"Child of Two Worlds"
Jun. 1st, 2009 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWhen Sarek used that phrase to Spock in the new movie, I was reminded of the many different ways Star Trek treats this particular fictional trope - the character who comes from two different cultures, might have different, sometimes conflicting loyalties; the hybrid. Sometimes, as in the case of Spock, but not always, this character is also identical with the outsider pov on the rest of the regular characters.
We get the literal hybrids - Spock (Vulcan/Human origin), B'Lanna Torres (Klingon/Human) and Deanna Troi (Betazoid/Human). Then there are also the characters who are biologically from one world, but were raised on another: Worf (born Klingon but raised human from time he was a small child), Odo (Changeling, raised by Bajoran doctor under Cardassian rule) and Seven of Nine (born human but assimilated by the Borg as a small child); I'd count them as hybrids as well. The result never plays out in quite the same way. The only character who is really at peace with both parts of her heritage and not conflicted about either of them, or with her hybrid status is Troi. She has some issues with her mother but not with being Betazoid, and indeed she usually refers to herself as Betazoid, not as human or half-human (unless she has to explain why she's an empath instead of a telepath). Her background is in a way the diamatrical opposite of Spock's. In the case of Sarek and Amanda (a couple invented and introduced in the 1960s), there never seems to have been a question of Sarek adopting human customs for Amanda, or the two of them raising Spock Terran-style; Amanda doesn't just live on Vulcan but has adopted Vulcan dress style and mostly a Vulcan way of life. By contrast, while Deanna's father Ian was in Starfleet, he seems to have moved to Betazoid when marrying Lwaxana, her daughters were born there, raised Betazoid-style, and though it's not spelled out explicitly, I'd say that the chances are "Troi" was Lwaxana's last name, not Ian's, which he adopted upon marrying her. (Lwaxana refers to "marriages" plural at some points but always maintains this last name, and her whole "daughter of the fifth house" speech points to a matrilinear background as well.) Of course, the Trois were invented in the late 80s.
Another counterpoint to Spock is B'Lanna, who is also the only one of these characters whose parents did not manage to maintain a relationship because of their cultural differences. While Spock might have rebelled against both his father in particular and the Vulcan Science Academy in general and chosen a Starfleet career, with mostly human friends, he still by and large lives according to a Vulcan code of conduct; he defines himself as Vulcan if anyone asks, not as human (and of course Spock Prime eventually ends up leaving Starfleet and becoming an Ambassador, completing the cycle). Whereas B'Lanna spends much of her time on Voyager explicitly rejecting her Klingon heritage, blaming it for everything she doesn't like about herself, and connecting it with self-loathing. She comes to terms with it somewhat but as late as the last or last but one season when there is a question of her and Tom Paris having a child would rather the child to be entirely human (as first instinct). As mentioned before, B'Lanna is the only one of the hybrids whose parents split up, with the result of her blaming both her Klingon mother and her Klingon heritage for being left by her human father.
Worf, who is fully Klingon biologically but was only a child when his natural parents died, went in the opposite direction in that for the most part of both TNG and DS9, he's not just proud of his Klingon heritage but tends to idealize it. Worf being more Klingon than Klingon and more rigid about (some of) their traditions than most Klingons basically screams overcompensation; on the other hand, he seems to have gone into Starfleet straight away, and doesn't actually live in the Klingon Empire until the very end of DS9, and then partly because it direly needs reformation. (Some of the time he's an outcast there, true, but there are also times where he could have had an honored position.) Guinan at one point mentions that if Worf thinks of home, he thinks of his human adoptive parents and Earth, and it's not a statement that gets refuted, but he doesn't manage to live on Earth, either. TNG and DS9 both have him firmly invested in Starfleet as a career, but not always following the Starfleet code of behaviour; Worf killing Duras Klingon-style against Picard's strict orders is an important TNG plot point.
