Star Trek: TNG's "Conspiracy" - or, The Forgotten Virtue of Brevity
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- Опубликовано: 28 мар 2023
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Развлечения
"Will you tell me which picture has bicycles" had me spit up my coffee.
"Now point out the ones that have a streetlight."
Oh...now I get it..."prove that you are human"...those infallible 21st century detectors.
Or boats.
Not really
We are actually help training the AI when we do those. The data helps it recognize those items. Currently it is the driving AI training. That is why it needs to identify crosswalks, street lights and bicycles.
Fun Fact: the events of "Conspiracy" are only mentioned again ONCE in a throwaway line in Picard's captain's log in season 4's "The Drumhead". According to this line: Admiral Norah Satie helped to uncover the alien conspiracy. THAT'S IT. It's just mentioned to give an an idea how shrewd and tough the character is--and indeed a subtle set-up reason for her to be paranoid about conspiracies in the episode proper. It's not belabored any further than that line. Talk about the beauty of brevity!
Just a fan theory on my part, but I think Satie and her coterie hunkered down during the worst of the conspiracy, emerged when Picard et al saved the day, and hacked in some backdated files to make it look like she had warned of this, in order to gain the free hand she was given prior to Drumhead. Given the confusion felt by the formerly possessed officers, she was able to pull this off. Kind of like how Cheney et al used the real tragedy of 9/11 to push through their full agenda.
The parasites in Conspiracy were the original Borg. They were supposed to be the main antagonists throughout season 2, who was meant to have a season long arc based on them. Then, a writer strike happened in Hollywood that completely torpedoed that project, and we got the season two we got instead. The Borg concept was worked on and reworked some more until it evolved into the cybernetic humanoids we met in Q Who.
You can see a little bit of similarities in how the parasite takes over the host’s mind versus how assimilation works.
@@pokepress Especially early assimilation that we saw with Picard vs the nanoprobes of later Borg encounters.
Oh snap I never knew that. Would have been interesting to see how that turned out. I can see that now seeing as how the episode ended
Darn writers strikes. I support any strikers but it's just a bummer when they come at inopportune times
For the better ironically.
Completely different arcs, even though the idea of control is very similar.
Trek things, like the Ferengi meant to be the threat that evolved into the Romulans.
"Brevity is the soul of wit, as Shakespeare tells us in Hamlet. ... Ironically, his longest play."
To add to the irony, the line is a joke. It's said by Polonius, a doddering old windbag with delusions of brilliance. He has no wit, and he never shuts up.
Yeah people also love to quote "neither a lender nor a borrower be" as if its wise, when also spoken by the same windbag.
@Rex Mundi To be fair, he also said, "To thine own self be true." Polonius had quite a few good points, he just never followed a damned one of them himself.
Once I eventually realized that, that character was created like that on purpose with some jokes and references to it within the play, I had a lot more respect for Shakespeare.
I mean yes, Shakespeare has many funny jokes and double entendres (sometimes triple) -- but for some reason that one hit on a deeper level.
Dead-guy Shakespeare is winking at me from 400 years ago *and* he's also still making me listen to Polonius *every* time someone puts on that play.
Brevity wasn't forgotten. It was killed when streaming services got the impression subscribers would abandon them if you didn't end every episode with a cliffhanger.
The 'LOST' effect, as it were.
That's hardly a new idea. Remember that the term "cliffhanger" came from heroines literally hanging from the New Jersey pallisades, when the entire US film industry was still centered in Fort Lee, NJ.
the cliffhanger-per-episode things always been a feature of serialized television. Daytime soapies are basically premised off having a cliffhanger each episode to keep the addiction up. Not saying its a *good* thing, daytime soaps are awful, but , frankly, they dont call it space opera for nothing.
Correct, the media format is often the cause of structural defects in television series. Before about 1990 most shows were reluctant to adopt strongly serialised arcs due to the syndication format, with two-parters largely being used to ensure viewer retention over long gaps like Christmas or summer breaks. Then in the 90s and early 00s we got the best of both with strong story arcs but shows that remained pretty easy to pick up for a casual viewer.
Today too much emphasis is placed on graphics, these shows are still going to look bad in 40 years time but the difference is that TNG and DS9 were well written and so will remain very watchable in 2060 while the current crop of shows with overly contemporary themes and poor writing will age very poorly.
In fairness, Netflix did start splitting up seasons as data confirmed people drop by to watch a season and then cancel.
The bait and switch of saying Door Dash instead of Grub Hub is why I like you.
Grub Hub isn't a thing where I live. That joke made *no* sense to me until just-now. Thank you for this
@@neliusbresnan3766 lol same. Here it's "Just Eat", Uber Eats, and Deliveroo. So I didn't understand the silent beat or the look on Steve's face either
When a retailer inevitably makes insects available for human consumption, you’ll be able to get it delivered by Uber Eats.
I have always hated the trope of killing the queen bee and all the other bees die also. It always seems like a quick and lazy way to defeat an enemy that generally would take more time and be more complicated
One that First Contact would also abuse.
And will probably end up being abused to resolve the season three of Star Trek Picard as well!
Suppose to be the weakness of any hive mind.
In a show like ST it's kinda a necessity. Like how all star empires are ruled by one person who always talks to a random ship captain. No time for space senate hearing, no time for the laborious rooting out of enemies after the villain is defeated.
