Hollow Pursuits by: Sally Caves and directed by: Cliff Bole

 

“Hollow Pursuits” is written by: Sally Caves and is directed by: Cliff Bole.  It was produced under production code 169, was the 21^st episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 69^th episode overall, and was broadcast on April 30, 1990.

 

“Hollow Pursuits” really should have been titled “Holo-Pursuits” as this is an episode exploring what happens when a crewmember becomes addicted to the fantasies of the holodeck and the consequences therein.  This is a very odd episode in many ways since it’s actually a look at a character with mental health issues, and in exploring mental health issues the episode is actually attempting sympathy towards Barclay, played by Dwight Schultz, an officer who clearly is suffering from some form of anxiety disorder.  He clearly has the knowledge to be a competent crewman and engineer, but struggles with interpersonal communication which in turn leads to harboring resentment towards his colleagues.  The episode does a fairly competent job at positioning Barclay as wrong for falling into the fantasy of the holodeck, there are several sequences where he places his colleagues in roles of villains for him to defeat as well as the rest of the crew regularly giving him the nickname Broccoli.  This is a nickname started by Wesley Crusher, something he is told to stop doing but it spreads even up to Captain Picard who uses it right to Barclay.  Picard is treated as in the wrong for this, it is portrayed as an incredibly awkward faux pas, though Picard doesn’t actually face any consequences.  Schultz’s performance is doing much of the legwork for the episode, because there are some major issues with Sally Caves’ script.  Schultz plays the role very much as well meaning but unable to communicate and it has caused him to become self-isolating.  That self-isolation becomes resentful and clearly wants the respect from his coworkers, but it’s more than that.

 

Barclay as a character is also a man in a television show written in 1990.  As a character, he is explicitly a misogynist: his fantasies specifically prop up his own sense of masculinity as either a strong man or swashbuckling hero while Troi and Crusher are presented as the only women in the fantasies.  Crusher is portrayed in Barclay’s fantasy as a mothering figure specifically to him while Troi is reduced to a sex object.  Now Troi as a sex object is something that Star Trek: The Next Generation struggles with, but here this is an episode that is actually aware that she is being reduced to this.  Troi as ship’s counselor is given material to be sympathetic towards Barclay, until his instability confronts her with her holodeck double which the tells to “muzzle it” with the comments about being a goddess of empathy.  It’s intentionally creepy, Barclay is implied to have rejected Troi’s counselor services when he desperately needs them.  The rest of the regular cast is largely written out of character.  Some of this is possibly down to the perspective of the episode clearly meant to be Barclay’s so the viewer may be seeing them through their eyes, but there are moments where Riker in particular is quite cruel.  He does not get much focus, but throughout there is just this lack of empathy and care that Picard has to call out at points which are off.  Again some of this is also clearly because Barclay is written to be in several ways morally repugnant, the episode proposing it is partially a result of his self-isolation, but the script also does have moments where Barclay is just treated terribly.  Wesley Crusher is responsible for most of them: there is the rather unflattering nickname but also a moment where Wesley just does not let Barclay even get a word in when he is reporting on the engineering issues plaguing the Enterprise.

 

Though the episode is focused on Barclay what helps “Hollow Pursuits” work is that unlike episodes which focus on one-off characters, this is equally an episode about Geordi La Forge having to be Barclay’s superior officer.  Geordi’s plot, the emotional B-plot of the episode because while the conflict is several mini-misadventures that link in the end to a leaking biological sample, the episode really is interested in examining Geordi’s command.  LeVar Burton actually gets his best material of this season (so far) in this episode, playing Geordi as the most understanding of the regular cast behind Picard.  He takes advice from his commanding officers (and Guinan in a particularly great little character moment) to put his dislike and frustrations towards Barclay aside to understand the man and help him work through his issues.  This does have the underlying message involving someone’s personal issues to be other people’s problems, especially when those problems are these biases and bigotries underneath are being placed on the one prominent black member of the crew, but then again this is a show made in 1990 by a mostly white production staff.  Caves’ script is interesting in that it does not at any point really invalidate Geordi’s feelings towards Barclay, even when the climax in the holodeck happens the episode portrays the crew as correct for being disturbed by the fantasy even if they are attempting understanding towards Barclay in equal measure.

