Legacy

Remember how excited we were to see Denise Crosby again last season...? Well, you won't be half as excited by this episode that's merely set on her home planet

The poker game is back, but no O’Brien. Instead, we get to see Riker try to bamboozle Data with a card trick that backfires to everyone’s amusement. Then we’re off to Turkana IV, which is supposedly exciting because it was Tasha Yar’s home turf. Anybody care about that...? Thought not. Well, at least there’s a space freighter about to blow up, and there’s O’Brien - no wonder he wasn’t at the poker game, he was on duty in the transporter room, intensely punching buttons like it mattered! Anyway, the freighter blows up but not before sending an escape pod we don’t get to see down to the planet’s surface. It’s really scary down there! Completely lawless! Remember the rape gangs in Tasha’s memory-illusion? Even if you don’t, Worf will name check ‘em for you.

Down on planet Street Gang, we discover that the colonists implausibly have proximity detectors implanted in their chests that light up when enemies come close (and everyone, for some reason, agreed to this arrangement). Smells like a plot device, but wait! Here comes Tasha Yar’s sister, Ishara. We know she’s Yar's sister because she has awful 80s hair and dresses in an aquamarine catsuit. I suggest we don't let her take over the security of any operation... oh no, too late! And already she’s been shot. So we’ll definitely trust her now, right...? Well, the Enterprise crew fall for the act, especially Data who has apparently never gotten over his sexual liaison with Yar the Elder despite having no emotions. Fortunately, Ishara will not be joining us after a whopper of a betrayal. Even more fortunately, there is no Wesley Crusher in this episode, so if all else fails this episode has that going for it.

Words

This is the first script by future Trek veteran Joe Menosky, who wrote sixteen TNG episodes, four for DS9 and a whopping 36 for Voyager. But apparently, he had difficulty getting the gig. He pitched everything he could at Michael Piller, who was unmoved. However, Piller liked the fact Menosky has been a science editor at NPR’s All Things Considered and so he pitched an idea to Menosky who, understandably, jumped at the chance. Piller’s idea was the germ of “Legacy”, and they liked Menosky's script so much they hired him onto the writing staff.

It’s not a bad story, it certainly fits into the family theme for this season, and it’s all perfectly watchable. Still, everything depends upon our buying into the idea that we should care about Ishara Yar because she’s related to Tasha Yar. But... I mean, you remember Tasha Yar? They didn’t exactly give her much to do, and she was a lousy security chief. This flimsy emotional conceit doesn’t really carry the emotional water it is supposed to, and ideas like ‘proximity detectors’ are not intriguing enough to give sci-fi depth to the episode.

The bad videogame map that the Away Team have to use to navigate - good luck with that!

As for ‘Coalition vs Alliance’... I find it odd that this was expressly intended to be an allegory of street gang violence (and they have Picard state it outright in case you weren’t sure) but then make the two ‘cadres’ have such bureaucratic names. I mean, it’s not that these names aren't plausible, but they do nothing to deepen the themes the screenplay is hoping to explore. The movie Boyz n the Hood was released just one year later, yet this episode feels light years behind that in dramatic tub-thumping about the self-destructiveness of gang violence.

Acting Roles

A huge amount of weight is put on Beth Toussaint’s shoulders.

She’d had a recurring role in Dallas that led to some bit parts elsewhere, including this one. She seems to have earned this gig on the back of two roles on Matlock where she worked with this episode’s director, Robert Scheerer. She also cropped up later in Babylon 5 with a bit part, and ended up with a recurring role on The Young and the Restless before giving up acting, at least for the time being. She’s perfectly watchable, believable as Tasha’s sister, but sadly in part because she feels so shallow.

Even more unimpressive is Don Mirault’s Hayne, who speaks his lines, takes his cheque and goes home.

His first role was in the brilliantly awful 80s show Automan, and his last was a small part in Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous, after which he seems to have achieved a certain degree of success as an entertainment jack-of-all-trades. He dances! He sings! He publishes books! And apparently he makes a fair amount of money from being a corporate spokesman. I think it’s safe to say that this role was not a significant step forward for any of his many career paths.

As for our regulars, well there’s a little bit for everyone here but none of it makes for spectacular television. The poker game in the teaser is essentially a highlight, because after busting Data’s robo-spheres for not being able to read human ‘tells’, Data finally gets his own back on Riker. Look at that smug android simulation of a grin!

Brent Spiner’s Data is basically made into the focal character, but the most enjoyable performance this week is Jonathan Frakes’ super-intense version of Riker. I mean, look at him - he’s acting so hard he’s given himself an imaginary headache!

Oh, and there’s several Colm Meaney O’Brien scenes, but it’s all perfunctory transporter operations unfortunately. Still any Colm Meaney is better than no Colm Meaney.

Models, Make-up, and Mattes

I very much like the various tunnel designs that they dressed up Sound Stage 16 with this week.

They also have lots of different spaces to shoot within, in both senses of ‘shoot’!

The lived-in areas are fairly straightforward, and make use of some of the left over pieces of the Ikonian complex in “Contagion” and a few other bits and bobs hanging around in the storeroom.

But you can guess what I’m going to single out as this week’s SFX star - it’s that charming matte painting by the legendary Syd Dutton.

It’s used as an establishing shot in a way that is so traditionally Star Trek that it’s actually quite surprising when we see it again when the Enterprise fires its phasers to tunnel into the ground.

A great sequence, it’s easily the most notable moment in this episode, unless you count Data snubbing Yar Jr on the transporter pad. Frankly, she had it coming.