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.

 

[Qonfounding Ghooool]

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...