You may be disappointed by The Great Wall LOL
I keep thinking back to Bilbo's statement in Lord of the Rings, when he realizes that the immortality of the One Ring is kind of a curse: "I feel like a very small spot of butter spread across a very large slice of bread." That's what a lot of these season-long stories feel like with Picard and Discovery - very small spots of butter spread across entire loaves of bread. They need to have more butter or less bread. Maybe add some marmalade, I don't know.
_mmm.._ marmalade…
Add some honey while you’re at it
Marmalade, I like marmalade.
For here, I'll consider marmalade episodes those which are (sometimes derided as) filler episodes. Until the streaming era, I never thought I would miss side-character centric episodes or low-stakes plot episodes as much as I do.
@@excrono Isn't this where...
I feel like Steve just perfectly encapsulated the best shows from the post TNG pre birth of streaming era. This is how things were done on the best seasons of Buffy, Supernatural, X Files, they'd dedicate maybe 5-6 episodes a season to the actual arc, with the more episodic episodes having the occasional plotpoint to keep the main story ticking along but still leaving plenty of time for the baddie of the week. I get that streaming is a different beast, but damn I miss that.
_Babylon 5_ is a good model to use.
Agreed, early supernatural is a great example of this (like..pre season 7....6? It's been a while). As a big fan of Fringe (yes, later seasons weren't quite as good) I would also throw that in as a great example. I rewatched it recently and most of it holds up extremely well. The extra tension you create by only sprinkling the season's arc over the course of a few dedicated episodes but still touched on in others to keep you interested is a fantastic way of storytelling that unfortunately just isn't done as much anymore in this era of streaming. Another great example is Stargate SG-1 (at least until they kept the show on life support when it was probably better to end it 3 seasons earlier).
One of my all time favourite shows (hell, one of my favourite pieces of media ever), Battlestar Galactica (2003) I think is one of the few shows that is *almost* completely serialized, but still does a fantastic job with its pacing, keeps each episode interesting without cramming the entire story down your throat, *or* making you wait 6 episodes for anything to happen. It's an excellent example of having a serialized show that doesn't make you wait and wait (and wait) for payoffs that only happen at the very end of a season or series like we often see now. Another great example of this is another top show of mine I rewatched recently, Babylon 5.....It's unfortunate that I have to think back to shows pre streaming era that pull this off - at least in this genre.
There are still lots of great shows that are being made today, but not many in the sci fi genre. The Expanse was excellent, but even it at times suffered from poor pacing and unnecessary cliffhangers.
streaming may be a different medium, but the virtue of standalone episodes still stands. this is a) the way stories naturally happen in real life, making the flow more relateable. while following the main plot, you are bound to stumble in other stories along the way. b) rewatchability. there are plenty of reasons to rewatch more standalone, story driven episodes - out of order, just for the fun of it. one of the more compelling reasons for that being the more novel story ideas these one-offs usually explore.
Totally agree. That was one of the things that I really liked about all those shows. Even the ones that were just a "monster of the week" had some little thing in them that made it feel like it was part of a greater whole, and that the characters and world of the show were growing and changing and moving forward. Not rolling the credits and hitting reset on the characters' lives. Essentially the exact opposite of what Steve said he didn't like in his vid about why Voyager is his least favorite Trek.
Russel T davies's doctor did that very well too.
To be fair to your three episode plan, Steve, the TNG writers were throwing all kinds of shit at the wall hoping SOMETHING would stick when it was obvious that the Ferengi were NOT going to be able to replace the Klingons.
The Ferengi with Bulb heads, sharp teeth and enormous ears look ferious. But, moment open their mouths you knew only be offer as comic relief characters😃🤣
"The Game" was a good example of how to do a conspiracy plot in one episode. Obviously, the difference is that episode only had the conspiracy affecting one ship not the whole Federation. But it's plot is done well, at least, in my opinion.
With a young Ashley Judd
@9:04 ah yes, the good ol' medical phaser: because sometimes you can't get close enough to use the off-button hypospray. Never leave sick bay without one.
I always liked "Conspiracy;" it's weird and stands out. I actually thought _Picard_ season 3 was going with the parasites as the big bad guys before they revealed the Changelings.
Having binged the entire season, my impression is they wanted to deliver on the endless fan debate "what would have the Enterprise done during the Dominion War?"
@@akosbarati2239 I always assumed the _Enterprise-D_ and her crew served by performing diplomatic and alliance-securing duties during the Dominion War, as befitting the flagship of Starfleet, rather than acting as yet another warship.
Serving as just one more _Galaxy_ class starship on the front lines wouldn't have had very much effect in strategic terms (we all saw the effect of just one single Jem'Hadar kamikaze attack against a _Galaxy_ class vessel)... but having the legendary NCC-1701-D USS _Enterprise_ with Captain Jean-Luc Picard in command showing up in person could have had _quite_ an impressive impact on securing treaties, cementing alliances, assuring friendships, and raising hope across the Federation.
Plus, I can only assume that Starfleet Command absolutely did _not_ want to risk the devastating loss of morale that would have resulted across the entire fleet if the _Enterprise_ entered into battle and went down like the USS _Odyssey._
Who then turned out to be the Borg. I loved season 3 of Picard until they decided to bring back the Borg.
@@akosbarati2239 Yeah, what an embarrassment. The correct answer to that common fan question is _"That story belonged to another cast of characters on another show, and it's not interesting to try to force the two together."_
Yeah, it should’ve been the Conspiracy bugs. A nice little shout out to long-time fans but if they do it right it can still be approachable to newer fans. Plus, body snatchers are a classic Sci Fi trope with some pretty heavy morale and strategic complications.
