DEVIL'S DUE


I have two basic reactions to this episode:

1)  It was nice light popcorn entertainment.  (I wish I'd brought my popcorn
    with me when I watched it. :-)
2)  It was hardly original.

To expand on those thoughts, then:

This had all the elements of a nice, average piece of entertainment.  Nothing
special, nothing outstanding.  The only thing that really grabbed me was
that the guest stars weren't very capable actors, but then the script was
a bit corny, so so what?

I quite enjoyed Picard ordering Worf to FORCE her off the bridge.  Nice to
see that Picard isn't quite such a bloody pacifist all the time.

The comedy touches here worked fairly well.  Seeing Picard transported
down to the planet in his bedclothes was pretty amusing.

I also enjoyed how they didn't introduce another f*cking starfaring race
into the Trek mythos, but instead had the Klingons be the other race to
have contacted the planet.  If episodes like "Suddenly Human" and "The
Wounded" had made use of the races already existant they'd have been
better episodes (come to think of it, "The Wounded" should have used
with the Gorns or the Tholians instead of summoning up the Cardassians).

On the other hand, this episode had its share of flaws.  One would think
the Enterprise would have done somethine when it lost contact with
Picard, or, indeed, that it would have been able to find a shoddily cloaked
ship without having to specifically search for it, it being the best ship
in the fleet and all.  And, of course, I wondered how the woman managed to
repel Worf on the bridge.  Finally, I gagged a bit when Data asked Picard
if he could explain the woman's powers and he said "no", even though
he'd adequately explained everything in his ready room earlier in the
episode - and it turns out he was right.  Bad scriptwriting there.

And the arbitration sequence was interminably long.  Sort of like pulling
teeth.  Oh, well.  Picard's zeal to expose the con game was refreshing,
at least.

As for my other point, I've seen most of this stuff before.  Except for
the fact that the whole thing WAS a sham, it bore a close resemblance to
the TOS episode "The Squire Of Gothos", except that this episode didn't
have a character with half the magnetism of Trelayne.  It also brought
back memories of "Wolf in the Fold" (the trial scene) and "Catspaw"
(the disappearance of the Enterprise thanks to a sultry alien woman).
Overall, I'd say that this one resembled "Catspaw" more closely in
quality than the other two, which is too bad.

I think you can file this one away with "The Royale" as an interesting but
flawed piece of light entertainment.  I can't damn it too harshly because
just the change of pace it provided was fun.  But, like last week's
episode, I'm in no great hurry to watch it again, either.

Grade: C-


SEASON FOUR TO DATE:
The Best Of Both Worlds Part Two: C-
Family: A-
Brothers: B
Suddenly Human: C
Remember Me: A+
Legacy: D+
Reunion: A-
Future Imperfect: D-
Final Mission: B
The Loss: D-
Data's Day: B-
The Wounded: C-
Devil's Due: C-
---
Total:  30
Average: 2.308 = C+
(Fall of 0.053 from previous episode)

Reality check:  Not a whole lot to check here.  It's certainly not as bad
as "Future Imperfect" or "The Loss", nor as good as "Final Mission" or
"Data's Day" (gee, we've had two D-alliteration episodes this season. I
wonder what that means?).  The different tone of the story makes it hard
to compare to BOBW2 or "The Wounded", but it seems about right.  The
difference is that those two wer ambitious episodes which fell far short
of their ambitions, while this had modest goals which it fulfilled
reasonably well.

C'mon Paramount... the fourth season is getting booorrrring!