With Odo, we have a circumstance that's not the case for any of the others because Odo is biologically different in a way the others aren't; at the same time, he knows least about one half of his nature versus nurture situation. He doesn't meet other shapeshifters until s3, and afterwards only briefly and usually in hostile circumstances until the start of s6, which presents his first truly extensive period of contact with the Founders. Because the Founders are the main antagonists of the later seasons, the loyalty conflict situation is sharpest in Odo's case, but at the same time I'd call it the easiest because the show doesn't really present the "join the Founders" option in any positive light (until the very end). (Whereas Vulcans and Klingons might have their drawbacks but also their virtues.) At the same time, Odo's loyalty to the DS9 regulars isn't presented as something cultural but entirely personal. Odo might have come to consciousness on Bajor, modelled himself after a Bajoran scientist (whom he resented for treating him as a lab rat), and be in love with a Bajoran, Kira, but I never had the impression he sees himself as Bajoran in any sense. He works first for Dukat and then for Sisko, but doesn't see himself as Cardassian or Federation-belonging, either. The show declares early on Odo has a personal code of justice which he follows, but doesn't explain where he got it from. Later events pose the interesting question as to whether it's an instinct for justice or an instinct for order. Either way, it's superceded by personal attachment; one of the starkest examples of Odo's genuine other-ness is his decision to kill 800 people and wipe out two hundred years of history in order to save Kira's life, which isn't justified by any behavioral code he could have adopted from the people he lived with. When Odo at the end of the show returns to the Founders in order to heal them and end the war, again the emotional sacrifice here is near derived exclusively via his relationship with Kira; while he admits to her he might miss some of the other people on DS9 as well (including Quark, which she's not to tell him), there is not a question of Odo missing Bajor (which during the course of the show he only visits once or twice) or the "solid" way of life as such.
With Seven of Nine, the ST writers blatantly went for the interpretation of the child raised by Indians from the old Westerns. They also used the chance to do something which didn't happen at the start of Voyager, where the potential conflicting background and agenda between Maquis and Starfleet crews was quickly removed by the fast way the new Voyager crew integrated. By contrast, the integration of Seven in the Voyager crew from the point where she was forced to join to the point where she decided to stay took the entire fourth season, and afterwards the show still took care not to erase her differences, and still occasionally conflicting code of conduct. Now if the Founders were one show's antagonists for several seasons, the Borg were antagonists for the entire ST verse, no matter which show, so letting Seven not reject her Borg-ness utterly and as soon as possible was pretty radical. It also gave the show a lot of character drama, starting from the second s4 episode when Janeway tells a just-severed-from-the-Collective Seven that she won't return her to the Borg because Seven isn't yet capable of choosing for herself. Seven then asks that if she does indeed become an individual in Janeway's definition of the word and at that point still wants to return to the Collective, would Janeway let her? Janeway's answer is evasive ("I don't think you'll make that choice"), but it's clear it's actually no, whereupon Seven asks that if individuality is forced upon her, how are humans and Janeway different from the Borg. It's an unsettling and effective moment because of course on the one hand the viewer, familiar with the Borg concept, agrees with Janeway that no one sane and sentient would voluntarily choose such an existence, and the erasure of self that goes with it, but on the other, the drone about to get individualized as Seven has a point as well. The person Seven becomes remains imprinted by both the Voyager and the Borg experience.
All of which doesn't lead me to any conclusions, except that the STverse won't stop with these children of two worlds characters any time soon....
But now, some more reviews.
Final Mission, a fourth season episode, was the last one with Wesley Crusher as a regular; thereafter he came back now and then as a guest star. Now, back in the day Wesley was one of the most unpopular characters around. I had no strong feelings one way or the other, but I did feel sorry for him due to the relentless fannish hostility. (Something like this almost invariably awakes my pity for the fannish underdog.) Still, I can't say I spent much time thinking about Wesley until a few years ago, the first Multiverse ficathon happened, and I got assigned to a pinch hit with the prompt "Wesley Crusher meets Anakin Skywalker". (Talk about fannish underdogs. This was post-Attack of the Clones, when Anakin hatred was at its height.) So I rewiewed some Wesley episodes in order to get a feeling for the character, and Final Mission, along with The First Duty, was one of them. Ever since, I've found myself fond of the still most unpopular of Wesleys. It's not that Final Mission is such a stellar episode; it's an okay one, with a predictable plot. (Just before he's off to Starfleet Academy, Wesley goes on what is supposed to be a run of the mill short diplomatic trip with Picard, the shuttle inevitably crashes, hardships ensue, Picard nearly dies and Wesley manages to save Picard's and his own life at the last minute; they get rescued.)
