Final Mission

We're finally getting rid of Wesley - hooray!

Wesley Crusher is leaving the Enterprise, and the crew - to say nothing of the audience! - couldn’t be happier. But mindful that it wouldn’t make a very long episode if we just booted him out of the airlock and threw all his so-called ‘science experiments’ after him, there’s something of a tale to wend him on his way. So Wesley and Captain Picard are off on another road trip together, and since there’s no possibility of anything ever going wrong, they decide to hitch a lift with an interstellar taxi service instead of using one of their own shuttlecraft, which would certainly have been too reliable for anything exciting to have happened. What do you know, they crash land on a desert planet and have all sorts of thrilling escapes from death, while on the Enterprise they, erm... escort an interstellar garbage can into the sun. Guess whose having all the fun location work this week? I’ll give you a clue: he’s leaving the show.

Words

It’s well-known that Wil Wheaton was not terribly happy with his role on TNG, and allegedly had been receiving film offers that encouraged him to quit and run away. How and why he was being offered movie roles when there’s no evidence at all that he can act at this point in his career is one of the great and abiding mysteries of the universe, but the important thing is that he was leaving and we got rid of this miserably ill-conceived character. Okay, not ‘once and for all’, as he will be back many times, but at least he won’t be the TNG equivalent of that hardened piece of snot that's stuck at the back of your nose which you just can't manage to sneeze out. (To be fair, Wesley’s future episodes are nearly all rather excellent - but as a cast regular, he was just too much of a plot device to be anything other than irritating).

However, the production crew still felt guilty about the terrible way they’d originally written out Denise Crosby. As Michael Piller recalled:

There had been a lot of very bad feeling around here about the way Tasha Yar was sent off. So we were determined to give Wesley a send-off that had real value and something that stayed with us. We finally decided that he would go to the Academy, which I think was Gene’s idea, the most reasonable and easiest idea, which also keeps him alive for future episodes.

Corey Allen hadn’t directed an episode since season one’s “Home Soil”, having kicked off the show itself with “Encounter at Farpoint”. Frankly, I’ve no idea why they thought it was a good idea to get him back for this one, but whatever the reason, he does a great job. I guess he got on well with Wil Wheaton too, because they got him back to direct two of the four future episodes that Wesley returns in (and nothing else).

Corey Allen directing Wil Wheaton in “Final Mission”

Originally entitled “Turnabout”, I get the impression it went through a rather troubled writing process. Jeri Taylor certainly felt it was problematic:

That’s the episode I probably put more work on than any all year long, because it was a combination of a very delicate kind of interpersonal story, and the dreaded technical story which is the garbage scow in space. So I had this supertechnical thing going on at the same time as this delicate kind of interpersonal story.

Originally, the crash landing would have been on an ice planet, but Rick Berman was concerned this would have to be done in the usual cheesy Sound Stage 16 fashion, which would have looked terrible (although we still have that particular studio space for the cave, of course). Instead, they splashed out on the drive to El Mirage Dry Lake Bed, east of Los Angeles, which looks far classier than anything they could have achieved aiming for cold instead of hot.

Although there are definitely problems with this screenplay, Taylor does a great job building on all the surrogate father baggage the show had struggled with over the years. I find it interesting how she makes use of Boothby (first mentioned here, but with many Trek appearances still to come) as a means of saying ‘I’m dying, so let me give you this one tip to take with you to the Academy’. This for me is the boldest aspect of the screenplay, and it is in effect a complete throwaway line, as nobody could possibly know that Boothby is going to appear in later episodes. It’s something I rather appreciate about how this all fits together.

Acting Roles

This is really the first time that Wil Wheaton is truly given a chance to stand up for himself, and what do you know he’s really good! I do not say that about any appearances of Wesley Crusher up to this point, but Wheaton's performance is both convincing and entertaining here, and although he has the big guns to back him up in the form of Patrick Stewart’s Picard, the plot contrives to have Picard incapacitated such that it’s up to Wes to save the day (presumably why the working title was “Turnabout”).

