The Next Generation 1x17 "When the Bough Breaks"

This is the kind of episode that gets lost in the shuffle when a series vastly improves.  It's another first season offering that isn't terrible but also doesn't have much to recommend itself to anyone watching Next Generation past, say, the first season.  It's also another of those vaguely original series episodes, a society that is trying to steal kids to replace their inability to conceive.

If you read that last line accurately, you may now have an idea what episode we're talking about today. It's got what was no doubt and in fact remains a very memorable title, but it's also dangerously generic, one of those phrases that probably sounded suitably poetic at a time when the series was still trying to do that, because the original series did it all the time.  But now "When the Bough Breaks" is about as noteworthy a title as it is an episode.

Anyway, the thing to take away from that closing line in the first paragraph is that it telegraphs this being a Wesley episode.  Now, this one is not a bad Wesley episode, like "Justice," but it is nonetheless a first season Wesley episode.  The boy genius is once again truncated to just the boy, and is the primary reason why anyone cares that this crazy society is doing its particular craziness.  It's also a reminder that Wesley is aboard the Enterprise because he's part of the considerable family contingent, a concept that some people still have a hard time figuring out, because they still assume that Starfleet must be a military organization just because it can and will get into scraps and sometimes outright wars.

Anyway, you can move along now.  Nothing much to see here.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Jerry Hardin

Memory Alpha summary.