Date: April 12, 2020
Season 4, Episodes 5 and 6
Musical Accompaniment: Ambient Worlds presents: Hufflepuff Common Room music
Interstellar News: Buona Pasqua, if you celebrate. 4 loads of laundry, 2 cleaned out closets, 2 family video chats, and 7 calls later we’re done talking to people and doing chores today.
Favorite Quote from “Remember Me”:
Dr. Crusher: I’d like Lieutenant Worf to program onboard sensors to monitor all personnel. If we can catch the exact moment someone disappears…
Picard: I’m sorry, whom did you say?
Dr. Crusher: Worf. (blank stare)
Chief of Security. (blank stare continues)
The big guy who never smiles? (blank stare continues for longer)
The Klingon!
McFadden’s delivery in this scene is fantastic. I mean it is hard to miss a Klingon on the bridge.
“Remember Me” begins with a log entry from Dr. Crusher who is welcoming her mentor aboard, Dr. Quaice. Quaice just lost his wife and is retiring, and laments to Beverly about how everyone he knows is dead or dying. She goes to check on Wesley in engineering, who is doing something with La Forge, and something strange happens.
Dr. Crusher goes to check on her friend, who isn’t there. In fact, no one remembers him getting on board and there’s no record of him at all ever existing. In MedLab she calls for several of her staff, who apparently do not exist either and the mystery deepens. I start to suspect that something happened to Dr. Crusher when she was down in engineering, since she seems to be the only one to remember the ship as it was, and everyone is acting just a little funny. As the number of people on the ship decreases, Dr. Crusher tries to figure her way out and does so (with a Wizard of Oz reference) just as Wesley and the Traveler also come at it from their end. All is right in the world and no one has actually disappeared.
I love that we finally have a Beverly Crusher centered episode. She knows something is wrong and is right on it, and everyone is backing her the entire way. She doubts herself several times, but then knows there is a problem and shrugs it off. She doesn’t melt into a puddle when her only son disappears because she is a bad ass mom who knows that she’ll fix whatever is happening. She also takes a literal leap of faith into the unknown hoping that her son and the rest of the crew were fixing exactly what she thought they were, and she was right. But there were no consequences for Wesley, as apparently everything is shrugged off because Dr. Crusher wasn’t really dead or in danger anymore. I was stoked about having a Crusher episode, but there were a few things I wish had been different. 7 bubble vortexes for me, please.
Favorite Quote from “Legacy”:
Riker: In all trust, there is the possibility of betrayal. I’m not sure you were prepared for that.
Data: Were you prepared, sir?
Riker: I don’t think anybody ever is.
Data: Then it is better not to trust.
Riker: Without trust, there’s no friendship, no closeness. None of the emotional bonds that make us what we are.
Data: And yet you put yourself at risk.
Riker: Every single time.
Riker with the hard truths. Curse your sudden, but inevitable, betrayal.
Worf’s One-Two Punch: “Pah!”
“Legacy” starts out with poker night that quickly turns into magic trick night where Riker gets schooled by Data. There’s a distress call that the Enterprise doesn’t get to in time. Two of the crew managed to escape in a pod, however they wind up in hostile territory which also happens to be where Tasha Yar was born. There’s “The Coalition” vs. “The Alliance” and Yar’s sister happens to be a part of the Coalition, so she beams up to the Enterprise to help them find the escape pod which is in Alliance territory.
Ishara Yar thought her sister was cowardly, but spends the next few hours learning about Tasha from her crew mates, especially Data. They try to enact one plan, but Ishara is hurt and they don’t make as much progress as they wanted. Ishara comes up with another plan and says she wants to leave the life she’s a part of, so they remove the proximity sensor in her chest. The away team beams down to enact the plan, but Ishara just wants to ruin the Alliance and is caught in the act. Although the crew members are saved, Data is as devastated as an android with no emotions can be. Ishara is beamed back and the ship leaves the area.
I was impressed by Riker’s discussion with Data and thought it very insightful of him. I will admit I got sucked into the fantasy that Ishara wanted to help and audibly gasped a little when she talked to the leader of her faction saying it was all going according to plan. Looking back at the episode, however, I’m also kind of mad at the crew of the Enterprise. They admit to themselves it might be a con job, let their emotions get the best of them, and then are all shocked that it’s a con job. I’m especially critical of Data, who supposedly doesn’t have emotions, but let his emotions for Tasha outweigh his good sense until he was hit over the head with evidence of Ishara’s betrayal. I mean it’s okay that I got sucked in, I don’t belong to Starfleet and haven’t served on the crew. Hell, I’ve only been watching TNG for two months. That earns this episode “Pah”, said 4 times in a row.
TA Out!
To Boldly Go Where Everyone Has Gone Before 