Star Trek TNG's Lonely Among Us: Data's First Sherlock Holmes Turn Cannot Save a Messy Episode

Going back to Lonely Among Us almost 40 years later, I have to admit I had forgotten most of this episode before sitting down to rewatch it. I remembered Data pretending to be Sherlock Holmes for the first time, I vaguely remembered the dog people trying to eat the snake people, and I remembered Picard getting possessed by a blue electrical alien. Watching it again in full, I understood exactly why so much of it had slipped from memory.

This is one of those early TNG episodes where there are two completely different stories happening at once, and neither one is developed enough to carry the episode on its own. The writers apparently decided that combining them would somehow solve that problem. It does not.

The Selay and Anticans bring a diplomatic subplot the ship never needed

The Enterprise is transporting two delegations to a diplomatic conference on a planet called Parliament. The Selay are basically humanoid snakes and the Anticans are large humanoid dogs. The two species come from neighboring worlds, they hate each other, and both are seeking admission into the Federation. Nobody at the Federation, apparently, considered that placing them together on one starship might be a bad idea, so the crew is immediately dealing with fights over accommodations, food, and security, with the Anticans particularly upset that the ship has no living animals for them to hunt and eat.

That does give us one of those early pieces of Trek world-building. Riker tells the Anticans that humans no longer enslave animals for food and that the ship can provide meat replicated from inorganic material. It is a small scene, but an important one for defining Roddenberry's vision of the 24th century, showing that humanity did not just invent faster spaceships, it changed culturally. Whether the Anticans needed to hear that lecture while asking where lunch was is another question.

By the end of the episode, the delegates are still trying to eat each other, everybody is smiling, and the Enterprise is heading on to Parliament as if nothing happened. It is treated as a dark little joke before the credits roll.

An energy entity possesses Worf, then Crusher, and the crew is far too slow to connect the clues

The Enterprise encounters a strange energy cloud, Picard orders a sensor scan, and some form of electrical energy jumps through the sensors and into Worf. Worf starts behaving strangely and lashes out before ending up in sick bay, where the energy transfers from him into Dr. Crusher. The entity does not seem interested in hurting anyone intentionally. It is moving between people and ship systems, apparently trying to understand where it is and how the Enterprise works, which is a good concept that never gets the development it deserves.

Beverly, under the entity's control, wanders onto the bridge asking Data questions about the ship's navigation system before the energy transfers into the computer and she returns to normal with no memory of why she came up there. That should set off every alarm on the ship, since Worf just had a blackout and acted violently, but instead everybody just moves on.

That is the recurring problem through the whole episode for me: the mystery only works because the crew takes far too long to compare extremely obvious clues. Multiple crew members suffer identical memory gaps, systems that are not physically connected malfunction at the same time, Wesley points out that the warp systems are not being repaired, they are simply functioning again, and Troi senses a presence inside the affected crew members. Everybody has a piece of the answer, but nobody sits down to put it together.

Assistant Chief Engineer Singh becomes the first Enterprise-D crew member killed and the show barely notices

The malfunctions eventually lead Assistant Chief Engineer Singh to investigate one of the computer connections. He finds the source of the problem, gets hit by an energy discharge, and dies. That makes him the first crew member killed aboard the Enterprise-D during the series, which I think is worth flagging as a fun fact, but the episode barely seems to care. Tasha launches a murder investigation targeting the alien delegations, Data begins studying detective fiction, and Singh is essentially forgotten.

Starfleet officers understand the risk of serving aboard a starship, but this man died at work, and the Enterprise treats it like somebody misplaced a tricorder. Singh's family is presumably waiting for a message explaining that he was killed by a blue spark because the senior officers were too busy arguing with dog people.

Data's first Sherlock Holmes turn is the one piece of this episode that actually lands

The murder investigation matters mainly because it gives us the first appearance of Data as Sherlock Holmes. Picard mentions the fictional detective, Data becomes fascinated, and immediately starts copying the mannerisms, the language, and the pipe smoking. Picard almost instantly regrets introducing him to the concept. To me this is easily the most entertaining part of the episode, because it feels like the first glimpse of something that becomes a major part of Data's character, returning in Elementary, Dear Data and Ship in a Bottle, stories that eventually give us Professor Moriarty, one of the more interesting Holodeck characters in the franchise.

