7-14. Sub Rosa.

Dr. Crusher is seduced by the mysterious Ronin (Duncan Regehr)

THE PLOT

Dr. Crusher visits Caldos II, a colony world modeled after the Scottish highlands. She is there to deliver the eulogy at her grandmother's funeral, but is about to get swept up in the plot of a bad romance novel. Before you can say,Ghost of the Highlander, she sees the striking young Ronin (Duncan Regehr) pass by her grandmother's coffin to throw a camellia, her grandmother's favorite flower, onto it.

While reading her grandmother's diaries, Beverly learns that Ronin was the dead woman's lover. She goes to the house to start closing things up, only to find the house full of flowers. She hears noises, but sees no one there. Until she looks into a mirror and sees Ronin, who announces that he is a spirit who has been the lover of the women of her family for generations. Now he has come for her - and rather than be appalled by this, as you might expect, Beverly seems perfectly happy at the idea.

And then things start to go a bit wrong with the planet's weather...


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: There are two kinds of episodes that make you really mindful of Patrick Stewart's contribution toTNG. First are the heavy-hitting episodes, such as Best of Both Worlds, Family, The Drumhead, and Chain of Command - episodes that showcase his full range by giving him material that demands an actor of ability and stature. Then there are episodes like this one.  In a show in which almost nothing works, Patrick Stewart still manages to salvage a moment or two of dignity. Picard refuses to simply allow Beverly to throw away her career and insists on confronting Ronin face-to-face. He gets his wish, resulting in the only good scene in the episode... a scene sadly cut short when Ronin, realizing he's outclassed, resorts to simply zapping the better man.

Dr. Crusher: Poor Gates McFadden. Her big spotlight episode of Season Seven, and it's one whose prime demand on her is to make an orgasm face every 5 - 10 minutes. Dr. Crusher's characterization is wildly inconsistent from one scene to the next. At first, it plays out as if her free will is drained by Ronin at about the 15-minute mark, leaving her effectively possessed. But at the end, she says she was seduced - which indicates that she acted according to her own will for the run of the episode, which makes most of her actions unfathomable. McFadden struggles gamely, but with no consistent throughline she's just playing it scene-by-scene. The results are unfortunate.

Troi: Is made to look like an idiot. She can sense something is wrong with Beverly's sudden romantic obsession (with her grandmother's lover, no less), but for the first time in the series' history, she refuses to intrude on someone else's privacy. If you see your friend acting bizarrely and might suspect she's under an outside influence, wouldn't you intrude just a little? Or at least ask the colony's governor about the man Beverly is obsessing over, to make sure he is who he says he is? Not if you're Troi, I guess. Marina Sirtis does what she can, but with writing this poor, there's really nothing for her to do except recite the lines. 

Guest Star of the Week: As Ronin, actor Duncan Regehr makes his Star Trek debut. With a debut like this, one wonders exactly why DS9's producers would offer him a recurring role later. In fairness, Regehr isn't actively bad as Ronin. But he isn't particularly good, even given the limits of his material. He certainly doesn't come across as irresistibly seductive, and his screen presence is actually weaker here than as Shakaar on DS9. In the verbal sparring match against Picard at the end, against heavyweight Patrick Stewart, Regehr barely even registers on screen! 


THOUGHTS

Brannon Braga's scripts don't always work, even in his TNG days. Despite this, I generally regard his name on the credits as good news.  Even his misfires are usually cockeyed enough to be entertaining. If nothing else, a Braga script is rarely dull.

Sub Rosa is dull. Extremely dull. It also doesn't feel like a Brannon Braga script. It's more like a particularly bad Jeri Taylor effort - hardly surprising, given that the story is credited to her. Why Braga ended up writing the teleplay is anybody's guess, but the result is that the worst tendencies of both writers are combined to produce an hour of utter sludge.

Braga's work, both the good and the bad, can be characterized as concept over character. That works terrifically well when the episode is Cause and Effect or Parallels. His writing style is ill-suited to a would-be romantic ghost story, however. Any chance of this episode being successful hinges on it working as a strong character episode for Beverly, to watch this capable character be seduced by a being who shouldn't even exist.

