My Heart (or Anyway One of Those Organs the Blood Rushes to) for the Highlands

 

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION

S7 E14 "Sub Rosa" 

 

Beverly has a slight attack of the vapors

This is my favorite really stinky ST:TNG episode. It was Season 7, it was written by Brannon Braga and Jeri Taylor, and it was oh-so-obviously conceived as "Dr. Crusher Runs from the Forbidding Mansion in a Nightgown and There's One Light On in the Tower".

 We open on Beverly delivering the eulogy for her Nana on Space Scotland (the planet has a name, but believe me, it's Space Scotland). At this point I am going to have to mention Jean-Luc, who is fussing around in his dress uniform so uncomfortably it's almost rude. He looks like he forgot to visit the little Captain's room after that last Earl Grey.

Anyway, Beverly finishes speaking, and all her Nana's friends circle around to pay their respects. One of them leaves a flower on top of the coffin. Beverly looks up to see this long-haired Heathcliff-lookin' dude as he glances sadly back, and oh me, oh my, I do declare, cue that Jerry Goldsmith music!

After we come back from the intro, Beverly asks Troi if she noticed hunk boi, then gets her to go along up to Nana's house. The colony's governor, who officiated at the funeral, takes the opportunity to wheedle Picard into checking out their terraforming equipment, which hasn't been serviced in like a hundred years. For some reason, the governor is an alien, and this is so inexplicable it's actually brought up in-script. He tells Picard he vacationed in Scotland as a boy and fell in love, but it's just weird. There's no reason at all for it, unless they had a rubber forehead quota to fill that week, or they wanted to make sure we remembered this was innn spaaaaaaccccccccce.

Back at Nana's house, Troi remarks that Nana had amazing green eyes -- this is what's known as Chekhov's Eyes, kids -- and Beverly says all the women in her family had green eyes except for her and her mom. Then they discuss this candle that's been a family heirloom for generations, and I'm assuming they mean the metal frame, because if it's 800 years old they'd have to get refills, and I'm really hoping Goop's out of business in the 24th century. Deanna tells her if she's done with the exposition dump she's gonna book, so Beverly takes Nana's journal upstairs to read.

Then Groundskeeper Willie (shut up, it's basically him!) walks in the front door and blows out the candle, and Bev comes back down and tells him to get out. He tells her to get rid of the candle and get out of the house, and she's like, "whatever, weirdo," and he's all but screaming, "yer DOOMED!!"

Back on the Enterprise-D, Geordi and Data tell the Governor the colony's weather system is off a bit for some reason. Bev tells Jean-Luc about Nana's 30-something lover she's been reading about, and since Nana was 100 when she kicked it, Picard is like, "good on Nana!" Also his name is "Ronin", which I'm pretty sure is not Scots.

To compress a bit of this mess: Bev has a very erotic dream (or was it?); Deanna is a bit jealous (d'ohh, stupid ol' hairy Imzadi!), but tells Bev people work through grief in different ways, especially if they read their gramma's sex diaries right before they go to bed; Bev reconciles with "Willie" at Nana's grave, and he tells her the house is haunted, and not to light the candle, it's where the ghost lives; the grave is suddenly covered with flowers and there's a giant thunderstorm because fuck you, Geordie and Data, is why; she finally meets Ronin, and he starts mind-controlling her, the easy way, with orgasms.

Okay, Bev's acting kind of weird and Troi is a little worried, and there's fog on the bridge because, apparently, ghosteses. Willie is found in Engineering trying to turn off the power connection between the ship and the colony, but he's killed by green lightning. Ronin convinces Beverly to light the candle.

Back on the ship, Bev locks her door, lights the candle, and squirms around like a hornypants teenager for what seems like a minute and a half. Then Ronin shows up, turns into a green mist and merges with her, and she seems to like it A LOT.

Then she resigns from Starfleet and beams down to live on the planet, to Jean-Luc's shock. I couldn't help but think it would have been really funny if Wesley was still on board. "Mommy's going to live with her demon lover, hon, be good!"

Geordie and Data determine there's a spot on the planet where the same energy that's messing up the weather is coming from, and surprise, it's Nana's grave! Jean-Luc beams down and finally meets Ronin. He asks him all sorts of suspicious questions. Ronin thinks Picard is just trying to cock block him, and to be honest, dude has a point. Picard is going to ask permission from the governor to exhume Nana's body. Ronin is like, "NO!!", and green-lightnings him. Ronin's like, hurry we have to stop them, but Bev's all, "No, he's dying, 'ma doctor, plus he's probly Wesley's dad!"

Data and Geordie are exhuming Nana, and for once they do something really smart. Instead of digging, they just beam her coffin to the surface -- noice! Then Nana's eyes pop open, and they're glowing green! She doesn't even look dead, it's just an old lady who green-lightnings them both.

Ronin gets there, followed by Bev (she already saved Picard). Bev tells him to stop, he lightnings Geordie again and says he'll kill him. (At some point, he stops controlling Nana's body and she just ragdolls back into the coffin, it's pretty funny.) Anyway, long story short, Beverly phasers the candle, then Ronin. Bye, Ronin! Now she can presumably finally take care of Geordie. (Data will be fine, they can just ding the dents out of him later.)

In the end, we don't even find out what Ronin really was. An alien on earth in the 1600s? A real g-g-ghost? ("something something anaphasic", hell with you, Braga.) Bev is philosophic, saying that at least he really loved all those women in her family tree, and they him. Pretty sure that's not how consent works, Bev, but okay.

Thank you, hope you enjoyed this report on the reason my crush on Gates McFadden got WAY worse after this episode! 😂