Star Trek Reviews

Return to season list

Star Trek TNG - Season 7 - Episode 14

Star Trek TNG - 7x14 - Sub Rosa

Originally Aired: 1994-1-31

Synopsis:
Crusher falls under the spell of a ghost lover. [DVD]

My Rating - 1

Fan Rating Average - 2.67

Rate episode?

Rating: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
# Votes: 52 41 13 14 11 7 0 4 4 12 9

Problems
- In one scene, the Enterprise was in standard orbit during the power transfer, which seems like an impossible situation to maintain, as eventually the Enterprise would be on the other side of planet, unable to maintain a moving beam on a fixed target. In another scene they were motionless, as they should have been in the previous scene. In another scene, they were in standard orbit again!

Factoids
- This episode establishes that it is a trivial matter to change the color of one's eyes in the 24th century.

Remarkable Scenes
- The foggy Enterprise.

My Review
This episode is severely boring and cheap ghost story horror all set in a 24th century old Scotland clone colony. Quite trite. Have the writers not learned to how to write science fiction in the last few decades? Essentially the story amounts to Beverly quitting starfleet to sit alone in her house with a candle waiting for her phantom man to sweep her off her feet and Picard and crew becoming ghost hunters. Finally, the episode reeks of tastelessness when Beverly's grandmother is briefly and spontaneously resurrected by Ronin for absolutely no reason. In the end, Beverly kills the energy life form of the week out of anger; completing the circle of cliches.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

  • From Wolfgang on 2008-05-20 at 6:58pm:
    Why did they make this episode? It's not even science-fiction, and certainly not Star Trek. Just a waste of time. If they wanted to put some spotlight on Crusher, why not give her a good episode...
  • From Paul on 2010-08-18 at 8:43am:
    I am Scottish so yet again I am forced to listen to the worst american versions of Scottish accents I've ever heard

    Also if they were trying to recreate the Scottish highlands why did they use stones from Glasgow and Edinburgh?
  • From Tallifer on 2011-03-13 at 5:36am:
    I like stories where the ghosts are shown to be tricks, hallucinations, dreams, mere legends or hoaxes. That is the triumph of rationality which is fitting in a science fiction universe.

    I hate stories where ghosts are explained by nonsensical pseudo-science. Which is more rational? The spirits of dead people haunting the world and possessing the living, or "anaphasic" aliens using "plasma" candles as foci and inhabiting people with green energy? Neither is rational of course, and the latter is just as stupid as television psychics and alien abductions.
  • From thaibites on 2013-01-04 at 9:50pm:
    Another one for the ladies. I think Dr. Beverly actually had a couple orgasms during this episode, which is pretty daring for TNG.
    At least this one was better than the episode where where Dr. Beverly fell in love with a big intestinal sea cucumber.
  • From L on 2013-05-01 at 10:26pm:
    Beverly's performance was quite, um, erotic. It was clear what form the energy alien's 'gift' to her took. Her aura of post-coital bliss/addict with a fix was quite convincing.

    There was nothing particularly wrong with the relationship as it seemed quite symbiotic, it could have worked quite fine in other circumstances. It did however make Beverly act like an irrational addict and cut ties to her friends.
    But really this was just an excuse for a gothic genre episode. Worth it for Beverly's performance.
  • From Sloganlogo on 2014-04-30 at 4:22pm:
    small trivia…In the first Scene after the titles between Troi and Beverly you can clearly see a grave stone with the name McFly…The scene ends with Beverly asking Troi to walk with her to visit a house and off the go.

    In the next scene Picard is chatting to a Colony local and in the background you can clearly see Troi in the background walking right to left. She ends up in the same position she was in the the last scene. I suspect they swapped the two scenes about.
  • From rendraG on 2015-01-08 at 2:32pm:
    Great ghosty fun with lots of olde world sets. Nice to see Picards almost death for love to overcome passion and the spell Ronin had casted over Beverly and her unfortunate but clearly sexually exhausted ancestors.

    Ronins emotional and sexual domination of Beverly combined with the sensual acting of Gates McFadden make this the naughtiest episode in all of Star Trek. Woof.


  • From Keefaz on 2017-02-18 at 6:45pm:
    Amazingly rotten episode. Absolute guff from start to finish. The bizarre Scottish colony which has 25th century power and weather stabilisation facilities but also candles, open fires, dusty books and so on. Weird accents. Ghost sex. The creepy revelation the ghost has been preying on every female ancestor of Beverley.

    A terrible episode, then, but one that is so odd and singular that it doesn't diminish the series as you couldn't even consider it a Star Trek episode.

Prove to me that you are a real person and not a spam robot by typing in the text of this image:

Return to season list