Samaritan Snare
Season 2 Episode 17
Original airdate: May 13, 1989

Netflix Synopsis

With Picard away for routine surgery, the Enterprise responds to a distress call from a Pakled vessel.

My Brief Review

Structured like an episode of The Love Boat, this is a mostly entertaining but not great episode. In one storyline, Picard and Wesley spend 6 hours on a shuttlecraft to Starbase 515, where Wes will take exams and Picard is going for what turns out to be a heart transplant. In the other storyline, Riker and the Enterprise deal with a ship full of simpletons on a ship full of stolen technology that is beyond their comprehension. They kidnap Geordi, but a clever ruse by the Enterprise bridge officers saves the day.

Then, with Picard’s surgery going awry, the Enterprise travels at warp 9 to get to the starbase so Dr. Pulaski can save his life. Which makes one wonder why the whole shuttlecraft scenario happened at all. (Bad writing!)

Memorable Moment

Communicating with Geordi in front of the Pakleds, Riker, Data and Worf speak in code to relay their plan to rescue Geordi from his dimwitted captors. Worf gets quasi-mystical for a moment.

Crew Rando

It’s the return of Ensign Gomez! I expected her appearance in the previous episode to be a one-off, but she’s still here… presumably because the story needed someone in engineering, and we don’t really know anyone there besides Geordi.

Distance Rating: 5K

IMDb score: 6.6/10