This episode is sort of the opposite of the previous one (“The Dauphin”), in that it has just never really worked for me, even though I gather that it is (relatively) highly regarded by many fans. It strikes me as a patched-together conglomeration of disparate story ideas, none of which is very compelling. In fact, although it’s nowhere near as bad as this makes it sound, it’s hard not to notice the strong story resemblance between this episode and the first season’s “The Last Outpost”: both feature a standoff between the Enterprise and an enemy vessel in which each ship ends up being disabled by the technology left over from an ancient, defunct empire!
At first, it looks like this episode is going to be a “rogue Starfleet captain doing something stupid” story, but that element goes nowhere, other than to bring the Enterprise into the neutral zone. The pretext for going there is paper-thin, but this point is never really addressed; that’s just not what the episode wants to be about. Since we do go there, though, the Romulans inevitably become involved—and for a brief moment, when the Yamato is suddenly destroyed while the Romulans hover menacingly nearby, and no one can immediately tell what has just happened, the episode threatens to actually get interesting. But then it segues into a story about a rash of malfunctions aboard the Enterprise, which presumably presage its own eventual destruction. Now, to be fair, “a rash of odd malfunctions” does sometimes work all right as a story element, as long as it is used to serve larger dramatic purposes and doesn’t last too long. In this case, though, there’s really no interesting engineering detective work, or really much of anything at all, to give it purpose—nor is there much else of interest going on in the episode. Basically, Geordi suddenly figures out that the probe is the problem, and then there’s a very artificially-manufactured-feeling tension-filled sequence in which he has to race to the bridge to prevent the ship’s destruction, because intraship communication is not functioning. The episode then moves on to other loosely connected story elements before eventually getting around to having the characters hit upon a boringly obvious solution to the malfunctions. Meanwhile, the involvement of the Romulans in the episode is completely wasted; they loom threateningly, then fall prey to the same rash of malfunctions as the Enterprise, but there’s really no story involving them.
As for the remaining story elements: The Enterprise goes to the planet that the captain of the Yamato was in the neutral zone investigating, in search of answers; Picard leads an away team over Riker’s objection, with Riker backing down much too easily (and to no real story purpose); on the planet, they discover a pretty nifty portal technology, but the story refuses to really be about this technology, its use, or anything like that; and Picard pulls some intuitive leaps out of thin air (almost literally, judging by his dialog) to the effect that hey, maybe the ancient Iconians (of whom we’ve never heard before and will never hear again, mind) weren’t conquerors after all, but were instead peaceful explorers like us. But…so what? Picard then stays behind on the planet long enough to destroy the portal technology so that the Romulans won’t get their hands on it—and in the dumbest story move of the whole episode, he totally fails to even try to time his escape through the portal in such a way as to get himself back to the ship, even though he totally could do so (and indeed, Worf has just done so moments earlier)! Instead, he just calmly resigns himself to ending up god-knows-where in a very cavalier fashion and for no reason at all…only to end up, thanks to an amazing stroke of luck, on the Romulan ship, from which he is then able to be beamed back to the Enterprise. What?
This episode is notable both for introducing Picard’s interest in archeology and for featuring his first-ever replicator order of “Tea, Earl Grey, hot.” Honestly, though, I rather wish that these things would turn out, upon looking back, to have first cropped up in a quality episode (as is the case with the poker game motif)! Alas, however—while not painfully bad in the manner of a one-star travesty, this very unfocused and uninspired episode just plain isn’t very good.