This episode sees the Enterprise transporting Ambassador Odan, a Trill, to mediate in a conflict that may escalate into a war. En route he and Dr Crusher have developed a relationship and now they are completely besotted. There is however something she doesn't know about the Trill; they are binary beings consisting of a symbiont and a host and the personality is contained in the slug-like symbiont not the man she sees before her. This wouldn't be a problem but an attack leaves the host dying leaving the 'real' Odan in need of a new host. They are far from the Trill homeworld so Will Riker volunteers to act as host during the peace conference while they await the new Trill host. This makes things very difficult for Beverly as it means her lover now looks like her old friend Will Riker; something she understandably has problems dealing with. Riker's body starts to reject the symbiont but the new host arrives just in time
this doesn't make things easier for Dr Crusher though; the new host is a woman!
Initially it looked as if the main theme of this episode would be the conflict that Odan was trying to solve but ultimately that proved a minor part of the story; the real story was all about the nature of the Trill and whether a person's appearance is as important as their personality when it comes to love not in the sense that appearances change with age or through accident but that in this case the person looks totally different. It was nice to see Beverly in love; Gates McFadden did a fine job did a fine job portraying both the infatuation then the confusion as Odan changed during the course of the episode. The Trill were a fascinating new species to add to the 'Star Trek' universe but anybody familiar with them from the later series 'Deep Space Nine' will be rather surprised as the details shown here contradict several things we see in that series; most notably the Trill look different and in this story they can't teleport due to their binary nature. Still over all this is a solid enough episode with some interesting ideas.
Initially it looked as if the main theme of this episode would be the conflict that Odan was trying to solve but ultimately that proved a minor part of the story; the real story was all about the nature of the Trill and whether a person's appearance is as important as their personality when it comes to love not in the sense that appearances change with age or through accident but that in this case the person looks totally different. It was nice to see Beverly in love; Gates McFadden did a fine job did a fine job portraying both the infatuation then the confusion as Odan changed during the course of the episode. The Trill were a fascinating new species to add to the 'Star Trek' universe but anybody familiar with them from the later series 'Deep Space Nine' will be rather surprised as the details shown here contradict several things we see in that series; most notably the Trill look different and in this story they can't teleport due to their binary nature. Still over all this is a solid enough episode with some interesting ideas.