In Braga's hands, what we get is an episode in which Beverly is replaced by a hormone-driven pod person at the 15 minute mark. After one scene of (very weakly) fighting Ronin, she becomes all but a slave to him for the bulk of the episode. He's killing people? Well, he can touch her in just the right way, so she'll go along with his every command anyway. Not that there's much contrast with the early scenes. After all, the first stretch still shows her talking entirely too freely in a public place about a sex dream. A sex dream involving her grandmother's lover. Right after her grandmother's death. However creepy that may read, the scene just plays out as ludicrous and boring. My favorite detail? Being regailed with all this, Troi seems neither appalled nor embarrassed. Instead, she claims to be envious and seems to find it funny. 

No bad Trek episode can be complete without a heap of Technobabble thrown into the mix, and ghost stories don't leave much room for such jargon. But fear not! The subplot comes to the rescue. There are malfunctions in the planet's weather control system. This calls for massive amounts of Technobabble by Data and Geordi. Needless to say, the malfunctions are the work of Ronin, who is generating storms threatening the planet for... no apparent reason. If his goal is to delay the Enterprise's departure, that mission is accomplished by causing minor malfunctions. Making the weather problems genuinely life-threatening simply draws attention to his interference. None of this causes any sense of tension either. The subplot creates all the interest of watching characters discuss the weather. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what they're doing.

Ultimately, the episode is too bad and the temptation too great for me not to make an obvious and groan-worthy play on the title. So I'll conclude by saying that Sub Rosa is strictly substandard.


Overall Rating: 1/10.  If I gave zeroes, then this episode would get one.

Previous Episode: Homeward
Next Episode: Lower Decks


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5-17. The Outcast

Riker begins a forbidden relationship.

THE PLOT

The Enterprise assists the J'naii, an androgynous spacefaring race. The J'naii have no males or females. They also apparently have no contractions, as they all deliver their lines like knockoffs of Data. If a viewer tuned in just after Picard's opening voice-over, that viewer could be forgiven for thinking that the visitors on the Enterprise were a race of androids!

Anyway, the J'naii have lost a shuttlecraft in what appears to be a pocket of "null space."  This pocket sucks in any form of energy, making it impossible to detect from outside. Riker teams with Soren (Melinda Culea), a J'naii pilot and scientist, to take a modified Starfleet shuttle on a rescue mission. But when Riker develops feelings for Soren, this joint venture threatens to create an incident - for if Soren chooses to act as a female, then she will be shunned by her own society...


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: A glorified extra in this episode, though he does invoke the Prime Directive in order to create some Artificial Tension for Riker at the end.

Riker: Soren comes from a race with no gender. Apparently, to Riker this just represents a challenge to be overcome, since he's all but hitting on Soren from their very first scene together. "What kind of woman do you like?" Soren asks Riker early in the episode. I shout back, "Breathing," as evidence from the past 116 episodes indicates that Riker's standards extend no further than that.

Worf: As predicted, he has fully recovered from his crippling spinal injury, and is up to participating in a tension-free rescue mission with Riker at the end. We also see him doing his best Archie Bunker impersonation for the poker game scene. Here, Worf becomes the voice of bigotry, grumbling about poker with wild cards being "a woman's game" and talking about how the J'naii "bother" him. I'm surprised they don't really hammer it home by having Worf add that he has no problem with the J'naii existing, but that they shouldn't flaunt their androgyny around others.

Hot Alien Space Androgyn of the Week: No males, no females. But of course, the J'naii who attracts Riker's eye is played by the very female, very attractive Melinda Culea. No attempt is made to disguise her obvious feminity, meaning that all of Riker's scenes with her read strictly as "man and woman." Then we discover that Soren actually is female, which allows writer Jeri Taylor to make text the homosexual subtext by making the J'naii race one that brutally represses gender - which also completely nullifies the entire concept of putting Riker into a relationship with somebody genderless.  From this point on, Soren is just another space babe for Riker to notch onto his ever-expanding belt.


THOUGHTS

I'm going to start by trying to emphasize the positive. I can think of two good things to say about The Outcast: (1) I've seen worse episodes of Star Trek. I can count them on my fingers, but they're there; and (2) I believe the intentions behind this episode were good.

That said, this is a Jeri Taylor script, so you're pretty safe in betting that everything will be presented simplistically and melodramatically. Even in (heck, long before) the 1980's, there existed gay rights movements, which were supported by many heterosexuals. J'naii society, however, is utterly monolithic in its discrimination against the "gendered," with no evidence given that even a single "non-gendered" J'naii would support the idea of rights for those like Soren. This... is really not believable, reducing our Guest Race of the Week into a race where personality and individuality appear to have been eliminated along with gender.

