ST: TNG - Suddenly Family Redemption

In an effort to relive my early teens, I am re-watching old episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It is both better and worse than I remembered it, as was my youth most likely.
_____________________________________

Seriesdate: 4.02
Family

The Borgified Picard season 3-4 cliffhanger was successful enough for producers to milk it with a third installment. In a truly inspired move, they didn't just pile on more cyborgs but followed up with Picard's psychological trauma and recovery via shore leave Earthside at his brother's vineyard. The elder Picard luvs him sum traditional life and resents Jean-Luc for exploring strange new whatevers. Cue the somewhat trite sibling rivalry subplot plus Jean-Luc's crisis of confidence. Turns out getting mindraped by a machine collective doesn't get cured by a TV-style episodic reset.

"They took everything I was. They used me to kill and to destroy and I couldn't stop them."

Aside from Stewart's customarily excellent performance, this whole thing was pretty much carried by the supporting cast. The plot almost nonexistent, almost a recap, the dialogues weighing on the overwrought side, left a lot of slack to be picked up by the actors. Otherwise the lack of stars or trekking could easily have rendered this as irrelevant as a holodeck episode. And pick it up they did. Picard's brother and his wife avoid the temptation of acting like rednecks, and Worf's parents manage not to exaggerate their comic relief roles in the B-plot. Only the C-plot about Wesley's message from his father drags a bit. Freakin' Wesley...

Heartrending string score aside, noteworthy for establishing not only the persistence of the Borg crisis but, through Guinan's dialogue with Worf's parents, hinting at the ongoing nature of Worf's Klingon entanglements.

__________________________________________________

Seriesdate: 4.04
Suddenly Human

The enterprise rescues a blindingly blond boy from a ship which was supposed to contain only "Talarians" - which, in case you're wondering, are a warrior race obsessed with family honor, endowed with forehead ridges and sporting vaguely tribal armor, but which are, and I cannot stress this enough:

- totally not Klingons!

Got that? This is an entirely new alien race intellectual property with its own completely unique personality. Accept no substitutions! So in addition to spending fifteen minutes establishing details which could've been summed up as "yes, they're just like Klingons" we find out the human boy was adopted by the warlike Talarians when they invaded his parents' space station... which is of course totally NOT Worf's origin story with the polarities reversed! Not at all. This one's blond. Totally unique character here, no similarities whatsoever. Move on!

Now, this whole ludicrous setup might've been salvaged if the writers had the balls to just own it, and play off Worf's similar experiences to allow the two warrior culture changelings to bond and compare notes. Instead, the kid's handed off to... Picard, to try to convince him of his humanity and rescue him away from the aliens. All while awkwardly interjecting public service announcements about Stockholm syndrome and abusive relationships.

Oy vey.
And ok, the ending's actually pretty decent, bringing the youth's personal choice to the forefront, but it can't compensate for 40/45 minutes of redundancy, loose ends, confusion, tedium and eye-rolling. Throughout the series, writers kept trying to shoehorn Picard into a paternal role, presumably to allow the audience to both relate and condescend to him as a stereotypical sitcom bumbling dad. The original setup had him stepping into the Crusher family in loco parentis. By the start of season 4, Wil Wheaton's departure would already have been in the works and various other relationships of Picard with a teenage son were being beta-tested... with consistently corny, non-sequitur results.

___________________________________________________

 
Seriesdates: 4.26-5.01

Redemption

I'll admit this episode made little impression on me when I was ten, but through older eyes its more complex storytelling qualifies it as one of the best-orchestrated of the show's run. TNG started with the mindset of typical TV serial fare, which is to say episodic goofiness with little to no progression. The first few seasons were iterated largely on that note. Hints of continuity started cropping up in season 3 though, and season 4 began pulling together actual storylines. Trying (and largely succeeding) to duplicate their season 3-4 Borg cliffhanger, the crew set up another effects-rich two-parter between seasons 4-5, this time focusing on the Klingons as seen through the eyes of Worf and his brother, Kurn. Yes, the guy from Sins of the Father which itself featured a continuity link to the first season.

To tie this all up in the audience's consciousness, the first half rattles off information like an overclocked android.
By minute 2:35 they'd breathlessly exposited the Klingon political situation and set up this episode's overt antagonists.
20 minutes in, the new character roster already swells to rival the number of TNG's core cast.
By minute 35 the plot had already twisted four or five times over.
The cliffhanger ending slaps Denise Crosby's (Tasha Yar's) face on the middle of a civil war, and the second, more action-packed half follows through with that as a rather convoluted and unexpected (but welcome) outburst of continuity in its own right. Tasha's post-mortem effect on the show's a topic for another day, but the Klingon A-plot itself is worth noting for its various shades of intrigue.

This, children, is called "seduction"... by some definitions. By others, it may be termed phrenology. I don't know. I'm not an expert. (Seriously, was Stewart struggling not to laugh in or out of character?)

The civil war story arc was compounded by Worf borderline selling his loyalty in return for reinstatement of his family name, a development foreshadowed from the start of the season in Family. In itself this could've made for a satisfactory two-part story. It could've just as easily been written as a pitched battle between Klingon forces. Tossing Romulan gun-runners into the mix would've polled well in the years following the Iran-Contra affair, when proxy wars were on everyone's mind. More importantly, it expanded upon TNG's more mature political setting as opposed to the original series' simplistic Buck Rogers routine. As does Picard lecturing Worf on Federation non-interference:

"You are using your position as a Starfleet officer to effect political change in your planet. There could not be a worse compromise of our fundamental principles. [...] We walk the same tightrope between two worlds, you and I. We must try our very best to keep those worlds separate... or we shall certainly fall."

_____________________________________________________

As arguably the most plot-driven genre, Science Fiction has less use for family dynamics. When handled mercilessly and integrated into the larger plot they can be quite memorable (e.g. Dune) but much more of the best SF (Red Mars, The Dispossessed, etc.) has instead purposely invoked the dissolution of such innate simian tribal loyalties, and the social effects thus incurred. As an '80s-'90s TV show, TNG was not positioned to make such leaps, so its characters' traditionalist family values more often than not had a negative impact on plot quality. They were especially heinous when presented as standalone plots in themselves, as in Suddenly Human with its almost aggressive redundancy and irrelevance to the rest of the show.

Relatives could, however, be useful in facilitating meta-commentary on other plots' progress, as in Family. They also served as anchors for sparse continuity from year to year. When Tony Todd a.k.a. Kurn stepped onto the scene, you knew you'd be in for some roaring Klingon drama. The brothers' relationship also allowed TNG's creators to play with the various forms of authority in Klingon society, as Guinan somewhat obtusely points out to Worf before he leaves the Enterprise. In scenes regarding family honor, Worf the elder brother pulls rank on Kurn. In ship combat he defers to Kurn, who outranks him, an admirably smooth shift with none of the time-wasting flamboyance of Data's scenes fighting anti-android prejudice while temporarily commanding a ship blockading the Romulans.

So long as they are not belabored, the presumptions of family ties can also make for quick, incisive characterization and pathos, as exemplified by Sela's tale of betraying her mother Tasha... but, once again, a topic for another day.