Friday, September 16, 2011

Classics: TNG 3:24 - Ménage à Troi (Jeers)

Overall Rating: 0.5

The half point is for having the decency not to force L'waxana to actually have sex to get them out of jeopardy...the lack of additional points is for causing me to worry that she might.

Plot Synopsis:

Ferengi asshole thinks Troi's Mom is hot.  Lwaxana shoots him down.  Naturally, Ferengi asshole assumes he simply hasn't been pursuasive enough and kidnaps both Trois.  DISGUSTING sexual references ensue and the girls whore their way out of danger (more or less), concluding with Picard playing the role of insane lover to save the day.  Seriously...I am not making this up.  I'm not even going to bother providing a link to the Memory Alpha page on it...buit you can look it up yourself if you'd like.

The Skinny:

Let me see...if I understand the custom correctly, oomox is the Ferengi equivalent of a hand job.  And Lwaxana spends a good twelve hours on the Ferengi vessel giving her captor endless hand jobs until he's stupid enough to give away security info (but his lieutenant catches him in the act and foils that plan).  Then, realizing she can't slut her way to freedom, Lwaxana calls the Enterprise and gets Picard to play the jealous fool to rescue her.  And I'm not, as a true Susan B. Anthony era feminist, supposed to find that offensive?  Really??  Roddenbury isn't even running the show anymore and yet...we still get stuck with his backwards view of women as powerful only in so far as they can sleep their way to the top?

And it's not just that this show is offensive.  The plot is horribly slow and formulaic, the episode seems to have no point in existing, and, oh yes...the dialouge is really REALLY bad, owing in part to the fact that the writers still don't know how to write believable Ferengi.  They are still being played as so spectacularly stupid that they can't think one step ahead of a mouse, let alone another humanoid, and yet somehow possessing space-faring vessels without blowing themselves up.  It doesn't make sense.  Why would they, with one hand, assure us that capitalists are intelligent enough to subvert the rights of billions of people for their own gains and then with the other, portray them us utterly retarded (and I use that in the literal, clinical sense of the word, not as an insult)?  It's wish fulfillment for socialists...that's all.

I'm so glad DS9 at least gave us Ferengi that we could respect, even if we didn't like their methods.  Sheesh.

Writing: 0.0

There is not one single redeaming value in this script.  Not one.

Acting: 0.0

Majel Barrett-Roddenbury is better than this...she proves that on DS9.  The Ferengi is totally un-credible as an enemy and Patrick Stewart's awkward and mannered portrayal of a guy portraying jealousy heroically to rescue his people is...truly Texas League quality patethic.

Message: 0.0

Women of the world unite...as soon as you realize that men are yours to command through sexual gratification, you will have no boundaries!!!!

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