I never liked “Hollow Pursuits”. I still don’t. Make of that what you will.

I would seem to be in the minority, as I am with literally everything else in my life, up to and including Star Trek. Apparently, a whole lot of people relate to Reginald Barclay on a very profound level, some even going so far as to claim he is the *only* relatable character in the entire Star Trek: The Next Generation cast. Now, I like Barclay too, even though I manifestly do *not* share the same connection with him that so many others have: He’s an interesting character and obviously Dwight Schultz is massively talented, no argument there, but, knowing as I do what a sizable subset of Star Trek fandom looks like, I have to wonder about precisely what so many people see in Barclay, what that says about Trekker culture and whether or not that’s even a reading “Hollow Pursuits” can support. And furthermore, there are some structural and creative quibbles I have with this episode that give me pause as to whether it’s actually sending the proper message it ought to be sending in the context of the situation it’s trying to examine.

The thing about Barclay is that, thanks to his awkwardness and sense of isolation (emotions that are not by themselves shameful or problematic, it should be noted) it’s altogether too easy to read him as a more sympathetic and nuanced portrayal of Nerd Culture than what Wesley Crusher affords: He’s an engineer, he suffers from crippling social anxiety such that his only recourse is to escape into a world of make-believe and is constantly and unfairly bullied and alienated by his peers, peers who are even described by Paula Block and Terry J. Erdmann in their writeup of this episode as “the cool crowd”. Indeed, they even go so far as to say

“Rather than mixing with the cheerleaders and the football stars at hot weekend dance clubs, those kids are more likely to spend their time at home reading a little sci-fi, or playing games online, or attending a Star Trek convention. 

Barclay’s a nerd who’s good at solving engineering puzzles, but not at making conversation. he works in a world where sci-fi is reality, online games are life and death and conventions-like baseball-are a thing of the past. So he finds something even better. He finds the holodeck.”

And I’m sorry, but no. No, no, no. This is wrong. So very wrong, and on so many different levels. First of all, it should be stressed, that this was absolutely not the intent of anyone in the creative team. Director Cliff Bole makes it perfectly clear that this episode was not meant to be about Star Trek fans, he would have heard about it if it had and he certainly didn’t see the episode that way himself.…

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Every so often, the fans get it right.

If you think “Samaritan Snare” is completely indefensible and irredeemable in every other respect, you must at least acknowledge that it was responsible for bringing one good thing into the world: That would be “Tin Man”. Writers Lisa Putnam White, David Bischoff and Dennis Russell Bailey were so famously fumed up over the former episode, ambitiously calling it the single worst piece of Star Trek ever filmed that they decided, as all Trekkers are wont to, that they could write Star Trek better than the professionals and set about sending in a submission to Star Trek: The Next Generation with the express intent of showing them how to write their own show. Bailey, Bischoff and White were no rank amateurs, though: They were a team of published literary science fiction writers who had together penned a Nebula Award nominated short story called “Tin Woodman” in the December, 1976 issue of Amazing Stories that was later adapted into a novel and, as it so happens, this episode.

Ironically enough, as much as the trio were convinced they were better than Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s creative team, they would never have gotten their story onscreen without them. Without Michael Piller’s open submission policy, this script never would have seen the light of day, doomed to live out the rest of eternity with all the other unsolicited spec scripts. One is forced to imagine that particular meeting going down a bit awkwardly, since not only was Piller giving them the opportunity to get their script filmed, he was also shouldering the threesome’s ire for the alleged sins of his predecessor Maurice Hurley. But, if René Echevarria could swallow his pride enough to become a beloved and respected member of the team, so could Bailey, Bischoff and White. And, annoyingly, it turns out they were right: They really could turn out a better story than the creative team, because “Tin Man” is nothing short of an absolute triumph. This is the first production since “The Bonding” where it’s demonstrably clear that Star Trek: The Next Generation is unquestionably firing on all cylinders.

It even got Michael Piller himself to sit up and take notice. We know as a general rule Piller shied away from scripts that place too much focus on guest stars and guest characters, believing, largely correctly I feel, that stories needed to be about the regulars in some capacity. And while “Tin Man” certainly doesn’t shove the regulars to the sidelines as everyone is actively involved in the plot and has some not-insignificant stake in what’s going on, the actual “story” as it were can only be read to be about Tam Elbrun and his journey. Although Piller obviously had a hand in rewriting and editing “Tin Man” just as he did with pretty much every story he was on staff for, it’s quite telling, and a testament to the quality of the original submission, that he let that go through and didn’t demand a comprehensive reconceptualization of the story’s whole thematic focus the way he did for “The Offspring”.…

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Pictured: Not Captain Picard.

