Unification: Part II (⭑⭑⭑)

Oof. There is some good stuff in this episode, and the whole of it is perfectly watchable, but its plot makes basically no sense, and it doesn’t come close to living up to the promise of part one. As I’ve noted before, this unfortunately became more or less the norm for TNG two-parters; there are definitely exceptions (I regard BOBW as one, even though I do think that part one is better than part two), but all too often, the first part sets up what seems like a really interesting story that the second part then totally fails to follow through on. “Redemption” fit this pattern to a point (even though I gave four stars to both parts of it), but “Unification” is perhaps the paradigmatic instance of it.

Let me begin by addressing big-picture plot issues. Frankly, neither the titular reunification between Vulcan and Romulus that Spock envisions, nor Sela’s scheme for a Romulan conquest of Vulcan, is remotely plausible. A growing underground movement of dissident Romulans who oppose the empire’s militarism and would like to see it make peace with the Federation would make sense, and for that movement to draw inspiration from Vulcan philosophy is a pretty cool idea, even. But “reunification”? It’s so specific, and it feels like it skips so many steps, and the facts of Vulcan’s membership in the Federation and the physical distance between Romulus and Vulcan introduce complications that nobody seems to be thinking about. The Romulans and the Federation don’t even seem to have a functioning diplomatic relationship, for fuck’s sake! And talk of reunification amounts to skipping right past “let’s stop being mortal enemies” and starting the conversation at “let’s surrender our independent sovereignty and meld our cultures together.” Really? Then, as for Sela’s military scheme: Three spruced-up junkyard derelicts were going to transport a bunch of troops deep into the heart of Federation space (at warp one, no less) on the strength of one broadcast (either coerced or faked) by a respected Federation diplomat suspected of having defected, claiming that the ships are carrying peace envoys? (Sela actually claims that the broadcast doesn’t even need to be convincing; it just needs to confuse people for long enough to allow the ships to reach Vulcan. Is Vulcan suddenly located on the border of the neutral zone? Would Starfleet really not send an escort to meet the alleged peace mission, even if they somehow believed in it? What universe does Sela live in!?) Anyway, and then the troops from those ships were going to somehow conquer a founding Federation member world!? And the Federation was going to be powerless in the face of this near-miraculous fait accompli, because the Romulans would be “entrenched” (deep in Federation space, and presumably cut off from any possible aid from Romulus)? Also…why would the Romulans even want to do this, exactly? Just as a great big “fuck you” to their Vulcan cousins and/or their own dissident movement? The Romulans are supposed to be canny strategists, not impulsive, wild-eyed nut jobs! Then, too: Why three Vulcan ships? If the Romulans were genuinely sending a peace envoy to Vulcan (never mind that this very premise makes limited sense)…wouldn’t they send it in their own ships? How exactly did stealing Vulcan ships from scrap yards and using them to transport the troops serve the Romulans’ scheme? This has never made any sense to me. And finally, the presence of a cloaked warbird accompanying the “peace ships” calls into question why this whole elaborate deception was needed in the first place. I mean, for that matter, there really needs to be some kind of explanation for why the Romulans can’t just send cloaked warbirds into Federation space whenever they want (and Picard taking a cloaked Klingon ship to Romulus raises similar questions). They must not be able to, or the neutral zone would be pointless and the Federation would stand no chance against the Romulans in general. Yet this episode seems to ignore these considerations, while at the same time having the Romulans resort to an elaborate deception that would seemingly be for the purpose of circumventing them. It just makes no sense.

Secondly, there are some large-scale storytelling choices with which I take issue in this episode. For instance, the Enterprise‘s whole investigation into the stolen Vulcan ship ends up being completely irrelevant. Yes, the Romulans were using that ship as part of their absurd invasion plan, but it’s not as though the Enterprise‘s investigation plays any role in thwarting that plan. Geordi is not even able to determine whether or not any of the three “peace envoy” ships is the one they’ve been tracking! Nope, the entire Romulan ploy is instead defeated by Picard, Data, and Spock, while they are left alone locked in Commander Sela’s office! Sorry, Riker! (Not that anything in that subplot was especially compelling to begin with, but if the episode was going to devote screen time to it, should it not at least have gone somewhere, and mattered in some way?) Also, the episode reveals early on that Proconsul Neral is in league with known adversary Sela and therefore must be full of crap and stringing Pardek and Spock and company along as part of some dastardly plan. Fine, whatever. But did we really need to then also have Pardek betray Spock? The two of them are supposed to have maintained a decades-long relationship, and Pardek’s support is the whole reason why Spock came to Romulus in the first place. But then he betrays Spock, for no particular reason that the episode bothers to make clear, and the latter more or less shrugs it off. Really? And, why? If we’re to take seriously the idea that there really is a genuine, growing dissident movement on Romulus, couldn’t the episode have left us with one semi-powerful person who actually supported it? Or are Romulans, after all, inherently untrustworthy, and is Spock really on the very fool’s errand that he acknowledges that Sarek would accuse him of? A somewhat related issue here is that even though it is undeniably fun to have Spock make an appearance on TNG, I am left wishing that we could have gotten something that was more genuinely “his” story, with him having greater agency and more of an arc. (Season six would, in this sense, do better justice to Scotty in “Relics” than this episode does for Spock.) And then, finally: Sela. As I discussed when reviewing the second half of “Redemption,” I had never really made up my mind one way or another about this character throughout all my years of watching TNG…until now. I didn’t really care for her role in “Redemption,” and I honestly like her even less in “Unification.” Besides just not being an especially interesting character, she comes across here as both moronic and petulant. Her plan is dumb, her cliched “gloatingly explain the plan to the heroes” scene is dumb, her “lock them in her office rather than securing them in a prison cell” decision is not exactly her finest moment, and her little “I hate Vulcans” tirade in response to Spock making just one very simple and obvious observation about it not being logical to expect him to comply with her demands is unearned. Even putting aside the larger problems with the plot, this episode really needed a Romulan adversary who felt worthy of the likes of Spock, Picard, and Data, and Sela is not remotely that adversary.

