angel one star trek tng

Angel One (episode)

• View history

While Riker leads an away team to a female-dominated planet, a mysterious virus spreads among the Enterprise crew.

• 1.2 Act One
• 1.3 Act Two
• 1.4 Act Three
• 1.5 Act Four
• 1.6 Act Five
• 1.7 Log entry
• 2 Memorable quotes
• 3.1 Production history
• 3.2 Story and production
• 3.3 Cast and characters
• 3.4 Props and sets
• 3.5 Continuity
• 3.6 Reception
• 3.7 Video and DVD releases
• 4.1 Starring
• 4.2 Also starring
• 4.3 Guest stars
• 4.4 Co-star
• 4.5 Uncredited co-stars
• 4.6 Stand-ins
• 4.7 References
• 4.8 Deleted references
• 4.9 External links

Summary [ ]

The USS Enterprise -D has discovered the wreckage of the Odin , a freighter that disappeared seven years earlier . It was disabled by a collision with an asteroid , and there are no life signs on board, but three escape pods have been discovered missing. The Enterprise travels to Angel I , the nearest class M planet, to search for the freighter's survivors. Angel I is a female-dominated society , ruled by six elected mistresses and a leader known simply as "the Elected One ". It has been 62 years since the last Federation contact with the planet .

The Enterprise hails the planet, and Captain Picard suggests Troi speak with the Elected One, Mistress Beata . Although initially wary, she agrees to let an away team beam down to visit the planet.

Act One [ ]

" The away team's ready, sir. "

As the away team heads for the transporter room, they encounter Wesley and a friend entering the holodeck for a skiing lesson in the Denubian Alps . The away team of Data , Riker , Troi, and Yar beam down to the planet, where they meet with Beata and ask about any survivors that might be on the planet. Still suspicious, she asks why they are only coming now, and Troi explains that the Enterprise 's discovery of the freighter was unexpected. Their only purpose in coming is to simply find any survivors and bring them home to their families. Another member of the council, Ariel , expresses her misgivings, and Beata refuses to tell them if there are survivors. Instead, Beata's male servant, Trent , takes them to another room where they will stay until summoned. Troi reckons that Beata's refusal to tell them about the survivors confirms that there are in fact survivors.

Petitioning the Mistresses

Back on the Enterprise , Picard tells Worf in the turbolift that all department heads will have to prepare for a trip to the Neutral Zone when the away team returns, as Romulan battle cruisers have been detected near one of the Federation's border posts. As they pass the holodeck, they are hit by a snowball thrown by Wesley. Picard scolds him. He also detects an unusual smell that Worf identifies as Night-Blooming Throgni , a Klingon scent.

Data is investigating some perfume when Trent returns to bring them back to the council chambers. Beata tells them that, although the decision was not unanimous, they have decided to tell them about the survivors. She says there were four of them, and their leader is a man named Ramsey . However, they are now fugitives in hiding: some time after arriving on Angel I, they started to abuse the hospitality they received and began to cause trouble. She warns Troi that they are dangerous.

Act Two [ ]

" …it's kind of sexy! "

Meanwhile, Dr. Crusher tells Picard that Wes and his friend are sick with a respiratory ailment. She is, however, working on a vaccine . On the planet, Data suggests that they can locate the survivors by searching for platinum , an element not found on Angel I, but which would have been brought by the survivors. Data asks La Forge to break orbit and to begin the search. Riker is brought an outfit worn by the men of the planet, as he wants to wear it when he meets Beata, to impress her by wearing indigenous apparel. Troi and Yar find his appearance wearing the outfit hilarious, however.

Dr. Crusher examines Captain Picard in his ready room . She pronounces him unfit for command and orders him to bed. He relents and tells La Forge while stumbling to the turbolift that he has command. La Forge sits in the captain's chair , and Worf tells him the platinum has been located on the planet. Riker meets with Beata and tells her the Enterprise has found the location of the survivors. Ariel is still suspicious and tells Riker this, then she storms out. Riker waits with Beata and tells Yar to begin the search. She, Data, and Troi beam to the location of the platinum, a cave mouth, where they meet a man who says he's been expecting them.

Act Three [ ]

Crusher tells La Forge there are 82 more cases of the virus and she's converted a holodeck to deal with it. Worf then leaves the bridge to go to sickbay . Meanwhile, Yar tells Ramsey how they found him, and tells him they're bringing him home. He shocks them by telling them he doesn't want to leave as he and the others are happy. They have wives and in some cases children.

Diplomatic courtesy

Beata tells Riker that Ramsey and his friends are anarchists and outlaws. She starts flirting with him, and as they start to kiss, Trent walks in with a present that Riker has brought for her. He shows her the Albeni meditation crystal , before they get back to kissing. Ramsey tells the rest of the away team that at first, they thought Angel I was great, but then they saw how the men had no respect and were discriminated against. When they spoke out, they were forced to become fugitives. He refuses to leave, and Data adds that they can't force him, as he and his crew are not members of Starfleet , nor do they have to obey the Prime Directive . Crusher tells La Forge there are more sick than beds, and he remarks they'd be seriously undermanned if they were forced to take action against the Romulans.

Yar contacts La Forge, asking to beam the three of them to their previous location, where they will regroup with Riker and return to the ship. He informs them that one-third of the crew has been infected and more Romulan vessels are converging in the Neutral Zone. Ramsey won't tell them how he knew they were coming, but after they beam away, Ariel comes out of the cave and kisses him.

Riker is with Beata when Trent enters and tells her that the away team hasn't got the survivors. Yar fills in Riker, and then Beata says she is forced to sentence the survivors to death.

Act Four [ ]

Sick aboard ship

Dr. Crusher visits Picard in his quarters to give him some medicine and notices the same odor that Picard smelled at the holodeck. She realizes that the virus is caused by an airborne particle whose sweet scent induces deep inhalation and that this is the way the virus spreads. Down on the planet, Data tells Riker that seven Romulan battle cruisers are now in the vicinity of the outpost, and the USS Berlin has responded to the distress call. However, the presence of the Enterprise is still regarded as a vital show of strength by Starfleet.

Beata brings in Ramsey and his crew, whom she found by having Ariel followed. She tells Riker that the fugitives are to be executed tomorrow. Riker is outraged and asks her for another chance to convince Ramsey to leave with them. She agrees, but Ramsey still won't go. Riker wants to beam them aboard anyway, against their will, in violation of regulations. However, Dr. Crusher won't allow anyone to come aboard the ship. La Forge has succumbed to the virus, and she can't find a cure. Riker orders Data to beam up and take the Enterprise to the Neutral Zone before it is too late.

Act Five [ ]

Data in command

The next day, Trent invites them to come to the execution. Data contacts them and says they still have time for Dr. Crusher to develop a vaccine before their ship has to leave for the Neutral Zone: 47 minutes to be exact. Riker agrees to attend the execution, which will be carried out by disintegrating the fugitives . Riker makes a speech about how Beata is trying to hold back evolution , which can't be done, and warns her that she'll just make a martyr out of Ramsey. At the last second, she relents and adjourns to reconsider. Crusher informs Data that she has devised an inoculant. Data then informs Riker that the Enterprise is ready for the away team to return. Riker instructs Data to maintain a lock on the away team and Ramsey's group but to stand by for further instructions. Beata then returns and says she's decided to stay the executions, and she exiles Ramsey and his followers to a remote region. It's not quite as hospitable as the rest of the planet, but she is confident that if they work hard, they can make a life for themselves… and be free to live as they please.

The away team returns to the Enterprise and is inoculated by Dr. Crusher against the virus. Captain Picard, although hoarse, has returned to the bridge , and the ship heads for the Neutral Zone.

Log entry [ ]

• Captain's log, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D), 2364

Memorable quotes [ ]

" I think I may sneeze. " " A Klingon sneeze? " " Only kind I know. "

" Ever feel like you're not really wanted? "

" Save us some deep powder. " " No problem, sir. The holodecks have all you'll ever need. "

" Engineering reports computer ma… ah… ACHOO!! …I'm sorry, I'm getting sick. " " I'm sure half the ship knows that by now. "

" On the Enterprise , Mr. Crusher, nothing just happens! "

" Make it so! "

" You can't rescue a man from what he calls his home. "

" It looks horrible, tastes worse, but it's absolutely guaranteed to make you feel better. "

" I must say, Commander, it looks kinda sexy! " " Thank you. Actually, it feels quite comfortable."

(hoarsely) " Mr. Data, set course for the Neutral Zone. Warp six. " " Coordinates set. Warp six, on your mark, sir. " (inaudibly) " Engage. " " Sir? " (Picard turns to Riker, who gives the order) " Engage. "

" We have determined that the heretical teachings of Ramsey and his followers are inconsistent with harmonious life on Angel I. Our patient efforts to silence revolutionary voices have failed. Therefore, we are left with none but the most final alternative. " (Trent demonstrates the device used on Angel I for executions, vaporizing a vase) " As you can see, we are not without compassion. Your deaths will be swift and painless. "

" After careful consideration this legislature has voted to stay the executions of the prisoners. Their children will be returned to them immediately. Do not rejoice prematurely. Ramsey and his followers are to be exiled to a distant and unpopulated region. Life will be difficult there, with little time for revolutionary or evolutionary upheaval. As some have observed we may not be able to stop evolution, but perhaps we can reduce it to a slow crawl. (aside) For a man, you can be very clever, Commander Riker."

Background information [ ]

Production history [ ].

