This is yet another worthless waste of an episode. As usual, one-dimensionality combined with (one assumes) budget limitations lead to a total lack of believability that permeates the episode: the POTW society, the reactions of the kids to being abducted, the reactions of their parents, etc. Are we truly expected to believe, by the way, that “humans are unusually attached to their offspring”? Other races really don’t feel similarly? Anyway, what exactly did this society hope to accomplish by kidnapping a total of seven children? It’s just laughable. Plus, a recycled idea that was already way overused in TOS is shoehorned in (without even being developed much at all) seemingly just for the hell of it: the society run by computers, where no one knows how anything works anymore. Here, this trite concept coexists with the wildly inconsistent notion that the society possesses advanced knowledge that it can offer to the Enterprise in exchange for the kidnapped children. Huh? To say that the mythical Aldea cheesily talked up by Riker in the teaser fails to live up to the hype would be a considerable understatement. (Plus, I’m inclined to call bullshit on the concept of the “cloaked planet.” However we choose to judge the plausibility of cloaking devices for starships, the idea that an entire planet could be concealed beyond the ability of Federation technology to detect it just pushes my personal suspension of disbelief too far. I won’t claim that I can speak authoritatively on this from a science plausibility perspective, but I just find it hard to swallow.)
The Aldean shield ought to be truly amazing in its invulnerability if they think that they can hide behind it after abducting a bunch of children (clearly an act of war) and expect it to withstand anything that Starfleet might throw at it—and the main characters certainly behave as though they see themselves as being in a serious predicament. They don’t even so much as discuss the fact that even if they can’t recover the children on their own, they have an entire fleet of other ships that could be called upon as needed. And yet, conveniently, this super-spiffy shield proves easily permeable with a little bit of study on the part of the crew as soon as the episode’s plot needs it to be.
There’s also the usual pointlessly meandering plot. What was the actual point, for instance, of Wesley’s “passive resistance” tactic? Since it doesn’t actually go anywhere, the point was apparently just to fill time in the episode. Most of the rest of the episode is filled out with posturing between Picard and the Aldean leader about whether negotiations will happen or not, etc.—not to mention the convenient delay provided by the “Aldeans demonstrate their power by sending the Enterprise a long ways away” idea. Then, finally, Dr. Crusher figures out the medical problem underlying the society’s situation, and the whole conflict vanishes—again, the usual first-season formula. How terribly dramatic and interesting! The sudden total change of attitude and show of insight and wisdom by the Aldean leader when his control is taken away and he is shown the power source behind his society’s technology, and the comically rushed resolution of all the society’s problems in the last couple of minutes of the episode (ozone layer: restored! fatal genetic malady: cured!), fully live up to many of the worst aspects of the bad rap that is often associated with TNG as a series. Was some sort of message about the flaws in the Aldean way of life intended here, with (presumably) a relevant analogy to the real world implied? If so, it’s lost on me. Also, as in other cases this season, the attempt at comic relief in the show’s final scene fails completely; it’s not even remotely funny. This is an utter shitisode.