Reckless Engineering by: Nick Walters

 

The cover of Reckless Engineering is one of the more effective from the BBC Books.  An alteration of an 1857 photograph of Isambard Kingdom Brunel in front of the launching chains of the SS Great Eastern turned askew with head replaced by skull, the imagery evokes death and altered history.  The Eighth Doctor Adventures’ alternate timeline arc is alluded to by the specific edits made to the photograph while indicating an example of a celebrity pseudohistorical.  Nick Walters does eventually include Brunel as a character, though this is largely in the final act, as Reckless Engineering is another alternate present story following The Domino Effect, Time Zero, and to a lesser extent The Infinity Race.  On its surface, it shares a premise with The Domino Effect: the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji arrive on Earth where technological development has been arrested and society plunged into dystopia.  David Bishop puts this around the development of the computer through Sabbath’s intervention while Walters is far less specific, setting Reckless Engineering in a world where the initial alteration was far less violent.  The intervention is seemingly additive, an effort to preserve humanity, implied to be due to the end of The Domino Effect, causes a temporal acceleration.  The population of Earth is forced to age 40 years in the span of a few minutes, causing babies to suddenly become adults, the middle aged to suddenly die, and society to collapse.  Walters presents this in retrospect, setting the novel 150 years from the presumed divergence point.  Technology has not progressed, England has turned to religion for comfort, and there is a segment of humanity regressed to animalistic desires that are often shot sight.

 

Where the first half of Reckless Engineering succeeds is the exploration of setting, Walters paces the chapter breaks whenever a mini cliffhanger seems necessary.  The Doctor, Fitz, and Anji integrate themselves with the society from the perspective of it being an alternate 2003 and not the mid-1800s.  Walters does fall into the trap of bringing up Anji’s race almost as a lampshade while during much of the story pushing her aside as lost in the time vortex when fixing the alternate timeline becomes the focus on the plot, but she is great through the first half of the novel.  This is especially great since the Doctor and Fitz are explicitly paralleled, each taking a strong moral stance as the ‘reckless engineering’ of the title is not of Brunel, his engineering is lauded throughout as making the modern world what it is, but of the Doctor.  The Doctor is determined to correct the timeline as he would in every Doctor Who story with a similar premise.  The question becomes what if this “alternate” timeline is not alternate, that the aberration is what the reader and the Doctor would call the “proper” timeline.  Fitz becomes an advocate for this, even when Anji is thrown into the time vortex, with the evidence being that the alteration was created by an evolved species of human called the Eternine.  The alteration was simply trying to bring them into existence sooner rather than later.  Fitz and the Doctor have one of their biggest rifts in quite a few books over this, Fitz knowing that the Doctor is going to be condemning many of these peoples into unexistence.

 

Walters does falter, Malahyde, the poet possessed by the Eternine Watchlar, is in fact lying and the Eternine come from their own pocket universe.  This revelation does weaken the novel, Walters not sticking to his guns and softening the actions of the Doctor who becomes unraveled when his initial attempts to fix the timeline fail and Fitz begins to integrate into the alternate universe even by bringing Brunel to this future and Anji falling on the TARDIS in the time vortex.  Brunel in the TARDIS is an incredibly charming sequence, there’s something inherently charming of a historical engineer coming to terms with time travel and the Jules Verne aesthetics of the Eighth Doctor’s TARDIS.  Even Malahyde does an interesting switch from passionate poet to possessed villain.  Fitz integrating, however, barely lasts a chapter and these decisions are made in the final third of the novel.  There is too much setup getting there, yet the setup is not bad setup.  Walters’ supporting characters are strong with Aboetta as the point of view character allowing the reader to see the TARDIS team from the outside, often focusing on the Doctor’s blue eyes as visual purity for a deeply disturbed mind, almost creating this ghost of Sabbath hanging over the novel where he does not actually appear.  The Doctor since The Adventuress of Henrietta Street and Camera Obscura has become a darker figure despite his place as the protagonist and in the end as the hero.  His actions are controversial for a reason, and not exploring them more thoroughly is what holds back Reckless Engineering from greatness.

 

Overall, Reckless Engineering despite almost single handedly justifying the alternate universe arc after two particular duds, does fall flat by being limited into the 280-page count of the BBC Books line.  Walters spends almost too much time on setup for a bigger story, falling flat by not being able to explore all the ideas it proposes.  There’s enough here to make it a good novel, the Doctor’s arc being both what works best and leaves something to be desired by giving him a slightly more heroic sense of morality in the end of the book.  The historical aspects of the story do work well, but despite the cover they are actually in the background for much of the novel and it helps that Walters is doing something different with the alternate history idea here.  It helps get the series out of a mediocre spell of Eighth Doctor Adventures.  7/10.

Future Imperfect by: J. Larry Carroll and David Bennett Carren and directed by: Les Landau

 

“Future Imperfect” is written by: J. Larry Carroll and David Bennett Carren and is directed by: Les Landau.  It was produced under production code 182, was the 8^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 82^nd episode overall, and was broadcast on November 12, 1990.

 

“Future Imperfect” nestles two twists inside itself, with the second recontextualizing the episode into meaning far less than without it.  The premise of “Future Imperfect” puts Riker in a dreamscape of his potential future where he has everything he wanted: command of the Enterprise and a happy if slightly bittersweet marriage with son he could not be more proud of despite his tumultuous relationship with his own father.  He does not remember the events leading up to his command of the Enterprise, the episode opening with a transporter accident “infecting” Riker with an alien retrovirus that rewrites his memory.  The setup is a riff on what TV Tropes calls the Lotus Eater Machine: it’s a fantasy to trick Riker into complacency and a life that he would be happy in even if it was unchallenged. The Federation is actively in peace talks with the Romulan, Admiral Jean-Luc Picard overseeing for the Federation and Tomalak from “The Enemy” and “The Defector” for the Romulans.  Jonathan Frakes plays Riker as never quite complacent and seeing through the cracks of the fantasy scenario as the Romulan presence makes him uncomfortable and the awkwardness of being a father to a son he cannot remember is fascinating.  Frakes playing against Chris Demetral as his son Jean-Luc are the best scenes of the episode and Demetral has enough screen presence to work.  There are also multiple scenes where Riker plays the trombone, these little character moments making the episode what it is.  The first twist, the “obvious” twist, that the future is not the future but a holodeck scenario from Tomalak to coax out the location of a Federation outpost which would bring the Federation and Romulans closer to war.

