Sarek (⭑⭑⭑⭑)

“Sarek” was something of a big event for TNG when it aired, and is an episode that I almost reflexively hold in high regard—and yet, if I’m being honest, I don’t actually like it quite as much as I want to. There’s good stuff here, and I’ve obviously still gone with a four-star rating, but the truth is that, were it not for Patrick Stewart’s amazing performance during the mind meld scene (which is easily the high point of the episode), we would actually be looking at a fairly routine, three-star installment here. When it comes right down to it, I want a bit more from this episode than what it delivers.

None of this is to say that having a familiar face from classic Trek visit the show was not extremely cool. Mark Lenard has an old-school gravitas that imbues his scenes with a real sense of continuity with the world of, say, Star Trek III, so that Picard’s yearning for a dialogue with Sarek about his role in shaping history comes across as credible and easy to relate to. What’s more, even though Lenard is, in a sense, playing against type for most of the episode, in that he lacks Sarek’s signature icy emotional control, this only makes it that much cooler when the mind meld with Picard evenetually brings forth the “real” Sarek. Also, during the early scene in which Picard and Riker discuss Sarek’s lifetime of accomplishments while walking to the transporter room to welcome him aboard, I found myself reflecting that in another episode, this scene would read as the episode trying too hard to build up hype around its guest character of the week and manufacture audience investment in him—but in this case, because the guest character is Sarek, the scene actually works.

That’s the thing, though: Too much of this episode boils down to relatively routine TNG that’s elevated merely by the presence of Sarek. The gradually escalating outbursts of hostility and violence among the crew are competently executed and entertaining enough, but nothing special. (Side note: Wesley has a date…with an ensign? He’s, like, 17, right? And an ensign would be an academy graduate, so…isn’t this a little weird?) The guest characters other than Sarek (his entourage) are mostly pretty one-note. (Perrin is the most interesting of them, but she raises a lot of questions—about just how fulfilling a life with Sarek could really be for her, and especially about Sarek’s disturbingly patriarchal manner toward her.) And then, too, the plot of this episode represents yet another instance of TNG’s fetish for stories in which important diplomatic talks can only be conducted by one all-important negotiator, and therefore become imperiled when that person’s ability to perform is impaired in some way (see both “Too Short a Season” and “Loud as a Whisper” from seasons one and two, respectively—not to mention at least one episode still to come that I can think of just off the top of my head). Again, because the all-important negotiator this time around is freaking Sarek of Vulcan, part of me is inclined to cut the episode a little slack on this point…but only a little.

When I say that I “wanted more” from the episode, though, what I mostly have in mind is the rich thematic potential that I see in the premise but that the episode fails to develop to the degree that it ought to have. We see that Picard not only harbors immense respect and admiration for Sarek, but even appears to feel a kind of kinship with him. Though not a Vulcan, Jean-Luc Picard is both a man of deep, intense passions, and a person whose chief character flaw is a reserve and detachment that keep him from really letting others in most of the time. Despite TNG’s largely episodic structure, a charitable reading of the show as a whole would acknowledge a series-long character arc for him in which he gradually sheds the excesses of this reserve and becomes more comfortable with vulnerability and genuine engagement with those around him. On top of that, he’s also the oldest of the regular characters, and his empathy for Sarek as the latter struggles with the indignities of aging and the loss of his faculties is clearly expressed in the episode. In light of all of this, I really feel like the episode should have done more with Picard’s mind meld with Sarek. As riveting as the scene is, there’s no character-development follow-through on it for Picard. He has this intense, direct experience of the long-term effects of a lifetime of bottling up one’s emotions—feels “the anguish of the man,” all his regrets “pouring out of him,” how he wishes he could have expressed his love more fully to his wives and his son, etc.—and…does he take anything away from this at all? All that would have been needed was one short scene, a couple of lines of dialogue, in which he reflects on the experience: how he sees himself in Sarek and realizes that he, too, tends to close himself off emotionally, and that if he doesn’t reverse that course at some point, it may wreck him much more quickly than it wrecked the Vulcan. Something along those lines, anyway.

With all of that said, it’s still a memorable and enjoyable episode featuring both a visit from Sarek and that unforgettable mind meld scene, and it’s competently executed overall with no glaring flaws. Again, without the intensity of the mind meld scene and Stewart’s raw, vulnerable, deeply affecting performance in it, I would only give “Sarek” three stars—but with that scene, it would feel like an insult to go with fewer than four!