Star Trek: The Next Generation – Season 6, Episode 18
Family gatherings are a big part of the holiday season, and they can often prove to be awkward ordeals we don’t look forward to. Who among us hasn’t had to deal with overbearing parents, an irritating family member, or a group of armed terrorists storming our workplace to steal a valuable treasure with only us capable of singlehandedly stopping them? Hey, we’ve all been there; it’s practically a rite of passage in adolescence. In fact, you’re kind of a weirdo if you haven’t fought off terrorists during the holidays.
Die Hard is a classic holiday mainstay – although it’s an odd duck because nothing about its story actually relates to Christmas at all, it just happens to take place during the holiday season (much like Iron Man 3). I don’t know if that detail really adds anything to Die Hard, but it doesn’t take anything away from it. Regardless, it’s still a well-structured and entertaining flick (as I myself discovered) that has earned its classic pop culture standing. Starship Mine is a less than subtle but surprisingly faithful tribute to Die Hard that gets a lot of mileage out of the film’s dead simple premise. Captain Picard is thrust into the role of unlikely hero just as John McClane was, stuck in a confined space and forced to thwart the aims of a group of ne’er do wells. Isn’t that what the holidays are all about? 🎄 🎄 🎄
The Next Generation was a pretty heady and philosophically-minded show, and although it had its fair share of action and fisticuffs, the fact that it would do such an accurate rendition of Die Hard is very nutty. It’s an entertaining episode, and it can be fun and interesting when Star Trek steps outside the bounds of its genre trappings (then again…). The multiple ways that it apes Die Hard are interesting, but there are several points of departure that make it unique and give it its own personality.
The Enterprise is undergoing some scheduled maintenance at the Remmler Array orbiting Arkaria. Apparently starships build up too much warp static cling and have to be swept for safety. I usually just tap my key on the hull to rid my starship of dangerous particles, but hey, what do I know? The visual of the Enterprise sandwiched between the two massive panels is a cool image. Once the baryon sweep starts, the array generates a green energy screen that slowly moves from bow to stern. The shots of it creeping towards the front of the ship throughout the episode are great and create a sense of escalating tension. The sweep is deadly to all organic life, so the Enterprise has to be evacuated. This is the biggest point of difference from Die Hard, and it’s an inspired story detail that creates a deadly ticking clock and a necessary sci-fi edge that’s more in like with Star Trek.
The crew is rushing around to make last minute preparations and in an extended sequence Picard is accosted by every single senior staff member to help put out fires. In addition to the crew temporarily evacuating to Arkaria, the senior staff must attend a party put on by the station’s interminable commander, Calvin “Call Me Hutch” Hutchison. Worf is able to cleverly finagle his way out of attending, which ends up being hilariously ironic given that he could have singlehandedly handled the terrorists. But maybe he was bitter about his pleas for caution getting constantly shut down, or afraid that despite his overwhelming fighting prowess he would still fall victim to his TV Tropes entry and get taken out by a banana peel or something. We don’t even find out what he does instead. I’d like to think that while Picard and his crew are each fighting for their lives with the terrorists, Worf is just sitting on his hotel room bed fully dressed, staring up at the ceiling motionless until the sweep is over. Even Klingon warriors need a little bedrotting now and then.
Picard steps out of his ready room to find the bridge completely deserted and all the consoles turned off. It’s a nicely calm and human moment that the episode didn’t need to include, but it’s a nice little breather before the action-packed plot kicks off. Picard slowly circles the bridge and really drinks in the silent stillness of his normally bustling bridge. It’s something I tend to do as well – admiring the silent profundity of moments – as I tend to be a pretty sentimental person when I’m not being an annoyingly snarky jackass. Stewart is so great without uttering a word, and he sells how much Picard loves and cherishes this ship of his. It’s his job and his sworn duty to protect, but it’s also his home and there’s an indescribable amount of pride and protectiveness he regards the Enterprise with. It’s these feelings that propel his struggle to defend the ship from the terrorists in the episode.
At the party, the staff are helplessly stuck with the dully loquacious Hutch, who is like a Seinfeld episode come to life – he’s the commander about nothing! And a bit of a close talker. Data’s autistic humanity hyperfixation this week coincidentally turns out to be “non-relevant conversation” – AKA “small talk.” Knowing that Hutchies is the master at it, Data observes the man in action. In the background, he begins mimicking the mannerisms of Hutchles and it makes for some absolutely silly moments. Spiner has a little too much fun with it but at least creates a classic GIF in the process. With his new material, he accosts Crusher and Riker with his small talk. Riker is absolutely tickled about it, and I wonder how much of his performance is just Frakes not being able to keep a straight face. It’s actually pretty funny and charming.
