Summary
- Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1 struggled to find its footing, and "Angel One" is often cited as one of its worst episodes, lacking nuance and making odd choices.
- The episode attempts to critique gender roles through an obvious inversion of the patriarchy, but fails spectacularly. It sidelines the main female characters and focuses on Commander Riker as the hero, despite its supposed intention to celebrate women.
- "Angel One" comes after successful episodes like "The Big Goodbye" and "Datalore," making it feel like a significant step backward. Its use of cliches from the original Star Trek series and a meaningless secondary plot contribute to its status as a low point in the season.
Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1 struggled to find its footing, and while some episodes showed glimpses of the greatness that was to come, others, like this infamous episode, aged particularly poorly. Following the adventures of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the USS Enterprise-D, TNG would go on to produce some of the best science fiction television of all time. TNG season 1, episode 13, "Angel One" does not fall into that category and is often cited as one of Star Trek's episodes.
Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Angel One" sees the Enterprise visit a planet governed by an oligarchy of women, with the men in positions of servitude. Commander William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) leads an away team to the planet to inquire about survivors from a freighter that went missing years before. The leader of Angel One, Beata (Karen Montgomery) seems reluctant to share information with the Enterprise crew, but she is clearly intrigued by Commander Riker. There may be a good message buried in here somewhere, but not since "Code of Honor" has a TNG episode missed the mark by this much.
