TNG Season 6

Last time on Star Trek: The Next Generation…

“The idea of doing a crossover between Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is such an intuitive one it writes itself. There are no two iterations of this franchise that mesh and blend together quite as well as these do: Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are a part of each other’s existence in a way that’s not true of any other Star Trek. Deep Space Nine opens up with the straightforward declaration that it’s a part of The Next Generation-Its opening moments literally take place in a Next Generation episode, its entire setting is inherited from one and The Next Generation plays an integral role in the plot of “Emissary”. This isn’t like Doctor McCoy showing up for one brief scene in “Encounter at Farpoint”, Captain Picard and the Enterprise are actual essential aspects to that plot.” 

“Of course the artefact that ends up triggering Data’s dream programme comes from the Gamma Quadrant. When we open our minds to the possibilities of different knowledge-spaces and expand our awareness to the harmonious interplay of people and events, we discover the things we are meant to find. Doctor Bashir cannot study the artefact with the resources he has on Deep Space 9; he needs Beverly Crusher’s lab aboard the Enterprise. Data could not unlock this heretofore unknown level of his potential had he not gone to investigate, or had the Enterprise not come to Deep Space 9 at this point in time. He could not have done so had he not met Doctor Bashir.” 

“But that ‘Birthright, Part I’ actually manages to live up to so much of what it hints at and points to is telling. It could only happen on Deep Space 9.

Honestly, I almost don’t want to see part 2.”

And now, the conclusion…

There’s an interesting structure to “Birthright” we haven’t necessarily seen in previous two-parters. This is the first time the show has done a story like this purely for creative reasons instead of responding to external pressures: “Chain of Command” was partially split into two for narrative reasons, but a big contributing factor there was finances and, to be honest, the fact that it was a mid-season finale and a spinoff series was going to be premiering directly after it. But there’s no ratings reason to drop a two-parter here, roughly midway through the second half of the year: The only reason there’s a “Birthright, Part I” and a “Birthright, Part II” is because the team through the story was too big and too good to contain in just one hour of television.

This leads to the interesting structural consequence that superficially, “Part II” has next to nothing to do with “Part I”. While Worf’s plot was introduced last week, Data gets a whopping one line in this whole episode and the entire story of him developing the ability to dream and the visions of his father he’s experiencing isn’t addressed even in passing; not even in the teaser.…

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It could only happen on Deep Space 9.

It’s been called “the season of taking risks” by the production team. But Star Trek: The Next Generation was born capable of taking risks-Its mistake was in forgetting for so long that it was capable of doing so. It’s only now when the Enterprise has rediscovered what its place in the cosmos has always been, and it does so by voyaging here. Commander Sisko came to the Celestial Temple and Deep Space 9 to uncover the journey he was meant to take. The crew of the Enterprise come here to remember and be reborn again. But in turn, Deep Space 9 grows and is further sublimated through visiting with the Enterprise: Together, they are much more than they ever could be on their own. They belong together. They belong here and now.

The idea of doing a crossover between Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is such an intuitive one it writes itself. There are no two iterations of this franchise that mesh and blend together quite as well as these do: Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are a part of each other’s existence in a way that’s not true of any other Star Trek. Deep Space Nine opens up with the straightforward declaration that it’s a part of The Next Generation-Its opening moments literally take place in a Next Generation episode, its entire setting is inherited from one and The Next Generation plays an integral role in the plot of “Emissary”. This isn’t like Doctor McCoy showing up for one brief scene in “Encounter at Farpoint”, Captain Picard and the Enterprise are actual essential aspects to that plot.

This is not to say that Deep Space Nine is merely a subset or subsidiary of The Next Generation, but rather to argue it was inevitable that Deep Space Nine would return the favour, and sooner rather than later. It’s silly to think there would never be crossovers, or even to think that crossovers aren’t going to be the actual *norm* from here going forward, because these two entities share their reality together in a very deep and profound way. A voyaging canoe is a community just as a village is, and just as a world is; there is no conflict between these concepts. The canoe and the village both symbolize the universe they are each a microcosm of: Each spirit, bringing with them their own talents and experiences, finds a role to fill through which we all can survive and grow. The canoe is the island, and the island is the world that we all share together.

