Star Trek: The Next Generation — 3x24 — Menage a Troi

Aired 1990-05-28

SpaceOpera.com rating:5

Average reader rating:3.08

Synopsis

The Ferengi kidnap Counselor Troi and her mother.

Remarkable scenes

Lwaxana avoiding the Ferengi.
Picard avoiding Lwaxana.
Lwaxana continuing to treat Deanna like a child and Deanna finally getting annoyed with it for once.
Picard getting Riker back with the shore leave impositions.
Betazed. Such a beautiful Federation world. We see so little of it :(
Lwaxana called Tog a "demon" as opposed to his Ferengi title "daemon."
Tog beaming the women out of their cloths.
Riker tricking and angering his Ferengi captor with chess trash talking.
Wesley's solution.
Picard professing his love for Lwaxana. Sucking at first, doing well later.
Picard's bluff.
Picard ordering Wesley to set course for Betazed at warp 9 to avoid Lwaxana!
Wesley's promotion.

Review

Finally a Ferengi episode where the Ferengi are completely in character. This episode is nice for its cheeky humor and interesting tidbits, but little more.

7 reader comments

Changed Premise: This episode makes the point, several times, that Betazoids cannot read Ferengi minds. Troi is half Betazoid. That means her empathic capabilities are scaled-down versions of a full Betazoid's telepathic capabilities. Yet in several previous episodes, Troi comments that she senses certain emotions from the Ferengi.
At some point the Ferengi gave up their "phaser whips." In "The Last Outpost," the Ferengi used a bullwhiplike device that emitted a stream of energy when snapped. In this episode, the Ferengi use more conventional-looking weapons.
When Lwaxana beams from the Ferengi ship to the Enterprise, she starts out sitting on the Ferengi captain's bed and ends up standing on the bridge. In other words, the transpoter had to rearrange her skeletal-muscular structure in transit.
I think Wesley would do a lot better with the women if he'd remember to zip up his pants. The pants on Wesley's "acting ensign" uniform don't close all the way in back! Maybe his promotion and Starfleet uniform will help ;)
by DSOmo | 07/29/2007 at 8:15 pm

Uggh. My general disdain for Ferengi episodes aside, this is still a mess. I can't buy the way Riker is able to make subtle shifts in the warp signature without being able to read Ferengi. I can't buy the Ferengi themselves; they're just to ludicrous. I can't buy the new-found (and then suddenly lost again in subsequent episodes) chemistry between Riker and Troi. This one is a zero for me.
by JRPoole | 04/15/2008 at 5:23 pm

Keep in mind, JRPoole, that it's always been implied that the universal translator allows people to read alien languages as well as understand the spoken variety.
by Eric Newport | 04/15/2008 at 8:18 pm

I guess you're right about the universal translator. But that would that mean the translator is inside the brain?
by JRPoole | 06/13/2008 at 7:06 am

I don't much like Lwaxana, I don't much like the Ferengi, and the combination of the two is almost too much to bear. The only parts I liked were Riker's escape from the prison cell and Picard's Shakespearean performance at the end.
by Christopher Alexander | 05/26/2011 at 2:34 pm

What I hate about Lwaxana is that, for a telepath, she's so terribly uninsightful. Also, I hate Deanna for telling her that she needs to speak out loud around non-telepaths. She already is too overbearing and loud to begin with.
by Bronn | 10/19/2012 at 9:13 pm

The worst part of this episode is that it provided the still frame for all the horrible "annoyed picard" gifs on facebook!
by TDV | 07/28/2014 at 6:35 pm