101 – Redemption, Part 2

Grade: D+

Summary

At the end of the last episode from the 4th season, Worf had decided to resign his commission with Starfleet to help his brother in the Klingon Civil War. And someone who looks like Tasha Yar appeared from the shadows wearing a Romulan uniform.

Commentary

Honestly, I didn’t like this episode. I thought it started out really bad with some truly awful writing and some lifeless acting. Picard’s scene with the admirals was just horrible. It didn’t make me want to watch this at all. But I’m on a mission to see every single episode of this series, so I stayed with it.

By far the biggest problem with this episode is that it’s completely forgettable. In fact, it’s the most forgettable episode since “Shades of Gray.” If it has been a while since you have seen this episode, I bet you think this is the one when Spock and Data go to Romulus and trick Sela with a holodeck program. Actually, that’s seven episodes after this one. The fact that I can’t remember much about this episode even after watching it recently is the biggest reason why I have to rate this one so low.

But like I mentioned earlier, there is some really awful acting in this episode. But really, most of the episodes that focus on Tasha Yar are just horrible. Denise Crosby just is not a very good actress. In fact, I think she’s awful. But she doesn’t get much help from anyone else, either. Watch Brent Spiner in his scenes. Remember, he’s supposed to be an emotionless android, but he gets angry, he yells a lot, and basically makes himself look ridiculous. And nobody else does any better, honestly. The awful acting is a horrible way to start off the season.

So by now, you know the story. Crosby plays Yar’s daughter named Sela, who is supposed to be 22 years old. The problem is that the actress is 34, and way too old to be playing a woman of Sela’s age. The last time we saw Crosby was in “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, and she didn’t look much different (if at all) from what she looked like at the end of the first season. But it has now been 19 months since that episode, and Crosby looks like she’s aged five years. Maybe it’s the Romulan makeup she was forced to wear. Or maybe it’s something else. But in no way should she have been able to play a 22 year-old woman. Not only that, but does it really make sense that the Romulans would have had such a young female commander? I don’t think so. It would have been a much better idea to have her play a 40+ year-old Tasha Yar instead. That would have been much more convincing and much more interesting as well. After all, they’d have to find a way to explain why Tasha became (and remained) a Romulan.

Overall, this is a very weak episode. It has much more in common with the second season than its current season. I expect much better effort this late in the series.

Of Note

Apparently, this 2-part episode was Denise Crosby’s idea. She really must have regretted her decision to leave the show after the first season. In all honesty, though, who would have thought that it could have survived the mess that was the first season?

What’s ironic is that at the end of the last episode, Crosby’s character says “humans have a way of showing up when you least expect them,” and it becomes yet another example of an episode of this series reflecting Crosby the actress.