So in the same way Star Trek: Deep Space Nine mirrors and compliments Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Birthright, Part I” mirrors and parallels “Emissary”.…

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Also there’s this scene. That’s all I’ll say about that.

And here I was all ready to write a lengthy, poetic Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind-influenced essay too.

This may have been the biggest shocker for me in all the time I’ve been writing about Star Trek: The Next Generation for this project. Here’s “Tapestry”, an episode so obviously a classic and a masterpiece it’s taken for granted-It’s right up there with “The Inner Light” in terms of stories that are absolutely peerless and are held up as definitive moments for the show without a second thought. Even I just immediately accepted it: I mean of course. It’s “Tapestry”. How can you criticize something like that? Yeah, it uses the It’s a Wonderful Life plot, which I find so far beyond hackneyed it transcends overused cliché to attain a new state of absolute fucking unwatchability, but this was traditionally the one exception I would suffer.

And I actually didn’t like it very much.

I hasten to add I don’t think this episode is conceptually flawed at all; not in the slightest. I think the core idea here is good, brilliant actually: Fundamentally, “Tapestry” is about coming to terms with the person you were in your youth, embarrassing mistakes and all, because all of your past experiences helped shape you into the person you are today. It’s the ultimate payoff for Commander Riker’s comment way back in “The Last Outpost” about how “we can hardly hate the people we used to be”. It’s an extremely Star Trek sort of moral, an immeasurably important one, and something I personally strive to live my life in accordance with even today.

The problem with “Tapestry” for me, and I say this with the caveat that I mean no disrespect to the man or his work personally, is that Ron Moore wrote it. I’m reasonably confidant I’ve now reached the point where I’ve realised I simply do not agree with Moore’s favourite themes or his take on Star Trek and never well. His trademark signifiers are justifiably and rightfully all over “Tapestry”, and that keeps me from getting into the story. There’s the conception of Q, a deft blend of his trickster god and judiciary personae playing the spirit who teaches Captain Picard a valuable lesson about aging. But this time it feels like there’s a biting cynicism to it, Q just forcing Jean-Luc into a humilation conga for our amusement. After all, Picard and his crew are all complacent and snooty and stuck up and need to get knocked down a few pegs.

Something similar happens in John de Lancie’s own “The Gift”, but somehow I don’t like it or find it anywhere near as effective here. Yes, Q humiliates Picard in the beginning, but that might have been a hallucination or an alternate timeline and it’s played more as payback for Q being humiliated in human form earlier in the series (that happened in the first volume of the comic line, if you recall).…

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The prevailing fan consensus on “Face of the Enemy” was always that it’s “The Good Troi Episode”: The one episode in the entire seven year run of Star Trek: The Next Generation that actually managed to do something interesting and compelling with Deanna Troi as a character. And that’s blatantly bunkum: “Face of the Enemy” isn’t the “good” Troi episode, it’s the definitive Troi episode. It’s the episode you show a Troi hater as the final closing argument for the defense of her character and for how brilliant Marina Sirtis is.

As an actor showcase episode, you’ll find none better in the series. Marina Sirtis’ last best outing, “Power Play”, still hinged on showing off one particular aspect of her acting range, albeit one we don’t typically get to see on Star Trek: The Next Generation. And even Brent Spiner’s numerous showcases mostly show off his knack for impersonations and comic character bits. By contrast, “Face of the Enemy” puts Marina front and centre and the story gives her an opportunity in every scene to deliver an incredibly interpolated and complex performance: Instead of locking her into “soft Marina” or “tough Marina” modes, “Face of the Enemy” finally gives her the chance to move through every emotion and pull the entire spectrum together into a very human and compelling performance that’s still larger than life enough to stick with us long after the credits role. It’s the absolute perfect venue for Marina to show off everything in her repertoire, and it’s the story she’s been starving for since at least the second season.

