Family

It's the start of the first new storyline of a season that's going to be all about family - I wonder what we should call this episode...

We open on a major crisis: Worf’s parents are coming aboard the Enterprise. Meanwhile, Picard is going to visit his family in La Barre, France - are we finally going to find out why Picard speaks with an exemplary English accent despite supposedly coming from the other side of the English channel...? Well, no, the mystery deepens as it seems that not a single person in France has a French accent. I presume during the post-atomic horror England finally got its vengeance on its southern neighbour and wiped out all those snooty French people. Something like that anyway...

Oh, and there’s a Wesley Crusher story too. And none of the three plots intersect in any way except theme, so this is basically three fifteen minute short films about the families of the Enterprise bridge crew.

Words

This episode divides fans into two camps: one that says that this is a waste of a show, and one that says this is one of the best character stories in the entirety of TNG. I am absolutely in the latter camp: this is actually one of my favourites in this season, and marks a turning point in the show. Not only because it proved they could go toe-to-toe with a hard-hitting character-oriented show like, say, thirtysomething (which was popular when this aired) but also because it showed Trek breaking out of the rulebook for broadcast television. The broadcasting guidelines had for a long time required each episode to end with everything set back to normal on the basis that you couldn’t count on your audience to have seen every show and know what was going on. But the 90s began to break with this trend, and TNG was part of this transition.

Busted!

It did not come about easily, though! As you might expect, Michael Piller was the champion for the idea, which had its genesis while he was trying to magic up a Get Out of Jail Free card for “The Best of Both Worlds”. Indeed, in a note appended to the story outline for the second part, he wrote the following:

I can’t help feeling that after what Picard has been through that being ‘back to normal’ is simplistic and incredible especially for a show that takes such a realistic look at humanity and life. I must reiterate my feeling that there is a hell of an episode to be explored here. Why not use the next episode to explore Picard’s recovery – bandaged, his face is healing, but there is more than just physical healing to be done here… it is uncertain if he can ever fully recover from the nightmares of his captivity to resume command … and as the Enterprise orbits Earth undergoing repairs, Picard returns to his roots to find himself. There is an interesting echo of the Beirut hostages returning home to be found here. Good episode!

Ronald D. Moore was trusted with the screenplay - and it was to set him at war with none other than Gene Roddenberry! Moore later recounted the whole gritty story:

Gene goes through this whole thing about how much he hates this script. ‘It says terrible things about Picard’s parents; these brothers don’t exist in the twenty-fourth century; they have such profound personal animosities; this would never happen. I don’t buy any of this, this is not a Star Trek episode. There’s no action in this; there’s no jeopardy. We can’t do this show’... I went off and wrote it, and never heard another word. Somehow, they were then dealing with Gene in a different way and that script just went through after that point. He just stopped kind of throwing out scripts and changing things from that point forward, and just started slowly to change.

The Jack Crusher story was originally a spec script for an entire episode, although all that survived was the holographic encounter - which, after all, is the best bit. There’s an interesting section in the screenplay that didn’t make it into the show where Jack says:

We’ve had a skeleton or two in our closet... someday, I’ll tell you about the Crusher who was a horse thief on Nimbus Three... but we also had our share of family heroes... a Crusher fought for the Confederacy at Bull Run. One died at Station Salem One. It’s a proud heritage, Wesley... one for you to pass on to your children.

That would have linked this episode up with Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (Nimbus Three) and also “The Enemy” (Station Salem One). Oh, and while we're talking about callbacks to earlier episodes, we’re still weaselling around the lack of a name for the Klingon homeworld, which is referred to here as ‘the Klingon planet’. What a liability this lack of name turned out to be!

Acting Roles

Before we get to the meat of the episode, I have to say that it’s nice that Marina Sirtis’ Troi gets to do some authentic counselling with Patrick Stewart’s Picard in the teaser.

The writing team is finally getting up to speed on the idea that yes, she does in fact have a job on this starship and perhaps we can actually allow her to be good at it. After all, there’s a reason she serves on the Federation flagship - you have to think she’s supposed to be an effective counsellor!

Okay, three plots, three sets of guest stars. Let’s start with Doug Wert’s Jack R. Crusher. This is actually a tough role to play, because you have no-one to bounce off and have to create the feeling of someone talking to themselves (which is not as easy as just talking to yourself).

Then there’s Worf’s plot, which is played both for comedy and drama, and works well with both.

Worf’s parents are played by Georgia Brown and Theodore Bikel, who were well-known in Yiddish theatre, which raised some questions about whether they might come across as comically ‘Jewish’. Piller felt comfortable that this was a small risk, and personally I think they nail these roles, with my only disappointment being that there’s never any reason to get them back in a future episode.

I also really enjoy Colm Meaney’s small role giving family advice to Worf before his parents come aboard - and as a reward he gets a full name (Miles Edward O’Brien) and an entirely new Starfleet rank name is invented for him (Chief Petty Officer). Not bad for a single scene appearance!

But of course its Patrick Stewart’s Picard who, as always, gets the plum role - and wow, what a great performance this truly is, and almost entirely on location... yes, they had to drive a whole fifteen miles to Encino, CA.

Actually, it looks like the vineyard was in Lancaster, CA, which was a whopping sixty miles from the studio. That would take a whole hour by road, although it’s more like a day when you’re leaving from Los Angeles. Anyway, never mind the shooting locations, it’s who you filmed there that counts - and Stewart is given a great supporting cast.

Young David Tristan Birkin as his ‘Uncle/nephew’ Rene and Samantha Eggar’s Marie provide able assistance in their respective roles, but neither have to go toe to toe with Stewart...

That’s Jeremy Kemp’s role as Robert Picard - and he’s so absolutely brilliant that it makes the episode for me.

Although Kemp had some Shakespearean acting in his rather lengthy catalogue of roles, I can’t find any evidence that he and Stewart had ever met before this show. Good actors just get into character swiftly, I suppose!

Models, Make-up, and Mattes

Despite this being a moderately low budget episode, it still has much to enjoy if you have a keen eye! For a start, I love McKinley Station, which was custom built for this episode. (Incidentally, paid subscribers have a behind-the-scenes shot of this model in Top 40 TNG Models: 21-25 - just saying!).

But you know me, there’s nothing I love more than a great matte painting, and this one by the legendary Syd Dutton is just brilliant. It transforms the field in Lancaster, CA into an utterly different place and time.

That’s the magic of a great matte painting. It can take you anywhere!