Clues (⭑⭑⭑)

I don’t especially like this episode, but I’m not sure that I can adequately justify my reaction to it. I also have a somewhat different relationship to this one than I do to all other TNG episodes. I happened to miss it when it originally aired, and while this was true for a fair number of episodes, I never chanced to see “Clues” when it re-ran, either, until several years later. It wasn’t until after TNG had completed its final season, in fact, that I managed to catch this particular episode in the cycle of reruns. By that point, I had seen every other episode of the series at least once (and most many times). “Clues,” in other words, became the last loose end of TNG for me—the final instance (when I eventually did catch it) of me seeing a TNG episode for the first time. Does the fact that I first saw it only years later, rather than contemporaneously with the rest of season four, affect my perspective on it? Do I regard it less indulgently than I do other episodes because of a lack of nostalgic attachment—or because, as the last episode that I was able to view with “virgin eyes,” I simply wanted more from it than it could give? I can’t say for sure. I can only say that, while I suppose that it’s fine, for what it is…I just don’t really like it.

There is certainly some potential for fun in the idea of the crew discovering a series of little discrepancies that eventually add up to the conclusion that they are “missing” a day, and then pursuing the mystery of why, and of what happened during that day. But I just feel like there needed to be something more than that, to justify making the episode. Not every episode of TNG necessarily has something super deep and meaningful to say, but most of them at least have something to say. The closest that “Clues” comes to this is in Picard’s reflection on the irresistible nature of a mystery, but it feels pretty perfunctory. For the story to really grab me, I think, there would need to have been something interesting at the heart of the mystery. The Paxans’ xenophobia doesn’t fit that bill—at least, not as presented (in a few brief lines of expository dialog concerning a people whom we don’t even get to meet, save in the form of one of them possessing Counselor Troi). It’s a macguffin that fulfills a plot need, but not a concept that provides the foundation for a story. It’s also not really enough to get me over the hurdle of accepting the uncharacteristic decision of Picard’s that the whole story turns on. On one hand, it’s admittedly hard to see what better alternative he could have chosen, given the situation of having encountered aliens who insist on remaining unknown to outsiders and who have the power and the will to ensure this by destroying the Enterprise. But it feels like a cheat. We’re not sold on the reality of these aliens’ extreme perspective, or given a chance to chew on it, or to come to sympathize with it at all; we’re merely presented with it as a fact and asked to roll with what our heroes have already tried to do to deal with it. If Captain Picard is going to be shown making the decision to hide the truth and orchestrate a cover-up that includes ordering Data to lie…that’s a character choice that should feel significant, should mean something! But as presented here, it really doesn’t. On top of that, the characters themselves aren’t even allowed much time to digest the situation and react to it like characters. Both in the flashback-telling of how things went down the “first time” and in the decision to try again, our characters are shown as being presented with this strange and kind of extreme problem and pretty much just immediately coming up with a pretty “out there” solution. (A solution that involves willingly having all their memories altered—and this by xenophobic and potentially hostile aliens whom they’ve just met, no less!) Nothing about this rings true for me.

A second problem is that the mystery is just not played very effectively. Instead of the whole situation genuinely feeling mysterious and creepy and engaging, it all too quickly becomes about the fact that Data is clearly lying for some reason. If Data were at least played straight, so that the audience could not see almost right away that something is up with him, that would be one improvement. Even better would be if Data’s memories had been altered along with everyone else’s, so that none of them knew what had really happened. Scenes of Picard interrogating Data and Data refusing to provide answers get old fast, but a scenario in which the characters were all, together, trying to unravel a mystery of their own making? That could have been fun. Also, I just don’t quite believe in anyone’s behavior once the rest of the characters become suspicious of Data. The scene in which Picard sends Data out of the observation lounge on a bogus pretext so that they can discuss what’s up with him is not handled at all deftly, and everyone’s emotional reactions to Data suddenly seeming untrustworthy feel very muted. (Though on the other hand, Picard’s line about how Data is likely to be “stripped down to your wires to find out what the hell has gone wrong” strikes a discordant note for me in the other direction, especially coming from a man who has fought harder than anyone else to secure legal recognition of Data’s rights as a person.) It’s as though the writers are much more interested in playing “what circumstance could make Data lie?” than in showing our characters genuinely reacting, as people, to him doing so.

If I wanted, I could nitpick further. It just feels like there are number of things that are subtly off about “Clues.” It’s situated at a point in the series when the writers have otherwise become quite comfortable depicting “down time” aboard the Enterprise and making it feel like a fleshed-out community rather than strictly a duty-and-mission-oriented setting, but the opening captain’s log here seems like it’s trying a little too hard in this respect. This is also the only episode past season two in which we see Picard doing Dixon Hill in the holodeck, and while the Dixon Hill scenes are fine, they feel enough like a throwback to contribute to a vague sense that the writers of “Clues” have not really been watching the show this season. Also, the Dixon Hill bit is yet another instance of our captain trying to indulge in a bit of off-duty recreation, only to be interrupted and called back to work before he gets very far. Argh.

Having said all of this, I remain very much on the fence about how to rate “Clues.” I’ve given it three stars (as a revision from my initial two-star rating), but very grudgingly. I like it decidedly less than any other three-star episode to date, but I also acknowledge that calling it a two-star was going too far. After all, there’s nothing cringe-worthy or blatantly problematic about it, and while the story doesn’t (as I said) really grab me, neither does it, say, actively bore me. Maybe it comes down to a thing that I’ve observed before: that the writers were skillful enough at depicting the characters and the world by this point in the show’s run that even when an episode doesn’t really work, it (usually) remains basically watchable. So, sure, we’re not looking at the level of ineptness that characterizes a two-star offering here–but we’re still looking at an episode that just isn’t very good.