TNG did this nearly perfectly with the Borg. Tease the borg at the end of season 1, see them once with Q, then have them as the main villains of the season finale.
It's almost 1 and a half seasons between Q Who and Best of Both Worlds. They did an admirable job of holding that card back. Most writers would never be able to resist the urge.
Completely disagree. If you are going to do something interesting with a alien threar, perhaps look at the Shadows in Babylon 5
The Borg at the end of TNG's run was a one double episode thing that didn't actually mean much.
Well, they _wanted_ to bring the Borg back for a shocking Season 2 finale, but they blew the season’s budget on “Q Who,” and had no money left. True life! (Why the hell else did you think they ended the season on a clip show?!)
Turns out to have been a good thing, though; first to build some tension, then let the audience start to forget, and finally hit them with the payoff when they least expect. And, course, the end of Season 3 happened to coincide with the end of Patrick Stewart’s first contract, and when which Michael Piller heard re-negotiations weren’t going well, he had an idea…
I'm surprised that Steve doesn't burst into flames under the smouldering gaze of Commander Riker's portrait.
You mentioned the Borg at the very end. I would guess that you also respect the way they set that up. They aired the Season 1 episode Neutral Zone in which outposts along the border were wiped out by an unknown enemy. Then, in Q Who they gave Data one single line that connected the events of the two episodes together, "It is identical to what happened to the outposts along the Neutral Zone."
Which doesn't really make a lot of sense. If the Borg are already in the Alpha quadrant, and in Federation space, why does Q have to send them all the way to the Beta quadrant to meet them? And why does it take them so long to reappear in Federation space?
@@markcoburn8269 Delta Quadrant
The first nearly 4 minutes here was a near non-stop assault of killer wit. The bicycles gag was the topper. Good stuff, Steve!
"Must have been Ensign Johnson's shift". I lost it at that one. I can picture Ensign Johnson eating a sandwich in the shower while Worf gets beat up.
Your breakdown of how the "Conspiracy" storyline could've been built up over time without being stretched out over multiple episodes is why I love Strange New Worlds so much. They've figured out how to do the "story of the week" format like Berman-era Trek while still building on an underlying season-long arc. I hope that trend continues for future seasons of SNW.
If I recall, the Borg were the replacement for the "blue gill parasites" from this episode, because the BGP's couldn't really be fully realized. S1 of TNG had a budget of a broken piggy bank, and even the small amount of CGI and practical effects for the BGP's was extremely expensive and time consuming in the Reagan error/era when the episodes were shot.
Correct, the Borg were the replacement of the BGP. I think part of the reason was that the episode 'Conspiracy', at the time it came out, was met with backlash over the "graphic violence" (the exploding guy/puppet was a bit much for major network TV at the time) and they had to include a warning at the beginning in future airings. Regarding the budget, I don't see it. The cost of sticking the fake gill on someone's neck and reusing Starfleet uniforms and sets they already have (not to mention they could reuse the CGI BGP shots they already had for a lot less) would be way cheaper than the extensive costuming, effects, and set design The Borg required.
I'm also fairly certain the destroyed outposts on both sides of 'The Neutral Zone' (1x26) was meant to be part of the BGP conspiracy too, as well as to reintroduce the Romulans (remember, Humanity doesn't encounter The Borg until 'Q Who' (2x16)).
Yep, unfortunately when the Borg were introduced it left this a narrative dead end. Expanded universe materials have had these things resurface (one time as a mutant version of the Trill symbiote), but nothing in any of the shows. But yeah, the Borg were originally intended to be insectoid, but they couldn't make it work with the tech of the time, at least not in a way that they could afford for TV episodes.
@@VladamireD Humanity doesn't *know* that they've encountered the Borg until Q Who. At the start of Best of Both Worlds, the Enterprise investigates a city that has disappeared in a manner similar to what was described in the Romulan intro episode and come to the conclusion that the Borg were responsible for these disappearances. The implication is that the Borg had been operating in the Alpha Quadrant for some time, right under the noses of both the Federation and the Romulan Empire. Q simply accelerated the investigation.
@@VladamireD the episode, aired in 1988, and there was no CGI in it. The conspiracy bug itself was done by very bad stop motion animation. TNG was not on a major network. It wasn’t a network at all actually. It was first run, syndication, which meant that they sold brand new episodes directly to local TV stations without making about with a network.
There definitely were complaints about the graphic explosion of that dude’s body, but I don’t think that’s why this storyline got dropped. I think if various documentaries about the show are correct, that it had more to do with Roddenberry, not liking or understanding the concept of serialized story arcs . Rich to be fair was not a thing that they did on TV at all in the 1960s and it had never really been done in any American science-fiction show, excepting Battlestar Galactica. But I am pretty sure Roddenberry never actually watch that show.
The signal they sent at the end, was supposed to set up their return in the second season, and they would’ve been an ongoing conflict between the bugs and starfleet, but that didn’t happen
I read the Borg were replacement for insectoid race .. wait--ooooohhhh
The video on "The Forgotten Virtue of Brevity" clocks in at 27:27 minutes - Steve, master of irony. 😉
As many Star Trek fans know, there was supposed to be more connection between some first season TNG episodes and some in season two, but a combination of the revolving door turnover of writing and production staff, particularly in the first season, and the writer's strike that started just before the start of season two saw those plans either ignored or discarded.
