Symbiosis (S01E22)
Airdate: April 18th 1988
Written by: Robert Lewin, Richard Manning & Hans Beimler Directed by: Win Phelps
Running Time: 46 minutes
Star Trek, across its many iterations, has frequently been accused of naivety, ponderous dialogue, or occasionally muddled science. Yet, one charge rarely sticks is that its creators lacked compassion or a fundamental desire to engage with meaningful human (and alien) dilemmas. The critical flaw, however, often emerges not from the presence of this moral compass, but from the insistence upon broadcasting its bearings with the subtlety of a photon torpedo blast. When the writers feel compelled to prove their ethical bona fides to the audience, the resulting episodes can become heavy-handed sermons rather than nuanced explorations. Such is the enduring, yet profoundly unfortunate, legacy of Symbiosis, a first-season entry in The Next Generation that has secured its place in Trek infamy precisely because it attempts to tackle a devastatingly real-world crisis – addiction – with all the finesse of a starship collision.
The episode commences with the Enterprise-D investigating stellar anomalies in the Delos system. Their scientific inquiry is abruptly interrupted by a distress call from the Sanction, a freighter belonging to the pre-warp civilisation of Ornara, engaged in trade with their neighbours, the Brekkans. Captain Picard offers assistance and is immediately perplexed by the Ornaran crew’s apparent incompetence and their bizarre insistence that only their cargo – not themselves – be beamed aboard the Enterprise. This illogical demand culminates in the Sanction’s catastrophic disintegration, with the Enterprise managing to rescue only four of the six people on board: two Ornarans, T’John (Merritt Butrick) and Romas (Richard Lineback), and two Brekkans, Sobi (Judson Scott) and Langor (Kimberly Farr). The visual contrast is stark: the Ornarans are visibly emaciated, trembling, and wracked with pain, whilst the Brekkans appear robust and entirely healthy. T’John explains Ornara’s centuries-long torment under a devastating plague, for which the sole cure is "felicium" – the very cargo the Sanction was transporting, exclusively supplied by Brekkans. This establishes the ostensible "symbiosis": Brekka provides the cure, Ornara provides trade goods, a relationship seemingly vital for both worlds.
Dr. Crusher’s subsequent medical investigation shatters this facade. Far from harbouring a plague, the Ornarans exhibit no pathological disease; their condition is pure, unadulterated chemical dependency. Felicium is not a cure, but a highly potent and addictive narcotic. The Brekkans, Sobi and Langor, are fully aware of this truth. Their "symbiosis" is, in reality, a calculated exploitation: Brekka prospers by manufacturing and supplying the drug, while Ornara collapses under the weight of its addiction, its society crippled by the need to procure felicium just to stave off agonising withdrawal. The recent solar flares have disrupted the supply chain by damaging Ornaran freighters, exacerbating the crisis. Picard, confronted with this revelation, makes a characteristically difficult decision rooted in his interpretation of the Prime Directive. He refuses to reveal the truth of the felicium addiction to the Ornarans, believing the shock and societal collapse would be catastrophic. Simultaneously, he denies them the means to continue their dependency, refusing to repair their freighters or provide replacement vessels. The Ornarans, Picard concludes, must face the brutal reality of withdrawal and recovery unaided – a harsh, arguably cruel, application of non-interference designed to force societal "maturation" through suffering.
As someone who grew up in Split, Croatia, during the twilight years of Communist Yugoslavia – a city then notorious for its devastating heroin epidemic ravaging its youth – the allegory of Symbiosis struck with unnerving familiarity. The physical deterioration, the desperate bargaining, and the societal decay; these were not fictional constructs but grim realities witnessed on Split’s streets. Initially, there was a certain dark amusement in seeing such a recognisably 20th-century scourge refracted through Star Trek’s typically optimistic lens. One could almost appreciate the attempt to confront contemporary darkness within the franchise’s utopian framework. Yet, this amusement quickly curdled. The true irony, the source of lasting discomfort, lies not in the attempt to address addiction, but in the execution. The episode’s clumsy, almost parodic handling of the subject matter renders its underlying message – chillingly relevant today amidst the relentless profiteering of the US pharmaceutical industry fuelling the opioid crisis – utterly impotent. It becomes less a cautionary tale and more a self-satirising relic of 1980s moral panic television.
