What do we want?
Drugs!
When do we want ‘em?
Drugs!
This is a review of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Symbiosis.”
If you have not seen this episode, and you don’t want to know what happens in it, be
warned: spoilers beyond this point!
That’s right, it’s the “Drugs Are Bad” episode of TNG.
“But Steve, I thought this batch of retro reviews was going to be about episodes that
dealt with labor issues!”
It was!
It is!
Yes, “Symbiosis” is first and foremost a cautionary tale about the dangers of drug
addiction.
It’s also an episode where the Prime Directive figures prominently into the resolution — an
angle I examined a few years ago in a video I did about the Prime Directive.
But, in addition to all of that, it’s also about exploitation — and that is most definitely
a labor issue.
The Enterprise is in the Delos system, doing some science stuff, studying the unusually
high solar flare activity of the Delosian sun, when a distress call comes in.
It’s from a freighter, captained by a long-lost descendent of Dr. David Marcus, and they’re
having some problems.
It seems their ship is rapidly failing, and they’re falling into the atmosphere of the
planet they’re orbiting, and no one aboard seems to have the slightest clue how to fix
it or how the ship even works.
After a few frustrating attempts to talk the freighter captain through the crisis, Picard’s
finally like, “To hell with it, just beam ‘em over before the ship falls apart.”
So, Riker and Yar go to the transporter room.
They have only minutes before the freighter disintegrates, so Tasha’s like “Get your
asses onto the transporter pad, like now!”
The freighter captain signals that they’re ready, but when Tasha energizes the transporter,
she beams over a bunch of storage containers — the cargo the freighter was carrying.
Riker’s like, “Oh my god, what is the deal with these dipshits?!”
He orders Tasha to beam the storage containers into the cargo hold and lock on to the actual
people on the ship.
By the time Tasha is finally able to beam the occupants of the ship over, the freighter
is falling apart and she can only lock on to four out of six.
Those four people materialize on the transporter pad, and they are Sobi and Langor, from the
planet Brekka — that’s the planet they’re orbiting at the moment — and T’Jon and
Romas, from the neighboring planet of Ornara.
T’Jon was the captain of the freighter, and the first thing on his mind is that cargo
they beamed over — damn, whatever that stuff is must be pretty important, huh?
The cargo is a substance called felicium.
T’Jon says it’s medicine, medicine that his people need very desperately, because
they’re all sick, you see.
Felicium is the only treatment for a plague that affects all the Ornaran people.
But, there’s a dispute over who the felicium belongs to.
T’Jon and Romas purchased the felicium from Sobi and Langor, but the goods they were exchanging
for it burned up with their ship, so Sobi and Langor now consider that deal to be null
and void, since they haven’t received what they are owed.
T’Jon and Sobi start to argue about it, things get physical, and hey, it turns out
that both Ornarans and Brekkians have electricity superpowers!
So, that’s neat.
Just kind of a random, neat thing.
The Ornarans do seem like they’re in bad shape, and Picard doesn’t like the sound
of that word “plague” they keep throwing around, so he has Dr. Crusher check ‘em
out in sickbay.
She’s puzzled — they show symptoms of a disease, but she can’t find any trace
of an actual infection.
She suggests that Picard go and sweet talk the Brekkians into letting go of enough of
the medicine to at least treat T’Jon and Romas for right now.
So, Picard does, and the Brekkians agree.
Sobi cracks open one of the canisters of felicium and doles out enough for two doses, then in
sickbay Dr. Crusher watches as T’Jon and Romas take their medicine, and after witnessing
their reaction — kind of a mellow, hazy euphoria — she’s not puzzled anymore!
She knows exactly what’s going on!
Crusher tells Picard, “Hey, guess what?
Those drugs in the cargo bay?
They’re drugs!
The reason I couldn’t find evidence of a plague in the Ornarans is because there is
no plague.
Their symptoms were from withdrawal.
The drug is a narcotic and they’re addicted to it.”