The final draft script

• Revised second draft script: 30 October 1987
• Final draft script: 4 November 1987
• Revised final draft script: 9 November 1987 [1]
• Filmed: 11 November 1987 – 19 November 1987
• Premiere airdate: 25 January 1988
• UK Premiere airdate on BBC2 : 9 January 1991

Story and production [ ]

• In Patrick Barry 's original story, Beata was named "Victoria" and she imprisoned Riker after he directly addressed her and then touched her hand. Tasha Yar stunned Riker to prevent him being killed and then took over command of the away team. In this version, Captain Picard was the only person aboard the Enterprise -D who was affected by the virus. The male slaves started a revolution, led by Lucas Jones , who was killed. ( Creating the Next Generation , p. 52)
• An early story meeting about this episode was attended by Patrick Barry, Gene Roddenberry , and Herbert J. Wright . Wright was wary that the concept of a matriarchal society had been too overdone. " So one of the major issues that we didn't want to do was an Amazon Women kind of thing where the women are six feet tall with steel D cups, " he recalled. " I said, 'The hit I want to take on this is apartheid, so that the men are treated as though they are blacks of South Africa. Make it political. Sexual overtones, yes, but political.' Well, that didn't last very long. Everything that Gene got involved with had to have sex in it. It's so perverse that it's hard to believe. The places it was dragged into is absurd. We were talking about how women would react, and Gene was voicing all the right words again, saying, 'Oh, yes, we've got to make sure that women are represented fairly, because, after all, women are probably the superior sex anyway, and it's real important we don't get letters from feminists, because we want to be fair and we don't want to infer that women have to rule by force if they do rule, because men don't have to rule by force.' Very sensible stuff. All of a sudden something kicks in and he changes: 'However, we also don't want to infer that it would be a better society if women ruled.' " His voice becoming increasingly louder, Roddenberry continued that this was because women were untrustworthy, "vicious creatures," which he angrily blurted out in a torrent of hateful verbiage. Concluded Wright, " Then he looks out the window, looks at the outline, and says, 'Okay, on page eight…' and continues like that didn't even happen. " ( The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years , p. 83)
• In November 1987 , production was shut down for a few days because the script of this episode wasn't available yet. This was the first of two occasions in TNG Season 1 when production was stopped for a few days due to the unavailability of scripts (the other being for " The Arsenal of Freedom "). ( Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Continuing Mission , p. 56)
• Wesley Crusher had two friends who accompany him to his ski trip on the holodeck, which was to the Swiss Alps instead of the Denubian Alps .
• In this script version no Romulan was mentioned being a threat. The heading for the Enterprise -D was the Avastam Triangle where a Federation outpost was surrounded by seven Ferengi battle cruisers.
• Following their first visit on the planet's surface, the away team was invited to an evening meal. This was also the time Riker and Troi delivered their gift, the Albeni meditation crystal.
• During the evening meal, Data sat next to Mistress Di who would later bring him to a separate room and a terminal where he could study the history of Angel I. She also tried to seduce him and kissed him.
• Ramsey and fellow survivors were not hiding in this version. There was only one survivor, Ramsey, and he was a prisoner of Beata. A guard brought him into the evening meal, restrained, at the order of Beata. Ramsey tried to knock one of the guards down and was himself knocked to the ground. When Tasha scanned him with a tricorder, she tried to calm him down and told him that they'd bring him home, but Ramsey responded that this is his home.
• Wesley and his two friends were treated in sickbay because of their viral infection. Wesley compared the infection to a Romulan thumping cough.
• During the away team mission, there were several conversations between Troi and Riker with harsh words. Troi named the attraction between Beata and Riker and Riker had a problem accepting Troi as the commanding officer of the away team.
• Dr. Crusher relieved La Forge from duty when he became ill. She took command of the Enterprise -D and did her research from the conn station.
• Ramsey escaped from his prison before he could be transported to the Enterprise -D. When Troi decided to beam back to the ship and head for the Avastam Triangle and come back later, Beata and two guards disarmed the away team and held them prisoners. They got their gear back when Ramsey was imprisoned again. But Dr. Crusher declined to beam the away team back because of the virus; only Data was beamed aboard. The rest of the away team was again held prisoner.
• Mistress Ariel, who previously helped Ramsey to escape, brought a communicator to the away team. When the away team prepared to beam aboard, including Ramsey, Ariel told them that she was expecting Ramsey's child. After a discussion about the Prime Directive, the away team assisted Ariel and Ramsey in their escape and then paid a visit to Beata who got furious and threw the Albeni meditation crystal at the away team but failed because Troi, Tasha, and Riker already beamed back aboard the Enterprise -D.
• The episode was filmed between Wednesday 11 November 1987 and Thursday 19 November 1987 for seven days on Paramount Stage 6 , 9 , and 16 .
• This episode wrapped principal photography on the same date as Paramount announced that Star Trek: The Next Generation had been renewed for a second season . ( Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Continuing Mission , p. 58)

Cast and characters [ ]

• This was Leonard John Crofoot 's first Star Trek appearance. He later appeared in TNG : " The Offspring " and VOY : " Virtuoso ".
• This episode was also the first for recurring background actor David Eum who was most notably featured as Ensign Wright during the first three seasons of The Next Generation .

Props and sets [ ]

• The first reuse came in the second season episode " Samaritan Snare ", when the Angel I matte was used to depict Starbase 515 without any change. In the fourth season episode " First Contact ", the painting remained substantially the same to depict the surface of Malcor III , though the colors were slightly more intense, the hue being overall more green compared to Angel I. A completely new painting was produced to represent another view of the planet, the style being similar to the original Angel I scenery.
• In the episode " The Mind's Eye ", the Angel I matte was modified to represent the Klingon colony Krios Prime . Trees were removed, and the style of the buildings were "Klingon-ized". Several new buildings were added in the background, the most prominent bearing the Klingon emblem.
• For the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine first season episode " Dax ", much of the original Angel I scenery was restored, adding a new tall building in the background for the night shot (which had curiously disappeared at daytime) and omitting some of the greenery. The colors for the day shot are more intense than the original matte; instead, it appears more similar to Malcor III.
• The most recent reuse of the Angel I matte came on the Star Trek: Voyager first season episode " Ex Post Facto ", when it was used to depict the surface of Banea .

• White lamps in various sizes, helix-shaped statues and round wall decorations appeared in several episodes.
• The silver box in which Riker keeps the Albeni meditation crystal later housed Miles O'Brien 's pet Lycosa tarantula Christina in " Realm Of Fear ".
• The pen that Mistress Beata uses to sign the death sentences popped up as a pen again in " Resistance ".
• The Albeni meditation crystal later appeared as an artifact housing the embryonic lifeform in DS9 : " Q-Less ".
• A flower-shaped wall decoration (presumably the Angel I logo) is seen in several scenes in the episode.
• Among the items from this episode which were sold off on the It's A Wrap! sale and auction on eBay, was an Angel I costume lot including the costume of Jacqueline Drake [2] , the costumes of Jonathan Frakes , [3] Karen Montgomery , [4] Leonard John Crofoot , [5] Wil Wheaton , [6] Chris Hall , [7] and three background performer costumes. [8] [9] [10]

Continuity [ ]

Two production staff members in a reflection on a prop

• This episode marks the first mention of the Romulans in The Next Generation . At the end of the episode, the Enterprise heads for the Romulan Neutral Zone . However, apparently no confrontation actually ensued, since the encounter with the Romulans in " The Neutral Zone " is described as the first direct encounter since 2311 .
• Data's party transports directly from their planetside accommodations to Ramsey's camp, marking the second occurrence of site-to-site transport , though it is not given its specific name yet. The first occurrence was in " Encounter at Farpoint ", when Riker and Data beamed to Troi's position underneath Farpoint Station .
• This episode depicts the Prime Directive into a doctrine of total non-interference with the affairs of other species or cultures, irrespective of technology level. This is consistent with " The Magicks of Megas-Tu ", which stated that "No starship may interfere with the normal development of any alien life or society." While " First Contact " would later establish the idea that the Directive was meant to apply to pre-warp civilizations, it would also continue to be applied to post-warp civilizations as well; for instance, Starfleet could not intervene in either the Klingon Civil War or the coup of the Alliance for Global Unity as long as they were believed to be strictly internal matters.
• This episode does differ from other portrayals of the Prime Directive in stating that the rule applies only to Starfleet personnel and not Federation civilians.
• It is also unclear how the Federation was able to make contact with Angel I, given that on other occasions the Prime Directive prohibited contacting pre-warp civilizations, something Angel I appears to be.
• This is one of only two episodes where La Forge was in command, the second being " The Arsenal of Freedom ".
• This episode marks the second time in The Next Generation someone from the production staff can be seen. This time the reflection of a boom operator and another man can be seen in the Albeni meditation crystal prop in Beata's quarters. Previously a camera operator was seen in a reflection in the episode " The Naked Now ". Further production staffers who can be seen include Bill Gocke in " Unification II ", an unknown man in " Time's Arrow ", June Abston Haymore in " Birthright, Part I ", and a boom operator in " Journey's End ".
• After his ski lesson, Wesley accidentally hits Captain Picard (standing outside the holodeck) with a snowball. Some water from this snowball remains on both his and Worf's uniform for the entire scene. The permanence of basic matter exiting the holodeck is unclear.
• At the conclusion of the episode, as the bridge crew discusses moving on to the Neutral Zone, the turbolift the away team entered from remains open.

Reception [ ]

• Maurice Hurley was succinct in his opinion of "Angel One": " Terrible. Just terrible. One of the ones you'd just as soon erase ". ( Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages , page 118))
• A mission report by Patrick Daniel O'Neill for this episode was published in The Official Star Trek: The Next Generation Magazine  issue 5 , pp. 19-21.
• Keith R.A. DeCandido reviewed the episode for Tor.com. He described the episode as being " one of the most sexist episodes of Star Trek ever produced under the veneer of feminism ", and that the virus subplot was " filler, and boring filler at that ". He said that it was " one of the absolute low points of the show ", giving it a score of two out of ten.
• Wil Wheaton watched it for AOL TV and thought that it started well but soon descended into the appearance of an episode from Star Trek: The Original Series with Riker in the Kirk role. He also noted that if the speech that Riker gave towards the end of the episode had been given to Yar or Troi then the overall message would have been more subtle. He gave it a grade of D overall.
• James Hunt of Den of Geek said that the episode was not as bad as " Code of Honor ", but that it contained " almost every terrible cliché seen in TNG's first season in one episode ". He summed up, " We've seen all of this before, and it was barely interesting the first time around. The second time, it's just tedious. A horrible episode on so many levels. "
• Zack Handlen watched the episode for The A.V. Club and said that he was not sure what the reversal of gender roles in the episode was meant to achieve. He described the virus subplot as "absurd" and gave the episode an F grade.
• The episode was included in a couple of worst episode lists, including in one compiled by Scott Thrill for Wired magazine, and it was ranked the fourth worst episode by Jay Garmon at the website TechRepublic.

