The Bonding

DVD, TNG S3 (The Bonding)

There at the end was quite a sad group. Jeremy with the loss of his Mother, Wes without a Father, Worf with no parents, Picard without a family, and... perhaps Troi with a Mother? The reason the scenes in 'Star Trek: Generations' with Picard ruminating sadly about death and time came to mind, was because those themes were important to this story. The turmoil of losing someone close is played out strongly, but with the extra layers of science fiction to make the grief worse. Though it ends happily with Worf almost adopting the young lad (strange we never saw him again, but the series didn't go in for continuity much), he has to face the death of his Mother, then the confusing return of same, and then come to understand the reality and fantasy of the situation, something which would have been hard for the adults to do.

The actor who played Jeremy did a fair job, and his lack of emotion probably worked better than if he'd had to portray strong feelings. His reserve and distance worked well for the story and suited the conventions of child acting. I mentioned continuity and it's not quite true that they didn't go in for it, but it tended to be subtle and spare. In this episode we get the poignant reference back to Tasha Yar's death, still felt keenly enough to mean something two years later, making for a simple, but effective scene between Data and Riker.

I think the pinnacle of the episode is its leading towards the confrontation Wesley had never allowed to surface and subsequently seeing it come out at Captain Picard. When you see Beverly and Wes in sickbay, still suffering the loss of Jack Crusher you realise how important it was for her to return to the series, since a scene like that could not have worked otherwise. It's at this point it's obvious she wasn't brought back on a whim, but with story intentions. In what would foreshadow Worf's life he learns to talk to a child. At first his gruff, scary approaches seem over the top for humans, but gradually he learns to pull himself back a bit. His anger, directed as it was behind a wall of circuitry enhances the impression of confusion and distance from others, Troi coming into frame in a small way as her voice of reason begins to have an effect, eventually letting the camera come out from the screen.

In all aspects the episode succeeds - technically, with the non-humanoid entity sweeping through corridors and attacking poor Mr. O'Brien who was quite content tinkering around in the Transporter Room; dramatically, with the shocks and the weight of Picard's task of having to tell the boy of his Mother's death and in the way various crewmembers pull together against the fantasy; and character-wise, using the back-story's of several characters logically and usefully. Picard may not be the only one who thinks that having children aboard starships is a questionable policy, but the strength of this episode provides a good reason.

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