People often ask me about my favorite episodes of Star Trek.
And I have certain stock answers, but sometimes it’s fun to set those aside and look for
deeper cuts, you know?
Take Star Trek: The Next Generation, for instance.
Everybody talks about, say, “Best of Both Worlds,” or “The Inner Light,” or “Yesterday’s
Enterprise,” but there are lots of great TNG episodes that don’t get talked about
nearly as often as those.
I’ll tell you what’s one of my favorites: it’s . . shit, now I forget the title!
You know it, though — it’s the one where one of the main characters becomes a mentor/surrogate
parent to a child who has suffered a horrible tragedy.
Remember?
I think it’s . . . yeah, it’s this one, where the boy’s mother is killed on an away
mission, and Worf feels responsible because he was in command of the landing party, and
the episode ends with Worf and the kid doing a ceremony that makes him part of Worf’s
family.
And then he’s ever seen again, because it’s TNG, but hey, it was a good thought, Worf.
One of the things I really like about that episode is how it shows the difficulty the
kid has adjusting to his new life.
Like, there’s that scene where Worf comes home, and the kid is staying with him, and
he finds him blasting this earsplitting alien music, and he’s like, “Turn off that damn
noise!”
Wait . . . no, that wasn’t Worf.
That was Picard.
And . . . that wasn’t the same kid, either.
That’s a whole different episode, actually.
Yeah, I’m thinking of this one, where they find a human kid who’s been adopted by a
Talarian after his birth parents were killed in battle.
And while they try to figure out what to do with him — return him to his Talarian father,
or send him to live with his human grandparents — the kid stays with Captain Picard, who
he kinda imprints on because his Talarian dad is also the captain of their ship.
But then it all turns out to be a holographic simulation, created by the kid, who is actually
an alien abandoned alone on a planet who just wanted the companionship of a real person.
. . . Right?
No, no, that’s this episode!
Riker wakes up and it’s the future and he’s the captain of the Enterprise and he has a
son, but it turns out to be a holodeck program being run by Romulans who captured him to
obtain tactical information, but then that turns out to just be a simulation by this
kid.
And Riker takes him back to the Enterprise, and the kid develops an unhealthy attachment
to Riker, starts acting like him and dressing like him, even to the point of . . . That’s
Data.
That’s Data I’m thinking of.
And it’s another totally different episode.
Now I’m thinking of the one where they find a kid who is the only survivor of a damaged
starship, and Data rescues him from some rubble, and the poor kid is so traumatized that when
he finds out Data is an android without emotions he says, “That sounds good to me!” and
starts acting like he’s an android, too.
Troi tells Picard about this and Picard’s like, “Is that . . . I mean, are we cool
with that?”
And Troi’s like, “He’s really messed up inside, I think we should just indulge
him for awhile.”
And Data’s like, “Okay!”
And the kid is carrying around all this guilt because he thinks he was somehow responsible
for what happened to his old ship, but it turns out it wasn’t his fault, and he eventually
helps Data solve the big problem of the episode so the Enterprise can escape the same tragic
fate.
. . . Yes.
That’s all the same episode.
I think.
So, did TNG really reuse that same basic plot four times?
Why?
Maybe this is a question worth exploring a bit (he says, reading from a script he wrote
for this video exploring that question).
First things first: just how similar are these four episodes?
Well, they aren’t shot-for-shot duplicates or anything.
But there are numerous, significant similarities.
All four episodes involve a child — a boy — who has lost his parents in a traumatic
way: in “The Bonding,” Jeremy Aster’s mother, an Enterprise crew member, is killed
during an away mission, leaving him an orphan, since his father died years before; in “Suddenly
Human,” Jono, the human boy raised by a Talarian, lost his parents when Talarian forces
— led by the Talarian captain who adopted him — destroyed the colony where they lived;
in “Future Imperfect,” the boy who creates the simulation for Riker explains that his
planet was invaded and his people were killed, and his mother left him on this planet alone
so that he would be safe, with holographic projectors so that he could create any world
he wanted to live in; and in “Hero Worship,” Timothy is the only survivor of the severely
damaged starship Vico, where he lived on with his parents.
All four episodes show the orphaned children dealing with their trauma in ways that aren’t
necessarily healthy: Jeremy eagerly runs to the arms of an alien pretending to be his
dead mother; Jono acts out repeatedly during his stay on the Enterprise, ultimately attempting
to murder Captain Picard; the boy we meet in “Future Imperfect,” whose real name
is Barash, though he also goes by Jean-Luc and Ethan at various times throughout the
episode, essentially abducts Riker and attempts to deceive him into staying with him to alleviate
his loneliness; and Timothy buries his guilt and grief by pretending to be someone incapable
of feeling those things.
All four episodes place these orphaned children in the care of Enterprise crew members who
aren’t super comfortable in parental roles.
“The Bonding” takes place before the introduction of Worf’s son Alexander, so he’s not a
father yet, and as we explored a bit in my video about Star Trek’s best and worst parents
a couple months back, he’s not such a great one once Alexander shows up, either.
