In many ways, Pen Pals is similar to The Icarus Factor. Both are flawed, uneven episodes whose secondary storylines are both more compelling and more plausible than the main storylines. Unfortunately for Pen Pals, its main storyline is a critical inconsistency for the characters and the TNG series.

The main story of Pen Pals focuses on Data breaking the Prime Directive by communicating with a girl whose civilization has not yet achieved space travel. Such a gross violation of a fundamental Starfleet regulation seems entirely inconsistent with everything we have learned about Data thus far. What makes matters worse is that this violation is followed up by a series of violations that increase in severity, culminating in Data actually bringing the girl on board the bridge of the Enterprise — only to be followed by having Pulaski erase her memory.

This is all justified, by both the episode and the characters within the episode, because the girl’s planet is being ripped apart by overactive tectonic forces. There is an intriguing scene in Picard’s quarters in which the morality of the situation is discussed, but the conclusions drawn by the characters directly contradict everything they have said and will say before, during and after this episode. Picard even says that the Prime Directive is meant to protect Starfleet from emotional, knee-jerk reactions. And yet his decision to violate the Prime Directive is exactly that: an emotional reaction.

Even more damning is something Picard says in The Measure of a Man: “Starfleet is not an organization that ignores its own regulations when they become inconvenient.” And yet, that is precisely what happens here. It is a fundamental error in judgment to have written this episode and introduced such gross inconsistencies into the characters of Picard and Data. I suppose such inconsistencies would be permissible if Data and Picard ever had to face the consequences for their actions — but they never do. Not in this episode, and not in the rest of the series.

The real saving grace to this episode comes from Wesley Crusher, who gets his first real “command.” He is put in charge of a mineral survey team and watching him confront the responsibilities of the task is quite enjoyable. If this had been the episode’s main storyline, it would have had much more success.

Pen Pals is an episode that presents us with an worthy moral dilemma. Unfortunately, it answers the dilemma in ways that are inconsistent to the characters and to the series.

Topics: Prime Directive
Filed under: TNG Reviews