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Episode Reviews - Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 7 (3 of 6)

We now come to our third instalment of episode reviews from season 7 of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Episode 10: Inheritance

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise arrives at Altrea IV, a planet with a core that is cooling and solidifying. Pran and Juliana Tainer, scientists from Altrea IV, inform the crew about the problem. Lieutenant Commanders La Forge and Data suggest injecting plasma into the core to restore it to its molten state. After the other members of the briefing depart, Juliana reveals herself to be the former wife of Data's creator, Noonien Soong, during the time Soong created Data and Lore, making her in effect their mother.

Data can only find one Juliana in his memory, a Juliana O'Donnell. She explains that after protests from her mother, she and Noonien decided to elope. A Klingon and a Carvalan Freighter captain served as marriage witnesses. She explains that his early memories were wiped and replaced with memories of the colonists of Omicron Theta. He was about to be reactivated when the Crystalline Entity attacked. Data conducts his own research into Juliana's story and finds evidence to circumstantially support her claims and decides to accept her as his mother while he learns more.

As they begin the plasma infusion, Juliana tells Data and La Forge stories about Data’s childhood before the memory wipe, including one about Data's trouble with learning to keep his clothes on. Data takes her to his quarters, where he plays his violin. She offers to play with him and uses a viola. Among his paintings, she sees one of his daughter Lal. Juliana is overcome with emotion when she is told of Lal's demise. Juliana asks Data to be careful if he intends to create another child. She admits that she was against Data being created due to the problems with Lore and confesses that she forced Noonien to leave Data behind when the Crystalline Entity attacked, fearing he would awaken to become like Lore. Later, she elaborates that she also couldn’t bear the pain of deactivating Data again, likening the dismantling of Data’s failed ‘elder brothers’ to losing biological children of her own.

Data observes something unusual about Juliana, and asks Dr Crusher to examine her medical records when Commander Riker calls. An emergency requires that Juliana and Data go down to effect repairs. They complete their task and return to the transport point, but find the pattern enhancers have fallen down a cliff. They must jump to safety. When Data jumps, he takes Juliana over the cliff with him. Data lands safely, but Juliana is knocked unconscious and her arm becomes detached from her torso. Data observes a network of circuitry and it becomes apparent that Juliana is an android.

In Juliana's positronic brain, La Forge finds a chip with a holographic interface. Data activates the chip in the holodeck and sees his father, Dr Soong, who created the interactive holo-program to answer questions about the Juliana android. Soong explains that his wife once was a real human, but was mortally wounded as a result of the Crystalline Entity's attack. He created a new android and used synaptic scanning to place Juliana's memories into it. After the real Juliana died, Soong activated the android's body and she awoke believing she was human. She later chose to leave Soong and he let her go (after installing the chip), sadly admitting that the real Juliana would have left him too. Soong pleads with Data to let her have her humanity. Data discusses this with Captain Picard, Dr Crusher and Counsellor Troi, torn between his father’s wish that Juliana believe she is human and his personal desire to connect with another being like himself.

Data returns to Sickbay and replaces the chip. When he closes Juliana's head, she awakens. He tells her that she fell from the cliff and broke her arm, but Dr Crusher has repaired it, and everything is fine. As Juliana prepares to leave the ship, Data tells her of his father’s love for her, and she notes he is the natural outcome of two parents who loved each other, citing an Altrean phrase to that effect.

Review:

This is a better Data-centric episode than we managed to get with ‘Phantasms’, and it’s also another example of the apparent family theme TNG had running through its final season. Having seen off his brother Lore for good back at the start of the season, we now finally get to meet Data’s mother after a fashion. It’s interesting to see how that parent-child dynamic plays out for a character like Data, and there’s a lot of good continuity in the episode, including a mention of Data’s daughter Lal from the iconic season 3 episode ‘The Offspring’. The mention is highly effective because it ends up revealing that there was a number of failed efforts by Soong to create androids before Lore and Data. This in turn gave the episode a small iota of issue exploration as we learn that what Juliana went through with her android offspring was akin to what parents in the real world must go through if they have a high chance of giving birth to life-limited children. Granted, that issue is not really explored beyond how it influenced Juliana against Data’s reactivation, but it’s still good to see at a time when not every Trek episode was remembering what Trek should be.

