What the hell was with Sub Rosa?

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Low_Finger3964@reddit

I dn't see it as tonally weird at all. One of the things TNG was most notable for in my eyes is it's variety of tone. There was a little bit of everything throughout all of the seven seasons. Aside from the heart and bonds of friendship, and of course science fiction in general, there really wasn't any one unifying tone that ran through the series. For me, each episode, although with occasional references to the past for continuity, really needed to be taken as its own individual story. That was the type of serial they were going for back then. Now if you put this episode in the middle of say, Star Trek Discovery, yeah, it would be very tonally different from any season. But for TNG? No. This was just straight up normal for them.

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dantheasp@reddit

James Doohan should have played Ned Quint.

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reflechir@reddit

While the core premise of the story is cringey, I think this still works as a TNG episode that explores a certain kind of morality using a sci-fi concept (even if it feels more like magic than sci-fi).

The morality being explored is one that TNG explores a lot:

In their search for, and their attempt to respect, new lifeforms, how far should they tolerate that lifeforms wishes?
And, as in a lot of episodes where this question is asked, the lifeform takes away another character's agency/liberty in controlling them. When asked to relinquish that control, and the lifeform does not:

If the lifeform is too powerful to defeat, the crew/Picard take a stance that they would rather die, than continue to submit (if that is the only alternative). As in: "Skin of Evil" and "Where Silence Has Lease".
If the lifeform can be defeated, it is destroyed. As in the ending of "Sub Rosa", and also "the Most Toys", if you believe Data did intentionally killed Kivas Fajo.

Sub Rosa makes the dilemma more complicated by making it appear that Beverly is consenting to losing her agency, making Picard trend lightly as he investigates.

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Attila_the_frog_33@reddit

As my then-16 year old daughter let slip in front of us - much to her embarrassment- when this was mentioned: “yeah that’s the one where Dr Crusher fucked the ghost!”

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StarVoyager7@reddit

“……….. yes …….. that’s one way of putting it yeah.”

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

You could have corrected her: "you mean was raped by the plasma based life form that lived in the candle."

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sidv81@reddit

Wesley's a traveler now right? They should canonize that he went back in time to before this episode, hurled Ronin into a black hole or whatever, and then prevented this episode from ever happening.

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MrSluagh@reddit

No, Wesley's psionic potential came from his candle ghost heritage

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sidv81@reddit

Picard: Beverly, we have to talk. Jack's not REALLY my son is he? (pulls out candle he found)

Crusher: I don't know what you're talking about. Didn't you miss that whole Frontier Day Massacre? Jack Crusher assimilating the ensigns because of YOUR Borg-altered DNA?

Picard: (pulls out Borg queen skull from First Contact) You mean the Borg DNA you injected your own son with to cover up your continuing affair with Ronin? Funny what a little secret investigation into your quarters can find out. I KNEW there was more to you ghosting me and the Enterprise crew for 20 years than your feeble and absurd excuses about my life supposedly being too dangerous!

Crusher: >:-(

(coming soon, Star Trek: The Wrath of Crusher, a feature length streaming production following the hit Star Trek: Section 31)

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Bushido_Seppuku@reddit

Unless I'm watching a DS9 episode, I dont want section 31 even referenced. That's the show where I already don't like Section 31. There's no reason to compound the issue.

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youstolemyname@reddit

Ronin is Wesley

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PushOutTheJyve@reddit

Absolutely no idea! It's hilarious and insane, takes place on planet Scotland for some reason, and even has lightning grandma!

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RhydYGwin@reddit

Not only Planet cosplay Scotland, but where they are all living int he 1700's. Because of course, only the USA moved forward. Everyone else lived in a Renfaire setting. I'm just glad they never tried to tackle Wales.

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Bushido_Seppuku@reddit

ToS already dod that in the 4th movie... oh... sorry.

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Marquar234@reddit

It took them 5 seasons to recover from Planet Ireland, so Planet Wales was a ways off.

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Slippery_Williams@reddit (OP)

Yeah I kinda love it, it’s there with the dumbest most fun season 1 episodes

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MrBones_Gravestone@reddit

shrug family sex ghost

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grieserl@reddit

A couple of guys who are a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast are apparently not too emberrassed to sell this: https://podshop.biz/products/the-ghost-fucker-candle

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JamesTheMannequin@reddit

As a true Scotsman, I'm ashamed of this episode.

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Marquar234@reddit

You are (No True Scotsman)[https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/no-true-scotsman-fallacy/]

😀

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JamesTheMannequin@reddit

lol, OK. I'll rephrase...

Having been born and raised in Scotland, I feel shame at the above blah blah.

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Groundbreaking-Pea92@reddit

This episode is hilarious. bev and bevs grandmother hooking up with a candle, rofl I skip the riker caveman ep, masks and data wild west but nest this

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doveinabottle@reddit

Imagine doing the same candle ghost dude your grandma bonked.

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Marquar234@reddit

She was still horned up from "Attached".

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Groundbreaking-Pea92@reddit

Picard's confidence hits a new low. He's now been bested by a beam of light, a space slug and a candle

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Slippery_Williams@reddit (OP)

During my rewatch the only episode I skip is the flashback one with Riker in a coma

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Jean-LucBacardi@reddit

I hate clip episodes.

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Slippery_Williams@reddit (OP)

I hate the Klingon politics episodes but I soldier through them but that clip episode has zero reason to exist

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Malnurtured_Snay@reddit

It does though. They overspent with Q-Who and the Moriarty episode, and Paramount refused to give more money and still needed 22 episodes for the season, which was already four episodes shorter than they'd expected due to the writer's strike that year. So while it is an awful episode......yes, it has a very real and good reason for existing.

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Shamanjoe@reddit

Exactly! It’s also a proud tradition in older TV to have a clip show 😇

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chpr1jp@reddit

I typically avoided Klingon episodes when they aired. I totally didn’t care. Years later I have come to the conclusion that they weren’t terrible.

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ormuraspotta@reddit

I remember hearing it was because they went way over budget on the episode introducing the Borg and made that one to save money.

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kadzirafrax@reddit

I think there was a writers strike

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Significant-Deer7464@reddit

Thats just the plasma, all the Howard women have plasma

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Jedi-Ethos@reddit

We call it plasma, but whatever the Klingon designation, it is merely ~~ionized~~ gas.

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Marquar234@reddit

"Tailpipe" laughs like Bevis and Butthead

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itc0uldbebetter@reddit

Just the single best damn episode about sharing a lover with your grandma.

And its in the top 5 trek episodes about a ghost candle

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gaiusjozka@reddit

There's a few episodes involving sex crystals. What other kinds of tech can we cram some sex into?

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Marquar234@reddit

Tasha Yar has entered the chat

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Kulban@reddit

That damn cahhndle.

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Slippery_Williams@reddit (OP)

And top 3 about zombie grandma turning into Palpatine

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QuadraQ@reddit

Someone read a bad romance novel and had a script due the next day

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jchester47@reddit

One of the writers read a trashy romance novel and it made her horny so she decided to adapt it to an episode of TNG instead of giving a badly underutilized female character some good development in the show's final season.

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BigFitMama@reddit

So Dr. Crusher fanfiction was born.

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watanabe0@reddit

It was S7.

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RhoemDK@reddit

It was an effort by confused, old men to get more ladies into the show

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Valuable-Impress-828@reddit

Wait. Is that the same actor as Shakaar?

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FunArtichoke6167@reddit

The sex candle ghost industry was trying to take off at the time, this was really just an elaborate commercial.

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Necessary_Ad2114@reddit

Most industries you get in on the ground floor. In this one, you get off.

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MasterlessSword@reddit

It’s what they originally envisioned the Fleshlight being, thus the name.

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katharsister@reddit

Omg yes 😆

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ghehy78@reddit

I regret not investing in the sex candle ghost industry.

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PaleAd1124@reddit

This one and Masks are always a skip for me.

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MasterlessSword@reddit

You no like Moussaka?

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Slippery_Williams@reddit (OP)

I love Brent Spiner being silly and he’s a genuinely good actor but god that was hard to watch in parts

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MasterlessSword@reddit

My ex would occasionally follow me around the house saying, “Moussaka is coming” in Data’s “Masks” voice and weird grin. I’d be trying to clean the house or find my keys or something and she’d be like peeking around corners going, “Moussaka!” She wouldn’t stop. It was funny at first but then would quickly turn to irritating and then infuriating.

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hbi2k@reddit

It's peak, is what it is.

Dinnae light the candle!

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Slippery_Williams@reddit (OP)

*chaandel

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MasterlessSword@reddit

Say what you want about Gates’s acting, but she can fake an orgasm with the best of them. I like how they had Jean-Luc watch from the shadows. Patrick Stewart has stated in interviews that, while the script didn’t explicitly call for him to have a stiffy in that scene, he tried to convey his arousal through his facial expressions.

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Slippery_Williams@reddit (OP)

Patrick Stewart in the background of that episode

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Spectre_Mountain@reddit

I liked it! I’m a sucker for anything ghosty.

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Slippery_Williams@reddit (OP)

So are the Howard women

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SeraphOfTheStag@reddit

Idk not seeing Beverly fake an orgasm on screen sure awakened something in me

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StitchedRebellion@reddit

This doesn’t explain it totally, but Gates McFadden (Dr. Crusher) directed this episode!

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elgrandefrijole@reddit

It would be fun if that were true, but Frakes directed this one.

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Slippery_Williams@reddit (OP)

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D7WD@reddit

Series 7 has quite a few howlers, seriously brought it home for the last episode though!

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Slippery_Williams@reddit (OP)

Watched like 8 episodes of season 7 this weekend and god some of this is worse than season 1 without the bumbling charm

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countdoofie@reddit

If it had happened on the Enterprise, then it wouldn’t have been quite as awful, but the fact that it was set in Scotland to really make it appear like some period romance novel made it wonderfully bad. And, the coup de grace is >!the reanimation of grandma’s corpse!< to really leave no stone unturned in its search for rock bottom.

It is now honored to be among the worst episodes in Star Trek history:

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls071407713/

Congratulations!

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WallyMcBeetus@reddit

Every series needs a "The Way to Eden" I guess.

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Menzicosce@reddit

Man even the way to Eden was better, it was a weird quirky groove man. This was just awkward

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brainfreezy79@reddit

You reach, man!

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Menzicosce@reddit

I am not Herbert

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Calvinbouchard2@reddit

I was really hoping the Crusher Ghosts would be the villains in Picard Season 3, not the boring Borg.

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RobbiRamirez@reddit

Crusher's need to get laid can literally raise the dead. As Mick Jagger put it in "Start Me Up,"

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Desperate-Gas7699@reddit

Around that time there was a series of books by Anne Rice (Author of interview faith the vampire) called “The Mayfair Witches” with a similar storyline. Like, so similar this feels like a ripoff. I think they were trying to capitalize on her popularity as an author at the time

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doveinabottle@reddit

When I was 17 I read The Mayfair Witches and thought it was the sexiest book ever.

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reiki-chef@reddit

Just wait until you read Belinda and Exit to Eden

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Robb_Dinero@reddit

I was yelling at the screen, “this is the fucking Witching Hour!” That was when I realized that you can have a career in Hollywood by being a fucking hack.

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ProperSupermarket3@reddit

that actually makes a lot of sense

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Revolutionary-Good22@reddit

I'm glad I'm not the only one that made this connection. I read the book and liked this episode.

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strangway@reddit

Ronald D. Moore left to work on DS9 full-time, so Brannon Braga was head writer. Then Braga took his weird brand of Trek to Star Trek: Voyager where we got Borg with high heels, wrestling with macroviruses, and Tom Paris having babies with Captain Janeway as hyper-evolved human salamanders.

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Ax_Wielder@reddit

They lifted the idea from elsewhere. Same problem as always when Trek sucks

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Hexxas@reddit

It's a really good Tales from the Crypt episode.

Dunno what the fuck it was doing on Star Trek.

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TheRealRigormortal@reddit

Grandmas Rape Candle episode

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Nawnp@reddit

They were running out of ideas in Season 7, it's possible it was a season 1 script brought up that was previously disregarded. A character screwing a ghost is so left field though, I'm not sure the season 1 writers dreamed that up.

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Tebwolf359@reddit

See, while I don’t like this episode, I’m glad it exists.

It’s an experimental episode. You don’t experiment, you don’t get this but you also don’t get Inner Light, The Visitor, etc.

I’ll take a dozen of this over Shades of Grey

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ClubDelicious9440@reddit

Well this episode at least shows Picard acting jealous for once.

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kyletreger@reddit

It's a weird ass episode, idk what they were smokin when they wrote it.

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folstar@reddit

I genuinely feel like they took a pulpy romance novel from an airport book store

Yes, exactly. It's a genre hop episode. Trek has done these many times. Though, this particular genre is not in the vast majority of Trek fan's wheelhouse so it stands out.

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MasterlessSword@reddit

Oh thank God! Now that you’ve explained it, I feel much more positively about this one.

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therealskr213@reddit

It was a loose take on an Anne Rice story.

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ResplendentShade@reddit

No idea the backstory behind it but she's been asked about it over the years. Basically she just thinks it's hilarious and quirky and enjoys the cult status it has achieved. She's implied that earlier in her career her feelings were more mixed, but these days she's just all humor and fun about the episode.

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broadsword_inhand@reddit

I know this may come as some surprise, but rick berman was in fact a strange little pervert...

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ButterscotchPast4812@reddit

The episode is so bonkers that I wouldn't be surprised if Braga wrote it. Pulpy Harlequin isn't his style but it's also weird as shit and that is his style.