Video and DVD releases [ ]

• Original UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video ): Volume 7 , catalog number VHR 2398, 5 November 1990
• UK re-release (three-episode tapes, Paramount Home Entertainment ): Volume 1.5, catalog number VHR 4646, 6 July 1998
• As part of the TNG Season 1 DVD collection
• As part of the TNG Season 1 Blu-ray collection

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

• Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard
• Jonathan Frakes as Commander William T. Riker

Also starring [ ]

• LeVar Burton as Lt. Geordi La Forge
• Denise Crosby as Lt. Tasha Yar
• Michael Dorn as Lt. Worf
• Gates McFadden as Doctor Beverly Crusher
• Marina Sirtis as Counselor Deanna Troi
• Brent Spiner as Lt. Commander Data
• Wil Wheaton as Wesley Crusher

Guest stars [ ]

• Karen Montgomery as Beata
• Sam Hennings as Ramsey
• Patricia McPherson as Ariel

Co-star [ ]

• Leonard John Crofoot as Trent

Uncredited co-stars [ ]

• James G. Becker as Youngblood
• Kellee Bradley as Angel I guard
• Jeffrey Deacon as command officer
• Jacqueline Drake as Angel I mistress
• Susan Duchow as operations officer
• David Eum as Odin crewmember
• Curtis Fairchild as Odin crewmember
• Chris Hall as Wesley's friend
• Nora Leonhardt as sciences ensign
• Tim McCormack as Bennett
• James McElroy as operations officer
• Lorine Mendell as Diana Giddings
• Rebecca Rose as Angel I native
• Guy Vardaman as Darien Wallace
• Engineering crewmember (voice)
• Female Angel I native
• Female command officer
• Female medical officer
• Female tactical officer
• Four Angel I mistresses
• Four command crewmembers
• Odin crewmember
• Operations crewmember
• Sciences officer
• Six civilians
• Three Angel I guards
• Three male Angel I natives
• Two male Angel I servants

Stand-ins [ ]

• James G. Becker – stand-in for Jonathan Frakes
• Darrell Burris – stand-in for LeVar Burton
• Dexter Clay – stand-in for Michael Dorn
• Jeffrey Deacon – stand-in for Patrick Stewart
• Susan Duchow – stand-in for Denise Crosby
• Nora Leonhardt – stand-in for Marina Sirtis
• Tim McCormack – stand-in for Brent Spiner
• Lorine Mendell – stand-in for Gates McFadden
• Guy Vardaman – stand-in for Wil Wheaton

References [ ]

20th century ; 2302 ; 2357 ; 47 ; adjournment ; advice ; ailment ; Albeni meditation crystal ; alcohol ; alternative ; amusement ; anarchist ; android ; Angel I ; Angel I execution device ; Angel I native ; Angel I settlement ; Annotated Shakespeare, The : anticipation ; aphrodisiac ; appointment ; area ; Armus IX ; asteroid ; attack ; attention ; attitude ; audience ; audio signal ; autopilot ; away team ; battle cruiser, Romulan ; bed ; Berlin , USS ; Betazed ; bingo ; border post ( border outpost ); cabin ; campfire ; carbon-based lifeform ; case ; choice ; citizen ; class M ; cloud ; combadge ; computer ; contact ; collision ; cologne ; color ; compassion ; compliments ; comportment ; coordinates ; course ; courtesy call ; court martial ; culture ; day ; death ; Denubian Alps ; Denubian Alps planet ; death penalty ( execution ); department ; desktop monitor ; destination ; diplomatic relations ; discovery ; dissent ; distance ; distress call ; domestic affairs ; earring ; Earth ; effect ; Elected One ; element ; evolution ; escape pod ( rescue pod ); eternity ; examination ; exile ; existence ; eye ; fact ; failure ; family ; fear ; feather ; Federation ; Federation starship (2302) ; field trip ; figure of speech ; fixed orbit ; floral scent ; freighter ; friend ; fugitive ; fur ; Galaxy -class decks ; gesture ; Great Hall ; governing body ; guilt ; hailing frequency ; head of state ; heaven ; hiding place ; holodeck ; hope ; hospitality ; hostility ; hour ; hunter ; hypospray ; idea ; impression ; information ; inhalation ; initial contact ; inoculation ; instruction ; isolation ward ; job ; Kabatris ; kiss ; Klingon ; law ; leader ; leadership council ; leniency ; lesson ; library ; listening device ; log entry ; malfunction ; marooning ; martyr ; matriarchal ; maximum warp speed ; medical emergency ; medical situation ; medical test ; medical tricorder ; meeting ; Milky Way Galaxy ; minute ; mission ; mister ; mistress ; month ; moral imperative ; morning ; mountain ; murder ; natural order ; nature ; necklace ; Night-Blooming Throgni ; number one ; object ; objection ; obligation ; Odin ; olfactory nerve ; oligarchy ; " on the double "; opinion ; opportunity ; order ; painting ; paper ; paranoia ; Parliament of Angel I ; perfume ; permission ; phaser ; place ; planet ; platinum ; plea ; pleasure ; praise ; Prime Directive ; prisoner ; privacy ; problem ; quadrant ; Quazulu VIII ; Quazulu VIII virus ; question ; ready room ; reason ; reference ; region ; repatriation ; report ; representative ; revolution ; revolutionary ; Romulan ; Romulan battle cruisers ; Romulan Neutral Zone ; Romulan Neutral Zone outpost ; room ; sculpture ; search ; search pattern ; second ; scanner ; sensor range ; sex ; sextant ; sexual pleasure ; sexy ; shipmate ; sickbay ; sincerity ; skant ; skiing ; ski instructor ; smell ; sneeze ; snow ; snowball ; society ; " soldier ; " stand by "; Starfleet ; Starfleet regulations ; starship ; statue ; status ; status report ; stimulation ; stranger ; student ; success ; surface ; survivor ; symbol ; technological development ; technology ( advanced technology ); territory ; term ; time ; tomorrow ; trace ; traitor ; transmission ; transporter ; transporter room ; tricorder ; trip ; tunic ; turbolift ; type I phaser ; universe ; unnamed plants ; value ; viewscreen ; visit ; VISOR ; voice ; vote ; window ; wings ; wish ; Wong ; word

Deleted references [ ]

Hesperan thumping cough

External links [ ]

• "Angel One" at StarTrek.com
• " Angel One " at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• " Angel One " at Wikipedia
• " Angel One " at the Internet Movie Database
• " Angel One " at MissionLogPodcast.com , a Roddenberry Star Trek podcast
• "Angel One" script  at Star Trek Minutiae
• 2 ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

Den of Geek

Revisiting Star Trek TNG: Angel One

James' season one TNG look-back comes to a truly horrible episode...

• Share on Facebook (opens in a new tab)
• Share on Twitter (opens in a new tab)
• Share on Linkedin (opens in a new tab)
• Share on email (opens in a new tab)

This review contains spoilers.

1.14 Angel One

Oh good, it’s Angel One . Wait, did I say good? I’m fairly sure that’s not what I meant at all.

On the way to the Neutral zone where the Romulans are causing trouble, the Enterprise drops in on Angel One to search for the possible survivors of a freighter disaster some years earlier. The planet is a strange one where (if you accept the episode’s highly dubious premise) social gender roles are flipped, so that the females are more dominant and physically imposing, and males are slight and weak-willed. You know, like the opposite of what is on Earth! (This might be a new record: a Star Trek episode whose ingrained prejudices undermine its point at the premise level, before a word has been written).

Ad – content continues below

Subtle, it is not. The planet is a matriarchy when men are required to walk around in flesh-baring costumes and the woman do pretty much everything to subjugate them except slap their asses patronisingly and call them doll. Troi finally gets to do something: as the most female person on the bridge, she’s given the task of calling the leader of Angel One, Mistress Beata, and asking if they can come look for survivors. Beata and her matriarchy get all cagey over the subject, which as we know, means there are definitely survivors and they’re definitely causing problems.

Meanwhile, on the Enterprise, Wesley and his friends have caught a cold after going on a skiing trip on the holodeck. I’m not even kidding.

Back on the surface, Beata admits that yes, there were survivors, and that they and their leader – an eighties action-hero of a man named Ramsay, who sports a mane of golden mullet hair – are considered dangerous fugitives. In the interest of promoting good relations, Riker dons some of Angel One’s traditional male clothing as an act of “diplomacy”, which leads to a lot of audience gagging over the sheer amount of chest hair on display. Troi and Yar find it hilarious, justifiably.

Meanwhile, on the Enterprise, Picard has caught Wesley’s cold and been ordered to bed. I’m not even kidding.

The crew manages to locate the survivors, and it turns out that Ramsay and his crewmen have started the local version of the suffragette movement, campaigning for male equality, and even taking indigenous wives from their growing supporters. They don’t want to leave, and the crew can’t make them. While this is going on, Riker and Beata are doing some wholly diplomatic making out, and Beata seems pleased to have a man around who isn’t grimly subjugated and soggy-willed, begging the question of why she’s so against male equality in the first place.

Meanwhile, on the Enterprise Geordi is in charge, but a third of the crew have colds and if the Romulans attack they’ll all be too snotty to fight back. I’m not even kidding.

The away team return to Beata, interrupting that earth custom they call “kissing”, and inform Riker that they’ve found everyone but can’t really do anything about it because they’re not Starfleet and don’t have to follow orders. Beata responds by sentencing the survivors (and their sympathisers) to death. Because everyone knows all alien judicial systems have only two sentences: summary death sentence without trial, and mind-jail.

Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!

Meanwhile, on the Enterprise, everyone has a cold and the ship has been quarantined. I’m not even kidding.

Data is allowed to return while Riker and the others hang around hoping to avert the execution. While they do, thanks to a moralising speech and claims that killing Ramsay will result in nothing but his martyrdom. Ramsay and his sympathisers are exiled to a remote part of the world where they can build their equal civilisation in peace.

Meanwhile, on the Enterprise, Crusher develops a cure for the cold, the away team is allowed to return, and the episode ends with Picard unable to give his orders to leave due to a sore throat. I’m not even kidding.

TNG WTF: Let us leave aside the sheer WTF-ness of an episode that thinks it’s holding a mirror up to our own society’s sexism by showing an entire matriarchy going weak at the knees for Riker in an open shirt, and instead concentrate on the real stupidity of the episode: Did Wesley really catch a cold by going skiing on the holodeck? Does the writer of this episode not know that COLDS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY?!

TNG LOL: Beata addresses Ramsay as she demonstrates the execution vaporiser: “As you can see we are not without compassion. Your deaths will be swift and painless.” I’m sure he’s very comforted.

Who’s that face?: Ariel, one of Beata’s fellow rulers, is played by Patricia McPherson, who was KITT’s mechanic Bonnie Barstow in the original Knight Rider series.

Time Until Meeting: A meeting-free episode. The mark of a writer who doesn’t know how TNG works.

Captain’s Log: Wow. When season one of TNG is bad, it’s almost unapologetically awful. It’s not quite Code of Honor  levels of offensive, but it is notable for containing almost every terrible cliché about seen in TNG ‘s first season in one episode. A virus on the ship, a “primitive” society based on laboured allegory, Prime directive hand-wringing and, let us not forget, a death sentence ticking clock. All it needed was Wesley to save the day and it would’ve been a full house. We’ve seen all of this before, and it was barely interesting the first time around. The second time, it’s just tedious. A horrible episode on so many levels.

Watch or Skip? Definite skip.

Read James’ look-back at the previous episode, Datalore, here .

Follow our  Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here . And be our  Facebook chum here .

• What’s The Viewscreen?
• Donation Success!
• Star Trek: The Animated Series Re-Watch Index
• Star Trek Movies I-VI Re-Watch Index
• Related Posts Index
• The Re-Watches
• Ten Forward
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch Index
• Privacy Policy
• Star Trek Re-Watch Index
• Laugh Treks

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “Angel One”

Season 1, Episode 14 Original air date:  January 25, 1988 Star date: 41636.9

Mission summary

The Enterprise stumbles upon the remains of the Odin , a small freighter that collided with an asteroid seven years previous. While there are no life signs onboard, three escape pods are missing. The nearest class M planet where any survivors may have landed is Angel I, a matriarchal constitutional oligarchy with whom the Federation last had contact sixty-two years ago.

