Haven

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Riker is called away from some holo-projected girl-on-girl harp action for the creepiest wedding gift I've ever seen. It's Armin Shimmerman's spray-painted face on a box! The horrendous thing craps bonding jewels for the imminent arranged marriage of Deanna Troi and Wyatt Miller. Troi backs away from it in tears and I know exactly how she feels. Yeeurgh!

(This is why I didn't send my fiancee one when we got married.)

I like "Haven". Uhura never got a story to herself! It's an important and genuine effort at making this an ensemble cast, not just supporting players in the Captain's adventures. It's overwrought romance, but it's got plenty of humor and that helps.

And Lwaxana is wonderful. Benefit to being the wife of the boss- you get the good parts! Mama Troi swoops in and runs the show. Unrelenting, vocal honesty is a Betazoid trait it seems, no matter who is embarrassed.

Before the horrible unwanted marriage can take place, a horrible unwanted plague ship from Tarella shows up. All the Tarellians were thought dead by disease or their scared neighbours the Alcyones. Today's Alien Tip: don't sneeze near an armed Alcyone.

"Unlike SOME people. I am in growth. " Eccentric Lwaxana has a pet thingummy with leaves, her towering mute manservant Mr. Homn rings a gong while she eats, and her traditional wedding ceremony will be All Nude to celebrate the act of love. Even though Lwaxana married one, she has a charming disdain for humans. In a lesser personage, I'd call it bigotry. But mostly she just enjoys messing with Wyatt's snooty mum. Deanna throws a small tantrum and storms out.

Data hovers over the wedding guests, observing. "Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing."

When she isn't calling him Bill, Deanna calls Riker 'Imzadi'. This means 'my beloved'. For her, even marrying Wyatt won't change that. But Riker's panties, as my wife put it, are in a bunch.

The only way to tell the plague ship people are SAD is the violin music. Maybe if one of them coughed once or something? Wyatt skips out for his lifelong dream girl the stricken Ariana. For such a sick person, she sure has Emmy-winning hair. And if Wyatt wasn't such a drip, I'd miss him.

Now for a chorus of Beyonce's hit 'All The Single Empaths'. Trish tells me if Riker likes it, he shoulda putta ring on it!