Man of the People

More of those monsters from the Id are in this TNG episode as the Enterprise picks up Federation Ambassador Charles Lucia for a mediation job on another planet. Accompanying him on the trip is an aged woman identified as his mother.

But she dies as the trip gets started. She's old and haggard and has a warning to Deanna Troi about getting to close to her son.

Still Lucia is a charming guy and Marina Sirtis is drawn to him. But a very strange thing happens. I'm sure Marina Sirtis must have loved this episode giving her a chance to show a different view of Deanna Troi. First she turns into a raging nymphomaniac and then starts to age.

I can't do better than what another viewer said in that this was a TNG adaption of Dorian Grey with Marina Sirtis serving as a living painting for Lucia's Id type feelings.

Seeing a different Marina Sirtis makes this episode worthwhile viewing.

I had, up until S05E05 "Disaster," believed Troi's lack of character roundness and frequent relegation to gendered archetypal genre tropes (passive, agreeable, deferential, etc.) to be an elaborate set-up for a dramatic reversal in which she throws off her constraints to take on a central role as agent in her *very own character episode,* if not two or three!

"Man of the People" could have been one of these desperately-needed modulations, but instead it's another iteration of "Skin of Evil," "The Child," and "The Loss" -- episodes in which Deanna, powerless, is placed within a cage from which she must be extracted, given -- most damningly -- no tools with which to do so herself.

Though I have not yet completed the series, I fear Troi's story will apex in direct service of Ryker's romance arc, rather than that of her own self-actualization -- the base variables of which have yet to be exposed.

This is one of the worst. Troi becomes infested by, not the spirit of a dead woman, but something else entirely. I won't spoil it but what it is makes her extremely sexualized and she becomes horrid to everyone. As the episode goes on it becomes more stupid and yet oddly logically, the connections to Dorian Grey are apt. To a large extent, this episode isn't worth it.

I liked this better than any other Troi-centric episode.

She does not cry, and is used in an unusual manner.

Although some of the makeup is badly applied, it can be forgiven.

The story is a little shallow, and the security team is weak in order to support the weak story. All-in-all, I stayed engaged with the entire episode.

I love this show, saw the whole thing first run and have watched it repeatedly since. Nonetheless, this is one of the worst episodes of any series I've ever seen. As others have noted, we again have a plot in which Troi is violated. But even setting aside the misogynistic aspects of this episode it is poorly written, lacks internal logic, and has an eye-rolling by the numbers climactic run to the finish. And if you're willing to set aside all those issues, it's still just a dumb episode. IMDb is insisting I add another hundred and three characters but I have nothing more to add. 16 to go......