Zzzzzzzzzz–snort-ugh, wha? Oh…uh, is the episode over? Sorry; I must have dozed off. Okay, no, but seriously: Is this one even for real? The writers went back to that lamest and tiredest of premises—random wacky aliens who want to “study humanity”—again!? And they made even less of an effort to do something interesting with the idea than in any of the previous episodes based on the exact same premise? It’s a little early in the season to be this hard up for ideas, guys.
“Liaisons” alternates between bits that are dreadfully dull (and all too predictable), and other bits that might be mildly amusing, but are also too silly to take seriously. Everything about the captain and Voval’s shuttle running into random trouble seemingly within minutes of leaving the Enterprise, and crash-landing on a nearby planet, comes across as utterly routine and seen-it-too-many-times-before. The whole setup that gets us to Picard stranded on the planet somehow manages both to feel too quick/straightforward and to plod along and eat up way too much screen time—a sure sign that it just isn’t a very interesting story idea to begin with. Then we get to the “meat” (such as it is) of the story between him and Anna, and she’s so weirdly off-kilter and un-engaging that…well, I won’t claim to have figured out what was really going on right away the first time I saw the episode, but I can say for sure that nothing about the scenario ever felt right or real, or pulled me in in any way. Every time I’ve ever watched this episode, I’ve pretty much waited impatiently through the scenes on the planet. As for the shipboard scenes, they’re largely juvenile and ridiculous, but I at least find them mildly entertaining…even if I also find it a bit frustrating to see the regulars depicted as putting up with the obvious bullshit of the “ambassadors.” I mean, come on; they behave like children, and our people just keep haplessly indulging them…until, finally, the one ambassador’s juvenile behavior at the poker table provokes Worf into an all-out brawl with him (while Riker and Troi mostly just sit there and watch), as though we’re watching a story about middle school children. Neither part of the episode has any actual stakes, despite the Picard part being about him being stranded on a desolate planet with a person who holds him captive and tries to emotionally manipulate him (!). (Similarly to how Worf and Troi put up unrealistically with the ambassadors’ antics, Picard waves away his abduction and attempted sexual assault at the end as though it were nothing.) All in all, I think the writing here is best described as sophomoric.
On a premise level, too, the story is completely incoherent. We have aliens who are perfectly capable of interacting normally (when they choose to) with our characters, yet who are from a society that apparently lacks (and doesn’t even understand) concepts like pleasure, antagonism, love, childhood, or crime. Beings from such a society ought to seem wildly different from “normal” people, and ought to be very difficult to relate to at all—but of course, they aren’t, except when purposely engaging in bizarre behavior designed to elicit instances of the concepts they’re trying to “study.” I mean, allegedly these guys eat solely for nourishment and have no concept of enjoying food…yet, for some reason, they do apparently have taste buds that react to food very similarly to how human taste buds do, and are readily capable of experiencing this alien concept called “deliciousness” when exposed to it. This, somehow, makes sense? Similarly, they clearly understand enough about antagonism to know how to provoke Worf—and they are capable of recognizing that they may have transgressed against others’ norms and apologizing for it, yet they supposedly have no idea what “crime” would be all about. Not for the first time (think “Allegiance” from season three), we have the problem here that a story about aliens “studying” humanity features them already seemingly awfully conversant with the “human” concepts that they claim to find foreign and strange. (Indeed, to a considerable extent, this entire episode amounts to a lesser rehash of (the already fairly mediocre) “Allegiance,” with Picard abducted by some of the aliens while others conduct their “research” aboard the ship.)
Anyway, enough said. There are worse episodes, but this one is pretty dumb.