Birthright: Part I (⭑⭑⭑)

This is kind of an oddball of an episode. I usually remember it mainly as “the Data dreaming one,” probably because that story thread is the one that interests me the most. The conversations between Data and Dr. Bashir do also stick in my head a bit, but as a DS9 crossover episode, this strikes me as a somewhat perfunctory effort; several early scenes take place on the station, and of course there’s the Bashir stuff, but none of that really seems crucial to the episode’s main stories, nor did the Enterprise‘s visit to Deep Space Nine really do a lot to get otherwise aloof viewers interested in checking out the (at the time) new spinoff series. Then, too, this episode makes a somewhat odd first-half-of-a-two-parter, since part two will only concern itself with one of the two main story threads introduced here, and I mostly think of the two episodes as quite distinct from each other (more about that, though, when I review part two). Basically, this episode serves up one storyline that is intriguing and sort of delightful in tone, yet kind of doesn’t go anywhere in particular, while at the same time setting up a second storyline that we mostly have to wait for part two to get particularly much from. It has its charms, for sure, but it’s not exactly (sorry, Data/Soong) the stuff of which dreams are made.

Dispensing, first, with the Worf story: Let me begin by saying that what I’m most glad about is that the Yridian’s claim about Mogh being alive turns out not to be true. I’m not saying this kind of thing can never work, and of course the claim was the perfect hook to get Worf’s attention…but in general, I feel that a changed premise, this late in a show, on the level of “your father is actually still alive!”, for a character who has been defined by his orphanhood and already dealt with epic intrigue around the truth of what happened in the event that killed his parents, is a mistake. It smacks of desperation a bit, for one thing—but more importantly, it feels like pulling the rug out from under a fundamental character premise in a way that I don’t really like. But the writers didn’t go that route, so…good. Bullet dodged there. Otherwise, frankly, most of the Worf story in this episode is a bit dull, consisting of fairly routine setup for what part two has in store. TNG doesn’t lend itself all that well to stories about a character going off on some personal quest, and Worf can be a bit predictable and dull when taken away from the usual shipboard setting and his relationships with the other regulars, and the episode doesn’t really make that much of an effort to overcome these issues or do anything particularly engaging with the Worf story; it really just takes us from a to b to c and gets Worf to the “prison colony,” then springs its big surprise on him once he arrives (while leaving the details unclear as a cliffhanger, of course). The only particularly meaningful bit, for me, comes in the scene with Data wherein the writers manage to briefly tie the episode’s two (thematically resonant, but otherwise essentially unrelated) stories together. Interacting with Data is exactly the sort of situation in which Worf does tend to become more interesting. I enjoy how Data observes his grumpiness and is about to abort his whole plan of talking to him, but then Worf notices that and offers Data an opening—and, of course, the bit where Worf, in giving advice to Data, realizes that he’s talking about himself, is a nice little moment. Beyond that, though, the Worf stuff is more or less just “there.”

Data’s dreams, on the other hand, are exactly the kind of TNG story that tends to fire my imagination, and there’s plenty to enjoy about what we get from it. For starters, it’s fun to get to see a different version of Dr. Soong from the old, crochety, paranoid one who appeared in “Brothers”—and in particular, one who displays a sense of passion and wonder that feels right for Data’s creator. For another, the slightly distorted and off-kilter looking views of the ship’s corridors featured in the dream sequences are nicely surreal, without going too far. In terms of somewhat surreal imagery, though, Data’s dream-inspired paintings really take first prize. I absolutely love not only the paintings themselves, but the whole concept of Data in a frenzy of painting and producing a series of images without entirely being able to explain what led him from one to the next, or where some of them came from. It’s very un-Data in a way, and if the episode didn’t eventually explain it satisfactorily, I would be annoyed…but it does, so instead I just enjoy the juxtaposition of calm, rational Data producing these really intense, cool-looking images. In the moment, it’s just enough to kind of make you worry about him a bit! (And I don’t want to hear anything more, a la “Schisms,” about Data’s artistic endeavors not being emotionally evocative!) And then, the whole idea that Dr. Soong wanted his android creation to dream (with all the metaphorical implications thereof), and programmed him with the latent ability to do so once he reached a certain level of cognitive sophistication, is cool, and a delightful new step along Data’s “becoming more human” journey (nicely symbolized by the dream imagery of Data-as-bird being forged by Soong-as-blacksmith). So, as far as all of that goes, this storlyline is all to the good. The trouble is, there’s not actually all that much story to it…and I’m left kind of wanting more. A random accident triggers a weird experience for Data; he ponders it for a while, and asks various people for advice; he decides to recreate the event; in doing so, he gets a fuller version of the experience that includes an explanation of what it’s all about. I don’t exactly know how to turn the premise into more of a full-fledged story, but I wish there were some kind of stakes beyond “gee, I wonder what that was about?” and I would like for Data to have had to make a challenging decision, or learn something more concrete, or something. Also, it’s a little disappointing that the whole incident is triggered by some random zap from a doohickey that Bashir got from the Gamma Quadrant, rather than by something more interesting, or emotionally resonant, or (at least) personally connected to Data. Bashir’s conversations with Data are mildly interesting, but there’s really no compelling story reason for him, in particular, to have been the unintentional catalyst for Data’s discovery of his ability to dream. Thus, as much as I enjoy the “Data dreaming” concept and the tone of surreal wonderment and his art and all that, I can’t really justify more than three stars for the episode. It ends up feeling neat and fun, but kind of inconsequential.

That said, I do have to express my appreciation for the excellent advice that Data gets from Picard with respect to interpreting the meaning of his dreams. I say this not only because I think that Picard is dead right about dream interpretation in general (cultural context is all well and good, but ultimately a dream’s significance (if it has any) will be specific to the individual dreamer and can only be discovered via introspection), but because it’s about time someone said this to Data! Time after time, the poor android has attempted to navigate some new experience by exhaustively researching how various cultures approach it, and the results are basically never relevant to him. If only someone would have given him similar advice back in “In Theory”!