His feelings toward Jeremy aren’t necessarily parental; as the commander of the away team
where his mother was killed, Worf feels responsible for the child.
Plus, Worf’s own parents were killed when he was a child, so he relates to what Jeremy
is going through in a very personal way.
“Suddenly Human” shows us Picard as the reluctant parent.
He begins the episode feeling sympathy for Jono, but doesn’t seem particularly interested
in stepping in as a father figure.
It’s Jono’s refusal to obey anyone else on the ship that compels Picard to take him
in and help him readjust to life among other humans.
Riker in “Future Imperfect” is the closest thing to an exception to this particular trope
among these four episodes.
When he wakes up in the first version of the holographic simulation and is told he has
a son named Jean-Luc, he’s surprised, and worried that he won’t be a good father,
but he makes the adjustment pretty quickly, all things considered.
He seems like he would be a good dad — and, of course, decades later when he appears on
Star Trek: Picard, we see that, in fact, he is.
And in “Hero Worship,” when Counselor Troi notices that Timothy seems more comfortable
with Data than the other members of the crew, she suggests that Data spend some time with
him.
Data isn’t sure what to do, but Troi says, “Just be with him.”
Data’s interactions with Timothy don’t go entirely smoothly, and initially he seems
just as puzzled by Timothy pretending to be an android as everyone else is, but eventually
they form a bond with each other that is genuine, and mutual.
And, of course, because this is Star Trek: The Next Generation we’re talking about,
the surrogate parenthood of the Enterprise crew members in these shows only lasts until
the end of the episode, and then these traumatized orphans vanish into black holes, for all we
know, and are never seen or mentioned again.
In fact, in three of the four episodes, the fate of the orphans is left largely unresolved.
When we leave Jeremy and Timothy at the end of their episodes, they’re still living
on the Enterprise without parents.
It is mentioned early on in “The Bonding” that Jeremy has relatives on Earth, but it’s
never explicitly stated that he will be leaving the Enterprise to live with them.
Timothy doesn’t even get that much.
Apparently he’s just gonna continue to live on the ship as, what, a ward of the state?
I guess?
As far as Barash, “Future Imperfect” ends with him beaming up to the Enterprise with
Riker, and the implication is that he’ll be taken care of, but we never learn exactly
what happens to him.
Does he stay on the Enterprise, too?
Do him and Timothy become pals?
Do they become mortal enemies, each obsessively scheming toward the other’s destruction?
We don’t know!
Only Jono, the human adopted by the Talarian, gets a definitive fate.
After initially deciding to send him to live with his human grandmother, Picard changes
his mind and returns him to the Talarian captain who raised him, to, as Picard puts it, “the
only home he has ever known.”
So, what is it about this basic plot that kept the writers of TNG coming back to it
again and again — and again?
Is it just lazy writing?
Creative exhaustion?
A result of the pressures inherent in creating twenty-five hours of scripted television a
year for seven years?
Maybe.
In all honesty, that’s probably part of it.
But I suspect there are other reasons why the writers of TNG were so attracted to this
premise.
To figure out what those might be, I think we need to look at the ways in which these
four episodes differ from each other.
The first one, “The Bonding,” from early in TNG’s third season, doesn’t center
exclusively on Worf’s relationship with Jeremy.
It’s more about how a comrade dying in the line of duty affects the rest of the crew.
We see Worf’s guilt and empathy for Jeremy, and the episode ends with them performing
a ritual to welcome Jeremy into Worf’s family, but we also see how the death of Marla, Jeremy’s
mother, brings up uncomfortable memories for Wesley of his father’s death, and how her
death leads Picard to question the practice of having families serve aboard starships
that routinely visit dangerous parts of the galaxy.
Data and Riker have a conversation about why he doesn’t notice Marla Aster’s absence
as strongly as he noticed the absence of Tasha Yar when she died, which is a nice touch of
continuity.
And, of course, we see how the death of his mother shatters Jeremy, and how willing he
is to believe the alien who appears in his mother’s form, so desperate is he to reclaim
the life he’s lost.
The episode isn’t just about the impact of the death of a parent on a child, but about
how a community responds to a sudden tragedy.
The second one, “Suddenly Human,” is about Picard coming to understand that his duty
in this scenario is to Jono, not to Starfleet, and not to Jono’s surviving family.
After spending most of the episode trying to coax Jono to turn away from his Talarian
father and embrace his human heritage — because of course a human child should be raised by
his fellow humans, not by the leader of a hostile species — Picard realizes that instead
of trying to force Jono to do what he, Picard, thinks is right, he should listen to Jono
and do what is best for him.
The rights and best interests of the child should come before those of the parents, I
think this episode is telling us.
This episode also continues the evolution of Picard’s attitude toward children.
In the series pilot, “Encounter at Farpoint,” Picard states unambiguously that he doesn’t
like kids and he’s not comfortable with them on his ship.
By the end of the series, while he hasn’t quite transformed into Mr. Rogers, he has
developed an ability, and even a willingness, to bond with children.