I remember seeing this episode for the first time. When they destroy the admiral/creature it definitely reminded me of a Cronenberg film, and seemed to come out of left field.
At the time they wanted to try and compete with other syndicated shows like War of the Worlds, Friday the 13th The Series, and Freddy's Nightmares which all had gore and violence on par with R rated movies of the time. It didn't work for TNG.
Before Shives I'd never really considered the Venn diagram between Trekkies and wrestling fans, but I'm now convinced it's closer to a circle than I had suspected. "Riker's still selling the glass table bump" is a sentence that makes perfect sense to me.
Like, of all my Trekkie friends and family, I can think of two who weren't also wrestling fans
Since wrestling is basically a US only thing I think the overlap is small. But it's a fun idea.
The thing Deep Space Nine did very well to help with the brevity that it would be renowned and known for in later seasons was setting up each character to make them feel important. We as the audience were invested in characters like Rom, Quark, Nog, Garak, even guys we shouldn't be rooting for like Dukat and Weyoun, because their arcs and their stories were so well put together over the course of three seasons. In those first three seasons, we witnessed Rom is smarter than his brother gives him credit and isn't a typical Ferengi, Quark is always down to do Ferengi business but will especially put his talents to use to help others if he feels there is profit to be made from it, Nog growing from troubled youth always getting into trouble into promising Starfleet cadet recruit, Garak's fall from grace and exile and how that shaped both his personal relationships with his fellow Cardassians, but also with people outside his own racial inner circle like Dr. Bashir, and Dukat going from fallen and disgraced hero of the Cardassian people to vilified by everyone to head of the Cardassian civilian government, a subtle but important step to where he would ultimately end up before the end of Season 5. By taking the time to build other characters' side stories - even the main cast - DS9's writers had the perfect tool to help them create brevity throughout the next four seasons. If a story feels important but they needed a B plot, just call on really any cast of characters to pitch relief to draw that story out to 44 ish minutes. And I'll agree with your point that we don't need a follow-up with the purple bodysnatching earwigs. 13 year old me would've disagreed greatly, but we'll leave it at that.
I don't know about Door Dash, but those grubs were definitely transported via wormhole.
It's been a really long time since I saw 'Conspiracy'. All these years I've been saying TNG was "five minutes of plot, forty minutes of character development", and you've gone and proved me wrong.
Now I'm just waiting for the reveal in ST Picard that the fleshy changelings were actually the purple earwigs all along ...
You have a very good point about the Conspiracy plot line, but television executives and producers were afraid of people not getting the point. That’s why Babylon 5, and a little later Deep Space Nine were so pioneering on their day.
"Riker is still selling the glass table bump."
😂
That Agent Mulder line 👌👌👌 the set up, the leanness of the line, and read so well.
What’s interesting is the writer, Tracy Tormé, originally intended a real conspiracy from within Starfleet. This was considered too dark for Star Trek so it was rewritten to be aliens. Star Trek would have other conspiracies in DS9 and Picard. But again, these were the result of alien influence. In fact, the only time I recall Star Trek having a true conspiracy from within was Star Trek 6. However, it was pretty small. One admiral working with one officer who recruited two crewmen.
There was the genuine human conspiracy in _Homefront_ and _Paradise Lost,_ but even that was _in response_ to the infiltration from the changelings so maybe it doesn't detract from your point lol
i just remembered something, the borg were originally supposed to be insectoid rather than cybernetic. i wonder if they just scrapped that idea and changed it, and this was supposed to be the beginning of the borg
Yeah, they were meant to be like the first scouts of a wider insectoid invasion IIRC. To start mind controlling influential people to make the later contact go smoother. And test them for susceptibility.
Isn't it funny how in almost every instance Worf fumbles his security responsibilities? Even here the ship doctor has to come and fill in.
We need Shives dubs with you doing voiceovers on parts. This was hilarious.
It's easier for me to overlook bad or silly Trek, 90's and older. Because back then, cast and staff were producing 28 episodes per season. Allowing for 2-parters, they were grinding out 25 to 28 individual stories per season. Writing, editing, makeup, staging, rehearsals, acting, post-production...the full cycle in less than a week.
Compare that to today's Trek. 10 episodes per year. All production and post-production completed and gift-wrapped well in advance of the airing of the first episode. To include movie-style promotional teasers and trailers...AND critical screenings.
For those who accuse OG fans of being too critical of modern Trek; I say, no. Conversely, we are too forgiving. It is perfectly rationale to expect better, because the producers have every reason and ability to deliver.
And back in the day, we were not paying $5 - 10/month for broadcast TV. But we are today. And that's on top of the same compulsory exposure to regular advertisement breaks. By the way, Picard season 3 is "low budget"...ha!
Syndication was never a money maker so they were shown on a UHF channel as Voyager was the showrunner on a new UHF channel which later changed to Fox . Syndication shows had there own fans like Babylon 5 and Enterprise.
👍👍👍
Problem is that back then, much like every other show, they were making star trek for the express goal of syndication. It wasn't until Babylon 5 that there was a specific story arc that threaded through the entire series. And boy do they have many moments where they had set up things that were only realized much later. It was also brainstormed to lay out the storyline on the early internet which is pretty cool.
Plus they didn't use coke in the writer's room anymore, that also helped.
