Justice (ST:TNG, Season 1)

★☆☆☆☆

Sometimes you go back and watch something years later and it’s better than you remember.

Sometimes it’s not.

We’ve started re-watching Star Trek: The Next Generation from the beginning, and “Planet of the Jogging Bimbos” falls solidly into the latter category.

The arbitrariness of the law, the fact that no one on the planet thinks to tell anyone about capital punishment until the second visit, the fact that the crew thinks it’s a great idea to send 14-year-old Wesley down to a planet where casual sex among adults is like a handshake without checking how their kids interact first, the general vapid characterization of the Edo, the lack of urgency in the editing, the shallowness of the argument and “solution,” all add up to something that was trying to present a moral dilemma, but has all the depth of a word problem on an exam with a lingerie picture next to it to spice it up.

Tip of a Hat

That said, Picard’s attempts to find a diplomatic solution don’t bother me as much as they did back when I was (checks airdate) 11, and frankly if the episode had taken time to really dig into ways they might actually negotiate with the Edo and their “god” – instead of making sure there was enough skin visible in the background on the planet scenes, and then just beaming up while saying that justice can’t be absolute, it might yet have transcended the ridiculous premise. As it is, the starship side of the plot does give them a reason not to just beam Wesley out of there and sort things out afterward.

I did appreciate the sarcasm in the “oh, you must be more advanced than us, so tell us how advanced your justice is” remarks at one point, though it’s not clear in the delivery. And it is amusing to watch the interaction between Troi and Riker during this season, before they’ve decided they definitely aren’t getting back together…knowing that eventually they do.

Any Hat

Yes, “Planet of the Jogging Bimbos” was a contemporary nickname for the episode. Strangely, searching for that exact phrase online only turns up one result on Google or DuckDuckGo, a forum discussion from 2007…almost half as long ago now as the original airdate. (And about as old as “The Apple” was when this episode aired, give or take a bit) I don’t know if the nickname was just local to the fannish circles my family moved in and didn’t make the jump to online usage, or if it’s yet another example of search engines not finding things anymore.