Voyager 1x9 "Emanations"

rating: *

the story: Harry gets mixed up in an alien culture's rituals concerning the afterlife.

what it's all about: "Emanations" is a perfectly serviceable episode for fans just looking for a cool sci-fi concept and/or examination of existential matters.  Where it fails is exploring its nominal lead, Harry Kim.

So this is probably why fans began to think Harry was basically worthless.  His first spotlight barely has anything to do with him, or say anything about him.  Already we've seen B'Elanna Torres ("Parallax"), Neelix ("Phage"), and Tom Paris ("Ex Post Facto") command spotlight episodes, so it's not as if the series has proven deficient in that regard at this early stage of the game.  It's certainly true that fans didn't end up caring all that much for just about any character in Voyager, but it wasn't for lack of effort.  Somehow, however, Harry ended up being pigeon-holed as the most meaningless of the bunch, and I have little doubt that it stems from "Emanations."  It's a shame, too, as he turns out much, much better in the second season episode "Non Sequitur."

criteria analysis:

• franchise - A casual fan's kind of episode.
• series - Nothing much to do with Voyager, alas.
• character - A poor spotlight for Harry Kim.
• essential - Not hardly.

notable guest-stars:
Martha Hackett (Seska)
Jerry Hardin

The Next Generation 6x1 "Time's Arrow, Part 2"

rating: ****

the story: Picard saves Guinan's life, and Mark Twain meets the 24th century.

similar to: "Storm Front" (Enterprise)

my thoughts: Okay, so let's recap.  Enterprise later ambiguously (or not) concludes its Temporal Cold War in "Storm Front," and everyone's wondering in "Time's Arrow" just how Guinan met Picard, and the nature of their intense bond.

It helps to keep in mind the nature of Guinan's people as explored in Star Trek Generations.  There, we learn that they have incredibly intimate bonds.  It's what they do.  So naturally, that's what Guinan forms with the guy who saves her. 

That's the short version.

The longer one actually has Guinan spending more time with Data, who's busy trying to keep his head attached to his body.  Guinan actually meets the whole crew in turn of the 20th century San Francisco.  But it's Picard who decides to stay behind and make sure she's okay.  This is a younger Guinan, who hasn't yet lost her planet to the Borg.  She's young, she's rebellious, and she's exploring her potential.  The imp who later challenges Q ("Q Who?") doesn't yet exist.  The know-everything Guinan, who's more aware than anyone ("Yesterday's Enterprise") doesn't exist yet.  But they can be reconciled.  Picard is the person who makes it possible, with a leap of faith

Actually, it's possible to explain this by analogy, and it's right there in the episode, with an old codger named Mark Twain.  A lot of this is implied.  If you know Twain at all, you know him as a cynical optimist.  History remembers him best for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and his many famous quips.  Yet by the time of the events in this episode, he's nearing the end of his life, and more cynical than ever.  He doesn't believe in a hopeful future, certainly not in Data and his odd experiments...

I must confess.  I didn't always like this episode, and it was because of Twain.  Frankly, I found him annoying and obnoxious.  And I didn't see how any of it explained the bond between Guinan and Picard.  But then I realized, Twain's journey parallels Guinan's.  And the bridge?  The unnamed young Jack London.

In the episode, London hasn't even become a writer yet.  Yet he is destined to complete the literary era of American frontier adventure, which Twain himself embodied.  So he continues and expands on the narrative, just as Star Trek as a whole does.  Guinan was every bit as lost as Twain, as London, before Picard came along, the symbol of the hopeful future.  It's this hope Guinan embraces, just as Twain does, just as London is about to.

And that's why Picard is so important to her, and why she's so important to him, because they prove to each other that they're not wrong.  That's Star Trek in a nutshell.  And that's why this one's a classic, and absolutely essential.

criteria analysis: franchise - series - character - essential (all criteria met)

notable guest-stars:
Whoopi Goldberg (Guinan)
Jerry Hardin

The Next Generation 5x26 "Time's Arrow, Part 1"

rating: ****

the story: Data's head is unexpectedly discovered in a cavern below San Francisco.

similar to: "Storm Front" (Enterprise)

my thoughts: Well.  Here we go: the secret origin of Guinan and Picard's relationship.  Was it worth the wait?  It's complicated...but yeah, it really is.  It just needs some special insight.

Remember Enterprise's Temporal Cold War?  That was an arc that lasted the span of the series, but ended on an incredibly ambiguous note in the fourth season two-part opener "Storm Front," in which we never find out who Future Guy is, one of the central riddles of the series.  Or do we?  I have my theories.  I believe that the alien who collaborates with the Nazis is Future Guy.  But without confirmation, it's just speculation.

"Time's Arrow" is a little like that.  Guinan is one of the trickiest characters in franchise lore.  Steeped heavily in mystery in her earliest appearances, the more we learn, the more we must decide if all that mystery was really worth it.  This is the central question of just how much was lost from the creative transition from the second to third seasons.  And it entirely hinges on "Time's Arrow."  Clearly the entire season had been leading toward it, just as Worf's in "Sins of the Father" inevitably led to "Redemption" (which itself served as a sequel to "Yesterday's Enterprise," which is what led to "Time's Arrow"...), so again, the question must be asked, Was it worth it?

Before we even get there, we have to examine what the bulk of the episode is actually about, which is an improved version of the previous "Next Phase," in which the crew once again deals with matters of mortality.  It's odd that the episode is so heavily centered on that (actually, two-part Star Trek episodes often work like that) without a lot of fan memory making much of it, but there you go, and as Data episodes go, it's a pretty good one, worthy of the finest tradition ("The Measure of a Man," for instance).

But in order to solve the mystery of what happened to him, and possibly prevent it (or cause and remedy it), the crew has to journey to the past, and at Guinan's insistence. 

...And in order to find out the answer to the question I keep posing, you will have to wait until the second part of this episode...(Hint: it's totally worth it.)

criteria analysis: franchise - series - character - essential (all criteria met)

notable guest-stars:
Whoopi Goldberg (Guinan)
Jerry Hardin
Marc Alaimo
Alexander Enberg

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.