Riker, Data, Troi, and Yar beam down to the surface with Troi taking the lead out of respect for the “Elected One,” Mistress Beata. Beata and her council neither confirm nor deny the existence of survivors. She consults with her Fashion Club before revealing that four men, led by someone named Ramsey, survived and made it to their planet. They are fugitives on Angel I for being uppity and “causing trouble,” but as long as Troi promises to get them off this planet Beata is pleased with the idea of a manhunt. She’s also on a manhunt ( rowr ) of her own, intrigued by Riker’s masculinity, and sends him something a bit more comfortable to slip into. He heads to her private chambers and they begin to bring their cultures closer together with some mood lighting and an unfortunate softcore soundtrack.

Meanwhile, Data, Yar, and Troi locate the men hiding out in a cave. MacGuyver Ramsey refuses to return with them, though, explaining that the survivors have taken wives and some of them even have children: Angel I is now their home. When the away team reports this to Beata, the mistress is outraged. She orders the execution of Ramsey and his men, not leastwise because one of her own councilwomen, Ariel, is secretly married to Ramsey. Riker begs Ramsey to reconsider his choice to stay on the planet and face the death penalty, but the ex-freighter captain declines once more.

Meanwhile, everyone on the Enterprise is coming down with an incurable, untreatable flu. (As per usual, it’s Wesley’s fault.) The ship’s complement is bed-bound one-by-one, and command eventually goes to Dr. Crusher. Riker asks about beaming the whole Ramsey contingent up to the Enterprise against their will, but with this virus going around Crusher won’t allow it, so the away team is on their own. In a third and even less plausible plot, the Enterprise is needed at the Neutral Zone as a display of power towards the Romulans, so Data beams up to the ship to warp over there if a resolution isn’t reached.

With only 48 minutes left before the Enterprise must leave, Beata arranges for the execution of Ramsey via disintegration zapper. Luckily Riker is there to mansplain the whole men’s rights thing to her and in the end her womanly emotions are swayed. She releases Ramsey and orders them to exile instead. On the Enterprise , a cure for the flu is found and the recovering crew head to the Neutral Zone.

Ah, the first of several Very Special Episodes has finally arrived.

This episode could have simply been a single scene: Riker walking out of the changing area wearing that ridiculous outfit while Troi and Yar laugh uncontrollably. It perfectly encapsulates “Angel One,” don’t you think? Where Riker thinks he’s being progressive and diplomatic by wearing the local attire, the episode as a whole has the same unearned smugness about rejecting sexism. (Sexism! It’s bad! This takes 48 minutes to explain!) The “mistresses” (because we’ve met so many men out there in the Alpha Quadrant who call themselves “masters”…) blow out their hair, are catty to one another, and wear high heels and shoulderpads, so there’s no confusion that this is slyly about that uppity woman down the hall from you at work .

What really bothers me here and with just about every woman-in-power plot we see in the Trek universe (and beyond) is the hypersexualization of women with any degree of authority. They’re never simply leaders–they’re always oversexed leaders. The Romulan Commander is, of course, vulnerable to Spock’s charms, and the worst offender is certainly the women of DS9’s mirror universe, who go from 0 to bisexual sadomasochist in the blink of an eye. Here Beata latches onto Riker almost instantly, as if the problem weren’t sexism itself (which is bad! don’t forget!) but that Beata just needed to find someone sufficiently masculine to mansplain it all to her. She doesn’t come to respect the men on her planet any more, and in fact remains hardened against their empowerment. Rather, she acknowledges that she’s a reactionary whose days will soon be over, but not on her watch. Your heroine, ladies and gentlemen!

Ultimately, what I find so galling is that this is a story about sexism that utterly fails to capture any of the realities of sexism. From what I can tell here sex discrimination mostly involves wearing a stupid costume and being a waiter. Luckily the men of Angel I don’t seem to ever contend with the less absurdly trivial: the fallout of a culture that objectifies one sex would more realistically include related issues of self esteem and depression, a culture of rape and the constant threat of violence (domestic or otherwise), and so on. No, all we see is Trent looking a little jealous when Riker horns in on his “mistress.” It reinforces the idea that sexism is the behavior of a few misguided relics, long since “cured” in our own world, and not a set of subtle, institutionalized power structures that legitimize behaviors that reinforce those privileges. And isn’t it cute that they think maybe feminism can one day go “too far”?

Like with “Code of Honor,” while I definitely remembered the primary catastrophic failure (sexism! it’s really really bad!), I had again totally forgotten all of the other huge failures. I didn’t remember the Ramsey plot at all, and the logical pretzels required for the Starfleet officers to believe they don’t have the authority to force Ramsey off the planet. Who cares if he’s in Starfleet? The Federation has an obligation to protect its own citizens. I can’t just move my family to Prince Edward Island without a passport and a visa, and my country has the right to repatriate me whether PEI turned out to be an unstable coven of moonsisters or not. I was also shocked that both times the Federation representatives try to convince the oppressed men to leave, Ramsey unilaterally declares that they won’t. What about what the other guys want? Shouldn’t they be able to make their own choices? And finally, how does a holoprogram create a real virus that incapacitates an entire ship, and why should we even care?

I’m going to use this opportunity to introduce the First Rule of TNG: if Futurama did it better , this is probably one of the worst ten episodes.

Torie’s Rating: Impulse Power (on a scale of 1-6)

Best Line: YAR: They’ve broken off transmission. LAFORGE: Ever feel like you’re not really wanted?

Trivia/Other Notes: La Forge only gets command once more, in “The Arsenal of Freedom.”

Previous episode: Season 1, Episode 13 – “ Datalore .”

Next episode: Season 1, Episode 15 – “ 11001001 .”

About Torie Atkinson

23 comments.

Impulse is rather generous. I’d have said Dead in Space. There really aren’t any redeeming features here at all. It’s just… ooh, there aren’t words for it. This is probably in the bottom 10, if not the worst, period (making allowances for “Shades of Gray” because they were forced to do a clip show).

There’s also the whole oppressive matriarch swoons for a real man ™ (sensitive New Age guy version) thing. Why? Is it like ancient Greeks finding women acting like their intellectual equals a perverse turn-on? It makes no sense! Actually, I wonder if Patrick Barry (or whoever hacked his script into this abortion) had some dom/sub issues that needed to be worked out. GAAAHHHH!!

The other thing that sticks out to me is the costume design and hair. In a way, it’s almost retro. The look seems to me to be much more early-mid 80s. Totally out of style by 1988. It’s a little too Flashdance , feathered hair and borderline mullets. I thought that was over by then and we were moving toward the grunge 90s look. I could be wrong.

As for the flu, I don’t think it was caused by the holodeck so much as Picard caught a chill from the snowball and succumbed to some bug in his bloodstream. But Federation medicine borders on the magical and they can’t figure out a simple virus? How about just “There’s not a lot we can do, but the symptoms aren’t really that bad and it’s less stressful on your system to let the thing run its course.” That’s better than making Dr. Crusher look incompetent.

In my mind, the Riker thing never happens. Troi, Yar, and Crusher go planetside to deal with the women, while Riker stays on board the Enterprise to deal with everyone being sick. Perhaps there’s an early intro of Alyssa Ogawa if we need more fabulous medical staff. And if there’s any dalliance with Beata, give it to Yar or Troi. But then again, anything other than what aired makes this episode better…

On the note of failing to really encapsulate sexism — here’s a sexist society where Beata’s manservant is the guy who operates the execution device? At what point in 1950s America would ANY woman have been put in charge of throwing the switch on the electric chair? Even if its only function at that point was to vaporize your Pottery Barn seconds.

I also love how Beata tells Riker she will repay him “in kind” for the gift of the meditation sphere. If that’s true, she intends to… give him another meditation sphere! Because THAT IS WHAT IT MEANS TO REPAY IN KIND. Not trading the sexing for it.

Also I think this episode should have a “yay kyriarchy ” tag…

It’s always sad how the Star Trek episodes about sexism only serve to underline that the people crafting the episode just don’t get it.

I have absolutely no memory of this episode, for which I am grateful to the US Navy. Not surprising it didn’t get a lot of syndication replay.

I’m puzzled though at why you’d consider Enterprise being called away for flag-showing purposes “less plausible.” It seems like the only sensible thing that happened in the entire episode.

Who would craft a policy like the Federation’s?

They have a policy, the HIGHEST principle, of non-interference with other cultures, but are powerless to remove a Federation citizen who is disrupting that society? And a citizen whose life is endangered because of that unwanted disruption? And who is endangering the lives of other Federation citizens and innocent citizens of that society in the process?

And all this, in place of a simple policy that would just remove Ramsey, and allow him to file his appeal through some court of appropriate jurisdiction.

It makes absolutely no sense. And the smug superiority with which such nonsense is dispensed is truly insufferable.

This is still one of the crap episodes before “The Best of Both Worlds” put TNG on track, which means I skipped it and still change channels when a non-collared uniform episode is on. So no comment on the episode from me. But thank you, Torie, for the Futurama link. Which I decided to briefly check out. Forty minutes ago.

I dashed off my earlier comment, but following on: It seems half the episodes in this season explore what is, in fact, a contrivance and invention: “Drama” created by the consequences of a non-interference directive.

Yet while strutting around and making declarations about how this policy has been tried and tested, the crew also stumbles around like they’re reinventing the wheel every time it comes up.

How common is it, in a mapped and explored galaxy where starships are evidently common, that the “humanitarian armada” of Starfleet would happen across Federation citizens who had exceeded the scope of the noninterference directive? I’d say in the multi-century existence of the Federation, this situation would be quite common. In fact, the commonness of interference might be considered the very thing that created the directive and policy in the first place.

Look at it this way, if these Federation traders had crashed on some world and set up a slave trade or a drug trade, would there be any “question” in the captain’s mind about how these Federation citizens should be handled? No, they would be stopped. They would be removed. Depending on the circumstances, they might be proescuted. They might have avenue for appeal. It is only because Ramsey acts out of “love” and “family devotion” that there is any ambiguity about what should be done here. The entire “dilemma” operates around some arbitrary situational premise that, frankly, Federation policy should have already addressed scores of times. After all, that’s what makes it a **policy.**

Someone once cleverly described Playboy as “the magazine entirely about itself.” I’m inclined to think TNG is “the television series entirely about itself” and its own self-referential contrivances.

(as an aside, I’m surprised you don’t thematically link this ep with “Spock’s Brain” in your Featured Posts. If Angel One is not Eymorg, I don’t know what is: “Brain and brian! What is brain?!”)

Oh, Torie…Torie, you have my sympathy. You drew Angel One . That’s just mean . Now I’m going to go read it, but I wanted to express my condolences just from seeing your name in conjunction with this shitfest, one which makes me long for the halcyon feminist-friendly days of I, Mudd and The Turnabout Intruder .

Let’s just put this one in the same killing jar as “Code of Honor”. It’s perhaps not as wretched an episode as “The Outcast” but it’s up there.

