YMMV / Star Trek: The Next Generation S1 E24 "Conspiracy"

• Bizarro Episode: Starfleet command has apparently been infiltrated by parasitic slugs that inhabit the brain of the host creature. This is obviously an event of considerable political magnitude, but it is never again referenced outside of a brief gag in the Lower Decks episode "Reflections". However, it was foreshadowed several episodes earlier, making it a kind of Aborted Arc.^note The story was originally intended to have a purely human conspiracy within Starfleet, but Gene Roddenberry himself vetoed that because of how it clashed with his vision of Star Trek as a utopia where all humans work towards a common goal in harmony. So they added mind-controlling alien infiltrators to the plot. It was intended to be the hook for the major villains of the series. The thing was, it created too much paranoia that they wanted to avoid, so they changed the concept over to the Borg. It is explored a little further in the Expanded Universe where it was revealed the parasites were the descendants of Trill symbionts that had been driven insane due to medical experiments performed on them.
• Fight Scene Failure: The fight scene between Riker and Quinn uses extremely obvious stunt doubles. The choreography itself is nothing to write home about either, with their blows being sluggish and clearly hitting nothing but air.
• Funny Moments:
  • A behind-the-scenes example: Michael Berryman loved his makeup for Captain Rixx, and he decided to leave it on while picking up his girlfriend’s kids from school so he would look cool. Being late, he started driving faster than he usually did and caught up to a cop, who was visibly angered Berryman caught up to him. Berryman promptly mouthed “My ship. I’m going to be late for my mothership.” The cop burst out laughing, much to Berryman’s shock, since he though he was going to get a ticket at best or be arrested at worst.
  • Within the episode, Worf falling victim as usual to The Worf Effect is made much funnier by the fact that mere seconds later, Dr. Crusher shows up and effortlessly subdues the foe who'd been tossing Worf around. Because instead of engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the superhumanly strong Quinn, she just shoots him.
• Special Effect Failure: The mother slug alien that busts out of Remmick's body is a stiff puppet blatantly screened in over the prop body. The screening effects are less obvious in the remastered version of the episode, but are still hampered by way of neither the props looking like they're sharing the same space. The smaller parasites are portrayed with choppy Stop Motion effects whenever they crawl around.
• Vindicated by History: Though controversial at the time for being so dark and violent, the fandom now appears to regard the episode as an underrated classic and one of the only bright spots for Season 1 of TNG.

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