It would have been far more interesting to have had Soren be truly androgynous, and to have had the other J'naii react to the alienness of her relationship with Riker. But then they might have to put Riker into a relationship with someone less obviously (and by the midpoint, spelled out in the text as) female, which I suspect was not a risk that early 1990's Star Trek was prepared to take, not even for one episode.

The plot involving the shuttle lost in "Null Space" is perfunctory, with most of its complications existing just to put Riker and Soren together in close quarters. As is typical of bad TNG, there is no sense of threat. Despite the opening of the episode providing a strict time limit to rescue the lost J'naii, there is no urgency to the efforts to locate them, no sense that this subplot actually matters to the characters at all.

Worst, of all, with a heavy-handed and uncourageous "message" plot and a perfunctory "rescue" subplot, the episode commits what I consider to be the cardinal sin of any television show or movie: It's boring. The dullest TNG episode since Loud as a Whisper.


Overall Rating: 1/10.

Previous Episode: Ethics
Next Episode: Cause and Effect

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5-07, 5-08. Unification

Picard and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) are caught in a Romulan trap.

THE PLOT

Picard is given a top-secret mission from Starfleet Command. Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy) has disappeared from Vulcan, only to reappear on Romulus! Starfleet suspects Spock has defected. Spock's dying father, Sarek (Mark Lenard), thinks otherwise. Sarek suggests Spock has made a rendezvous with Pardek (Malachi Throne), a former Romulan senator who has been a voice for peace and moderation within the Empire. Picard calls in a favor owed by the Klingons to secure a cloaked ship for travel across the Neutral Zone.

Picard is able to find Spock fairly quickly and discovers that Sarek was right. Spock has not defected to Romulus, but is instead working with Senator Pardek and a Romulan underground movement. Through Pardek, Spock is trying to appeal to a new Romulan proconsul to work toward the reunification of Vulcan and Romulus. But when the proconsul appears a bit too eager to help Spock achieve this dream, Picard suspects they have all walked into a carefully-laid trap!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: It is now difficult to remember how weakly Picard came across in the early days of the series. Between the ever-improving character writing and the performance of Patrick Stewart, Picard has grown from the tedious grumpy old windbag of early Season One into a genuinely complex and formidable figure. We get to see multiple sides to him, even within the first twenty minutes. He is gentle and compassionate in dealing with Sarek, even as he keeps firmly on topic in getting what information the old Vulcan can give.  In contrst, he is all tough shrewdness in dealing with the Klingons, selecting his words with care to convey just enough of a threat to remind Gowron of how much he owes to Picard and Starfleet. These two scenes, coming one right after another, are masterful demonstrations of Picard's skill as a commander, and Patrick Stewart seems to revel in them.

Spock: Leonard Nimoy's special guest appearance as Spock was heavily advertised at the time... which probably left a lot of viewers of Part One frustrated, as Spock barely appears in that episode. Part Two makes up for that, giving him a very large role that respects the character's place within the franchise without marginalizing Picard in any way. Spock's interactions with Picard are vastly different than his interactions with Kirk. There, Spock was usually the voice of caution. Here, Picard fulfills that function, cautioning Spock about the likelihood of a trap and trying to make the Vulcan slow down and think. Effectively, Picard becomes Spock's version of Mr. Spock - adding to the humor of Spock's observation of how "analytical and detached" Picard is. It's actually a very interesting partnership, and I'm actively sorry that Spock wasn't seen again in TNG - either in the show or the movies.

Riker: The "B" plot puts Riker back in command of the Enterprise. It's a role that continues to suit him, which only reinforces how insupportable it is for him not to be transferring to his own command by this point. We do see some of the differences between Riker and Picard in command. Where Picard tends to be analytical, Riker is more instinctive. His handling of the Ferengi in the smugglers' bar is certainly more Kirk than Picard, as he does not hesitate to get physical and intimidating in order to get the information he needs.

Sela: Denise Crosby makes a return appearance as the half-Romulan Sela. I think she's better here than she was in Redemption, with her stiffness well-suited to a character whose only real emotion is thinly suppressed anger. Still, save for a single reference to Redemption, there's nothing here to really use the character's backstory. You could easily replace her with Tomalak for the same effect - and I'd actually have preferred that, as the thought of Patrick Stewart, Leonard Nimoy, and Andreas Katsulas all acting up a storm is genuinely irresistible. Ah, well. Crosby's not bad here, and I actually think it's a shame that the character never recurs again.

Sarek: Mark Lenard only has a single scene, but it's a powerful one. Sarek is reduced to near-incoherence, lying on his bed, shaking and moaning. We are told this has become an almost constant state, save for brief periods of lucidity. Picard's presence manages to spark one of these lucid moments, but it's not the old Sarek - not even the declined Sarek of the late Season Three episode - that we see. It's an old man who can, in his most lucid moments, remember being that man. A double torture, and he's unable to even cling to that for more than a couple of minutes. Lenard's performance is striking, and it's difficult to shake that this ignoble agony is the ultimate fate of such a dignified figure.  This, coupled with the standout performances of both Patrick Stewart and Mark Lenard, make this scene by far the best of the entire 2-parter.


THOUGHTS

This highly touted 2-parter opens with a dedication to the recently-passed Gene Roddenberry. Though The Game was the first episode broadcast after his death, this is an infinitely more appropriate story for the dedication. It's a big episode: the return of both Spock and Sarek, and the final appearance (chronologically, at least) of the latter character.

It's a story that pulls together many different running threads of the series. We touch on the Klingons again, and learn that Gowron is rewriting Klingon history to eliminate the Federation's role in his succession. We see more of Romulan society, with a culture that seems modeled on life in East Berlin before the Wall came down. There are informants everywhere, and Picard and Data are initially taken for being secret police. Meanwhile, we see that Romulan society isn't monolithic, with a growing group of younger Romulans clearly yearning for something more. In this way, both the Romulan and Klingon strands that have run through this series since Season Three are developed further.

It's interesting that this 2-parter has different writers for each episode. Jeri Taylor, the credited writer for Part One, is generally weak on plot but good with character scenes (at least, when not allowed to dip into soap opera melodrama). Part One is fairly light on plot, just putting some story pieces into play around several strong character scenes. Most of the story happens in Part Two - which is written by Michael Piller, arguably the series' best writer in pure plot terms. By tailoring the nature of each part to the strengths of the two writers, both are allowed to do good work. Even better, both halves fit together as a single piece. I watched both parts in one sitting, essentially as a "movie," and it played quite well.

Quite well, but not perfectly. It is clear that there isn't quite enough story to support 90 minutes. Part One has a blatant scene of padding in which Picard attempts to sleep on the Klingon ship, but is unable to relax because of Data's presence. The scene gropes about for laughs that it utterly fails to find, and the only reason for it to have remained in the episode was to stretch the running time. In Part Two, we get yet more padding, with endless scenes involving a four-armed piano player in a smugglers' bar that's basically a poor man's Mos Eisley. Despite all the padding, the resolution feels rushed, the defeat of the Romulans' trap accomplished all too easily.  It's not an awful ending, but neither is it entirely satisfying.

Despite the padding and the flaws, Unification is still a strong episode. Not only is it wonderful to see Leonard Nimoy's Spock again in a way that ties the full franchise more closely together, this is a good story, one that is mostly well-told. It's not the great episode that I'd have liked from TNG's sole Spock story. But it's still well above the series' average.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Previous Episode: The Game

Next Episode: A Matter of Time

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5-04. Silicon Avatar

Dr. Marr (Ellen Geer) is suspicious of Data.

THE PLOT

Riker, Data, and Dr. Crusher have been dropped off on a world that is home to a new Federation colony. They are planning the building of key sites when the Crystalline Entity appears in the sky. As the Entity begins blasting the planet's surface, Riker leads the colonists to a nearby cave for protection. He is able to save most of the colonists - but not Carmen (Susan Diol), a young woman he had been making plans with just a few minutes prior to the attack. By the time the Enterprise returns, the Entity has moved on, leaving the planet's surface completely devastated.