Nope. Can’t add anything to what you wise people have said. It’s like an MRA (Mens’ Rights Advocate, the polite name for “guys who had bitter divorces and now really hate all women completely unless they’re hookers in which case they only hate them when they’re not actually having sex with them”) version of what a feminist society would be. It’s the nightmare of every overprivileged, super-entitled asshole ever: that the uppity $TARGETS_OF_BIGOTRY ever take over, they’ll massacre the formerly privileged, and treat them the same way the formerly privileged treated them . It’s like a big red flag waving, saying, “I’m a person who will oppress you in every way I can get away with, and I assume you would do the same to me, because I’d rather believe this is just ‘being human’ than that it means I’m a crapsack waste of good oxygen.”

Maybe there is sonething more to be said, not about this episode so much but about the storytelling method. It’s pure Rod Serling irony; the nearest analogy I can think of is the Twilight Zone episode in which a young woman, who looks ordinary to our eyes, is hideously deformed in the eyes of creatures (concealed until the third act) who are made up to look like distorted frog-men for the audience’s benefit. Supposedly this reversal of point of view is supposed to say something about prejudice and the subjective nature of beauty. Instead…it comes across like an attractive girl is being persecuted by frog people until she’s rescued by a comely young man. It just doesn’t work the way Serling intended. Did it ever work?

Same thing here, only it’s decades on and the plot device is even creakier. It doesn’t feel like a statement against sexism, it just feels horribly sexist. How could anyone have thought that the role-reversal fictional conceit, already shabby when Serling was doing it, would work in a modern teleplay?

And just eleven years before this aired Norman Lear’s short-lived and justly forgotten All That Glitters ran with it’s look at a world just like ours – except that women were the dominate gender. My memory insists that a few episodes ran (even though I don’t remember a thing about them) but IMDB seems to list only the pilot.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075658/

Now, about those costumes. They didn’t seem too far removed from the fantasy themed porn of that time. Back then, Cencom Cable had an adult entertainment pay-per-view channel on which the programming was all run on 3/4 inch video tape from tape decks in Master Control. We Master Control Operators shared the task of QCing (Quality Checking) everything that was to run off tape on all our tape fed channels. And before you make your comments, let me point out that most of it was boring crap and it was made worse by being “cut for cable” crap. You know the story – boy meets girl, Boy does girl. Boy meets other girl, boy does other girl. Girl meets other girl … Anyway. I remember commenting “I know how they came up with these costumes” when I watched this episode. One other thing. There was an ‘actor’ in some of those movies who (to me) looked so much like Jonathan Frakes that I thought it was him – from a few years earlier.

Not much else to say about this episode. Another one I’m looking forward to forgetting again.

And I just remembered that this isn’t the first time Roddenberry went to this well. Back in 1974 he took a second try at getting his concept of 20th century man awakens in a devastated future turned into a series. The first attempt was Genesis II and was OK. The second was Planet Earth , which starred John Saxon and had him encounter a vicious matriarchal society that enslaved and brutalized their men. It was awful. Lots of Trek actors in it: Ted Cassidy, Diana Muldaur, Majel Barrett. And much of it eventually became Andromeda . Dylan Hunt was the hero in both films, the idea of traveling to the future and trying to rebuild a ruined society.

Oh save me from over moralizing in fiction. It always damages the fiction and rarely reaches beyond those alreay in agreement. The story must come first, and any ‘lesson’ should be buried in the theme, not used like a whip to keep Dr. Moraeu’s beat men at bay. There is nothing I can think of to reclaim or recommend this episode. Yes sexism is bad, I really don’t need an hour of tv to tell me that.

@bobsandiego, what makes it worse for those of us within a certain age range is that, when sci fi and fantasy was actually included in our reading and literature curricula, it was always the ham-fisted, message-peddling stuff. This, we were taught, was the purpose of speculative fiction: to deliver clunky and obvious allegories to contemporary social problems. Among other things I truthfully remember from grade-school anthologies were Ray Bradbury’s depressing and shallow “All Summer in a Day” (bullying is bad!) not to mention Fahrenheit 451 (burning books is bad!); print versions of “Twilight Zone” teleplays, particularly the laughable “The Monsters are Due on Main Street” (paranoia is bad!); Orwell’s worst book, “Animal Farm” (Stalin was bad!); and even Orson Welles’s radioplay for “War of the Worlds” (humans are ants!)

No wonder I liked Arthur Clarke for a time in high school even though he couldn’t write his way out of a damp brown bag; at least, in some of his stories, it was *fun* to be in space.

@etomlins re: heavy-handed didactic sff —

Yeah, I totally know what you mean, even if I’m of an age where we occasionally got to read Citizen of the Galaxy and A Wrinkle in Time and Bram Stoker. I mean, heaven forfend anything be on an English syllabus because it’s actually fun to read, right?

Re: Orwell, I don’t think 1984 was any better — can’t say I’ve read any of his spec fic that wasn’t overbearingly message-heavy. I think you’re oversimplifying Fahrenheit 451 though; to me it was about the willing embrace of triviality rather than simply that book-burning is bad. More of an Amused to Death thing than a reaction to literal book-burning censorship (and I say that as not at all a Bradbury fan)…

Yeah, you’re right, I’m being a bit unfair to Fahrenheit 451 . Yes, it’s less about censorship and more about the kind of society that might demand it, although how Bradbury’s futuristic dystopia got to where it was doesn’t quite make sense. The ironies are too pat. Firefighters becoming bookburners? The head bookburner being a well-read, poetry-quoting man?

I suppose I should move this to the forums since it’s got nothing to do with “Angel One”, but you have to admit it’s an episode that begs to be distracted from.

Oh, something just occurred to me: I was never a big fan of Sliders but I just remembered they did a role-reversal plot something along these lines, in which John Rhys-Davies ends up being an unwilling male candidate for office in a society in which men are not trusted to make intelligent decisions, and I remember it being a lot better than this. I vaguely remember that the reasons the women in the episode gave for why men weren’t fit to make decisions actually seemed like at least a little thought had been put into the writing. To be fair, it was a few years later than “Angel One” and I don’t remember the episode that well anyway aside from the Ed Muskie plot twist at the end.

@ 1 DemetriosX The Real Man Riker thing implies all these women need is good hard you-know-what. But I can’t get over that Riker is the prime example of grade-A manliness available. He’s truly the poor man’s James T. Kirk. I cannot put my finger on why Riker comes across as a sleazy jerk every time sex is involved. They’re obviously trying to put him into the Kirk role and it’s just never ever going to work.

@ 2 Catherine E. Tobler I have the feeling we’re going to be using our imaginations a lot more in the next season and a half.

@ 3 DeepThought You obviously aren’t allowing yourself to conceive how truly appalling a society would be if feminism went too far! Men would be executing their own, cats and dogs would be living together…

@ 4 Toryx Well they understood that it’s bad. That’s all there is, right?

@ 5 S. Hutson Blount I just can’t imagine the Enterprise would ever get anything done if its primary task as the flagship was to show up for dick-waving contests at the Neutral Zone. It’s especially ridiculous considering the entire crew is incapacitated. I mean what good would it do if it actually came down to a show of force?

@ 6 Lemnoc This is actually the first time we see the Prime Directive in its modern incarnation, where it applies to all civilizations and not just pre-warp ones. And it’s idiotic.

@ 7 sps49 I love that Futurama episode. But I love most of Futurama.

@ 8 Lemnoc It just doesn’t make sense, and continues to make less and less sense as the series goes on and they wind up doing such non-interfering things as being involved in the Klingon civil war and the reunification of Romulus and Vulcan. It’s for the best when they eventually ditch this notion.

I did that Featured Posts thing now. I had a really busy few days and forgot!

@ 12 CaitieCat Like I said to Demetrios, the message is clear. What these women need is a good hard…

Thanks, TNG!

@ 13 etomlins I like that Twilight Zone episode, but maybe it gets more of a pass from being over twenty years older than this. Here it’s 1988 and yet it could have easily been written by a MRA crank on usenet.

@ 14 Ludon I still think the outfits look kind of power suit-y, but I confess that I have no knowledge of early ’80s porn and defer to you.

@ all regarding didactic fiction I actually don’t have a problem with moralizing, as long as there’s an interesting story in there. This fails to qualify.

Not to be overly simplistic about this, but all I can say about this episode is; “Ick”.

I was planning on re-watching this episode to be able to comment but I just can’t do it. Life is too short to waste time on this episode. Ick is right. Probably in my top 5 worst of TNG.

From my hazy memory of this steaming pile I give a…full stop. Or reverse. Or self-destruct. Yea self-destruct.

Sorry to sound off so late on this one, but it’s been a really busy week for me. I also might have been a little afraid to share my opinion, given the direction it’s going…

I had such low expectations for this episode going back into it, I was actually surprised that it wasn’t as bad as I remembered it. It still isn’t good, but it’s not without some redeeming elements. On the surface, each of the three plot threads is kind of interesting, however poorly they are handled and integrated with each other.

It feels like they had the A plot worked out, but couldn’t figure out what to do with it; rather than have the conversations that we’ve been having here, and handle the material as respectfully as possible, they decided to take it to the obvious places. Like Riker and the others, the matriarchy on Angel I is treated like a joke. Oh, how backwards they are! Let’s try to show them a better way, but without violating the Prime Directive–except we’re totally going to violate the Prime Directive by forcing them to keep this rebellion alive and planting the seeds of change.

One of the things writers learn is that plots need complications, but they went a bit overboard here. The crew is thwarted every step of the way, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but given how simple the solution should be, it just gets ridiculous. Especially when your complication relies on coincidence, like a mysterious outbreak on the ship at exactly the wrong moment. Although this subplot sticks out like a sore thumb because it doesn’t really fit with the rest of the show, it plays off better than any of “The Naked Now,” and I can’t help but think they squandered an intriguing premise–an infection that spreads because of its pleasing scent–on a crap episode.

The third complication, the posturing on the Federation side of the Neutral Zone, works best for me, particularly because it shows that writers were actually planning ahead and laying groundwork for the series. This minor plot point pays off in the season finale, “The Neutral Zone,” for some interpretations of “pays off.” I was surprised that they had introduced this arc so early, and it impressed me. It was just about the only thing that did in “Angel One.”

Even so, I started out ranking this one as a more middling episode and steadily knocked my assessment down as I read all your comments. I’m giving this one a tentative Warp 1.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  Notify me when new comments are added.

Recent Comments

• Nanda on Star Trek Re-Watch: “And The Children Shall Lead”
• GMC on Star Trek Re-Watch: “Miri”
• Joey on Star Trek Re-Watch: “The City on the Edge of Forever”
• bcjammerx on Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “Datalore”
• Richard Simpkins on Re-Watching Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Recent Discussions in Ten Forward

• Re: A data journalism approach to solving "best ST" debates? by: Kevin July 3, 2017, 19:02
• ST Rewatch: The EMotion Picture (long) by: Guest October 18, 2015, 15:13
• Re: Chaos on the Bridge by: Kevin September 3, 2015, 13:13
• Re: Leonard Nimoy by: Kevin February 28, 2015, 15:13
• "Shaka, When the Walls Fell" by: ecmyers June 19, 2014, 08:20

Recent Posts

Laugh Treks: “Spock’s Brain”

Making "Spock's Brain" re-watchable.

