“I was always proud of you.”
Wil Wheaton’s proper swan song with the franchise (complicated by the fact that he returned later for a couple of really good episodes, and a couple of really poor episodes) finds the young ensign on his way to Starfleet Academy at last – but not before he’s given one last opportunity to save the universe with his pluck and his tricorder. Well, not the universe this time, or even the ship; but as a fitting apotheosis for the character, Wesley saves Captain Picard.
“Final Mission,” therefore, is the last nail in the eternal short shrift that Star Trek: The Next Generation gave the Wesley-Beverly relationship. As usual, Beverly is left out of the story wherever Wesley’s development or mentoring are concerned. She turns up at the very end of the episode quite glad to see her son alive, but that’s it. Whenever Wesley has needed a role model throughout the run of the show, it hasn’t come from his mother; it’s come from any of the male crew members of the Enterprise, and most frequently Captain Picard. The grand tradition of patriarchy-begets-patriarchy storytelling, particularly in science fiction, is staunchly upheld here.
The episode is a technical marvel, featuring some terrific Death Valley location photography in the first act when Wesley, Picard, and Captain Dirgo crash-land on a barely-M-class moon. Corey Allen makes one of his rare returns to the Next Gen director’s chair, having helmed the pilot episode; Ron Jones strives for nothing less than Lawrence of Arabia in his score, and propels the beats nicely. “Final Mission” is the second script by Jeri Taylor, who was brought in to shore up the writer’s room in Season Four and went on to become the showrunner by Next Gen’s final year – and co-created Voyager. There’s an early, solid example of CGI in the force field that protects the water fountain. Of course, no one ever bothers to ask why, on an uninhabited world, anyone would build a water fountain – or a force field to protect it.
Wheaton and Stewart manage a few, last scenes together with touching aplomb. The events of Samaritan Snare are revisited, and Picard tips Wesley to a man he should seek out at Starfleet Academy: Boothby, the groundskeeper, i.e. the Hagrid of San Francisco. Picard’s line at the end of the episode rings largely true: Wesley will be missed, even though, by this point, his usefulness to the series had dwindled almost to nothing. There’s even a new, pretty blonde at the conn position on the bridge already, the first of a revolving door series of ensigns who would replace Wes, and would culminate with my favourite latter-day addition to the series, Ensign Ro.
Three and a half Enterprises out of five.
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 in stores now.