rating: ****
the story: Worf discovers a colony where Klingons and Romulans live side-by-side.
similar to: "The Enemy" (Next Generation), "Chimera" (Deep Space Nine)
my thoughts: I have long struggled over this episode, and yet now I am recommending it as a Star Trek classic. So let me explain...
What used to make me so uncomfortable is how fallible Worf comes off, and how unwinnable a situation he comes across in the strange village housing both his people, the Klingons, and their frenemies the Romulans. "The Enemy" had already demonstrated the depth of his enmity toward Romulans (refusing to help save the life of one), and later in Deep Space Nine's "Change of Heart," his refusal to see the greater picture (which would have sacrificed Dax in the process), all of this amounts to a unique franchise character, one who doesn't conform to the perfect standards Gene Roddenberry envisioned for the future. It's not that he's Klingon and therefore absolved from the human vision, but that, as perhaps best depicted in "Birthright, Part 2," he has a hard time overcoming the prejudices and attitudes he has formed over a lifetime, and yes, inherited, too.
Which makes him unique, a continuing character study of everything Star Trek sought to demonstrate as having been overcome in the future. This doesn't mean Worf, ultimately, is a villain. Far from it. His struggles make him, if anything, more heroic. "Birthright, Part 2," again, is where it all comes together.
Lured on the promise of reuniting with his dead father, Worf instead comes face-to-face with something his people won't overcome, despite Klingons finally having made peace with one implacable foe, the Federation, with Worf himself being the living embodiment of that progress. That doesn't make confronting his shortcomings any less ugly or uncomfortable to watch. To him, his actions are all about Klingon pride, but the underpinning is his basic intolerance of Romulans, and his unwillingness to reconsider his views. He may, with every justification, question Romulan motives (Deep Space Nine did a similar story, "Cardassians," about a war orphan forced to choose where to pledge his loyalties, which itself was similar to Next Generation's own "Suddenly Human"), but that doesn't excuse his disgust as he finds out his lovely Klingon beauty also has Romulan blood in her.
Again, there's a Deep Space Nine episode ("Chimera") where Odo is forced once and all to decide where he stands on the matter of prejudice against his kind (changelings), and this matter can't be discussed without bringing up Data ("The Measure of a Man") or The Doctor (Voyager's "Latent Image"), but just as with the bigotry even Spock faced ("Balance of Terror," for instance) and Enterprise's xenophobes ("Demons"/"Terra Prime"), this is a matter very much relevant to the real world, and Star Trek's exploration of it, in all its forms (Deep Space Nine's "Far Beyond the Stars"), ultimately tends to let the good guys off. Not this time. And this is very, very important, because it acknowledges how unsettling this problem really is. Because it's not just something that happens to the other guy.
"Birthright, Part 1" featured Data daydreaming, which was a metaphoric acknowledgement that the android needed to continue growing. I think "Birthright, Part 2" is about Worf struggling to understand that, too. Something to think about, anyway.
criteria analysis: franchise - series - character - essential (all criteria met)
notable guest-stars:
Alan Scarfe
Jennifer Gatti
Richard Herd
Cristine Rose
James Cromwell
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Showing posts with label Alan Scarfe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alan Scarfe. Show all posts
Friday, July 15, 2016
Monday, January 4, 2016
The Next Generation 4x11 "Data's Day"
rating: ***
the story: Data records a letter detailing, among other things, the wedding of Miles and Keiko O'Brien.
similar to: "In Theory" (Next Generation), "Explorers" (Deep Space Nine), "Dear Doctor" (Enterprise)
my thoughts: Groundbreaking without being overly significant, "Data's Day" is one of those episodes you can heartily recommend to fans of the series. It's a true slice-of-life experience.
"In Theory" later in the season revisits observing what being Data means on a routine basis, and on the whole it's fairly mundane, though not in a particularly trivial way. Data's wonder at life around him, and his attempts to make sense of it, has a wide range of implications. He's the only character who could get away with having nothing to do with someone else's marriage and yet still be relevant to its occasion.
It's not particularly a surprise, however, that this isn't an experience the franchise rushed to duplicate, and thankfully when it did there was usually a better point to be made, some personal achievement (the Siskos bonding in "Explorers") or perspective worth noting (Phlox's opposition to Archer's actions in "Dear Doctor").
What's puzzling is that Data is composing a letter to Maddox, a character we originally meet in "The Measure of a Man," and he's supposed to be addressing matters of his own unique nature. If the recipient had been anyone else, or merely his recording a common log entry, it would have made more sense.
As much as you might enjoy Data in the episode, it's much more important as an O'Brien story, the culmination to that point in his whole development, and his further adventures in Deep Space Nine, solidifying him as important in his own right, and not just as a familiar face.
It's always nice to have a change of pace, and aside from everything else, this is an episode that proves once and for all that Next Generation is comfortable in its own skin.
criteria analysis:franchise - series - character - essential
notable guest-stars:
Colm Meaney (O'Brien)
Rosalind Chao (Keiko)
Alan Scarfe
the story: Data records a letter detailing, among other things, the wedding of Miles and Keiko O'Brien.
similar to: "In Theory" (Next Generation), "Explorers" (Deep Space Nine), "Dear Doctor" (Enterprise)
my thoughts: Groundbreaking without being overly significant, "Data's Day" is one of those episodes you can heartily recommend to fans of the series. It's a true slice-of-life experience.
"In Theory" later in the season revisits observing what being Data means on a routine basis, and on the whole it's fairly mundane, though not in a particularly trivial way. Data's wonder at life around him, and his attempts to make sense of it, has a wide range of implications. He's the only character who could get away with having nothing to do with someone else's marriage and yet still be relevant to its occasion.
It's not particularly a surprise, however, that this isn't an experience the franchise rushed to duplicate, and thankfully when it did there was usually a better point to be made, some personal achievement (the Siskos bonding in "Explorers") or perspective worth noting (Phlox's opposition to Archer's actions in "Dear Doctor").
What's puzzling is that Data is composing a letter to Maddox, a character we originally meet in "The Measure of a Man," and he's supposed to be addressing matters of his own unique nature. If the recipient had been anyone else, or merely his recording a common log entry, it would have made more sense.
As much as you might enjoy Data in the episode, it's much more important as an O'Brien story, the culmination to that point in his whole development, and his further adventures in Deep Space Nine, solidifying him as important in his own right, and not just as a familiar face.
It's always nice to have a change of pace, and aside from everything else, this is an episode that proves once and for all that Next Generation is comfortable in its own skin.
criteria analysis:
notable guest-stars:
Colm Meaney (O'Brien)
Rosalind Chao (Keiko)
Alan Scarfe
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