We also get a visit from Data’s father in holographic message form as well following the discovery of ‘Juliana’s’ true nature, so of course we get Brent Spiner playing two roles; never a bad thing. The discovery in turn gives Data a great little crossroads to contend with, and I think bearing in mind Counsellor Troi’s advice to Data, that honouring his father’s wishes allows Juliana to obtain the goal of humanity Data has always sought to attain, his end decision is also a moment of growth for him. While this episode doesn’t quite have the same resonance as a lot of earlier Data episodes, it’s still very good. Its only flaw that I can see is how there’s a lot of potential issue exploration touched on but never fully exploited, but as this is primarily a character episode that’s not a major issue. As such, I hand down a full 10 out of 10 for this one.

Episode 11: Parallels

Plot (as given by me):

Lt. Worf returns to the Enterprise from a bat’leth tournament on Forcas III. It is his birthday, and despite his distaste for such things, his friends throw him a surprise birthday party. During the party, Worf notices discrepancies; the cake changes from chocolate to a yellow sponge cake and Captain Picard is suddenly present when Commander Riker had previously said the captain was otherwise occupied. As the crew investigates an apparent malfunction of the Argus telescope array, more and more discrepancies begin to become noticeable to Worf, each time being preceded by spells of dizziness. Initially, Dr Crusher attributes this to a concussion Worf received during the bat’leth tournament, but Worf recalls no such injury. Returning to his quarters, Worf finds his trophy has changed; where it had previously been a ‘Champion standing’ trophy (the top prize), it now states ninth place.

The spells of dizziness and sense of discontinuity for Worf grows, leading to an incident where Worf is suddenly on the bridge during an attack by a Cardassian vessel and faced with an unfamiliar tactical console. As a result, the Enterprise is damaged before Riker can leap in to raise shields and return fire, and Lt. Commander La Forge is severely injured by plasma burns. Worf returns to his quarters and is shocked to learn he is now married to and living with Counsellor Deanna Troi, who earlier he had asked to serve as Alexander’s mother if anything happened to him. Realising something is wrong, he seeks out the assistance of Lt. Commander Data.

Following another moment of discontinuity, it is revealed that en route back to the Enterprise, Worf has passed through an anomaly known as a quantum fissure. According to quantum physics theory, all matter resonates at a set frequency, and all possible outcomes to life’s events play out in parallel quantum realities, each with its own frequency. After passing through the fissure, Worf’s quantum signature was altered in such a way that Worf entered into a state of quantum flux. Energy emissions from La Forge’s VISOR then caused Worf to be shunted from one quantum reality to another; in the latest reality, Worf is First Officer of the Enterprise, serving under Captain Riker. La Forge is dead from plasma burns as he died in the prior reality Worf was in, and while Worf is still married to Counsellor Troi, he is now a father of two children with her while his son Alexander doesn’t exist. Finally, Captain Picard is dead in this reality following his assimilation by the Borg, and Lt. Wesley Crusher mans the tactical station.

The Enterprise heads for the quantum fissure where they are attacked by a Bajoran vessel, the Bajorans being a rogue power and the Cardassians oppressed by them in this reality. The attack disrupts the barriers between quantum realities, causing the space near the fissure to become flooded with quantum duplicates of the Enterprise. Data theorises that if Worf travels back through the fissure in the shuttle he originally used and generates an inverse warp field, it will seal the fissure and return everything and everyone to their native realities. Luckily, they are able to find Worf’s original Enterprise, who send the relevant shuttle for Worf to use. After kissing Troi goodbye, Worf departs. An Enterprise from a reality where the Borg have over-run the Federation tries to destroy the shuttle to avoid being forced back to their reality, forcing Captain Riker to fire on them. Due to heavy battle damage already sustained, the Borg-ravaged Enterprise is accidentally destroyed instead of just being disabled.