 

This initial scenario and this first reality of the Romulans using Riker’s own desires against him as the holodeck scenario is from his subconscious mind is in conversation with The Best of Both Worlds and Riker’s decision to stay first officer on the Enterprise.  His subconscious tells him that he does want command but only the Enterprise, no other ship would satisfy him.  The desire can only come to pass for Riker if Picard fulfills his own command duties, the promotion to admiral allowing a standard transfer of command for both men at the correct time.  The scenario is superficially perfect, the crack that gives it away is that Riker’s dead wife is Minuet and his son Jean-Luc is not real.  Jean-Luc is actually a child called Ethan captured by the Romulans inserted into the fantasy, and with the reveal the episode shifts into an escape from their base.  It is a statement that Riker does not want an easy future, he does not want to give into the fantasies of an easy life.  This is a restatement and examination of who Riker is as a character, and then the episode throws it away for a secondary twist.  It is not in fact the Romulans, but Ethan creating these fantasy scenarios.  Ethan is a lonely alien in a really bad grey mask as the last survivor of his race, hidden from unknown invaders.  J. Larry Carroll and David Bennett Carren are taking the themes the first 40 minutes of “Future Imperfect” and throwing them out the window.  A charitable read is Carroll and Carren with this twist are attempting to make the episode about isolation and needing to find connection, the alien just wants to find a place where it can belong, and Riker does take him back to the Enterprise.  The final line does indicate Riker regards Ethan as Jean-Luc, the son from the initial scenario, but that does not say anything about either of these themes as Riker does not know this alien who might be called Ethan (the script is unclear).

 

In both fantasy scenarios, “Future Imperfect” as an episode is playing out like a standard, character focused episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Les Landau is in the director’s chair and continues his understanding of dramatic blocking, even in the scenes set in reality such as Riker’s birthday party and the final scene in the cave communicating the character’s emotions where the script is lacking.  Outside of the alien’s true form, the older designs for the regular cast also look great, the silliest being putting Patrick Stewart in a silly mustache while the grey streaks in Jonathan Frakes’ hair works quite well.  The crew of the Enterprise are given obvious futures: only Picard has moved on, Wesley is nowhere to be seen as that would involve recasting Wil Wheaton as an adult, Data has not changed outside of his position into a red shirt, and Geordi La Forge now has implants that allow him to see without his visor.  There is a very subtle detail in LeVar Burton’s performance of looking more intently as a blind person regaining sight would, emphasizing his eyes with specific head movements and slight strains while Landau’s direction is not giving Burton close ups.  The Romulan base is also quite a nice sequence of sets, this episode clearly getting a full budget to build new environments that sell it as reality, even if they could just reuse the Enterprise holodeck.

 

Overall, “Future Imperfect” while not a bad episode, ends by effectively removing much of the depth that it had by ending a plot challenging Riker’s view of the Romulans and implying his loyalty to Starfleet and the Federation could even be tested when abandoned on a Romulan base for something about loneliness.  J. Larry Carroll and David Bennett Carren write an episode too long and could not see a way to cut things down so implemented a secondary twist that’s the equivalent of a thought terminating cliché.  Luckily most of the episode is still solid and bolstered by Jonathan Frakes’ performance throughout even trying to wrap the final scene into the rest of the episode.  6/10.

Nemesis of the Daleks by: Richard and Steve Alan with art by: Lee Sullivan and lettering by: Zed

 

“Nemesis of the Daleks” is written by: Richard and Steve Alan (pseudonyms for Richard Starkings and John Tomlinson) with art by: Lee Sullivan, and lettering by: Zed (a pseudonym for Richard Starkings).  It was released in Doctor Who Magazine issue 152-155 (August-November 1989) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: Nemesis of the Daleks by Panini Books.

 

Abslom Daak is a throwback character from the early days of Doctor Who Magazine.  Created by Steve Moore and Steve Dillon for the backup strip, two stories reprinted in the back of the collected edition of Nemesis of the Daleks, he is a character that fits so well into what the 1990s would bring for Doctor Who that in many ways “Nemesis of the Daleks” reads as a statement for where Doctor Who is going.  This was the last strip released by Doctor Who Magazine while Doctor Who was in its original run, finishing release in the middle of The Curse of Fenric, and tonally it’s taking itself far more seriously than anything the Seventh Doctor’s comic run had done so far.  This story reads as a special event, Abslom Daak makes his debut proper in a Doctor Who story and writers Richard Starkings and John Tomlinson directly write a sequel to Remembrance of the Daleks.  This amount of crossover with the parent show at this point is a particularly bold choice, like using Peri during the Sixth Doctor’s era, it’s making its own statement as to what Doctor Who wants to be.  Tonally this story moves away from what had been mostly lighter fare, following a very Season 24 Seventh Doctor as he stayed in the backseat of most of the stories with writers interested in writing other things.  Starkings and Tomlinson do continue the trend of the Doctor as background character, but here he is characterized as a far more serious figure.  The Daleks bring out the danger as they are essentially following the plot of Star Wars in creating a Death Wheel under their emperor, heavily implied by the Doctor to be a Davros who is now fully Dalek.  The plot is simple, using the archetype of Star Wars to show the Daleks as a great, galactic empire bent on destruction and putting the comic version of the Seventh Doctor in a scenario where he cannot make jokes.

 

At the heart of “Nemesis of the Daleks” is Abslom Daak as more than just a Dalek Killer.  Starkings and Tomlinson do write him with Steve Moore esque dialogue, emphasizing the joy that he gets from slicing Daleks in half while artist Lee Sullivan is clearly having fun with the inventive ways that can happen, but there’s the constant undercurrent of a man who just lost all the allies he held dear under the surface.  There’s a reason the Doctor allies with him, he can see the man determined to see the Daleks defeated underneath all the bluster and machismo.  He is motivated by the possibility of saving the love of his wife, the Princess Taiyin who is held in suspended animation at the moment of her death.  She dies here anyway, quite literally being a woman held in a refrigerator until the point of her death which is a shame as based on the original “Abslom Daak…Dalek Killer!” and “Star Tigers” strip there was actually development that could have been done when given to a different writer.  Her sexist handling is largely the biggest black mark against this story, as “Nemesis of the Daleks” despite being highly derivative is a well told story.  Sullivan’s art is elevating much of the more derivative material by looking modern, formatting itself with panel layout that is far closer to what the rest of the industry was doing while maintaining this realistic style.  The use of inks is particularly moody, Sullivan taking advantage of the mediums to portray the Daleks in these immense numbers, often relegated to the shadows with what seems to be hundreds just waiting to converge.  This is also very much a tribute to Terry Nation’s style of storytelling.  The setting is the planet Hell and visually the Emperor is the Golden Dalek Emperor from the early 1960s comics.  In a way Starkings, Tomlinson, and Sullivan are tributing the past while making way for a future of darker storytelling.  The question is will that be where the strip goes at this point?

 

Overall, it’s just nice to have such a solid Seventh Doctor comic strip after an entire volume of ups and downs.  “Nemesis of the Daleks” while wearing influences on its sleeve is elevated to near great status by the work of Lee Sullivan and by using its four part structure to focus on one character who was already established in the script, even if he hadn’t appeared in a decade.  It’s not a nostalgia based story, but one that works because of stronger characterization and while the Doctor is on the sideline he is clearly the Doctor, making plans and pushing pieces to quickly defeat the Daleks.  8/10.