Having said all that, there are some good dialogue scenes both between Spock and Picard and between Spock and Data. Not necessarily great scenes, but good scenes. Picard accusing Spock of engaging in “cowboy diplomacy” is perhaps the episode’s most memorable line, and it works for me. This is essentially Picard, as a representative of the mature, 24th-century Federation, telling Spock that his Kirk-like “western in space” original Trek antics (going off on his own, as if not answerable to any higher authority, and trying to impose his will on whole societies) are out of date. And on the one hand, not only is Picard our protagonist, but I also agree with him that Spock taking on this Romulan mission on his own authority and not consulting with the Federation on it is unacceptable. But at the same time, this positions Picard as “the man,” telling an iconic hero that he needs to cooperate with the establishment. This is not a role that we often see “our hero” playing, either within Trek or on TV in general! I really enjoy the complexities of this clash of perspectives. Spock, for his part, displays a willingness to introspect, and to acknowledge his own foibles (both with Picard and with Data, as when the latter points out that he has used a human expression when voicing his satisfaction with his choice of a primarily Vulcan lifestyle), that I find admirable, and that specifically lives up to his reputation for being “logical.” This serves to mitigate, somewhat, my feeling that his whole one-man rogue mission to Romulus, and his attitude that it’s none of Starfleet’s or the Federation’s business, is not very logical. His explanation about how his decision to go it alone was informed by his own past experience with regard to his role in the opening of peace talks with the Klingons was intriguing and provocative when this episode originally aired, since it constituted a teaser for the forthcoming sixth original-cast Trek movie; now, though, it doesn’t entirely work for me, given the amount of time that passed between the two events and the fact that Spock is not supposed to be so easily swayed by emotion. As for the exchange between Spock and Data in which they mutually acknowledge their opposite trajectories in life with respect to humanity/emotions…it’s good as far as it goes, but it doesn’t really go beyond what any even minimally perceptive fan had observed on their own from TNG’s early days. I would have hoped for rather more from the encounter between these two characters. (On the other hand, Data himself has a couple of pretty great moments in this episode, like the scene in which he gets everything he wants from the Klingon captain mostly by virtue of being so far beyond him in general competence that the latter seemingly gives in merely to save face by projecting the appearance that he even understands what the android is talking about. Also, the utterly Data one-liner to Sela about how she might be happier in another job. Data, of course, is not joking; he perceives a weakness (however slight)—a potential avenue by which to approach dissuading an adversary from her course—and even though it’s one that literally no one else would bother testing, Data’s at least going to try. 🙂 )

So anyway, what we basically have here is a deeply half-baked and largely vacuous story that coasts along on the strength of the audience’s built-in enthusiasm for getting to see Spock on TNG and a few genuinely engaging bits of dialogue, plus whatever residual good will its viewers might harbor toward it as a result of part one having been as good as it was. There’s some degree of payoff for the setup of Picard having a personal mission to bridge the gap between the late Sarek and his estranged son alongside his official mission to rein in the rogue ambassador, but not as much as I might have hoped for. I do buy into Spock’s transference of his lifelong arguments with his father onto Picard, followed by his eventual acknowledgement of same, and him coming to respect our captain for his Vulcan-like qualities; also, the mind meld at the end through which Picard endeavors to effect some degree of reconciliation between the two Vulcans is a nice touch. Unfortunately, these pluses tend to get somewhat lost in the avalanche of stupid that are the episode’s plot and many of its storytelling choices. It is, as I said at the outset, an eminently watchable episode that contains some really nice moments—but on the whole, it’s still a pretty major disappointment.