Fans who complained about this aspect of Picard’s character in the recent Star Trek: Picard
series seem to have forgotten this.
His relationships with Elnor, Soji and, briefly, Dahj, might be incongruent with his characterization
in “Encounter at Farpoint,” but they’re entirely consistent with the arc of his character
development throughout the series.
In “Future Imperfect,” the “surrogate parent to an orphaned child” premise is
mostly there to provide a setup for a riff on the concept of false reality, as Riker
sees through multiple layers of deception before learning the truth about what’s happening
to him.
We get some nice beats of Riker-as-a-father throughout the episode, like when he gives
Barash, who he thinks is his son Jean-Luc, some tips on playing the trombone — By the
way, his kid is interested in learning the trombone?
Shouldn’t that have been his first tip-off that something wasn’t right here? — or
when he learns that his son has been injured playing Parisee’s squares and reacts with
a very parental combination of relief and anger that his kid was playing such a dangerous
sport in the first place.
“Future Imperfect” does share some thematic DNA with “The Bonding” — both episodes
seek to remind us that facing reality, however painful, is better than losing oneself in
fantasy — but “Future Imperfect” takes place almost entirely inside its fantasy,
whereas the fantasy of Jeremy and the alien pretending to be his mother only occupies
a portion of “The Bonding.”
And “Hero Worship” takes the premise as a jumping off point for yet another “Data
learns something about what it means to be human” story.
And it’s one of the best examples of this sub-genre of TNG, because here Data isn’t
in the role of the student — he, the emotionless android, finds himself having to remind Timothy
of the advantages of being a human with feelings.
Naturally, not only is he able to lead Timothy back to his humanity, Data also demonstrates
that he understands a lot more about what it means to be human than he realizes.
And while the exact fate of Timothy isn’t resolved, the episode does end with Timothy
letting go of his fantasy and beginning the process of dealing with his grief as a child,
not an aspiring android.
Data’s reaction to this leads to one of my favorite Data scenes in the entire series.
As Data observes Timothy in school with other children, Troi asks Data if it’s difficult
to see Timothy moving away from wanting to be like him.
Data says no, because emotions he ain’t got.
And yet, it does seem to bother him a little.
Perhaps it’s as Troi speculates, that Data is disappointed on some level that Timothy
no longer wants to be an android.
Or maybe it’s deeper than that — maybe it’s the fact that Timothy has the ability
to go from “android” to boy, and Data doesn’t.
Either way, when Troi asks if it’s difficult for Data to watch Timothy abandon his android
fantasy, Brent Spiner packs a lot into his delivery of Data’s response: “That would
require an emotional context I cannot provide.”
Each episode takes the same basic premise and develops it in ways that are undeniably
similar to one another, but that also allow the show to take the premise in unique directions
and use it to illuminate different facets of the show’s main characters.
Parenthood is one of the most fundamental of all human experiences, though not a universal
one, as I and many other happily childless adults can attest, and while Star Trek: TNG
does abide by the standard practice of action adventure shows at the time and present all
of its male characters as being unmarried and childless (with the eventual exception
of absentee father Worf), doing the occasional episode with this premise allows the series
to show some of its heroes acting as parents, and thereby to explore that experience of
parenthood in a limited way that can be conveniently dispensed with by the episode’s final fade
to black.
And this premise also provides an opportunity to explore what has become one of the universal
themes of the entire Star Trek franchise: the idea that, actually, we can choose our
family.
We first encounter this theme in Star Trek: The Original Series.
It becomes one of the most important elements of the Classic Trek film series, culminating
in an exchange between Kirk and McCoy at the conclusion of Star Trek V, when, hearing Kirk
refer to Spock as his brother, McCoy says, “I thought you said people like us don’t
have families.”
And Kirk responds, “I was wrong.”
Viewed in that light, it makes perfect sense that the “hero becomes a surrogate parent
to an orphan” trope would pop up so often.
Most Star Trek heroes are orphans themselves, in one sense or another — nearly every major
character has either lost or been estranged from at least one parent by the time we meet
them.
It’s only natural that they would want to step into that role when they encounter a
young person who is struggling with the same thing.
Okay, maybe “want” is too strong a word in Captain Picard’s case, at least as we
find him in “Suddenly Human.”
But despite his personal reluctance to act as a surrogate father to Jono, by the time
“Suddenly Human” originally aired, we had already seen that Picard understood the
importance of chosen family, especially to a person who found themselves without their
biological family.
There are a few ideas, a few themes, that are found in every version of Star Trek.
We might call these the defining characteristics of the franchise, the things that make Star
Trek, Star Trek.
I won’t give you a comprehensive list right now, but, for example, I’m talking about
concepts like optimism, humanism, celebrating curiosity and science, a strong social conscience
— and an idea that, for my money anyway, is never expressed any better than in Captain
Picard’s words to young Jeremy Aster in “The Bonding”: On the starship Enterprise,
no one is alone.
No one.