Homeward

DVD, TNG S7 (Homeward)

The theme of family continued to resonate through the final season with a story featuring Worf's adopted brother Nikolai Rozhenko. Why he was allowed to operate an observation post for Starfleet when he couldn't stay in the organisation is something to think about, and doesn't make all that much sense, except that once there he became engaged to one of the women there. He certainly kept that aspect of his work secret. He was a forceful personality, a big character, just as his parents were shown to be ("I hev all the skeematics!"), and getting to know him allows us a further peek into Worf's troubled childhood, another part of him that he rarely discusses, not that he discusses much of anything about himself, or in general, really! I like that chubby old Nikolai never thought about consequences, just the people and what they meant to him, even squaring up to a Klingon who could probably have beaten him soundly. I didn't buy that Worf was not a wild child compared to Nikolai, but maybe his brother was compensating for having a powerful alien in the family as they grew up?

Prime Directive stories usually tick the box of being a thought exercise, but this one goes off on other rich tangents too, becoming as much about Vorin and his reaction to the unveiling of the secrets of the universe, or many levels up from his primitive existence; and the anger Worf feels at the dishonour Nikolai brings on them. But first, a discussion: was it right for Nikolai to save the people? And on the other side of the quandary, was it right for Picard and crew to let them perish? It's the age old question, and it has been shown time and again that interfering in another species' culture brings rack and ruin. Yet there can't be any more ruin than the complete annihilation of a species. Nikolai, even though he does something that in the end seems right, was still playing God by selecting that village and those people, because he had a connection to them, a personal one at that, and couldn't save the other occupants of the planet. So he selectively saved whom he chose to, and if you think about it, that's as wrong as letting them all die. Or is it?

It's a real conundrum, and that's why Starfleet came up with the Prime Directive - not to stop starship Captains from having to think, but to reduce the likelihood of them making a situation worse by interfering. Nikolai had already interfered, so you could say part of the 'damage' had been done, though he hadn't broken his cover. What about the baby? Granted, the Boraalans had no technology to make judgements on the DNA of a child, but if the baby had enough humanity he might look different. It could be explained away (and Nikolai of all people had the gift of the gab), but what of the distant future when Boraalans made it to space flights and first contacts and the ability to spot alien DNA in their bodies? Then again, if he hadn't saved the village there would have been no future. I wonder if Picard was secretly relieved that the decision had been taken from him. It was a terrible moment for him and the crew to have to stand silently, duty-bound to allow the Boraalan race to die - the harsh reality of the Prime Directive. Once there was no alternative, he was going to do whatever he could to help those people.

The question remains, what was their alternative? It doesn't seem fair that a race should die out when it could be saved, but at the destruction of its culture, beliefs and way of life? Picard had plenty of experience with these situations, just look at 'Who Watches The Watchers?' and the later 'Star Trek: Insurrection,' but if there had been no forced relocation and the people had found themselves in the Holodeck grid, could their minds have taken the shock? We seem to see the answer in Vorin's solution to his agony of choice: he decides not to choose whether to go back to his people carrying the knowledge he accidentally discovered, or to stay and make a new life beyond his comprehension. He kills himself. This suggests the other Boraalans would have done the same, but not necessarily. Yes, the old man who offers his daughter to Worf looks like he might have followed such a course, or become mentally unstable (though he was hale and hardy by the way he was clambering over rocks, or slings his backpack up to Worf!), but the younger ones might have come to accept it - Vorin might have been able to if he had had the whole community around him, experiencing the loss and confusion together. But the burden was too heavy for him to bear alone, and although he had a love of the past, his reason for continuing the chronicle, he didn't have the imagination to look to the future.

I liked the performance of Vorin, completely selling the terror and confusion of discovering a world beyond what he knows, but I just could not work out who he was until I went back and checked the name: a very young-looking Brian Markinson, more famous for his roles of Durst (and the Vidiian that steals his face) in 'Voyager,' and the eccentric Dr. Elias Giger in 'DS9.' It was because we don't see his bald head in this role so his most distinguishing feature was absent. It was the same for Worf: Michael Dorn gets to act almost entirely without prosthetics for the first time on Trek, not repeated, I think, until late in 'DS9' for 'Far Beyond The Stars,' and I'll bet he loved leaving the pasty forehead behind! He looked much younger without that and the wrinkled nose, yet retains the Worf attitude, so it works, even if early in the episode it seemed a bit of a jump for Picard to say he wants Worf to be surgically altered. Are Captains allowed to just summarily alter their crewmen's appearance; is it part of the job description? The other notable casting was Penny Johnson in her first Trek role as Jobara, Nikolai's wife. She would go on to greater acclaim (and much better hairstyling), in 'DS9' as freighter Captain Kasidy Yates. Her role in this is small and unimportant, but fun when compared with her later character.

The ending clears the air between Worf and his brother, who's forced to stay close to him just at the moment he doesn't want to be anywhere near him, and though Nikolai was a one-episode wonder, his character was strong enough that you felt you knew him and would like to see him again. But, as is generally the case on the series, this story was wrapped neatly, without even the potentially dramatic allowance for Vorin to remain with the crew. It's a happy ending, all the same, but I was surprised Nikolai allowed Worf to take the chronicle! It's a relic of the people, one of the few things they have left of their past life - though early in the episode Vorin takes a superior attitude to Worf's talk of keeping records through story and song passed down, it shows what can happen if you only have one copy of your precious chronicle - it can get lost or stolen– sorry, 'given away!' There were other niggles or nits to pick, the main one being that although the Boraalans were asleep the first time they were beamed up, at the end, they're fully cognisant, and even hidden in tents they must have been able to experience the de/materialisation process we saw Barclay go through in 'Realm of Fear.' Maybe they were too afraid of the storm to think much about the strange sensation sweeping over them?

I always thought that people could move around in the Holodeck as much as they wanted because the floor would be moving with each individual, and the computer could theoretically alter the way each person's vision interacted with the environment. So a person could be standing only a metre away, but the computer could erect a perspective in front of them (or even right over someone's eyeball, theoretically, at least in my mind), so they appeared to be much further away. This theory seems to be quashed by the mention in this episode that the people all need to stay together, though that could be put down to the malfunctioning equipment not at peak performance. Which is the same excuse I'm using for them showing the single-level set of Stellar Cartography, which is clearly nothing like the 'stellar' job they did on that location for 'Generations' - I say the 'real' room was under repair so they had to make do with the smaller room. And finally, what a musically profound episode, it really took flight - I usually like Trek music, but this was something special.

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