TNG was made in an era where continuity was discouraged so that viewers could jump right in with any episode. The minor examples of continuity in TNG were unexpected in the show's era.
The writers of TNG season 1 have said that the bugs were intended as one of the "big bads" of the whole series, but they replaced them with the Borg instead.
I saw Conspiracy recently as part of rewatching TNG. I laughed so hard when Data finds all this "suspicious behavior" as soon as he's asked to look for any. As simple as that, eh?
This whole story telling with little drops and details or something bigger, reminds me of what happens with Tom Paris in the second season of Star Trek Voyager, where he repeatedly, among many episodes of the season, starts to act erratically and in a bad manner. In the end it is revealed to be a set up prepared by Paris, Tuvok and Janeway to catch up a spy inside Voyager.
Yeah, I really like that too. In a way I kind of wish it wasn't a ruse, just because I like seeing a crew in their situation having discipline problems and it should've probably happened more. But just having trickles before the final plot was nice. You can thank Michael Piller for that, but sadly he left before season 3 so that's why we never saw it again!
I thought at the time, and continue to think today, that the set up for that arc was actually quite good!
Such a pity about the payoff.
After these events... did anyone bother to schedule Data to do a regular check of Star Fleet for infiltration. Like maybe he does it weekly and you can get a report of it. Maybe he downloads regular updates with the latest infiltration threats. Like after Siko discovers the Founders, maybe he sends Data a file with a zero-day infiltration threat assessment.
When i watched episode 1 od season 3 i instantly thought of that Conspiracy episode especially when Crusher says to trust know oneand i was actually hoping it would be a continuation of that story as the original Ep back in season 1 TNG made it clear they where out there and they would be coming, but sadly all we are getting is a changeling story even though the whole changeling thing was 100% resolved
Jack Crusher does have super human strength though.
In a sense, it was a continuation, as for the Changelings, it's not the resolution that bothers me. Separatists seeking revenge is very much in line with postwar terrorism. Their motivation is what had bugged me. The Changeling Odo killed faked the blood test when he mimicked the blood vial. Separatist or not, a Changeling wouldn't do much of what these did in Season 3.
@26:21 Badwolf says Hi! Not sure how much of revived Doctor Who you have watched, but the first season if the perfect example. Though the season, they were hints towards "Bad Wolf" not being revealed to what it meant until the second to last episode when we got into the two-parter to end the season. It was hay, pay attention is vital without overdoing it.
With Steven Moffat, to me, it's always a general rule to pay attention :)
With a lot of modern TV shows doing serialization but not doing it all that well, I think back to Doctor Who Season 1 in 2005. There are a couple two parters in a series of fairly independent episodes with character arcs connecting all of them, along with one phrase: Bad Wolf. Threaded through the episodes in sometimes subtle, sometimes a bit overt, always background that has no bearing on the episodes themselves. Until the episode before the finale where the characters start to catch on to this phrase that seems to keep following them and they can't figure out why or what it is- then the actual finale 2-parter, which is a culmination of that arc, the character arcs, and every episode that came before it- not because the episodes were focused on setting up the finale, but that it's the natural conclusion to everything that they've seen and done. It's not a season of perfect writing, but it set up its season arc better than I think any of the seasons after (barring Season 4, that was great too, threading through the idea of lost planets in the background while your focus is placed squarely on Rose)
They did it excellently again in Season 3 with The Master/Saxon, setting up Harriet Jones, the bees leaving. I feel RTD was the best with that.
@@GWiggz absolutely. Moffat really didn't know how to do it, he either leaned waaaay too hard on them and then the payoff was unsatisfying, or he didn't lean into it at all and then the payoff seems to come from nowhere and is utterly baffling. (I haven't actually watched any of the Chibnal stuff so I can't compare there.)
“Conspiracy” is one of my favorite Trek episodes ever, though I’m torn between thinking it’s a shame they never followed up on that story, and thinking it’s great because the Borg were cooler and it’s really hard to do “utopian sci-fi” when the Big Bad means you can’t trust your best friends.
I think that’s why the Changeling arc worked on DS9 when it wouldn’t have worked on TNG, though even DS9 wraps their “trust no one” thread in a very Trekish “identity vs. duty/own kind vs. chosen family” emotional arc through Odo, which also seeds us with the idea that not *all* Changelings are necessarily in love what the Great Link is up to. It’s harder to do that with the Conspiracy bugs. No one who’s been taken over by a bluegill is, like, on one hand trying to rip the Federation apart for the good of their buggy overlords, but on the other hand they’ve really gotten into this human thing called “poker” and Geordi’s nice to them so humans aren’t all bad.
That wouldn’t work with the bugs, because - like Dr. Crusher says - it’s almost impossible to remove the bug without killing the patient. The Changelings usually let the real version of you live, unless they’re really mad this week, so they work better as a Trek villain because it’s easier to humanize them and just say that yes, they’re wrong, yes, they might even be doing evil, but they have a point of view that’s within the bounds of understandable. Solids are a threat because they’re, y’know, solid. It’s mostly prejudice, but we can wrap our minds around it.
Great review as always. I always enjoy your episode or story rewrites. Thank you.
