Sub Rosa (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 14) Dr. Beverly’s Space Ghost Romance

Rewatching ST:TNG

Dr. Crusher eulogizes a grandmother she’s never once mentioned, on a colony terraformed to resemble Scottland (scotta-formed?). A man who looks like he swaggered off the cover of a romance novel throws a flower into the grave.

A grumpy old caretaker warns Beverly not to light the candle which is her family heirloom. 

Beverly learns her 100 year old grandmother had been in a relationship with a 34-year-old named Ronin, and tells Troy of the unusually erotic dream she had. Of course, there’s more to it than dreams.

The grumpy caretaker is killed while apparently sabotaging the colony’s weather-protection system; but should Beverly have heeded his warnings? Of course she should.

When her lover zaps Picard, Crusher has to choose between her hormones and her identity as a healer. The big reveal is that her grandmother’s ghost lover is actually an alien who has been symbiotically merging with Crusher’s ancestors for centuries, and whose ghost shenanigans are somehow messing with the colony’s weather systems (storms being a thing in gothic ghost romances).

A completely unnecessary scene involving the disinterment (by transporter) of the grandmother’s coffin and the eye-rolling technobabble make me unsure whether this episode more closely resembles bad fanfic or a good Starkid parody.  The usual good performances by the cast don’t elevate this episode above the silly premise.