TNG Episode Review: IMHO - "Dark Page"
TED BRENGLE
***A Special Encore Presentation Of The Best Of IMHO***
(or a lousy, stinking re-run)
TNG: Season 7: "Dark Page"
Okay for what it was.
What I worried might be just a shallow exploration of more
daring TrekAngst (pat. pending) turned out to be more substantive
than that in adequately written and performed hour that covered
some familiar dramatic territory with a somewhat disappointing lack
of fresh ideas to bring to it.
One thing that did jump out at me was that for the first time
this season, a new alien race was not a blatant insult to our
intelligence. They seemed better thought-out and more logically
consistent, and while they did ask a few "naive" questions ("What is
poetry?"), they made perfect sense for a race that uses telepathy
solely.
Also I must admit that I liked Sirtis here. She
acted in a very effective, understated manner throughout the
episode. I was afraid she would go bonkers with the emoting again
(and when she does, she's terrible), but here she made the wise
choice of handing the emotions she had to display with both reserve
and subtlety, making both her character and the situation a lot more
believable. Unless I'm forgetting something, I'd have to say that
this was her best performance in the series, because this was the
first time she handled some material with meat to it without going
totally over the edge and making me contemplate throwing a heavy
object at the TV screen to shut her up.
Unfortunately, the same can not be said of Barrett, who I must
admit I have never thought was much of an actress. Here we saw where
Troi gets her overacting from. Several of her scenes were too
overplayed to be believed, and really hurt the episode. The sad part
was that much of the writing for the character was strong. It was
not only truly endemic to the character, but also helped to explain
why Lwaxana has always been in such a frantic rush whenever we've
seen her, as if she is afraid that if she's not in constant,
perpetual motion, seeking out constant stimulus to keep her
occupied, she might begin to remember. Turning this obnoxious trait
of Troi's on its head by explaining it reasonably and making her an
actual character, instead of a gooney caricature, is powerful, but
Barrett couldn't pull off the tricky acting this kind of story
requires without making me stifle a chuckle and BANG! that's when
the episode almost died.
Also working against show was some pretty inept direction.
Putting "Dark Page" right after "Phantasms" was a major mistake.
"Dark Page's" dream imagery was quite unimaginative (Ooooo, she
stepped out into space. Scary). True yawners, especially when
compared to Braga's effort last week. And the direction really made
me appreciate the freshness that Stewart brought to similar
material. During "Dark Page" a number of annoying cliches were
trotted out and used to bash the viewers over the head, including
superfluous use of fish-eye lenses and stedicams, that truly goofy
"spooky" sound effect that was used whenever somebody communicated
with telepathy (A trope right out of the 50's, it also made me
wonder if somebody's head was going to explode like in "Scanners")
and that really, really hackneyed trick of having the camera pull-in
on a telepath's eyes, then cut to a similar pull-in shot of the
person who's receiving the communication, then back to the telepath,
then back to the contactee, and so on. I don't know how many times
they did that during the hour.
But in many ways the failure in the direction and the dream
imagery went hand-in-hand. For example, why exactly did the bulk of
Lwaxana's "meta-conscious" mind (And there is another annoying
gimmick that didn't work. If all Betazoids have a part of the mind
specifically set aside for the complete repression of memories of
mind-ripping traumas, I don't even want to think about the kind of
planetary environment, yet alone the society which would form out of
it, that would be necessary to evolve something like that in a
humanoid. But, as usual, I digress) resemble, for the most part, the
corridors of the Enterprise? Why not DS9? Heck, she visited there, too.
If I were to explain it, I would say that it was a construct of
Deanna's mind, not Lwaxana's, and it acted as a neutral medium between
their two consciousness. The script, on the other hand, didn't even try
to cover up this show's pragmatic, bottle-show limitations (Where is
this season's budget?! Look at all these cheapo episodes! I'm getting
suspicious. Anybody else ever seen "The Producers"?)
Then there was the way that the death of Troi's sister was set
up (actually a pretty desperate and hooky idea and I was surprised they
were able to make it work as well as they did). The set they used was
so damn small and boxed-in it seemed like the only way the Trois could
have missed their daughter falling into the water was if, indeed, they
had both been totally negligent. Again, this might have just been
Lwaxana's interpretation of the event, but still it felt weird. Also
hurting the episode was the music. "Why?" you may ask. "It was in no
way different than the music in any other episode that TNG has put on
in the last three years." And that's exactly the problem. I've just
about reached my tolerance level for the exact same, dull, ridiculously
non-committal "music" that TNG keeps putting on. It actually has become
a distraction. Every time they go to a commercial during a scene of
"high tension" they play that exact same "eeeeeRRRRROOOOWWWW". You
know. The cue that sounds like a 747 with a none-too-recently checked
engine flying overhead. EVERY DAMN TIME! I wish they'd just stop
scoring these shows. Much like Barney The Dinosaur, the monotonous,
banality of it is getting increasingly annoying.
To the Big Board:
The Grade: C+ (All over the map. Strong in some
places, very weak in others.
Flaky direction and Barrett's
performance bring it down, but an
ambitious attempt to make the
character of Lwaxana work and
Sirtis' best performance ever
bring it back up.)
Next Week: Frakes takes the conn (Yeah!) and we'll be taking
bets on whether this is actually "the Bev/Picard
story fans have been waiting for!"
-Ted Brengle
(Cynic who likes Deanna every
once and a while... but doesn't
like to publicize it)
(c) Copyright 1994, Ted Brengle (IMHO Inc.)
* OLX 2.1 TD * Complacent, arrogant, inept: Congress or Modern Trek?
==========================================================================
Origin: Spock's Adventure! BBS - Computer Shopper's BBS of the Month
Cincinnati, OH (513) 779-9717 FidoNet 1:108/175 TrekNet 87/6001:1839
==========================================================================