 

Overall, “Hollow Pursuits” from the perspective of someone watching over 35 years later actually does play quite well in terms of mental health advocacy.  The biggest stumbles are in a script that mischaracterizes the regulars even with the argument that we are not in the typical perspective during the episode.  Barclay is an interesting character that is played well despite the character lacking much of the charm of a typical character.  Were it made today the nuance would be brought a little more to the forefront while the direction from Cliff Bole would also be more than the serviceable visuals we have.  The discomfort feels intentional at points even if there are some big blunders in portraying that discomfort, though the material for Geordi La Forge is particularly great.  7/10.

Claws of the Klathi! by: Mike Collins with art by: Kev Hopgood and Dave Hine and letters by: Zed

 

“Claws of the Klathi!” is written by: Mike Collins with art by: Kev Hopgood and Dave Hine, and lettering by: Zed (a pseudonym for Richard Starkings).  It was released in Doctor Who Magazine issues 136-138 (April-June 1988) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: A Cold Day in Hell! by Panini Books.

 

The claws of the title “Claws of the Klathi!” are not literal, they’re not even metaphorical, it’s just to sound evocative.  Sounding evocative is perhaps the best analysis of Mike Collins’ second Doctor Who Magazine strip.  This entire story has some fairly intriguing big picture ideas: aliens at a freakshow during the Great Exhibition, giant robots committing murders at the docks, and a group of scientists who meet during the full moon to discuss experiments.  Any one of these ideas could very much take up the premise of an issue of the Doctor Who Magazine strip at this time and actually give the readers the first good Seventh Doctor strip.  Even with Collins being given three issues of the magazine to tell the story you could do these ideas justice, but in execution there really isn’t anything deeper than the initial idea.  The plot itself ends up being something not so much standard for Doctor Who: aliens have been captured by Victorians and are trying to escape with the twist that the two Klathi are actually evil.  That twist is where everything becomes surface level analysis, Collins is uninterested in examining the nature of the freak show and its place in Victorian society.  It just isn’t there.  The Victorian setting reads more like Collins having an idea for a backdrop because of the freak show idea, it’s integral to the story but doesn’t actually contribute to the plot.  The freak show is just a reason to have some violence done on our sympathetic alien, which should give the story at least a little bite but every other character including the Doctor barely reacts to it.  Even at the conclusion when the Klathi Danq and Yula are defeated it just reads as something that has happened with no emotional stake.

 

The characterization of the Doctor, despite being written after Sylvester McCoy has had a season air in the role, is weak.  This is not a Terrance Dicks style generic version of the Doctor, he is more a cypher who arrives and vaguely wants to help out seeing someone in trouble, but only after being accused of theft for a page or two to add some drama.  If I didn’t know better I would think that Collins started this story for a different Marvel UK strip and converted it into a Doctor Who strip.  It does not help that in this story the pseudo-companion shares more character traits with the Seventh Doctor as characterized in Season 24 than the Doctor here.  Nathaniel Derridge is portrayed as an upper class gentleman and scientist who bumbles around, creating spoonerisms of colloquial phrases and having an eye for justice.  This is something that I have to ascribe to Collins and not artists Kev Hopgood and Dave Hine despite the possibility of the Marvel method being used to write “Claws of the Klathi!”.  It isn’t like Collins hadn’t written for Doctor Who before, his previous effort was “Profits of Doom” which was a great Sixth Doctor strip, so he should have a handle on at least the Doctor’s characterization.  Hopgood and Hine do at least make “Claws of the Klathi!” interesting to read, the art is particularly good and stylized in a way to evoke Victorian illustrations while maintaining the late-1980s house style.

 

Overall, “Claws of the Klathi!” is another poor entry for a period of Doctor Who Magazine comics that seem to lack a solid sense of identity.  It does reflect where the show was at during Season 24 as a period of transition, but unlike the show this is not a story that gives the Doctor any sort of character or assurance that the transition will be going somewhere.  4/10.

