As is is befitting a show contemplating loss and nostalgic regret, “Remember Me” plays quite knowingly and powerfully over our own memories of that which we have left behind. In our case, memories of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s first season: A year that, while comparatively speaking not all that distant from us all things considered, given recent events feels like a whole lifetime away.

Most obviously, of course, this manifests in The Traveller returning to play a pivotal role in the episode’s resolution, bringing with him all the provocative concepts of thought-form magick, reminding us there was once a time when Star Trek: The Next Generation would not be so quick to run away from such things. But it’s not just “Where No One Has Gone Before” that is invoked, but also “11001001”, though the re-use of most of that episode’s iconic effects shots, most notably the Enterprise approaching and mooring inside Spacedock. It’s bittersweet that these, two of the most vividly iconic, haunting and defining visual landscapes of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s inaugural year, would be the ones to be revisited now. I already feel a pang of nostalgic sadness and yearning for the feelings I associate with those images, even though the part of me that recently wrote a whole book on the historical era they’re from remembers how even then the show had its slew of bungled opportunities and bad decisions. And even though I know what’s just around the corner.

“Remember Me”’s central themes about people and memories tending to fade with age if we’re not careful and letting people know you appreciate them while you have the chance are fairly obvious. Textually overt, even, what with the fact the whole warp dimension was conjured up out of Beverly’s thoughts as she was going through those particular emotions, as multiple characters take care to point out for us. And yet there’s real synchromystic power and resonance in doing this story now, at ground zero in the aftermath of the Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s traumatic exorcism of its past self. You may think it odd that a show currently in the process of trying to essentially reboot itself would suddenly become so backwards-thinking, what with how much “Remember Me” seems to be desperately trying to grasp at the spectre of the dearly-departed first season. But I actually think it’s entirely to be expected, and welcomed, for that matter: The strength of memory is what it can remind us about our own past lives, both positive and negative. Ideally, we should want to learn not to repeat the mistakes of our past while trying to reconnect with things we might have known back then, but have since forgotten.

Put that way, “Remember Me” is also a re-evaluation of “The Battle”, and maybe even “The Neutral Zone”: The past cannot truly remain the past, because it is always with us guiding our actions in the ever-unfolding present.…

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Previously on The Brent Spiner Show…

Well, that’s the obvious reading, is it not? “Brothers” is the limit case for Brent Spiner’s incredible versatility as an actor, playing three completely different characters all of whom interact with each other during the same scenes. And there’s no two ways around it, Spiner is simply masterful, effortlessly shifting between Data, Lore and the surprisingly alive (temporarily) Doctor Noonian Soong. It’s the latter of those roles that’s worth speaking the most of here, as it provides the first genuine challenge Star Trek: The Next Generation has thrown at Spiner since he joined the show. It’s not that Spiner’s talents were ever not self-evident: He’s great as Data, obviously, and the way he works his penchant for impersonations into the android’s inherent mutability and impressionable nature is a stroke of genius. And his love of playing unreconstructed psychopaths is on record, as is his profoundly chilling skill at it: That’s pretty much who Lore is here again, and there’s another episode coming up next year that gives Spiner even more room to play in this regard.

But it’s the brilliant, eccentric and aged Doctor Soong that’s of the most interest, because it’s a role manifestly different from the sort of thing Spiner’s played on Star Trek: The Next Generation to date. In fact, Spiner even says he was uncertain how to play the part until he saw himself in the old age makeup, and then it immediately came to him. So, he credits the character of Doctor Soong as much to Michael Westmore as to himself, if not more so, a touching reminder of how much of television is really a group effort. And let’s not forget, of course, the herculean efforts the camera crew and director Rob Bowman had to go through to get Brent Spiner to appear on camera in three different places at once. And Spiner’s performance itself is predictably wonderful: We definitely get the sense that this is a person who’s possessed of great confidence and ambition who, while old age has caught up with him and slowed him down, is as sharp and wry as ever. It’s instantly memorable and one of Spiner’s most iconic performances, really removing whatever upper limit might have been arbitrarily placed on his acting range.

I’ll talk a little bit about Lore as well, because it’s really this episode that sets in motion all the cool stuff the show does with his character from here on out that I particularly like. It’s also the episode that sort of codifies the version of Lore’s personality that sticks and that I associate most with him (not to mention a good deal of Data’s subsequent character arc, particularly in terms of his relationship to Soong). Lore’s not merely a generic evil twin or a violent, thuggish backstabber as Gene Roddenberry wrote him in “Datalore” this time. Here, he’s a clearly twisted and genuinely wicked character who manages to be truly chilling, singing random stanzas from old folk songs, perhaps befitting his name (the song is the frequently-quoted, and just as frequently misquoted, “Abdul Abuldul Amir”.…

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The fourth season sees the comparatively swift assembly of the team that will be the primary creative figures in Star Trek for the next four years, and in a few cases, even longer. Michael Piller, Ronald D. Moore and René Echevarria are the only survivors from the chaos of the third season, with Rick Berman maintaining the day-to-day duties he’s had since the show began, as essentially an intermediary between the writing staff and Paramount Corporate. Brannon Braga is the first new addition, coming on as a staff intern over the summer. Later in the year they’ll be joined by Naren Shankar, whose work we’ll be seeing more of when we get to season five and beyond.

The biggest and most important new face of the year, however, we get to meet now. Jeri Taylor, who will go on to be co-executive producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation and co-creator of Star Trek Voyager, joins the team with this episode at the recommendation of outgoing producer Lee Sheldon (the Michael Wagner of the fourth season). Taylor herself freely admits she knew absolutely nothing about Star Trek before she was asked to come in and clean up “Suddenly Human”, though she was a veteran of television drama and, between this episode and her first proper submission she went back and watched basically every bit of filmed Star Trek ever produced to prepare herself for the gig. Perhaps as a result, “Suddenly Human” feels conceptually a bit like a a brand-new show trying to find its footing and to parse out what works and what doesn’t. It’s elevated, of course, by the by-now seasoned cast and crew who throw together a thoroughly solid and competent outing, albeit one that’s also somewhat middling and unremarkable.

The uncertain nature of “Suddenly Human” manifests most clearly when you try and piece out what sort of story it actually is. How do you choose to read it? Is this a Captain Picard story about forcing him to come to terms with his dislike of children so that he can adopt the role of a father figure? This is the reading that seems to stem most directly from the show’s new post-“Best of Both Worlds”, post-“Family” mandate for “inner conflict”. And this is also, it should be stated, a manifestly different sort of conflict then the show has been playing with in the recent past, although it’s still one that’s very much complimentary. When, for example, Ron Moore and Ira Steven Behr like to lather on the conflict, they tend to prefer making people argue and fight one another, or putting them in situations that call their judgment into question, thus making characters we thought we knew seem dangerous and unpredictable. It’s a very proto-90s grimdark approach to conflict, which makes sense given Ira Behr will go on to become one of the pre-eminent architects of 90s grimdark on television.

What we seem to be more interested in now, however, at least for the moment, is forcing characters to confront their inner demons, preferably over and over again for our amusement because actually having them heal and move beyond them isn’t good drama apparently.…

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