferengi and find a better way to set things up, and change some dialog here and there in ways that more successfully mitigate the unfortunate sexist and heteronormative aspects of the premise, and maybe I would be canonizing it as an all-time classic. But even as is, this is an episode that inspires a lot of passion from me, and that enriches the show (and my life) as a whole.