Laugh Treks are humorous audio recordings you can sync with your Star Trek episodes to enhance your viewing experience.

Favorite Posts

Uhura takes the first steps to becoming a crazy tribble lady.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who on the ship is meanest of all?

If you hit Forever, you went too far.

Wrath, like a seed, needs time to grow... in a Petri dish, best kept cold.

This week on Masterpiece Theater... Shakespeare’s Hamlet! In space.

• June 2014  (1)
• May 2014  (1)
• January 2014  (2)
• November 2013  (1)
• October 2013  (1)
• August 2013  (5)
• July 2013  (2)
• June 2013  (4)
• April 2013  (3)
• March 2013  (4)
• February 2013  (4)
• January 2013  (4)
• December 2012  (2)
• November 2012  (4)
• October 2012  (3)
• September 2012  (4)
• August 2012  (4)
• July 2012  (3)
• June 2012  (5)
• May 2012  (4)
• April 2012  (4)
• March 2012  (5)
• February 2012  (4)
• January 2012  (4)
• December 2011  (5)
• November 2011  (5)
• October 2011  (6)
• September 2011  (1)
• August 2011  (7)
• July 2011  (8)
• June 2011  (8)
• May 2011  (5)
• April 2011  (6)
• March 2011  (4)
• February 2011  (5)
• January 2011  (6)
• December 2010  (5)
• November 2010  (6)
• October 2010  (6)
• August 2010  (1)
• July 2010  (3)
• June 2010  (3)
• May 2010  (6)
• April 2010  (8)
• March 2010  (4)
• February 2010  (3)
• October 2009  (2)
• September 2009  (6)
• August 2009  (1)
• July 2009  (5)
• June 2009  (8)
• May 2009  (8)
• April 2009  (9)

About Arras WordPress Theme

The Viewscreen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

• Show Spoilers
• Night Vision
• Sticky Header
• Highlight Links

Follow TV Tropes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E13AngelOne

Recap / Star Trek: The Next Generation S1 E13 "Angel One"

Edit locked.

Original air date: January 25, 1988

We open with the Enterprise having investigated a seven-year overdue ship, the Odin . The wreck contained no life signs, but had several missing escape pods, suggesting there are survivors. The nearest planet is Angel One, a pre-warp society that is a matriarchy . Women are larger and dominant, while the men are small and subservient. The all-male survivors of Odin have become outlaws due to their subversive behavior. The elected leader of planet, Beata, agrees to allow the Federation to find and extract them.

Picard wants to get this small issue finished with quickly so that he can rush to the neutral zone, where the Romulans have started amassing battlecruisers. Further complications arise when Wesley Crusher contracts a virus aboard the ship, and it quickly spreads to other members of the crew. Picard gets hit with flu-like symptoms and is relieved of duty by Dr. Crusher, leaving Geordi in command.

On the planet, Riker has developed quite a thing for Beata. He meets with her for a private audience wearing the traditional attire of the native men, which includes a plunging neckline that exposes almost all of his Carpet of Virility . The display proves irresistible. After some heart-to-heart conversation, Riker marks another notch in his quest to screw every female guest star on the series.

Meanwhile, the away team decides to find the missing crew by isolating something unique to them that doesn't exist on Angel One. Rather than looking for human biosigns, they look for platinum. Sure enough, they find Ramsey, the leader of the surviving freighter crew. Unfortunately, he has no intention of leaving. The crew has settled in, taken wives, and even have children. However, due to how men are treated on this planet, they're in hiding. Nevertheless, they refuse to leave.

As Ramsey and his men are not members of Starfleet bound by the Prime Directive, the away team has no power to force them to comply. The team reports back to Riker right in front of Beata, who promptly sentences Ramsey and his followers to death and easily captures them. Riker offers to take them and their families off-planet to avoid execution, but they still choose to stay even in the face of death. Meanwhile, the virus has spread to so many crew members that Dr. Crusher declares the ship quarantined, meaning Riker can't beam them away even by force.

As the scheduled execution approaches, Riker makes a last-ditch appeal to Beata, pointing out that Ramsey's men are not the cause of the revolutionary views spreading across Angel One, but merely a symbol, and executing them would make them into martyrs and worsen the situation. After some thought, Beata agrees, and sentences the Odin survivors and their families to exile on the opposite side of the planet to at least slow down the effects of their rebellious views.

Just in time, Crusher has finally figured out how the virus spreads and treats the crew. The away team beams back, and a recovering Picard orders the ship to make haste to the Neutral Zone.

Tropes in this episode include:

• '80s Hair : It's all over S1, but it is especially prominent in this episode with Ramsey and Beata.
• Boldly Coming : One of the more notable cases in the series. Riker not only rationalizes going off to score with Beata as being part of the diplomatic nature of their mission, but he even dresses up in native male attire, which bares his chest, specifically to appeal to her. Deanna and Tasha find it hilarious .
• Camp Straight : The native males of Angel One are distinctly effeminate as compared to men from the Federation.
• Carpet of Virility : Riker causes several women to swoon when he bares his hairy chest while decked out in the planet's native attire.
• Disintegration Chamber : A variant, in which victims are executed by disintegration out in the open rather than in some kind of closed chamber—simply placed between two pillars and then subjected to a "swift and painless" death.
• Don't Create a Martyr : Riker advises Mistress Beata of the possible consequences of executing Ramsey and his friends, saying her actions are trying to hold back evolution, which can't be done, and warns her that she'll make a martyr out of Ramsey. At the last minute, Beata relents and simply chooses to have Ramsey exiled.
• Angel One is established to be a world in a mid-20th Century age of development, meaning the Prime Directive should have forbidden Picard from making contact with them. Possibly an in-universe example of the Grandfather Clause , as dialogue implies that first contact with them occurred back around the Star Trek: The Original Series era, when the Prime Directive was much more loosely applied.
• Picard refers to the sighted Romulan ships as "battlecruisers" rather than "warbirds." He also speaks as though the Federation and Romulans are still in regular, if adversarial contact; later in the season it's established that there have been no communications between the two powers for half a century, and almost no sightings of any Romulan ships in that time.
• Exact Words : Riker orders Data, in command of the Enterprise, to go to the Neutral Zone to deal with the Romulan threat. Data delays his departure, giving Dr. Crusher a window of time to develop an inoculant to the virus, and justifies it by pointing out that his orders were to get to the Neutral Zone not immediately, but "before it is too late". Riker realizes he can use that same window to his own advantage and even thanks Data "for following [his] orders so precisely".
• Halfway Plot Switch : The episode starts out looking like it's going to be A Day in the Limelight for Troi, who opens communications with Angel One and initially leads the negotiations with Beata. Riker takes over as the focal character partway through the story, and it's him who delivers the Patrick Stewart Speech that saves the day.
• Lady Land : Angel One is ruled by women.
• Lost Aesop : At the time of this episode's writing and for years afterwards, it was heavily insisted that the society on Angel One was an allegory for The Apartheid Era in South Africa . Although Angel One does depict a segregated society, there is far more evidence of a cautionary tale against certain radical feminist movements whose ideology is often interpreted as an intention to replace the alleged patriarchy with a matriarchy. It is possible that the writers insist on the apartheid allegory to avoid alienating part of the fanbase, and/or the credited writer, Patrick Barry, genuinely did intend for it to be a commentary on apartheid, but the message was lost during Gene Roddenberry 's rewrites.
• Ludicrous Precision : Riker: To travel the distance we did in two days at warp one would have taken the Odin escape pod five months. Data: Five months, six days, eleven hours, two minutes... Riker: Thank you, Data. Data: ...And 57 seconds.
• The Main Characters Do Everything : When Picard falls ill, he turns command over to Lieutenant JG La Forge, who at this point is just the helmsman. The Enterprise's crew should include scads of higher-ranking officers for this duty, but practically speaking, it has to be La Forge because every main cast member who outranks him is busy (on the away mission, ill, or — in Dr. Crusher's case — combating the illness).
• Minor Injury Overreaction : Dr. Crusher dramatically tells Picard that he's no longer capable of effectively commanding the ship, even though he looks like he has a mild case of the flu.
• Modern Stasis : Angel One is described as having roughly a 20th Century level of technology. Yet this is not their first contact with the Federation. They had been contacted more than 60 years prior, raising the question of whether they had either been very primitive at the time of first contact or else made very little technological progress.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist : In this episode, Crusher is a GP, a virologist, immunologist, and chemist, and she doesn't need to run any kind of clinical trials on her cure once she has one she thinks will work (which she comes up with less than an hour after she figures out what the pathogen is). She also seems to have the best immune system because she never shows any symptoms despite her constant exposure to the sick.
• Patrick Stewart Speech : Riker tries his hand at one. "When you spoke of the prisoners, you used the term revolutionary. Indeed, death has been known to stop revolutions. But I suspect it's not a revolution that Angel One is hoping to stop. It's evolution. Mister Ramsey and the Odin survivors did not initiate the waves of dissent that are rippling through your planet. Their presence here merely reinforced the change in attitudes between men and women that was already well under way. They became symbols around whom others who shared their views could gather. You may eliminate the symbols, but that does not mean death to the issues which those symbols represent. No power in the universe can hope to stop the force of evolution. Be warned. The execution of Mister Ramsey and his followers may elevate them to the status of martyrs. Martyrs cannot be silenced."
• Persecution Flip : The native males on Angel One are physically smaller and weaker than the females, and are likewise treated as intellectually inferior. This reflects Angel One as a society supposedly similar to 20th Century Earth prior to the modern women's liberation movement.
• Phlebotinum-Proof Robot : Since Data is immune to the virus, due to being an android, he is put in command.
• Race Against the Clock : The Enterprise can't linger too long, as there is increased Romulan activity at an outpost near the Neutral Zone.
• Real Life Writes the Plot : Or a minor part of the plot, at least. Originally, the Race Against the Clock was supposed to be Ferengi ships threatening an outpost. Due to negative reactions to the Ferengi from fans and production personnel alike, this was changed to a Romulan threat instead.
• Ripped from the Headlines : The episode was meant to be a commentary on Apartheid.
• Running Gag : Data's Ludicrous Precision is once again played for comedy.
• Schizo Tech : Angel One does not seem to have much in the way of advanced technology, in keeping with their 20th Century level of development. However, public executions are by Disintegrator Ray , albeit one that is a bulky piece of machinery and obviously nowhere near as effective as Federation handheld phasers.
• Shirtless Scene : Picard while in bed.
• Skewed Priorities : Late in the story, Crusher refuses the landing party permission to beam up on the grounds that their lives may be in danger if they're exposed to the virus. Riker actually points out that the Odin survivors are facing the choice between possible death if they beam up and certain death if they stay on the planet, but Crusher still refuses, forcing him to resort to a Patrick Stewart Speech to get the survivors out of trouble.
• Straw Feminist : Angel One women are just as chauvinist against men as Earth men were against women in the mid-20th century.
• Take a Third Option : Instead of executing the freighter's survivors, or letting the Enterprise take them away, Beata chooses to exile them to a remote portion of the planet.
• Tempting Fate : Riker assures Troi and Tasha that execution of Ramsey and his people will be unlikely to happen since, being refugees on the run, they would be difficult to find in the first place. Literally ten seconds later, Beata returns with the survivors in tow.
• Ticking Clock : The crew are in a rush to finish their business on Angel One so that they can address more pressing concerns in the Neutral Zone.
• Too Dumb to Live : Ariel, a member of the ruling council, had married one of the survivors, presumably for quite some time, and somehow it is only now that she is caught.
• You Are in Command Now : Picard puts Geordi in command upon being relieved by Dr. Crusher. When Geordi is incapacitated, Riker orders Data back to the ship to take command, as he is immune to the virus.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation S1 E12 "Datalore"
• Recap/Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Star Trek: The Next Generation S1E14 "11001001"

