Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season Four

1990 to 1991

Welcome to the party, Jeri Taylor, soon to be longrunning-Trek-creator/ producer.

The show hit its stride during the third season, but the fourth season is the first full-length TNG season to seem like its own self (so to speak) in terms of pace, character, and production design. An approach and sensibility had been patiently worked out, and with Wheaton's departure, this is the cast that takes us through to the end.

Here are my favorites, least-to-worst, although this is such a strong season that even my least favorites are probably B-minuses, objectively speaking, and my top twelve are more or less interchangeable. 

26.

 

Q returns and puts the crew through a Robin Hood scenario 

to teach Picard about love or some crap.

Is this a "much-maligned" episode or a "beloved" one? I've seen it described as both.

I've not been kind to this episode over the years, but I enjoyed it much more this time around. The Robin Hood stuff occupies less screentime than I remember, and the surrounding dynamics with Vash's return are fun. Unfortunately Q's lesson here ("you've learned how weak and vulnerable you really are, if you finally see how love has brought out the worst in you") is horribly confused and ineptly conveyed and kind of renders everything pointless. Harmless fluff.

25.

 

Data is summoned by his creator Noonien Soong, 

as is his evil twin brother Lore.

I’m generally not a fan of the young actor playing an old man with tons of make-up trope. I’m trying to think of exceptions, but the only thing I can think of (like seriously, it’s like the memory shoving everything else aside and banging its wrinkled fists on the Weekend Update desk) is Dana Carvey in the “in my day we didn’t have (insert anything), we had (cartoonishly inadequate something) and we liked it – we loved it!”). Or Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella. Okay, SNL exceptions aside, who can I think of? There are times where it doesn’t take me out of an episode, but include too much of it and something is lost, I think. Personal reaction maybe. 

I can see how these things appeal to a performer of course. Three roles! Thrice the acting! I wonder how that plays out under the elaborate SAG rules; does the actor get paid three times? Anyway, Spiner does a good job differentiating his three roles, but nothing here caused me to revisit my lukewarm stance on Data and Lore’s backstory.

24.

 

It's off to Starfleet Academy for Wesley Crusher, but on his final mission with the Enterprise he and Picard become stranded on a desert planet.

I really wanted to give Wil Wheaton a break in his last regular-cast episode. I even had that at the beginning of my notes (“be kind to WW”). And no he’s not terrible here. But he’s not great, and he should have been. I just don’t get how they flubbed the Wesley Crusher character so badly. It’s not jus the actor’s fault, by any means. But here, despite the generous efforts of Patrick Stewart as his scene partner, his character never hits the dynamics he could (and should) have.

Still, there are some nice moments between Wesley and Picard, (again, mostly thanks to Stewart) and I’ll always have a soft spot for the ship-crashes-in-the-desert set-up. Good luck at the Academy, Wesley; we’ll meet again. 

The tractor beam is inconsistent. I mean, what isn’t (the replicator, transporter, etc.) It’s not worth keeping track of, but don’t think I’m not noticing. 

23.

 

A Starfleet Captain's gone rogue. To save the Cardassian peace treaty, Picard must find and stop him from blowing up any more Cardassian supply ships.

“It’s not you I hate. It’s what I became because of you.” Good angle on the subject matter. Good O’Brien episode.

Loses a step once Captain Maxwell comes onboard. All he does is lob up softballs for Picard to smash. It’s always more interesting when things aren’t quite so black and white. They should have played up more the angle they at least suggest at episode’s end  – i.e. Picard is forced to stop Maxwell even though the Cardassians actually are running guns.

It's kind of funny that an entire generation of folks will learn about the Cardassians and think of the Kardashians involuntarily. Whereas my own generation, at least those Trek-watching members of it, have the exact opposite happen to us. I still have to adjust - in 2020! - for such a thing. Will this phenomenon get bigger or smaller during the inevitable Kanye Presidency?

22.

First his old crewmate and then Geordi transform into alien creatures with a strong instinct to return to their planet of origin. Can the Leitjen and LaForge Reunion Show be saved?

Chronologically this came out right after “Night Terrors,” so two episodes with creepy elements in a row. Not as effectively creepy as “NT,” but it has its moments, particularly if one has viruses or infections on the mind. ("But I had two bioscans today; you said I was fine." Must have been WHO-approved bioscans up in Sick Bay.) The mystery turns out to be more compelling than the solution, though.  Geordi's Blow-Up-esque finding of the shadow-man is cool, but the air kind of comes out of the balloon from there on out.