Reunion by: Thomas & Jo Perry, Ronald D. Moore, and Brannon Braga, from a story by: Drew Deighan and Thomas and Jo Perry, and directed by: Jonathan Frakes

 

“Reunion” is written by: Thomas & Jo Perry, Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga, from a story by: Drew Deighan and Thomas & Jo Perry, and is directed by: Jonathan Frakes.  It was produced under production code 181, was the 7^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 81^st episode overall, and was broadcast on November 5, 1990.

 

Star Trek: The Next Generation is asking a lot of its viewers with “Reunion”.  This is the first episode to pull together different aspects of story and character arcs running through multiple seasons of the show into a single episode.  It also ends indicating that the story arc is not complete, “Reunion” is just a regular episode, nestled in the weekly release schedule.  This is a regular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and it’s taking a bold swing at doing serialized television at a time before that is the norm.  The premise of the episode is K’Ehleyr, played by Suzie Plakson, returning with Worf’s son, Alexander, all while K’mpec, played by Charles Cooper, is dying and tasks Picard with overseeing the rituals to declare a new Chancellor for the Klingon Empire.  While Picard is the overseer of these rituals, this is a Worf episode, Patrick Stewart as Picard being satisfied as the diplomat and captain, making decisions to ensure that K’mpec’s murderer is revealed.  Yes, K’mpec is slowly being murdered in the setup, a slow acting poison that has no cure so we can have the episode plot happen.

 

This is explicitly a sequel to “Sins of the Father”, the script indicating until the very end that it is going to restore Worf’s honor, instead ending with a pile of dead bodies in a bloody conflict, Worf with a black mark on his record with the Federation and a new son living with his parents, and an additional vow of revenge and restoration of honor.  The episode further examines the honor system of the Klingons as this out of date idea that is holding the culture and empire back in the past.  It’s partially why the ending works as well as it does because Worf now has strong motivation to force the change to happen within the empire.  Michael Dorn’s final scenes of the episode, especially the one opposite Stewart as Picard, are particularly heartbreaking and some of his best work.  The ending is a grave note, Picard is stalwart that Worf made the wrong decisions in killing Duras in retaliation for his murder of K’Ehleyr even if under Klingon customs he acted properly.  Worf is perfectly content in continuing on the Enterprise with this black mark on his own record.

 

K’Ehleyr’s death is presented wonderfully, Jonathan Frakes is back in the director’s chair and the entire climax of the episode is just visually dynamic.  It’s threading a difficult needle, there was very much a real possibility of this being a case of fridging a female character.  Her death is the final act to get Worf to change, however, I would argue against this fitting in traditional fridging as that is not the only thing that gets her killed.  It’s tragedy, K’Ehleyr got too close to the truth of Duras’ treachery in “Sins of the Father” after the episode was further exploring her relationship with Worf.  Plakson and Dorn have this fantastic chemistry, continuing the opposing views between the pair on Klingon culture, Worf’s dishonor, and their own relationship.  Again this is an episode that indicates that they are going to become essentially a married couple, this only being stopped this time because of Worf’s expulsion from Klingon society.  Worf does put far more stock in the system of honor than K’Ehleyr does, the warrior code guides his every action right through the end of the episode and while it takes until the final line of the episode to acknowledge to Alexander that he is the boy’s father, he wishes his son to follow the same code.  K’Ehleyr’s status as only half Klingon means that she is presented again as far more human and flexible.  Her attitude towards Worf’s dishonor continues a thread that his parents began in “Family” of fully accepting him without the need for the customs, but for who the man is at his heart.  Worf for his part in “The Emissary” was in love with K’Ehleyr but here would not wish to dishonor her, and by extension Alexander.  It’s partially why K’Ehleyr hid his son from him, she did not want Worf’s insistence on honor to force them into a marriage because of a child, something the episode presents as a noble decision, quite progressive for television in 1990.

 

The episode is also fascinating that it presents Worf and K’Ehleyr’s different approaches to parenting Alexander as equally valid.  While K’Ehleyr’s parenting style is mostly off-screen, the episode devoting more time to Worf, it is one presented as allowing Alexander to choose his own path and eventually come to terms with his own identity as part Klingon and part human.  Worf, on the other hand, is arguably harsher as a parent, but much of that is because he is struggling to come to terms with the fact he has a child.  There is a scene early in the episode where Alexander lashes out at other children on the Enterprise, nearly getting violent, and Worf actually stops him because it would be dishonorable.  One should not attack an opponent who is weak enough as to not fight back, something that guides who Worf is as a person and is where the episode goes to question the actions by the end.  The script is good in leaving Alexander as a supporting character, Star Trek as a franchise does have a problem with writing child characters but here Alexander is allowed to be a particularly young child.  Alexander is played by Jon Steuer and there is a sense that it’s Jonathan Frakes’ direction that is getting him to give a performance.  It’s still the performance of a child, the line delivery is given with fairly basic grasp of the emotional context of the line, but it’s certainly better than other child performances on this franchise.  The performance is watchable which at this point is as much as you can really ask.

 

Overall, “Reunion” is an episode that takes a little bit of time to get going, not because it is lacking in material but because it is letting the character revelations breathe and the character dynamics to really sit with the viewer.  This is an episode that’s clearly setting something up for the future as a continuation of multiple episodes’ story arcs which is a bold choice, the script giving enough information and the performances enough emotion so newer viewers can pick up exactly where things are going.  This also means “Reunion” works as a standalone episode with Klingon culture and Worf at the center of it all, despite being from several different writers.  Likely the final script is Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga doing a final rewrite on the Perry’s initial script.  Jonathan Frakes is a director who gets Michael Dorn to give one of his absolute best performances thus far and the episode is just an emotional rollercoaster.  9/10.

Blue Box by: Kate Orman

 

Blue Box does not refer to the TARDIS in its title, instead it is Kate Orman’s return to an idea she initially proposed to Virgin Publishing as The Pinocchio Virus, potentially tying into her novel SLEEPY.  It was always meant to be a story involving the Sixth Doctor, Peri, and a computer virus, based on the title eventually evolving into Blue Box’s Savant.  The connection to SLEEPY feels particularly strong in Blue Box, if only spiritually, with Savant being very much in the same vein of the artificial intelligences that exist and influence the living.  Savant’s influence is far more corrupting, it creates this extreme attachment to someone, driving them into a madness where Savant is the only real thing in existence.  Orman does present Savant as amoral rather than immoral: it is a creature created by the people of Epsilon Eridani that accidentally made its way to the Earth, this entire novel being an accidental plot.  The real villain of the novel is Sarah Swan, a computer hacker slowly manipulated by Savant into an attempt to take over the world in a series of increasingly manic episodes that in the end leave her a husk of a person.  It’s a particularly cruel ending for someone but Blue Box is in many ways a particularly cruel novel.  Orman is examining identity and humanity with Blue Box, using Doctor Who as the framework to do this.  Now, it’s important to note that this was a novel written and published in 2003, 23 years ago from the time this review is being written and that I am a cisgender man.  There are aspects of Blue Box that while I will not shy away from discussing them, I am not the final authority as to what they represent.