And yet “Face of the Enemy” is also a story that could in a sense only have come now. I mean idealistically speaking, as we are wont to do on Vaka Rangi, any reasonably conscious and aware casting director could have seen how bloody excellent Marina Sirtis was just watching the filming of “Encounter at Farpoint” and given her a pair of showcase venues in place of, say, “The Naked Now” and “Code of Honor”. However acknowledging the realistic production history of this particular series (and also, to be fair, the fact saddling Marina with Deanna Troi was always going to be something of a crippling handicap), we needed to get through things like “Clues”, “Power Play” and even “Man of the People” before we could get “Face of the Enemy”: Both Marina Sirtis and the production team needed time to experiment with pushing the boundaries of what Deanna Troi could do as a character before totally breaking them down.

Which brings us to the nut of what’s really brilliant about this episode, which is that as much as it is a cathartic redemption of everything great we’ve always loved about Marina Sirtis and Deanna Troi, it’s also very much the logical follow-up to a specific antecedent. And, perhaps counterintuitively, that’s “A Fistful of Datas”. As we talked about in its respective essay, the big innovation of that story was that it was the first time the show had made an effort to channel Marina’s adaptability as an actor through the character of Deanna Troi herself.…

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What immediately struck me about watching “Aqiuel” in contextual sequence for the first time is that in many ways it’s really a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine script. That’s not to say it was actually pitched to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, it was very much conceived of as a story explicitly for this show. But in many ways it’s a story that would have been a better fit on the other one, namely because it’s a murder mystery and murder mysteries tend to work better in settings that aren’t about voyaging. It makes sense how the Enterprise gets involved in the case here, but from a genre perspective it’s kind of weird to have them in the role of private investigator as they have no permanent investment in the area they’re investigating.

It’s even really easy, even at this early point in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine‘s history, to see how this story would have translated. Imagine Aquiel being one of the Bajoran technical staff, let’s say. Maybe even a nationalist and former resistance member, to play up her allegedly spotty past. The somewhat questionable usage of the Klingons as red herring adversaries being filled instead by the Cardassians, perhaps the crew of a “supply ship” being run in “good faith” in the interest of “joint Cardassian and Federation relations”. There’s Sisko and Kira caught in the middle of a potential diplomatic incident neither of them are prepared to deal with. Former ambassador Dax plays confidant to them both. Picture Julian Bashir in Geordi’s position, taking on the case out of his brash exuberance and desire to make not just a difference, but a grandiose, heroic difference and becoming predictably smitten with his subject. Put Odo in Commander Riker’s place, grudgingly taking Julian on as “deputy”, cautioning him on his overt investment and maybe clashing with him over interpretations of the evidence. Complicated, naturally, by the ultimate revelation that the killer was a shape shifter; itself potential foreshadowing to “Vortex”.

This probably would never have happened because Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had literally just done a murder investigation the week before, even if a bizarre call on the part of a Paramount higher-up sent “Past Prologue” out ahead of “A Man Alone” in spite of the latter episode featuring all of the exposition one would normally expect to see in the first regular episode of a TV show. Although that said, this thought experiment does highlight some important differences between Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: The Next Generation, or at least differences in the assumptions about how the two series operate held by their respective creative teams. Because “Aquiel” is a different sort of murder mystery plot than “A Man Alone” and has a very different reputation. While I feel “A Man Alone” is underrated and understudied, it’s still held up as a solid first step for Deep Space Nine while “Aquiel” holds a standing in mainline fandom opinion just slightly above “Code of Honor”.…

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I doubt it was deliberately planned this way, but “Ship in a Bottle” is the absolute perfect pick for the first Star Trek: The Next Generation episode to go out into a world where Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a material reality. After the chaotic upheaval of “Chain of Command” and the apotheosis of “Emissary”, Star Trek: The Next Generation needed to pitch something that would unequivocally prove it was still in the game: Something that it and only it could not just execute, but execute flawlessly to once more and for good demonstrate to us it’s not going to rest in its laurels, retire and hand the keys over to its wildly successful and popular younger sister.

