Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: Conundrum

TNG "Conundrum"

"Conundrum" has a singularly clever premise, as an alien erases the Enterprise crew's memory and inserts himself in the command structure of the senior staff, in order to use the Enterprise's tactical features as weapons of mass destruction against an enemy. By instantly retconning himself into the crew, the alien (MacDuff) becomes an early example of the "Dawn from Buffy" phenomenon. Dawn was also inserted into the cast of the show, and the artificiality of that was a major plot point.

The initial disorientation of the crew is captured by rare handheld camerawork, from director Les Landau. I love how the initial reveal of MacDuff is done subtly; no particular musical sting accompanies his first appearance, and the camera quickly cuts away. Of course, later MacDuff's cover is violently blown.

What saves the day is Federation ethics. Picard has a great scene in the Ready Room with MacDuff, forcefully saying that he requires a moral context for orders that involve killing. Before things turn around, the Enterprise is treated as a warship even by the show itself. Dennis McCarthy's score follows the ship with a percussive martial cue.

Perhaps the episode's biggest flaw is a quick resolution, so common in Star Trek. MacDuff is phasered into submission, and there's only the briefest reflection on what has happened. What's missing, on the nose as it might have been, is a moment of summation.

With Star Trek: Picard hindsight, we have any seed that pays off in that later show. Data speculates that he could hail from a race of artificial life-forms, who live on a home planet they claim as their own. Such a planet directly factors into Picard.

A clever episode that slightly fizzles out at the end. 7/10.