The Dauphin

Enterprise transports an important passenger and Wesley becomes romantically involved with her.

I found this to be one of the weakest entries in the second series mainly due to the lack of chemistry in the romance and the terrible visuals. It does have some saving graces that make it just about watchable, such as Guinan's contribution to the final scene and the unintentional humour generated by some of the effects and physical performances.

The story is a fairly uninspired teenage romance doomed to failure with some reasonable themes around parental attachment and protectiveness. I did not care for the relationship at all, as it is one of those typically bad 'they're in love because they are' type situations. Romances rarely work on episodic television as there is only 45 minutes to get you invested and the ingredients to make it work are not possible in such as short space of time unless its particularly cleverly written and well acted. For me a screen couple either have to go through something meaningful together from which the love develops or the actors need sizzling chemistry from the moment they share the screen. Neither of this happens in 'The Dauphin'.

As a romance, it is nowhere near as bad as it is an attempt at a creature concept. The visuals are truly horrible, with costumes and camp physical performance that would look bad in the original series. In addition to this the general visuals are awkward and poorly choreographed. The fight scenes, the entry of the security team and Wesley's first sight of his love interest are but a few examples of unintended comedy.

The less said about the scenes where Wesley seeks romantic advice from the crew members the better as most of it is pretty cringe-worthy, particularly Riker who comes across as creepy as ever when trying to be amorous.

Performances are generally decent. Will Wheaton is solid, but is no romantic lead and likewise Jamie Hubbard. Paddi Edwards does well with some quite poor material, as does Michael Dorn. The standout performer is easily Caryn Johnson as Guinan in two scenes, but mostly so in the final sequence where she is effortlessly natural.

I'm going to lean positive on this one and go with a 7/10. There's coming of age stuff going on that would have worked well for me in 1991 when I was roughly the same age as Wesley, but of course now it all seems a bit creaky...but I'd be an old miser to take the show to task TOO hard on that. Obviously it's a bumpy landing back to earth after last week, but that was an extraordinary episode.

Negatives are all fairly obvious. It's a bit nondescript. The teenage crush thing is a bit frivolous and it does dominate most of the episode, so maybe I'm high on something to give a 7 but I liked a lot of the surrounding stuff.

The Dauphin is a Wesley-focused episode but it's quit nice. There are some fun, goofy monsters. The aliens are really alien. And there are a bunch of solid interactions between characters. Sure, the episode has someone talking to a giant teddy bear, but it all works - even the teeny-bopping melodrama isn't too painful.

I have to say that the story was quite well done and very nice characterisation of the Princess Bride ala Star Trek starring Young Wesley Crusher.

It kinda illustrates the difficulties that Wesley goes through as a fatherless boy and millions of answers he his seeking as he grews into a Young Adult aboard a working Starship. Very Poignant story.

Who was that girl? There really is not much info on Jaime Hubbard, she was only in a few TV shows from 1989-1995. No Bio, No other info or trivia on her page. I understand she was about 25 years old in this episode, but sells the Alien Teenage Princess thing beautifully.

So of course Wesley develops his first crush. Unfortunately, the girl has a nanny "Anya" acting as a Deflector Shield (Voice Actress Paddi Edwards - Who ironically was the voice of 'Gozer' in Ghostbusters).

In fact, Paddi the nanny was the high point of this Ep. We all thought she was just a protective old woman until she changes into a monster in sick bay. An "Alasamorph" - maybe a distant cousin to Odo, a Shapeshifter, and she's good at it. But her over-protectiveness is interrupting normal ship operations, and Salia (Jaime) is affecting Wesley the same way, he can't get any work done.

Picard confines Anya to quarters. She has a great confrontation with Worf. This gives Salia a chance to sneak out and chase down Wesley.

But "Nothing is as it seems", in more ways than the obvious. It is not simply that the nanny 'Anya' is not who she seemed, but we see Salia talking to a young woman and then a short alien bear. Eventually we figure out that these are also Anya, and she is much more than a Nanny.

Basically this episode is Anya and Selia's taxi ride from Harlem to The Bronx, and what they did to spend the time. The Enterprise is simply a backdrop, and it was lucky for Salia as well that Wesley was there to get all bothered.

This episode was long before they had any digital shots, so there are a couple of transformation sequences done by Dan Currie which were matte paintings shot over each other in rapid succession. The end result was fantastic. Eventually, Foundation Imaging would do CGI for Odo's transformations in DS9, but here, they could do more than the regular Orangish Odo-Goo, you could see the hair and skin textures developing in each piece of the transformation.

This episode in fact had a lot of great imagery, and it was all practical effects. It's worth seeing, even if you don't like Wesleysodes like this. But the Wesley-Salia salivation is not the only connection, there is a strong Anya-Worf connection, and the interaction between Michael Dorn and Paddi Edwards is like watching two boxers in the ring. Or, even better: Two Klingons with Bat'Leth's