Worf returns to his own reality successfully, and suspects he will face a surprise party for his birthday upon his return. However, in his quarters he finds Counsellor Troi, who explains she talked Riker out of it because she knew he hated surprise parties. Remembering how he formed a romantic relationship with Troi in the alternate realities, Worf asks Troi to stay for dinner, ordering champagne from the replicator.

Review:

This is an episode that takes a great sci-fi/fantasy concept and puts its own spin on it, though despite what script writer Brannon Braga might claim, it’s not exactly an original idea. Marvel was trotting out numerous alternate realities in their ‘What If’ comic book series since at least the 1970’s, a concept they are only just now bringing out in a televised format via the MCU animated series of the same name. DC Comics, in turn, set up the idea of parallel worlds back around the 1950’s and 1960’s so they could maintain their golden age and silver age superheroes alongside each other; each set of heroes just inhabited different Earth’s within a multiverse, which was collapsed during the ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’ crossover in the 1980’s, then reversed in several years ago. By the same token, the Red Dwarf episode ‘Dimension Jump’ did the whole concept of all outcomes playing out in parallel realities in March 1991, while this Trek episode aired on November 1993. Sorry, Braga, but we Brits beat you to the punch for televising this idea by two-and-a-half years.

However, the beauty of the ‘What If’ concept is that while the concept as a whole might have been around for a while, there are a multitude of things to do with it. TNG alone raises a lot of questions like this with some of its most notable episodes. What if Tasha Yar had lived? What if Dr Crusher never left the Enterprise for a year, or never came back? What if Data’s daughter Lal had lived? What if Alexander’s mother had lived, or if Duras had killed Worf? The list goes on, and while we get a few answers here, TNG and its spin-offs could keep a writer in alternate reality stories for years.

What really helps to differentiate the episode is that it opens the door to a romance between Worf and Troi. Now unlike some fans, I’m not averse to this for its interference with the potential resumption of the Riker-Troi romance. Rather, I just don’t get why you’d set up Worf with Troi. If you consider Worf’s other major romances in K’Ehylar and Jadzia Dax, those made sense because they were women who could really be Worf’s equals, and somehow Troi doesn’t quite convey the same fire, the same spirit as those two. It reminds me of stories about how the character of Elektra was developed to be a true equal for Daredevil when she came into the comics, because everyone else he’d had for a romantic lead wasn’t an equal at all. Getting Worf to go with Troi is like watching Matt Murdock with Karen Page or Heather Glenn; sooner or later, you want Elektra back, and by the same token, I feel this romance was a bit poorly chosen. Yes, ok, the actors playing the role kind of made it work a bit this time round and it was originally intended as a joke by the writers in the tradition of TV odd couples, but to my mind this couple is just way too mismatched. Overall, I give this episode 8 out of 10.

Episode 12: The Pegasus

Plot (as given by me):

The Enterprise is ordered to divert from a survey mission to collect an Admiral Erik Pressman of Starfleet Intelligence. It turns out Pressman was captain of the USS Pegasus, Commander Riker’s first posting as an ensign fresh from Starfleet Academy. Apparently, Pressman and Riker were among the few survivors of the ship, being forced to abandon it before it apparently exploded. However, Starfleet Intelligence has learned the Romulans have come across evidence that some or all of the Pegasus may still remain intact. Their mission is to find the missing vessel, salvaging key equipment if possible and destroying the ship if necessary.

Discussions between Riker and Pressman hint that there is a further secret to the Pegasus that neither can disclose; indeed, Pressman informs Riker orders have been covertly sent for him not to discuss the true nature of the mission with any of his crewmates, Captain Picard included. However, Picard is curious and pulls in numerous favours to learn what happened all those years ago. He is shocked to discover that there was a mutiny on board the Pegasus, and that despite suspicions that the Pressman loyalists were covering up the truth, no further investigation occurred. He confronts Riker about it, but Riker explains he is under orders from Pressman not to disclose anything about it. Picard reluctantly accepts this, and tells Riker he will have to trust him not to let Pressman endanger the ship; if Riker betrays this trust, Picard implies he will have to find a replacement first officer.

