7-22. Bloodlines.

Picard discovers the son he never knew he had...

THE PLOT

Bok (Lee Arenberg), the Ferengi Daimon who was stripped of his rank and imprisoned after attempting to take vengeance on Picard for the death of his son years earlier, is once again free - and he still wants revenge! This time, Picard is not the target. Bok has found another way to make the captain feel what he felt. He sends an unmanned probe to the Enterprise, with a message that Bok intends to kill Jason Vigo (Ken Olandt) - a colonist in the Camor system who Bok identifies as Picard's son!

A genetic test confirms that Jason is Picard's son, and from there the plan is simple: Keep the young man safe on the Enterprise until such time as they can find Bok and resolve this issue. Then Picard is awakened in his quarters to find Bok standing in front of him. The Ferengi repeats his threat, then vanishes before Security can arrive. Bok has somehow acquired an advanced transporter, allowing him to beam right through the Enterprise's defenses. And if he can beam himself in... He can also beam Jason out!

CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: Any Picard-centric episode gets a boost from Patrick Stewart's considerable screen presence and his by this point instinctive command of the character. It's just a shame that Picard's response to this situation is so generic. He is startled to hear this stranger named as his son, but frankly acknowledges that it is possible the young man could be. When a test confirms it, he tries to be a part of Jason's life and wrestles with whether to force his friendship or whether to respect Jason's wish for privacy. He does get one good scene, climbing with Jason in the holodeck, but even that is disappointingly standard fare, given life more by Stewart's performance than by anything in the script.

Riker: Respects Picard's privacy enough that he doesn't ask for details when Bok names Jason as Picard's son. He listens as Picard gives the backstory on his relationship with Jason's mother, but doesn't push for information; he just accepts what Picard wishes to tell him.

Dr. Crusher: As Wesley's mother and Picard's old friend and flirtation partner, she of course is the one Picard goes to for advice on parenting. It might have been more fun if Picard had also collected advice from Worf and Data (the other parents on the crew, albeit only briefly in Data's case)... but then we might have had less time for Dr. Crusher to be Very Earnest.  Gates McFadden and Patrick Stewart retain a steady screen chemistry in their scenes together, but with Crusher reduced to simply "the voice of motherhood," there's no chance for any more interesting character interplay to occur (as happened even this very season, in Attached).

Ferengi: Ferengi prison apparently works a lot like old debtor prisons: The convict is jailed until he is able to buy his freedom - which is what Bok did. Though Bok was able to buy his freedom, it was not enough to secure his old title as "Daimon," and the loss of that title is something that stings. Much as was the case in The Battle, Bok's goal of revenge ends up undermining his standing with his Ferengi accomplices. Ransom is fine; but revenge is a pursuit that carries no particular profit.

THOUGHTS

With the series in its dying days and story ideas running scarce, I suppose it's understandable that the production team would look to old episodes for inspiration. But of all the old episodes to revisit, I cannot fathom why they would choose the first season stinker The Battle as being worthy of a sequel. What next? The Wrath of Lutan?

In any case, Bok is back to once again seek revenge against Picard for putting the Ferengi's belligerent and suicidally stupid son out of the galaxy's misery. Somehow, despite having lost his title and presumably most of his influence, Bok is able to get his hands on transporter technology that, Geordi's Technobabbling about its inefficiency aside, appears to have real value as in inflitration and attack tool. Bok can beam onto the Enterprise at any time, and can beam anyone off the Enterprise at any time. Which, of course, means using that technology to goad Picard, thus advertising his one great weapon and its capabilities, thus giving the ship's crew a generous amount of time to figure out how to counter it before the climax. Unlike most Ferengi villains, Bok is not played for laughs... making his extraordinary stupidity all the more toxic to any attempts at drama.

At least this episode has the sense to make Bok's machinations the "B" plot, with the focus really being on Picard and the son he never knew he had. If Jason was a more interesting character, his rebellious streak perhaps reflecting Picard's own less-than-stellar youth, this might have had potential. Instead, we get very generic interactions between the two characters (and not very much of that), before Technobabble and Medo-babble combine to nullify any chance of this episode having any point at all.

In the end, Bloodlines is too flat and generic to work as a character episode; and it not only fails to redeem The Battle, it fails to be any better an episode than that one was. TNG is looking creatively dead at this point, and it's actually a relief that there is very little of the series left to go.

Overall Rating: 3/10.

6-4. Relics.

