TNG Rewatch: 5x01: "Redempton Part 2"

A few weeks to perhaps a couple of months have passed since the events of the last episode and the Klingon Civil War doesn't seem to be going too well for Gowron and the seated council as the Duras Family side seems able to out match the Empire at nearly every turn.

This hasn't gone unnoticed by Picard who appeals to the Federation leaders to allow him to step-in to some manner in order to expose what he assumes is aide from the Romulans along the Klingon/Romulan border. He proposes an idea that should expose any cloaked Romulan ships crossing the board and rendering aid to the Duras family.

In the war, Worf struggles to adapt to serving on a Klingon ship as he suggests fleeing from battles he assumes to have already lost, concerns himself with ship matters when off duty in a more casual setting and even shows some worry over the the opposing sides drinking together and celebrating glory together in a neutral bar. The Duras sisters take note of Worf's differences from his brother Kurn and other Klingons and hope to take advantage of this in order to convince Worf to their side in order to be a role-model for Toral. Worf declines their offer and finds himself imprisoned by the Duras sisters.

Picard commands a small fleet of ships to cast a detection net on the Klingon/Romulan border that should expose any cloaked Romulan ships, after expressing concerns over not being initially selected, Data is assigned to command one of the ships during the operation.

The fleet and tachyon net doesn't go unnoticed by the Romulans as the leader of this operation, Sela, confronts Picard about it, eventually leading to a meeting between the two.

Picard takes particular interest over Sela's resemblance to Tasha Yar and learns through Guinan's intuition that "he" had sent Tasha into the past aboard the Enterprise-C where she was apparently captured and had a child with a Romulan. A story that is supported by Sela's own word. Though Picard is not satisfactorily convinced. None the less he has no intent to remove the Federation fleet from the border before a deadline set by Sela where she intends to take more hostile action against the fleet.

Picard hatches a plan to fake a weakness in their net hoping the Romulans will take advantage of it where they'll be snared as the fleet re-adjusts to compensate for the falsified weakness. The Romulans will need to enter Klingon space to render aid to the Duras side after a series of attacks by Gowron's forces. Picard doesn't know, however, thar Sela and her team have developed a potential defense against the detection grid and intend to implement it.

They create a disruption near Data's ship, where he's constantly butted heads with his first officer, but Data ignores the orders given by Picard to implement his trap and devises his own plan to expose the cloaked Romulan ships. Data's plan works, earning him the respect of his first officer, and Sela and the Romulans withdraw from the area. Data later apologies to Picard for disobeying orders and offers himself up for disciplinary action. Picard tells Data that sometimes not obeying orders may be called for and Data showed himself to be a capable commander and notes so in his reports.

Now near defeat without the Klingon assistance the Duras sisters order Worf killed but Worf manages to overpower his would-be killer but not before the Duras sisters beam away leaving Worf, and Toral, behind.

The Empire manages to win the civil war as the Duras support weakened without the Romulan supplies and support for the Duras family weakened as the Romulan connection was exposed. Gowron offers the life of Toral to Worf as it was Toral's family that robbed Worf of his honor. Worf elects to spare Toral's life as the boy has personally done him no harm and requests to return to the Enterprise.

As far as the series' various 2-part episodes go that serve as season bookends Redemption 2 is perhaps the better Part 2.

It follows up on the various stories and plot points of Part 1 and ends them well while also introducing its own aspects and handling them well as well. (Almost, we'll get to that in a moment.)

The Klingon civil-war part is fairly minor in the grand scheme of things as it seems easily resolved (the war seems to have lasted only a few weeks to a couple of months which, really, isn't THAT much of a war.) You'd think even if the active battle front of the war ended quickly there'd still be a lot of political discourse and turmoil in the wake. Unless Klingons are *so* dedicated to honor and "friends outside of battle" ideas they're able to just admit defeat, shrug, and go back to business as usual.

I do really like the idea that off the battlefield the Klingons are able to drink together and trash-talk one another in the same bar as if they're not on opposite side of a war but, rather, opposite sides of a football game that just ended.

Worf almost seems to have something of an arc here as he seems to struggle with dealing with serving on a Klingon ship and lifestyle and continues to act like a Starfleet officer/human. It's not too much touched on as much as it should have been, though. I did like the idea of Worf sparing Toral's life and even fighting for it as Gowron offers Kurn the chance to kill Toral. I do wonder, though, how safe Toral is walking around town given his place in the war and his paternal roots.

The Duras Sisters continue to be a delight, really wish we had gotten to see them a lot more in the series.

I really enjoyed the interaction between Data and his first officer aboard the Sutherland and how it showed how capable Data really was as a commanding officer and even how he's able to convey emotion even if he can't feel it. He shows anger and annoyance towards his first officer, who challenges Data at every turn, to get him to obey.

Which, really, how is that guy in the position he's in? Okay, I get that accepting a "machine" as being a sentient being capable of everything a human is may not be entirely rooted into the human "perfection" concept yet. But this guy prefaces his request to being transfered that he accepts Data as an officer so you'd think he'd show some level of respect towards Data's being in command rather than making decisions on his own and challenging Data's orders in front of the whole bridge.

None the less, the story plays out nicely as Data shows how capable he is at command and even manages to convince his first officer of this since he calls Data, "Captain," in an almost respectful manner once Data reveals the cloaked Romulan ships.

One of the bigger plot points of this episodes centers around Sela and her maternal origins. I've said before I really liked the way Crosby was brought back again for the role and the idea of Sela, though I don't think the character was used very well here or in next appearance in the Unification two-parter later this season.

I like it because of the fluidity and twisting nature of time and how the events of "Yesterday's Enterprise" happened and did have a real impact on the "prime" universe. That everything that occurred in this episode, as suggested by Guinan, is Picard's fault and he doesn't even know how or why.

At the same time, that's kind of what is frustrating about this. Nothing ever becomes of it ever again. Seems like there really should have been another episode somewhere to expose more of this story and to reveal to Picard, and the rest of the crew, what happened in YE. Actually, it would have been nice if Yar had lived to "present day" and was able to speak with Picard and reveal everything that had happened in her universe's past.

We could also almost "question" what happened between Yar and Sela's father. If the relationship was largely a mutual one after the few years that passed between Yar's capture and her being killed trying to escape. You'd think "something" of a real relationship happened there (as has happened between cpators and the captured without Stockholm or a Slave/Master aspect needing to be in play) but instead it seems Yar played her mate for a few years before trying to escape.

It's just unsatisfying that the entire Sela thing is mostly shrugged off which why I'm partly annoyed by this aspect as it mostly seems to play to Crosby's need to re-install herself into a franchise she prematurely left and done out of any real dramatic need.

All the same, though, I think the two aspects still result in me liking the idea of Sela as a character but just wish it was executed and played out a bit better.

Again, a good episode that I really think is one of the better follow-ups to a season cliffhanger.

 

The only bright spot in this episode was Data as the captain of the Sutherland.

Other than that, it is an absolutely dreadful episode. I never saw the need to bring back Denise Crosby, who just isn't a very good actress. Plus, the tachyon field really made no sense. The Romulans should've just been able to fly around it.

 

This episode was OK. But it continued the pattern of strong cliffhangers with payoffs that weren't as good as the setup. I agree that Data as captain is the best part of the episode. It's also nice to see O'Brien have things to do outside of the transporter room.

It's still an above-average episode for the season. With the exception of Silicon Avatar and The Game, the season started off very strongly.

 

I like this one, even though it's not as good as part one. I didn't like how it started, with the Klingons partying like the Civil War was called off. I know they didn't have DS9's budget, but it would have been nice to actually see the effects of the Civil War, which we really didn't. The best parts of the episode were Data on the Sutherland, and I didn't mind Crosby back as Sela. I just wish we got more Sela after Unification, like Nemesis should have been.

 

Take Sela out of the equation and I enjoyed this two-parter much more than I remembered. This is very much a Data episode. I can overlook the 3-D problems with the tachyon detection grid - it's just a way of telling a story.

Regarding the HD upgrade. Did the capital of Quo'nos always burn like that?

I enjoyed those! But I agree that season five started off really well before falling off a cliff with New Ground and not really recovering until The Next Phase

 

You don't like "Violations", "Conundrum", "Power Play", "Cause And Effect", "I, Borg" or "The First Duty"? Wow, tough audience.