The Enterprise finds the Pegasus in an asteroid field, and is forced to play a game of cat-and-mouse with a Romulan warbird to avoid giving away the ship’s location. On Pressman’s orders, and over Picard’s official objection, the Enterprise enters one of the asteroids via a large fissure and find the Pegasus inside, half-buried in the asteroid itself. Pressman and Riker beam over to the engineering section of the Pegasus and find the equipment Pressman was hoping to find intact. Riker reveals he regrets his past actions and objects to their mission, but Pressman states that Riker is still under orders not to reveal what the equipment is. They retrieve the device and beam back to the Enterprise, only to discover the Romulans have fused the fissure closed, trapping them inside.

Faced with possible capture by the Romulans or collapsing the cave by using weaponry, Riker disobeys Pressman’s orders and reveals what the admiral has retrieved from the Pegasus; an experimental cloaking device with matter-phasing capabilities. Apparently, the development of cloaking technology is prohibited in the Federation by a treaty signed with the Romulans 60 years earlier, and when the Pegasus crew learned of it, they mutinied in protest. Realising Picard will act the same way, Pressman tries to seize command, but none of Picard’s crew will follow the admiral’s lead. Riker suggests using the cloak to escape the asteroid, and Picard agrees.

The Enterprise successfully uses the cloak to escape, and their efforts to adapt it to the Enterprise enables the crew to deduce what happened to the Pegasus years ago. Picard then orders the Enterprise to decloak, noting that they will make full disclosure to the Romulans and ordering Pressman arrested. Riker also insists he be arrested as well, but Picard later releases him from the brig, noting his years of service since his time on the Pegasus and that he ultimately did the right thing.

Review:

This episode is thematically similar to ‘The First Duty’ from TNG’s fifth season, but this time instead of dealing with a young cadet like Crusher who would have little to no defence in admitting an error, we’re looking at Riker. As a result, the consequences of the episode’s deception being revealed are less, but the character conflict and question of the importance of truth and duty versus loyalty to others remains much the same. It’s good to watch and nice to see an episode not doing a bad job of doing character development and issue exploration at the same time. It’s just a bit annoying that the idea’s been done already within this show and that it’s combined with the ‘mad admiral’ concept to boot.

That being said, at least the episode answers a question that apparently Trek hadn’t sufficiently answered before, namely why the Federation wasn’t in the habit of using cloaking devices. Up until this point in the franchise, cloaking tech was used by a few other races, most notably the Klingons and the Romulans, but never the Federation. A couple of previous efforts that hadn’t landed had been that cloaking tech was harmful to humans, or that the tech was simply incompatible with Federation ships. However, the worst explanation was Roddenberry’s own, which was that because the Trek crews were scientists and explorers, they wouldn’t “go sneaking around.” Umm, Gene, are you forgetting all the little holographic fields and other concealment bits used to hide Federation observation posts on planets with pre-warp civilisations? Pretty fucking sure that’s the Federation “sneaking around” right there. The treaty idea makes far more sense than just assuming that being a scientist or researcher automatically makes one honourable and morally superior. There’s plenty of real-life people with such titles who are neither honourable nor morally superior, for goodness’ sake.

In addition, the episode is the first to incorporate a black Romulan, which I suspect is a subtle set-up for Tim Russ playing Tuvok, the first black Vulcan, in the Voyager spin-off series the year after TNG went off the air. It’s a good move, and in true Trek fashion an understated one. A lot of franchises could learn a lot about diversifying their characters without drawing ire from watching Trek. Anyway, on balance, I give this episode 7 out of 10.

Episode 13: Homeward

Review (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise receives an emergency distress call from Nikolai Rozhenko, Lt. Worf’s foster brother and a Federation anthropologist, currently posted to Boraal II, a class M planet in the process of suffering an atmospheric catastrophe. The Federation observation post is found to be deserted, but force field shielding has been set up nearby which protects a series of caverns. Captain Picard decides to send an away team to investigate. Concerned for his brother, Worf volunteers, and Picard orders him to go alone and be surgically altered to pass as a Boraalan. Worf transports to the planet and discovers that his brother set up the shield to protect the local villagers.

