the terror (dan simmons, 2007)

I knew I’d read something recently that had crystallized my feelings about Samaritan Snare and I found it on Memory-Alpha:

• (Samaritan Snare) inspired writers Dennis Russell Bailey, David Bischoff and Lisa Putman White to write the third season episode “Tin Man”. According to Bailey:

“The point at which we became serious about trying to write a script for the show was about five minutes after watching ‘Samaritan Snare,’ which in my personal opinion was the most abysmal piece of Star Trek ever filmed. My objections to it were that it always resorted to idiot plotting to make the story work, and that offended me a great deal worse than some of the awful shows which were done on the original series. I thought the way in which it was plotted and the way it was dealt with was an insult to the intelligence of the people who watched the show and the actors and characters in the show. None of the plot could have happened if all of the characters hadn’t suddenly became morons that week.”

“Someone must have been aware of how hokey it was, because they wrote obvious questions into the script which they chose not to answer. For instance, before Geordi beams over, Worf says explicitly to Riker, 'Do we have to send them our chief engineer because they have a little problem?’ and it’s never answered. If you don’t want to answer it, don’t bring it up. Another thing that is stupid is Deanna Troi comes on the bridge and says to Riker, 'I don’t sense fear or confusion. Geordi is in danger. Bring him back,’ and no one even responds to that. They simply act as if it wasn’t said. On the trip over to the starbase, where Picard and Wesley have this long heart to heart talk, Wesley says why would anyone use a defective heart transplant. That’s a minor point. A major piece of stupidity is they send him to a medical facility where it turned out that no one was qualified to handle the operation if it went at all wrong. I can’t believe they expect viewers to be so stupid as to not ask about that. The fact that the routine was repeatedly said, throughout the show, to be an absolutely routine procedure and when it went wrong, it went wrong for no reason that was mentioned, except that it had to go wrong to have the climax. Then it turns out they have to call the Enterprise to bring Pulaski over to do the operation because she’s more qualified and the people there weren’t.” (Captains’ Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages)