'Season 2' of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' took many steps to fix the problems of the painful first season,
most notably in decreasing Gene Roddenberry’s influence on the show.
But it isn’t until 'Season 3' that the show really breaks out.
Gone are the the pajama onesies of the first season.
The silly and overacted melodrama
finds a more grounded philosophical tone,
driven more by character
and less by the alien menagerie.
Perhaps most importantly,
Riker...
gets...
...a beard.
[sexy beard montage]
'Tin Man' is the 20th episode of the show’s breakout season.
In it, the crew are dispatched to investigate a starship that is a living entity.
The creature, deemed Tin Man,
has moved into a system with a star about to go supernova as, the crew theorizes,
...it has decided to kill itself.
He is supremely lonely, out amongst the stars with no one to connect to.
In order to facilitate communication with the creature
the crew brings a special envoy.
An individual with psychic power turned on so loud
he can hear the thoughts of every member of the crew onboard simultaneously.
And whose power is so personally invasive it has rendered him
...bitterly anti-social and a loner.
That character’s name was Tam Elbrun,
(record scratch)
[Mayor-ly laugh]
"I love that name, by the way."
...played by Harry Groener.
As a passionate fan of both 'Buffy' and 'Star Trek',
I’ve always loved the parallels between those episodes.
And like 'Tin Man' in 'Star Trek (:The Next Generation) Season 3',
'Earshot' is one of my favorite one-off’s in 'Buffy Season 3',
a season almost over-burdend by terrific ones.
Buffy is battling two mouthless demons in the park
and, after killing one of them,
...happens to absorb some of their blood through her hand.
While the gang is trying to put the information Buffy and Angel conned out of Faith to use,
Buffy is noticing the demon blood spot is getting slightly itchy.
Or maybe she’s got a case of the creepy crawlies from Angel and Faith's kiss,
even though those are a pair of lips he took for the team.
Buffy realizes the itchy hand has to do with (the) mouthless demon blood
and Giles informs her she’s likely going to manifest some aspect of the demon itself.
“Hope it's not the outside part.”
Willow complains about the darkness lately in the school paper,
likely she’s the only one in the group who actually reads it
and Buffy tells her about the aspect of the demon.
“Was it a boy demon?”
Out on patrol that evening, Buffy and Angel run into each other and things are most certainly strained.
Buffy explains the incoming aspect of the demon and Angel is typically reassuring.
“No matter what,
"I’ll always be with you--”
The next day at school, while talking about the game Buffy missed the night before,
Xander spies Cordelia talking to Wesley.
Buffy overhears his thoughts and realizes the aspect of the demon is upon her.
As she walks the halls she’s given a special tour of all the unfiltered thoughts of the teenagers around her.
It’s a cute and adorable scene
but everytime I watch it I’m struck by how being a teenage girl privy to all the unfiltered thoughts of all the teenage boys around you
would actually be kind of a terrifying nightmare.
In class, the students are going over 'Othello' and Iago’s use of jealousy to turn Othello against Desdemona.
Despite the fact that the classroom lessons DIRECT ties to the episode’s themes
can be a bit on the nose,
this use of 'Othello' is really one that I love.
And it’s a play that’s been referenced before,
when Spike told Dru he would chop Buffy into messes.
Here, the play Othello maps pretty well over the events of this season.
In this case,
Iago is Faith and Buffy is Othello.
Due to the recent events of the season, Buffy is now suffering a wave of jealousy over having seen Angel and Faith kiss.
And Buffy’s proposed thesis of the play here
may as well be directly describing her relationship with Faith.
"Is there something else at work here?"
"Well, he, um..."
"...he sort of admits himself that his..."
"motives are spurious."
"He...does things because..."
"...he e-enjoys them."
"It's like..."
"...he's not really a person."
"He's a..."
"...the...dark half of Othello himself."
And in this episode, Buffy’s aspect of the demon is actually a metaphor
...for her jealousy over Faith and Angel.
“There’s this thing in me and..."
"...I can’t find it."
"I-I can’t stop it.”
Buffy heads to the mansion to try and use the aspect of the D
to fish out any amorous Faith thoughts from Angel.
She fails since Angel, as a vampire, doesn’t give off a psychic reflection.
And in Angel’s open hearted reply. Buffy seems to come to grips with her own jealousy.
Giles and Buffy decide to share with the group her recent aspect of the demon
and we get a stellar scene in which Buffy traverses the thoughts of each of the Scoobies.
What’s so wonderful is the way in which each of their thoughts informs their characters in such a pitch perfect manner.
“I am my thoughts.”
"If they exist in her, Buffy contains everything that is me and she becomes me."
"I cease to exist."
"Hmm."
As she walks the halls again, this time she discovers a host of anxieties the students are carrying around with them.
And Giles finds out that a man who had this problem recently
...went insane from it because he couldn’t turn it off.
As they discover this, Buffy is overwhelmed in the lunchroom by the ceaseless noise
but manages to pluck a single thought from the ether.
“This time tomorrow,"
"...I'll kill you all."
The Scoobies begin a profile of the students to try and find the disgruntled one whose thought Buffy managed to hone in on.
They believe the editor of the school paper to be at fault.
Wesley and Giles recruit Angel to kill the second demon and get its heart
so they can brew the potion to save Buffy.
Meanwhile, at the school, Jonathan has brought a rifle to the clock tower
and everyone is worried he’s the murderer.
Buffy climbs the tower and confronts Jonathan
who she discovers is instead suffering from the crushing weight of social expectations.
"I came up here to kill MYSELF."
In the cafeteria, Xander stumbles on the actual killer,
the school lunch lady,
and in a fight with Buffy we get the most hilarious case of
... “Oh look, the stunt double!”
...as the lunch lady magically drops in size by half
...and...maaaaybe grows a penis?
And the episode ends with Buffy perfectly and gloriously revealing to Giles that..
...she knows.
Part of the process of adolescence is moving from a purely egocentric point of view
(Do I belong?)
(Am I accepted?)
...to one that is more empathetic and compassionate.
As I mentioned in the 'Top 10 Buffy or Angel Episodes (that remind us everything is going to be all right)'
it’s the realization that everyone around you is living a life
rich with as much detail, desire and drama as your own.
And that we are all no more or less important than anyone else.
And throughout much of 'Season 3', Buffy has been facing her selfish demons and dealing with them,
as she did in the episodes 'Homecoming' and 'Consequences'.
And while she’s always shown compassion for her friends in the Scooby circle,
in 'Earshot',
she gets a massive dose of the human condition through the psychic powers she can’t turn off
and shares as much with Jonathan.
It’s an awareness she carries for the rest of her life.
Among the Scooby circle perhaps the least selfish and most patient is Buffy herself.
I have so much deep love for this episode.
There’s a certain level of wish fulfillment in the general concept.
We’re all trapped in our own heads which can be a profoundly lonely feeling.
Our lifelong quest for intimacy and connection with other people
is driven by a deep hunger to reach across that barrier to genuinely know and be known by someone else.
Buffy’s power here to do that has a "genie in the bottle" kind of appeal to it.
As ever, one of the best scenes in the episode
happens to be when it’s just our circle of characters sitting around in the library talking,
"Buffy IS all of us."
"We think, therefore she is."
...and I love that so much.
Buffy’s compulsion to try and use this newfound superpower to delve into her boyfriend’s mind and quell her own insecurities
...is simultaneously believable and adorable.
"Oh, this honesty stuff is fun!"
And of course, there’s the final scene in which I considered a Giles Almost Gets Knocked Out Counter.
I have only two incredibly minor quibbles with 'Earshot'.
The first is that at the start of the episode the Scoob’s are attempting to make sense of the information they learned from Faith
...and getting nowhere.
Well, Buffy now can LITERALLY read minds.
Couldn’t they have somehow arranged a chance meeting with the Mayor or Faith to try and steal more information from their thoughts?
Perhaps the onset of the paralyzing psychic power came too quickly?
My second gripe with the episode is how quickly
Buffy’s slightly depressing speech is able to sway Jonathan to give up his plan.
As someone who has personally dealt with some deep dark depression at various times in my life,
including high school,
I’ll say that Buffy’s assertion that nobody cares because they’re all too busy caring about themselves
PROBABLY wouldn’t have been what I needed to hear at my darkest times.
Not that it’s untrue, but when you’re feeling so depressed as to be on the verge of drastic measures
her statement always struck me as something that would’ve made Jonathan feel worse about himself.
Not better.
And it’s a terribly short scene.
Buffy has gained this perspective through a whole day with a magical ability.
Jonathan is expected to understand it in a short dialogue with a girl he doesn’t really know.
As a contrasting example, consider Buffy’s conversation with Angel at the end of 'Amends'.
Sure Jonathan isn’t really a fully formed character at this point,
but the conversation still could’ve felt more convincing if Buffy instead shared...say...
the reasons she dropped out of her own life at one point,
and how she found the courage to come back to it.
As it went though,
the scene in the clock tower just didn’t quite do it for me.
That’s me projecting some of course and I accept that.
Buffy is still the main character in the episode
and it’s HER journey that is of primary importance to the story
-which is why I find that scene totally forgivable
and consider 'Earshot' to be in the running for best 'Season 3' one-off.
Earshot was originally scheduled to air April 27th, 1999.
But seven days beforehand,
the Columbine Massacre occurred,
and the WB decided not to air it until nearly the start of 'Season 4',
...some five months later.
According to Wikipedia, Sarah Michelle Gellar lobbied hard to have this air on time,
thinking the material could actually help those affected.
I’m of two minds about it,
but I’ll preface by saying the only thing I can state conclusively
is I don’t have anything wise to say on the topic about violence in media or schools.
I can only speak from my own personal experience.
When the Columbine Shooting occurred, I lived 25 minutes away
and had just graduated high school the year before.
I had cousins who went to school there.
As much as the message in 'Earshot' is diametrically opposed to what happened at Columbine,
seven days from the event the last thing I think any of us wanted at the time
was to turn on our television
and see a gun in the hand of a high school student.
But that said, just as I believe no topic should be off limits from humor
...I don’t think the topic of guns and school should be taken off fiction’s table
simply because it’s one we’re terrified of in real life.
But if you don’t have a perspective or something of value to say about it
...it can be in extremely bad taste.
It’s too bad then that school shooting has become something of a genre in contemporary television.
But 'Earshot' has a perspective,
...and a valuable one at that.
Buffy’s development of empathy here is the next logical step in her growth this season
and will have some beautiful ramifications in
'The Prom'
and 'Graduation Day'.
It’s an incredibly important process, especially for Buffy, as...
...being the Slayer can be SO isolating for her.
Significantly, it’s the characteristic that distinguishes her the most,
...from Faith.