“I know what I want, I know what I’ve got, and you’d be lucky to do so well.”
Well, we’re finally here: the One Where They Deal Directly With Riker/Troi (Albeit With A Sci-Fi Twist). If I remember my Star Trek: The Next Generation lore correctly, the unrequited Deanna/Will romance was part of the series bible when Next Gen got started, but was shuffled under the rug shortly thereafter so that Riker would be free to be this series’ Kirk, beaming down on away missions and sleeping with various women on Angel One and Bringloid V without seeming like too much of an asshole.* Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis, however, made a private pact to play as much Riker/Troi subtext into their scenes as they could, which leaves you with stuff like Deanna grabbing Will’s hand when they both think the ship is about to explode in “Contagion,” or the great thumping wellspring of capital-M Meaning that underplays Troi’s conversation with Beverly about Odan in “The Host.”**
I was never hugely invested in #WILL+DEANNA=4EVR when I was watching the series (I was a Picard/Beverly man), but all these years of teases effectively drove the fanbase nuts, especially towards the end of the run, when it was starting to look like there would never be a resolution to the storyline. (And there wasn’t. Deanna spends next year dating Worf, and wouldn’t get back to her OTL till Star Trek: Insurrection.) As such, “Second Chances” was a kind of watershed moment toward the end of the sixth season – and just as much, a gentle sign that we were reaching the bottom of the barrel for Star Trek: The Next Generation’s macro-scale storytelling. We’re one Picard/Beverly kiss away from done here, friends.
Preamble aside, good lord, “Second Chances” is a neat idea for an episode. It returns Next Gen to the kind of storytelling I like: the invention of the kind of scenario that could only exist in science fiction (the Enterprise encounters a “copy” of Will Riker from a mission immediately prior to the start of the series) that creates a legitimate emotional dilemma for one of our principal characters (Deanna, who is now confronted, essentially, with the man who didn’t choose his career over her). And as a way to look at one’s life, “Second Chances” provides a nifty paradigm, because it isn’t just about reflecting back on a key decision point and a road not taken, in a “what would have happened if” scenario. After the transporter accident on Nervala IV, both Rikers continued down their decision tree for eight years – which results in a Tom Riker (as he would come to be called) who spent eight years pining for Deanna, and solidifying his emotional commitment to her (up to a point; this is still “reset” style television, which I’ll get to shortly).
And so, “Second Chances” is more than just “Tapestry” for Will and Deanna’s broken love life; in Tom Riker, Deanna is presented with a literal, physical manifestation of that bogeyman that lurks in a lot of our anxieties about relationships that didn’t work out: the fully-formed “other version of the story.” The one where the person you fell in love with never changed, never made the bad calls, never found a way to fuck up everything that was so great about your pairing in the first place. The version of history where he/she never began to drift away till you were wondering if the person you’d fallen in love with had even been there in the first place.
And for reset storytelling? The answer “Second Chances” gives to that latter question is, if unintentionally, terrifically sad: Tom Riker does, indeed, immediately make the same choice Will Riker made eight years ago. He gets a shot at a promotion, limply proposes to Deanna as a mitigating strategy, and takes off for the hills anyway when she says no. All of this, of course, is because Next Gen is a “reset” show and everything at the end of the episode needs to be back where we found it at the beginning; but here the ending is actively at odds with the dramatic core of the episode. We can smell the missed chances throughout the final act, where the Rikers get to perform the gangplank crisis that would eventually kill Captain James T. Kirk, after a beauty of a card game in which Riker takes on Riker in an unofficial contest of who is better at being Riker.
The episode never manages to milk its own idea for all the drama contained within – arguably, focusing on both the Deanna/Will romance and the Riker/Riker tension provides it with two narrative throughlines, neither of which can be resolved satisfactorily in 42 minutes. (And the scene of Data wondering aloud what it’s like to meet one’s double is patently ridiculous.) Directing for the first time, LeVar Burton mounts the drama credibly, but as with all split-screen shows dating back to “The Enemy Within,” the staging is hokey and the Riker/Riker conflict suffers as a result. Within its tight frame of rules, Next Gen can’t give us the ending we want here on either storyline. Tom and Deanna, and Will and Deanna, can’t work out their combined sixteen years of romantic misadventure (or even get in a good threesome); and the two Rikers can’t fight to the death over the chasm beneath the station on Nervala IV, with their shirts off, so that we never know for certain which Riker came back from the brink. “Second Chances” is a huge idea – but needed at least a third chance, or possibly fourth, to get it right.
*To remain length-conscious on this entry, I can’t get into a larger discussion of how problematic many aspects of the Will/Deanna “friends with benefitsship” is. Other places on the internet have that sewn up. Google it! I have some thoughts of my own re: Deanna’s agency, but they might have to wait for a less interesting episode and/or a separate blog post after #BloggingTNG is done.
**The Deanna/Will relationship only ever really became “text” instead of “subtext” in one other episode since the show started, “The Icarus Factor” – which makes an excellent pairing for this episode for a number of reasons.
Blogging The Next Generation runs every Tuesday as I work my way through the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. Season Six is in stores. Season Seven will conclude the series, starting with our New Year’s special – the blu-ray is in stores now!