Tin Man by: Dennis Putman Bailey and David Bischoff and directed by: Robert Scheerer

 

“Tin Man” is written by: Dennis Putman Bailey (a pseudonym for Dennis Russell Bailey and Lisa Putman White) and David Bischoff and is directed by: Robert Scheerer.  It was produced under production code 168, was the 20^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 68^th episode overall, and was broadcast on April 23, 1990.

 

“Tin Man” should probably be an episode focusing on Deanna Troi but Star Trek: The Next Generation seems to be allergic to giving its female characters real episodes of substance.  The premise of the episode is a different Betazoid who never really adapted to his telepathic abilities arriving on the Enterprise to investigate a massive life form taking the form of a sentient spaceship preparing for a first contact situation.  The tin man is stuck in Romulan claimed space, though explicitly not acknowledged as Romulan space, but the Federation desperately needs this first contact to go well for whatever strategic advantage they could gain in the mounting conflict.  The episode is a character piece about Tam Elbrun, the Betazoid played by Harry Groener, in a way that isn’t going to be to everyone’s tastes.  Elbrun is a character written by Dennis Bailey and David Bischoff (and apparently an uncredited Lisa Putman White which is where Bailey’s middle name in the credits comes from) to be abrasive and impossible to work with.  The episode is very intentional in delving into the hell that would be telepathic abilities that one cannot switch off: Elbrun just cannot stop himself from blurting out what everybody around him is thinking and knowing that he is not liked.  He already has this great sense of guilt around an incident that killed 47 Starfleet personnel, the guilt taking him every day and, on the Enterprise Riker explicitly blaming him for not giving better guidance.  This is a man who has been broken and beaten, he is at the end of his rope and “Tin Man” as an episode serves as a way to give him an out.  The eventual message of the episode is actually quite sympathetic to his plight and gives him a place where he can be without the pains of other people.  The ending is almost beautiful.  Almost.  It doesn’t quite work nearly as well as the episode thinks it does, it feels almost as if the ending just creeps up on the episode.

 

There’s a lot of the episode that does explore Elbrun’s relationships with other people.  While the episode takes very little to focus on Troi, it is made explicit he is a previous patient of hers in her training as a counselor.  Mental health services here are presented in this very mixed light, the fact Elbrun had mental health services is presented as a dramatic twist, but Elbrun is treated at the very least like a person.  Marina Sirtis is clearly grabbing at the material she is given, even if it isn’t the focus on the episode.  The episode is more interested in creating a relationship between Elbrun and Data because Data’s android nature means he cannot be read telepathically.  This is the first person Elbrun doesn’t immediately know everything about and Groener plays it just as this sigh of relief.  Data becomes the only person that Elbrun can connect with because he doesn’t know Data’s internality.  Data has internality, that has been explicit throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation, but because he is not organic those thoughts aren’t there.  “Tin Man” is not a Data episode, though he does take a lot of time between Elbrun and Data as characters.  The episode is also interesting since there really isn’t a B-plot, instead it all being related to Elbrun.  Robert Scheerer is in the director’s chair for this episode and it is quite interesting to see exactly how he sets up so much of this episode to play into the emotions of the characters.  The way he shoots Riker in this episode is of particular note, he’s almost shot as the villain of the episode and certainly there is some antagonism there which feels wrong for the character on paper but in practice Jonathan Frakes plays it correctly.  Riker is emotional throughout the episode and his animosity towards Elbrun isn’t entirely unearned.

 

Overall, “Tin Man” is another example of a good episode but it is an episode that never quite reaches the status as one of the greats.  While the ending is touching and much of the episode works because of an emotionally charged script, it does have this problem of never actually being about our main cast instead being the story of a guest character’s relationship with the crew.  The relationships actually need just a bit more time to be fleshed out because they are all ever so slightly surface level while there isn’t really a B-plot to get satisfaction for characters like Riker, his anger just being an antagonistic force that is not ever brought to catharsis.  It is a good episode, but it’s an episode that could have easily been great with expansion to a two parter, especially considering this was based on a previously published novel.  7/10.

