Not quite as good as The Inner Light which is also a tale of an ancient archive floating in space Masks still manages to be one of TNG's more memorable episodes. For those who haven't been impressed with Brent Spiner's acting I would hold this episode up as an example of his range. Plus any episode that is going to be Brent and Patrick going at it for who can do the acting best is ok with me. It seems like transforming a space vessel into a stone city would have dire consequences pretty quickly, but whatever.
The episode opens with Troi helping out at a kids sculpture class. In the back of the room Data is also working on sculpture, but his works tend to be extremely realistic. Troi encourages him to go with the images in his mind, but that doesn't help much either. On the bridge they have encountered a rogue comet that has been travelling through deep space for 86 million years. When they scan it there is a sudden flash and some sort of sensor echo. Troi and Crusher stop by the counselors quarters to pick up gym clothes and Beverly notices a strange stone artifact on the table that Troi doesn't recognize. Back in the sculture class Troi notices that Data has made something out of the ordinary, an ornate mask with a sun symbol on the forehead. One of the students is having problems with his terminal and when Data investigates he finds Mayan style glyphs floating across the screen.
Down in engineering Geordi is trying to figure out what is going on with the symbols and replicated objects appearing all over the ship and Data notices something odd, he can read some of the symbols. Back on the bridge Picard is determined to get the the middle of this crisis literally by blasting off the outer layers of the comet with the phasers. Inside they find what Data recognizes as an archive which has apparently been controlling the ship through their sensors. Picard decides that since it is such an ancient thing they should probably let it do its thing and find out what that is so he sets to work studying the symbols looking for meaning. In engineering Data is hooked up to the computer to try and figure out what is happening with him. When the computer accesses his memories he suddenly slumps over and when he looks up he has a strange symbol on his forehead and a clay tablet on his chest. Also, he is no longer Data.
Picard shows up and learns that Data is currently Ilhat, some sort of trickster who is trying to avoid Masaka, apparently an evil queen who lives to make people suffer. When Troi arrives Data switches personas and seems to believe that she is Masaka. Data is confined to quarters and the rest of the crew sets to work on the new problem, the archive has grabbed them with some sort of tractor beam and even replaces the power cells on their photon torpedoes with live snakes. Data continues to exhibit more personalities all of whom seem to fear Masaka to varying degrees, but also revere Korgano who apparently used to hunt for Masaka. Eventually Picard learns that to talk to Masaka he must build her temple and gets one of the personas to show him the symbol which Geordi feeds back into the archive. The temple appears and Data changes again. This time the symbol on his forehead is gone and instead he dons the clay mask he made early in the episode and assumes the thrown. Masaka won't acknowledge any of them but Picard figures out how to make Korgano's mask and convinces Makaka to sleep so she can begin the hunt again and the ship is released.
Review: This last run of episodes in season 7 have been amazing and this one certainly doesn't disappoint. It is so amazing to see the writers take advantage of how the characters have grown throughout the show to make amazing episodes like thing.
8 out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment