What a remarkably annoying episode. I am never sure if the writers are as annoyed with Lwaxana as I am or if they buy into her hippy dippy bullshit about being a free spirit. I was as annoyed with her as Worf throughout the entire episode. Even the B story about metal parasites was pretty dumb. It seems totally unreasonable that the ship would be unable to detect having parts of it turned into goo that are generally required for normal functioning. Wouldn't there be some power fluctuation before the entire thing turned into the slime from the second ghost busters movie?
The episode opens with the only decent scene in the episode, they are racing to blow up an asteroid falling towards a populated planet and only manage to destroy it with a few seconds left. And yeah, they clearly don't understand how asteroids work since they just blow it into chunks that are still going to fall in the planet with huge velocity, but whatever. Then we see Worf and Alexander getting some advice from Deanna who insists in the value of family until she gets a call that her mother is arriving. It turns out Lwaxana is getting married to some minister she has never met, but first she has to turn Alexander into some sort of parody of a hippy by taking him to a free spirit colony on the holodeck.
After annoying literally everyone except Picard who is just happy because he gets to give Lwaxana away as a bride we see the B story reappear in the form of some shiny dust moving through the ship. First the replicators are damaged and then the inertial dampeners. The groom arrives and is a total stick in the mud since clearly all people are either fun loving free spirits or total pains in the ass. He has brought along a protocol adviser to try and keep things going properly. I am going to stop here for a moment, the idea that Lwaxana would even consider marrying someone like this clearly contradicts everything else we know about her and makes this episode double dumb.
The ship is almost destroyed by the parasites and everyone but Data passes out due to low oxygen, but since the writers know as little about medical science as they do about space science there are no ill effects of being oxygen deprived for an extended period of time. When it comes time for the wedding Lwaxana shows up nude and her groom flees showing he has more sense than I gave him credit for.
Review: I hated this episode as a kid and I didn't like it now. This is Lwaxana at her worst. I guess it could be worse, but I am not sure I want to find out how.
2 out of 10
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