Sub Rosa (⭑)

And so, we come to the episode in which Crusher gets sexually assaulted by a ghost, then promptly falls in love with “him.” Oof. Season seven of TNG has more than its share of bad episodes, but whereas many of them are bad in relatively humdrum, forgettable ways, “Sub Rosa” stands out. Regrettably, it’s also one of the first episodes that comes to my mind when I think about TNG’s final season. It’s not that this season is all bad (hell, check out the episode following this one!)—but far too much of it is, and this episode has sort of become emblematic of that, in my mind. This is, to be blunt, a profoundly dumb piece of work. (Another reviewer has gone as far as to call this “TNG’s equivalent to ‘Spock’s Brain,'” and I find the comparison reasonably apt.)

I shouldn’t even need to say this, but Star Trek should not do ghost stories. And let’s not kid ourselves; a ghost story is precisely what “Sub Rosa” is. Yes, it papers that over with a token bit of technobabble so that it can pretend to be sci-fi (the key nonsense word for the week, boys and girls, is “anaphasic”) and stop short of venturing definitively into the realm of the supernatural, but this is a clear case of a distinction without a difference. Besides the fact that labeling Ronin an “anaphasic life form” rather than a ghost changes nothing about his nature, there is also the fact that, narratively, the story indulges in all the tropes of, and deploys all the trappings of, a ghost story. (The superstitious quasi-servant character who somehow knows all about Ronin but only offers cryptic, overwrought warnings about the house being haunted and whatnot is perhaps the most out-of-place element, but there are plenty of others. I mean, there’s even a scene with a spookily reanimated corpse!) Look: Weird energy beings of various kinds abound in Star Trek, and while I might personally have preferred for the show to feature way less of this sort of thing than it does, that in itself is not the issue here. Nor, for that matter, do I necessarily object to a Trek story in which events or phenomena initially appear to be supernatural, but are eventually revealed to be explicable by rational means. Such a story, however, ought to be, thematically, about these conflicting ways of understanding the world, at least on some level—and weird energy beings, if they must exist in a Trek story, ought to have some kind of genuine idea behind them (not just a made-up word purporting to “explain” them), and ought to serve some kind of (for want of a better word) “science-fiction-y” narrative purpose. And none of that is true here; this is just a ghost story for the sake of a ghost story, technobabble or no. As such, it’s wildly out of place in a Star Trek show.

Not only is “Sub Rosa” a ghost story—it’s a supernatural gothic romance…and it’s hokey as all hell. Beverly Crusher, however poorly served as a character by the show as a whole, has at least been (until now) consistently portrayed as a rational, level-headed person. For her to read her deceased grandmother’s journals and be intrigued by the old woman’s account of her mysterious, much younger lover, is one thing. But for the said lover to manifest as a ghost and assault her, and for her to then, the following morning, suddenly be all gooey with romantic feelings for (him?), and to lie-by-omission to Troi about the situation, and to go on behaving in an increasingly erratic and irrational manner, even to the point of resigning from Starfleet to live with the sexy ghost in her dead grandmother’s house? All with essentially no explanation whatsoever? All of this is nothing less than insulting, both to the character and to the audience. (Let’s not forget, just for comparison, how impressively and relatably the doctor kept her wits about her, despite being enmeshed in a much more baffling predicament, back in “Remember Me.”) Also, this is still TNG, and the show is no better at convincingly depicting romance here than it has usually been in the past. Even putting aside the fact that he’s a ghost, nothing about Ronin ever feels real or convincing or emotionally compelling at all, which makes it entirely impossible for the viewer to occupy Beverly’s head space as the story progresses. I’d say that the episode is a load of melodramatic nonsense, but honestly, even the melodrama feels phoned-in. More accurately, then, the episode is an over-the-top cheese-fest of unintentionally goofy awkwardness and characters (well, mainly just the one) behaving weirdly for no discernible reason.

Plot coherence is also notably absent. I mean, not that I’m inclined to take anything about the whole “anaphasic life form” premise particularly seriously…but, if I were to attempt the suspension of disbelief necessary to at some level buy into it: Crusher says that anaphasic energy is unstable and needs an organic host to maintain “cohesion”—but also, it can apparently inhabit…a special candle (?). Oh, and it conveniently also has the ability to manipulate the colony’s climate control system. But there are certainly no clear rules governing the extent, nature, or limits of its abilities (and, let’s be honest, the real reason why the writers made it able to mess with the climate grid is to justify having atmospheric, moody weather appropriate to a romantic ghost story, complete with eerie, green-for-some-reason mist). Quint claims that the ghost caused Beverly’s grandmother nothing but misery, and suggests that if Beverly isn’t careful, she’ll swiftly follow her grandmother to the grave; but the grandmother lived to be 100 years old and died of natural causes, and her journals, says Beverly, indicate that Ronin actually made her happy (?). Taking corporeal form, Ronin says, is very difficult for him, yet he seems perfectly capable of doing it whenever the writers want him to; also, he can make flowers mysteriously appear all over the house, because why not. Beverly falls under his sway for no obvious reason, until alarming events manage to snap her out out of it, and then, all at once, she makes several huge intuitive leaps concerning his true nature, rather than her or anyone else doing any kind of interesting investigative or deductive work to figure out what’s going on. (Data and Geordi plod along in the background trying to fix the malfunctioning weather controls, but their involvement is largely inconsequential.) Also, the said malfunctioning weather controls somehow manage to affect conditions aboard the Enterprise at one point, basically as a half-baked excuse for an un-funny, and lamentably characteristic for teleplay writer Brannon Braga, visual gag involving fog on the bridge. Fucking dumb.

I prefer to pretend that this episode doesn’t exist.