The First Duty

The Enterprise is back on earth and Jean-Luc Picard is the commencement speaker at StarFleet Academy. But the Enterprise's own Wesley Crusher is in a jackpot at the Academy. His flying squad is the subject of an investigation involving the death of one of its members.

The dead cadet is the son of a StarFleet officer Ed Lauter much like Wil Wheaton is the son of a man who was killed on active duty. But there is a wall of silence like in our police forces today and in this case it is enforced by the leader of Wheaton's squadron Robert Duncan McNeill.

No doubt McNeill's performance here led to his being cast as Tom Paris in the Star Trek Voyager. Paris is something of a bad boy though nowhere as reckless as his character here.

Ray Walston appears as groundskeeper Boothby sort of a father confessor to the cadets. He has an important scene with Patrick Stewart who values his opinion and his counsel. Imagine his character decades earlier as Lionel Barrymore's in Navy Blue And Gold and you have some idea of Walston's relationship to the cadets.

The key scene is Stewart and Wheaton who reminds him of his duty and how he's letting all on the Enterprise down who invested hopes and dreams in him.

Do you doubt Wesley Crusher does the right thing?

Enterprise visits Starfleet Academy and Wesley Crusher.

This is a very strong episode with a good moral tale at the centre and some strong character moments.

The plot is quite straightforward and relatively simple to see where it's going. There is a nice theme of conflict between duty to your friends and doing what is ethically right. There is quite a bit of obvious exposition in the dialogue, but what makes it work well is how the characters are written and the performances.

Wesley Crusher is depicted as a human with flaws. This makes him a far more interesting character than in previous episodes and Will Wheaton gives one of his best performances on the show.

Nicholas Locarno (aka Tom Paris) looks like he's going to be quite one dimensional at first, but that doesn't happen and his arc has a pretty satisfying conclusion. Robert Duncan McNeill does a great audition for his role in Voyager.

As ever Captain Picard is the voice of reason and puts his philosophical stamp on events. If anybody could break you in half with a look of disappointment it's Patrick Stewart in this episode.

It's an 8.5/10 for me but I round upwards.

This is another Episode that bothered me, but not because it was a bad episode.

It is because, for the first time in Next Generation, Wesley Crusher is shown to be simply Human, and is put into a spot where he has to decide, "Do I keep my mouth shut and support my Leader Tom Paris... Er, I mean 'Nick Locarno'... and Picard will never trust me again in this lifetime, or do I tell the TRUTH right from the start?" I think this episode, despite my personal discomfort watching it, hits at the core of what Star Trek is all about. Our FIRST DUTY is to The Truth, however painful it might be to tell it, regardless of our feelings toward our crew mates and class mates, we MUST tell the Truth. That does not mean that there are not some times to withhold truth, that's called basic "tact" - But there are times to tell it right away. This idea even rises out of our TV sets and DVD players or SmartPhones, whatever we are using to watch this series, into our real lives. I think many of us might have had something similar happen to us. That is what makes this an episode to not pan or pass on.

I can accept Ensign/Cadet Crusher being ambivalent about this, he had developed a pattern of successes on The Enterprise that was leading toward an opportunity for command, which at this point in the series, was what the character wanted.

And we finally get to meet "Boothby" for the first time, portrayed by the great Ray Walston of "South Pacific", "Kiss Me Stupid", and "My Favorite Martian". And it is Boothby who states it: "Nick Locarno is leader, mentor, best friend and even surrogate father to those kids - He would do anything for them and they would do anything to support him, even if it requires jumping off a cliff".

This type of Cadet/Leader is even mirrored in the Deep Space Nine episode "Valiant" where a personality much like Locarno had been put in charge of a Defiant-Class Starship. "Captain" Tim Watters might have been the same to his "Red Squad" cadets as Locarno was to his "Nova Squadron" - But that DS9 episode shows the worst case scenario. Here, Picard is able to intervene before it gets to that point.

Locarno's "Nova Squadron" was not as large as Watter's Red Squad, so we get to see more of each member as they have to decide if they are going to tell the Truth or not. And they all would have lied to save their skins, had not Picard confronted Crusher.

And Picard knew how to Fine-Tune Crusher to get him to comply, by dangling Crusher's own values over a precipice. We know that what Picard thinks is what concerns Wesley the most, and therein lies the answer.

Look for Shannon Fill to reprise Ensign Sito Jaxa in the Season 7 episode "Lower Decks" along with Jeri Taylor's son Alex Engberg as "Taurik" - Who may be Vorick's identical twin brother from Voyager. I only started understanding recently why they can't use these names - Tom Paris was supposed to be Locarno and Vorick was supposed to be Taurik - But they would have had to pay Jeri Taylor or Ronald D Moore for every episode those characters appear in. It's an unfortunate truth about TV shows and why characters get their names changed occasionally.

A strong episode that takes us back to Earth to hang out with Wesley Crusher as he struggles with the ethical dilemmas of being a snitch.

I'm pretty happy with this episode overall, though to be honest, yes the cadets did wrong, but not that wrong. Over-punishment leading to dishonesty is really the fault of the authority as much as it is the underling. And maybe this shapes my impression a bit here, but why are these cadets flying space fighters? When does Star Trek ever have fighter jets in space that zoom around like the Blue Angels? It seems wildly irresponsible.

It's been years since I'd originally seen 'First Duty', and I guess the reason I'd always written this off (to some extent) is because I didn't like Nova Squadron; especially Nick Locarno (Robert Duncan McNeill), although they do go to some lengths to soften him in the end.

But the rest of the team are just background players. This is all about Wesley; his guilt, self-doubt and ultimately his reconciliation with the truth during a hearing over a flight accident. I do like that this has him painted in an unsavory light and there's an effort here to show him struggling against expectation and peer pressure. His implied father/son relationship with the Captain is truly put to the test here (resulting in one of the great - and wrathful - Picard speeches).

There's a ray of hope in the end, but with serious restrictions.

Yeah, I'd say this episode has grown on me.

7/10