Scotty (James Doohan) and Picard discuss old ships and old age.

THE PLOT:

The Enterprise encounters a Dyson Sphere, an enormous structure enclosing a star. On the surface of the sphere is a crashed spaceship - the Jenolan, a Federation ship that vanished 75 years ago.   An Away Team beams down to the ship, where Geordi discovers one survivor whose pattern has been kept active within the transporter. He activates the transporter, and they learn the identity of the sole survivor:

Captain Montgomery Scott (James Doohan)!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: Fascinated by both of the "relics" of the title. The Dyson Sphere is a theory he is already familiar with, and finding an actual one cannot help but capture his interest. Nor can he help but be captivated by the living relic that is Scotty, a man from a past that predates Picard's birth. Picard doesn't view Scotty as simply a specimen, though. He recognizes that this a man who is used to feeling useful. He empathizes with Scotty's feelings of obsolescence, and he takes steps to give the old man a chance to be useful once more. Patrick Stewart is as solid as ever, and he has a splendid scene opposite James Doohan, as the two share memories of their old ships while sitting in a holodeck simulation of Scotty's old Enterprise.

Scotty: As an engineer, Scotty's success in his field has depended on his intimate knowledge of cutting edge technology. Thrust almost a century forward in time, he no longer has that knowledge. Much of what he knows no longer applies, leaving him "in the way" when he tries to insert himself into Engineering on the Enterprise D. No surprise that this leaves him feeling useless. It's only aboard a ship from his own time that he truly comes to life. By working one final miracle, Scotty is able to feel like the man he was and ends the episode no longer ready to retire - though it is hard to see what, beyond some educational lectures, he will truly be able to contribute, given that the time it would take to become expert on new technology would eat up most of the rest of his life.

Geordi: With the engineer of the old series being the focus of the episode, the script doesn't miss the chance to pair him (and contrast him) with the engineer of the current show. Geordi tries to show respect to Scotty, even allowing him access to Engineering as they study the Sphere. But Scotty does not understand the newer ship's technology, and at the same time can't keep from poking at everything in sight, and Geordi finally loses his patience. Their personalities are sharply different. Geordi is very contained and earnest. When he gives his captain an estimate of how long a task will take, it's an accurate one - Whereas we learn here that Scotty was always able to get things done in half the time required because he deliberately inflated the estimates he'd give to Kirk! The two manage to work together in the crisis near the end, and the episode closes with them behaving as proper friends.


THOUGHTS

Having brought back Dr. McCoy for a cameo in Encounter at Farpoint, then having brought back Spock and Sarek for more central roles in Sarek and Unification, it isn't surprising to see this series mining TOS one more time. This time, Scotty is brought to the 24th century. Unlike the other characters, he hasn't aged into this time period. Instead, through the magic of the transporter, Scotty is effectively plucked out of his time into the next century, making him very much a stranger visiting the future.

Writer Ronald D. Moore is able to mine this situation to good effect, and his script is at its best in the character scenes between Scotty and Picard or Scotty and Geordi. A fan of TOS, Moore doesn't hesitate to throw in references to multiple episodes, nor does he resist an opportunity to revisit the bridge of the 1960's Enterprise. He isn't just a fan, though - He's also an excellent writer, and he makes the scene on the old Enterprise's bridge is more than just a moment of fan service. The scene is built up to in the script in such a way that the viewer understands its importance to Scotty - even a viewer who never saw a single episode of the old show.

The script is at its weakest when dealing with the Dyson Sphere, an interesting concept which I think is simply not a good fit. The episode's real story is Scotty's feelings of uselessness and obsolescence. This requires some external threat that his skills are able to defuse. In an ideal script, that threat should in some way reflect Scotty's situation - tying the two relics together in theme as well as plot. The Dyson Sphere doesn't reflect Scotty's issues, however, and there is no time to explore it in any depth in itself. The result is a crisis that feels artificial, even tacked-on. The resonance of Scotty's scenes, particularly his scene with Picard, is completely absent from the scenes dealing with the Sphere. It becomes just a random object in space that does Something Dangerous for Unknown Reasons.

Relics is still a good episode. It's never dull, and it makes excellent use of the character of Scotty and the situation of bringing him to a time and place where he doesn't feel he belongs. But despite some excellent character material, it never quite threatens to become a great one. 


Overall Rating: 7/10.

Previous Episode: Man of the People
Next Episode: Schisms


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