Episode title: “Angel One”
Season: 1
Basic plot: Riker ends up on a planet run by women. It's not as great as it sounds. Oh no wait, it is. Kind of.
Importance: 0
Crisis point(s) if any: Sort of none other than the trouble out Neutral Zone way
Original transmission date: January 25 1988
Writer(s): Patrick Barry
Director: Michael Ray Rhodes
Stardate:* 41636.9
Destination: Angel One
Mission (if any): Track down any survivors from the freighter
Odin
Main character(s) in Plot: Riker
Main character(s) in Subplot (if any):
Not appearing: O’Brien
Villain/Monster (if any): None
Deaths: 0
Lives saved (episode): 14
Lives saved (cumulative): 24
Locations:
Shipboard:
Bridge
Sickbay
Holodeck
Space:
Other:
Angel One
Ships/vessels (encountered): 0
Ships/vessels (mentioned only): Freighter
Odin, USS
Berlin, Romulan Warbirds
Space battles: 0
Bodycount
Historical
0
Incidental
0
Direct
0
Total: 0
Running total: 86
Make it so: 0
Engage! 1
Combat factor: 0
Planets visited: Angel One
Planets mentioned:
Aliens: The Angel One-ians
Mysteries: None
Patients in sickbay: over 100 (“More patients than beds”, according to Bev)
Data v Humanity: n/a
Data 3 - Humanity 6
Character scores:
Picard 10
Riker 175
Data 15
Geordi 10
Troi 15
Bev 20
Wesley 30
Worf 10
Yar 15
O’Brien 0
Earl Grey: 0
Shuttlecraft: 0
Admirals: 0
Starbases: 0
First contact: 0
Humour: 4
Episode rating: 1/10
Episode score: 65
Oh god this is the one about the planet of women isn’t it? And not in a “Space Bikini Girls on the Moon” sort of way, or anything. This is a matriarchy, where Riker has to dress in an embarrassingly revealing… oh no. My dinner! It’s rather typical that in a story where the women are in power (written, I should note with some asperity, by a man) there has to be rebellion fomenting. Like male equivalents of the Suffragettes, the men who have survived from the Odin are now leading a rebellion, helped by women who don’t enjoy the status quo. Sort of a reversal of the movement here, where certain women went against the idea of suffrage. But the underlying sentiment, though it’s cleverly presented as “no one gender should have power over another” is really “women should not be in power and the natural order of things is that men should be in charge.” To illustrate this, the arrival of the manly men - as opposed to the somewhat vain and effeminate native ones - has sparked feelings long suppressed in some of the native women, who just want the men to take over and rule them as they feel should be how things are.
"Ah yes! At last, the power is mine!"
It doesn’t help that the central figure of this matriarchy, the authority, Beata, is presented as gruff, masculine, butch and uncompromising, unfriendly and not exactly all that pretty. You are, as a man (or I am anyway) more or less immediately annoyed by and turned off by her, and your sympathies quickly lie with the “rebels”. It is interesting that, when they’re located, and refuse to leave, because they’re civilians they can’t be forced to go. This episode does give the two main men the chance to bare their manly chests, if you’re into such a thing, and also for a sort of reflection of the planet below to occur on the ship, as Beverly is the one running things, since somehow she hasn’t got sick. The ending is very poe-faced I feel: Riker basically talks Beata into letting the captives live. It’s very ****ing
Star Trek, isn’t it?
A few seasons later, they might have been executed and we’d be left with an uncomfortable reminder that sometimes you just can’t and shouldn’t interfere with internal planetary politics. Still, you’d wonder, given that Ramsay and his men are all Federation citizens, if Angel One is risking a diplomatic incident by attempting to execute them? And why Riker - or Data - doesn’t point this out in an attempt to change yer wan’s mind? Seems like with a race that prides themselves on strength so much, an open threat might be more respected than a plea.