#84, Parallels, The Next Generation, Season 7, Episode 11

"Ahead full! Maximum Worf!" — Worf

I'm not going to lie. I was worried about this episode. Worried because when I announced that 'Little Green Men' was on the docket, I also announced how much I liked it. But when I revisited that episode, I realized that it didn't hold up to my memory. Part of this is the nature of comedy. Much of comedy relies on surprise. A set-up followed by misdirection. A classic structure of expectation and reversal. A third phrasing of that thing. A big part of my reaction to that episode was that it just wasn't all that funny. I've always found Trek better at being 'amusing' than 'funny.' 'Little Green Men' was just a little too-not-at-all-that-funny for my tastes.

That being said, I really, really remembered liking 'Parallels' and I was worried it would fall short of my expectations. After watching, I'm pleased to say it's still a great deal of fun, as Worf bounces from parallel reality to parallel reality, drifting further and further from the Enterprise he knows. As he shifts, the changes in his surroundings go from subtle (the cake is a different color!) to drastic (Riker is Captain!). It's one of those episodes that takes our familiar characters and puts them outside their comfort zones. What is at first contributed to a concussion from a bat'leth tournament messing with Worf's memories quickly escalates into him realizing that he's no longer in his home reality. Worf is lost, unsure of where he is or what's happening thanks to some shuttle accident and Geordi's visor, or something. The technobabble and technobabble solution aren't not really the problems here. Worf's motivations as a character are.

Worf rolls with the changes fairly well at first, assuming his memory is suspect thanks to the aforementioned blow to the head. But, history keeps changed around him. And not little things.  Deanna Troi is his suddenly his wife. Picard is dead at the hands of the Borg. Data has blue eyes. Dr. Crusher is no longer the Chief Medical Officer. Their combadges are slightly different. It's madness.

"Come, sit down, embace this new me-filled reality." — Deanna Troi

What I find interesting is that the reality in which Worf finally finds himself is a fairly sweet one. He's gotten a promotion to first officer of the Enterprise and is happily married to Deanna Troi with two supposedly beautiful children (we never see them). It's not until he realizes that in this reality, his son, Alexander, was never born, that Worf's drive to return home kicks in. Sirtis does a great job of handling Deanna's complex emotional roller coaster as she realizes that Worf not only has no memory of their relationship, the man she knew and loved is gone. Replaced with a man from another world. It's a completely weird thing to ask of an actor, but I think it's handled well.

If I have one major complaint about the episode (I have second but it isn't critical, and is super-nerdy) it's that the episode spends a great deal of time establishing what is essentially a non-mystery. The audience is so far ahead of the characters in this episode on what's going on, it's painful to watch the them catch up. They spend way too much time with the setup and explaining to the audience what a parallel reality is. It's a fairly well-known science-fiction trope and I feel we could skip a fair amount of this and get straight to the emotional conflict in the episode. I say a non-mystery because the reveal of what's going on is in the damned title. Doesn't take a warp-engine specialist to put two and two here.

The episode is very character heavy, where a man who is normally sure of himself, questions everything around him. There's not much driving the story forward, past the mystery we already know the answer to. So, the episode lumbers a bit. We have new, shiny things to look at, but it does drag. There are a few red herrings. Cardassians tamper with a space telescope, and aggressive Bajorans strike against intruders to their territory, but neither pay off in a satisfactory way. It's not until the barriers of reality start to break down that we have an actual threat to deal with, and Worf has any kind of decision to make.

My second complaint about the episode is far more nit-picky and about the Son of Mogh himself. In this episode, Worf comes across as the Klingoniest-Klingon-to-ever-Klingon-a-Klingon. And it bugs me. The episode starts off with Worf returning from a bat'leth tournament, which sounded an awful lot like an Olympics where competitors get impaled. Or, I imagine something akin to MMA, but with giant knives. But not only did he compete, he won with Grand Champion standing. I call shenanigans.*

Worf going off to a bat'leth tournament as a spectator I totally buy. He wasn't raised by Klingons and Worf has always struggled to connect to his heritage in a meaningful way. Worf running off to learn what it means to be a Klingon is a reoccurring character theme. But for him to go to this tournament and win, I just don't buy it. Having competed in martial arts tournaments (I have, don't laugh), I can tell you the people that win those trophies on that level are preternaturally gifted, train non-stop or both.

Worf is a capable officer and warrior, but for him to be competitive amongst natively-raised Klingon warriors, living in a society where competition pushes each of them to the extremes is not credible. I get that we need a mcguffin for him to recognize what reality he's in, and what's changed. As a symbol of the changing realities, his grand master trophy changing from 3rd place to 9th to a participatory ribbon certainly works. It just stands out as being a little too Klingoniest-Klingon to me.

As he swapped realities, it would have been great to have seen Worf in a wind up in a place where Klingons ruled the Federation, which may have been a real emotional challenge for Worf. Here we'd have a character who's struggled with connecting with his heritage, and then have to choose to give it up in order to save reality.

While it's fun to subtly change things around Worf, things never drift too far from the Enterprise-D we know and love. The changes aren't really that drastic. Worf pops into a reality where Wesley Crusher is the tactical officer (one once again questions the wisdom of Starfleet HR). And it would have been great to have Dr. Kate Pulaski show up as medical chief in a cameo. I love that there's something meta here. It's like we're looking at the series in alternate timelines. It's almost as if they're embracing the fan rumors/theories that Stewart wasn't going to return for season three after 'Best of Both Worlds.' Or looking at what if Wil Wheaton had stayed on with the series to become Lt. Crusher?

"Ugh. Pressing space buttons is so beneath my preternatural genius." — Tactical Officer, Lt. Wesley Crusher 

The mind, it boggles.

If anything, I wish they'd gone wilder with it. And weirder with it. We get hints of it with a reality where the Borg have conquered the Federation. When Worf's shuttle takes off to seal the anomaly, it's threatened by a panicked and mountain-man-bearded Riker. He's so desperate to do anything to keep from returning to his nightmare that he'd rather face the breakdown of all existence than the Borg. There's a surreal moment, when New-Reality-Riker is forced to kill Mountain-Bearded-Riker, but it's soon passed. If we had gotten to the answer to the mystery sooner, we might have had a chance to explore some of the more extreme tangents in Enterprise reality. As it is, it's a slow start and a rushed ending.

"The Borg are everywhere! There's no shaving cream or hair gel left in our reality! We won't go back!" — Riker

It's still a fun adventure, but I find myself pondering what might have been. I can't decide if that's appropriate or ironic considering the nature of story.

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Next up, a 'Timeless' adventure with the Voyager crew. So, the Voyager crew and time travel? Again?

We'll see.

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*I wanted to use the Klingon word for 'shenanigans' here, but, sadly there isn't one.