Nikolai meets with the ship’s senior officers and describes his plan to save one village of the doomed planet by setting up a concealed artificial biosphere. Picard replies that the Federation Prime Directive prohibits interference with the natural development of the Boraalan civilization; it is not for them to decide that one group shall survive while the rest of the planet perishes, nor can they decide if the natural development of the culture ends in survival or death. After witnessing the atmospheric dissipation extinction event transpire, the crew is puzzled by an unexpected power drain, the origin of which Worf tracks to the Holodeck. His brother has transported the population of the Boraalan village aboard the ship, using the Holodeck to replicate caverns identical to those on the planet, misleading the villagers into thinking they are still on Boraal II.

Nikolai tells Worf and Picard that he believes offering the Boraalan culture a chance of survival is more important than following the Prime Directive. He champions his updated plan of transporting the Boraalans to a new home on a different planet, using the holodeck to simulate a journey across their original planet to a simulated destination matching their new home-world. Picard reluctantly authorizes the plan and orders Dr Crusher and Lt. Commander Data to find a new home planet for the Boraalans. Crusher and Data choose Vacca VI as the new Boraalan home world, but it is almost two days away at maximum warp. Lt. Commander La Forge tells Picard and Nikolai that the Holodeck program may not run that long. Nikolai volunteers to return to the Boraalans and help account for any anomalies in the program. A mistrustful Picard orders Worf to accompany him.

Returning to the Holodeck, Nikolai and Worf tell the Boraalans that they will lead them to a new home. As they travel, Worf and his brother nearly come to blows when Worf learns that his brother has impregnated one of the villagers, and Nikolai tells Worf that he intends to remain with the Boraalans. Meanwhile Vorin, the village chronicler, finds his way out of the Holodeck and suffers severe culture shock at the reality of the world outside. Counsellor Troi and Picard try to help him adjust, offering him the choice of returning to his people or staying on the ship. Ultimately Vorin can’t live with what he has discovered and commits ritual suicide.

The Enterprise arrives at the new Boraalan home, and the Boraalans are beamed down to the eventual site of their new village. Worf and Nikolai make peace when Worf accepts that the Boraalan race would not have survived if not for his brother’s unconventional methods. Nikolai assuages Worf by telling him that he is going to stay with the villagers and become the new village chronicler. Aboard the Enterprise, Picard muses with Crusher that while their plan for the Boraalans worked out well, he is disappointed that Vorin wasn’t able to bridge the gap between their two cultures.

Review:

Sooner or later, Trek always comes back round to a discussion of Starfleet general order number 1; the prime directive. It comes up here amidst what is otherwise a character piece in keeping with season 7’s family theme as we see Worf having to deal with his human foster brother. That character story is fun and interesting to watch and a nice change of pace for Worf, but the really intriguing aspect of the show is that while it actually explores something of why the prime directive exists.

At first, Picard’s adherence to the directive seems a bit cold and heartless, but when Nikolai’s actions force the crew of the Enterprise to mitigate the violation of that rule, a lot of issue exploration unfolds. You have Crusher and Data choosing a new home for the Boraalans without really having enough information to know if they’re picking the right one, in effect playing God. You have Vorin, the alien who learns the truth, can’t live with it and takes his own life. Plus, they’ve only saved a handful of the aliens from a single village, which means only dozens or maybe a hundred people, tops. Now I’m not an expert in this area by any means, but I’m pretty sure so few people wouldn’t equal a viable gene-pool for the long-term survival of the species. Within only a handful of generations, you’d probably be looking at the start of congenital defects from the lack of diversity in the gene-pool, leading the species to just die out more slowly.

It is these issues which ultimately show why Picard is probably right to stick to his guns and adhere to the prime directive. As bad as allowing the Boraalans to die on their original planet might seem at first, having normal people play God and risk killing that race in the long run anyway is also bad. The only way Nikolai’s plan could really have worked long-term and been truly vindicated is if Starfleet sent multiple holodeck-rigged ships to pull off a larger covert relocation of the Boraalans en masse. As it is, those villagers better hope I’m either wrong about the lack of genetic diversity or that their DNA is somehow less susceptible to the adverse effects of breeding in a quite shallow gene-pool than human DNA would be. Overall, I give this episode 8 out of 10.