The script, credited to Robert Lewin, Richard Manning, and Hans Beimler, commits the cardinal sin of reducing a complex, multifaceted societal catastrophe to a simplistic, almost cartoonish morality play. The notion that an entire spacefaring civilisation, capable of interplanetary trade, could collectively fail to recognise they are suffering from drug addiction rather than a plague is profoundly unconvincing. It insults the intelligence of both the audience and the hypothetical Ornaran populace. The allegory lacks any nuance; the Ornarans are depicted solely as pathetic, weak-willed addicts devoid of agency or societal complexity, whilst the Brekkans are painted with the broadest brush as uniformly ruthless, calculating exploiters. This binary opposition – the helpless victim versus the evil profiteer – conforms precisely to the crudest propaganda tropes, offering no insight into the systemic forces, economic desperation, or psychological complexities that fuel real-world addiction crises. It reduces a profound human tragedy to a simplistic "Just Say No" fable.
This descent into cliché is epitomised by the infamous scene where Wesley Crusher, expressing naive astonishment at why anyone would become addicted, receives a stern lecture from Tasha Yar. Despite subtle hints that Yar’s own troubled past might involve similar struggles, her delivery is pure, unadulterated 1980s anti-drug propaganda that lands with the thud of a lead balloon, evoking the spectre of Nancy Reagan far more effectively than any meaningful character moment. It transforms the episode into the very thing it likely aspired to avoid: a "Very Special Episode" of the worst kind, where complex human failings are reduced to a single, easily dismissible soundbite.
Furthermore, Picard’s application of the Prime Directive here feels profoundly inconsistent and intellectually dishonest. While the Prime Directive traditionally forbids interference with pre-warp societies to allow natural development, Picard’s choice to withhold the truth and the means of continuation is an active intervention with catastrophic potential consequences. He is not observing non-interference; he is deliberately engineering societal collapse as a form of forced therapy. This stands in stark contrast to numerous other episodes where Picard bends or interprets the Directive flexibly to prevent immediate, demonstrable harm. Here, his rigidity feels less like principled adherence and more like a narrative shortcut to a bleak, supposedly "mature" ending that ultimately satisfies no one. It provides ample ammunition for critics who found the first season of TNG uneven and overly enamoured with its own moral posturing.
It is worth acknowledging, however, that director Win Phelps delivers competent, workmanlike television. The pacing is generally solid and the special effects for the era (particularly the freighter disintegration and stellar phenomena). The fundamental flaws lie squarely in the conception and writing, not the execution of the basic televisual craft.
What ultimately elevates Symbiosis from mere mediocrity to a strangely haunting piece of television history is the casting, particularly the tragic resonance of Merritt Butrick’s performance as T’John. Butrick, alongside Judson Scott (who played Joachim in The Wrath of Khan), brought prior Star Trek pedigree to the roles. Scott, while competent, delivers a fairly standard portrayal of the smug Brekkan supplier. But Butrick, cast as the brilliant scientist David Marcus in Wrath and The Search for Spock, undergoes a startling transformation. T’John is a man utterly consumed by suffering, his desperation palpable in every laboured breath, every tremor, every pleading glance. The performance is raw, deeply affecting, and far removed from the idealistic young scientist he previously embodied. The profound tragedy is that Butrick’s gaunt appearance and visible anguish were not solely the product of acting. He was, at the time of filming, desperately ill with AIDS, a condition he was battling with limited treatment options and staggering medical costs. He reportedly took the role as a favour from the Star Trek production team, who sought to provide him with much-needed financial support. Knowing that Butrick succumbed to the disease less than a year after the episode aired (March 1989, following its April 1988 broadcast) imbues his performance with an unbearable, unintended meta-textual weight. The anguish in T’John’s eyes, his struggle for each breath, transcends the poorly written allegory; it becomes a heart-wrenching reflection of Butrick’s own very real and losing battle. This unintended layer of truth is the sole element of Symbiosis that resonates with genuine, unmanufactured power, making the episode’s other failures all the more lamentable. It serves as a stark reminder that real human suffering demands more than clumsy allegory and simplistic slogans; it demands empathy, understanding, and, above all, the narrative sophistication worthy of the tragedy it represents.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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