Tom Salinsky

TNG S04E03 Brothers (). From Family to Brothers. In the teaser, Riker of all people has to deal with a practical joke gone wrong. Surely the command structure isn’t so narrow that the second-most senior officer has to deal with bratty kids? If any of the bridge crew needed to be involved, I would have expected it to be Troi, but this isn’t an episode which deals with overbearing mothers or roguish space cowboys, so we can hardly expect her to get a line. No, this is a Data episode and more than that it’s a Lore episode, with Brent Spiner now adding Dr Soong to his roster of characters (as well as impersonating Picard, thanks to some post-syncing). The Data-hijacks-the-Enterprise sequence is suitably exciting but once again we’re faced with the fact that this enormous ship with a crew of several hundred can be successfully piloted by one android (wait till we get to Remember Me).

When Data comes face-to-face with his creator and fellow creation, the results are compelling. Spiner is incredible in his triple role, and the effects work, all done on a TV budget and still a few years before digital compositing, is very effective. Echoing the sci-fi adventure storyline with conflict between the two squabbling kids is a reasonable attempt to add some depth and thematic resonance, but the subplot is clichéd and dull, so it drags the episode down rather than elevates it. What’s fun about this is that Data has no idea Soong is alive and Soong has no idea Lore is alive. That’s nifty plotting which keeps our interest and prevents this from being a re-run of Datalore. Soong’s sudden need for a convenient snooze, virtually in mid-sentence, rather less so. Unusually for this show, a clear memory of earlier episodes is required and there’s very little handholding for anyone who might not know who Lore is, or what a crystalline entity might be, but the Data/Lore/Soong scenes are so strong as to sweep away many of these quibbles. The ensign in engineering is wearing the new uniform, but it’s the seam-down-the-middle-of-the-chest version. Rick Berman gets sole writing credit on this one, which is a fairly rare occurrence.

S04E04 Suddenly Human (). Rather in the vein of the Smith and Jones sketch which parodied the way in which UK news broadcasts would emphasise the number of Britons involved in overseas catastrophes (and list the remaining wounded in order of importance), when the Enterprise rescues five young trainees from a stricken Talarian craft, everyone fixates on the human boy. It is quickly determined that all of his foreign nonsense needs to be drummed out of him for his own good, and that regardless of the strength of the loving bond between him and his Talarian parents, being returned to a human society he has no memory of is definitely what should happen. (“They brutalised him.” “I forbid you from any custom I personally am unfamiliar with regardless of how much comfort you should happen to draw from it.”) Because this is 90s Trek he is of course rigidly patriarchal. Due to a plot contrivance, Picard (who evidently has plenty of time on his hands) is required to be the one to draw him out, despite the fact that he’s (all together now) no good with children. Nothing we haven’t seen before, but the scene between him and Troi which painstakingly goes over this ground probes a little deeper and is arguably the highlight of quite a thin and frustrating episode, in which Picard can’t understand the concept of an adoptive parent without being stabbed through the chest first. Yes, they get it right in the end, but it’s hard to appreciate the journey when the destination is so breathtakingly obvious and our people so blinkered and stubborn. That Picard/Troi scene is worth an extra half a star.

S04E05 Remember Me? (). When I was reading comics as a teenager, I was easily seduced by the seemingly apocalyptic scenes presented on the covers, which promised to totally upend the established norms of the story “It can’t be! The Incredible Hulk is Superman!” That kind of thing. Often, when this panel actually turned up on page 19 out of 24, it would turn out to be a bit less epoch-defining than it seemed and sometimes it would be an outright cheat. But just like those maddening click-bait ads, I can’t resist a story premise which seemingly undercuts the very thing which makes the show work. Some of my favourite episodes fall into this category, but the hard part is sticking the landing – making the revelation of what’s really going on as interesting as what seemed to be going on, and not hitting the reset button too jarringly hard. Remember Me is that rarest of things, a Crusher-based story which isn’t a medical emergency or a soapy love story. Beverley is stuck on an Enterprise which is rapidly losing personnel, and it seems she’s the only one who recalls the familiar faces who used to roam its corridors. It’s a delicious mystery, carefully set up, Gates McFadden does great work and the resolution is exciting and makes sense. It’s probably only really worth four stars, but I’m going to bump it up half a star because it’s just so much fun. What I love about this episode more than anything is the way in which none of the bridge crew refuse to believe the doctor, almost no matter how nuts she sounds. It means we get way more story beats in the time available and it makes the crew seem like what they are – a family. Writer Lee Sheldon didn’t stick around, but he recommended Jeri Taylor, who will become a core part of the team very soon.

TNG S04E06 Legacy (). A landmark episode which saw the new live action series overtake the old in terms of number of instalments. But the inhabitants of Turkana IV are yet more sub-Mad Max warlike colonists with designer stubble and 90s highlights. Evoking Tasha Yar doesn’t do Beth Toussaint any favours either. While it’s nice to be off the ship for once, the petty squabbles between the blandly-named Coalition and the even more blandly-named Alliance are so tedious that even the crew is more interested in the Yar family tree than they are in the supposedly thrilling escapes from death happening in the caves on the planet below. This would love to be an epic story about betrayal, trust and family but it gets far too bogged down in its cross and double-cross plotting and none of the supporting cast registers.

TNG S04E07 Reunion (). Following episodes which have seen the return of the Traveller, Lore, and the evocation of Tasha Yar, this week K’Ehleyr is back, and it’s always a treat to see Suzie Plakson. Worf does not share my enthusiasm and he’s pretty much horrified by the sight of the Klingon child who materialises next to her on the transporter. “I won’t bore you with the intricacies of Klingon politics,” the ambassador tells Data, showing that she has her storytelling priorities straight. Sadly, a lot of the rest of this relies on not just following the internecine details of this episode, but recalling the equally baroque specifics of the earlier stories Sins of the Father and The Emissary. Among a lot of dimly-lit Klingons under similar makeup, Robert “Eyes” O’Reilly makes a strong visual impression as Gowron. Of more interest is Worf’s relationship with moppety Alexander, and Michael Dorn is excellent throughout, but never more so than in these scenes. This thread will continue through subsequent episodes, but the part will be re-cast. The price we pay for this addition to the cast is the loss of K’Ehleyr which stings. Plakson will be back in both Voyager and Enterprise. We see a bat’leth for the first time, as decoration, as training tool and finally as method of lethal dispatch.

TNG S04E08 Future Imperfect (). Time for Riker to get another character dimension. This time it’s “plays the trombone”. Thin? Yes, but fun, and it is one of the things I remember about him (and the writers of Lower Decks evidently remember it too). Party pooper Picard virtually snatches the birthday cake out of his mouth before sending him to Planet Matte Painting, where moments later, he’s choking from methane inhalation. Happy birthday, mate. When he wakes up, sixteen years have passed. This is another of those brilliant cover-of-a-comic book premises. We know it can’t be true, but it gives the writers a bit more freedom to play and it’s (generally) fascinating to watch how the mystery eventually falls away. No money for new uniforms, just a new style of communicator and no rank pips, even though Star Fleet togs will undergo two fairly drastic revisions in the next five years. Like a good practical joke, the clues are there, and even though the number of possible explanations is very small, the vision of the future is so engaging and so much fun, that I doubt many viewers were scrolling through options as they watched – I certainly wasn’t. And even if you were, there’s another twist coming (although neither is wholly convincing). Among the pleasures are Geordi’s eyes, a Ferengi on the bridge, Admiral Picard (in yet another seamstress-panic-attack uniform and a Colonel Sanders beard) and Andreas Katsulas returning as Tomalak. High concept usually means low stakes, and so it is here, so this is very, very good rather than an unassailable classic. Troi and Crusher sport identical “older lady” hairdos. And doesn’t Troi look good in uniform?