The reason why it left me with fond feelings for young Mr. Crusher, both during my story research back then and now upon rewatch, is this: for starters, contrary to his reputation, he's not presented as perfect. A diplomat Wesley is not; he manages to piss off the shuttle captain with his somewhat snobbish remark at once, which has consequences. Secondly, the point the episode makes about machismo and shoot-first, think later tactics being stupid agrees with me, as does the way it makes said points. (I.e. once Picard is injured and out of it, Wesley can't stop the shuttle guy from doing the stupid shoot first thing though he tries to point out that analyzing the MacGuffin of the week first, thus finding out what they're up against, would be better. But a) the guy doesn't take Wesley seriously due to the earlier incident and b) there is also no way a teenager, genius or not, without any martial arts training can stop a grown man, and the episode doesn't pretend otherwise.) Thirdly, and most importantly, there is the scene the episode inevitably builds up to, when Wesley tries to keep Picard awake and alive while trying to figure out how on earth to deactivate the MacGuffin of the week. Other than the entirety of Stand by Me, this is probably my favourite of Wil Wheaton's on screen performances because the way Wesley finally comes out with his "please don't die, Starfleet, my science experiments, the genius stuff, I did that all so you would be proud of me" speech, which in its earnest, awkward emotionality feels very real. (Also makes sense of Wesley's later characterisation, because if he picked Starfleet as a career because of Picard, not because of himself, it figures he might make a different choice once he grows up.) There has always been a sense of simultanous affection and deliberate restraint coupled with some unease in Picard's relationship with both Crushers, which given the Jack Crusher backstory makes sense. And because he's Picard, Wesley doesn't get a hug or a love declaration in return, let alone a dramatic "if I die, please tell your mother...", but a "when you're at the academy, visit Boothby the groundkeeper who knew me better than anyone back there". (Boothby, as we later find out, specializes in depressed cadets.) That makes the scene for me, too. More than the to be expected "I am proud of you" later. The final joke between the two about the uniforms clinches it.
Relics, after Sarek and Unification, was the third and to my memory last time TNG (excluding the pilot and later the movies) used a TOS guest star, in this case James Doohan as Scotty. I was already fond of the episode but upon rewatching found its poignancy tripled because of the changes the intervening years wrought:
1.) James Doohan is dead.
2.) I've just seen a young Scotty played by someone else in ST XI
3.) When Scotty tells Geordi LaForge near the end that he should treasure his turn on the Enterprise because the adventure comes only once, and then it's over and you'll never get that time of your life back in this way, it's impossible not to be aware that now nearly as many years have passed for the TNG folk as they had for the TOS actors back when the episode was made.
Even without this, though, Relics is a good episode and homage both, better than Unification and as good as Sarek. It's not just fanservice bringing back a beloved character, it uses him to tell a story about age, about both its losses and grace. Scotty's initial sense of alienation on the Enterprise-D (the tech is new and thus his own knowledge is out of date, he doesn't know anyone and it initially doesn't go too well with Geordi) resonates, but so does the emotional turning point, when Scotty asks the computer to program the holodeck to recreate the bridge of the original Enterprise. (Which btw was as loving a reconstruction as I ever saw one. I remember reading they got the set decoration from fans who had rebuild it in their garage because of course the original sets had long since been destroyed.) And toasts absent comrades. But then he gets a visitor on that bridge, and it's fitting that the first person he bonds with on the D isn't yet Geordi but Picard, because Picard, while still active, isn't young anymore and has a sense of age and losses, and nostalgia. (It's also a neat character moment for Picard who talks about his first command, the Stargazer, admitting to missing her even now. Kirk Prime's one true love might have been the Enterprise - Reboot Kirk is not yet that attached - but they didn't try to repeat this with Picard. (Unlike Adama, whom Moore couldn't resist giving Kirk's Enterprise, err, Galactica angst. And then some.) Who is fond of the Enterprise, but it's not his first ship or in otherwise something that exclusively defines him.)
From this point onwards, Scotty's emotional lot improves; he ends up saving the day together with Geordi, proving the tried and true mad engineer skills in the new age, and as befits an ST character leaves us heading towards a new adventure. He also has one wonderful moment for old time fans:
Geordi: I told Captain Picard I'd get this done in an hour.
Scotty (winking): So how long will it take?
Geordi (confused): One hour.
Scotty (shocked): You didn't tell him how long it would REALLY take, did you? Laddie, you've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.
Lastly, the way the writing justified Scotty's presence in the 24th century without having to put James Doohan in 130 years old make-up - he saved himself in an emergency situation via locking himself in a transporter buffer - is my favourite use of technobabble on the show.