Picard enters the social fray, and ever the guy who hates boring parties, takes advantage of the first excuse to get the hell out of there. Hearing that the planet has some horse trails, he high-tails it back to the Enterprise to retrieve his personal saddle. The ship is minutes away from total power shutdown, and as he is departing with his saddle (and swell riding outfit), notices an open conduit and shifty worker he gets a bad vibe from. It’s Tim Russ, who pops up in several Trek places before gaining a larger role on Voyager. I guess you could say that he… found shit after all. 🖖❤️
Not-Tuvok tries to take Picard down while his back is turned, who hilariously (and ironically) puts him down with a Vulcan Nerve Pinch. Dashing to a transporter room, Picard attempts to beam off the ship but ends up being one second too late as the Enterprise goes totally dark.
He drags Not-Tuvok to sickbay and attempts to not-beat some information out of him. Even with a laser torch pointed at him, the guy calls Picard’s bluff since he’s a namby-pamby Starfleet dude who doesn’t kill all willy-nilly. Picard puts him down (again) with a hypospray and takes his comm unit, through which he hears the plotting of the terrorists aboard the ship. Just like in Die Hard, where McClane used one of the bad guys’ walky-talkies to communicate with them (and the outside world)!
At the party, Riker saves one of the locals from Hutch’s clutches by introducing him to Data, and they start getting on famously by trading empty factoids and fake forced laughter back and forth. He and Troi later stare in amazement and wonder how long two people can talk about nothing. At least nine seasons and 180 episodes worth, I’m sure.
However, things turn dark when La Forge sees some odd energy readings under a table. It turns out to be some guns, and the Arkarians suddenly pull them out and start blasting. La Forge and Hutchers both take phaser hits, the latter of whom does not survive. I always found the death of Hutch pretty shocking – the guy was annoying for sure, but definitely did not deserve to die. It ends up being another interesting Die Hard parallel in that it mirrors the sudden and bloody murder of the good-natured Takagi to set some deadly stakes.
Picard gets captured by one of the terrorists and brought to Engineering, where they all seem to be working on something nefarious. Their leader Kelsey questions Picard about his identity, and thinking fast, he poses as the ship’s barber Mr. Mot. Another Die Hard parallel that recalls when Hans Gruber pretends to be an American hostage. Picard is placed outside of suspicion by the terrorists and learns that they’re stealing trilithium resin from the Enterprise’s warp core.
When the guard isn’t looking, Picard uses his laser torch (guess you villains should frisked him, eh?) to somehow magically trigger a warp core overload steam bath. He destroys the special device the terrorists have that protects them against the baryon sweep and hightails it out of Engineering. Crawling through the conduits, he comes face to face with the sweep as it makes its way through the ship. Again, the unstoppable and unavoidable green wall of death creates some great tension. The guy chasing Picard isn’t able to avoid it, and as Picard escapes down a corridor, he hears his life-ending scream which stops him in his tracks.
It’s a nice little moment, the reminder that Picard takes no joy in killing someone, even if they’re a bad guy. It also relates to one of my musings about Die Hard – although it was still an action movie with plenty of death, seemed to be a more sensitive and nuanced flick than the soulless shoot-em-ups that had been the norm up until then. Like Picard, McClane was a more or less regular guy who didn’t want to kill anyone, but was put into a situation where he had to.
Back at the party, the crew is held at gunpoint by the Arkarians while Crusher tends to La Forge’s phaser wound. The crew amusingly formulates a plan of attack against the captors right in front of them. Normally, these types of guys are usually like “All right, shut up, stop moving around, no talking.” But the Arkarians are clearly new to this, and have a much more laid back, laissez faire attitude towards this whole armed terrorism and hostage taking dealio. The crew plans to use Geordi’s VISOR to create a hypersonic pulse that will incapacitate everyone in the room.
With their protective device fried, Kelsey has the nerdy tech dude Neil create a container for the trilithium so that they can carry it away from Engineering to avoid the sweep. This guy is really the outlier of the group and definitely doesn’t seem to have the deuterium pods to be a criminal. Your mom would be so disappointed, Neil!