Nurse Ogawa gets a last name here, although she was called Alyssa earlier in the season in “Clues.” I was listening to the Nitpickers Guide on TNG on audiobook the other night and the author refers to Nurse Ogawa (Patti Yasutake) as "an attractive Oriental" like forty times. This is actually in his review of "Future Imperfect" but it's all the weirder because he's trying to point out how Riker's a secret racist or something for imagining Nurse Ogawa - whom he'd clearly know by name as part of the crew - as not aging in his fantasy, ("because Orientals don't show their age.") but he can't even put together that this is the same woman who appears in multiple episodes, by name, of TNG. 

Yasutake appears to play mostly judges now. It's funny when certain actors get typecast into certain professions, eh? Not bad for an attractive Oriental.

21.

 

Tasha Yar's sister Ishara seeks to restore order on their conflict-ridden colony world.

Speaking of attractive Orientals (not really), this is the episode with popular 80s TV guest star Beth Touissant.

Here she is "Rat Girl" from Cheers, season nine. One of at least three Cheers crossovers in TNG season four. The obvious one is still coming up, but can you name the third? I'll give you a hint; it involves the punchline "He's lying, I'm the Eastern Seaboard... what a view!"

She’s got a Markie-Post-in-Buck-Rogers vibe going on in this one. This one isn’t bad but not a fave. Outside of the “hey where do I know this girl from?” thing that was bugging me throughout, you can more or less guess where it’s going to go. But, it’s well-made enough. It was the eightieth episode of the series to be filmed, i.e. one more than TOS. A once upon a time big deal. 

I feel bad spending this whole review talking about other shows, but welcome to my head.

20.

 

An unknown force captures the Enterprise 

and causes Deanna to lose her empathic powers.

I’m not really a fan of these character-loses-memory/ power set-ups. Which just as soon I type that, I realize is not actually true; more than a few of my favorite TNG episodes start with some variation of that. But there’s something about making a handicapped-metaphor episode that sits uneasily with me. When a character receives a disability and progresses through stages of anger and/or acceptance with it, it robs things somewhat if the status quo is restored at the end, which of course it will be. And yet, these episodes (and this one in particular) seems to speak to people, either to help them understand the challenges or perspectives of the suddenly-disabled, or to vent some of their frustrations in a way you don’t normally see.

I guess it all depends on the writing. And here it’s pretty good. The inner/ outer conflict set-up with Troi’s drama mirrored by that of the two-dimensional aliens.

19.

 

When the Enterprise accidentally kills a pregnant space creature, its energy-draining offspring attaches itself to its mother's murderer. Meanwhile, Geordi meets the engineer whose holo-avatar he fell in love with back in "Booby Trap," but the real-life version finds him somewhat disagreeable.

Excellent return for Susan Gibney as Leah Brahms. Very cool that she got to bring the character to life twice in such different ways. And two excellent episodes to boot. 

Geordi’s clumsy attempts at seduction – connection, really, not seduction – with Leah are totally inappropriate to nowadays, of course. But let’s face it: anyone who’s using nowadays as a template for romance is not someone to give advice on the subject. The episode is sensitive to Dr. Brahms’ position, and we’re certainly not meant to over-empathize with Geordi. Sympathize, yes, but the viewer cringes alongside him, here. He could of course read and respond better to the cues he’s getting, and let’s not overlook the whole ‘dinner in my quarters’ thing. But he's a guy, and a nerdy one; that's kind of the point. It’s not like he was wearing a bathrobe when she got there.

The Enterprise/ space gyoza stuff is okay, but the story doesn’t match so symbolically with the Geordi/ Brahms story. The first one did a little bit (the more Geordi tried, the greater the resistance/ his bad luck with girls; sort of parallel to the Enterprise’s stuck in the ‘booby trap,’ ahem) and I like when these plot and subplot themes mirror one another. Hell, it might have been TNG to actually show me this sort of thing was possible in TV, I can’t remember. 

I didn’t notice as many attractive background players in Ten Forward this season, but this is one of those episodes, by the by, with a conspicuous amount of attractive people walking by the camera. I thought about screencapping them for you but seemed a little overboard. (That sound you hear is 7th grade Bryan knocking over a bunch of boxes in my head. Hey up there! Knock it off.) 

18.

 

Picard must help a human boy raised by aliens to decide his fate.

