This is a pretty down-the-middle, three-star episode: not bad, but not great either. It holds my interest while I’m watching it, but for the most part, it doesn’t really…matter to me in any way, either positively or negatively. I guess that’s not a terribly flattering thing to say about a piece of entertainment, but there are also much worse things that could be said! And again, I do find it reasonably diverting while I’m watching it, and one or two things about it will be worth mentioning in a positive way. So, yeah…a very medium episode.
From a narrative point of view, I suppose the two most salient things to talk about are a) the episode’s furthering of the Worf/Troi romantic pairing, and b) the reveal, near the end, that much of what we’ve been watching didn’t “really happen.” Taken together, these elements leave us with the interesting situation wherein Worf and Troi have now each, separately, had alternate-reality experiences in which the two of them were a romantic couple (Worf in “Parallels,” and Troi in this episode). These two still make no sense as a couple, and I won’t stray from that stance; still, I always did think this pair of episodes to be a clever way for the writers to introduce the idea of them, and start to maneuver them toward each other, if indeed they (for whatever reason) were going to do so. It establishes for the audience the idea that each character is starting to feel something for the other, but without much of anything having actually happened between them. If I were into the idea of them as a couple, and if TNG were a more serialized show and had followed up in a more robust way on the threads laid down in these two episodes (and if the whole thing weren’t such an eleventh-hour character dynamic for the show), I would probably really like this whole parallel-alternate-reality lead-in (and even as things actually were, I still actually kind of dig it). Each episode ends with its respective protagonist testing the waters with the other just slightly in “real life,” too, which makes it possible to imagine how things might actually progress between them from here. So, it’s nice to see the writers being willing to shake up the status quo among the regular characters just a little bit, and of course, this all will be picked up on in a fruitful way in the series finale, so that’s cool. Would it be even cooler if I could believe, even for one second, that these two actually felt this way about each other? Absolutely. But still, there’s something to appreciate in this. Coming back to this actual episode, though, there’s also the question of how to feel, as a viewer, about having the rug pulled out from under most of its events at the end. I mean, from the moment when Troi shoots Worf, it becomes obvious that we must be in some kind of fantasy or dream or alternate reality, but… Some, I suppose, might feel like most of the episode is invalidated by the “it wasn’t real” reveal. I don’t really feel that way myself, though, since the all-in-Troi’s-head events do the character work of surfacing Troi’s (alleged) feelings for Worf. In effect, I find the story structure effective and the narrative purpose clear; I just don’t really believe in the key character dynamic. (Also, I have historically had a difficult time tracking exactly which events did or didn’t “really happen.” I think I followed it this time, though. Many have pointed out in the past that the Worf/Riker exchange in Ten-Forward was “real,” but I seem to remember feeling unsure, in the past, whether that was the case or not. I see now, though, that that does seem to be what was intended.) Finally, I recommend both Jammer’s review for his remarks about the overwrought melodrama of the latter part of the episode and how the writers wash their hands of it, and the thoughts of my favorite commenter on Jammer’s site, William B, about how a role-switched version of the Worf/Troi story might have worked better.
Leaving these narrative concerns aside, then, what of the episode’s plot? Well, I’d call it a mixed bag. The mystery of why Kwan committed suicide, and then what’s going on with Troi’s weird experiences at the scene of the incident, plays well enough, and watching the characters pursue the investigation (with nothing much else of note going on aboard the ship, notwithstanding a few tidbits about a mission to transport medical supplies that fill in some of the background) is agreeable enough. On the other hand, the “empathic imprint” idea upon which the entire plot hangs is a little out there for my tastes. Yes, telepathy/”empathic awareness” have always been part of TNG’s premise (for good or ill), and I’ve always had to suspend disbelief about it in order to be a fan of the show. Still, Troi suddenly being able to witness/experience past events that took place in a room because of some freak interaction between her empathic ability and some technobabble of the week pushes my limits a bit, and the whole concept of characters reliving/re-enacting a traumatic sequence of events from someone else’s past because of “psychic residue” or whatever is a little too ghost-story-ish for what I want out of Trek. It’s not on the level of “Sub Rosa,” but it’s still not entirely to my liking. But, whatever. Star Trek has never been what one would call “hard” sci-fi, nor would I even entirely want it to be; it’s just that, sometimes, it goes a bit further in the other direction than I would prefer, and this is an example of that. Taking the “imprint” as a given, though, the episode’s plot is put together pretty well, with the idea coming up early on so that the reveal at the end doesn’t feel out of nowhere, and with Worf and Troi already working closely together (and seemingly starting to develop a degree of intimacy) before the imaginary sequence commences. Finally, while it ought to feel a bit “edgy” for TNG to weave a story around Starfleet officers who engaged in petty/cruel romantic betrayals, and even a murder motivated by romantic jealousy, in actual fact this all elicits pretty muted reactions, both from the characters and from the audience. Granted, the events took place eight years in the past among characters we don’t know, but still—it is kind of lightly glossed over, isn’t it?
Other than noting my appreciation for the brief Data/Geordi conversation about suicide, I think that exhausts what I have to say about “Eye of the Beholder.”