Star Trek: The Next Generation

In some ways, it’s almost too simple. The parallels and analogies are so easy to draw I almost feel embarrassed pointing them out. It’s too obvious. The symbolism is handled with incredible deftness and finesse within the story, of course, I’d just feel like I’d be pointing out the obvious by mentioning it. The episode basically analyses and critiques itself, which is in a sense deeply fitting. Perhaps that’s the idea.

“Emergence” is Star Trek: The Next Generation. It is the show doing the best it can at attaining the best version of itself. Is it the greatest episode in the series? I could argue that. There are other productions that are materially better texts, but that’s neither important nor interesting. There is no episode that embodies the potential of Star Trek: The Next Generation better than “Emergence”. It’s the very best of the series gathered together in one place for critical assessment and bittersweet introspection. “Emergence” is unabashedly the Star Trek: The Next Generation that I, personally, remember. It is the one story in the entire seven year television journey I can point to and tell you that I saw this. This represents and speaks to that which I witnessed and experienced long ago, and that which I think about as I put words onto paper. It is a textual artefact and like all textual artefacts it is an artificial construct. It is a series of metonymic symbols that is itself a symbol, but perhaps it is a symbol that can help us reach common ground.

“Emergence” brings us back to the self and personal identity theory, and also to consciousness. “Emergence” makes us conscious. Whatever we are, we are more than the material sum of our brains and senses. It’s a theme that has made up countless Data stories over the past seven years, which almost starts to explain and forgive his crippling overexposure here. At times one does begin to wonder why the ship has any non-Data crewmembers aboard considering they seem to spend most of their time having things explained and exposited to them. Clever child, that ghost of Wesley Crusher. And yet even now Star Trek: The Next Generation is admirably still trying to be an ensemble show: Doctor Crusher and Deanna Troi in particular get to showcase their problem-solving skills and contributions to the team in memorable ways. And for an episode that is for all intents and purposes the series’ last, it’s about bloody time.

“Emergence” brings us back to life force, breath and sex magick. The Enterprise gives birth. What does she give birth to? What’s the analogy? That’s thinking too narrowly. Saying it’s Star Trek Voyager, while a broadly defensible reading given the historical context, is also unbelievably cynical and limiting. Maybe a symbol, or a metaphor, or an analogy, doesn’t have to mean anything. Or at least not any one thing. There’s no objective real out there, Odo.…

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In the last book when I wrote about “The Survivors”, I mentioned that as far as I was personally concerned, the most notable thing about it was that it was a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode I somehow never managed to see in 25+ years and thus knew next to nothing about. It’s a strange thing to have a fresh experience with a show you know this well. Back in the days of the TNN reruns, “Bloodlines” was that episode for me. Even moreso, in fact: At the time, I had no idea this episode even existed, in spite of owning a fair few reference guides and episode lists. It was like watching a brand new, never-before-seen episode of my favourite show for the first time in seven years, and was definitely an experience I savoured.

At the time I was pretty warmly receptive to “Bloodlines”: There was nothing I found explicitly objectionable and I more or less had an enjoyable evening with it. Over the years though it has faded from memory somewhat, partly due to my hazy 1980s-90s memory combing with my hazy 2000s memory conflating it with “Suddenly Human”. Revisiting it for this book, however, the pretense is entirely gone and it’s evident this is a mediocre, ill-advised misfire. In fact it turns out that part of the reason I kept confusing this episode with “Suddenly Human” is that they’re basically the same story: Captain Picard takes on a troubled young man with a predilection to get into trouble, adopts the role of a father figure and tries to be a mentor for him. The difference this time is that we’re meant to believe that the kid in question, some guy named Jason who’s so forgettable I’ve already forgotten his last name and I just had Memory Alpha open a minute ago as I sat down to write this, actually is Captain Picard’s son for much of the runtime, though he actually isn’t.

As a result of this basically just being “Suddenly Human” again but with a Ferengi genetics experiment revenge plot tossed in for good measure (oh yeah, DaiMon Bok is back, did you miss him? He was supposed to be the main thrust of the plot, but he’s even less remarkable than Jason whatsshisface), all of the criticisms I had of that episode still apply. There’s been, over the course of the series, a peculiar fixation on forcing Captain Picard, a man who is not a parent and manifestly was never meant to be one, into a parental role, to the show’s detriment. First of course we had Wesley Goddamn Crusher, and the seven year on-again-off-again abortive plot to make him Captain Picard’s surrogate son. Then we had this episode’s antecedent in “Suddenly Human”, “The Inner Light” and its directionless follow-up “Lessons” (where the notion lurked around the paratext if it wasn’t overtly dealt with), and now this. I’m probably forgetting some things, but those are the most notable instances.…

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I didn’t want to use this picture. Thought it was too obvious. But there are very few high quality images from this part of the series.

A brief rant: Why isn’t this episode called “Bloodlines” and the next one called “Firstborn”? “Bloodlines” to me connotes family ties, lineages and heritage, which is precisely what this story is about. Next week’s episode is a drama about firstborn sons, or perceived firstborn sons, with DaiMon Bok coming back (oh yeah Spoiler Alert DaiMon Bok comes back. Remember him? That makes two of us) to try and exact revenge on Captain Picard yet again because he’s still tortured by the death of his son. I legit thought this episode was called “Bloodlines” and got incredibly confused when I was trying to figure out which episode I was writing about.