(The audience figures for “Emissary” were, in case you were wondering, through the roof. There’s no question that in January, 1993 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was the biggest and most popular show on television.)

And “Ship in a Bottle” is precisely that. It follows on from the intense symbolic power of “Emissary” and while it may be a lower-key and smaller-scale manifestation of it, that power is still there. This is a story about the lasting influence of ideas and fictional concepts and even reveals a subtle hint at the nature of reality itself. We’ve finally wrapped up any anxieties we might have had left over from “Time’s Arrow”…and shown how inaccurate the title of that episode really was in the process. And just incidentally, I find it somewhat interesting that immediately following “Emissary” we get a story about a supposedly forgotten person from Captain Picard’s past who holds a bitter grudge against him. However, the narrative never gives Moriarty the high ground here; his grudge against Captain Picard is never shown to be anything other than sadly misguided. Grudges and lingering bitterness are not constructive emotions.

Professor Moriarty is understandably upset at being shoved into cold storage for four years. But it’s not Captain Picard he should be upset with, but the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Although the Sherlock Holmes stories were in the public domain in the US in 1988, they were still under copyright in the UK, and the Doyle estate sent a sternly worded letter to Paramount saying that if they wanted to use the characters and setting again they’d have to ask permission and pay a licensing fee. The letter was more in response to the Young Sherlock Holmes TV series and not “Lonely Among Us” or “Elementary, Dear Data”, but it was enough to spook the Star Trek: The Next Generation production team into not using the consulting detective again until now.

The legal backstory is worth delving into a little further, because it actually runs up against the major themes “Ship in a Bottle” is trying to convey in an interesting way and, in doing so, it reveals where Star Trek: The Next Generation stands at this point in time in terms of a broad culture-scale ethical position.…

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Last time on Star Trek: The Next Generation…

“And that’s an important thing to remember here: Most of the stuff fans like to praise the most about ‘Chain of Command’, namely the truly gruesome and unsettling torture scenes that are justifiably held up as a human rights statement, are from Part 2. Part 1 in hindsight feels much more like a setup, not just to Part 2, but to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Because that’s what this episode is really about, at a metatextual level if not an explicit one.” 

“That’s a historical fact I feel is frequently overlooked: This is the first two-parter in the history of Star Trek: The Next Generation to actually come right out and advertise itself as a two-parter from the very beginning. ‘The Best of Both Worlds’, ‘Redemption’, ‘Unification’ and ‘Time’s Arrow’, the previous stories of this ilk, all hung on their cliffhanger endings: You were meant to watch them for 39 minutes assuming they were going to play out like a normal episode, and then be gobsmacked by a left-field revelation…’Chain of Command’, however, makes it perfectly clear to us from the outset it’s telling a story too big and too epic (and also too expensive, which was the main reason Michael Piller suggested splitting it in half) to be contained in one episode. Given the strategic December airdate, it thus also becomes Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s first proper mid-season finale, which seems like the only fitting way to reify Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”

“Ro Laren’s absence in ‘Chain of Command’ is really, strikingly noticeable and one can’t help but wish they held Michelle Forbes’ annual guest spot over for this story instead of shunting her into the teaser for ‘Rascals’. Especially considering she had already turned down the gig over at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, it would make sense to get her perspective on the Cardassians’ withdrawal from her homeworld…” 

“Because I do suspect that former ROTC man Ron Moore looks at Captain Jellico as someone he probably admires to at least some degree due to his bombastic and unapologetic old-fashioned masculinity. The kind of captain he’d probably like to serve under if he was in the military…And a story that lionizes Edward Jellico cannot hear the voice of someone like Ro Laren because it cannot imagine that voice exists. And this story, and both incoming Star Treks, are the poorer for it.” 