Captain's Holiday by: Ira Steven Behr and directed by: Chip Chalmers

 

“Captain’s Holiday” is written by: Ira Steven Behr and is directed by: Chip Chalmers.  It was produced under production code 167, was the 19^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 67^th episode overall, and was broadcast on April 2, 1990.

 

“Captain’s Holiday” is the definition of a good time.  It’s an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that is slightly fitting to be reviewed while I am away on vacation (I am writing this review before I leave for posting over the weekend).  Ira Steven Behr writes an episode that is utterly ridiculous: Captain Picard being overworked is tricked by his crew, mainly Riker, Troi, and Crusher to get him to go to the pleasure planet of Risa.  This is some of the best character interactions in the episode: from Troi’s tactic of claiming that her mother is going to join the Enterprise on the Starbase for maintenance which just pushes him away, Crusher attempts the indirect approach by proposing a completely different crew member is burnt out and desperately needs a vacation, and Riker just proposes his general charm and the ridiculous thought that Picard might need to have a relationship that is not strictly professional.  Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis in particular play it specifically as if Riker and Troi have been trying to profess their love for one another but Picard being a stick in the mud has come in between their relationship.  It’s genuinely a hilarious moment that’s entirely in the subtext.  The implication that Picard would wish to go to Risa also feels deliberately the wrong vacation for Jean-Luc Picard, he brings far too many books with him to read intent on staying alone by the poolside for the entire trip.  Ira Steven Behr also doesn’t forget that this is a show with an ensemble cast, giving every main cast member in the episode at least one little comedic moment to push Picard into taking a vacation.

 

This is only the first act of the episode, an act that takes up perhaps just a bit too much time to get to the actual point of the episode.  “Captain’s Holiday” is a big tribute to adventure films with treasure hunting, ridiculous time travel, and several beautiful women flirting with Picard because Riker tricks him into buying a souvenir that is basically an upside down pineapple.  Ira Steven Behr’s script is maintaining a tone between the Roger Moore James Bond films and Spielberg’s Indiana Jones trilogy, attempting to connect the time travel shenanigans to Picard’s own personal future.  Jennifer Hetrick plays Vash, our Bond girl though given far more characterization than the typical Bond girl.  Vash is an archeologist’s assistant looking for the Tox Uthat, that is our MacGuffin of the episode, after her mentor had died, though Picard is wrapped up in several lies.  Hetrick and Stewart have fantastic chemistry throughout the episode and Vash is far too much a presence to waste in a single appearance.  Our Bond villain of the episode is Max Grodenchik’s Sovak, welcoming back the Ferengi into Star Trek: The Next Generation in a role that intentionally is leaning heavily into the comedy of the episode.  The joke being that capitalist scruples, the lack of, are eventually a fruitless endeavor.  “Captain’s Holiday” is about fruitless endeavors, Behr concludes the episode by noting that Picard and Vash’s actions were only ensuring a future would come to pass, not altering the timeline in any notable way.

 

“Captain’s Holiday” is in a way all about subversion.  Patrick Stewart may have wanted an episode full of action and adventure, but Jean-Luc Picard as a character still feels ever so slightly out of place in this type of adventure.  The adventure is a pastiche of a very old type of adventure film, something that the original series of Star Trek would actually be more comfortable in.  Yet, the episode works because Picard as a character is so out of place in this genre.  Despite Gene Rodenberry envisioning the character as Horatio Hornblower in space, Horatio Hornblower isn’t actually an American hero while the protagonist of this subgenre of film is explicitly American.  Where the episode actually falls down is honestly the limits of being an episode of television made in 1990.  The effort is being put in by director Chip Chalmers and he is shooting most of the episode well, but the way the action is shot is limited by the resources available and the closer, quieter scenes aren’t quite allowed to be as quiet or intimate as Ira Steven Behr’s script really is allowing for.  There is also the concern that this is just the type of episode certain people will not really connect with because you have to be willing to go into some very silly places for it to work.  The pacing is not quite at the three act structure of a television episode, the first act actually taking up a bit too much time leaving the second and third acts to be slightly truncated.

 

Overall, “Captain’s Holiday” works because of how much fun Patrick Stewart is having getting to play the reluctant Starship Captain out of his element.  There is something magical about the 26 episode season allowing an episode like this to exist, it’s filler focused exclusively on watching one character dragged into a vacation because he has been working too hard.  It would not be made today, and the plot would not allow a self-fulfilling prophecy of time travel with a reluctant hero, but because of where it is placed in the season it is nothing but a good time.  7/10.

Allegiance by: Richard Manning and Hans Beimler and directed by: Winrich Kolbe

 

“Allegiance” is written by: Richard Manning and Hans Beimler and is directed by: Winrich Kolbe.  It was produced under production code 166, was the 18^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 66^th episode overall, and was broadcast on March 26, 1990.

 

With any season of television that has 26 episodes there are going to be episodes that don’t really give you anything.  For Star Trek: The Next Generation that very often is scripts from Richard Manning and Hans Beimler.  Manning and Beimler’s written episodes are all over the place from incredibly strong like “Who Watches The Watchers” and one of the rewrites of “Yesterday’s Enterprise” but they also had their hands in “Shades of Grey”.  “Allegiance” is their final script for the show and it can best be described as unnecessary filler.  Now filler is not a bad thing, for the medium of television: it is necessary.  It’s the chance for the characters to be characters so they can develop outside of whatever overarching plot for those more serialized shows.  “Allegiance” doesn’t actually have anything to say about the characters.  The premise should be gold, Captain Picard is abducted by mysterious aliens and replaced with a doppelganger as the episode wants to build suspicion among the crew until the climax where Riker, Worf, Troi, and Crusher succeed in a mutiny before the real Picard is back.  This is the strongest material in the episode, it is the A-plot after all, but the script itself does not allow for the suspense to build because the pre-credits scene is Picard’s abduction.  This is an episode that should be building that tension about what’s happened to Picard because he is acting strange, but not in any sort of malicious way which is a fascinating examination of what the crew thinks of Picard.  Potentially the episode could have examined how Picard as a person is far too stiff and ordered for his own good, many of the “wrong” things fake Picard does include going on a date with Dr. Crusher and singing a drinking song with the crew.  The singing is explicitly joked about in the closing stinger of the episode as the most ridiculous aspect, but these scenes are of Patrick Stewart getting a chance to have a lot of fun in the role.  There is also a lot of secret keeping that provides the sinister aspect of the episode and the mutiny itself is fantastic, especially how sinister the rest of the cast play it.

 

While the A-plot is fine, flawed because the audience knows that Picard is a doppelganger and we lose tension, but the B-plot is just absolutely nothing.  It is following the abducted Picard with other, alien prisoners who slowly have to unravel the layers of their capture.  There are trials like food that one of the prisoners cannot eat and scenarios where they have to work together, but this is a type of story that at this point feels stock.  It’s a stock story that Manning and Beimler just write almost to fill the runtime so the episode can have something different to cut back to when the A-plot needs a cutaway.  There also really isn’t enough plot because the characters are clearly intelligent enough to realize they are in an experiment as is the big twist of the episode, but that could be fine if the characters are given the time to shine even if like in this episode they are non-recurring characters.  Manning and Beimler provide basic characters for the episode: there’s an alien that’s a warrior, a Starfleet cadet, and a pacifist.  These are all things that are perfectly okay for characters, but they are also skin deep which is a problem.  It all means that this big plotline in the episode is a complete afterthought, something that could be almost entirely cut without losing anything.  “Allegiance” would be better in practically every way if this were excised entirely.

 

Overall, “Allegiance” is one of those episodes that’s just going to be lost in the shuffle of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s third season.  It’s an example of one of those episodes that is by no means bad, it is just an hour of television that exists and is taking stock elements to put on screen to fill time.  Patrick Stewart in a double role is clearly having a good time to cut lose as the doppelganger of Picard and the rest of the regular cast each get a moment to shine but having a B-plot that does not actually do anything of note with the stock plot.  It’s mediocre.  5/10.

Ghost Light by: Marc Platt

 

Ghost Light was written by: Marc Platt, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 156^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

The joke in Doctor Who fandom that isn’t entirely a joke is that Ghost Light is a story that’s too difficult to understand which is one of those little ideas that I don’t actually agree with.  As presented on television, Ghost Light is a serial Marc Platt is putting in full of subtext.  It’s a serial all about stagnation, Victorian society is presented as rigid and impossible to change as a parallel to the alien survey team inhabiting the house of Gabriel Chase insisting on cataloguing all life on Earth as a stationary definition of life.  Ace’s arc is also about change, letting go of her adolescent anger while holding onto that strong sense of justice which can be channeled into helping others (she is responsible for Control realizing her sense of self represented in the Victorian social order as an Eliza Doolittle type).  It’s there in the subtext of the television story, it just doesn’t come right out and explain what the plot is, realizing that the audience paying attention.  What is interesting is that because this is why Ghost Light works so well on television even if it is compressed into 75 minutes, novelizing the story should lessen that subtext because it makes it text.  That is not the case.  Marc Platt’s novelization of Ghost Light should also be hindered by taking the first episode and making it half the book, something that is not a problem because Platt knows exactly what he is doing when it comes to writing a book.  The prose itself does not feel like an adaptation of a script, but an original novel.

 

The key to making Ghost Light work is not reintegrating several of the deleted scenes, although that is something that is done, but it’s just how the character work happens.  If we take the script of everything that was filmed that still does not make up everything in the novelization.  The story is recontextualized from the opening: it opens with Ace burning down Gabriel Chase in the aftermath of the hate crime committed against her friend Manisha.  This in the original story is a twist, but placing it at the beginning creates an immediate sense of foreboding while the reader makes the connection between the opening and the setting of the story.  It adds this idea that the story itself is going to be cyclical, Ace at one point even being frightened that she may be in some sort of paradoxical time loop.  Ghost Light is about Ace at its core and it’s telling that she is the main focus of the novelization.  While Platt uses third person perspective and certainly does additions to different characters, it’s Ace that gets the most.  The Doctor is making this explicitly a test for her own development and she must face her own traumatic past so she can grow, evolve even.

 

The supporting characters are equally fleshed out, the most interesting addition is a brief flashback to the opera where the Reverend Matthews sees in their box Josiah Samuel Smith and Gwendoline, being startled by a phantasmal light and Smith’s insistence on staying in the shadows.  It’s this encounter that prompts Matthews to go to Gabriel Chase in the first place, he could have picked any follower of Darwin and Wallace after all.  Gwendoline is also a character presented in the novelization to somehow be further on the edge, Platt emphasizing how confused she is despite the performance under Smith’s influence.  It makes her initial spiral parallel the spirals of Mrs. Pritchard and Redvers Fenn-Cooper who are equally added.  The relationship between Gwendoline and her mother, like the television story is just in those final moments, but Platt deepens it so much by bringing parenthood as a theme to the forefront.  Light here is also presented as slightly more ethereal, Platt taking advantage of the fact that anything can be achieved in prose and not be limited by the special effects budget of a television show.

 

Overall, Ghost Light surprisingly deserves its title in novelization form.  It does feel like one light left on the stage after Gabriel Chase should have been abandoned long ago.  The satire of both the Victorian period and 1989 Britain (the stagnancy of government is a jab at the rule of Conservatism at the time) feels all the more pointed here while the characters just create the depth because Platt is more interested in writing a novel and not a novelization.  10/10.

Sins of the Father by: Ronald D. Moore and W. Reed Moran from a story by: Drew Deighan and directed by: Les Landau

 

“Sins of the Father” is written by: Ronald D. Moore and W. Reed Moran, from a story by: Drew Deighan and is directed by: Les Landau.  It was produced under production code 165, was the 17^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 65^th episode overall, and was broadcast on March 19, 1990.