 

Just wanna point out a little moment with Gowron I always liked. It's when a Klingon warrior steps up and wants to dethrone Gowron, then we get a close up of Gowron in the chair with grinning like he won the lottery. Robert O'Reilly is always delightful in this role.

 

I should have added "other than Cause & Effect and The First Duty."

Conundrum is a rehash of season four's Clues
Power Play suffers from Sirtis' acting.
I, Borg made the Borg a whiny easily defeatable race that we see on VOY.
Violations I can't seem to remember off-hand. Maybe it will surprise me.

Season five is often held up as one of TNG's best but it's where the decline started. Season six is great in comparison.

 

Where would you say specifically is TNG's "jumping the shark" moment?

...and now I have a mental image of Picard, in his leather (-shouldered) jacket, jumping a motorcycle over a shark that looks like Worf.

 

For me, it would be "I, Borg". It was where I quit taking TNG seriously in any way.

 

The best thing about "I Borg" is the follow up in "Descent" where Picard letting Hugh go had disastrous consequences and made him question his judgement. It touches on things that DS9 would later take and go to town with.

PICARD: "He was in this room, Will. I could have rid the Federation of a mortal threat, and I let him go."
RIKER: "Sending Hugh back to the Borg was a very risky, a very dangerous choice, but it was the moral thing to do."
PICARD: "It may turn out that the moral thing to do was not the right thing to do."

 

"Decent" also explains what happened to the Borg and also sort-of shows that their "virus" plan wouldn't have worked sense it seems that The Borg can just remove the "damaged" drones causing the problem and then continue on but also that the "individuality virus" did have a touch of an impact.

 

Any episode with Gowron is worth watching.

 

With his eyes, it rather him who's watching us.

 

Glory to you ....... AND YOUR HOUUUUUUUUSE. O_O

 

I liked this episode exploring someone not trusting an artificial lifeform in command. They kind of just gloss over it because Data is so loveable, but the guy was kind of right. And then Data proves himself to be a capable Captain, but the issue still stands that he might not value the crew as much in the same way as a human.

For instance when Data was dating he only devoted a fraction of his processing power to the girl, where as human is allocating considerable more of their thoughts towards that person. So would you want your safety to be a fraction of someone's thoughts? Interesting question.

 

Well, considering we didn't get to see Data's Processes tab in his Task Manager it's hard to really know what is involved with him "devoting a fraction of his processing power to her", and this was just during their kiss when he was asked what he was thinking about. It's likely Data has a vast number of CPUs in his system and that every task he's operating gets the full recourses of that CPU's processing power as well as whatever internal components Data has in order to process his thoughts and functions.

Data also does state when their relationship begins that he's devoted a large share of his internal resources to developing the program specifically for the relationship with Jenna.

I mean, yeah, if when you and I are kissing a girl and while doing it we're thinking about how to realign the rack on our car, are thinking about how to organize our DVD collection, wondering what next week's work schedule is looking like and, oh yeah, I need to safely kiss this girl. Then she'd have a right to maybe be a bit upset that we're not completely thinking about her. But we're human, it's very, very hard (if not impossible) for us to think about multiple things at once and when/if we do one usually takes some precedence over the others. We're a single-core processor. Thinking about one thing pushes everything else away.

Data's not like that. He can think about multiple, possibly a great number, of things at once and can dedicate his full attention to all of those things. Sure, maybe he can prioritize what gets more attention or if something more important gets maybe two processor cores, or whatever but on a basic level he can think about many things at once with the same level of attention.

 

I agree Data values the crew just as much as a human captain would, just in a different way with his computations etc...

But Hobson didn't know Data, all he knew was that the only artificial lifeform in starfleet was now in charge of him. His doubts seemed pretty reasonable to me. Just like people would doubt that a Q captain would value human life as much as a human.

Hobson requests a transfer immediately after Data comes on board and explains the problem honestly, that seems like the appropriate thing for him to do at the time. If Data wasn't Brent Spiner and was just a metal box without a human face I don't think people would be so quick to hate on that guy.

 

That should read "but we're male"! The ladies are actually very good at multi-tasking!

 

Uhhh, sir the toaster just said that you're not qualified for this position and he's promoting the coffee maker to first officer.