And now, the conclusion…

It’s possible to read “Chain of Command” as a kind of narrative collapse. With Star Trek: Deep Space Nine imminent, and even though it at least should have been plainly obvious by now that both it and Star Trek: The Next Generation were going to exist in tandem rather than conflict with one another (well…at least not *artistically*, but we’ll get to that when we get to it), spinoffs still don’t tend to happen in a TV show’s imperious phase: It’s entirely likely there was lingering anxiety about this, especially considering no-one except insiders had actually *seen* Star Trek: Deep Space Nine yet.…

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The reputation of course precedes it. Not just its own, but that of what it sets into motion. We know what’s coming next. And so did everyone who saw this on initial transmission: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was the show on everyone’s minds that was getting all the industry buzz. The promo spots were already airing on TV, and we’d seen the new crew and the new space station. Anyone who followed science fiction would have known the new show was going to be set near Bajor and feature the Cardassians, so everyone knew what a mid-season finale involving the Cardassians over at Star Trek: The Next Generation *really* meant.

And that’s an important thing to remember here: Most of the stuff fans like to praise the most about “Chain of Command”, namely the truly gruesome and unsettling torture scenes that are justifiably held up as a human rights statement, are from Part 2. Part 1 in hindsight feels much more like a setup, not just to Part 2, but to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Because that’s what this episode is really about, at a metatextual level if not an explicit one. The teaser starts, and right away we get a series of bombshell revelations: Captain Picard is being reassigned, the Enterprise is getting a new captain and the Cardassians are withdrawing from Bajor. We’re given practically no time to process any of this, just like the crew who are given no time to process the transfer of command from Jean-Luc Picard to Edward Jellico. And yet at the same time, we also know that none of this is going to be permanent, because we follow the entertainment rags enough to know Patrick Stewart isn’t leaving the show and also because this episode is literally entitled “Chain of Command, Part I”.

That’s a historical fact I feel is frequently overlooked: This is the first two-parter in the history of Star Trek: The Next Generation to actually come right out and advertise itself as a two-parter from the very beginning. “The Best of Both Worlds”, “Redemption”, “Unification” and “Time’s Arrow”, the previous stories of this ilk, all hung on their cliffhanger endings: You were meant to watch them for 39 minutes assuming they were going to play out like a normal episode, and then be gobsmacked by a left-field revelation: Captain Picard got turned into a Borg. Tasha Yar is still alive, and a Romulan. Spock is back (even though we kind of knew he was coming). Data gets sucked into the past, where we know he’s going to get killed. “Chain of Command”, however, makes it perfectly clear to us from the outset it’s telling a story too big and too epic (and also too expensive, which was the main reason Michael Piller suggested splitting it in half) to be contained in one episode.…

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The immediate problem with “The Quality of Life” is that it’s “Home Soil” again. This is something like the fourth or fifth time Star Trek: The Next Generation has done this brief, and, like clone degeneration or VHS signal decay, each iteration has been a successively less effective version of “Home Soil”.

The secondary problem with “The Quality of Life” is that it’s not “Cost of Living”. Prior to this watch I tended to conflate the two stories (in my defense, those are *criminally* similar titles: Almost as bad as “A Matter of Honor/Perspective/Time”: I’m stunned I never got *those* mixed up). This error on my part actually elevated the two stories considerably in my memory, as I had assumed the Lwaxana/Alexander story of “Cost…” was the A-plot of “Quality…”, with the Exocomp stuff as the B-plot (and also that it was a Season 5 story, which elevated that whole season considerably in my memory). The tertiary problem with all of this is that “Cost of Living” sucks canal water and the Lwaxana/Alexander story would have done nothing but drag this hypothetical episode down: As much of a retread as “The Quality of Life” might be, it’s still solid and watchable, even if it is also mediocre and forgettable.

