6.13 Aquiel

Rating: 3

When the Enterprise investigates the disappearance of two Starfleet officers assigned to repairs on a relay station near the Klingon border, all they find are the possible remains of one officer, and her pet dog. Geordi becomes familiar with Aquiel, the missing female officer, by watching her video logs. When the local Klingon patrol find her alive in her shuttle, Geordi becomes her friend and defends her against the accusation that she is a murderer.

Comments

This episode was co-written by Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore, from a story by Jeri Taylor.

Levar Burton (Geordi) once again deserves a round of applause for how cool, calm, and convincing he is when delivering dialogue, from the toughest technobabble to the softest declaration of love.

Nits

In a pivotal scene, the dog Mora starts playfully grabbing Geordi’s pants leg. Geordi, trying to do some work, gets annoyed and yells at Mara to stop. Mara walks away and turns into a poorly animated blob of gold, then begins to attack Geordi. Two questions arise: Are the writers trying to say that Geordi’s unwillingness to play was the catalyst for the coalescent to begin its attack? And, if Rocha also turned into a blob before attacking Aquiel, wouldn’t she remember this? Conveniently for the plot, it seems a coalescent attack also brings with it a loss of memory, otherwise Aquiel would have remembered a blob, and the show would have been over in ten minutes.

Another point about Attack of the Blob: there were a couple of moments when Geordi had the opportunity to tap his communicator and say, "Emergency! Security to my quarters!" But for some reason he didn’t.

Quotable Quotes

Riker: I think you’ve let your personal feelings cloud your judgement.
LaForge: I’m not the one making judgements.