This is the episode that Patrick Stewart was referencing as “where I played a sort of racquetball with a troubled youth” in Michael Piller’s still-unpublished (and essential) Trek memoir Fade-In * when he objected to an early draft of Insurrection. That sounds quite funny to me in my mental Jean-Luc Picard voice, over-emphasis on “racquet.”

* Oh, I guess it's published now? But apparently out of print. It used to be available for free online. I printed out that sucker and bound it myself.

Not a bad one. The Talarians, previously mentioned as the builders of the freighter the Klingons hijacked in “Heart of Glory”, are yet another warrior/wrestler race out there in space. It really boggles the mind how many wrestlers secretly work on warp drive equipment. If I were Rick Berman, I’d have nixed giving them their own shingle and just made them the spacefaring descendants of these guys from “Friday’s Child: "

But, as circumstances point out to me daily, sometimes with an irritating amount of enthusiasm, I am not now and never have been Rick Berman.

Does Worf ever comment on the similarities between Jono’s situation and his own? He has the perfect opportunity to do so a few times but doesn’t. I wonder why?

17.

 

The Romulans brainwash Geordi to carry out a covert mission.

Good stuff from all the Klingon actors (and Romulan actors as well) here. (“Your modesty is very human, Captain. I will excuse it.”)

Two things: (1) The Manchurian Candidate episode. To be honest, I’ve never been blown away by this movie, either version. I think I prefer it as filtered through a Federation lens.  The layers of intrigue are fun, though, undoubtedly. And (2) I’d forgotten just how much the show did with the Romulans. Quantitywise, they’re TNG’s signature foe by a large margin, but quality-wise, too, the argument can certainly be advanced. I felt previously that somewhere along the way TNG dropped the ball with the Romulans. I was wrong, though. The visuals/ costumes are dumb, but TNG got them very right.

All of which makes Nemesis even more baffling than it already is. It astounds me that the last bit of the franchise is as bad as it is, and that Picard chose to actually continue in that direction rather than correct it. Alas, as Austin Powers once said, that train has sailed.

16.

 

After an encounter with an alien probe, serial holo-abuser Lt. Barclay experiences great leaps in confidence and intelligence.

I’ve seen this one much less than all other TNG episodes. Not on purpose, just as I was watching it again I realized it’s somehow worked out that way. Hard-hitting biography journalism, right here, I hope you're paying attentions. But it’s a fun discovery for me, as it’s almost like having a new TNG episode to watch. 

Another showcase for Dwight Schultz. He makes the most of his Flowers for Algernon arc here. And a “2001” reference (“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir…”) before it was fashionable.  Every reference post-1995 is post-fashionable. In music, too – samples had cachet once, then they didn't. I'm saying 1995, but I don't know when this moment solidified. Somewhere around them. For a brief moment in the 80s and 90s, samples were about how good your references were, or a solidarity-shout-out to members of your audience. Then, like anything, it became abused and institutionalized, leading down to now and easter-egg thinking. 

Here’s a wild idea: instead of it turned out to be the Cytherians, it’s someone putting on the Great Leader helmet on the Spock’s Brain world and zapping Barclay from afar, just to get him there, and then a spin-off series: Barclay’s adventures on Spock’s Brain World. An alternate Trek timeline I can get on board with.

15.

 

Dr. Crusher falls in love with Odan, a peace negotiator, only to discover that he is the symbiotic host to a Trill: two aliens for the price of one. Not the threesome she signed up for, especially once the trill is implanted into Riker once the original host dies.

Another interesting and worthy slice of what-Trek-meant-back-in-the-day. I like everything that happens here, and I enjoy the ways it frustrates easy conclusions.

I have avoided and will heretofore avoid again other reviewers’ takes on things. But I’ll make an exception here: "Zack Handlen gave the episode a rating of B+ in his review for The A.V. Club, saying (that the) ending made perfect sense: love isn't solely spiritual, 'we fall in love with features, with shapes, with bodies, as well as with minds.' He added that Odan's reaction was also right, as 'everyone has a line, and if you love them, you won't ask them to cross it.'"

I wouldn't say that too loudly, Zach, these days. Especially among the woke faithful over at the AVC. And speaking of episodes that seem to be chastising this group specifically:

14.

 

A witchhunt ensues for suspected Romulan spies aboard the Enterprise. Captain Picard delivers a speech that the ACLU will later find problematic.

