“Moment.”
Like Geordi a few weeks ago, Deanna’s personal history gets a final-season “enhancement” (in this case, call it more of a retcon) in this strange and complicated episode in which we learn that Lwaxana Troi had another daughter, before Deanna, whose accidental death she has been repressing for over thirty years. It’s Majel Barrett’s final appearance as Lwaxana on Star Trek: The Next Generation (though she would play the role twice more on Deep Space Nine) and it’s in keeping with the trajectory that has been established for the character. Lwaxana hit “peak wacky” in her third-season appearance, “Menage a Troi,” and it was nice to see the visiting Queen Roddenberry given meatier and more dramatically involving fare in “Half a Life” and “Cost of Living.”
“Dark Page” continues in that vein, though less successfully. Barrett is good – particularly in early scenes where she plays a strikingly downbeat and muted Lwaxana – but the episode backgrounds her at the end of the second act. The remainder is largely built around Deanna sleuthing her way through her mother’s personal history – and subconscious.
The result dramatically demonstrates how visually uninteresting Next Gen had become by this point. This series, once given a visual shot in the arm in a 12-episode mandate for director Rob Bowman, and lit with beautiful balances of light and shadow by Edward R. Brown, is now on its third regular cinematographer (Jonathan West), and its rotating coterie of directors (Les Landau in this case) have long since given up the ghost. Everything about this season is flat, low-contrast, and simplistic, and episodes like “Dark Page” suffer by it the most. Watch, with utter amazement, as spirit-walking Deanna is menaced by a timber wolf in her mother’s brain, which comes across more like she’s being chased by an eager puppy.
A pre-pubescent Kirsten Dunst plays one of the aliens-of-the-week, one of those rare instances where someone who would go on to become super famous proves after-the-fact distracting in a run-of-the-mill Star Trek episode. Her species is a group of telepaths who are only, right now, learning to communicate verbally – making one wonder for the umpteenth time why they have perfectly normal human faces and mouths.
Blogging The Next Generation is winding down to the end, as I work my way through the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. The final season is in stores now.