“He is human. And humans have a way of showing up where you least expect them.”
The fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation concludes on a note nearly as rousing as its high-water mark in the season prior, “The Best of Both Worlds.” Though not as dynamic a cliffhanger as Captain Picard’s transformation into a Borg, the revelation of Commander Sela – natural daughter of the late Tasha Yar by a Romulan father, and looking every inch like her mother in a beautiful blonde Romulan wig on Denise Crosby – propelled Next Gen into its fourth hiatus with an appreciable pop. On the whole, “Redemption 1” is as grand and delightful as “Best of Both Worlds,” on a different tack: being the third part of Ron Moore’s unofficial Klingon mytharc, it takes Worf back to Qo’noS to put paid his discommendation, the death of Duras, and the start of the inevitable Klingon Civil War.
And I do entirely wish you could have been in the room with me to hear the sound that came out of my mouth when Tasha/Sela stepped out of those shadows, all those years ago. Sort of an inhaled shriek of glee, it also saw me falling backwards off the ottoman I was perched on at the time. (On blu-ray, it’s far easier to make out Crosby in Sela’s silhouette earlier in the episode, giving away the reveal. Another thing: in the original version of the episode, there’s actually a subtle freeze frame after Sela smiles at the end of the show. On blu-ray, they’ve let the film run instead, leaving us with the somewhat hilarious image of Sela looking around shiftily with a half-smile on her face, as though daring the other people in the room to pick up on her fourth-wall-breaking joke.)
I suppose the only thing we can say that really sucks about “Redemption” is that as season finales go, it leaves three quarters of the principal cast on the sidelines, even going so far as to give Beverly, Troi, and Geordi no dialogue at all. (Gates McFadden, now seconds away from giving birth, merely wanders past the camera in the final scene on the Enterprise – and does so for quite a bit longer than those of us who hadn’t cottoned to her offscreen pregnancy would expect.) This is doubly unfortunate in that “Redemption” is, in addition to being the fourth season’s finale, also the series’ 100th episode as a whole – not that such things require commemoration, necessarily, but this is a weird way to celebrate what is, after all, an ensemble show. Still, I’m a huge fan of the Picard/Worf relationship, and “Redemption” pays that pairing off in good stead as Picard mentors Worf through the reclamation of his family name, acting not as the Klingon officer’s captain, but as his cha’DIch.
In lieu of the Enterprise crew, we get Gowron back (we will now begin to notice that Robert O’Reilly, on a nearly episode-by-episode basis, delivers one phrase in which he hammers on the word “NOW…!!” in mid-sentence, pausing with nearly Shatnerian delectation before continuing the rest of the line), as well as Worf’s brother Kurn, who has been elevated to his own command. We are also introduced to two of the defining cosplay avatars for the entire Next Generation era, with Duras’ troublesome sisters, Lursa and B’Etor. As new characters for the saga, the sisters are so much more delightful than Duras himself that one wishes Ron Moore had thought of them in the first place and saved us the bother of the brother. B’Etor (the hot one) snarls like a panther and rakes her claws down Captain Picard’s bald dome, while Lursa (the clever one) outlines her plot with the calm patience of a seasoned mafia don. The sisters’… ahem… boob window in the center of their costumes’ chests was more than scintillating enough to send a generation of teen boys wishing that one or the other of the deadly duo might favour them with a bite – and to introduce the notion that biting, particularly, had a place in the sexual lexicon, in my case. And Gwyneth Walsh and Barbara March play Lursa and B’Etor to the nines, seeming fully aware that they’ve landed in a grinning outer space fantasy opera that is one foggy castle shy of Shakespeare.
“Redemption” draws a line under one of the prevailing, unspoken facets of Worf as he has been presented to us for the past four years: for all his protestations to the contrary, he’s just about the least Klingon fellow imaginable. Removed from his people, he has spent his life practicing a mode of behaviour that seems to him to be like what Klingons must be like; here, in a wonderful scene with Guinan and beyond, he begins to realize that he’s had his race wrong all this time, in his deadly serious stoicism and gravity. Not that it will end up changing Worf much – he’ll tuck tail and return to the Enterprise before the end of the next episode – but it enriches the character, nonetheless. Neither human nor Klingon, what is Worf? The best of both worlds, as Picard suggests in the episode, and all the better for it.
Blogging The Next Generation runs every Tuesday as I work my way through every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. Season Four is now finished! and Season Five is in stores now.