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b5_revisited, a few weeks back we talked about the first season episode Eyes, and thus also about other examples of the "outsider investigator comes on board, ends up putting Captain on trial" type of story, and The Drumhead was named as one, while it was simultanously pointed out its narrative focus was actualyl elsewhere. It hadn't occured to me to compare the two episodes before, but I found it highly interesting to do so, and would like to add Litmus (from Battlestar Galactica's first season), because it has far more in common with The Drumhead than the B5 episode. You can tell Ron Moore liked The Drumhead so much in his TNG days that he wanted to do a BSG remake; unfortunately, Litmus isn't as good. In both cases, there is a genuine act of sabotage which gets the whole thing going. (Whereas in Eyes there is not; it's all about Sinclair being unfairly maligned.) In both cases, the commander/captain first tries to put a stop to the investigation developing into a witchhunt when the investigator puts a crewman on trial whose innnocence he's convinced of. In both cases, the investigator then responds by putting the commander/captain himself on the stand, which proves to be the one thing too many which causes the end of the proceedings. Both episodes, in the context they were first watched, can be seen as making a "MacCarthyism is bad" point.
Now, here are a couple of reasons why I think the older episode is the one which holds up better. There's the second accused crewman. In BSG, that was Tyrol. (Also two of his people, but the focus and what tipped Adama over the edge into intervening was Tyrol.) Tyrol was a regular the audience liked and knew to be innocent. (Although his girlfriend was not, but even that was beyond her own will or knowledge at the time.) In the TNG episode, on the other hand, that second crewmember was not a regular. Like the first, guilty one, it was a new character, Simon Tarses, whom the audience did not know before. We don't know, anymore than Picard does, whether Simon Tarses is innocent or guilty of spying; we do know he lied about his Romulan grandfather. So the point the episode makes - that you don't use the "guilty unless proven innocent" approach on someone, that even in a time where there are actual attacks, acts of sabotage and conspiracies around, you do not take someone's civil liberties away - carries more weight. Even more importantly, BSG, like the B5 episode, had everyone of our regulars siding with their commander, and not with the investigator. By contrast, The Drumhead has three main characters - guest character Admiral Satie, Picard and Worf; and Worf, a regular we like and sympathize with, initially becomes an enthusiastic supporter of Satie's investigation. It's not a question of the mean outsider coming to make trouble for the noble regulars; it's a question of how easily a climate of fear and paranoia can be created, not among strangers, but among "us", the heroes, the good guys. Watched post 9/11 and eight years of Bush, this episode suddenly looks not like something drawing on some distant McCarthy past, but something remarkably prescient. Lastly, the way Adama resolves the sitation once he's himself accused is by simply ordering the investigation to stop and the tribunal to be dissolved. He can do that because other than Roslin, he's the only authority around.
By contrast, in The Drumhead Picard at this point is neither the only nor the highest authority around; not only does Satie outrank him but another admiral has joined the proceedings. He can't simply order Satie away. Rewatching the climactic scene, it occured to me that the way Picard outmaneouvres Satie is double-edged. Because it's not just that he makes an argument about civil liberties and that it's not acceptable to buy safety by taking them away. Earlier in the episode, when they were still getting along, she talked about her hero worship for her late father. (And the episode established Picard knows said father's works.) And it was pretty obvious this was a big emotional button. During the hearing, directly after Satie has delivered her own biggest emotional blow (asking Picard how he can live with the knowledge he's directly responsible for the deaths of all the people the Borg killed while he was Locutus), Picard delivers his by not replying with any old statement but a direct quote from her father - and this provokes Satie, who until then kept her cool, into an outburst so intemperate that it shows the other attending admiral she's out of control and no longer reliable. You can argue about whether or not Picard knew that quoting her father would have this result, of course.
Now, would the episode end here, it would be very good but not perfect. The tag scene between Worf and Picard, however, rounds it off, because it doesn't end on a self-satisfied "thank God the evil woman is gone" note, but Picard observing that they think they've come so far, but it needs just the right circumstances, and someone exploiting fear, and we're back at the witch hunts. It doesn't matter that Satie herself isn't on the Enterprise anymore; the potential for a repeat "will always be with us". And that's the element of greatness in this episode. It's not the outsider versus the regulars, it's not about the hero or a friend of his getting slandered, or a look at past mistakes; it's about how easily we ourselves can abandon principle in favour of imagined safety, and how important it is not to let this happen because you believe yourself immune to it.
