The Klingon civil war continues, and Gowron's forces are losing ground. Certain that the Romulans are supplying the family of Duras, Picard assembles a fleet to enforce a blockade at the Klingon border. This will test Data, who is given his first starship command. But a surprise awaits them all: the Romulan fleet is commanded by Sela, the half-Romulan daughter of an alternate timeline's Tasha Yar.
"Redemption II" is, quite simply, an overcrowded episode. It boasts three major story lines, and none can really be said to be secondary to any of the others. As with part one, Ronald D. Moore handled the script. (Though the director changed for the conclusion; David Carson, the man who ultimately directed the first Next Generation feature film, took charge.) Moore once again let his love of the Klingons show, peppering the script with fun glimpses of their culture. The scene in which rivals party together in the same bar is a fun one (even if it does conflict with a past episode in which Q informed us that "drink not with thine enemy" is part of the Klingon code). From the knife-enhanced version of arm wrestling to Kurn's desire to live it up in case they all die tomorrow, it feels like a realistic foreign culture.
Klingons also bookend the episode. It opens with a fairly elaborate (for the time) opening battle sequence, one that makes clear Kurn is the captain, even if Worf played the "I am the older brother" card in the previous episode. And it ends in the Klingon High Council chamber, with Gowron flashing those wide eyes and a wicked grin as he taunts the vanquished son of Duras. This last scene is perhaps indicative of the overcrowded nature of the episode -- the scene could have been longer to better help the story. I feel like Worf should explain why he wants Toral to live. (Forcing him to live with a father's dishonor, as Worf himself had to, seems reasonable, though it should have been voiced.) I also question why Gowron would let a potential political rival live, regardless of Worf's "pardon."
In my opinion, the best storyline involves Data's command of the U.S.S. Sutherland, and the first officer, Christopher Hobson, who is reluctant to take his orders. The plot is an allegory for racism, and not at all a subtle one. Lest you think that Hobson is just anti-android in some possibly understandable way, he also tosses off the bigoted opinion that a Klingon could never be a ship's counselor. He is, in short, an oddly reprehensible Starfleet character.
By contrast, Picard does much better when Data confronts him earlier in the episode about his casual bigotry. When Data asks why he is not being assigned a command, Picard immediately backpedals and gives him one. And at the end of the episode, he congratulates Data with a big, beaming smile and a string of compliments. But really, I think it's no surprise that Data would make a good captain. I remarked of last season's "In Theory" that Data had clearly learned how to be a good friend over decades of observation. He's probably had even more role models for a leader than for a friend, and Brent Spiner's performance in this episode makes clear how Data is drawing on those role models -- chiefly Picard himself.
The least effective storyline, in my mind, is the revelation of Sela. The idea came from Denise Crosby herself, who had enjoyed her return appearance in "Yesterday's Enterprise" and was apparently having second thoughts about leaving the show. She concocted the idea of Tasha and Richard Castillo (from that episode) having a daughter who was raised by Romulans. The writers went for the idea, though they decided to remove the Castillo element from the pitch.
The idea of a recurring Romulan nemesis for the Enterprise is actually a great one, particularly one who is at least sometimes able to outthink our heroes (as Sela briefly does in this episode). But there are problems with the idea too. For one, Sela doesn't really recur much. She reappears in the "Unification" two-parter later this season... and then vanishes forever.
But the larger problem is essentially voiced in the episode by Picard himself: what difference does it make that Sela is Tasha's daughter? Picard says the revelation won't influence his tactics, and indeed it does not. Nor does Sela get any special insight from her unusual origins. Basically, as soon as Sela's origin story is explained, it stops being at all interesting or relevant to the story. And when you scratch the surface of it a bit, the origin doesn't even quite work. Sela is a mere 23 years old (which Denise Crosby decidedly is not), and yet has somehow risen to command an entire Romulan fleet? I think if Denise Crosby wanted to return to play a recurring villain, they simply should have cast her as some alien in concealing makeup (she could have been Lursa or B'Etor, for example), and simply not made a thing of it -- as, for example, Rene Auberjoinois' appearance on the series Enterprise had nothing to do with his character of Odo from Deep Space Nine. Oh well.
Speaking of Deep Space Nine, it was that series that actually followed up on this episode more than The Next Generation. Lursa, B'Etor, Kurn, and Toral all made their last appearances on The Next Generation in this episode, yet all of them appeared on Deep Space Nine. (Though Lursa and B'Etor did return for the film Star Trek: Generations.) And as for how things end here, why exactly do Lursa and B'Etor leave Toral behind? He's their only real means of claiming power, and it's not like they didn't have time to save him while they were saving themselves.
Other observations:
- In the fourth season finale, Worf was said to be going to serve on Gowron's ship, but this episode has him serving with his brother. The writers were actually aware of this consistency, but felt that pairing the brothers made for a better story -- a story they had not planned out ahead of time when the first part was written.
- O'Brien takes over at tactical in Worf's absence. In the episode "The Wounded," we learned that he had past experience in that role.
- I really don't buy the conceit that you could blockade a border in space. Why do the Romulans have to cross into Klingon territory right there? I mean, people sneak undetected across the borders of countries here on Earth all the time, and those borders cover an unimaginably tiny fraction of the distance of space, even before you account for the three-dimensional nature of it.
- How do the Romulans know that one of the Federation ships has an "android captain?"
- Perhaps another reason the introduction of Sela is less than compelling is that the script writer himself didn't really believe in it. Ronald Moore said in an interview, of Denise Crosby: "She came up with the concept, which I rolled my eyes at the first time I heard." He then tried to sell it a bit in that same interview: "But as we started to get into story on 'Redemption II,' I needed some sort of Romulan thing to actually happen this time since we kept saying they're doing this stuff. It just seemed natural. It fit and we did it." But I think Moore's true feelings on the subject shine through.
- Michael Dorn was also a bit critical of the crowded nature of this episode. He said in an interview that he thought this was a good episode for him, but that the Data story could have easily been an episode unto itself -- and that that strong idea didn't get enough time here.
No comments:
Post a Comment