Dr. Kila Marr (Ellen Geer), the Federation's foremost expert on the entity, joins the Enterprise to investigate the aftermath of the attack. She is initially suspicious of Data, due to Lore's prior collaboration with the Entity - but those suspicions are forestalled when Data discovers a way to track the creature through space. Now Enterprise is in pursuit of the destructive being. Picard hopes to find a way to communicate with it. But Dr. Marr, whose son was one of the colonists killed by the Entity on Data's homeworld, wants only one thing: to destroy it!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: His fascination for the unknown and his basic humane nature lead him to prefer communication with the Entity over its destruction. He is willing to destroy it if there is no other way to stop its path of devastation. But he considers force to be a last resort. He confesses uncertainty about that choice in his log, but he's made his decision and sticks to it.

Riker: Despite his grief at the loss of his one night stand-to-be, he behaves with professionalism. He has doubts about Picard's plan to attempt communication, but insists that he isn't motivated by revenge. He backs up that statement by laying out some very persuasive arguments to make his case. In fact, I found Riker's position to be more persuasive than Picard's, and it's worth noting that while the captain sticks to his decision, he is not able to dismiss Riker's arguments.

Data: Was programmed with some of the memories and journals of the colonists from his home world. This enables him to access the records of Dr. Marr (Ellen Geer)'s son. This seems to provide Marr with a certain level of comfort - though hearing her son's voice from Data's mouth also seems to push her over the edge as she becomes delusional that her son somehow is still alive within Data.


ZAP THE (HONORARY) REDSHIRT!

She's not actually an Enterprise crew member. But when cute young Carmen (Susan Diol) is seen not so much flirting with Riker as offering herself to him, and then the Crystalline Entity appears in the sky within about a minute, it's not hard to anticipate what will happen next. I suppose we're meant to see Riker experiencing a deep emotional loss. But given that we never saw her before, and he does not appear to have any lasting relationship with her, Riker's reaction to seeing her death can be validly read as, "Aw, crap. There goes getting laid."


THOUGHTS

The opening part of the episode is quite good. I particularly like how much is made of the time it will take Enterprise to reach the colony, even at top speed. It's always nice when an episode bothers to remember that space is, well, big. It's effective to see Picard helpless to do anything except increase speed (to cut the travel time to a still substantial six hours) to the colony and hope he's not too late.

Once the initial attack has passed, however, the episode loses its initial momentum very quickly. Writer Jeri Taylor tries to duplicate Rick Berman's success with his Brothers script, by kick-starting the episode with action before shifting gears to focus on characters and emotions. But while Berman's script focused on Data and his complicated relationship with his "father" and "brother," Taylor's script is mainly concerned with the characterization of a one-shot guest character.

Brothers observed Data's conversations with Soong and Lore in a way that showed all three as complex characters. We weren't told what to think of Lore - We were shown Lore's resentment for brother and father, were shown his grief upon hearing that Soong is dying, and finally were shown his anger and instability. Taylor's treatment of Dr. Marr in this episode is much more simplistic. Her initial resentment and suspicion of Data is not revealed gradually, but is overplayed from the first to a point that I started to wonder why Picard was putting up with it. After that is resolved (in literally one scene), all of her characterization then revolves around her grief for her son. It isn't simply a facet of her character - It is her character, which makes her a much flatter and less interesting person than she needs to be for this episode to actually succeed.

For all its problems, Silicon Avatar isn't bad. There are several good scenes. The entire opening sequence is terrific. Picard's frustration at being unable to reach Riker is later mirrored by his helplessness during the attack on the freighter. He is able to hear the freighter captain and crew dying, but is unable to do anything to stop it for the exact same reason he was helpless at the beginning: the Enterprise is just too far away.

Scenes like these, along with a very strong ending, make this worth watching. But after starting with so much urgency, it's disappointing how quickly that sense is lost. We know the Enterprise is engaged in a chase. But all the Data/Marr scenes make it feel like a soap opera (a recurring weakness with Jeri Taylor scripts). There's no sense that the crew is pushing either the ship or themselves. They're just... flying toward a destination, with the episode mostly marking time until they reach it.

All of which leaves the episode in that horrible "in between" space, the one that's hardest to really review. Silicon Avatar isn't bad. But neither is it particularly good, leaving me awarding it a score dead-center of the scale.


Overall Rating: 5/10.

Previous Episode: Ensign Ro

Next Episode: Disaster

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4-21. The Drumhead

Guilty until proven innocent:
Admiral Satie (Jean Simmons) and her court.