We get the literal hybrids - Spock (Vulcan/Human origin), B'Lanna Torres (Klingon/Human) and Deanna Troi (Betazoid/Human). Then there are also the characters who are biologically from one world, but were raised on another: Worf (born Klingon but raised human from time he was a small child), Odo (Changeling, raised by Bajoran doctor under Cardassian rule) and Seven of Nine (born human but assimilated by the Borg as a small child); I'd count them as hybrids as well. The result never plays out in quite the same way. The only character who is really at peace with both parts of her heritage and not conflicted about either of them, or with her hybrid status is Troi. She has some issues with her mother but not with being Betazoid, and indeed she usually refers to herself as Betazoid, not as human or half-human (unless she has to explain why she's an empath instead of a telepath). Her background is in a way the diamatrical opposite of Spock's. In the case of Sarek and Amanda (a couple invented and introduced in the 1960s), there never seems to have been a question of Sarek adopting human customs for Amanda, or the two of them raising Spock Terran-style; Amanda doesn't just live on Vulcan but has adopted Vulcan dress style and mostly a Vulcan way of life. By contrast, while Deanna's father Ian was in Starfleet, he seems to have moved to Betazoid when marrying Lwaxana, her daughters were born there, raised Betazoid-style, and though it's not spelled out explicitly, I'd say that the chances are "Troi" was Lwaxana's last name, not Ian's, which he adopted upon marrying her. (Lwaxana refers to "marriages" plural at some points but always maintains this last name, and her whole "daughter of the fifth house" speech points to a matrilinear background as well.) Of course, the Trois were invented in the late 80s.
Another counterpoint to Spock is B'Lanna, who is also the only one of these characters whose parents did not manage to maintain a relationship because of their cultural differences. While Spock might have rebelled against both his father in particular and the Vulcan Science Academy in general and chosen a Starfleet career, with mostly human friends, he still by and large lives according to a Vulcan code of conduct; he defines himself as Vulcan if anyone asks, not as human (and of course Spock Prime eventually ends up leaving Starfleet and becoming an Ambassador, completing the cycle). Whereas B'Lanna spends much of her time on Voyager explicitly rejecting her Klingon heritage, blaming it for everything she doesn't like about herself, and connecting it with self-loathing. She comes to terms with it somewhat but as late as the last or last but one season when there is a question of her and Tom Paris having a child would rather the child to be entirely human (as first instinct). As mentioned before, B'Lanna is the only one of the hybrids whose parents split up, with the result of her blaming both her Klingon mother and her Klingon heritage for being left by her human father.
Worf, who is fully Klingon biologically but was only a child when his natural parents died, went in the opposite direction in that for the most part of both TNG and DS9, he's not just proud of his Klingon heritage but tends to idealize it. Worf being more Klingon than Klingon and more rigid about (some of) their traditions than most Klingons basically screams overcompensation; on the other hand, he seems to have gone into Starfleet straight away, and doesn't actually live in the Klingon Empire until the very end of DS9, and then partly because it direly needs reformation. (Some of the time he's an outcast there, true, but there are also times where he could have had an honored position.) Guinan at one point mentions that if Worf thinks of home, he thinks of his human adoptive parents and Earth, and it's not a statement that gets refuted, but he doesn't manage to live on Earth, either. TNG and DS9 both have him firmly invested in Starfleet as a career, but not always following the Starfleet code of behaviour; Worf killing Duras Klingon-style against Picard's strict orders is an important TNG plot point.
With Odo, we have a circumstance that's not the case for any of the others because Odo is biologically different in a way the others aren't; at the same time, he knows least about one half of his nature versus nurture situation. He doesn't meet other shapeshifters until s3, and afterwards only briefly and usually in hostile circumstances until the start of s6, which presents his first truly extensive period of contact with the Founders. Because the Founders are the main antagonists of the later seasons, the loyalty conflict situation is sharpest in Odo's case, but at the same time I'd call it the easiest because the show doesn't really present the "join the Founders" option in any positive light (until the very end). (Whereas Vulcans and Klingons might have their drawbacks but also their virtues.) At the same time, Odo's loyalty to the DS9 regulars isn't presented as something cultural but entirely personal. Odo might have come to consciousness on Bajor, modelled himself after a Bajoran scientist (whom he resented for treating him as a lab rat), and be in love with a Bajoran, Kira, but I never had the impression he sees himself as Bajoran in any sense. He works first for Dukat and then for Sisko, but doesn't see himself as Cardassian or Federation-belonging, either. The show declares early on Odo has a personal code of justice which he follows, but doesn't explain where he got it from. Later events pose the interesting question as to whether it's an instinct for justice or an instinct for order. Either way, it's superceded by personal attachment; one of the starkest examples of Odo's genuine other-ness is his decision to kill 800 people and wipe out two hundred years of history in order to save Kira's life, which isn't justified by any behavioral code he could have adopted from the people he lived with. When Odo at the end of the show returns to the Founders in order to heal them and end the war, again the emotional sacrifice here is near derived exclusively via his relationship with Kira; while he admits to her he might miss some of the other people on DS9 as well (including Quark, which she's not to tell him), there is not a question of Odo missing Bajor (which during the course of the show he only visits once or twice) or the "solid" way of life as such.
