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SST420: Beverly Crusher stays to treat bombing victims on Rutia IV when Picard orders the away team back to the ship. It feels like the obvious call. Seconds later she’s taken by Kyril Finn, leader of the Ansata separatists, whose dimensional transport technology can deliver them anywhere without a trace and is slowly killing everyone who uses it.

Finn is disciplined and politically serious. He’s already worked out how this plays: the bombings draw Federation attention, the Enterprise attack makes them an active party, the kidnapping of Picard forces their hand. He tells Beverly her society is built on the same historical violence it now condemns in others. He compares himself to George Washington. The Washington comparison falls apart because Washington didn’t target civilians. But the argument about who history calls a general versus a terrorist is harder to bat away.

Dom Bettinelli, Jimmy Akin, and Fr. Jason Tyler work through “The High Ground” (TNG S3E12) and find an episode that’s better than its reputation. The crew gets the weakest lines. Finn and Rutian security chief Alexana Devos out-argue Picard and Beverly in most exchanges, including the post-kill conversation where Alexana explains why she shot Finn rather than captured him. “As a prisoner, he would have been a focus for violence as his followers tried to free him.” She isn’t wrong.

The episode was pulled from UK and Irish broadcast in 1990 after Data notes that terrorism proved effective in the “Irish Unification of 2024.” Writer Melinda Snodgrass originally designed it as an American Revolution allegory. Production pushed her toward the Irish Troubles. It reads now like a show grappling simultaneously with the Intifada, the Irish Troubles, and Afghanistan, without quite committing to any of them.

Gates McFadden handles Beverly’s near-Stockholm syndrome with restraint. The rescue battle is almost entirely silent. Wesley, notably, doesn’t ask to join the mission. Above average for the season, and Gates McFadden is the reason.

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