THE PLOT

A Klingon exobiologist, attached to Enterprise as part of an exchange program, is caught transmitting information about the ship's warp core to the Romulans. Not long after his transmission, there is an explosion in the ship's engine room. This pair of incidents so close together prompts Starfleet to dispatch Admiral Norah Satie (Jean Simmons), called out of retirement due to her reputation as an investigator, sealed when she uncovered an alien conspiracy against Starfleet.

Satie is initially pleasant, responding well to Picard's respect for her work and the work of her father. She swiftly gets the Klingon to admit his attempted alliance with the Romulans, then begins searching for a co-conspirator who might have been responsible for the explosion. But when Geordi pronounces the explosion an accident and its timing a coincidence, the admiral refuses to believe it, turning the Enterprise into the site of a witch hunt for conspirators who almost certainly don't exist!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: This is a script finely calculated to bring out the best in Stewart's performance. Picard treats Satie with respect at all times, but it isn't long before he is doing everything he can to get her to call a halt to the proceedings. The climax, in which he and Satie face each other down with all the considerable rhetorical skills at their disposal, is splendid. Picard begins by making a largely intellectual statement, calmly pointing out how little evidence Satie has brought to bear in her impromptu witch hunt. She responds by attacking, using innuendo, selectively chosen facts, and calls to emotion to paint Picard as a villain. He shuts her down by exploiting her weakness by turning the words of her idolized father against her. It's effective, good words that are brilliantly delivered by Patrick Stewart, and Saiti makes the mistake of rising to the bait.

Worf: Sides with Saiti, and seems genuinely confused when Picard begins speaking against the investigation. "The Federation does have enemies!" he insists, not inaccurately. That Satie's investigation focuses on Romulans, the hated enemies who destroyed Worf's Klingon family, likely makes him even more blind to her maneuverings than he may have been anyway. It's a nice irony that Duras used the accusation of Romulan collaboration to discredit Worf's family, and now accusations of Romulan collaboration against Starfleet crew members are used to gain Worf's alliance with Satie.

Terrifying Space Bureaucrat of the Week: Veteran actress Jean Simmons lends her talents to the role of Satie. She's not someone generally known for playing villains, but this makes her all the more effective in the role. She is so calm and reasonable in her initial dealings with Picard, that it's very easy to believe what she says. When Picard argues against her persecution of a crew member, she quickly defuses his arguments by stating that it's actually in the man's interests to be proved innocent. Picard reluctantly goes along - right up until she begins using the man's distant Romulan ancestry against him, at which point he clearly sees her for what she is. Simmons plays the role with keen intelligence, making Satie a convincing adversary for Picard, and she handles a difficult "crack up" scene in a way that downplays the potential melodrama.


THOUGHTS

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin


The Drumhead apparently began life with the studio trying to pressure the producers to make a clip show. Thankfully, the show didn't go that route, but one can see how this story could be used as the frame of a clip show. Indeed, it's stuffed with references to other episodes, from Conspiracy through Data's Day, all framed by a hearing in which the Enterprise itself is effectively put on trial. Think Stargate SG-1's first season clip show, Politics, only without the clips interrupting the drama.

Jeri Taylor has not generally been my favorite Trek writer, but this script is superbly structured. It's tightly-paced and genuinely disturbing in its plausibility. It feels convincing that this investigation could get out of hand so quickly, in an atmosphere in which the Romulan threat has been gradually rising like a snakehead. Mix in the damage of the still recent Borg attack, and it's easy to believe that Starfleet would be at its most paranoid - at its most vulnerable to a Joseph McCarthy-like figure such as Saiti.

Jonathan Frakes directs, which by this point says everything you need to know. The direction is confident, with the interrogation room scenes highlighting the atmosphere. This is even true of the tag scene, in which Picard stands in shadow, mulling over what almost happened on his ship and what it might mean for the future.

The best episode of Season Four, and the series' best episode since The Best of Both Worlds.


Overall Rating: 10/10.

Previous Episode: Qpid
Next Episode: Half a Life

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4-09. Final Mission

Wesley's farewell.

THE PLOT

A spot has opened up at Starfleet Academy, and Picard has vouched for Wesley's readiness, giving the young ensign a new opportunity to advance his Starfleet ambitions. With Wesley leaving the Enterprise, Picard decides to bring him along on one last mission, a routine negotiation on a mining planet. Flown in a shuttle by the grizzled Capt. Dirgo (Nick Tate), it is set to be a simple and routine bit of Starfleet business.