With the show’s newfound brief to focus on character interiority, we’ve seen the creative team work hard to come up with a specific conception of who exactly these characters are. Now, it’s more than possible to argue that our main cast already had characterization, it was just characterization that was different then what this team eventually decided on and made canon (indeed, I think that’s precisely what happened), but regardless, the fact is the third season has had a series of episodes dedicated to nailing down a new set of personality traits for the Enterprise crew: We had “Evolution” for Wesley, “Booby Trap” for Geordi, “The Enemy” and “Sins of the Father” for Worf, “The High Ground” for Doctor Crusher, “The Ensigns of Command”, “The Defector” and “The Offspring” for Data, “The Vengeance Factor” and, uh, “A Matter of Perspective” for Commander Riker and, um, “The Price” for Deanna Troi.

Yeah, that doesn’t look so hot all laid out on paper now, does it?

The thing about this is that while this season in general and these episodes in particular get credit for “fleshing out” previously vague characters, I happen to think all that happened is that people like Ron Moore and Ira Behr got to completely reconceptualize the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation and they just happened to get lucky that theirs were the interpretations that wound up taking. Either way, perhaps surprisingly, the one character this team has had a particularly hard time nailing down has been Captain Picard. He’s been written particularly changeably this season, and upsettingly so as there seems to have been a trend to depict him as very tight-laced, stringent, stodgy and reactionary (I’m thinking particularly of “The High Ground” and “The Offspring” here, though he has had good moments in stories like “The Defector” and “The Hunted”).

To me, this is writing him horribly out of character. The Captain Picard I know, the one derived from the best moments of the first two seasons, is a boldly progressive and highly principled explorer infatuated with travel and the universe. He’s a romantic at heart, yet someone who is also in possession of a fierce moral code and still a bit socially awkward in places. Even so, Captain Picard should be the first person to stand up against the banal evil of the Federation and to remind humanity that its place is amongst the stars. He embodies all of the ideals the Federation lies to itself by claiming as its own. The Picard of “The High Ground” and “The Offspring” cannot possibly be the same person who stood firm against Federation neo-imperialism in “Too Short a Season” and “Conspiracy”, who made regular trips to the Holodeck to play games with his friends and who went to the hilt for Data in “The Measure of a Man”. He’s not even the same person who chatted with the crew about ships in bottles in “Booby Trap”, directed Henry V or took up painting.…

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What “The Enemy” was for the Romulans, “Sins of the Father” is for the Klingons.

This episode is frequently held up as an important turning point for the series and rightly so, as it defines a lot about what Star Trek: The Next Generation (and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine too, for that matter) is going to look like going forward. But “Sins of the Father” is also the kind of episode that’s exceedingly difficult for me to write about as it’s been extensively analysed and historicized by just about every major publication to cover the franchise. This is the kind of episode I hate because it leaves me with perishingly little new erudition to add to the glut of discourse that already exists. Yes, yes, this episode sets in stone pretty much everything we think of when we think of Worf and the Klingons, yes it’s a strong character piece and yes it’s a major step in the development of more explicit serialization in episodic Star Trek. Yes, the award-winning set design and matte paintings are all gobsmackingly good. And yes, it sets up “Redemption”, about which I have a lot to say, but I’ll save for the fifth season. That’s all true to be sure, but it’s also blindingly and bluntly obvious to the point I don’t even think it’s really worth taking the time to talk about.

But then what is there left to say about an episode like “Sins of the Father”? I could be my usual grouchy self and dispel some myths about the backstage stuff: This episode is frequently touted as being the moment where real characterization, serialization and world building was introduced to Star Trek: The Next Generation. Which would be true except for the minor fact it does none of those things. Maybe it’s just me and my judgment is clouded by over 25 years of familiarity with this show, but I haven’t had a hard time piecing down who people like Captain Picard, Commander Riker, Geordi or Data (or, much as I hate him, Wesley) are so far. The only characters who did seem to lack a bit of detail were Doctor Crusher (who got better) and Tasha Yar (who isn’t around anymore to complain and thus doesn’t matter anyway). So then the argument goes this is the first time a so-called “second tier” character like Worf got a large-scale story arc all to themselves, which would be a fine argument if you chose to conveniently ignore “Heart of Glory” and “The Emissary”. Yes, those particular story threads weren’t ever fully developed on after those episodes, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have been had the creative teams that worked on them stuck around for longer than one season apiece.

Then there’s the argument that “Sins of the Father” was the first episode to introduce serialized, arc-based storytelling to Star Trek and that this was manifestly a Good Idea.…

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