Future Imperfect (⭑⭑⭑)

This episode had great potential, and most of it is quite enjoyable, but its ending is a pretty big disappointment, and ultimately there’s just not enough “meat” here to make for a really engaging story. It’s too bad, because I can readily imagine the four-star version of this episode that could have been. The setup of Riker waking up, in effect, sixteen years in the future, is inherently fun and provides plenty of good stuff to explore character-wise, and there are lots of nice moments along the way. If only…

In a nutshell, the main downfall of “Future Imperfect” is that it opts for the least interesting of all the readily imaginable answers to the question of what is actually going on. Naturally, the apparent “future” scenario turns out not to be real. This was a given; the show would never have actually skipped ahead sixteen years and left a main character with a gaping hole in his memories (though part of me almost regrets that, because it could have been really interesting!). So, the question becomes: okay, what is going on, then? For a good chunk of the episode, the obvious theory (both for the audience and for Riker himself) is that it’s all some kind of Romulan ploy…and the trouble with the episode is that this would have been much more engaging than the scenario that it actually goes with. (One is left half-wondering if the writers simply couldn’t come up with a suitably clever Romulan ploy, so chose to make that whole thread just a red herring.) Or, if not that, then what if Riker’s experiences upon awakening had at least turned out to represent, through some kind of sci-fi mechanism, a genuine glimpse of his future? That, too, could have been interesting. Instead, alas, it’s all just a meaningless illusion created by a one-off alien guest character, for reasons that, sure, are relatable and moving enough, but aren’t really about either Riker or the larger setting or story of TNG in any way. And the thing is, it’s bad enough for an episode’s ending to not be especially compelling—but for the episode to tease a potentially really interesting Romulan story, only to pull it out from under us and be all like “just kidding!”? This makes the eventual “random lonely alien child whom we’ll never see or hear of again” reveal that much more of a letdown.

Consider, too, the rich character development potential inherent in this episode’s setup. Seven episodes ago, Riker turned down yet another opportunity for his own command, only to be forced to take over command of the Enterprise under circumstances that looked likely to be permanent (though of course ultimately proved temporary). Here, it’s like he wakes up sixteen years into the alternate future that he sidestepped by rescuing Picard in BOBW: commanding the Enterprise in his former captain’s stead (albeit with Picard still alive and well in this case), still mostly surrounded by the rest of his fellow officers in their familiar roles, but with his life also having moved on in notable ways (a marriage, a son, being widowed). Everything about the early parts of the episode—opening on his birthday, greying him up in the faux future, the way he reacts to being called “Captain” when he wakes up—seems designed to frame an exploration of a “path not taken” for Riker. I’m not exactly sure what sort of nifty character journey I would most like to have seen take shape from this beginning, but it definitely feels like a missed opportunity—and one that might have suggested multiple and intriguing meanings, on a thematic level, for the episode’s title (which strikes me as potentially great, yet amounts to merely a mildly clever pun on its own). On top of this, here we have a guy who has spent much of his life feeling betrayed and abandoned as a child by an inadequate father after the death of his mother, waking up in a world where he himself is a widowed, single parent who at least feels like he hasn’t been there for his own son (since he has no memories of the kid). This is touched on briefly in one (quite nice) turbolift scene, but it seems like a lot more could have been done with it. (These musings are all entirely my own, but as usual, commenter William B at Jammer’s Reviews has a ton of even more in-depth character analysis to offer, along generally similar lines, in two separate comments that I didn’t read until after writing my own review.) And then, what if all of this character stuff had tied in with whatever it was that the Romulans had been up to (if they had been real)—some big psychological game that they were playing in pursuit of some nefarious goal that Riker had to somehow see through and avoid playing into? What an episode that could have been!

So, all right, none of that is what we actually got, here. What of the episode that the writers did give us? Well, it’s a fun glimpse of an imagined future, with a pleasing number of nice little touches and bits of continuity, and it is fun to watch Riker trying to adjust to the various changes in his world. Like I said, for all that I find it disappointing, this episode remains mostly enjoyable. Probably the single cleverest (and most memorable) bit is the reveal that Riker’s “wife” was Minuet (!), and the way that his discovery of this detail is what prompts him to realize that this “future” isn’t real. That’s pretty great (and represents yet another instance of season four being willing to revisit ideas from season one, as it had already done with both Lore and the Traveler). I also appreciate the fact that, for once, this episode succeeds in making characters look older than their usual selves in a believable way. I do think that a fair amount of what goes down in “the future,” up to the point when Riker calls bullshit on the whole scenario, plays out rather improbably (Riker resumes his duties immediately upon coming out of his (fake) coma, with no down time or even briefing about what’s going on? etc.), but I’m not sure whether to criticize or praise the episode for this; after all, the scenario is fake, so any unrealistic elements can be explained—or even interpreted as clues. I both enjoy and find frustrating the involvement of Tomalak, who, despite never being fleshed out much as a character, displayed enough presence and duplicitous menace in the two memorable third-season episodes in which he appeared that just seeing him again is initially exciting, adds to the sense of continuity, and ups the (fake) stakes as Riker wrestles with adapting to a future in which the Romulan commander is allegedly now trustworthy…but when the entire Romulan angle proves not to be real, this just adds to the sense of wasted opportunity. Finally, I’m struck by this episode’s relationship to three of TNG’s signature recurring tropes: First, it flirts with putting Riker in the position of “sole essential negotiator without whom important peace talks can’t go forward”—and in this one way, at least, I’m glad that the Romulan negotiations plot ends up being bogus. Second, this is virtually the paradigmatic instance of a story in which one of the main characters is trapped in some illusory reality, eventually realizes it, and loudly announces some version of “I’m not going to play this little game anymore!”, thus prompting whoever is behind things to drop the charade (a trope that I’ve always chuckled at; we saw kind of a proto-example with Picard in season three’s “Allegiance,” and of course, poor Riker will find himself in another classic scenario of this sort toward the end of season six). And third…as uninspired as I find this episode’s ending to be, I’m at least grateful that the being who was behind everything here turns out to be a lonely child seeking companionship, and not yet another wacky alien wanting to “study humanity”!

Trivia Note: When Riker awakens in sickbay near the end of the teaser, the first face that he sees is that of a minor recurring character making her initial appearance on the show: Nurse Ogawa!