TNG Deathmatch Episode 20: The Arsenal Of Freedom vs Journey’s End

This'll be short. The Arsenal Of Freedom is one I barely remember because we missed recording it back when it first aired; Journey's End is one I never watch because, bless its heart, it's so insipid.

The Arsenal Of Freedom is the one where the Enterprise finds a planet that's been decimated by war, and they're interrupted by an out-of-office message from the Magratheans a sales pitch from the long-dead civilisation (as embodied by Vincent Schiavelli). On the planet, Data, Yar and Riker fight weird-looking drones in a fake-looking jungle; under the surface, Picard must minister to a wounded Crusher by stuffing her with herbs or something. 

On the ship, Geordi is actually pretty good in command, but has to deal with a professional dickhead interrupting him every three minutes to insist that Geordi sucks as captain and should quit. It's serviceable and inoffensive, and I've never felt the urge to rewatch it. I might have nicer things to say if I did.

After leaving in the fourth season, Wesley returns in Journey's End for a little visit with a chip on his shoulder and a bitchy attitude. His grades are dropping and his mum's concerned. 

(The scene with Geordi interests me. Geordi's geeking out over some engineering adjustment he's made, Wesley is unimpressed, and Geordi, who initiated the exchange entirely on the geek to geek level, and not as a superior officer to a cadet, suddenly pulls rank, pointedly calling his friend "Ensign Crusher" where he'd been "Wes" moments earlier. Wesley was being a condescending prick, certainly, but it's kind of pathetic how quickly Geordi takes his ball home with him just because Wes didn't think his new project was all that and a Kitkat too. I like Geordi and I like LeVar Burton, but sometimes the writers on this show really struggled not to write him as a petulant brat whenever he didn't get things his own way. Maybe, Lieutenant Commander LaForge, you could talk to your friend and subordinate and ask if there's anything wrong that might explain his behaving so out of character? You know, if you're pulling rank, maybe as a superior officer you might have responsibilities to your underling that you could prioritise over your wounded feelings?)

Meanwhile, Admiral Necheyev has arrived to order Picard to remove the colonists from Dorvan V, where a group of Native American Indians settled some years earlier. The Federation has signed away Dorvan to the Cardassians as part of the peace treaty, and the Dorvan colonists have to be resettled, an historical parallel which Picard finds unnerving.

It's a Trek allegory which is barely even allegorical at all: these aren't allegorical Native Americans, they actually are Native Americans. It's nice I guess that Trek envisions the spiritual and cultural traditions of the Native Americans still thriving in the 24th century, if "thriving" is the right word to use for "forced to find a new homeland on an entirely different planet". It's just a shame that the depiction seems to be very much a white-person's-view of tribal culture - I don't think the show actually depicts a particular tribe, just a lot of generic Native American "stuff", a lot of vague chatter about spirits and sacredness and being welcomed by the land. It would have been preferable if the Dorvan colony had been some other alien culture, not an actual current human culture - it really feels cheesy at best, and patronising.

Anyway, the Dorvan colonists don't want to leave because they feel very much one with their new home and don't believe they'll easily find another; their leader, Anthwara, reveals to Picard that they have discovered that Picard's ancestor some centuries back was partly responsible for putting down a native revolt in the 17th Century, and that they think Picard has come to them to wipe that crime from his family's history.

Now, with all due respect to Anthwara, if I were Picard I'd just roll my eyes at this, at the very least. The idea that Picard should feel responsible for the crimes of an ancestor of his from some seven hundred years ago is preposterous, and it's strange that the episode seems to want us to treat this seriously. How they would even be able to identify - from their remote colony - an ancestor's participation in an event that even Picard didn't know about, is not explained; nor is it explained how they are so sure that this Spanish solder is Picard's relative at all, instead of just someone with the same surname. It's a very silly attempt to inject some sort of personal stakes in the episode for Picard, as if just trying to not get everyone killed by the Cardassians wasn't enough. (Picard does say himself that it's irrelevant to his mission, but I get the impression he's troubled by it more than he lets on.)

While all this is going on, the Cardassians (led by Gul Evek, everyone's fifth favourite Cardassian, maybe) are hovering about waiting to move in, and causing a lot of tension while they measure for curtains and stuff, and Picard sends Worf down to prepare to beam the colonists away without consent if his talks with Anthwara fail. Wesley beams down after an invite from a colonist named Lakanta, who senses that Wes is troubled and invites him to go on a vision quest, which in this instance means to sit in a small room breathing in campfire fumes until he hallucinates. Wes sees a vision of his father and realises he's been following in his father's footsteps when he really doesn't want to be in Starfleet at all, he just didn't want to disappoint everyone by quitting. 

He does it in grand style: he steps out into the colony's central square and starts yelling at the colonists that Starfleet is planning to abduct them. Picard is furious, and Wes quits.

Theoretically, it's a nice ending for Wes' arc. Those of us who were creeped out by how desperately Wesley craved Picard's approval can now place it neatly in the context of a grieving child trying to recover something of his father, by following his career path and impressing his captain/best friend. It makes a little more sense that way.

It's undercut slightly by the reappearance of the Traveller - I don't dislike the character, but his interest in Wesley has always come across as just a little off, especially since it's always been hard to define exactly what he thinks is so special about Wesley. First, he was the Mozart of warp drive, a child prodigy who had an extraordinary instinct for and understanding of the intricacies of propulsion and space and time...and now he's, what, a Jedi? He's the Kwisatz Haderach or something? A Bajoran Prophet maybe? He literally stops time in this episode. That's a stretch. Mozart didn't have the power to alter reality with his music; Wesley being a scientific prodigy shouldn't mean he's a wizard. He's still a human being.

It's not a bad episode by any means, and it has a number of nice moments (Lakanta: "You are a sacred being, Wesley." Wes: "I think that's the first time anyone has used that particular word to describe me."). It just feels very much like an episode designed to serve a purpose rather than tell a story: it exists to give Wesley an appropriate send-off. I'm not convinced that travelling through alternate planes of existence (with an alien he's only met twice before) was the best way to do it.

In the end, the colonists opt to stay on the Cardassian side of the border. Considering how monumentally important the treaty supposedly is, nobody seems all that bothered about finding out how this decision will sit with the Cardassian government. Presumably the status of Federation citizens in Cardassian space was discussed as part of the peace talks - that's why they were trying to remove them in the first place. Yet here we are at the end of the episode, with the colonists deciding to stay put, and it's as if nobody had considered that possibility before. They have the word of Gul Evek that the Cardassians will leave the colonists alone, though, so that's something. 

Oh, wait, no, not his word: he just kind of suspects that the Cardassians will be happy to leave them alone. So, nobody wants to call the Cardassian government and check that before warping away...? No? Happy to take one random Cardassian Gul's noncommittal shrug as guarantee of the colonists' safety? Because the Cardassians are trustworthy and definitely weren't already re-arming for war in The Wounded or trying to trick the Federation into wiping out the Bajoran resistance in Ensign Ro or killing Ensign Sito in Lower Decks...? Alright then. I'm sure that'll be fine and definitely not cause any problems in the future on any other shows.

WINNER: Journey's End, because I managed to write more about it I guess