 

This is a novel that while undoubtedly a Doctor Who novel, takes a first-person approach to the narrative.  It’s presented like David Bishop’s Who Killed Kennedy? as cowritten between Orman and journalist Charles “Chick” Peters, who finds himself wrapped up in the Doctor and Peri’s world through Savant.  Chick is a man who is confident in his own identity, an identity that is not questioned by the narrative as this is his narrative.  This is different from Swan, or to a lesser extent Peri.  Swan while an incredibly compelling villain, really ticks because her identity is in question.  Her name isn’t even Swan, Chick giving the pretense of changing the names and certain relevant details even with the mythological references in the text of people turned to swans and losing their humanity.  It is Chick’s confidence in his identity as a man that solidifies the theme that identity is something personal, something that only he can really define and damn if the rest of the world does not accept it.  There’s the snag, this empowering message is presented in the twist that Chick is intersex, something that is treated by both Swan and Peri as something disgusting.  The disgust from Peri is explicitly because of the thought of first Chick finding her potentially attractive and second at the idea of sex that isn’t strictly heterosexual.  It’s Peri’s disgust where Orman’s argument becomes weak because the audience is primed to see Peri as good, she is the Doctor’s companion after all.  Presenting the intersex condition as a twist is also generally problematic.  While being intersex is not the same as a transgender identity, this type of twist does fall into what was (and arguably still is) a popular trope of the secret transgender person, usually for the basis of a punchline.  Chick is at the very least still a person.

 

The twist is also relegated to the last 30 pages of the novel, before that Blue Box is a thriller built around discovering what Savant is.  Orman however papers over ever so slightly the twist with the way that she characterizes the Doctor.  Now outside of the twist, it’s clear that Orman loves Colin Baker’s portrayal of the Sixth Doctor: here he is just as brash but always with intelligence and care.  The Doctor and Peri are fighting not in anger but as an old married couple, a relationship built on love.  Orman also puts the Doctor in Colin Baker’s suggested outfit of blacks with pops of color on the tie, almost as a treat.  In relation to the twist about Chick Peters, Orman indicates the Doctor does not so much fit within the gender binary either, though this is sadly a brief mention.  Chick’s identity as a man in the end is not in the question, Orman even subverting the at the time general view that sex with a non-cisgender person to be somehow wrong with a single line that Chick’s girlfriends had no problem with it.  To add support to Orman’s message of identity is the fact that Savant is villainous because it cannot have an identity.  Visually Savant almost represents a Y-chromosome, Orman using it to critique an almost fragile masculinity that grabs onto people despite being developed by a planet that in Lucifer Rising was the home planet of a multi-dimensional being lacking in the concept of gender.

 

Overall, for what would be Kate Orman’s last Doctor Who novel until 2023 with Big Finish Productions’ Audio Novel range Blue Box is actually an interesting if outdated look at identity through the lens of a techno-thriller.  There is love of the Doctor and Peri, even if Peri is sadly made in the model of both the time of publication and her time of the mid-1980s.  It’s real strength is the two villains, Orman excelling at creating that spiral.  Even with its problematic presentation (and the very real openness for a regressive reading as much as my own progressive read), Blue Box is still a Kate Orman novel and because it draws on ideas that had been with Orman since the mid-1990s it really does shine.  8/10.

Legacy by: Joe Menosky and directed by: Robert Scheerer

 

“Legacy” is written by: Joe Menosky and is directed by: Robert Scheerer.  It was produced under production code 180, was the 6^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 80^th episode overall, and was broadcast on October 29, 1990.

 

The first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation attempted and largely failed to discuss mature topics.  Tasha Yar’s backstory involved a planet of conflict run explicitly by “roaming rape gangs”, heavily hinting that she was a victim of such abuse.  Even if she wasn’t specifically assaulted, she was raised in a traumatic environment that would inform her upbringing and especially her personality.  Because the first season was largely written by a rotating group of writers, she was not a character explored particularly well.  When her backstory did come up it was often ancillary to the plot, sometimes even glossed over in a single line.  Denise Crosby did leave the show near the end of the first season, Yar’s death in “Skin of Evil” effectively ending any of that intrigue.  The third season brought Yar back in “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, one of the best episodes of the show thus far and reflective on the underutilized potential of the character.  It should not be surprising that the fourth season would also continue these threads in an attempt to continue the renewed interest in Yar with “Legacy”.  Setting an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation on Yar’s home planet to explore its ruthless and violent society without Tasha Yar being there is at its core an odd decision.  Yar can only be given more depth from either situations such as “Yesterday’s Enterprise” with an alternate timeline version, or by other character’s relationships to Yar.  There is the possibility of additional flashbacks to bring Yar back, however, “Legacy” does not do this instead the episode’s big supporting guest character is Yar’s sister Ishara, played by Beth Toussaint.

 

The production team not casting Crosby as Yar’s sister is a solid decision.  While Crosby certainly has the range to play her character’s sister, giving it to a different actress means a different interpretation to Turkana IV.  Writer Joe Menosky focuses the script on the desperation of the planet.  Things have changed, the “rape gangs” are a thing of the past as an attempt for Menosky to avoid handling the concept which even mentioned in passing did not work, but there are still factions at war for the planet and hostages from a Federation freighter in danger.  Ishara is markedly different from Tasha, she is the one who stayed behind and leads the crew to believe she regrets that decision.  The big twist of the episode is that Ishara is lying, all of the trust she’s built with the crew and especially with Data was just to continue the violence between the Coalition and the Alliance.  Brent Spiner as Data is really the episode’s standout character, Menosky clearly loving the idea of a relationship between Data and Yar established quite clumsily (to put it nicely) in “The Naked Now”.  Menosky writes Data as not feeling emotions but still having the capacity for friendship in a way that is particularly interesting.  Friendship comes not necessarily from emotions but from a continued familiarity with someone over a long period of time.  There is also the idea that Data is in fact experiencing emotions and feelings, he mentions absence when a friend is gone in the case of Tasha Yar.  This is emotion, Data’s grief is portrayed as real.  On her part, Ishara Yar knows how to manipulate that grief for her own ends.

