“Mr. Data, we must hurry or we shall miss Commander Riker’s party.”
“Future Imperfect” is one of those great “have your cake and eat it too” episodes that completely collapses under any kind of scrutiny, but is so much fun in the meantime that you sort of don’t care. A peek into the future of the Enterprise is always exciting, even if it is (as turns out to be the case here) totally made up. Commander Riker passes out breathing carbon monoxide or something while on an away mission, and wakes up sixteen years later with sixteen years of amnesia. It’s the future! Geordi has eyes! Worf has a scar! Data’s in red, Troi’s in blue, there’s a Ferengi at the conn…
I have a longstanding theory that Star Trek episodes that feature alternate versions of the main universe are always a leg up on their counterparts, because they represent the infrequent opportunities for the Star Trek writing staff to throw the Roddenberry rulebook right out the window and stretch their legs a bit. “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and the entire Mirror Universe saga on Deep Space Nine are better examples, but “Future Imperfect” is in there too, feeling for all the world like a fanfic riff on our heroes and their relationships. Captain Riker! Named his son Jean-Luc! Who is an ambassador now, with a Van Dyke! Whoa!
The trouble with the episode is that having created this future playground for Riker to run around in, the show doesn’t really have any idea what to do next. The future scenario is revealed to be a fake in the fourth act, a ploy by the Romulans to creatively interrogate Commander Riker; the interrogation scenario is then revealed to be a fake in the fifth act, and it all turns out to be the holodeck fantasy of a lonely alien boy who has kidnapped Riker to be his daddy. It’s dramatically underwhelming as a resolution, but even more to the point, the episode fails to connect itself to its lead character in any meaningful way. In other words, “Future Imperfect,” and stories like it (“The Inner Light” does it better) have the opportunity to be a kind of reverse-order It’s a Wonderful Life, if the alternate future somehow reflects back upon its protagonist with something he doesn’t know he wants, but learns that he does. “Parallels,” in the seventh season, gives Worf an alternate timeline where he’s married to Deanna Troi – which wakes Worf up to the fact that he’d like to maybe date Deanna Troi. “Future Imperfect,” though, doesn’t teach Riker (or us) anything about Riker, except for the fact that he’s mayyyyyybe a little too obsessed with Minuet, the holodeck fantasy girl from “11001001” who turns up as Riker’s future wife, because his brain scan reveals that she meant a lot to him. Between Riker’s doting upon Minuet in “Shades of Grey” and here, I’d say yeah, it’s maybe time for Will to join Geordi and Barclay in the “I fell in love with a holodeck plaything” support group.
Well anyways. The future stuff in “Imperfect” is enough fun, and credibly executed, and thus I don’t really mind that the episode doesn’t go anywhere. On revisiting the show, I find that Chris Demetral (as the alien boy / Will’s son) is far weaker than I remember; I also observe that the kid has one hell of a big penis. (Sorry. Spandex + blu-ray + healthy natural endowment = awkward revelations.) There are also two weird runners that extend from the episode. The first is Nurse Alyssa Ogawa, who appears in the future fantasy, having never appeared on the real Enterprise to date; but she turns up a few episodes later in the real timeline anyway, and continues to recur throughout the rest of the show. I guess that’s not too weird, if you assume that Alyssa was on the Enterprise the whole time and just happens to be featured in Riker’s brain scan, but it felt initially strange when she turned up again in “Clues,” regardless.
The second thing is the comm badges. I love the future comm badges, which feature the Starfleet arrowhead and a series of bars serving as the rank insignia behind it. (On blu-ray, I’ve noticed for the first time that there are always four bars – the lower ones are just painted black, if you’re anything less than a captain.) But given that the comm badges are made up by the alien boy, explain to me how they turn up in “Parallels” a few years later? Maybe Will liked the design so much, he sent a doodle to Starfleet with a note that said “consider this for future use.”