Important Links

• Action Adventure
• Commercials
• Crime & Punishment
• Professional Wrestling
• Speculative Fiction
• Sports Story
• Animation (Western)
• Music And Sound Effects
• Print Media
• Sequential Art
• Tabletop Games
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Characterization
• Characters As Device
• Narrative Devices
• British Telly
• The Contributors
• Creator Speak
• Derivative Works
• Laws And Formulas
• Show Business
• Split Personality
• Truth And Lies
• Truth In Television
• Fate And Prophecy
• Edit Reasons
• Isolated Pages
• Images List
• Recent Videos
• Crowner Activity
• Un-typed Pages
• Recent Page Type Changes
• Trope Entry
• Character Sheet
• Playing With
• Creating New Redirects
• Cross Wicking
• Tips for Editing
• Text Formatting Rules
• Handling Spoilers
• Administrivia
• Trope Repair Shop
• Image Pickin'

Advertisement:

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Challengers Link to Challengers
• I Saw the TV Glow Link to I Saw the TV Glow
• Música Link to Música

New TV Tonight

• The Veil: Season 1
• Hacks: Season 3
• The Tattooist of Auschwitz: Season 1
• A Man in Full: Season 1
• Acapulco: Season 3
• Welcome to Wrexham: Season 3
• John Mulaney Presents: Everybody's in LA: Season 1
• Star Wars: Tales of the Empire: Season 1
• My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman: Season 4.2
• Shardlake: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• Baby Reindeer: Season 1
• Fallout: Season 1
• Shōgun: Season 1
• Dead Boy Detectives: Season 1
• Knuckles: Season 1
• The Sympathizer: Season 1
• Goodbye Earth: Season 1
• Ripley: Season 1
• Them: Season 2
• 3 Body Problem: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Dead Boy Detectives: Season 1 Link to Dead Boy Detectives: Season 1
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

Rotten Tomatoes’ 300 Best Movies of All Time

Best Horror Movies of 2024 Ranked – New Scary Movies to Watch

Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Weekend Box Office Results: Challengers Takes the Crown

The Most Anticipated Movies of 2024

• Trending on RT
• Challengers
• The Fall Guy
• Play Movie Trivia

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Season 1, Episode 14

Where to watch, star trek: the next generation — season 1, episode 14.

Watch Star Trek: The Next Generation — Season 1, Episode 14 with a subscription on Paramount+, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

More Like This

Cast & crew.

Patrick Stewart

Capt. Jean-Luc Picard

Jonathan Frakes

Cmdr. William Riker

LeVar Burton

Lt. Geordi La Forge

Denise Crosby

Lt. Tasha Yar

Michael Dorn

Gates McFadden

Dr. Beverly Crusher

Episode Info

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Cast & Crew

Karen Montgomery

Sam Hennings

Patricia McPherson

Information

© 2011 CBS Corp.

Accessibility

Copyright © 2024 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.

Internet Service Terms Apple TV & Privacy Cookie Policy Support

• Web Channels
• Star Trek: The Next Generation

An Enterprise away team beams down to a planet with a matriarchal society to search for survivors of a crashed Federation freighter.

Patricia McPherson

Karen Montgomery

Sam Hennings

Leonard Crofoot

Cast appearances.

Patrick Stewart

Jonathan Frakes

LeVar Burton

Michael Dorn

Gates McFadden

Marina Sirtis

Brent Spiner

Denise Crosby

Wil Wheaton

Episode discussion.

Watching this 7 months into a pandemic, it's a little sad to see Dr. Crusher find a vaccine in 30 minutes... even if it is several hundred years into the future and they have multiple planets' worth of knowledge to draw upon...

Though you think they'd know several hundred years from now about covering their mouths when sneezing... looking at you Worf...

Great Books Guy

Reading the classics.

Star Trek TNG: Season 1, Episode Fourteen “Angel One”

Stardate: 416136.9 original air date: january 23, 1988 writer: patrick barry director: michael rhodes.

“Women, by our very nature, want what is best for men.” “Men are not objects to be possessed, Mistress Beata.”

The Enterprise-D has recently examined a derelict, seven-year-overdue Federation freighter called the Odin which was disabled by an asteroid collision. However, three escape pods got away which leaves the possibility of survivors. The nearest planet is Angel One, a Class-M planet rife with carbon and populated with intelligent life forms –it is similar in technological development to mid-20 th century earth. The Enterprise has traveled 2 days in order to arrive in orbit around Angel One, but if the Odin escape pods made it this far, it would have taken them about five months (or as Data notes, five months, six days, 11 hours, 2 minutes… and 57 seconds).

To complicate matters, Starfleet is adamant that the Enterprise keep positive diplomatic relations with Angel One (why?). Starfleet’s hope is that one day this world may become part of the Federation. Politically, Angel One has evolved into a constitutional oligarchy with a parliamentary body composed of six elected mistresses, headed by one single female known as “The Elected One” (this is apparently akin to the home planet of Counselor Troi, and Worf awkwardly remarks that Klingons appreciate strong women). Since this is a female-dominated matriarchal society, Counslor Troi first makes contact with Beata (the Elected One on Angel One), but she is still met with hostility. Eventually, Beata reluctantly allows a “brief visit” which will be “tolerated.”   

A landing party consisting of Data, Tasha Yar, Riker, and Counselor Troi is greeted by the Elected One, but she deflects the question about survivors of the Odin until the council had some time to deliberate (in particular, Mistress Beata and Mistress Ariel do not seem to agree). Meanwhile, back aboard the Enterprise, Picard prepares the ship for warp six once the away tam has completed its mission since Romulan battle cruisers have been detected near a Federation border outpost and assistance has been requested for the USS Berlin. However, many crewmen begin suffering from a strange respiratory illness on the Enterprise.

On Angel One, Beata allows the Enterprise crew to track down the four survivors, providing that they forced the survivors to leave Angel One. Beata warns the Odin survivors are dangerous and went against the “natural order.” The landing party finds the survivors living in a cave, led by a man named Ramsey, while Riker makes love to Beata. And as it turns out Mistress Ariel is secretly in love with Ramsey (hence her opposition to tracking down the survivors, and also why he refuses to leave).

In the end, Beata condemns the survivors to death but she is persuaded at the last moment by a flimsy speech from Riker about evolution. After a brief moment of reconsideration, Beata changes her mind and allows the survivors to live, albeit only in exile. Meanwhile, the mysterious virus seems to have been fixed with Data serving as the sole functional person aboard the ship so the Enterprise can finally provide support allies on the edge of the Neutral Zone.

My Thoughts on “Angel One”

Overtly sexual and also blatantly sexist, “Angel One” is another low point in season one –an episode which is clumsy, awkward, and preachy. It is highly reminiscent of “Justice” in its on-the-nose social commentary of a society wherein men-hating women rule like dominant matriarchs over their small-minded, small-statured male counterparts (at one point, the women openly forbid men from reading documents in their library, because the men are too stultified). Meanwhile, Riker prances around in a shiny tunic while being aggressively seduced by Beata. However, in this episode the acting across the board is simply pitiful. On the plus side, I found Dennis McCarthy’s score to be inspiring.

Several unanswered questions still linger for me with this episode: Why would the Odin survivors insist on remaining on the planet Angel One among its hostile women instead of departing with the Enterprise crew? Also where did the virus come from aboard the Enterprise? What caused it? Is the crew fully inoculated in the end?

Writer/Director

Writer Patrick Barry drafted the story for this episode as a social commentary on Apartheid in South Africa, with gender roles reversed.

Michael Rhodes directed this episode as part of a deal with The Bronx Zoo , another television show filmed at Paramount Studios.

Star Trek Trivia:

• In this episode, Wesley Crusher and a friend head to the holodeck for some skiing on the “Denubian Alps.”
• At one point, Worf and Picard smell night-blooming throgni “from home.”
• When agreeing to wear the apparel of Angel One, Riker notes that in the past on Kabatris he had to wear furs to meet with the leadership council, and on Armus IX he wore feathers, as well.
• Riker gives an “Albeni meditation crystal” to Beata as a gift.
• This is the first time the Romulans are mentioned in TNG (as far as I can tell).
• Apparently, Patrick Stewart tried to reverse the sexist character of this episode while it was being written.

Click here to return to my survey of the Star Trek series.

Share this:

1 thought on “ star trek tng: season 1, episode fourteen “angel one” ”.

I must say that when it comes to another world where the gender-based prejudices and oppression are reversed, an episode of Sliders seemed to do it much better than even Star Trek could with this one. It’s always curious when another sci-fi show can do something better than Star Trek. I’m glad that TNG would get much more sophisticated with its sci-fi drama as it progressed. Thank you for your review and trivia.

Like Liked by 2 people

Leave a comment Cancel reply

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

Angel One Stardate: 41636.9 Original Airdate: 25 Jan, 1988

<Back to the episode listing

Star Trek ® and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc . Copyright © 1966, Present. The Star Trek web pages on this site are for educational and entertainment purposes only. All other copyrights property of their respective holders.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (TV Series)

Angel one (1988), full cast & crew.

Directed by 

Writing credits  , cast (in credits order) complete, awaiting verification  , produced by , music by , cinematography by , editing by , casting by , production design by , set decoration by , costume design by , makeup department , production management , second unit director or assistant director , art department , sound department , special effects by , visual effects by , camera and electrical department , casting department , costume and wardrobe department , music department , script and continuity department , transportation department , additional crew .

Release Dates | Official Sites | Company Credits | Filming & Production | Technical Specs

Contribute to This Page

• Full Cast and Crew
• Release Dates
• Official Sites
• Company Credits
• Filming & Production
• Technical Specs
• Plot Summary
• Plot Keywords
• Parents Guide

Did You Know?

• Crazy Credits
• Alternate Versions
• Connections
• Soundtracks

Photo & Video

• Photo Gallery
• Trailers and Videos
• User Reviews
• User Ratings
• External Reviews
• Metacritic Reviews

Related Items

• External Sites

Related lists from IMDb users

Recently Viewed

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

Star Trek TNG

Video item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

3,912 Views

41 Favorites

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

In collections.

