Suspicions is a highly suspect episode on a number of levels. Truth be told, it’s just barely on the better side of failure. Not much goes well from either a writing, directing or even performance aspect. And, to make matters worse, there is simply no point to the entire exercise. It’d be different if the episode was at least attempting to do something more than just be mindless escapism entertainment. Because if that’s all you set out to do, you had better do it well. And that makes Suspicions a waste of time.

The episode is told primarily as a flashback. To begin, we’re told that Dr. Crusher has been fired from her position as Chief Medical Officer, is facing a courts martial, and has been at the center of an “interstellar incident.” It may have been mildly engaging if it hadn’t been such a pure contrivance. At the very least it’s indicative of the episode as a whole — which is little more than one contrivance after another.

After Guinan appears in Dr. Crusher’s quarters, complaining of tennis elbow, Dr. Crusher begins narrating the sequence of events that led to her dismissal. It seems she had been rather taken by the theories of a Ferengi scientist. Yes, the Ferengi are in the episode. And true to their bellwether status, the presence of a Ferengi is a portent of doom.

That isn’t to say that this Ferengi, one Dr. Reyga, is a terrible character. Actually, he may be the best part of this particular episode — which directly confronts the notion that a Ferengi scientist is a “contradiction in terms.” As a character he is plausible as a driven, self-conscious scientist, desperate to prove his worth to the greater scientific community. That his invention is a shield that allows a shuttle to fly into the corona of a star is irrelevant — all that really matters is that he has an invention and he wants to prove that it works.

Dr. Crusher has also gathered a few other scientists, skeptics mostly, to be a part of the tests. As characters, the collection of scientists is exceptionally bland — which is a huge error for an episode that becomes a pseudo murder mystery. I mean, who ever heard of a good mystery that had lousy characters?

The “murders” occur in two stages. First there is an alien, named Jo’Bril, that volunteers to pilot the test shuttle. During the experiment, the shield malfunctions and Jo’Bril dies. A few scenes later, a distraught Dr. Reyga, is found dead after an apparent suicide. Dr. Crusher doesn’t believe that either incident was an accident and she sets off to investigate.

Her detective work, accompanied by her narrations, provide a very vague impression of a film noir piece. But Suspicions is so bad that to go any further in the comparison would be an insult to film noir.

Eventually, Dr. Crusher disobeys orders not to conduct an autopsy on Dr. Reyga, whose family conveniently objects to such procedures because, you know, allowing Dr. Crusher to conduct an autopsy would have gotten in the way of the mystery. And speaking of mystery, I also have to use that term very loosely because the episode does a fabulously poor job in creating any sort of mystery or suspense.

And the mystery itself is just a sham. The final reveal, the final resolution such pure contrivance that it’s really rather embarrassing. It turns out that Jo’Bril wasn’t actually dead, just in a self-induced coma that mimics death. How convenient.

We learn about this while Dr. Crusher has, yet again, disobeyed orders and commandeered the test shuttle and is piloting it into a star. (What star, by the way? They were enroute to a starbase so that she could do her courts martial thingy — and they just happened to be passing near enough to a star?) And she is forced to destroy Jo’Bril before he kills her.

So in the end, she winds up with absolutely no evidence — aside from proving that Dr. Reyga’s invention actually works — to clear her name. And yet, she is reinstated as Chief Medical Officer without any question or fuss about insubordination or violating Ferengi burial customs.

Lazy.

Suspicions is best avoided at almost all costs. Only watch it if someone is forcing you to choose between it and, say, Too Short a Season.

Topics: Ferengi, Klingons, Vulcans
Filed under: TNG Reviews