Picard breaks into Worf’s quarters to arm himself with some weapons (as the sweep makes regular phasers nonfunctional). He hears the terrorists planning to take the trilithium container to Ten Forward, since (as the name implies), it’s the most forward part of the ship that will be swept last. Picard can’t help but chime in to implore them not to try and move with the stuff, since it’s super volatile and could potentially destroy the ship. We learn that trilithium is a waste product that doesn’t have any utility but as a weapon. What would the holidays be without some delicious and precious space yellowcake? Yum! 😋
Now armed with Worf’s crossbow (Worf has a crossbow? Of course he does), Picard concocts some solution to dip his bolts in as well as some fiery chemical thingies. Meanwhile, Kelsey and her group are stymied by a crawlspace where Picard has apparently cut off all the rungs from the ladder they were climbing up. Nice. I wish the episode could have featured more of this type of stuff – Picard using his knowledge of the ship and his resourcefulness to create headaches and roadblocks for his adversaries. It’s one of the ways “Starship Mine” differs from Die Hard – the Nakatomi Plaza Tower was an unknown and alien environment to McClane as he had never been there, whereas the terrorists in that movie had a carefully worked out plan and intimate knowledge of the place. Quite the opposite in this episode!
The scenes at the party drag the episode down and there could have been a couple more action setpieces on the ship with Picard. “Starship Mine” seems like an attempt to break out of TNG’s mold a bit and emphasize Picard’s physical prowess but I don’t think it fully utilizes its premise in that regard. First Contact would eventually make good on the promise of a more muscle-bound ass-kicking Jean-Luc, and this episode seems like a rough draft of that idea that’s not quite there yet.
ANYWAY. Kelsey rings up Picard to taunt him, who – like McClane – doesn’t betray his true identity. Picard deduces that they’re going to Ten Foward and that they’ll be beaming off to an escape ship, which he plans to also be on. Kelsey quips that it’s a small ship not big enough for both of them. “I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll send your regrets,” Picard shoots back before hanging up. Yesssss. With a dry cool wit like that he can definitely be an action star! 😎
Crusher is ready to hook up La Forge’s VISOR thingie, but needs a distraction that Riker provides. Pretending to negotiate with the lead guy, he gives him a classic palm to the face and totally lays him out but somehow gets taken out by the other guy who’s a foot shorter than him like a chump. It’s kind of silly, like he purposely stops short of just taking out their two captors himself so that they can do this overly-complicated sci-fi tech escape plan. If Data had only been a few feet away (since they’re totally allowed to just freely move about the cabin), he could have easily plotzed out the other dude. C’mon, you guys. There’s just the two armed Arkarians!
At any rate, Crusher is able to complete her piece of the puzzle and the crew’s ridiculously circuitous escape plan moves three-sevenths forward!
Picard takes out one of the terrorists with his crossbow, apparently the bolts were dipped in some knockout juice. It’s badass. Not so badass is that he is immediately taken prisoner by another terrorist, the same red-headed female terrorist that took him prisoner earlier in the episode. It’s oddly repetitive and sticks out. Like in “Catspaw” where Kirk and co. escape their prison only to be rounded by by Sulu and Scotty. And then the same thing just… happens again later.
Also, the terrorists all seem to be using laser torches as weapons. Except when Not-Tuvok brandishes one all it does is make a wimpy little one inch flame out of the barrel. How is that at all dangerous? It’s like threatening someone with one of those novelty cigarette lighters that’s shaped like a gun. Oh no, how am I going to get out of this jam? Well, besides standing more than two inches away from you, that is. Unless these laser torches can create longer, light-saber sized flames? Or shoot shit out? If you’re going to introduce a new kind of weapon, you have to actually demonstrate its use in order to create the proper stakes. If phasers don’t work here, the terrorists would be better off just using actual guns that fire bullets. Picard has a projectile weapon but surrenders to someone with a candle lighter. Cool beans.
(And along those same lines of “show don’t tell,” I wish we could have gotten a glimpse of what the baryon sweep actually does to you if you get caught in it. For some reason I just assumed it vaporizes you, but I think showing it would get the point across much more effectively than just being told its deadly. Plus it’s always fun seeing people getting vaporized!)
Kelsey decides that Neil has outlived his usefulness and kills him offscreen. Ice cold! See Neil, crime doesn’t pay. You could’ve been a Starfleet engineer and bonded with Barclay about also being a milquetoast tech nerd, and now look at you.
Crusher activates their improvised device and as planned, takes out everyone in the room except Data, who easily commandeers the command post.