Another Trek Perry Mason episode. I imagine this one must make some people uncomfortable these days where innocent until proven guilty has been rendered "problematic" by partisan narrative. Good. It should. Maybe that cognitive dissonance will re-align some folks with the principles they claim to espouse. Maybe we’re seeing why the presumption of innocence is and was and must be again the bedrock of a fair legal system and something to fight for, not something to judge solely against a political-affiliation backdrop. Be wary of those people, FFS; they are not on the side of anything worth preserving. 

In a world of Admiral Saties, be a Jean-Luc Picard. This Jean-Luc Picard, at least, i.e. the actual one, not the creature of misguided whimsy currently occupying the title role of some show on CBS All Access. 

Sad that it must be sad. As it was in 1991 when this aired. Some things should only have to be worked out once or twice instead of in every generation. But such is humanity.

13.

 

K'ehleyr, Worf's one-who-got-away, returns and brings the son he didn't know he had with her. They assist Captain Picard in mediating a power dispute for the Empire.

And then came Alexander. Pt. 1 of the trilogy of Klingon stories Moore wrote for s4. 

Sad to see K’Eleyr go. The death howl will never not be gold, though. Should’ve thought that one through a bit, Duras.

Wow, I took no notes on this one, eh? Great episode, though.

12.

 

Riker is hospitalized during a botched pre-first contact mission. Government officials struggle to explain or exploit his presence.

Each of the following episodes could be my favorite from Season Four on a different day. They are more or less interchangeable. This one is a fun departure in that it shows things from the alien POV for the most part. This will be used to great effect down the road in "Thine Own Self," another of my TNG faves. 

Hey, how about a My Dead Buddy story? Remember him? As relayed in many other places he wasn't a TNG fan. He was a lot like Robert from Free Enterprise, actually - terrible with money, passionate about the art and media he loved, a bit of a Casanova (to put it mildly), and he "fucking hated the Next Generation. Only the original! Only the classic!" But the way to get Klum to do anything was never try to persuade him directly; you had to just persevere in your own love of something and sooner or later his curiosity would win out. Took a few years in TNG's case, but literally the month before he died he asked me for a list of twenty-five episodes to check out as he was going to dive in on Netflix. I don't know how far he got on that list, but I do know he watched "First Contact" with me once and loved it.

Sure was looking forward to discussing TNG with him one day. He would've sent me some fun comments on these posts. I keep meaning to go back and read all the comments he sent me on the reviews I did of TOS. It's been about six years, now, since he died; maybe this is the year. 

Well - not much reviewing of the episode going on here, is there? Sorry about that.

11.

 

A powerful mythic figure from a planet's past returns to claim her side of the compact signed with its ancestors. Convinced she is an opportunistic charlatan, Picard pledges to expose her.

This opens with Captain Picard directing “A Christmas Carol” with his second officer playing the lead. Which seems like a criminally negligent use of two senior officers’ time, but hey, they’re committed to this idea. Let’s say it’s an obligation of officers aboard the Enterprise to be active in theater, why not. It at least absolves me of having to point out how ridiculous  it is everytime it appears.  Anyway I like the symmetrical contrast of having Marley’s ghost and Ardra's scheming in the same episode.

I’ve always liked this one. As with “A Matter of Perspective,” it brings together tropes from both the Trek and the legal-drama genres, and they mix well here for my money. It also serves as at-a-distance commentary on any inherited mythological tradition. 

I once devoted two pages out of a three page love letter to my wife when we were still dating (and living in different states) to the plot of this episode. I don’t even know why to this very day, it just felt right. Boy was she was confused. To put it mildly. I don’t know how I survived such reckless disregard for love-letter-writing protocol.  Sometimes, like the people of Ventax 2, I need someone to swoop in and save me from myself.

10.

 

Lwaxana Troi falls in love but discovers her new man 
intends to undergo a ritualistic suicide.

This is quite good. I remembered it being so, but it really does belong in the conversation of what makes Trek. Definitely Majel Barrett’s finest moment as Lwxana. Very classy ending.

It’s one of those Trek episodes that treats you like an adult. Just some random unsupported speculation here: if you watched a lot of Trek as an adolescent, you probably still remember in some unconscious level what that felt like and how new/ appreciated a feeling it was. That feeling is preserved in amber in an episode like this.

9.

 

The Enterprise is trapped in a rift, and while the crew succumbs to REM sleep deprivation, Troi has a recurring nightmare.

A very atypical TNG episode. Also a very effective one. It’s either this or the alien-abduction one that gets mentioned as "that creepy TNG episode." (“Sub Rosa” too but for different reasons I guess.) 

Troi’s floating scenes look a little silly, at least the odd way she’s angled, but it’s kind of cool. And it scared my kid who came in the room while I was watching. So hey, bonus points or something. Who is the negative-zone ship on the other side of the riff? I love how mysterious it all is. 

Brian Tochi from “And the Children Shall Lead” (as well as a couple of Police Academy movies) as Ensign Lin.

8.

 

After an apparent failure of a warp-field experiment, people begin to disappear from the Enterprise with only Dr. Crusher remembering that they ever existed.

Here’s another I’ve always loved way more than most. I’m not sure why that is. It always lands with me, just one of my go-to Trek-metaphor explorations of life, death, existence, and oblivion. I’m very moved by everything that happens, which is all thanks to Gates’ performance. This and another episode I seem to enjoy much more than everyone (“Sub Rosa”) are my favorite Beverly moments of the series. 

I like particularly how the crew, once revealed to be simply projections from Beverly’s mind, acts. Beverly has high regard for her shipmates if these are the projections from her quantum-uncertain state. 

The mystery escalates well.  Some of the Wesley/ Traveler stuff is perhaps dramatically unsatisfying and gets a little too Tao-of-Physics-y about things. If that sinks this episode for some, I can understand it. Really, though, this is one of those that kind of hits me at a spiritual level I can’t quite put into words. Not the Wesley/ Traveler gobbledy-gook, but everything on Beverly's side of the bubble. The script reads like an Oracle of Delphi-type response where you perceive your own truths.

Along those lines, here’s a mash-up poem of bits from the script I like, in the vein of that TS Eliot post not too long ago. (Script by Lee Sheldon.) 

So many of the people you've known all your life are gone.
All you said was 'Thank you.'
I said, 'My pleasure,' or something, and that was the end of it.
Your word has always been good enough for me.
A lie I can live with.
Narrow perceptions of time and space and thought.
I won't forget. I won't forget any of you.
Once we've cataloged the symptoms, we will proceed to determine the illness, 

and find the cure.
We will start with the assumption that I am not crazy.
If this was a bad dream, would you tell me?
That is not a valid question.
Like hell it's not.
That information is not available.
There is no Tau Alpha C listed on current star maps.
That information is not available.
If there's nothing wrong with me, maybe there's something wrong with the universe.
The universe is a spheroid region seven hundred and five metres in diameter.
That's when it started. That's when I started losing everybody.
My thoughts created this universe.
That information is not available.
One thousand and fourteen.
That's the exact number there should be.

7.

 

Riker finds himself sixteen years in the future, his memory of 
the interim erased by a dormant virus.

Here’s another one that feels like the sort of thing Trek once did so effortlessly, that sense of outreach to lonely, gifted youth. Maybe just an 80s thing and not a Trek thing. I can't call it. That ending is killer, though. Riker’s finest moment. I’m sure he enjoyed yelling at everyone on the bridge, too. 

Is the kid actor (Wayne Norman from Sometimes They Come Back) a little stiff? Sure. I prefer to think of it as a case of his being too good: he nails the awkwardness of an alien trying his best to mimic the mannerisms of a youth from another species. 

6.

 

Worf leaves the Enterprise to fight on 
behalf of Gowron in a Klingon civil war.

I’ll have more to say on this one next time for pt. 2, but what a great end to the trilogy of Klingon episodes Moore wrote for season 4. Each one sets up the next, and this cliffhanger with Romulan-Yar is a great little where-are-they-going-with-this. The Klingons – from the Duras Sister to K’urn to Gowron (one of my favorites) – are never better. 

“Your blood will paint the way to the future.”

5.

 

A day in the life of Second Office Data, which he narrates as a letter to Bruce Maddox at the Daystrom Institute, comprises preparation for Keiko and Miles O'Brien's wedding as well as intrigue with a Vulcan ambassador in the Neutral Zone.

A perfectly constructed bit of business. 

Is this Keiko’s first appearance? I think it is, right? (Sometimes I just transcribe my notes, good or bad, so I can answer my own questions. Sure is.) It’s definitely Spot’s (Data’s cat) although the cat remains unnamed until “In Theory.” Am I looking this up in The TNG Companion? Yes, as well as others, but not consistently. This isn't a book report FFS.

I feel I should have more to say about this, and undoubtedly it’s all worth discussing. But I’m not in the mood to just come up with hyperbole. It's a pretty well-regarded episode of the show for all the obvious reasons. As is:

4.

 

Picard is rescued from the Borg as the Enterprise races to save Earth. Data interfaces with the half-Borg Picard and finds a way to shut down the Borg ship.