Stewart and Wheaton in a behind-the-scenes shot from this episode

For the B-plot, there’s something dull for everyone to do in the alien trash barge storyline. It’s all fine, but there’s a definite sense that the only reason any of this is happening is to ensure that the Enterprise can’t come and rescue their missing crew members too swiftly. That, and this is a lot cheaper than the location shoot at El Mirage, of course.

In terms of guest stars, Kim Hamilton’s Chairman Songi is a role that, much as with the aliens in “Déjà Q”, seems to suffer from having so much heavy latex she’s not able to act with any degree of naturalness.

Hamilton’s acting career started in 1955, but it’s almost all small parts and I have great difficulty understanding why she was cast in this role other than that great roulette wheel that is bit part casting.

Oh, there’s also the first appearance of Mary Kohnert’s Ensign Tess Allenby, who must have been intended to be a recurring minor character as she gets a name in the script and everything.

Mary Kohnert’s Ensign Allenby (left)

However, she only ever appears twice: here and in the next episode.

Anyway, all of this is small fry next to the major guest star this week, for this episode truly features sci-fi royalty in the form of Nick Tate, who plays Captain Dirgo.

Stewart, Wheaton and Nick Tate as Captain Dirgo

Now admittedly his role here is a well-worn archetype, but he delivers it brilliantly - so much so that when the alien fountain sentry kills him instead of Wesley we're glad to get rid of him. Pause for a second to ponder what an amazing achievement that really is!

Now as for why Nick Tate is a legend in sci-fi circles, it has nothing to do with his recurring roles on Dynasty, Holiday Island, awful Australian soap Sons & Daughters, or Open House, and everything to do with him playing Eagle pilot Alan Carter in Gerry Anderson's Space: 1999.

Between classic Star Trek and TNG, Space: 1999 is far and away the most significant sci-fi show on television, and Captain Carter is an absolutely key character - not to mention that he gets to fly one of the most iconic studio miniatures there is, the Eagle Transporter.

Speaking for myself, I took great pleasure in seeing Tate in this story, and Trek will get him back again for DS9 too. And if you don’t know Space: 1999, give it a go! The first season tries to do serious and thoughtful sci fi stories, while the second gives up on this and goes for cheesy monster-of-the-week instead, but all the way through you have the brilliant studio miniatures that Gerry Anderson’s shows were justly renowned for - not to mention an absolutely to-die-for cast of acting talent. Well worth your time if you don’t already know it - just remember, it was made in the 1970s. Don’t say I didn't warn you.

Models, Make-up, and Mattes

There’s a lovely multi-planet matte painting at the end of the teaser that’s hard not to love!

Multi-planet matte painting (left) and Sound Stage 16 fountain (right)

It’s certainly nicer than the fountain-in-a-cave that had to be built on Sound Stage 16 - and which never quite looks right. As Rick Berman bitched about later:

We had huge optical problems with the fountain. It was a nightmare. It was something we built and it didn’t work. Then we were going to do it optically and that didn’t work. So we had a lot of technical problems.

The Gamelan make-up (see above) is extremely ambitious, and is certainly striking, even if it proved impossible to act with.

And finally, we have some studio miniatures to enjoy! The garbage scow is a reappearance of the Batris from “Heart of Glory”, restored more-or-less to the original design from that episode after having appeared a few times afterwards as other vessels. It’s non-descript enough to pull off this role reasonably well.

Batris-as-garbage-barge (left), Nenebek scale model for the studio (centre) and studio miniature (right)

Then we have the Nenebek, which in a sense is a totally new studio miniature built just for this episode. I say ‘in a sense’, because this model was built to match the full sized mock up of the shuttle in “The Most Toys” (which reappeared in “Transfigurations” and “Legacy”). This is, I think, the first time that a small scale Trek model had been made to match a large scale model, and the match is admirable even if the studio miniature is never really clearly seen (that’s it in front of the matte painting, above).

There’s so much to love in the SFX for this episode, and even if the B-plot falls utterly flat, it’s still a brilliant send off for Wil Wheaton, and the start of my no longer hating his awful, awful character of Wesley Crusher.

Wil Wheaton’s farewell party

Frankly, I’m as surprised as anyone to say that when it comes to Wesley, the best is yet to come...