Then one of Dirgo's engines explodes, forcing them to crash-land on a desert moon. Picard takes charge immediately, pushing them to move toward the mountains for shelter, then leading them into a cave. It is there that they see a fountain, protected by a technological sentry. When Dirgo attempts to use his phaser against the sentry, the resulting disruption leaves Picard severely injured - leaving it up to Wesley to reach the water, before the captain dies!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: Dirgo makes an early dig about hoping that Picard is tougher than he looks. Picard quickly proves that he is, effortlessly taking command after the crash landing. When Dirgo tries to protest, Picard doesn't shout him down (as Wesley tries to), instead calmly asking for the man's input until the pilot is forced to acknowledge that there is no viable alternative to Picard's urgings to move toward the mountains. Picard talks to Wesley almost like a father to a son during the scenes in the cave, and worries that it was "selfishness" to bring Wesley along on this mission.

Riker: Yet another episode that puts Riker in command of Enterprise, and yet another one that demonstrates his readiness for command. Presented with the radioactive garbage scow, he doesn't stubbornly cling to his first option - directly towing it - when Geordi questions him on it. Geordi points out the risk to the ship and proposes a safer alternative. Riker listens... and even when he learns of Picard's disappearance, he sticks with Geordi's plan for as long as it appears viable. The instant Geordi's plan fails, however, he doesn't hesitate to order a return to his riskier initial idea, now that there is no other alternative. My only question is how long the show can sustain a second-in-command who is clearly ready for his own ship, given that we have yet to even hit the series' halfway point!

Wesley: Wesley's final appearance as a regular (though he will be back for some guest appearances). For the first half of the episode, we largely see a return to the annoying Wesley of the early seasons. He loudly dismisses Dirgo's ship in earshot of the man, then becomes unnecessarily argumentative with him after they crash-land on the moon. Picard eases Dirgo's ruffled feathers both times, and gently but firmly indicates to Wesley to back off, but it's still rather poor behavior. Thankfully, the second half allows him some more dignity, particularly once he is caring for Picard on his own. His admission that the thing he most wants is for Picard - the closest thing he has to a father - to be proud of him is genuinely effective, and the episode's encapsulation of the Picard/Wesley relationship is by far its strongest element.


THOUGHTS

Final Mission is the second and, I believe, last TNG episode to write out a regular. It's a deeply ordinary episode, and one that leaves me with no particular enthusiasm. It flirts with tedium through most of its running time, though I'll acknowledge that it mostly stays on the right side of that line. I am getting far too familiar with the Star Trek cave set, which the production doesn't even attempt to make look different than it did in, say, Captain's Holiday.

The script, by Jeri Taylor and Kasey Arnold-Ince, never does anything to explain the single fountain or the sentry. The fountain is simply a goal for Wesley to reach, the sentry simply an obstacle. It's dramatically effective at giving the story some conflict and momentum, but it doesn't go any further than that. I might be willing to credit the episode for leaving the mystery unexplained... except neither the fountain nor the sentry is ever presented as a mystery. They are there simply to fulfill a narrative function, and none of the characters seems to find their presence in any way strange. A sharper script would have made more of this, I think.

The episode does at least do a good job of encapsulating the Picard/Wesley relationship, and most of the show's best moments come from their scenes together. Wil Wheaton, while not a bad actor, really isn't at Patrick Stewart's level. Still, he does raise his game in the quiet scenes in which Wesley tends to Picard, scenes that are the real heart of the episode. If some of what surrounded these scenes were a bit stronger, or if the episode had simply trapped Wesley and Picard in a cave to await rescue without having to throw in an unexplained sci-fi fountain and an idiot guest character, then this episode might actually be good. As it stands, it's a tolerable time-filler with a few really good scenes.

As an exit episode, one might have wished for better... but, as Skin of Evil reminds us, it certainly could have been much worse.


Overall Rating: 5/10

Previous Episode: Future Imperfect
Next Episode: The Loss

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4-04. Suddenly Human

Jono and his Talarian "father."

THE PLOT

The Enerprise receives a distress call from a Talarian ship. They approach warily, given that the Talarians are a warlike people who have been responsible for numerous deaths of Federation citizens. But when Troi senses that there is life on the ship - "and it is fading" - Picard orders a medical team over. They discover a radiation breach, several teen boys with various degrees of radiation burns... and one human boy, dressed in Talarian uniform.