 

It’s a miracle that Star Trek: The Next Generation is a series that can do several episodes focusing on the Klingons, their culture, and in the case of “Sins of the Father” their planet and get away with it without a hint of irony.  There is something almost magical about the ability of an episode of television to be able to put objectively silly images on screen, but bring together a cast and have them play it entirely straight.  The premise of “Sins of the Father” is Worf having to fight for the honor of himself, his deceased father who has been charged a traitor, and to his long lost brother Kurn, played by Tony Todd.  It’s also a direct sequel to “A Matter of Honor” directly having Kurn serve on the Enterprise as part of the cultural exchange between the Klingon Empire and the Federation, as Riker did in the previous episode.  The first act structurally of the episode is entirely devoted to that cultural exchange, this time with a lone Klingon not really integrating properly to human culture.  Klingon culture as presented by writers Ronald D. Moore and W. Reed Moran emphasizes that militaristic order and discipline over all else.  Sure there’s the objectively hilarious line about not killing someone at the supper table, but it is this obsessive discipline that causes conflict among the Enterprise crew.  It’s not enough conflict to fill an entire episode, but it is enough to get to the reveal that Kurn is Worf’s brother, done in private because Kurn isn’t implementing the discipline on his brother.  It’s essentially the B-plot of the episode that fully plays out before the rest of the episode making for a far more integrated story.

 

The A-plot is Worf and his own struggle to clear his father’s name, a man he never really knew, with evidence that he does not have nearly enough to actually do.  “Sins of the Father” is an episode that actually becomes a tragedy, mainly because Worf’s task in this episode is impossible.  There is exactly one piece of evidence in the example of a living witness who refuses to testify, revealing a far larger conspiracy that could have sparked a Klingon Civil War.  Moore and Moran leave the episode on this almost empty, dissatisfied note where Worf has made a choice that is best for himself and his brother, one of self-sacrifice and of humanity, one that is dishonorable but enough to save his brother.  This is explicitly framed as a human decision and not a Klingon one, but it is obviously the correct decision to make.  It expels Worf from Klingon society, a society that he never fully belonged to in the first place, and yet the episode ends with a sense that he is not the one turning his back in the slightest.  He still has his pride and his own personal honor, something that Michael Dorn does without saying a word.  Dorn also has impeccable chemistry with Tony Todd as Kurn, not so much of showing any brotherly love but this incredibly deep respect that only brothers can have.  The idea of love between the pair is something that would come had the episode not ended the way that it does, that is part of the tragedy of “Sins of the Father”.  These are brothers in a society that has left them inverse of one another.  Worf’s public face is one of dishonor but is internally is nothing but the peak of honor while Kurn is the inverse, his own conscience of denying his family is clearly a pain on his own honor though Klingon society sees him as a full member of society.  There is also this public power imbalance between Worf and Kurn, Kurn being a commander while Worf a lieutenant, that isn’t actually examined much by this episode.  This is an episode after all that swiftly gets against the chain of command, despite devoting time to having Picard serve in Worf’s defense after Kurn is wounded in a fight.  This is used more to further Picard and Worf’s dynamic of respect between commander and officer, Patrick Stewart and Dorn play it well of course, but it is one of those smaller elements of the episode.

 

The production design of “Sins of the Father” is of note at being the first on-screen appearance of the Klingon homeworld.  This is interpreted through the budget of a television episode, but the matte painting and model exteriors designed by Richard James are exquisite.  The architecture is particularly angular and the lighting design of the episode gives the episode these fascinating alien colors mixing red and green in a way that almost emulates certain uses of the two-strip Technicolor process.  The interior sets are also excellent, even if you can tell that they are a bit smaller in places than the script was expecting.  Les Landau directs the actors around them quite well, the final shots of the episode with Worf being cast out of society are particularly effective because of Landau’s direction.  The episode received an Emmy for Best Art Design which is a particularly notable contribution, but really it is the use of lighting that ties everything back together.  It really does mean the episode is going to stick in the mind of the viewer because the lighting despite a musical score that is just perfectly average.

 

Overall, “Sins of the Father” may be the strongest episode to focus on Worf yet, which is saying a lot because many of his episodes had been the stronger episodes of the first two seasons.  The layers it presents to Klingon culture drive the episode after a first act that tricks the audience that it is going to be a rather straightforward counterpart to “A Matter of Honor”, and the tone becomes far more serious than the relatively light first act.  Some of it cannot be adequately explored in a 45 minute television episode, but the script is tight with Ronald D. Moore once again bringing his stellar character writing while Tony Todd steals the show as Worf’s brother.  8/10.