Picard finally reveals his true identity to Kelsey and implores her to take him hostage rather than the trilithium. Which is odd because… you really think she’s going to take that deal? I guess at this point he’s still assuming they’re terrorists stealing the trilithium for their own purposes. But she reveals that they’re just going to sell it. Which completes the Die Hard tribute by revealing that the terrorists in fact have no political agenda at all and are just doing the heist for the moola! Picard is of course disgusted. Money? How dare you!
Kelsey (and her one remaining colleague) lead Picard into Ten Forward ahead of her. At this point, why is Picard even still alive? Kelsey is absolutely ruthless and doesn’t seem to give a shit about anyone else, not even her own team. They’re not actually using Picard for any purpose and she isn’t interested in him as a hostage. This guy has already taken out three of her people, what is she keeping him around for?! I feel like the other terrorist is about to have a Scotty Evil moment – “I have a gun laser torch, I’ll just blow burn his brains out right now!” Kelsey has a whole bag of “Shh!” with her name on it, though.
Case in point! Picard leads the two of them into a nice little floor trap he laid ahead of time. Other terrorist gets ‘sploded, and Picard and Kelsey commence fisticuffs! In fact, the other terrorist gets knocked out of the entire episode because she isn’t shown again at all. The big bad Grinch sweep barges into the room, and we don’t even get to see what it does to her body! C’mon, she’s right there, it would have been a great opportunity to finally see someone get totally fucked up by this thing. I’ve been a good boy this year Santa, please let me watch a person get vaporized by a fictional sci-fi thingie!
Anyway, Picard and Kelsey in their extremely tight pants violently tussle around in a way that isn’t sexual or gives me any funny feelings at all as the green wall of death steadily moves towards them. She seems to get the upper hand, as well as both her weapon and the trilithium storage container. Picard can only helplessly watch as she receives the signal from her ship and beams off. And still doesn’t kill him. LOL, how are you this bad at being evil, girl? I guess Kelsey would rather place Picard in an overly elaborate and exotic death machine, leave him alone, and assume it all went to plan. Sure, why not.
Picard signals Arkaria base to shut down the sweep, and his calls grow more frantic as the green screen continues to roll toward him. Cowering in the very last inch of room in Ten Forward, the sweep finally deactivates and Data signals him, asking about the ship that’s escaping. Picard coolly notes that it won’t get far as he looks at the control rod device he apparently snagged off the trilithium container. The escape ship promptly explodes in satisfying fashion. Like I always say, it’s not truly Christmas until I see Kelsey’s ship blow up after escaping from the Remmler Array.
The crew is back aboard the Enterprise as Crusher tends to Picard’s wounds in sickbay. Worf finds the object of an intensive search of the ship – Picard’s saddle. Yippie kay-ay, Mister Fucker Worf! Picard notes that the saddle came in handy but laments that he didn’t get to use it on a horse. “Of course,” Worf replies, as this action-packed Die Hard-inspired episode concludes with… a fucking Mr. Ed reference? That’s how we’re puttin’ a bow on this one?
LOL, OKIE DOKIE DOO!
Just.
Dead.
It’s not really fair to compare an hour-long TV episode to a feature length, big budget film. Die Hard is an action spectacle with a great cast, effective emotional stakes, and represented a tonal shift in how its genre was handled. “Starship Mine” does away with the valuable emotional character material of Die Hard but still keeps a lot of the effective appeal of its premise. The tight claustrophobia, outnumbered but resourceful protagonist, and evil villains are still there and it makes for a curious but entertaining Next Generation outing. And isn’t that what the spirit of Christmas really is?
Stray Observations:
- Data and Hutch’s conversation is filled with inane nothingburgers, but at the same time they’re neat little tidbits. The Sheliak prefer to be in an environment where the external temperature matches their internal one. Gross! Tyrellia is one of three known inhabited planets without a magnetic pole, and one of seven known ones without any atmosphere. I’d love to hear from an astrophysicist if either of those things are actually possible. In the world of Star Trek, even the boring stuff is fascinating!
- Picard goes to the trouble of stealing Worf’s crossbow, but what about his bat’leth? I would’ve loved to see him swinging that thing around.
- I think Picard using the nerve pinch is kind of silly. Maybe he learned it from his mind meld with Sarek. But I always assumed that the way it worked required a Vulcan’s superior strength. To that point, I think the only other non-Vulcan we see use it is Data.
- Presented without context:
