Star Trek: The Next Generation — 3x11 — The Hunted

Aired 1990-01-08

SpaceOpera.com rating:7

Average reader rating:6.12

Synopsis

The crew deals with a dangerous prisoner.

Remarkable scenes

The prisoner. It took five men to restrain him! Then his personality was totally opposite. I loved how rational he seemed and how eloquent his conversations were with the crew. I also love how everyone wanted to help him but had no means by which to do that.
Worf fighting the prisoner.
The prisoner's valiant escape.
The escaped prisoner: "To survive is not enough. To simply exist is not enough."
Picard bailing out of the situation, giving the supersoldiers a chance to reclaim their freedom peacefully.

Review

Another race that looks exactly like humans! Anyway, the idea of creating a supersoldier is terrifying and this episode explores it well. I remember hearing a story once about one of my relatives returning from Vietnam and suddenly having a dual personality. A usually kind and gentle man suddenly and seemingly randomly becomes violent. Likewise to the episode the society of these people decides to ignore the aftermath afflicting their war veterans. But in this episode, it all comes back to haunt society.

10 reader comments

The brig has been retrofitted. In "Heart Of Glory," the brig was a room with a force field around the door. In this episode, the brig is a large room with a detention cell in it.
Supposedly the Angosians are technologically inferior to the Federation. Yet one of their soldiers gets loose on the Enterprise and wreaks havoc. Danar makes one pass through Engineering and comprehends all the systems of the Enterprise. He defeats Data in rerouting power systems. He knows the exact location to place an overloading phaser so it will cripple all exterior sensors. He "hot-wires" a phaser to supply power to a transporter. Granted, Danar is supposed to be brilliant, but this is like taking someone who is a genius at fixing tube-type electronics and turning him loose on integrated circuits. He isn't going to get very far.
Dr Crusher indicates that the reason the sensor can't lock on Danar is because of the substances the Angosians put into his body. Later, the prime minister admits that the chemicals can be removed, but the mental programming cannot be undone. If you are trying to keep these guys locked up, doesn't it seem reasonable that you would take away any edge they have? Why let them remain invisible to sensors?
Danar tries to force a confrontation between his men and the Angosians by firing at a wall. The weapon blows a chunk out of the wall. Several seconds later, the same shot shows that the wall is COMPLETELY WHOLE!
by DSOmo | 07/22/2007 at 11:43 pm

My only problem with this episode is the way Danar breaks out of the brig. WTF did he do to fight off the transporter beam?
Other than that, and the slight stretch of plausibility mentioned in the above comment, this is a top notch episode. I love Picard's reaction to the stand off.
by JRPoole | 04/06/2008 at 1:22 am

Problem: After the prisoner has left engineering and as the the camera pans around, Geordi's visor is on the ground some distance from Geordi. When Worf walks into engineering, Geordi is wearing his visor.
by Bruce Dudley | 09/28/2009 at 2:57 am

I think Season Three of TNG is in the running for "Most New Alien Races Introduced In a Single Season".
This time it bugs me though. Everything about the ending of this episode suggests to me that we should see the Angosians again, either in TNG or maybe DS9. As one of the comments above pointed out, they designed a genetically enhanced soldier that was more than a handful for the Federation's flagship. It seems they have the knowledge and technology to warrant being seen again, especially when the Federation is fighting the Borg or Dominion.
I do like the issue this episode deals with, though, that being veterans struggling to live in a civilized, peaceful society, and that society having no place for them. This episode, like the DS9 war trauma episodes, is interesting to watch in today's context.
by MJ | 02/23/2011 at 10:52 pm

In response to previous comments:
I, too, found it somewhat difficult to believe that the technology of the Angosians could produce something as deadly as Danar. But I think it is explainable. It appears that the Angosians are inferior to the Federation in most technlogoy but superior in the rest of the galaxy in super-soldier technology; that would explain the Enterprise being unable to handle his anti-sensor and anti-transporter abilities. And if the Angosians are applying for Federation membership, they may already have regular relations with the rest of the galaxy and have access to Federation scientific knowledge. They just haven't had time to build up their infrastructure. Indeed, the enemies of the Angosians probably had better hard technology too, so disabling advanced enemy starships may have been exactly what Danar was trained to do.
Still, I found it weakened the episode that I had to explain so much in order to believe it. And it seemed a bit of a copout to set up a moral quandary about what to do with the super-soldiers after the end of the war, then get out of it by having the Angosian government turn out to just be too cheap and lazy to deal with the issue. But in general this was a good and memorable episode. I liked the character of Danar and the hunt for him was quite exciting.
by Christopher Alexander | 03/11/2011 at 12:16 pm

-Picard says that Danar is in their "Highest Security Detention Area" yet when Troi senses his emotional tension moments later she walks in and there isn't a single guard in sight!
by Troy Coutu | 03/13/2011 at 10:06 pm

In response to the comments by others saying that the reasons given by the Angosians for failing to treat the super soldiers was lame: not so! The real reason is quite chilling and given by one of the Angosians in an almost off-handed way, it is this: "We might need to use them again."
If you had access to a devastating weapon, would you give it up readily? Certainly, the Angosians decided not to. They wanted to retain the option to deploy the super soldiers against another potential enemy.
This scenario has many parallels in history. Ancient Rome is a great example. Rome developed the Legions, the most devastating military power of their time. The ancient equivalent of nuclear weapons. Once they had the Legions, though, the Romans found them both difficult to live with and impossible to get rid of. This led to instability eventually resulting in the downfall of the Roman Empire.
by Jeff Browning | 10/21/2011 at 9:55 am

I had a mixed reaction to this episode, but I think it's decent and definitely belongs in the series… The issue of reintegrating war veterans, dealing with PTSD, etc. is important enough that I can applaud the writers for tackling it, and forgive them for doing so in a less than subtle and slightly bumbling manner… (I'm thinking here specifically of the very contrived final scenes, the soldiers rappelling down out of nowhere, the final dialogue and exposition…).
But there were definitely redeeming features, even beyond the social commentary. I liked the nuanced antagonism that eventually developed between Picard and the fugitive, with both apparently respecting each other but forced to contend due to circumstance. I also enjoyed seeing a sympathetic super-soldier wreak total havoc on the Enterprise, outsmarting the entire crew. (I was going to say that the writers preempted The Bourne Identity, but I just learned that the book was written prior, in 1980). I only wish the first fight scenes were a bit better. The crappy choreography doesn't fit the super-soldier plot…
Problem: How the hell did Crusher "examine" the fugitive? Warf can't take down the forcefield for .1 seconds without him escaping, but Crusher can perform a complete and thorough examination?
by Ggen | 03/14/2012 at 11:14 pm

Actor side note: the Angosian Prime Minister Nayrok in this episode is played by James Cromwell, who also played Dr. Zefram Cochran in Star Trek: First Contact.
by Daniel Antil | 01/26/2014 at 7:06 pm

The rating for this episode doesn’t look quite right…. You want my advice? Double it!!!!
by Bernard | 04/29/2022 at 5:07 pm