Sunday, August 12, 2012

Star Trek: The Next Generation - 4x04 -Suddenly Human

    The Enterprise picks up a few alien teens who are injured in some training.  Among the survivors is a human boy, who identifies as one of the aliens.  After a bit of research, it's discovered that the aliens had taken him, as a baby, during a war.  This leads to some conflicts about the boy's identity, along with some questions of who should be caring for the boy.
    With a title like this, I really thought this would be a Data-centric episode.  Instead, it's actually a pretty dull affair.  Most of the episode mines material from making Picard uncomfortable with being a father figure to the boy.  What's worse… is that the episode has an angle that goes unused.  Worf was in the same situation.  He was a child survivor of a battle that left his family dead.  It turns out much later that he has a living relative that he thought was dead.  This remains unmentioned throughout the episode (to make sure, this background had been established for Worf prior to this episode.  This isn't material that was later written.)
    The other big problem with this episode is that the ending isn't satisfying.

No comments:

Post a Comment