With Seven of Nine, the ST writers blatantly went for the interpretation of the child raised by Indians from the old Westerns. They also used the chance to do something which didn't happen at the start of Voyager, where the potential conflicting background and agenda between Maquis and Starfleet crews was quickly removed by the fast way the new Voyager crew integrated. By contrast, the integration of Seven in the Voyager crew from the point where she was forced to join to the point where she decided to stay took the entire fourth season, and afterwards the show still took care not to erase her differences, and still occasionally conflicting code of conduct. Now if the Founders were one show's antagonists for several seasons, the Borg were antagonists for the entire ST verse, no matter which show, so letting Seven not reject her Borg-ness utterly and as soon as possible was pretty radical. It also gave the show a lot of character drama, starting from the second s4 episode when Janeway tells a just-severed-from-the-Collective Seven that she won't return her to the Borg because Seven isn't yet capable of choosing for herself. Seven then asks that if she does indeed become an individual in Janeway's definition of the word and at that point still wants to return to the Collective, would Janeway let her? Janeway's answer is evasive ("I don't think you'll make that choice"), but it's clear it's actually no, whereupon Seven asks that if individuality is forced upon her, how are humans and Janeway different from the Borg. It's an unsettling and effective moment because of course on the one hand the viewer, familiar with the Borg concept, agrees with Janeway that no one sane and sentient would voluntarily choose such an existence, and the erasure of self that goes with it, but on the other, the drone about to get individualized as Seven has a point as well. The person Seven becomes remains imprinted by both the Voyager and the Borg experience.
All of which doesn't lead me to any conclusions, except that the STverse won't stop with these children of two worlds characters any time soon....
But now, some more reviews.
Final Mission, a fourth season episode, was the last one with Wesley Crusher as a regular; thereafter he came back now and then as a guest star. Now, back in the day Wesley was one of the most unpopular characters around. I had no strong feelings one way or the other, but I did feel sorry for him due to the relentless fannish hostility. (Something like this almost invariably awakes my pity for the fannish underdog.) Still, I can't say I spent much time thinking about Wesley until a few years ago, the first Multiverse ficathon happened, and I got assigned to a pinch hit with the prompt "Wesley Crusher meets Anakin Skywalker". (Talk about fannish underdogs. This was post-Attack of the Clones, when Anakin hatred was at its height.) So I rewiewed some Wesley episodes in order to get a feeling for the character, and Final Mission, along with The First Duty, was one of them. Ever since, I've found myself fond of the still most unpopular of Wesleys. It's not that Final Mission is such a stellar episode; it's an okay one, with a predictable plot. (Just before he's off to Starfleet Academy, Wesley goes on what is supposed to be a run of the mill short diplomatic trip with Picard, the shuttle inevitably crashes, hardships ensue, Picard nearly dies and Wesley manages to save Picard's and his own life at the last minute; they get rescued.)
The reason why it left me with fond feelings for young Mr. Crusher, both during my story research back then and now upon rewatch, is this: for starters, contrary to his reputation, he's not presented as perfect. A diplomat Wesley is not; he manages to piss off the shuttle captain with his somewhat snobbish remark at once, which has consequences. Secondly, the point the episode makes about machismo and shoot-first, think later tactics being stupid agrees with me, as does the way it makes said points. (I.e. once Picard is injured and out of it, Wesley can't stop the shuttle guy from doing the stupid shoot first thing though he tries to point out that analyzing the MacGuffin of the week first, thus finding out what they're up against, would be better. But a) the guy doesn't take Wesley seriously due to the earlier incident and b) there is also no way a teenager, genius or not, without any martial arts training can stop a grown man, and the episode doesn't pretend otherwise.) Thirdly, and most importantly, there is the scene the episode inevitably builds up to, when Wesley tries to keep Picard awake and alive while trying to figure out how on earth to deactivate the MacGuffin of the week. Other than the entirety of Stand by Me, this is probably my favourite of Wil Wheaton's on screen performances because the way Wesley finally comes out with his "please don't die, Starfleet, my science experiments, the genius stuff, I did that all so you would be proud of me" speech, which in its earnest, awkward emotionality feels very real. (Also makes sense of Wesley's later characterisation, because if he picked Starfleet as a career because of Picard, not because of himself, it figures he might make a different choice once he grows up.) There has always been a sense of simultanous affection and deliberate restraint coupled with some unease in Picard's relationship with both Crushers, which given the Jack Crusher backstory makes sense. And because he's Picard, Wesley doesn't get a hug or a love declaration in return, let alone a dramatic "if I die, please tell your mother...", but a "when you're at the academy, visit Boothby the groundkeeper who knew me better than anyone back there". (Boothby, as we later find out, specializes in depressed cadets.) That makes the scene for me, too. More than the to be expected "I am proud of you" later. The final joke between the two about the uniforms clinches it.
