I can’t give “The Chase” more than three stars, but I actually enjoyed it somewhat more than I expected to on the rewatch immediately preceding the writing of this review. In a way, it’s sort of like an inverse of the previous episode; whereas “Lessons” had obvious promise but ended up disappointing me, “The Chase” makes a bit more than it really ought be able to out of a fairly ridiculous premise. It’s also one of those TNG episodes whose particular merits and flaws make perfect sense when you look at its writing credits; one imagines that it owes its potent symbolism and thematic resonance largely to Menosky and its rich Picard character moments to Moore…all while exhibiting a level of dubious sci-fi logic and a somewhat ho-hum plot that, frankly, aren’t too unexpected from either of them. Honestly, most of what I like about this episode occurs either in its first ten minutes or so, or at the very end, and I could kind of do without most of what comes in between. But those opening and closing segments do have some good stuff in them!
The visit from the captain’s old archeology professor, and the reflections that it inspires from him, are handled extremely well. It’s actually a little hard to reconcile the image that episodes like “Tapestry” have given us of who Picard was as a young man with that of the studious “star pupil” who looked upon his archeology professor as a surrogate father—but “hard” doesn’t mean “impossible.” No, for me this is a good, productive kind of difficulty, challenging me to imagine the young Jean-Luc as a messy, complex, whole person rather than as some two-dimensional caricature, and helping me to see how, as a young man, he actually contained within himself all the seeds of the person he would eventually become. And, indeed, the episode all but explicitly asks us adopt this view by offering, up front, the symbolism of the many voices within the individual…and then, ultimately, leading to a discovery about an ancient race that contained within it the seeds of everything that all the disparate peoples of Trek would one day become. So, on that broad thematic/symbolic level, the episode definitely works for me. Also, the idea of Picard having connected with this archeology professor in ways that he never did with his father meshes nicely what what previous Moore-penned episodes have established about the captain’s family background, and his line about how “the past is a very insistent voice inside me” (albeit not the one that he listened to when deciding on his life path) ties together so much about this complex and fascinating character whom we’ve seen unfold over the course of almost six seasons. And the wistfulness that Professor Galen’s visit provokes is played just right, without going too far. I’d have called BS, for instance, if asked to believe that the captain was genuinely tempted to leave the Enterprise to join the professor on his expedition, but watching him indulge in moments of longing while remaining self-aware about their meaning and confident in his life choices is a pleasure.
On a plot level, the general outlines of what follows these early scenes are reasonable but hardly riveting. The professor quickly gets himself killed, and the ensuing investigation segues into Picard taking on his unfinished work? Fine. But, first, I could do without Galen turning into a jerk when Picard declines the invitation to accompany him. Second, the hyperbole surrounding the likely outcome of the work (most profound discovery of our time, etc.) never quite rings true, while also invoking the usual trope of big scientific discoveries being made by lone geniuses whose work doesn’t relate to anything that others in the field are doing. Third…does it even need to be said, that the “science” underlying the episode’s central conceit is total nonsense? Granted, it’s a particular type of total nonsense that “fits” with the brand of old-fashioned and somewhat hokey sci-fi that defined much of original Trek, and maybe more than a little of TNG as well. Granted, too, it’s nonsense that works thematically in the context of this episode. But, you know…a few bits of DNA cannot “guide” evolution toward producing an array of broadly similar life forms on scores of different planets, and anyone who thinks that it could is laboring under more fundamental misconceptions about the nature of evolution that I can easily enumerate. And fourth, while I appreciate what the episode is trying to say about the Trek world’s various humanoid races sharing a common…well, not “humanity,” but something symbolically analogous thereto…there’s something about the idea of life in its many forms throughout our region of the galaxy having been “planned,” in a sense, by a parent race that came before it, rather than just being the way that things unfolded, that rubs me a little wrong. I suppose it’s the quasi-theistic feel of the idea that I don’t quite care for? Or, I dunno; maybe it just makes the universe feel a little “small” in a kind of disappointing way. As for the actual plot details: they’re…okay. I don’t quite believe the idea that all of the major alpha quadrant powers (and no one else!) are somehow aware of Dr. Galen’s work and invested in the project of seeing it through, much less that they all converge on it at the same time—and the hijinks, if you will, that ensue are fairly routine. (There’s also an odd loose end of a plot point regarding why the Yridian ship explodes, which the episode seems to just forget about; apparently there was a line explaining it that got cut from the script for some reason. Oh, and Picard beaming down to the planet at the end, even though it’s expected that the Cardassians might show up at any moment, and Riker not objecting to this? That isn’t right.) I do appreciate, though, that the Klingon captain mostly ends up working in harmony with the Enterprise folks, yet remains thoroughly Klingon in the process. Actually, to be honest, I just flat-out like the guy. The scene where he tries to bribe Data is nothing short of hilarious (Data is in top form in this scene, too), and his reactions both to the Cardassian gul’s comment about a recipe for muffins and to the ultimate reveal about the ancient alien race are both funny as well. So, okay, there are some other bits of the episode (in between the opening section and the final moments, I mean) that I do enjoy.
Maybe the strangest thing about the episode is how genuinely affecting I find its final moments, despite them not necessarily seeming entirely earned. True, the story has done a decent job of juxtaposing the squabbling and intrigue of the various players with the idealistic message about unity and connectedness that the ancient alien hologram delivers—and, of course, the episode has been rich throughout with symbolic representations of its basic themes. And then, Picard’s frustration that the aliens’ message seemingly fell on deaf ears obviously sets up the final moments, too. But the Romulan commander who proves, in fact, to have actually taken in the message is someone who only appeared near the very end of the episode, and has had basically zero character development prior to reaching out to Picard at the end. I feel like his overture ought to require more than that to really feel effective; we ought to know him, perhaps even to have seen our characters butting heads with him, before getting to this moment. And yet, it does work for me. Part of is is the wise choice, on the part of the writers, to make it the Romulan commander who makes the overture; the Romulans are both the most cerebral and the least “knowable” of the Federation’s major antagonists, so the acknowledgement of commonality is both more believable and more impactful coming from them than I think it would be from the others. Part of it, too, is the stoicism with which the commander offers up his thoughts; he’s not saying “let’s be friends,” but merely acknowledging what’s been put on the table, and what it could, possibly, mean…not today, for sure, but “one day.” There’s a subtextual sense that, with the childishness of the Klingon’s bluster and the Cardassians’ scheming put to rest, the two adults in the room are sharing a mutual acknowledgement before going their separate ways. It’s hopeful, yet understated, and for me, it was the perfect note on which to end the episode—elevating it, as I noted at the start of the review, into something that kind of transcends both the routine-ness of its plot and the absurdity of its premise.