That’s not to say, however, that I don’t have problems with this episode apart from it being a retread. My biggest issue is its handling of Captain Picard and Commander Riker, the captain in particular: Michael Piller-era Star Trek: The Next Generation has a bad habit of trying to force conflict amongst the Enterprise crew by writing someone, usually one of those two, in ways that seem weirdly and spontaneously out of character to me in order to put them at odds with somebody else in the crew. So we get things like Geordi’s humiliation conga in his solo outings, Riker flipping out at Worf in “Ethics”, Deanna Troi being a codgy stick-in-the-mud in “Cost of Living” and most things involving Captain Picard and artificial intelligence post-“The Measure of a Man”. It seems like whenever the story needs someone to play the role of a stodgy bureaucrat or square oldster who needs to have their worldview shaken up, the team would rather throw out Captain Picard’s established characterization instead of actually being creative.

Both Riker and Picard are off-puttingly out of sorts when it comes to the possibility the Exocomps might be thinking life-forms, Picard especially. I simply cannot buy that they would require an entire episode to become convinced that the Exocomps are alive when they live on a starship inhabited by hyper-evolved androids and sentient holograms. Painfully, “The Quality of Life” even *knows* this and gives us a whole scene where Data has to defend the Exocomps’ right to exist using the same rhetoric Captain Picard did in “The Measure of a Man”, even name-checking that very episode. It feels like it exists solely to try and handwave away this rather glaring affront to characterization continuity, which indeed it does and the creative team have all but admitted as much in subsequent interviews.…

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OK, I like it.

Yes, it is very silly. It amounts to little more than an acritical genre romp done of the most obvious and easy genre the show could have possibly done (and one that happens to be deeply historically problematic to boot), and it’s even *literally* shot on a Hollywood backlot. It’s also transparently an actor showcase episode, the plot serving as little more than an excuse to get Brent Spiner to do every Spaghetti Western cliche in existence. But the thing is, this is exactly the kind of story the holodeck exists to do, and I’m *way* more OK with this sort of thing here than I am in something like “Qpid”. For one thing, it doesn’t have Q in it and isn’t aiming to do anything more serious than “Western movie riff where Worf plays the sheriff everything is Data because of some reasons”. And I can respect that.

Of course, “A Fistful of Datas” isn’t just a genre romp. It’s also an actor showcase, and one of the best in the series. It’s obviously one for Brent Spiner, so obviously in fact it’s not worth commenting on except, perhaps to say that his take on Annie would probably not play as well today as it did in 1992. Although to the episode’s credit, I got more of a Monty Python vibe from it where the point of the scene is a drag quotation of stereotypical feminine tropes and signifiers. Data is essentially a recursive performer, after all: He’s Brent Spiner doing an impersonation of an android doing an impersonation of what he thinks humanoids are like. So I think you could actually redeem that scene rather strongly by writing it back into the pre-existing notions of performance and artifice that are part of Data’s character, the holodeck’s relationship to narrative and Star Trek: The Next Generation on the whole. But as predictably outstanding as Brent Spiner is, this is an equally good outing for Michael Dorn and Marina Sirtis, and that’s easy to overlook.

(And not to be outdone, Brian Bonsall is really pretty excellent too with the material he has, and he’s just about everything the child actors in “Rascals” weren’t. As frequently poorly handled as Alexander is, it’s important to remember Bonsall is a good actor in his own right, so he deserves the same redemptive treatment we afforded Wil Wheaton.)

But for me the stars of the show tonight are Dorn and Sirtis. Not only is this the best Worf/Alexander story on television to date, it’s also the best Worf/Deanna Troi one because it plays so well to the actors’ strengths. Dorn is visibly having a blast under Worf’s awkward facade, and Sirtis finally gets to stretch her legs with Deanna Troi *as a character*. This is the first time we’ve gotten to see *Deanna* as mercurial and adaptable as *Marina* is, and she understandably knocks it out of the park. To me this is best exemplified by Durango’s accent, which isn’t Marina Sirtis doing a fakey Western accent and persona (which she could have very easily done and would have been perfectly understandable), but Marina Sirtis doing Deanna Troi (with Deanna Troi’s own inflections, mannerisms and distinctive accent) doing a fakey Western accent and persona, which is a damn laudable bit of acting if I’ve ever seen one.…

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