I was an 80s child when this aired and my dad was a typical 70s dad, not much involved with the kids; his tv shows took priority over ours, that sort of thing that wouldn't fly today. However I did grow up watching the original Star Trek with him and I liked the series. We both watched Next Gen when it first aired and was the only show we both liked so we enjoyed watching it together as it aired from episode 1. Conspiracy is one of my fav episodes even though I didn't like season 1 very much. It had more to do with how graphic it was and how my dad actually had a human reaction in front of me as we were watching this the night it aired and it did scare me a little because I was a kid but not too young to not understand the horror elements of it. I LOVED it back then and for us we were both like "holy shit that was awesome!" because nothing quite that graphic had ever been aired on tv back then. It was such a great moment! I know it's not their best episode but it sold me and made me want to watch more and it hooked my dad and considering how family tv shows were centered around him back then, at least I had a series I already enjoyed and knew I wouldn't miss out on it going forward.
according to the novels, the earwig is directly related to the Trill symbiont, one driven crazy through genetic manipulation.
Since when did you need an excuse to take cheap shots at Picard?!
I may not agree with them (most'a the time) but they're almost always hilarious.
If anything, I want more cheap shots.
Then you shall have them, my friend.
@@SteveShives
Good man!
@@SteveShives cue the clip of Nero shouting, "Fire everything!"
I wasn't always into ST:TNG but I enjoyed "Conspiracy," as it recalled for me some of the chills of "The Invisibles," an episode of the original Outer Limits. (Ray Bradbury once said "Digression is the soul of wit" and I think there's a case for that as well.)
I always thought TNG rly jumped the shark w “Conspiracy”. It’s so utterly ridiculous, it seemed like the episode belonged more to “Lost in Space” than ST. All of the changes you described would have improved its believability, Steve (I can never suspend my disbelief w that one)
Brevity is the soul of Wit.
I never met Wit but they sound swell.
He’s in the Dtormlight Archive books. Funny guy.
Also he’s in like every Sanderson book under different names.
It’s still up in the air whether he has a soul, though
"We don't. Ya hear me? We don't ... (long pause) ... we do not!" hah! Brilliant :D
Damn there's some good script writing here. Bloody good job, Steve.
it is good script, but it only really shines, because there not much in the line of competition is there?
the way Tryla Scott says Una Carapledes is in my mind forever
The whole early set up thing is something that Babylon 5 did really well and Star trek got a little bit better at with DS9... they often included short scenes that seemed innocuous on their own at the time but snowballed into major plot points, sometimes spanning several seasons, sometimes resolved in a single or double episode.
3:45 "Strange things are happening inside Starfleet." And of course this was YEARS before Janeway was around, so yeah, that's super weird that bonkers commands would be issued that make no sense to the rank and file.
I really like the way you dissected this episode. You always educate and entertain us!
Despite not liking season one that much when it first aired (even skipping some episodes in favor of shows on other channels), this was one of the ones that I remember being glued to, especially with it being a continuation of an earlier (even if also not partifularly liked by me) episode. Something after growing up on TOS, TAS and a slew of Dell Comics issues, I never expected. DS9, like you said, did a great job of expanding the notion yet not making it feel too drawn out. Brings to mind the trend in in too many comics nowadays (from what I've seen) to stretch out what could've/should've been just a single issue or a two-parter into instead a year long story. Done too often it goes from being a special event to being common place and akin to wading through molasses.
A side bit of info... one of the DS9 books "retcons" the BGPs as an offshoot of the Trill species that was parasite rather than symbiote.
I am not a TNG Stan, but I really enjoyed Conspiracy when it aired. It felt like the start of a cool multi-episode arc. Whelp, that didn't happen. Still, I enjoyed the ep. Glad you did too.
Given how you press Star Trek writers to sprinkle plot over several episodes, it still kills me that you are not a B5 fan, which did exactly that and did it well. But then I don't appreciate DS9 like you do, so what are you gonna do?
This episode had me to watch the next season since the 1st season was choppy and only a handful were any good .and if you noticed producers came and went .
That whole back and forth about trusting was great :D
When I was younger I wrote a broad plot and story synopsis for "Conspiracy Pt. II" set sometime around the post Dominion war era. And it would specifically tie into the parasites origins as Borg precursors.
The story starts with one of our people recognizing someone though lost in the war, this would lead to the revelation of a new conspiracy but one where not everyone involved is a parasite, even old trusted friends try to dissuade our character.
In time it's revealed that the parasites are a race that was displaced by the Borg, they have no native technology due to their physical forms and so found their place among the humanoids of their sector.when the Borg arrived they discovered that a drone created from such a possessed humanoid would be problematic, the parasite naturally resistant to assimilation and able to disrupt the collective. Since ether offered no advantage to the Borg they were designated a pest species and they went about eradicating them until a population of refugees were forced to flee.
On their long flight two factions arose, one looking for safety and a new home, another looking for revenge. The latter was behind the original conspiracy, intending to turn the federation against the Borg and eradicate them.
This new conspiracy is an attempt to work with the majority of this race to both provide them a refuge and gain their intelligence and technological knowledge from previous hosts. The cover up deemed necessary after the events of the changelings infiltrating the federation.
Our protagonist ultimately understands, but refuses to be party to the conspiracy. The conspirators to their credit refuse to do anything drastic to shut them up, because they are specifically not the bad guys here. Our character decides to expose the actions of starfleet and government officials with the hope that cooler minds will prevail and the people as a whole will choose to do the right thing.
For someone who doesn't like Lower Decks, you write pretty good Lower Decks dialogue.
10:46 - Meal worms. «Buh-dum psssss!» The writers really knew how to sell that one.
13:47 - "We'll never know who was compromised... until their parasites start rotting within their bodies and they get a massive infection..."
