The Perfect Mate

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.

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.

I apologize in advance that this will not so much be a review of this episode, as it is my opinion of what is wrong with the way many seem to be watching and rating TV shows and movies nowadays.

As for the episode itself, it was better than I expected from the single-sentence summary I read before watching it. The story has a tragic aspect to it, because it involves a woman who was specifically raised with the sole purpose of being nothing but a gift, to be handed over during the signing of a peace treaty. The story ends with a rather unexpected twist that makes it all the more tragic. What makes the episode particularly nice, is that it gives us a more personal look into Picard's personage than we're generally used to. Despite the serious subject matter, there are quite a bit of humorous scenes to lighten it up. Highly recommended.

Now, as I stated before, my only expectations of this episode were based on a single sentence that summarizes the plot. For the rest I know I am watching an early nineties show with a mid-sized budget and a tight schedule. I am fully aware it is not as refined as present-day shows written by people who studied all the flaws in all older shows in televised history. Therefore I do not expect the same rigor. There was a particular moment in this episode where I thought: "boy, that is some poor security for a 24th-century space ship." However, it was obvious that this part of the story was completely secondary to the main subject, therefore I immediately ignored it under suspension of disbelief. When going through the other reviews however, I find another recent one that completely disses the entire episode just because of that exact same shortcut in the plot.

Yes, a Ferengi simply walking into a cargo bay that was earlier on explicitly requested to have increased security, is sloppy writing. But no, this does not break the entire episode as the reviewer insinuates. Maybe if this episode would have been released today this would be unacceptable, but it is 24 years old. If you're going to apply present-day expectations to something from a quarter century ago, it may be better not to watch it at all.

This is not the first time I bump into a review like that. Even beyond TV and movie reviews I notice this same kind of behavior being on the march: creating completely unreasonable expectations based on either incomplete information or inappropriate frames-of-reference, or both; and then being extremely disappointed when those expectations are not perfectly met. That is one sure way to be disappointed with pretty much everything. If you want to go back to enjoying things, make minimal assumptions about them. Take things for what they are, not what you thought them to be based on whatever rigid models or misleading advertisements (like movie trailers, which I avoid if I can). Of course, whoever wants to turn themselves into a complete sourpuss, is free to ignore this advice, but I would appreciate it if one would not try to spread this kind of acidity across the world.

In her first role, Famke matches quiet intensity with Patrick Stewart with ease. The chemistry with these two was superb, as well as Famke's scenes with the other Costars. While the role depended on her beauty, she brought a grace to the show that had me hoping for a future reunion that never occured. The ending gave me the feeling I get when reading the final pages of a fine novel. I felt I was leaving something behind.

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.