Crusher suggests synthesizing a non-addictive substitute to felicium, to enable the Ornarans
to wean themselves off of their addiction, but Picard’s like “Can’t.
Prime Directive.”
T’Jon and Romas get a call from Ornara.
It’s this guy, Margan, who is . . . their boss?
The President of Ornara?
It’s not really clear, but he seems like he’s in charge, and he wants to know where
the shit is and what’s taking so long.
Desperate to help his suffering people, T’Jon grabs Riker, holding him hostage with his
electricity powers.
T’Jon tells Picard, “Give us the felicium or I’ll kill this guy.”
And Picard’s like, “You think that’s a threat?
Dude, it’s season one, I barely know him!”
His bluff called, T’Jon lets Riker go.
Langor, one of the Brekkians, drops by and wants to talk to Picard about something, so
Picard’s like “We’re gonna go talk to her.”
And Riker’s like, “I’ll hang out here with the guy who just threatened to kill me
and his equally desperate addict friend.
I’m fine, by the way — oh, you’re already gone.”
Picard and Crusher go to the Brekkians’ quarters, where Sobi and Langor have come
to a decision: they’re going to let the Ornarans have the felicium!
They can pay for it later, what’s important is that the sick people get the medicine they
need.
Picard’s like, “Wow, dude, you’re an even bigger scumbag than when you worked for
Khan.”
Between the two of them, Picard and Crusher deduce what’s going on here between the
Brekkians and the Ornarans: the Brekkians invented felicium because there once was an
actual plague, and it affected them first.
But they realized how dangerously addictive the drug was and avoided becoming dependent
on it.
However, when the plague struck Ornara, the Brekkians offered the Ornarans the drug and
allowed them to get hopelessly addicted, knowing they would still need the felicium long after
the plague had been cured.
Sobi and Langor fill in a couple of additional details: the arrangement between the Brekkians
and the Ornarans works so well for the Brekkians that Brekka no longer has any other industry.
All they do is manufacture the drug, which they sell to the Ornarans, and in exchange
the Ornarans produce everything the Brekkians need.
Crusher is outraged, but Picard reluctantly agrees not to tell the Ornarans any of this,
since such a disruption to the cultures of both planets would be a violation of the Prime
Directive.
However, Picard also rescinds his offer to the Ornarans to help them repair their fleet
of failing cargo ships, since that would also be interference.
With those ships on their last legs, and with neither the Ornarans nor the Brekkians apparently
possessing the skills to fix them, it seems their, ahem, trade agreement will be coming
to an end before too long, one way or the other.
And that’s pretty much it.
Crusher is mad at Picard for not doing more to help the Ornarans break their addiction,
or at least manage their withdrawal symptoms once those last cargo ships break down and
their felicium connection dries up, but Picard’s like, “Sorry, Prime Directive, our hands
are tied — now can we go?!”
“Symbiosis” is a pretty blatant anti-drug episode — there’s even an infamous scene
where young Wesley, sweet summer child that he is, innocently asks why anyone would try
recreational drugs in the first place.
And Tasha says, “Because not everybody lives on an interstellar love boat and sometimes
people with shitty lives want to forget their troubles for a little while.”
And the scene ends with this really weird cut to Data, who looks like he might be thinking,
“Recreational drugs, eh?
I wonder if the replicators make those . . .”
Despite that, there’s much in this episode that is of interest when viewed from a labor-oriented
perspective.
The relationship between the worlds of Brekka and Ornara is not symbiotic, as the title
suggests, but nakedly exploitative.
Dr. Crusher comes right out and says it — the Brekkians have intentionally addicted the
Ornarans to the drug, and are leveraging that addiction to force the Ornarans to work in
their — the Brekkians’ — interest.
The drug is of no practical value, but the Ornarans need it — they think — to survive.
Other than the drug, which they use to maintain their domination of the Ornarans, the Brekkians
produce nothing — they extract everything they need, and everything they want to enjoy
their apparently quite cushy and comfortable lives, from the Ornarans.
Now, tell me: how much of what I just said would I have to change if instead of a drug,
we were talking about money?