Relics, after Sarek and Unification, was the third and to my memory last time TNG (excluding the pilot and later the movies) used a TOS guest star, in this case James Doohan as Scotty. I was already fond of the episode but upon rewatching found its poignancy tripled because of the changes the intervening years wrought:
1.) James Doohan is dead.
2.) I've just seen a young Scotty played by someone else in ST XI
3.) When Scotty tells Geordi LaForge near the end that he should treasure his turn on the Enterprise because the adventure comes only once, and then it's over and you'll never get that time of your life back in this way, it's impossible not to be aware that now nearly as many years have passed for the TNG folk as they had for the TOS actors back when the episode was made.
Even without this, though, Relics is a good episode and homage both, better than Unification and as good as Sarek. It's not just fanservice bringing back a beloved character, it uses him to tell a story about age, about both its losses and grace. Scotty's initial sense of alienation on the Enterprise-D (the tech is new and thus his own knowledge is out of date, he doesn't know anyone and it initially doesn't go too well with Geordi) resonates, but so does the emotional turning point, when Scotty asks the computer to program the holodeck to recreate the bridge of the original Enterprise. (Which btw was as loving a reconstruction as I ever saw one. I remember reading they got the set decoration from fans who had rebuild it in their garage because of course the original sets had long since been destroyed.) And toasts absent comrades. But then he gets a visitor on that bridge, and it's fitting that the first person he bonds with on the D isn't yet Geordi but Picard, because Picard, while still active, isn't young anymore and has a sense of age and losses, and nostalgia. (It's also a neat character moment for Picard who talks about his first command, the Stargazer, admitting to missing her even now. Kirk Prime's one true love might have been the Enterprise - Reboot Kirk is not yet that attached - but they didn't try to repeat this with Picard. (Unlike Adama, whom Moore couldn't resist giving Kirk's Enterprise, err, Galactica angst. And then some.) Who is fond of the Enterprise, but it's not his first ship or in otherwise something that exclusively defines him.)
From this point onwards, Scotty's emotional lot improves; he ends up saving the day together with Geordi, proving the tried and true mad engineer skills in the new age, and as befits an ST character leaves us heading towards a new adventure. He also has one wonderful moment for old time fans:
Geordi: I told Captain Picard I'd get this done in an hour.
Scotty (winking): So how long will it take?
Geordi (confused): One hour.
Scotty (shocked): You didn't tell him how long it would REALLY take, did you? Laddie, you've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.
Lastly, the way the writing justified Scotty's presence in the 24th century without having to put James Doohan in 130 years old make-up - he saved himself in an emergency situation via locking himself in a transporter buffer - is my favourite use of technobabble on the show.
On
b5_revisited, a few weeks back we talked about the first season episode Eyes, and thus also about other examples of the "outsider investigator comes on board, ends up putting Captain on trial" type of story, and The Drumhead was named as one, while it was simultanously pointed out its narrative focus was actualyl elsewhere. It hadn't occured to me to compare the two episodes before, but I found it highly interesting to do so, and would like to add Litmus (from Battlestar Galactica's first season), because it has far more in common with The Drumhead than the B5 episode. You can tell Ron Moore liked The Drumhead so much in his TNG days that he wanted to do a BSG remake; unfortunately, Litmus isn't as good. In both cases, there is a genuine act of sabotage which gets the whole thing going. (Whereas in Eyes there is not; it's all about Sinclair being unfairly maligned.) In both cases, the commander/captain first tries to put a stop to the investigation developing into a witchhunt when the investigator puts a crewman on trial whose innnocence he's convinced of. In both cases, the investigator then responds by putting the commander/captain himself on the stand, which proves to be the one thing too many which causes the end of the proceedings. Both episodes, in the context they were first watched, can be seen as making a "MacCarthyism is bad" point.Now, here are a couple of reasons why I think the older episode is the one which holds up better. There's the second accused crewman. In BSG, that was Tyrol. (Also two of his people, but the focus and what tipped Adama over the edge into intervening was Tyrol.) Tyrol was a regular the audience liked and knew to be innocent. (Although his girlfriend was not, but even that was beyond her own will or knowledge at the time.) In the TNG episode, on the other hand, that second crewmember was not a regular. Like the first, guilty one, it was a new character, Simon Tarses, whom the audience did not know before. We don't know, anymore than Picard does, whether Simon Tarses is innocent or guilty of spying; we do