Pen Pals is an one of those episodes that you remember once you start watching, but forget pretty soon afterwards. There isn't anything wrong with it that I can point out and say that is where they went wrong, but it also seems a little bland. The A story about Data finding a little girl on a doomed planet and violating the prime directive by talking to her doesn't really pay off like it probably should have. The subplot about Wesley getting his first command experience also doesn't seems pretty formulaic. First they don't do what he says but then he gets some confidence and everything goes perfectly. And at the end of the episode after they have saved an entire planet of people in violation of the prime directive they make it all better by erasing one girls memory.
The episode opens with Riker on the bridge entering an unstable star system and Picard explaining why horses are awesome to Troi on the holodeck. Before Picard can ride off into the forest Riker calls him to the bridge which is clearly disappointing to Riker. The crisis he had to rush there for was that a previously life bearing planet was now a volcanic hell hole and wasn't changing or something requiring hurry at all. The bridge crew have a conference and decide that Wesley needs his first taste of command so they give him the job of running the mineral survey team. After they break up the meeting Data starts scanning for radio anomalies and finds a weak signal coming from one of the planets that hasn't destroyed itself yet. After messing with it for a bit he is able to get through to a young girl on the planet and worse, the planet is doomed.
Wesley is having trouble picking his team so there are lots of scenes of him getting advice. And after he has the team together it is hard for him to tell people older than him what they need to do, but after a pep talk from Riker things are going fine. Meanwhile Data tells Picard what he has done and Picard calls a senior staff meeting. They all agree it violates the prime directive and there is nothing they can do until they hear the little girls voice and all agree they should save her planet. For some reason this requires Data to beam down to get her and then bring her back up to the ship to watch Wesley save the planet with special photon torpedoes and then Pulaski erases her memory and everything is fine.
Review: I know the writers weren't going to kick Data off the show for violating the prime directive, but it loses some of its impact when it is so easily ignored. Also it would have been more interesting if there had been a little more conflict in the episode. They set Wesley up to have a hard time but all he has to do is be confident and everything turns out great. Certainly this isn't an unpleasant episode to watch, but not very memorable either.
5 out of 10
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