Episode of the Week: When the Bough Breaks

[Captrek]

This week’s exercise in idiocy is When the Bough Breaks.

In this episode with extended negotiations and a captain who’s a diplomat by reputation, nobody shows any awareness of the concept of diplomacy. The Aldeans say, “We’re taking your kids, and that’s that!” The Enterprise says, “You can’t have our kids, and that’s that!” They scold each other a lot and resort to brute force and deceit to get their ways. At no point does anybody say, “Let’s put our heads together and try some creative problem solving.” There are almost certainly win-win-wins to be had.

WESLEY: How do they cloak the planet?
DATA: The theory is simple. The shield bends light rays around the planet's contour, similar to the Romulan cloaking device.

That would make little difference to anyone looking for it. The real trick is cloaking the gravity.

RADUE: Your name? We've been monitoring your ship's communications. We must return now to Aldea. Our eyes are very sensitive to bright light. Rashella.
(They vanish again)

The lights can be dimmed, you know.

CRUSHER: Wesley! They've taken my son.
(all over the ship, children are disappearing. Alexandra while playing at her mother's feet, Katie while playing a musical instrument)
WORF: Captain, Saucer Section reports six more children are gone.

They took an odd number of kids and dealt a real-life game of Old Maid.

LEDA: Will you at least eat?
(She puts the tray on the table and leaves)
WESLEY: No, Alexandra.
ALEXANDRA: Why?
WESLEY: We can't eat. I know you're hungry. We all are. But it's our way of telling them that we want to go home. Understand?
ALEXANDRA: Yes.

Yes? Sure. She’s what, four? Putting little children on hunger strike for reasons they can’t possibly understand is child abuse. I don’t want to be too hard on Wesley since he’s just a child himself, but the episode shows no awareness that there’s anything wrong with it. It’s creepy.

DATA: This is it, Commander. It is programmed to accept only authorised voice command.
RIKER: There's no way we can override.

Evidently, Data can fake Picard’s voice but not Wesley’s. Coincidentally, Spiner is known for his impression of Sir Patrick, but I haven’t heard of him doing Wheaton.

[T'Girl]

Picard: "You've kidnapped our children."
Kidnapper: "You're not being very diplomatic about this."

Captrek, you're joking right? They kidnapped children !!!

.

[inflatabledalek]

Deep Throat, yay!




Other than that, Wesley was surprisingly well written considering the rest of the episode (and again showed what Wheaton can do when thrown a bone) very forgettable. Seemingly an episode born out of someone realising they'd got these families onboard and should probably do something with them and failing to find anything interesting.

[Timo]

At no point does anybody say, “Let’s put our heads together and try some creative problem solving.”

Anybody suggesting such a thing in a real child custody case would be asking for having his eyes gouged out or her face made over with acid.

The lights can be dimmed, you know.

...But that would remove a perfect excuse to retire from an inconvenient discussion.

Putting little children on hunger strike for reasons they can’t possibly understand is child abuse.

Well, everything is child abuse nowadays. In the future, they have probably developed a somewhat more rationalized system where abuse at level 4.7 is okay to counter abuse at level 4.8.

Wesley was surprisingly well written

Indeed. Are we in fact seeing a bona fide Wesley vehicle in motion here? The "utilizing the families" angle oddly suffers from the omission of said families (that is, the parents) from the entire process.

Timo Saloniemi

[MikeS]

Having not watched this since its original airing, I was again pleasantly surprised - granted, it's probably just the excitment of seeing a seemingly "new" TNG episode.

Who was the guy who surrogated "Harry"? I recognise him, has he been in other Trek?

I hadn't realised that the "throw the Enterprise far-far-away" effect, that we see at least once a season, had originated here.

And agreed with others here - excellent use of Wesley. His finest hour?!

[BillJ]

Not the best of Trek, but an entertaining hour.