Sub Rosa

There seems to be a lot of dissatisfaction with this episode. I'm not really sure why. The whole series was an examination of characters, only here the plot intersects the usual character driven story format that was Star Trek The Next Generation.

That is to say old school Star Trek was a plot driven "police in space" show, whereas Star Trek The Next Generation looked at character interaction for a variety of reasons. Here the good doctor is again made the subject of examining someone who experiences the world differently, only this time it's a plot device to move the story forward.

The plot is more than just a romance, and adds real jeopardy to ship and characters. Not to keep parroting myself here, but old school Star Trek went after a lot of bad guys who had psychiatric issues that caused problems. We get some of that here with Dr. Crusher interacting with a character that others don't know about, question, or can't otherwise experience like the ship's doctor.

Regrettably the story starts to falls into psychological examination as is the supermajority of this TV series which slows the story. But, it's not simply a Harlequin romance novel in space as a lot of the reviews would suggest. The episode deals with a character who has strong emotions for someone that other people question. Said relationship poses a threat to the ship.

Personally, to me, it's just another character driven episode with some plot elements that stray from the usual background story fodder where the plot usually exists in this show.

I had it on in the background when it first aired, and watching it again after thirty years I shrug my shoulders at it. To me it's on par with all of the other episodes in the series, perhaps a bit better than a lot of other episodes. The subplot essentially becomes that basis for the larger plot, with perhaps a dash of the Emperor from Return of the Jedi with the anaphasic energy thing.

There is a moral dilemma here that the good Doctor has to face, and in this respect she confronts herself and helps save the day. To me, in this regard, it's a slightly better episode, but again falls into the basic character driven format that is this episode. I think what has some people put off by this episode is that it has "mushy stuff"; romance. Personally, given all of the romances Kirk and Spock had with non-starship personnel, I don't see the problem, and this comes from someone who is not a fan of the show. But to each his own.

Wow, where to begin.

We suspend disbelief a lot for our beloved TNG, but this was way too much.

The story centers around a ghost, a spirit, a whatever, that has been seducing generations of Crusher women. And there we encounter one issue...this becomes the first star trek show to have incest as a plot line.

Now for some reason, this spirit needs the burning of a flame in order to come close to the Crusher women(!). All of a sudden, Beverly is willing to leave behind her career to spend her life with Quint. And now its up to her crew mates to save her from making a terrible choice.

That is the nuts and bolts of it. And what we are left with is perhaps the worst TNG episode of the entire bunch, and a excellent character (Crusher) is making choices that seem completely out of place, even for someone as her. And Gates McFadden, who's done well in stories that were centered around Crsuher, tries her best to hold everything together. She can't, and even her cast mates seem to know that this is simply a terrible plot.

If TNG even jumped the shark, it was here.

I thoroughly hated "Sub Rosa" and feel it's among the most embarrassing and stupid episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation". My wife didn't hate it quite as much as me, but she thought the show was indeed inferior.

Beverly Crusher goes home to a colony where she grew up in order to attend her grandmother's funeral. Here, you learn she's of Scottish descent--which is odd as it was never mentioned before or after. It all seemed very contrived as soon she was caught up in what was a Gothic Scottish romance combined with a paranormal story. While this combination MIGHT work, putting it in outer space and on this series was awfully bad. What follows is a ghost-like story along with LOTS of heaving bosoms and perplexing romance. All in all, it was just god- awful and Gates McFadden didn't do much to help this story.

UPDATE: By the way, it isn't just me who hated this episode. At the 50th anniversary Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, this was voted as one of the 10 worst of all episodes from every Trek franchise! That is some ignoble designation!

This episode should have just been called, Beverly needs to get laid. Horrible episode from an otherwise great show.

Every so often a series will have an episode that is not up to the standards we expect. This episode proves that 'TNG' is also hit by the clunker syndrome.

In this episode we have Doctor Crusher attending her grandmother's funeral where she finds out that her 90+ year old granny had a 30 something lover. But is seems that the lover is a ghost that haunts the family and now Beverly is next in line. And supposedly the ghost has the sexual prowess to convince Beverly to resign her commission and start a new life on the Scottish planet. And all his power comes from a candle that Beverly was warned about at the beginning of the episode.

It will be easy to blame this episode on Gates McFadden but the fault should be squarely on the writers. They tried to make this a sexual episode that would appeal to women thus bringing them into the fold of the series. But what they ended up with is a cheap dollar love story that did little to cause any interest.