In the twenty-second episode of the sixth season of The Next Generation, Dr. Crusher risks her job just to prove a suspicion. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.Â
Oh, y’all, this was a treat. Everyone should know by now that I love Dr. Crusher a great deal, so I was biased to love “Suspicions” from the start. But it’s also got in media res! And a mystery! AND A VERY DIFFICULT MORAL CONUNDRUM! Truthfully, coming off of “Progress” over on Deep Space Nine, I felt a certain kinship between the two episodes, which I’m aware wasn’t intentional. But at the root of both stories is a deeply disturbing ethical choice.
So how are the two episodes different? What can be gained by a comparison of the two? I think that “Suspicions” flows better, especially since it opens with a much more dramatic scene. Dr. Crusher angrily confesses to Guinan that she can’t help her with her tennis elbow because she’s no longer the doctor on the Enterprise. It’s a hell of a hook, and Gates McFadden’s lovely narration as Crusher guides us through the story. The episode largely takes place through flashbacks and voiceover, and it’s how we discover that Dr. Crusher wanted to give a Ferengi scientist a change to prove their findings when most of the scientific community couldn’t get past the fact that Dr. Reyga was Ferengi. It’s a powerful statement about prejudice, one that even Dr. Reyga jokes about with Crusher.
Of course, we’re all waiting to find out how it is that Dr. Crusher gets to a point where her actions could get her fired and facing a hearing. My initial suspicion (HA) centered around the first test of Dr. Reyga’s metaphasic shield. Jo’Bril’s death was horrifying and disturbing, and despite that he consented to it, I assumed that this was a possible breach of ethics. Had the team followed a rigorous code when testing the shield? Was Jo’Bril’s consent enough? However, within a few scenes of Jo’Bril’s death, Dr. Reyga himself dies of an apparent self-inflicted wound, and THIS ESCALATED QUICKLY. Very quickly!!!
And yet, I couldn’t figure out the path that led to the present time. How did any of this get her fired? I thought the answer might have been in her interrogation of the other scientists on board the Enterprise, who all stood to benefit in some way from Dr. Reyga’s death or the sabotage of his shield technology. Well…sort of. I worried that Dr. Crusher’s actions would give way to her horrible future. What if she accused the wrong person? What if her suspicions took her down the wrong path? It was possible, wasn’t it? What little evidence she had was circumstantial, and it was barely that at best.
That’s when the ethical nightmare presented itself, and Dr. Crusher made the decision that could have destroyed her career. I think that in examining this, you can see just how The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine differ. Now, I don’t think DS9 is terribly subversive about its plots (at least not yet), and plenty of episodes in the first season have followed a fairly standard storytelling format. When Dr. Crusher made a choice to violate the desires of Dr. Reyga’s family, she knew it was unethical. Her pursuit of the truth was, in that moment, more important than the rights and desires of others. She believed that the answer to Dr. Reyga’s death and the failure of his shield was in his body.
And it’s a bold, scary choice for her to make. At the very least, she knew that. She didn’t ask for Picard to shield her from the repercussions of her actions. Unfortunately, THE AUTOPSY DIDN’T PROVE ANYTHING, which was clearly frustrating to her. Yet it didn’t necessarily discourage her. With some nudging from Guinan, she pursues the answer to this mystery with great risk to her own life. SHE LITERALLY FLIES INTO THE CORONA OF A STAR TO SEEK THE TRUTH. Now, I had not even remotely considered Jo’Bril to be the perpetrator, so this explains the shock you’ll see in the video for “Suspicions.”
At the same time, I think the resolution of this episode does not contain the satisfaction I found in “Progress.” As I said before, both episodes deal with possibly career-ending choices made by people in hopelessly complex situations. But the charges brought against Dr. Crusher are wiped away in an instant, because apparently it was okay for her to violate the customs of the Ferengi as long as she vindicated Reyga. It’s a very strange treatment of the story because it immediately removes all the weight from it, deflating the stakes in an effort to provide us with an easy conclusion. “Progress” does no such thing, committing to the choice that Kira made and showing us the emotional and disturbing implications of it. It has much more of an impact than “Suspicions” does.
It’s not a bad episode by any means, and the chance to get an entire episode about one of my favorite characters was appreciated. But I think “Suspicions” is deeply flawed in the end and not just because the main threat is neutralized with a cop out. I find Guinan’s use here to be hopelessly disappointing, since she is utilized once more as the moral guide for other characters without any story of her own. How did she know Beverly was in trouble? Did she go to her quarters and invent the tennis elbow on the spot? I’d care less about this if Guinan hadn’t fit the trope of the mystical black character to a T throughout this show. We’re six seasons in, and we still know barely anything about her, unlike practically every other recurring or regular character.
Ultimately, I enjoyed this, but I think it could be better.
The video for “Suspicions” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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