know he lied about his Romulan grandfather. So the point the episode makes - that you don't use the "guilty unless proven innocent" approach on someone, that even in a time where there are actual attacks, acts of sabotage and conspiracies around, you do not take someone's civil liberties away - carries more weight. Even more importantly, BSG, like the B5 episode, had everyone of our regulars siding with their commander, and not with the investigator. By contrast, The Drumhead has three main characters - guest character Admiral Satie, Picard and Worf; and Worf, a regular we like and sympathize with, initially becomes an enthusiastic supporter of Satie's investigation. It's not a question of the mean outsider coming to make trouble for the noble regulars; it's a question of how easily a climate of fear and paranoia can be created, not among strangers, but among "us", the heroes, the good guys. Watched post 9/11 and eight years of Bush, this episode suddenly looks not like something drawing on some distant McCarthy past, but something remarkably prescient. Lastly, the way Adama resolves the sitation once he's himself accused is by simply ordering the investigation to stop and the tribunal to be dissolved. He can do that because other than Roslin, he's the only authority around.
By contrast, in The Drumhead Picard at this point is neither the only nor the highest authority around; not only does Satie outrank him but another admiral has joined the proceedings. He can't simply order Satie away. Rewatching the climactic scene, it occured to me that the way Picard outmaneouvres Satie is double-edged. Because it's not just that he makes an argument about civil liberties and that it's not acceptable to buy safety by taking them away. Earlier in the episode, when they were still getting along, she talked about her hero worship for her late father. (And the episode established Picard knows said father's works.) And it was pretty obvious this was a big emotional button. During the hearing, directly after Satie has delivered her own biggest emotional blow (asking Picard how he can live with the knowledge he's directly responsible for the deaths of all the people the Borg killed while he was Locutus), Picard delivers his by not replying with any old statement but a direct quote from her father - and this provokes Satie, who until then kept her cool, into an outburst so intemperate that it shows the other attending admiral she's out of control and no longer reliable. You can argue about whether or not Picard knew that quoting her father would have this result, of course.
Now, would the episode end here, it would be very good but not perfect. The tag scene between Worf and Picard, however, rounds it off, because it doesn't end on a self-satisfied "thank God the evil woman is gone" note, but Picard observing that they think they've come so far, but it needs just the right circumstances, and someone exploiting fear, and we're back at the witch hunts. It doesn't matter that Satie herself isn't on the Enterprise anymore; the potential for a repeat "will always be with us". And that's the element of greatness in this episode. It's not the outsider versus the regulars, it's not about the hero or a friend of his getting slandered, or a look at past mistakes; it's about how easily we ourselves can abandon principle in favour of imagined safety, and how important it is not to let this happen because you believe yourself immune to it.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 10:46 am (UTC)One thing about The Drumhead vs. Litmus (and I might be wrong about this, as I haven't seen the latter since it first aired): I thought we were supposed to take away from Litmus that Adama was wrong, and that's why it was an angsty, Moore-style BSG remix; I thought we were supposed to be unhappy with Adama for just ending the tribunal because he felt like it; that unlike The Drumhead, Litmus' Satie was actually right. Again, I haven't seen it in a while.
Would you class Data as part of the "child of two worlds" trope? I enjoyed reading your thoughts on that, btw. That's a tricky trope -- I mean, it's basically the "tragic mulatto" thing that has been justly decried. At the same time, there is something powerful about it.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 06:47 pm (UTC)(Which btw is another difference to The Drumhead - Picard was concerned for this particular crewman, but it was the overall implication which disturbed him even more, what it meant to everyone else's liberty.)
Data: not really, because while he is in one state and wishes to achieve another, there are
no other Cylonsno androids as an original society available to him, plus he doesn't remember anything before Starfleet found him, i.e. of his early days with Soong. The other androids he later encounters are Lal, whom he creates himself (and then has to destroy), Juliana (who was created by Soong and believes herself to be human, and Data can't bring himself to tell her otherwise), and Lore, who is the evil twin archetype, but again, not a society. You could make the case that in First Contact, the Borg Queen offers the Borg as an alternative to the humans to Data, but he doesn't have a connection to them that predates or equals his connection to humanity.