 

The episode is also considerably kinder to the betrayal of the character, she is allowed to go by Picard despite her actively harming two crewmembers.  There is far more nuance here with the idea of Tasha Yar’s legacy and understanding a planet’s situation where intervention would likely be inherently violent.  Menosky does not say the Enterprise shouldn’t interfere, but it should at least acknowledge that these situations are complicated to untangle which is a nice little idea.  Where “Legacy” does fail, at least in part, is that Toussaint does not have nearly enough chemistry as Ishara Yar as she really needs for the episode.  She is not giving a bad performance, but she does not really have chemistry with Brent Spiner.  The episode positions them as potentially in a romance which inherently has odd implications considering the romance between Data and Tasha, even if largely on-screen, has been established as a defining part of Tasha Yar’s legacy.  Toussaint is more awkward, though when she leans into the freedom fighter aspects of the character there is more confidence in making the character work.

 

Overall, “Legacy” is good, but it’s an episode that is almost working despite the absence of Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar.  There almost isn’t enough of Tasha haunting the narrative for an episode like this to work, likely due to the failure of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation to really explore what Yar’s background was.  That and the main plot of the episode leans a bit too close into the generic which does not help with the lack of character relationships.  It does say something to the increased quality of the show, however, when this is a relatively weaker episode as it’s still a good hour of television.  7/10.

Remember Me by: Lee Sheldon and directed by: Cliff Bole

 

“Remember Me” is written by: Lee Sheldon and is directed by: Cliff Bole.  It was produced under production code 179, was the 5^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 79^th episode overall, and was broadcast on October 22, 1990.

 

“Remember Me” reads like a commentary on the difficulties women face in healthcare.  Healthcare, at the very least the American healthcare system, has a tendency to be incredibly paternalistic, reducing and ignoring their concerns to their detriment.  “Remember Me” is a slow decent into madness for Dr. Beverly Crusher as people on the Enterprise disappear and only she seems to notice it happening.  The rest of the crew are unaware and are slowly picked off one by one until she is left with Picard and then alone on a ghost ship.  Lee Sheldon’s script is clearly aware of the relationships between the characters, Crusher being given nothing but sympathy as the rest of the crew sees her condition worsening despite their incredulous attitude to her ramblings.  It’s clear that Sheldon is not intent on portraying the gaslighting of women, instead approaching the episode as examining what it’s like to be isolated and alone, lingering in the final act with Crusher on the Enterprise with nobody else.  As a plot, it should not work nearly as well as it does.  Sheldon forgoes the A-plot/B-plot structure in favor of near exclusively focusing on Dr. Crusher’s descent into madness, only cutting away once everyone is away so the audience can be filled in on what’s happening to Crusher through fairly well-structured technobabble and a reappearance of the Traveler.  Giving it a technobabble laden explanation does undercut some of the tone that “Remember Me” is going for, but it also has to be confined to an ongoing episode of television, fitting in more closely with an episode of The Twilight Zone for much of its runtime.

 

The strength of “Remember Me” rests entirely on the shoulders of Gates McFadden as Dr. Crusher.  Previous reviews have discussed Star Trek: The Next Generation’s tendency to underwrite its female characters, but that is not present here.  Crusher, having already been given quite a bit of good material in this recent run of episodes, gets an exterior life complete with old mentors and friends.  It’s integral to making the episode work that the first person to disappear is an old mentor of Crusher’s, an elderly doctor whom Crusher is immediately worried has been injured when he disappears.  Structurally starting with a guest star disappearing keeps the initial tone light, there are easy rationalizations as to how Dr. Quaice may have either gone back to Starbase without telling Crusher, even if the implication is that the crew thinks it’s all in Crusher’s mind.  McFadden’s performance throughout the episode is one of her best.  Clearly enjoying the material, McFadden keeps Crusher put together until just over halfway through the episode, making the switch when she realizes that Wesley is eventually going to disappear.  The disappearances of her friends and colleagues do affect her mental state, but it is her son that pushes her over the edge.  Crusher also does not have an tearful breakdown as you would expect from how Star Trek: The Next Generation has portrayed female characters.  It is emotional, but McFadden gets to play the part as more manic than anything else before pulling herself together to be alone and deduce what is happening.  Cliff Bole shoots these sequences particularly well, alternating between wide shots and close ups for juxtaposition of the loneliness with Crusher’s resolve to discover things.

 

The audience getting information outside of Crusher’s reality, for that’s essentially what this is a reality in a warp bubble that was slowly taking her away from reality, is perhaps where the episode is weakest.  This is not do to poor performances, focusing on Wesley is a particularly good note from Sheridan, with Wil Wheaton also getting good material, but because it runs in parallel with Crusher working things out the climax is repetitive.  It’s not fully committing to getting rid of a B-plot entirely as there is clearly a way to make this an exclusively Crusher focused episode.  It’s especially a shame since having a more concrete explanation in these scenes with the other characters does minimize some of the horror when Crusher is alone.  While the vortex phenomena are largely portrayed with smoke, wind, and glowing lights, Bole is quite good at making them feel in line with the loneliness.  The lighting is standard Enterprise set lighting but shifted ever so slightly so there can be an emphasis on long shadows and empty spaces.  The tension just does not sustain with the introduction of reality into the episode and it almost seems Sheridan did not trust the production to commit to focusing on just one character or the audience to follow what Crusher was deducing.

 

Overall, “Remember Me” succeeds at giving a female Star Trek: The Next Generation character a strong character piece.  It’s particularly satisfying to see after Gates McFadden in the first season of the show had voiced complaints and temporarily left for a year because her voice wasn’t being heard.  While the commentary on the female experience is likely unintentional, that does not mean it is any less powerful with what is on-screen.  The episode excels particularly at the horrors of loneliness and being unable to trust your closest friends.  8/10.

The Domino Effect by: David Bishop

 

David Bishop’s previous novels Who Killed Kennedy? and Amorality Tale were both examinations of the Third Doctor’s era, deconstructing the actions and motivations of UNIT and how the Third Doctor as a character works.  The Domino Effect is Bishop’s crack at an Eighth Doctor Adventure, continuing the arc dealing with alternate Earths and hints at the multiverse in a novel that can be kindly summarized as a standard alternate history story.  The premise is that a mysterious force has changed the history of the Earth by killing or indefinitely imprisoning those responsible for the development of computers which has created a knock on effect of a fascist British Empire ruled by racism and xenophobia as an extension of imperialism.  The big twist of the novel is once again that Sabbath is behind things, attempting to collapse the multiverse on a point, the novel ending with the reveal that the day isn’t actually saved and the multiverse is on the brink of collapse.  It’s a great last page cliffhanger and does create some forward motion for the series which has been struggling with actually going anywhere as Sabbath has been an antagonist for over 10 books, on and off, and only now is slowly moving into a point where an ending is coming.  There’s almost something there of Bishop not revealing much of the nature of this alternate history until interludes between the rather long chapters, chapters intentionally framed on a specific date, though the first being the murder of Charles Babbage among others does really give the game away.  This becomes an issue when the actual worldbuilding of the present does not actually do much to have computers or computing factor into the plot.  Alan Turing is reintroduced, in this timeline being prisoner in the Tower of London and often on the Doctor’s mind, but his actual contribution is for someone for Fitz to speak to in captivity.

