The Perfect Mate

In this episode Famke Janssen appears as psychic alien beauty who can remake her own personality to suit whatever man she wishes to please. Knowing that she would have to be the focus character of the episode they did a great job with the casting, she more than holds up the episode with her acting.

It is a sort of fun premise too, she looks like a young human woman, but she isn't. She's an entirely different kind of being who simply attracts men like a machine. And as she explains, it's not some kind of subservience, or a role chosen for her, nor is it a vice, or some kind of high. It is her very nature to attract men, as she says like a Vulcan is logical or a Klingon aggressive.

Which leaves men like Riker and Picard feeling very uncomfortable, in a very enjoyable story.

I liked this episode. Picard's sense of duty reminds me of Horatio Hornblower. Hornblower marries a woman whom he does not love, and he does it because she loves him so dearly, and he remains true to her until she dies. These philosophical and ethical discussions is why I love Star Trek so much. Once again I need to write more to fullfil the imdb review board's demand of required characters, so you out there reading this, my fellow ape, soul, star dust creature: I'm glad you enjoy Star Trek as much as I do. I wish you a peaceful day. Say hi to your pet from me. Greetings from frozen november land in Norway.

The Perfect Mate is perhaps a misleading title. The emotional depth of this episode is remarkable and the performance of Famke Janssen is outstanding. The deep emotion that must be dealt with is loss. These are emotions familiar to the characters of Next Generation but presented in such a remarkable and different way. I felt that the use of the Ferengi was a little clumsy here. Another plot might have allowed us to spend more time with Famke.

Great depth and thoughtful story. Well done.

Enterprise transports a passenger and 'cargo' to a peace ceremony.

This is reasonably good character based episode that has some problems but just about works thanks to a number of strong performances.

The plot has good and bad points. I think it works as a character study of both Captain Picard and the guest character Kamala. However, the premise is similar to the original series episode 'Elaan of Troyus' and the Ferengi involvement is poorly written.

Star Trek one off romances never usually work for me, but I found this one slightly better than most due to the performances of Patrick Stewart and in particular Famke Janssen. They do as much as they possibly can in the short time given to this story to convince us that Picard might actually love this character. As ever though, I can never truly accept any burgeoning relationship involving a main character and ultimately want it to fail so it does not affect the status quo.

That being said, Kamala's and Picard's situation works well to drive the plot in an interesting direction. If you want to examine it deeply in the context of gender roles you could perceive problems with Kamala's depiction. A contemporary show probably would have written a male empathic metamorph with female starship Captain (or possibly use non-binary characters) just to avert accusations of sexism, but Kamala is written (and Janssen cast) with a 1990s heterosexual male audience in mind. Importantly though, the writing does at least acknowledge her situation is tragic and regardless of her personality reflecting Picard's notion of female desirability, she is presented with certain amount of freedom to choose her own path.

Visually it works well in the scenes between Picard and Kamala. I like the use of mirrors in some shots, the framing of the two in various scenes, the lighting, set design, makeup, and costuming.

As I mentioned briefly earlier it's the Ferengi scenes that really spoil it with their plot contrivances and the generally annoying characterisations.

Most performances are great, particularly Janssen and Stewart.

This episodes starts off on a bad foot, with goofy Ferengi shenanigans, Riker the Lothario making another appearance, and some cringy "humina humina awoooga!" performances from some extras, but then it settles into an interesting character study and brings with it a fantastic Picard performance.

This episode initially tackles some familiar ground of Trek, with the crew coming to grips with "draconian" rules of an alien society while their own notions contrast with it, but it also shows a new kind of challenge for the crew and why Picard is the man that he is, and why he's the perfect captain for the Enterprise.

This episode is on the better end of the spectrum of "filler" TNG episodes.