Uploaded by Santosh Varughese on March 2, 2023

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 1 Ending, Explained

Quick links, how does star trek: the next generation season 1 end, star trek: the next generation season 1's biggest story arcs, what do fans think of star trek: the next generation season 1's ending.

The stumbles of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation have been well-documented. Behind-the-scenes, writers struggled with the concept set down by franchise creator Gene Roddenberry. Some episodes were blatant remakes of Original Series stories, and the show even managed to lose a key cast member. Sometimes it seemed a quadrant away from the classic-packed first season of Star Trek in 1966.

It would be a couple of years before TNG introduced the trademark two-part stories that split seasons — ‘The Best of Both Worlds’ set a high bar at the end of Season 3. But it was clear TNG wouldn’t settle for being defined by its first season. It mustered up a season finale that reasserted its vision for Star Trek while keeping an eye on the future.

Best Picard Quotes In Star Trek: The Next Generation

‘The Neutral Zone’ ends the first year of TNG in an unusual way. It doesn’t pick up specific plot strands from the 25 episodes that went before, instead serving up two balanced storylines that dovetail into an intriguing ending. In the pre-title teaser, Worf and Data encounter a 20th-century Earth spacecraft packed with cryogenically suspended humans and retrieve three of them. The discovery recalls ‘Space Seed,’ the ominous 1967 episode of the Original Series that introduced major villain Khan Noonien Singh, but the threat in TNG comes from somewhere else entirely.

Mostly, the three revived humans provide comic relief and pose an inconvenience as the crew of the Enterprise investigates the loss of several Federation outposts along the Romulan Neutral Zone . The fear that the Romulan Star Empire is re-awakening after 53 years of isolation is realized at the end of the episode when the Enterprise encounters a huge Warbird and two combative commanders.

9 Underrated Star Trek: The Next Generation Episodes

The twist is that the Romulans aren’t behind the devastating attacks, having lost bases themselves. While there’s a chance for the Empire and Federation to work together, the Enterprise crew and fans are left in no doubt that the Romulans mean business in the galaxy, as one commander promises, “We are back.” As Picard eloquently observes, “I think our lives just became a lot more complicated.”

The episode’s odd structure makes an interesting juxtaposition. The antics of the survivors from the 20th century recall some comedic moments in the Original Series . While the Enterprise crew are oddly dismissive of the time refugees, their presence reinforces that the exploration and knowledge-led 24th century is far removed from the 20th, and even the 23rd. It’s a timely reminder as the parallel plot reintroduces and repositions the new-look Romulan Star Empire as a major threat.

The first season of TNG didn’t have the kinds of story arcs Star Trek fans are used to today. In the 1980s, TNG was syndicated to local stations in the US, meaning episodes could be broadcast in any order. That made arcs impossible and led to soft resets at the end of each story — which is why the death of a major character just two episodes before doesn’t warrant a reference. However, that didn’t stop TNG from seeding plots that would grow over the following years.

TNG ’s first year introduced Data’s long-lost brother Lore and the mysterious Traveler, both of whom would return with consequences. TNG ’s first story, ‘Encounter at Farpoint,’ welcomed fan-favorite Q, the omnipotent alien who would reappear throughout and beyond the series, including the grand finale ‘All Good Things.’ However, the most significant plot arc concluded in the episode before ‘The Neutral Zone.’ Teased in the 19th episode, ‘Coming of Age,’ the penultimate episode ‘Conspiracy’ had Picard and crew uncover and foil a parasitic alien infiltration at the head of Starfleet.

After dealing with monsters close to home and Federation ideals, TNG’s second major arc was all about establishing a next-generation threat to the galaxy. Roddenberry was keen to mark the Star Trek sequel series out from its 1960s forbear. Worf’s presence on board the enterprise was a clear sign that time had moved on, and he spelled it out in the series’ writing rules :

No stories about warfare with Klingons and Romulans and no stories with Vulcans. We are determined not to copy ourselves and believe there must be other interesting aliens in a galaxy filled with billions of stars and planets.

6 Biggest Retcons To Star Trek History

The solution was the Ferengi, a vicious and distinctive new species mentioned in early episodes before they made their presence felt in the fifth story, ‘The Last Outpost.’ As fans know, the looks and motives of this new threat didn’t work out , and the big-lobed aliens were softly rebooted into the avaricious comic relief that became a popular part of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine .

The Ferengi retreat left a gap, and the Romulans were ready to fill it . Using the time jump to the 24th century, the show recaptured the mystery of their reveal in the Original Series ’ ‘Balance of Terror’ (the Federation and Romulan Empire had fought a war in the 22nd century, but before view screens!).

The updated villains, who receive a great write-up from Troi in the episode, had new forehead ridges to distinguish them from Vulcans , a new Imperial symbol, and a gigantic new warship. The impressive D'deridex-class Romulan Warbird was the last ship created for the franchise by legendary designer Andrew Probert, who was also responsible for the Enterprise-D.

The fan reception to TNG Season 1 is mixed. It holds an Audience Score of 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, well under the 93% earned by TNG’s seventh and final season.

However, the final episode has received generally favorable reviews. One Redditor has justified that it’s a perfect starting point for new viewers of TNG as it expertly defines the traits of most of the main cast and sets out Star Trek ’s optimistic vision

The way the revived humans are handled comes in for most criticism, as observed on Reddit . While the episode mainly uses the 20th-century throwbacks as a chance to set out the Federation charter in the 24th century, it’s at the cost of plausibility. Would the enlightened crew of the Enterprise not be more interested in the time capsule that fell into the ship’s path or wary, considering what happened with Khan less than a hundred years before?

6 Most Evil Characters In Star Trek History

The handling of the Romulans stands out, as the Empire snarled back with suitable threat and promise. One Redditor even suggested the episode foreshadowed the approach Deep Space Nine would take to the Federation when they provoked the Dominion . Are the franchise's heroes just bringing trouble on themselves with their smug assertion of how great and correct they are?

An interesting side note couldn’t help but affect how fans perceive the episode as soon as a year after its broadcast. The Romulans were a welcome returning threat, but they were a stop-gap. The Ferengi were pushed aside in preparation for a yet-to-be-revealed major new threat whose presence was felt in the devastating attacks on outposts in the Neutral Zone. It would be a while before the culprits were revealed, even if the stellar cartography and timeline don’t quite match up. ‘The Neutral Zone’ is the first sign of TNG’s definitive enemies: The Borg.

Star Trek: 5 Important Moments In The Borg's History

Screen Rant

I'm glad star trek: tng never did a mirror universe episode.

The Mirror Universe worked great on Star Trek: The Original Series, but it would have felt out of place on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

• TNG's moral crew would clash with a dark Mirror Universe, making an episode feel out of place.
• Mirror Universe concept worked for TOS but wouldn't fit TNG's serious and optimistic tone.
• TNG found other ways to explore alternate realities without resorting to Mirror Universe episodes.

Star Trek: The Next Generation never did a Mirror Universe episode, and that ultimately worked in the show's favor. Star Trek's Mirror Universe first debuted in the classic Star Trek: The Original Series episode, "Mirror, Mirror," in which Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and some of his crew find themselves in a dark alternate universe that mirrors their own. In the Mirror Universe, the ISS Enterprise serves the Terran Empire instead of the USS Enterprise as part of the United Federation of Planets' Starfleet. Crew members are tortured when they make a mistake and the chain of command is often determined by officers murdering their superiors.

Despite the divergence of events in Star Trek' s Prime Universe and the Mirror Universe, many people ended up in the same place in both realities. For example, the entire crew of the USS Enterprise was the same in both universes, but their personalities were drastically different. Simply put, t he Mirror Universe is a world of opposites , although Spock (Leonard Nimoy) is logical in every universe. While the Mirror concept worked well for a one-off story with Captain Kirk and his Enterprise crew , the Mirror Universe would have felt out of place on Star Trek: The Next Generation for a number of reasons.

In Star Trek: Picard season 2, Q (John de Lancie) altered the past of the Prime Universe, which resulted in the

Confederation of Earth, a "xenophobic authoritarian regime" much like the Mirror Universe.

Star Trek 10’s Best Mirror Universe Variants

Why a star trek: tng mirror universe episode wouldn't have worked, the mirror universe clashes with the tone of tng and its characters..

Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation represent the most moral Star Trek crew, and "evil" versions of those characters would have felt cartoonish. The Mirror Universe worked with the campy tone of Star Trek: The Original Series and Kirk was already an emotional Captain, so it wasn't that hard to imagine an evil version of him. TNG , on the other hand, had a more serious and optimistic tone, and an evil Captain Picard would have likely been either too dark or too over-the-top. TNG did tell alternate universe stories, such as "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "Parallels," but they did it in a way that was new and unique rather than rehashing TOS ' Mirror Universe concept.

Although Star Trek: The Next Generation had some callbacks to Star Trek: The Original Series in its early seasons, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry wanted to distance TNG from TOS . "Mirror, Mirror" is generally regarded as one of classic Star Trek's best episodes, and it would have been difficult for any TNG episode to live up to that. Despite not doing a Mirror Universe episode, TNG found other ways to allow its actors to play different, and even evil, versions of their characters. Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner), for example, faced off against his evil twin brother Lore more than once, and multiple characters were possessed by alien entities.

Various non-canon tie-in novels and comic books have told Mirror Universe stories with Star Trek: The Next Generation's characters, beginning with Diane Duane's novel Dark Mirror in 1993.

Some Star Trek Shows Overused The Mirror Universe

The mirror universe began as a good concept but offers diminishing returns..

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had five Mirror Universe episodes, beginning with DS9 season 2, episode 23, "Crossover." This episode revealed that Mirror Universe Spock had reformed the Terran Empire after Captain Kirk and his crew visited there in "Mirror, Mirror." Although his reforms initially proved successful, they led to the occupation of the Empire by the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance, which then became the dominant power. In the Mirror Universe, Terok Nor (space station Deep Space Nine) was commanded by Intendant Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) , and Nana Visitor clearly had fun playing an evil version of Kira. However, with its overly sexualized characters and general campiness, the Mirror Universe storyline offered diminishing returns after the novelty wore off.

Star Trek: Enterprise's two-part "In a Mirror, Darkly" faired a bit better than DS9's Mirror Universe adventures, as it presented a self-contained story that took place entirely in the Mirror Universe and connected with TOS.

The Mirror Universe made more sense combined with the darker tone of Star Trek: Discovery , but it sometimes felt like too much for a Star Trek show. Still, the Mirror Universe of Discovery did provide the characters of Captain Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs) and Emperor Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), two of Star Trek's best new villains. After its appearance in multiple Star Trek shows, the Mirror Universe began to feel too much like a gimmick. It's a concept that works better when used sparingly, and it would have felt tonally out of place on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Enterprise, & Star Trek: Discovery are available to stream on Paramount+.

Star Trek: The Next Generation