 

Turing’s presence in the Doctor’s mind is an interesting reflection on The Touring Test and there’s this implication of the Doctor having extreme guilt, being motivated not to change history because there is no guarantee that this is actually a wrong timeline.  That and the Doctor is implied here to have had an attraction to Turing of some sort, not necessarily sexual but very likely romantic.  Several supporting characters in The Domino Effect actually infer the Doctor as bisexual which is one of the few interesting ideas here even if it isn’t explored.  The Domino Effect’s plot does not actually do much with the world not having computers, structurally it’s the Doctor, Anji, and Fitz being mistaken for terrorists in the aftermath of an explosion.  They are separated, Fitz captured, and the Doctor and Anji stuck to navigate a hostile Earth.  Anji is the worst served by this novel, the fascist state of Great Britain is racially segregated and Bishop basically has every supporting character denigrate her in some way.  It gets so bad to a point that the Doctor tells her not to be so on edge because not everyone asking where she’s from is interested in her race which is a dialogue exchange I could not believe I was reading in this book.  Bishop also just gives her nothing to work with, this is the third novel in a row where it is clear that she wishes to leave the TARDIS and is being strung along on adventures because of the alternate histories mean she cannot go home.  This is not entirely Bishop’s fault, but it is a plot motivation that has become repetitive and since he does not give her much more, not even examining the underlying racism and xenophobia on display instead just portraying it as a bad timeline, she falls flat.  Her best moments are when she is in conflict with the Doctor, building upon previous novels.  The Doctor is also odd as throughout he has these dizzy and fainting spells that while explained in the end, are indicative of just how repetitive the novel can be.  There is almost a lack of enough plot to get through the required page count.

 

Overall, The Domino Effect is a novel that at best is mediocre.  Things improve when Sabbath actually appears because Bishop can’t help but delight in writing a villain, and the Doctor’s guilt is at least something for the novel to explore.  There’s almost a sense that Fitz and Anji are supplementary to requirements, Fitz featuring basically as the MacGuffin.  Bishop also lacks any real examination of the setting, having the Doctor be cruel to how Anji is being treated and not really grappling with the need for violence against an oppressive state.  For a novel with quite the evocative cover, The Domino Effect is the second underwhelming Eighth Doctor Adventure in a row. 4/10.

Star Wars: The High Republic: Tears of the Nameless by: George Mann

 

George Mann wrote Tears of the Nameless at a time where he didn’t know whether or not he would live to see it through, something revealed in the acknowledgments at the end of the novel.  This adds a grave tone to the novel, retrospectively, as while The High Republic as an initiative was far from one author’s vision, Tears of the Nameless is very much about the Jedi in nothing but a precarious place.  The Nihil have the upper hand and while there have been several parties slowly advancing on their enemies, the High Republic and the Jedi have always felt on the backfoot and ready for a fall.  George Mann as a person is writing this novel through the idea that he might actually fall to a brain tumor.  The Nameless themselves can almost be read as some of Mann’s own fears of what could be killing him, even if Mann examines the fact that calling them Nameless paradoxically gives them a name within the book.  The acknowledgments don’t actually say whether or not the lesion is benign or a malignant tumor, though the implication is that it is benign as Mann describes partway through the writing process being able to add levity back into the book.

 

That retrospective tone means Tears of the Nameless becomes a book about hope returning, something great for the young adult audience that this is aimed at.  Mann, however, despite getting lighter in tone as the book goes on actually ends the novel with these bittersweet notes that work as the characters really haven’t won the day.  They have gained knowledge, some of that knowledge being contradictory and confusing when it pertains to certain characters, but knowledge nevertheless.  It brings this in line with the other books from Phase III of The High Republic as being often more personal stories for the characters outside of the larger Nihil and Nameless plots.  Impressive considering Mann likes to include a rather large cast of characters from Vernestra Rwoh to the crew of the Vessel with several added cameos.  It’s many of the returning characters that while not bringing the novel down, are perhaps the least explored here.  It isn’t so much as Mann not wishing to advance plot threads of pre-established characters, he doesn’t really introduce new characters here and a major supporting character was an integral part of Path of Deceit, but includes almost too many characters for them all to be established.

 

This is slightly odd as the book is split into two parts and the first half is the slower half.  It’s all perfectly serviceable setup and focused largely on connecting the reader with Padawan Amadeo Azzazzo, a character who has appeared in the publishing initiative but this is really his book over anyone else.  The actual plot builds to a secret mission with the intent of capturing one of the Nameless alive for study.  The buildup before this intended mission is revealed is slightly weaker than when we get onto the mission, this is where the characters become their most contemplative.  Doubt creeping into one’s convictions is the novel’s major theme.  Amadeo as a character is largely upbeat and caring protagonist even if his relationship with his master becomes fraught with worry and strain, but he is essentially the only one.  He is paralleled with Jedi Raeth Silas who is dealing with the loss of his master and thus his own doubts in the nature of the Jedi teachings.  While he has a new Master, one with whom he eventually can confide in and rely on.  The representation of doubt that springs to the forefront and ties Tears of the Nameless together is Azlin Rell, the fallen Jedi from Path of Deceit (among other books and audio dramas).  He’s essentially the representation of temptation and forbidden knowledge, almost more so than the Nihil and the Nameless as this novel is one that is reflective on the High Republic as an organization through its characters.  The doubt is also an interesting aspect as by the end there is this almost beautiful uncertainty as to the alignment of the Nameless, they are living creatures after all and there is a sense that they are not inherently evil.  Even for his sinister nature Azlin Rell is a fallen Jedi and not a Sith.  Mann is active in making the role of antagonist for Tears of the Nameless to be less clear cut than some other novels, just this once, to allow the characters to really grow.

 

Overall, reading Tears of the Nameless was actually quite the nice return to Star Wars: The High Republic even if it is slightly weaker than the last installment I read from George Mann.  When it works the best is when it is continuing individual characters as examination of the entire Jedi and High Republic as a setting as well as sewing specific seeds of doubt.  The second half of the novel in particular is an exhilarating ride after a first half where the buildup is just slightly overstuffed to really smooth out.  Mann is putting a lot of himself in the page in a way that you can tell even if you don’t read the acknowledgments at the end.  8/10.

Suddenly Human by: John Whelpley and Jeri Taylor from a story by: Ralph Phillips and directed by: Gabrielle Beaumont

 

“Suddenly Human” is written by: John Whelpley and Jeri Taylor, from a story by: Ralph Phillips, and is directed by: Gabrielle Beaumont.  It was produced under production code 176, was the 4^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 78^th episode overall, and was broadcast on October 15, 1990.