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Velocitor1729@reddit

File this under "The Author's Barely-Concealed Fetish."

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Phatbeazie@reddit

The last season goes bug nuts more often than not. Alot more romance between the main cast. Producers had f Begun focusing on generations

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Slippery_Williams@reddit (OP)

I do not buy the idea of Worf and Troi as a couple. It felt so forced

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Phatbeazie@reddit

Yuuuuup. 100

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Menzicosce@reddit

This was a function of the writers focusing on Generations and All good things

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Gnarly-Gnu@reddit

This and Code of Honor are the only two I skip.

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darumamaki@reddit

Same. I was 13 or so when this episode aired and I remember dying of embarrassment for the actors when I saw it. (Well, kinda saw it. I had to hide my face at every 'sexy' scene. Kind of a sign that I was ace even back then lol) I still can't watch it without cringing.

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Null_Singularity_0@reddit

Every TV series needs to have a worst episode.

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Chuckgofer@reddit

Yeah and the worst one for TNG is called Code of Honor, Sub Rosa is at least funny.

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DarkHeliopause@reddit

Up there with the worst.

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Direwolfofthemoors@reddit

Orgasmic Beverly is the bees knees

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Slippery_Williams@reddit (OP)

Jesus, her basically talking about her orgasm dream and Troi is like ‘you go girl!’ was really weird to see in a Star Trek episode

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chocobosocialclub@reddit

Don't light the candle!

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Bobby837@reddit

Someone's joke fan fic that was accidently officially submitted, vetted, and wound up being produced.

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Kulban@reddit

My favorite review of this episode is by Alison Pregler.

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rotomangler@reddit

It was inspiration for the film “The Lighthouse”

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sjg1087@reddit

“That damned candle!”

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Champ_5@reddit

Dinnae light that candle!! And dinnae go back to the hoose!

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PutAdministrative206@reddit

We knew it wasn’t universally loved going in. Our basic judgement was there was too much story for one hour of tv. They had to condense too much for it to work well. But it wasn’t as awful as I’d been warned.

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Nefarious_Nemesis@reddit

BEVALEE!!

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Akronitai@reddit

They had tombstones for "Vader" and "McFly" on that graveyard.

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Vincent1031a@reddit

Modern view of Sub Rosa?

Feminist Perspective on sex toys. (Google definition)

By providing women with tools to explore their own pleasure, sex toys offer a means of empowerment, allowing them to break free from societal expectations and reclaim ownership of their bodies and desires.

Or its just Crusher being F by a ghost/spirit that preys on her female family members.

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ExistentDavid1138@reddit

This episode was DR Crusher gets desperate for sex then comes to her senses when Captain Picard is wounded.

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TacitusTwenty@reddit

Someone was an unabashed fan of The Witching Hour by Anne Rice and literally transplanted the story to NextGen. Kinda mind blowing after I read the book.

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MuseoRidiculoso@reddit

Jeri Ryan.

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drrhrrdrr@reddit

Taylor*

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MuseoRidiculoso@reddit

The producers weren’t doing Gates any favors back then, so that’s doubtful. But the episode was directed by Jonathan Frakes, who told hair, makeup, costumes, and lighting to make Gates look more gorgeous than ever. I’d say they did a good job at that. Since she is an ardent feminist (a 1970’s ardent feminist,) I’m sure Gates herself enjoyed looking more badass than ever in Picard than being all dolled up for a romance novel episode in TNG. lol!

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MuseoRidiculoso@reddit

Right. Thanks.

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drrhrrdrr@reddit

My two cents: Jeri Taylor was the writer for this episode and you could later see her interest in this theme alllllllll over Voyager episodes with similar bodice-ripping stories.

It's kind of embarrassing and by that I mean totally embarrassing.

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Washtali@reddit

I dunno, I actually don't mind it, I think the episode does a good job of portraying abusive relationships.

To me there are far worse episodes of TNG, I never skip Sub Rosa

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salamander_salad@reddit

Season 7 gets a little silly but this seems right out of season 1

I disagree! The cast clearly had a lot of fun with this one, something you didn't see much of in season 1.

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haresnaped@reddit

In attempting to answer this very question for the sake of my own sanity, I have read (on Memory Alpha, I think) that this episode was very popular among certain demographic who Trek has not historically catered to (but which have been dedicated fans and essential supporters of the genre).

So, I like it for that reason. As an expat from Scotland I also find it so weird but oddly sensible that there is a planet somewhere designed to be like Scotland and that aliens come and cosplay as Scottish barons.

I think that Billings's culture from Lower Decks who are all fantasy-themed makes a ton of sense of how humans would choose to design their lives if they had no resource limits.

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