They certainly didn't blow the budget on makeup for tonight's episode. The reverse aging admiral looked like he had bad aged makeup right from the start and his intermediate makeup wasn't any better. At the same time I did enjoy the story of a man unwilling to accept what the aging process has done to him, but at the same time having to face up to the biggest success in his career having been a lie. You would really expect them to run into more military dictatorship planets instead of all the peaceful democracies, but maybe they just don't normally visit?
The Enterprise is on the way to Persephone V (my friend Amy had a cat named Persephone for many years) with Admiral Jameson (my friend Claire has a corgi named Jameson, this is the episode of the pet names apparently) to negotiate for the release on some hostages. Instead of the demands coming directly from the hostages they have been contacted by governor Mordan who says the hostage takers have insisted Jameson negotiate personally. The admiral is very old and is confined to a wheelchair, but special Starfleet orders insist he is in charge of the mission and will command any away teams. Crusher performs a medical exam and discovers that she has been given old files on the admiral, but Picard isn't worried.
In his quarters Jameson gets out of his wheelchair greatly surprising his wife. He tells her he has been taking a new treatment and it is working. On the bridge the admiral gets up and walks around which he shouldn't be able to do with the degenerative disease he has. While preparing to negotiate the admiral collapses and his wife calls the doctor. She finds unknown chemicals in his blood stream (no idea why they weren't detected when she did her exam like an hour before) and he tells them all he went to an alien world and got a dose of anti-aging drugs. His wife is pissed and isn't happy when he tells her he got her a dose as well (never mind that he already took her dose to get it working faster).
Jameson calls Mordan directly and figures out Mordan is the hostage taker. He doesn't tell the captain this but insists on leading an armed rescue party immediately making him seem pretty nuts. They warp in extra fast and beam into tunnels where Jameson believes the hostages will be, but his memory is long out of date and they end up trapped and taking fire. Picard beams them up just in time after Jameson collapses from side effects of his reverse aging. Mordan calls up and gives them 5 minutes before he starts killing hostages. Jameson beams down to Mordan with Picard, but Mordan refuses to believe this young man is actually Jameson. Finally he is convinced and prepares to kill his old enemy (Jameson ended the previous negotations by agreeing to give Mordan the weapons he wanted but also armed his foes leading to 40 years of bloody civil war) but decides to watch him die from his own mistakes instead which takes about 3 minutes.
Review: Not sure I buy that no one in the future wants to be young again, but whatever, maybe Picard is happy being old at least. The plot about the famous negotiator actually being a fraud was a cool twist. Above average, but not super memorable.
7 out of 10
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