Not very much, would I?
It differs in the details, but broadly speaking, the arrangement between the Brekkians and
the Ornarans is the same sort of relationship that existed for centuries between the working
class and the ownership class — between labor and the company — however you want
to describe it.
The people of Ornara do all the labor, create all the value of this interplanetary society,
while the Brekkians enjoy those fruits of Ornaran labor and offer nothing of value in
return except something that enables the Ornarans to temporarily escape from the misery which
the Brekkians themselves created and imposed upon the Ornarans in the first place.
Even though it wasn’t the intention of the creators, I think the episode works better
as a workers’ rights allegory than an anti-drug one.
The “just say no” message, especially in that Wesley scene, is extremely heavy-handed,
and despite a sometimes quite moralistic tone, there doesn’t seem to be much of moral other
than “don’t do drugs, kids” and “people who deal narcotics to addicts are bad,”
which, yeah, thanks for those keen insights, Star Trek.
Read as a workers’ rights story, it’s imperfect and incomplete, but it at least
gives you a general picture of what the essential labor and company relationship is, why it’s
exploitative, why it’s a problem from the labor side of things, and why it shouldn’t
be allowed to exist in that lop-sided, unregulated state.
No society that has evolved to a point where the upper class controls all the wealth and
does none of the work, while the lower class does all the work but gets to share in none
of the wealth, is very healthy, no matter how strong and stable it may appear at any
given point in time.
Good thing we don’t have to worry about that here in the good ol’ U-S-of-A, huh?
Thank god I live in America, where everything is fine and always will be.
As an episode apart from its themes and deeper meanings, “Symbiosis” isn’t all that
great.
It’s definitely not the worst that season one of TNG has to offer, but it’s not exactly
gripping drama, either.
It is a classic Star Trek premise for sure — Enterprise visits a new solar system,
encounters a society with an obvious Big Problem, learns about the problem, solves — or in
this case, deliberately chooses not to solve — the problem, and leaves never to return.
The plot is simple and straightforward, which could have been a good thing, if the story
was a little more compelling than this.
The big decision at the end belongs to Picard — to break the Prime Directive or to uphold
it, to intervene or to allow this toxic exploitation to continue — but the episode never really
feels like it’s about Picard in any meaningful way, so his ultimate choice to back away and
leave the Brekkians and the Ornarans as he found them doesn’t land with as much impact
as it should.
There are a couple of details worth noting as fun bits of trivia — the episode features
two guest stars — Merritt Butrick as T’Jon and Judson Scott as Sobi — who both also
appeared in Star Trek II.
And, even though it originally aired a week before “Skin of Evil,” the episode where
Tasha Yar is killed, this episode was filmed after that one, meaning from a production
standpoint this is Denise Crosby’s final episode as a regular cast member — and if
you look closely in the background of the shot where Picard and Crusher walk out of
the cargo bay on their way to the turbolift near the end, you can see Denise way in the
background, waving goodbye.
And then, presumably moments later, Rick Berman stalked over, tore the Starfleet badge off
of her costume, and told her to get the fuck off the set.
Not a great episode, or even a particularly good one, but an interesting one to think
about and talk about, particularly if you read it in a way that I’m pretty sure no
one involved in making it actually meant.
It can be taken as a statement about the importance of workers’ rights and balance in the relationship
between labor and the company — an incomplete and unintentional statement, but a strong
one nonetheless, and I’ll take as many of those as I can get — god knows there are
plenty of people who need to hear them.
Those are my thoughts on “Symbiosis.”
What do you think of this episode?
Please share your thoughts with me in the comments.
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Don’t forget to join me and my best friend Jason Harding this weekend for our review
of episode nine of season two of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Our review will be up sometime on Saturday.
And, please come back next week for another retro review.
Next time, this batch of retro reviews focusing on Star Trek’s labor-themed episodes continues
with a look at another episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation: “The Quality of Life.”
I’ll see you next week for that.
Thanks for watching and take care, everybody!