The boy, Jono (Chad Allen) is unharmed, but refuses to answer questions from Dr. Crusher or Counsellor Troi (showing good judgment in the later instance, at least). He does respond to Picard, and requests that Picard take him home - back to the Talarian Captain Endar (Sherman Howard). Meanwhile, Starfleet is able to provide Jono's true identity. He is Jeremiah Rossa, the grandson of Admiral Rossa (Barbara Townsend), whose parents were killed when Talarians attacked their colony. Jeremiah was listed as missing, presumed dead. But he refuses to answer to that name, says of his parents that "death is a part of war," and insists he be considered a Talarian. Matters are further complicated when Picard is contacted by Capt. Endar. Endar demands Jono's return, having raised the boy as his own son!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: When Troi confronts him with the idea of acting as a father figure to Jono, he comes very close to balking. "I have never been very comfortable around children," he tells her, in a way that suggests profound understatement. He admits to Troi that he never really had much of a childhood, something we probably already guessed from what we saw of his family home. In a way, Jono becomes a reflection of Picard. When Jono boasts that he "always wins at the games," it sounds very close to Picard's brother complaining that he always won the ribbons and got all the attention. In Picard and Jono, we see two people who have always felt driven to achieve and win, no matter what... Which, if that aspect had been more focused upon, might have made for a much more interesting episode.

Troi: If this were the only TNG episode you were to tune into, you could be forgiven for assuming that Counsellor Troi was the highest-ranking person on the ship. She decides that since Jono actually responded to Picard's authority, that Picard should therefore take the boy under his wing. Picard doesn't want to do it, but Troi insists. And when a ship's counsellor insists that the ship's captain do something... Well, sure enough, we cut straight to Picard following Troi's orders.

Dr. Crusher: In full earnestness this week. She decides - on the basis of very little actual evidence - that Jono has been abused, and spends the rest of the episode referring to Jono as an abused child and to Endar as an abuser.


THOUGHTS

After three very good to excellent episodes, I suppose it was time for Season Four to have a weak episode. In Suddenly Human, it gets one.

Suddenly Human was the first Star Trek offering of Jeri Taylor, who went on to be one of Voyager's showrunners. A lot of Voyager's flaws are in evidence. The episode presumes to be character-centric but, except for Picard, none of the characters have any depth. The two speaking guest characters, Jono and Capt. Endar, feel more like stock "types" than real people, while Troi and Dr. Crusher are at their most earnest and, therefore, their most irritating.  The storytelling is simplistic, with Picard making a choice at the end that should have significant consequences - but, of course, never will. 

The script introduces the complication that Jono was not adopted, but taken - kidnapped, by any legal definition of the term - and then completely glosses over it!  If a man kidnaps an infant and raises him as his own, then it doesn't matter if he's been the best father in the history of fatherhood; if caught, that man is going to jail for a very long time, period.

The Picard/Jono relationship could have overcome the episode's weaknesses, had it been written and acted in such a way as to bring real complexity to at least that aspect of the story. But while Patrick Stewart brings his "A" game, the script lets him down. Picard initially restates his Encounter at Farpoint proclamation about being uncomfortable around children, only to instantly assume a parental role with Jono - in literally the next scene, with no sign of emotional resistance on his part. A script that really made use of Picard's discomfort, so that he resists a relationship with Jono just as Jono resists his own human heritage, might have been worthwhile. Instead, Picard expostulates to Counsellor Troi, then immediately turns into Ward Cleaver.

Chad Allen's Jono only adds to the episode's problems. Allen never convinces as someone who has been raised to achieve within an alien culture. He alternates between wooden and sullen. Shallow characterization and self-conscious dialogue (Talarians are apparently above contractions) don't help.


THE PICARD SLEDGE-HAMMER

After Jono attacks him with a knife, Picard sees the light and proclaims - at length - the importance of listening to the child's opinion during a custody battle, before waxing eloquent about returning this "noble" young man to "the only home he's ever known." Personally, I think that he's finally had enough of this crap and just wants shot of the brat. Can't say as I blame him. I just wish he didn't have to make his speech as if he's issuing Indisputable Moral Rules from the mountaintop.


Overall Rating: 3/10

Previous Episode: Brothers

Next Episode: Remember Me

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