Character – I always find it difficult to watch the Worf/Alexander scenes because it mirrors my relationship with my father in real life, albeit Worf is much of a man of substance than my father. Worf has a clear view of how a Klingon boy should behave and Alexander just doesn’t match up. He’s not a warrior, he’s not especially honourable and he doesn’t give a fig for tradition. Worf’s disappointment lingers in every line of dialogue he shares with his son. I empathise with Alexander.
I don’t think Captain Picard can win with me. When he is shoving the ethics of the Federation down the throats of the alien characters on his Ship I have something of an allergic reaction to it because I feel like the should be proud of their heritage and culture and allowed to explore that. And yet here he is advising Worf to take Alexander to a colony and coax him into enjoying Klingon traditions, something that Alexander has said he definitively does not want to do. How about letting people be and make their own life decisions? Picard is only being kind to Worf by offering encouragement but he always feels as though he is on the wrong end of telling people how they should live their lives to me.
Performance – Why did the creators of TNG continue with Brian Bosnell when it was clear that he struggled with making dialogue sound naturalistic? TNG had two chances to make a child character palatable; Wesley Crusher and Alexander and they blew it both times. One pollutes the first half of the series and almost as soon as he departs the other joins to sabotage the latter half of the series. Unless you find Bosnell’s efforts in A Fistful of Datas, Rascals and New Ground to be a performance highlight of this series. He always feels like he is reading from cue cards and Michael Dorn ends up carrying the scenes for both them, which he gamely manages to achieve.
Dorn himself can relax at the tail end of the series. He must know this is a far cry from the Klingons being presented at their best but he has put so much work into the character of Worf and making the Klingon culture a living, breathing reality on TNG that he can breathe easy that he has been the essential ingredient in why any further exploration of the Klingons appears authentic. When TNG began he was the ropiest character to reach any kind of potential and against all the odds Dorn brought more depth to his character than anyone else in the cast. He leapt over the DS9 with a fully formed, and nurtured character. That’s their gain but all the legwork was done on TNG.
James Sloyan is one of those actors that you can rely on to bring any role to life with aplomb. Whether he is Neelix’s arch enemy, Odo’s dad or an older version of Alexander, he injects a gravity and realism into every role he plays and believe that he is a completely different persona each time. It’s astonishing. This is probably his least interesting role across the franchise and he’s still enthralling to watch.
Production – Jonathan West presents an energetic and theatrical piece of Klingon mythology for the festival crowd with lots of singing, fighting and chest thumping. It’s a really fun sequence and it allows Alexander to indulge in his culture in a way that a child would find very appealing.
Best moment – The TNG/DS9 crossover that I am surprised didn’t happen more often given that the two shows were taking place in the Alpha Quadrant at the same time. Nowadays they would be inextricably linked, feeding one another and featuring lots of cute cameos. Back then the two shows were distinct entities and doing their own thing. Because of that the appearance of Quark was unexpected and delightful. It says a lot when Armin Shimmerman gives the most charismatic performance in this piece.
Worst moment – The twist that M’tek is Alexander from the future feels like it comes completely from left field and yet the entire episode clearly pivots on the revelation. It comes at a point where he is about to murder himself as a child, which is something I have longed for ever since Alexander first appeared on the show. However, the revelation could not be dealt with in a more tedious manner. This is a character from the near future; 20 years or so, and he has lots of knowledge about where the Alpha Quadrant ends up. What do we learn? That Worf is to die and that Alexander is to become a diplomat. Big whoop. As startling portents of the future go, I could have guessed both of those things. The outcome of this insane SF twist is that Worf decides to go easy on his son and lets him find his own path. Stunning this is not. Should it really take something this offbeat for him to come to this realisation?
I wish they hadn’t done that – This is the episode they choose to fill the 21st slot in the final season? Mind you I can say that an awful lot about the final season of TNG, which was a year where the writers and directors forgot how to tell decent Star Trek. Coming hot on the heels of what is possibly the finest season of TNG (season six which had some very dark and funny tales) it is a bizarre anomaly. Looking at where the other series’ were in the 21st slot of their final seasons is quite telling – TOS features The Cloud Miners, which demonstrates the show trying to salvage some dignity after a mixed quality final year, DS9 was in the depths of a hugely complex and ambitious ten episode arc that was accelerating a manifest of storylines and bringing others to a close, VOY was limping home with some pretty anaemic storytelling with a season that had some promise but was clearly treading water until the finale and ENT brought it’s complex final season to a close with a penultimate episode that pushed an idea forward that was distinctly Star Trek (that we are better working together than fighting other races). TNG in comparison is telling a bunch of stories about the crews’ families because it has pretty much exhausted all storytelling possibilities within the Enterprise setting and is straying into serious soap opera territory. The movies were coming and so TNG needed to feature a season that essentially climaxes with business as usual to make the transition effortless. As a result the series ends on a limp note, becoming the Dynasty of Star Trek as Worf bonds with an Older Alexander, Beverley shares a ghostly lover with her Nana, Data discovers who his mother is, Troi finds a dark secret in her mother’s past and Picard discovers he had a son he never knew he had. As final seasons go, it holds the candle for how not to do it.
The whole Lur’sa and B’tor ore smuggling subplot is so half baked and lacking in tension that I wondered why they bothered…and then I realised there would only be half an episode’s content if they hadn’t squeezed this in.
A reason to watch this episode again – Firstborn isn’t without redemption (although it is nothing like Redemption- hoho) but as a Klingon episode it lacks the teeth that I have come to expect from TNG. Like a lot of season seven it takes genres that this series has produced some very decent episodes with and adds a family twist that injects too much domesticity and guts the drama. The final twist here comes out of nowhere but without it this would be completely unmemorable. With it, it feels like a wasted opportunity because there is so much more that could be done with Worf interacting with an adult version of his son beyond teaching the young Alexander how to fight. Everything is in place for TNG to be creating television gold in its final season; a well-oiled cast, superior production values and all of the lessons that the writers have learnt over the previous six seasons. For some reason I find this season, and this episode, lacking that magic that TNG captured so effectively.
** out of *****
Clue for tomorrow's episode:
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