I totally LOVE your revised version
You'll never be able to convince me that this episode wasn't what inspired the Goa'uld from Stargate.
In my personal headcanon, the earwigs are the Yeerks from Animorphs, which takes place in the Trek universe.
Waking up to a new video from Steve. It's gonna be an awesome day!
12:10 ...and eight episodes later it features Riker eating worms! By the way I love that episode too! Love your wit Steve! Peace and long life.
The series of images with bicycles joke really got me.
DS9 does this wonderfully with the Dominion. They started as trade partners with the Ferengi. Then the name is dropped here in there while in the Gamma quadrant, until Odo finds out he is Dominion.
The supervillain chair looks like the $20K wheelchair for Pike. I don’t think it ever moved.
I love how you embellish enough that you're serving spoilers that still make me want to watch the episode. Thanks, Steve
I always found similarities between the Conspiracy aliens and the Goa'uld in Stargate SG-1. The Stargate movie (and maybe the novels; I've never read them) keep what the alien Ra is vague enough that all we can really say for sure is he is a parasite in a human host. But the TV show fleshed out this alien race a lot more and some of these details seem to match the Conspiracy aliens.
- They can take a human host (despite not evolving on a planet with humans).
- They completely control their host by interfacing with the brain stem. The host can't really fight back in any meaningful way (Stargate SG-1 toys with a few exceptions to this over the years).
- They can impersonate the host well enough to fool others (though the Goa'uld can use any memories of the host to do so, while it looks like Conspiracy aliens can just act human but don't have access to specific memories.. except ow to do a Vulcan neck pinch?).
- They empower the host with super strength for their own benefit.
- They take the form of an insectoid (well Goa'uld are snakes, so a bit different).
- They enter their host through the neck (Goa'uld are said to also be able to enter through the back of the throat, but usually prefer the back of the neck).
- The sign they have infiltrated a host is hard to spot (Goa'uld leave an entry wound which rapidly heals, leaving no sign).
- In the show both infiltrate an Earth organization and attempt to take control of it (this is a bit of a stretch since it's a minor story arc in Stargate SG-1 rather than a main plot point. Our heroes are not a member of that organization and in fact were fighting it before it was taken over anyway).
- Very difficult to surgically remove.
- Resistant to stun weapons.
- They sometimes prefer eating food their hosts would find unpalatable (in a single episode of SG-1, the Goa'uld are shown to eat other Goa'uld symbiotes sometimes. Live. Raw).
- They are extremely overconfident and arrogant (the three admirals' actions seem this way to me. They show their hands to Riker/Picard before infecting them is a sure thing.
I am sure some of these similarities can be attributed to tropes, and there's certainly plenty of other attributes between the two alien species that are very different. But I can't help but wonder if the Stargate SG-1 writers took inspiration, accidentally or not, from Conspiracy. SG-1's Goa'uld are a lot better, in part because they got 10 seasons to get fleshed out so yeah.
"Conspiracy" was the one episode of TNG that my mother wouldn't let me watch. That may be one of the reasons I consider it one of my favorite episodes of TNG.
I do agree with you, the lack of payoff is actually a silver-lining:
We will never know what is going on in some unknown sector of space... but earwigs are there.
Star Trek Online had a decent story line with the Vaarduar featuring these creatures as main antagonists. I can see a similar story forming here.
STO is a cavalcade of member berries masquerading as an awkward third person shooter RPG hybrid. The story with the Conspiracy bugs is about as wild as every other story STO does.
Don't get me wrong the missions are ludicrous fun, and reach a satisfying conclusion with the Iconian War, but the kind of quality nuanced storytelling one would expect from TV or Film they most certainly are not.
2:30 Thank you, Bernard, I couldn't have put it less clearly myself
I liked the episode, and it's definitely my favourite of season one, but it was always disappointing to me that the idea was never followed up 😟
Actually, the creatures DID make a return appearance in the video game arm of the franchise( I forget which game it was). I think the incident was referenced also.
I’d hold up Gravity Falls as another excellent example of this type of storytelling. Seeds planted early before being paid off later, with excellent standalone episodes that work on their own.
Sometimes that ends up being the case of having a close group of writers who are passionate about the world they're creating and aware of what came before. Things never intended to be seeds can become so because they know the world and the arc well enough to see how they can connect. I was in a role-playing game where the GM did this, though we usually didn't know it at the time. I was essentially his technical advisor, providing him with synopses of whatever relevant occult or historical information he needed, which he cut and pasted as needed to create a much more detailed world, but all too often I was providing him with things that perfectly legitimized the random thing he'd pulled out of his ass and thrown at us the week before and never known that wasn't always his original, planned intention. Alex Hirsch was clearly a storyteller cut from a similar vein.
Also Steven Universe. Though I know Steve doesn't generally go for cartoons, Hilda in the watchalong streams being an exception. Though in one stream he's mentioned somewhat reconsidering Avatar the Last Airbender based on Star Trek Prodigy, so maybe he'll eventually check out these two as well 🤞
Nice work, Steve. Those aliens always reminded me of a baby Tingler, from that Vincent Price movie.
Plot twist, Picard's changelings are a group taken over by the purple earwigs, which is why they have cut off their hand telepathic shapeshifting communication powers, cuz reasons... and they want his body to be part Borg also, but Kirk comes back and saves everyone and gets an android body and...