Brent Spiner is clearly still figuring out exactly how broad Data's comedy should be, and there are moments in season one where he pushes it maybe a little too far, but I like it here. It reveals something about Data: he does not casually enjoy a new interest, he absorbs it like a sponge. He discovers Sherlock Holmes and five minutes later he has apparently decided to become Sherlock Holmes.

Riker appears to be the only person enjoying Data's performance as much as Data is. He is always laughing while Picard wants the pipe gone, and Riker looks like he is trying not to laugh through the entire conversation. Those little reactions are what makes this cast work even when the story itself is struggling.

Picard's possession forces a near mutiny, and the transporter resolution loses me completely

Once the entity leaves the ship systems and enters Picard, the Enterprise starts functioning normally again, but Picard orders the ship to turn around and return to the energy cloud. Troi senses something is off but cannot clearly explain it. This is one of the more interesting parts of the episode because the crew is still new to each other, Riker has not served with Picard for years, Beverly is his doctor but does not fully understand him, and everyone knows they need to relieve the captain but nobody wants to step up.

Beverly finally confronts Picard and formally declares him mentally incapacitated. Picard responds by relieving her of duty and ordering her to sick bay, and the senior officers meet behind his back to plan what amounts to a mutiny, though the scene plays it restrained since they are not questioning an order they disagree with, they believe something has physically taken control of him. That is where Patrick Stewart gives the episode some weight, keeping Picard calm, distant, and slightly off without turning him into a completely different person, enough that the crew hesitates.

The entity eventually admits the Enterprise accidentally pulled it away from the cloud, and it says they have become one with Picard, though his behavior is clearly being controlled and I have always had a problem with never knowing how much of that decision belonged to Picard himself. Riker orders security to restrain the captain, Picard shoots electrical energy, and then he disappears entirely, his physical body gone. The crew searches and cannot find him, and the entity reveals Picard from information left in the transporter, after which he simply walks away like nothing happened. As I put it, "I don't know. I don't really even know where to go with that." The transporter has always raised uncomfortable questions about whether it moves a person or destroys them and creates an identical copy, and Star Trek usually avoids looking directly at that question. Lonely Among Us runs right into it and then shrugs it off.

Production trivia: TNG's first bottle show and Marc Alaimo's uncredited debut

I think this is TNG's first real bottle show, meaning the story was designed primarily around existing sets without a major planet or expensive location shoot, which explains why almost everything happens on the ship. The Anticans' masks barely allowed any facial movement. On the fun side of Star Trek history, Marc Alaimo makes his first appearance in the franchise here as the Antican delegate, uncredited, before going on to become Gul Dukat on Deep Space Nine.

What worked, what didn't, and my score

Data discovering Sherlock Holmes is charming and becomes important later, and Patrick Stewart gives possessed Picard a strangeness that is effective for the script. Beyond that, not much works. The episode is slow, the central mystery is obvious, the entity is barely developed, Singh's death has zero weight, and the diplomatic subplot never needed to be there.

My MVP is Data, not a difficult decision, since he gives the episode its only genuinely memorable character material. My favorite moment is Picard trying to continue the murder investigation while Data stands there holding the pipe, fully committed to being a nineteenth century detective. My biggest loser is Assistant Chief Engineer Singh, who investigates a problem Wesley basically already warned him about, gets electrocuted, and is then forgotten by everyone. The weakest element overall is the complete lack of connection between the two stories.

Does it hold up? No. There are pieces worth seeing, especially Data's first Sherlock Holmes performance, but otherwise it does not land. I am giving Lonely Among Us a 4 out of 10. It is not as unpleasant a watch as Code of Honor, and the Data material keeps it from being forgettable, but it sits firmly in the lower part of season one. In the running ranking, it lands at number five.

Was I being too hard on it, or is Data holding this entire episode together with nothing but a pipe and a bad Sherlock Holmes impression?