Episode 14: Sub Rosa

Plot (as given by me):

The Enterprise visits Caldos IV, a Federation colony created to re-create Scotland on another world, in order for Dr Beverly Crusher to attend the funeral of her grandmother Elisa Howard. At the funeral, Beverly notices a young man leaving a flower on her grandmother’s grave. Beverly begins to sort through her grandmother’s possessions and learns from a journal that despite being around 100 years old, her grandmother was apparently involved in a passionate relationship with a man in his mid-thirties. She also has a confrontation with Ned Quint, an older man on the colony who claims that a ghost haunts the house of Beverly’s grandmother and warns her to get rid of a lamp that apparently draws the ghost to the house.

While the Enterprise crew try to contend with a growing problem in the colony’s weather control system, Beverly finds herself being seduced by the ghost, who is also the 30-something man her grandmother had been involved with. The ‘ghost’ goes by the name of Ronin, and who claims to have been the incorporeal lover of all women on the female side of Beverly’s family since the 1600’s, the relationship passing from mother to daughter through the generations. Following Ned Quint’s death in an attempt to interfere with the weather control system, Beverly is so seduced that she resigns her commission, opting to re-settle at the colony and be a healer there.

Concerned at the out-of-character behaviour Beverly is displaying, Captain Picard visits her at her grandmother’s house, while Lt. Commanders La Forge and Data trace an anaphasic energy signature matching the weather system distortion and the method of Quint’s death to the grave of Beverly’s grandmother. When Picard confronts Ronin, asking him questions he can’t answer and condoning the exhumation of Elisa, Ronin attacks him and then heads to the graveyard, attacking La Forge and Data. Following him, Beverly finally deduces the truth; Ronin is an anaphasic life-form, needing either a corporeal host or an energy receptacle like the lamp candle to keep from dissipating. Beverley destroys the lamp with a phaser and then does the same to Ronin’s corporeal form. Later, back on the Enterprise, she notes to Counsellor Troi that whatever else Ronin may have done, he at least made her grandmother very happy.

Review:

Frankly, the idea of a secularist sci-fi show like Trek doing any kind of ghost story strikes me as a bad idea, and this episode proves it. It feels very campy, and almost like TNG was trying to do an homage to Scooby Doo, especially with the last-minute deduction that it’s not a ghost they’re dealing with, but something more in line with what Trek deals with every day. The episode also ties into the family theme of this season through Beverly’s grandmother, but really the episode seems to be mostly focused on the idea of what is meant to be a romance with a ghostly lover. Apparently, most fans are split down gender lines over this side of the episode, with men hating it and women loving it.

For me, I’m pretty much in the hating it group, but not for the inherent eroticism of the story, nor because I’m opposed to romantic plots. No, it’s more to do with the fact that romances should generally involve both/all parties to the romance having sufficient agency in the story that neither one seems to be getting manipulated by the other. Ronin’s ‘ghostly’ antics with Crusher smack of an ulterior motive and trying to manipulate her for his own ends from very early on, and because of that and the pseudo-spook aspects of the episode, I don’t see a proper romance here. More like a supernatural mind-controlling stalker story, which I really think is something Trek should leave well enough alone.

That said, I did think giving Beverly a Scottish ancestry of sorts via her maternal line was cool. Because of Trek being made in America, the human crewmembers among each show’s main cast can often be very American, as for that matter are the actors who play most/all of the aliens. As such, anything that shows a crew member has at least some roots outside America is always a boon. Trek is supposed to be a very diverse franchise, and the international, inter-racial crew of the original series really exemplified this. With the later shows, however, I think increasing use of aliens in the main cast left a lot less room to show off a wide range of human nationalities. However, this touch is not enough to really buy this episode much of a reprieve. The end score for it is a mere 4 out of 10.

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