 

Star Trek: The Next Generation’s fourth season has thus far built itself around ideas of family and identity.  From “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II” and “Family” examining Picard’s assimilation into the Borg as something that rocks who he is fundamentally, to “Family” and “Brothers” exploring the strained family dynamics including atypical family relationships.  “Suddenly Human” is an episode that should fit right in with where the show is currently going.  The premise is the Enterprise finds a ship of four Talarian teenagers and one human.  The human is an orphan who was adopted by the Talarians and has grown up with their culture and customs, he no longer sees himself as a human being, has no connection to his remaining human family as his grandmother is an Admiral in Starfleet.  The conflict of the episode is whether or not Jono should stay with his Talarian father or be returned to his human family.  Now, where I will definitively give the episode credit is that it ends with Jono making the decision for himself and the implication is that the Enterprise crew are in the wrong for wishing to impose human culture and force that culture onto the child.  But to get to that point, this is one of those incredibly awkward scripts where it’s clear that the attempts are being made to handle difficult themes, taking inspiration from stories like Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes.  Stories about people being raised outside of their own species has a long history, however, the different species is often coded to be from a different race or culture.  Burroughs was writing during periods of colonialism and that is a general angle that is left over in a piece like “Suddenly Human”.

 

The issues with this type of story is the coding of a white man’s burden to civilize a savage, lost white child.  Jono in many ways falls in this stereotype, much of “Suddenly Human” pairs Jono with Picard who is meant to act as a role model to the kid because the Talarians are a patriarchal and misogynistic society.  Jono won’t give women any sort of respect, only being loyal to a vessel’s captain so in this case it is Picard.  There is also the very odd decision to make the fact that Jono was adopted by the Talarian captain Endar, played by Sherman Howard, as a mid-episode twist.  The Enterprise crew is forcing the child into the box of a human being, arguably not seeing Jono’s personhood until the point at which he starts to assimilate into human society on the surface about halfway through the episode (that and he has traumatic flashbacks to the death of his parents).  The crew doesn’t see Talarians as people in a way that could be a commentary on how the liberally minded can still have biases towards outsiders who have cultures that have distasteful aspects, for instance the tendency to not see people of the Middle East as people due to similar misogyny and homophobia, however this isn’t evident by the text.  The text of the episode says that the crew is wrong in the end, Jono does get to chose to leave, but there isn’t any examination of Talarian culture, in many ways it’s similar to Klingon culture but is designated as having tensions with the Federation.  The ending gets to the right place in the end, but without actually examining much of the why these are the correct decisions, leaving the tropes just tropes without examination.

 

For his part, Chad Allen as Jono is a really compelling performance.  He takes on the alien customs and plays them without hesitation.  Jono feels like a teenager, which is interesting since adults often struggle with this kind of character.  Jono’s breakdown is particularly effective.  Plus the ending of the episode does work, even if it doesn’t quite make up for a lot of what the episode is doing.  The biggest problem with the episode, however, is actually an issue of intertextuality.  This is an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where our main characters are often written as out of character.  Picard is the one who comes out the best, but even he has the issue of being saddled with a child to show he might be a good parent, something he isn’t interested in, and playing it as someone who hasn’t dealt with children reads as if the writers have forgotten Wesley exists.  The biggest offender of the episode is actually Worf as it’s forgotten that his own upbringing is quite similar to Jono, and he is written with a lack of empathy for the kid in the very few scenes they share.  These issues are clearly down to the fact that this is an episode written by three people who seem to be unfamiliar with Star Trek: The Next Generation, Jeri Taylor likely being the one to come out of it the best as she became a producer immediately after production for the two episodes before this (they were produced out of order).  Ralph Phillips is likely the root of the issues, he is given the story credit and a cursory glance indicates this is his only credit for both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek as a franchise, John Whelpley at least having some connection with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

 

Overall, “Suddenly Human” is not an episode without potential, but on screen there is clearly a sense of too many cooks in a single kitchen next door to the production of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  The ideas are interesting and it is at the very least an episode with its heart in the right place in terms of examining aspects of a teenager’s identity, but the applicability is messy as the text brings up several ideas from adoption to cultural identity to even child abuse (the aspect most glossed over in the episode), while the main characters who are framed as wrong are sadly out of character.  Being out of character doesn’t actively ruin the episode, but it does mean that obvious parallels to characters are not made use of and the tropes at the heart of the episode are left unexamined.  It’s an episode that ultimately says very little, leaving ideas on the surface which weakens it greatly.  4/10.

The Emerald City of Oz by: L. Frank Baum

 

J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up would receive it’s American debut in 1905.  Its place in literature is an integral text in the understanding of adolescence and the need for children to grow up: at the end of the play Wendy Darling takes her brothers back home while the emotionally stunted Peter Pan stays behind in Neverland.  Peter Pan does not leave fairyland, he never grows up and when he returns again to take her back she refuses to go because being stuck in childhood means he forgets things left behind.  He is stuck.  The Emerald City of Oz, published in 1910 is a different take on leaving fairyland.  L. Frank Baum proposes that perhaps fairyland is a better place to be than the real world, that sometimes childlike logic and especially kindness can have a better outcome than the trials of adulthood and society.  The Emerald City of Oz, it is important to note, isn’t entirely taking on a child who refuses to grow up, but adults who have lost their inner child.  The inciting incident of The Emerald City of Oz is that Dorothy’s Uncle Henry has lapsed payments on the farmhouse, rebuilt after the cyclone in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  Henry and Em don’t believe Dorothy actually went to Oz multiple times, were happy to entertain her stories since despite disappearing she always managed to turn up again safe and sound.  They are adults, adults don’t believe in lands of make believe where everybody gets along with everybody else and nobody actually has to do work that they don’t want to.  They get the grand tour of the country, encountering wonderous people from living bread, to living utensils, and of course cameos from the most famous of the Oz characters.

 

Going to the fairyland of Oz means that the grey characters of Kansas have to relearn exactly what it means to be a child.  It also means an escape from having to fend for themselves.  The farm being taken away because of bad crops and economic depression is explicitly stated in the book to be a problem of capitalism as a system.  Baum does not give faces to the members of the bank which is an important detail, dehumanizing something as grand as the system despite the adults initially denying the existence of fairyland as a utopia where everybody is provided for.  Baum also does not forget the bank taking the farm, when the Nome King invades Dorothy does propose everybody go back to the farm so Baum can make a point that a good society isn’t one where you abandon your fellow people in times of hardship.  Aunt Em and Uncle Henry maintain disbelief even while on the road throughout the Land of Oz, though Baum goes through lengths to show how this disbelief unravels slowly.  He keeps their reactions at this very adult distance of people who won’t deny the reality of their eyes, but still have to deal with the cognitive dissonance of seeing these fantastic things.  There is also a point that life should be lived doing things, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry do want to find some work in Oz even if it isn’t for money.  They cannot spend their days sitting around doing nothing, even traveling is doing something like building community with different peoples of Oz.  Also the Wizard of Oz can now do actual magic which is the closest thing to a character in Oz getting character development so far.