As I mentioned last time I was not one of the fans watching the show regularly at this point, so I missed out on the excitement of waiting for the new season to finish the “Best of Both Worlds” cliff-hanger. But I can relate to some of the disappointment I’ve read where such fans were treated to the big “fire” weapon being instantly a dud. A sudden thwarted release of tension could perhaps have been rethought. I suspect they felt hey, we landed every other part of this, so let’s just move on. Fair enough. 

That wonderful ending moment with Picard about to sip his Earl Grey and look out the window as he’s done routinely so many times before, suddenly arrested by a wave of traumatic memory and that little music cue, works so damn well. First Contact aside, this is the high water mark for the Borg.

Trek Trivia: Wolf 359, third closest star system to Earth (aka Sol 3) is referenced in quite a few places.

3.

 

Data participates in a romantic relationship with a fellow crew member.

What a subtle masterpiece this one is. What could be the fodder for yet more Pinnochio-type joking is actually a wonderfully melancholy sideways exploration of relationship incompatibility and the difficulty of navigating such things, android or not. 

One of my favorite TNG endings. ("Are we no longer a couple? Then I will delete the appropriate program.") If only humans had that ability. Thank God we don't, but it sure would help sometimes.

So many wonderful moments throughout and that a-story/ b-story symmetry is well done. Although as mentioned elsewhere (and maybe too often) the whole only-I-can-pilot-this-shuttlecraft plot device never really works, dramatically.

2.

 

The crew, with the exception of Data, is rendered unconscious for 30 seconds after going through a localized wormhole. As various clues are uncovered that suggest they were unconscious for an entire day, Picard et al. suspect Data is, somehow, lying to them.

Here’s one that I’ve learned over the years elicits a strong negative reaction from a lot of folks. I’ve never understood why. But the reaction is so common that every rewatch (and I'm something like thirty or forty rewatches deep at this point) I expect that okay, this will be when I get what everyone's talking about.

But nope, I still don’t get the negativity on this one at all. It’s such a fun episode! The mystery unfolds so well, and Spiner’s performance is pitch perfect. The pre-credits stuff with Dixon Hill perhaps could have been integrated into things a little better, but that’s my only less-than-kudos takeaway. And here it is again, in my top three. Really like I said way up there, my top twelve are fairly interchangeable and are my collective pick for ‘Best/ Favorite Episode of Season Four.’ But here’s where this one landed on the May 2020 spreadsheet/ re-watch. I guess this is just one of those you-say-tomato moments with me and the rest of Trekdom. I have a few of those ("Spock's Brain", Insurrection, Voyager, "Sub Rosa," etc.) So it goes. Like Commander Kruge, I trust my instincts. 

Data’s “You have returned” to possessed-Troi is a great little moment. We still don't know who the "you" at that point. I hesitated writing this because it’s just a line and not a stellar line or even a stellar delivery, but there’s something about it that seems so eerie to me. 
 

1.

 

While the Enterprise undergoes repairs, Captain Picard visits his brother's family in France, Lt. Worf's adoptive human parents come to see him aboard the ship, and Dr. Crusher gives her son Wesley a personal holo-recording left by his late father shortly after his birth.

While we're here, hey Generations: fuck you, still.

If someone told me this was TNG’s finest hour, I’d disagree, but I could understand it. Even applaud it. I’m voting it my favorite of s4, but weirdly, when it comes time to do my favorite TNG episodes, I imagine many of the ones preceding this will be above it. 

I’ve seen some criticism of the kid actor playing Picard’s nephew, but I can only shrug. He does a better job in “Rascals” as the transporter-de-aged Picard, but he acquits himself honorably here. And even though the episode is obviously about Picard’s arc, the supplemental arcs with Worf’s human parents and Wesley’s moments with his departed holo-Dad hit me right in the feels. The sentiments run on the wholesome side, but like Lynch’s The Straight Story or the better moments of Little House on the Prairie, wholesome doesn’t mean hokey, necessarily. Ending the "Best of Both Worlds" arc with something like this was a bold move at the time but obviously correct in hindsight.

Ted Bikel as Worf’s human Dad Rozhenko, as well. He mentions a brother, but is it the Paul Sorvino brother he means? Who was the brother in “Heart of Glory”? For some reason when they add or subtract siblings from Worf's family I never mind, whereas it bugs me when they do it for Spock. 

~
And now for the ending montage of leftover screencaps.

"Let him dream."

See you next time.