This has been such a wonderful analysis as well as often hilarious. I was left with a thought that you would have been a great addition to the writing team of TNG. The first season needed help that your analysis leads to. Thank you Steve.
Someone may have already said this, but the insects were supposed to be what the Borg ended up being. The reason there wasn't a payoff was, in part, budget production reasons.
The advice at the end, where we sprinkle clues about the big plot into various other episodes in the season without making it the focus of those episodes, and then paying it off in an episode or two at the end is a really good description of the better seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I know it's good advice because I've seen it work before. You can even have a whole episode in the middle of the season devoted to the big plot as long as you don't reveal *too* much. We recently finished Enterprise and it was so full of two- and three-parters it felt weird. I'm not convinced they all needed to be whittled down to a single episode but It's possible a few of them could have been. TNG didn't do a lot of two-parters, but they did them pretty effectively. Like in Chain of Command, where the first part was about Jellico and the difference between his leadership style and Picard's, and Part 2 was about Picard standing up to torture (with some Jellico carry over). The story needed to carry over two episodes, but each episode had it's own focus and tight storytelling to go with it. Also, Jellico had a long-lasting effect on the series, for example, he makes Deana switch from civilian clothes to uniform and she (mostly) kept with that change going forward (there were some exceptions in the immediately following episodes but it wasn't long before she was mostly in uniform).
OMG! Conspiracy was one of my favorite TNG episodes. Your commentary had me in tears! 🤣 Brilliant!!!
I was just a kid when Conspiracy first aired, and I missed it till a few years later, not being a regular TNG watcher yet in 87/88, but Conspiracy remained one of the most talked about episodes for quite a while, as I remember. A lot of people are very critical of season 1, and I do understand why, but at the time, it was all exciting, NEW Star Trek.
I like your ideas for adding some buildup to the conspiracy story. It does develop and wrap up really quick. I know TNG didn't have the two-parter tradition yet, but if any season 1 story deserved another episode, it certainly has to be this one.
Everyone loved the body horror aspect as well. They could have taken that a bit further. Push the envelope of prime time TV a little bit.
Many modern serialised series contain so much padding. The recent adaptation (or, attempted adaptation) of Octavia Butler's kindred novel for Hulu shows exactly what can go wrong with this. The series introduced so much fluff that wasn't in the extremely tight, economically perfect book, and now the show, which ended on a cliffhanger, is never likely to be finished. What's wrong with a two-hour movie? Would have been the perfect length for this powerful story, which still deserves to be told televisually.
Ha! love the retelling of the episodes! you should more of them! ... like a whole season! great work mate :)
I love this episode, probably because it's tone is so different than what came before it.
So these little buggers worked really hard getting that conspiracy going, but then the Admiral guy started winging it and brought it to fall by rampaging through the ship.
The gruesome phaserering of the mother parasite within the smoldering cadaver was cut in Germany for reasons of taste, I only ever saw it with the remastered verion.
best episode synopsis ever, do the whole series.
A friend of mine is a very well-known Trek author. During a chat I reminded her that Conspiracy finished with a message being sent out of the galaxy and nothing had ever been done with it. She got very interested and pitched a story telling the next part.
Paramount rejected it out of hand.
Great job on the graphics package on this episode. Really appreciate all the visuals keeps us entertained on these talking head videos. Excelsior.
A million years ago, I left this comment on the Mission Log podcast’s blog. I would like to share it with y’all now (quotation marks are around the bit I’m replying to. rest is me. blah.)
“Finally what are supposed to make of that Okudagram of a harpy-like Gene Roddenberry. I realize it is based off a painting of Roddenberry as the ‘Great Bird’ given to him as a birthday present, but seeing it flip by as Data is analyzing the rot at the core of the Federation gives me an strange feeling.”
A - Science Officer Jones, this is Captain Smith.
B - Go ahead, Captain.
A - Lieutenant, I’m sending Ensign Farkus down to the lab. Do you happen to have a parrot handy?
B - Yes, Captain, but I don’t understand-
A - Great. I’m gonna need you to try and graft Farkus’s head onto that bird’s body.
B - Sir?
A - You heard me, Lieutenant.
B - That’s highly unethical, sir.
A - WHO’S GIVING THE ORDERS HERE, JONES?
B - Sorry, sir. May I speak freely?
A - If you must.
B - Sir… if you were actually a creepy purple bug from an uncharted planet wearing the Captain like a skinsuit, you’d tell me, right?
A - …
B - Sir?
A - Anyway, I’m gonna need that man-parrot on my desk by Friday.
Steve you get better and better with these. Keep it up.
Petition to have purple earwigs return as the villain for Picard Season 4
I always liked this episode, I wish it would have been resolved in a movie since it was never referred to again
Out-of-universe: the BGP (Blue Gill Parasite) story line was put on the back burner for a couple of reasons (budget probably), and was finally morphed into the Borg.
It’s called Chekov’s gun. If you show a gun in the first act you have to fire the gun by the final act ergo every element of a story should contribute to the whole
Yeah, there are a lot of deaths in Conspiracy that feel like they should of had more ramifications. And The earwig villains are powerful and threatening enough that it feels weird they just disappeared and never came back, but I don't know what you'd do with them that wouldn't just retread the same territory over again. Even back then I could swear some of the dialogue was almost copied and pasted from old Pod People movies. Unless it was some kinda tongue-in-cheek Lower Deck parody of the storyline, I think bringing them back would bore the hell out of me.