 

The different places and peoples of Oz is following the same structure as Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz and The Road to Oz, becoming repetitive just before Baum gives Dorothy a slightly longer adventure being lost from the party.  Bunbury is a fun diversion, but the real parallel is Baum swapping adventures with the protagonists by following the Nome King, given the name Roquat the Red, allying himself with other creatures who are not deadly afraid of eggs.  General Guph is the Nome sent out to recruit allies, but rhetorically this gives The Emerald City of Oz this little edge of danger, a ticking clock that there is an invasion coming that the protagonists don’t actually know about until the final act.  It is a plot that also follows the structure of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz and The Road to Oz, but in reverse.  There’s actually a lot of humor in this telling, however, as Guph often has to make these lofty promises to other armies of land and people under subjugation.  Baum positions the Nome King as an authoritarian once again despite some of the humor, he is wicked because he would take away the autonomy away from the Ozites.  Guph promises some of the allied armies with as many as 20,000 slaves which is particularly fascinating as Baum is an author who lambasted war in general, this book concluding without bloodshed but trickery.  This does contradict his views of the settler colonialism of the American west of course, but people are complicated and often hypocritical in his views.  There is implication that slavery is worse than death, something that likely would have been instilled in Baum in childhood growing up in the Union during the American Civil War.

 

Overall, The Emerald City of Oz is a return to form after The Road to Oz.  It is Baum’s attempt at replicating Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem”, to say goodbye and go out with a bang while actively being in conversation with what it means to go to fairyland and away from reality.  The Emerald City of Oz has several ideas around community building and making fairyland a place where people are allowed to live together, safely, free from the oppressive nature of selfish rule and by extension money.  It works best when it eschews the established formula, even if it does this by paralleling the formula between protagonists and antagonists.  Not quite the perfect return to form, but a very close to it.  8/10.

Brothers by: Rick Berman and directed by: Rob Bowman

 

“Brothers” is written by: Rick Berman and is directed by: Rob Bowman.  It was produced under production code 177, was the 3^rd episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4, the 77^th episode overall, and was broadcast on October 8, 1990.

 

Star Trek: The Next Generation is Brent Spiner’s world and we are just observing it from the outside.  “Brothers” is Season 4’s first Data focused episode and the first episode written by Rick Berman, the executive producer who would be responsible for Star Trek as a franchise after Gene Roddenberry until the end of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005.  Berman is a controversial figure, believing Star Trek needed to be fully adherent to the vision of Gene Roddenberry, that is through the lens of the things that Gene Roddenberry put on-screen during the original series and the time of Star Trek: The Next Generation when he was alive, not necessarily the philosophy behind many of those decisions.  That is largely a discussion for other episodes when he is more in charge fully, but “Brothers” is an episode that shows Berman isn’t incompetent when it comes to telling a story.  “Brothers” is an episode that asks Brent Spiner to play a triple role: Data is taken over by a signal bringing him to the hideaway of his creator, Dr. Noonian Soong with his brother Lore following soon after, all to explore essentially a family dynamic between two brothers at odds while an oblivious and almost selfish father who sees his creations as objects.

 

Soong fits the stereotypical mad scientist: he’s an old man with frizzy white hair stuck in a home that is also a laboratory.  He’s been hiding on this planet for years and the episode very much positions him as this absent father who does not really care for his creations.  He cannot see either Data or Lore’s perspectives on life: early on in their conversations he expected Data to follow in his own footsteps and become a scientist instead of entering Starfleet and wasn’t even aware Lore was “active”.  By the end of the episode, Soong doesn’t actually learn the error of his ways or anything, he brought Data back to give him emotions and essentially complete his life’s work which is thwarted by Lore taking the emotion chip for himself.  That twist is particularly fantastic because narratively it is Lore acting out, almost rightfully, to trick a father who does not actually care about him.  He cares about Data, even asks Data to reconcile with Lore on his own deathbed seeing an error at the very last minute of his life, not properly, and the episode is aware of this because Spiner as Data gets the final shot contemplating his brother silently which is genuinely fantastic.  Spiner as Soong, really playing up the madness of a man who cares about one of his children and almost nothing else.  Spiner as Lore is also picking up right where the performance in “Datalore” left off, and because there isn’t actually a big scheme to take over the Enterprise or anything here, just eventually get that chip.  Berman’s script is one that is reliant on dialogue to communicate the story and obviously the performance of one actor.  Rob Bowman is in the director’s chair and his dynamic sense of blocking guides the heavy dialogue sequences while juggling the triple role.  There is a tendency in drama to employ a technique called backacting where you will have two actors having a dialogue scene with their faces towards the camera.  Because of the triple role, Bowman cannot rely on that, instead often times we’ll keep Data or Lore in shadows while the focus is on Soong before setting up reverse shots with Soong completely out of frame.  This is likely because of the different makeup job on Soong being more difficult to recreate with a stand in since it’s a new makeup, while the Data makeup is for the team been distilled down to a science.  Visually this does make the episode surprisingly dynamic, especially with Bowman also having the camera move through scenes with several walk and talks to keep the dialogue moving even on a smaller set.

 

The important plot point here is that both Data and Lore were summoned by Soong against their wills, the first act of the story is this horrific sequence of Data outside of his control performing a mutiny on the Enterprise.  This mutiny is quiet, starting by making life support fail with the pretense of an accident so the rest of the crew abandons the bridge and then locks the rest of the crew out of the controls.  He does this silently, Spiner not being allowed to change his face enough but the minute expressions just add to the uncanny valley of the character and the danger of the situation.  The script also adds this secondary tension of a child on the Enterprise in quarantine because of a prank of his brother’s, an obvious parallel to the Data/Lore relationship, This is the B-plot of the episode and the real shame is that these brothers are dropped largely after the first act, only to come back at the very end, because there isn’t actually a whole lot of drama there, but it really should be resolved before we get into the meat of the Soong plot.  It’s actually quite nice to see Dr. Crusher be a doctor and it once again allows Gates McFadden material to be a full character, even if the role of doctor bleeds slightly into role of mother as well.  The tension is that the sick child could die if the Enterprise doesn’t get to the nearest Starbase because of a parasite acquired from eating a plant cultivated on the ship after a prank gone wrong.  It’s an effective B-plot, made more so by Michael Piller’s inclusion of Lore in the plot as that wasn’t in Berman’s original script, reflecting that Berman is a producer over a writer.

 

Overall, “Brothers” is less an examination of brothers, but of the issues a father can create in their children from the viewpoint of being absent, an added layer that writer Rick Berman likely wasn’t entirely intending to be there.  What’s elevating a good script is Brent Spiner’s ability to play three parts at once and carry the entire episode on his back.  8/10.