Parallels - We Won’t Go Back!

[Yuri Nikolayev]

Rewatching Parallels, and got to noticing something… Riker from the war-weary universe is adamant that he won’t return to his universe, yet he fires on the Enterprise with Captain Riker… why not just jump into high warp, and head for some random location in Federation space? It’s not like Captain Riker’s Enterprise could have done anything at that point… they were too preoccupied with sending Worf back to OUR Enterprise and dealing with the other Enterprises to give chase… at least for a while. I know their warp drive wasn’t in the best shape, but IIRC, it was the torpedo from Captain Riker’s ship that did them in. I think they could have gone to warp?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

He's not thinking clearly - tired of the fighting and danger and the chase.

 

[Takeru]

Going to warp wouldn't have helped, the plan was to send Worf into the anomaly and seal it which would return every Enterprise to her own universe immediately.

 

[Qonundrum]

I'd be more worried about the "get out of plot free" card written in that allows Worf to return to his dimension in a plot-convenient time before or after the events where only Worf would remember. This was a parallel universe episode, not time travel, but all of a sudden it was.

Still a great episode but the ending goes out of its way to wimp out.

Or did Worf return home because, now, all of a sudden, Worf was told by not-wifey Troi that they considered a surprise party but opted not to and, of course, this is where Wroi or Trorf or whatever the shippers want to be cutesy with will call it.

At least it was a different Riker, not our Worf's Riker, who pointed out the problem. It allowed a nice moment with not-Riker telling Picard it was great to see him again (showing another outcome of TBOBW, which was a great focal point to explore these things since casual fans aren't going to remember those pants-filling events from "Justice" where the Edo god and all its buddies materialized in our universe and caused problems... thankfully...)

Of course, Worf didn't flake out at the beginning. If he had, then we'd know there'd have been a dimensional hiccup to have the ending actually make sense. Like "Ship in the Bottle"*, the little nuance that stitches together the reason for the problem was not "hidden in plain sight".

Also, wouldn't it be weird if champagne did to Klingons what chocolate does to dogs? So glad Troi didn't own any pet poodles too...

* the ship was already acting goofy before any impetus for Moriarty to be re-activated wasn't subtly displayed. Just an existing problem and after Barclay fiddles then the genie pops up and he, while forgetting Dr Pulaski existed just like everyone else, was conniving in the background all while Picard laid his sledgehammer babble about "This is the 24th century and you'll get a spanking if you commit your naughty things in this century" in what was a very cringe-inducing scene, but I digress. Or it was a coincidental malfunction and the holodeck is known for doing that so it's not quite a direct comparison...

 

[knightgrace]

Actually Worf didn't return home - ever.

He was in a parallel reality which was 99.99999999___ percent close.
But not actually his reality.

So close that even a Galaxy class computer core couldn't tell the difference.

 

[DonIago]

Rewatching Parallels, and got to noticing something… Riker from the war-weary universe is adamant that he won’t return to his universe, yet he fires on the Enterprise with Captain Riker… why not just jump into high warp, and head for some random location in Federation space? It’s not like Captain Riker’s Enterprise could have done anything at that point… they were too preoccupied with sending Worf back to OUR Enterprise and dealing with the other Enterprises to give chase… at least for a while. I know their warp drive wasn’t in the best shape, but IIRC, it was the torpedo from Captain Riker’s ship that did them in. I think they could have gone to warp?

War-weary Riker didn't fire on another E-D, he fired on the shuttle. Warping anywhere wouldn't have helped because what Worf was going to do would still send everyone back where they belonged.

 

[Ragitsu]

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

Wharf - certainly - did not look back.

 

[Riley]

Actually Worf didn't return home - ever.

He was in a parallel reality which was 99.99999999___ percent close.
But not actually his reality.

So close that even a Galaxy class computer core couldn't tell the difference.

I believe this to be the case, though poor Worf had to go through all of the awful experiences that never happened in the original timeline, like the TNG films, the alteration of the timeline further when Picard and his crew interfered with the past in FC, and the garbage that is the Abrams/Kurtz developments. Meanwhile, the Worf that ended up in the original timeline probably had a much better time of things.

 

[Oddish]

At least they escaped being assimilated.

 

[Set Harth]

the garbage that is the Abrams/Kurtz developments.

the horror... the horror...

 

[knightgrace]

Believing that the glass is more than half empty, is the correct choice.

 

[Qonundrum]

It's a shame we didn't see an Enterprise from the parallel dimension where enough of it was reverse-engineered and assimilated into a Borg cube*... After "Q Who" where the Borg carve out a bit and realize there's some good stuff they somehow can make advantageous use of, an assimilated ship popping in would have given (285,000-2) (and rising) Enterprises putting out even louder distress calls on top of all the hails... minus two because our prime Enterprise is getting hailed on from all over the place and then crazyRiker's ship being blown to bits before a Borgiprise would appear... minus 3 since why would our prime Enterprise not be hailing out on every channel along with everyone else? Remember that old tv sci-fi parody/comedy "Quark" where the officer and her clone kept bickering over which one wasn't the clone? Well... same premise works here, why wouldn't our prime Enterprise not be belching out 285K (and rising) hails? How would they not know they weren't bleeped anywhere else along with the rest of them? (Every other parallel universe version would be doing that, probably**.) Oh well, at least the episode ends with some tidy time travel and bleeps Worf back to before when it all started, to save on the time needed to have all exclaiming what a weird out-there scenario they just survived through or anything more interesting.

* Descent pt 1 might also explain why the new cube's design looks so cool; along with individuality they dug up some notes on Federation architecture and had a field day cobbling up the enhancements...

** So ours is the lucky one, the one that got luckier than Riker, so that's an impressive feat right there...

 

[Qonundrum]

Another missed opportunity was avoiding the "Mirror, Mirror" episode that oversimplified the concept. Imagine Riker and Worf on the viewscreen wearing clothes like Uhura's and Kirk's...

 

[Gaith]

At least they escaped being assimilated.

But then Riker didn't get to romance Annika Hansen in Unimatrix Zero!

 

[Qonundrum]

The worst issue in the story is how we never got to see Worf, or even Riker, wearing that blue hue for science/medical divisions. Bit of a shame...

 

[Ragitsu]

The worst issue in the story is how we never got to see Worf, or even Riker, wearing that blue hue for science/medical divisions. Bit of a shame...

A Riker who was persuaded to focus on the behavioral sciences thanks to his imzadi?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Specializing in couples therapy.

Seriously, aside from that, which science discipline might Will have chosen, based on the other interests he expressed in the show?

 

[Qonundrum]

Specializing in couples therapy.

Seriously, aside from that, which science discipline might Will have chosen, based on the other interests he expressed in the show?

He'd probably dig geology... Ironic or not, he'd dig paleontology too what with his background as alleged in "Genesis", but the same episode posited that Picard evolved from a lemur...

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

which also explains this:

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Speaking of lemurs...

 

[JoseNoodles]

Actually Worf didn't return home - ever.

He was in a parallel reality which was 99.99999999___ percent close.
But not actually his reality.

So close that even a Galaxy class computer core couldn't tell the difference.

He might have ended up on the purple Enterprise-D with the purple Data.