Homeward

I just watched this episode and I liked it. I liked the simple, natural ways of the villagers, I like the emotional conflict between Worf and Nicolai, I like how Picard has to make tough choices, I liked Deanna's compassion when Vorin found himself terrified in ten forward, I liked the surprising ending where Vorin committed suicide. I'm not going to analyze it further to find flaws. I hope you enjoy it, too. I have to write some more to meet the requirements of the review board, so these last words coming from wintery november land Norway is just to wish you a good and peaceful day. Tonight we have a starry sky.

So the moral high ground that is typical of the Star Trek world is taken to an extreme here. The story has a few flaws as pointed out in other reviews. My largest issue is in all the years that the prime directive has been around and the number of times that the Enterprise and other members of the Federation have bumped up against it they have never made any adjustments to the basic framework. No addendum, no exceptions, No paragraph 1 subparagraph C rules...Nothing. They simply keep coming across problem after problem and throwing the same "rule" at it and breaking that same rule. Isn't that the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Yet another bad episode from season 7.

Again, original Star Trek was a plot driven "police in space" show. Star Trek the Next Generation emphasized character interaction with plots used as backdrops for character driven stories.

Homeward is still character driven but has an interesting premise of transplanting a group of people from one world to another. The practicalities aside of finding a habitable world with a compatible atmosphere, water and edible flora and fauna, not to mention a human "mating" with the natives, this episode explores the bridging of interpersonal gaps between cultures and foster brothers.

To be honest, it's still a chore to watch, but there's enough "alien intrigue" to mitigate The Next Generations typical slowness and soft peddled approach to story telling. George adds some plot hijinks trying to nurse both holodeck and engineering, and trying to sooth the brow of one of the guest characters adds some interest, but once again Star Trek the next Generation was designed for a broader and younger audience. Therefore any cross cultural is kept comparatively static.

It's interesting for what it is, and had more story energy than previous episodes I had seen, but again the show has a softer approach to just everything old classic fans like me enjoyed from Kirk and Spock.

Take that for what it is.

One of the rules in telling a good story is breaking the rules that you have set within that framework. It creates tension. So if you create rules such as "the prime directive", imagine all the fun you can have when you break those rules, telling a great story. What a bore, without that tension. Much like the majority of the first 2 seasons, which lacked those conundrums.

Oh! And it's fiction. Some have forgotten that fact.

Synopsis:

In this episode, Worf catch up his step-brother Nikolai, he is with an alien race who is gonna be extinct after some natural events who gonna erase the life of that entire planet.

But Nikolai do has another plan; transport all the people while they are sleeping into the holodeck and make them believe they are still on that planet, find another world were this race can live and simulate with the holodeck to just travel away from they town, into a uncharted place.

Important: This race is setted on dark ages, so they don't really know about space ships, or even Nikolai is an human, so he is an alien between them.

Review:

In the entire episode we see why save that people is complicated, but not impossible.

1) What if they find out that is a simulation? Imagine get out of your house and then finding out that is a holodeck and you are in an alien planet, imagine knowing you were."kidnapped" without even know about it.

2) Finding a similar planet is not that easy.

3) The holodeck has troubles to hold on the simulator for so long since the Enterprise was affected before leave the planet.

4) You can't really garantee their future, you cannot simple play as a god.

In this episode this things are discussed and in the worst of cases; we see the consecuences.

It's a matter of moral and ethical thing to do or not to do, the Prime Directive was already a topic in the series and they do it again, and that is what make this series so interesting, is not just spaceship fighting, is about resolve problems, know what to do in a future who we can be those "aliens who come in peace", not for nothing the diplomacy is important for interact with other races who already reach the space travel age.