Anyway, the should-have-been-called-“Bloodlines” isn’t about any of that, although it does feature a firstborn son. Namely Worf’s, that is, Alexander. A personal highlight of the TNN years for me, it’s the best Alexander story in the entire series, which will assuredly make things interesting for any prospective viewers who (for some reason) listen to my recommendations as I would advise skipping every story in which he plays a major role except this one (and I suppose “A Fistful of Datas” too). It’s also the best thing Star Trek: The Next Generation has done with the Klingons since the first season. I hate to keep bringing up “Heart of Glory” as I seem to be doing that a lot lately, but that really is the best, and pretty much only, story you can do with the Klingons as originally conceived for this series (there is one more story that can be done with the Klingons without throwing out absolutely everything about them, and it’s a damn good one at that, but we have to wait nine years to actually see it get made).

Because the whole point of “Firstborn” (I am never going to get used to saying that) is to problematize the concept of honour and the way of the warrior in Klingon society. It doesn’t quite go far enough with this on a macroscopic level-You could, for example, imagine a story where the ramifications of Alexander’s choice are explored on larger scale political and social level (again, nine years), but that’s OK because this isn’t that kind of story. It’s a very personal story about a father and son and the social expectations that are placed on them, and it handles this outstandingly. Ever since “The Emissary”, Worf has tended to get pigeonholed as a born-again zealot for conservative Klingon values and cultural norms which, like all conservative values and cultural norms, are ludicrously ahistorical and inauthentic. I still think it was wrong to take Worf in that direction and it irreparably damaged him as a character, but that aside if there was one story where it was absolutely imperative that he not be written this way it was this one, and miraculously he’s not.…

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Well, it could be worse. A lot worse.

I’ve been looking forward to revisiting “Genesis” since I first started this project. Of all the episodes of Star Trek I remember, this is the one that has the absolute widest gulf between popular opinion and my own recollections. Fan consensus on this story is that it’s about as bad as it can possibly get-The only episode that seems to regularly beat it out for the title of Worst Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode Ever Made is, deservedly, “Code of Honor”. It’s at least regarded as one of the nadirs of the series, and of the franchise as a whole. But I remember being utterly mesmerized by this one back in the day-It’s another story whose imagery has haunted me ever since, and I remember immediately taking to it for its grotesque surrealism and dark, foreboding atmosphere. Prior to this rewatch I’d actually only ever seen this episode once, way back when it aired in 1994: I’d always avoided watching it again because I wanted to save it for a time when I could give it a fair and sober evaluation, and also because I probably always knew it was never going to be as good as I remembered it as being.

And it’s not. “Genesis” is no masterpiece of popist abstraction in the same way even “Eye of the Beholder”, “Phantasms” and “Dark Page” are. But it is significantly better than people give it credit for being…Or at least there are parts of it that are definitely deserving of praise and attention that people tend to ignore and disregard while in a rush to mock its sillier aspects. You could call it a Curate’s Egg (“parts of this disaster are excellent!”) if you were so inclined, but I think even that’s being a bit unfair. I found “Genesis” to be an entirely enjoyable and watchable (well, mostly), albeit goofy, outing with some really outstanding cinematographic touches worth taking some time to look at.

So let’s get the big thing out of the way right off the bat. The plot device makes absolutely no damn sense. But let’s be careful here: This isn’t to say the plot makes no sense. Actually, it makes perfect sense, it just doesn’t make sense in a way Star Trek fans like. What doesn’t make sense is the technobabble stuff, all that business about introns and junk DNA and synthetic T-cell viruses. The script’s conception of evolution is notoriously scientifically wonky, and there’s absolutely no getting around that. But it’s actually not as terrible on this front as you might expect: It’s actually very careful to avoid falling into the trap of presenting biological evolution as teleological-I don’t think the phrases “lower life form” or “higher life form” appear anywhere in the script, and the central artistic license hinges on the fact that all life shares common ancestors somewhere up the tree, which isn’t actually inaccurate, it’s just vague.…

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It’s always an event when I return to a story that left such an indelible impression on me it literally shaped my own visions. And there are few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, or of anything, that are as deeply ingrained in my imagination as “Eye of the Beholder”.

I count up to the double digits, at most, the moments in media that were so primally formative they completely changed my life. Many of them are from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and at least five of them are from this season. We’ve seen two of them already and there’s another two to go, but “Eye of the Beholder” may well be the most momentous and personally meaningful. The degree to which the imagery and iconography of this episode have haunted me all my life, and haunted really is the only truly fitting term, is almost completely unparalleled. Why this episode stuck with me to the unbelievably powerful degree that it did, to the point rewatching it actually gave me chills due to how familiar it felt (even though, prior to this rewatch, I’d only seen it twice)…I have no explanation. Except for, perhaps, that it’s really damn excellent.

But it has, and watching it again was like reliving a dream from long, long ago buried deep within the recess of my psyche: I remembered, vividly and to the last detail, the nacelle control room that features prominently in the plot. The hallucinations of the psychic imprint that constantly replay themselves. the lingering single-take shots where the camera follows Deanna Troi as she pensively meanders through the Enterprise‘s corridors. And, above all else, the unforgettable image of Deanna standing on the landing gazing into the pulsing heart of the ship’s warp nacelle. I remember that the way I remember my first birthday, and the first house my family lived in when I was a young child. In fact, it literally was reliving a dream for me: After it was announced that TNN would start airing Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns, which would be the first time in seven years I’d have the chance to see the show again, I got so excited the show started to infiltrate my real, actual dreams. As the date approached, I distinctly remember having an incredibly lifelike dream where I was onboard the Enterprise myself. I was accompanied by Deanna Troi, dressed exactly the way she was in this episode, who took me on a tour of the whole ship so I could reacquaint myself.

One of our stops was the nacelle control room from “Eye of the Beholder”. And, just as I had been reminded once before on TNN, as I watched this inexplicably powerful episode for only the third time in my life, I couldn’t help but notice that room looked exactly the way I saw it in my dream. The only difference is that now I can tell it’s a stage set.…

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