172 – Journey’s End

Grade: C+

Summary

Admiral Nechayev commands Captain Picard to remove some Native American colonists from a planet that has been recently turned over to the Cardaassians. Also, Wesley Crusher comes on board, having taken a few days of vacation from Starfleet Academy.

Commentary

This episode has never been one of my favorites. In fact, I’ve always felt a bit lukewarm about it. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it just seems to be missing something. Maybe it’s that fact that we’re dealing with a potentially serious issue of Native Americans being forcefully removed from their planet by the Cardassians, and yet the focus of this story is on the development of a recurring character.

I’m not a huge fan of Wesley Crusher, but that’s mostly because he seems to be very contrived. In later seasons, he grew out of that role and into something more realistic and substantial, so that’s good. In this episode, he has a pretty good role, but I’m not buying all of it.

In addtion, we have a fairly major conflict that is about to take place – between the Native Americans and the Cardassians. Naturally, they do not want to leave the planet, and I certainly don’t blame them. But on the other hand, the episode ends with such an obvious solution that I’m wondering why it took nearly the entire episode for someone to suggest it in the first place.

Personally, I don’t think there’s much of a chance that the Cardassians will just leave them alone like they said. After all, didn’t they want this planet for some reason? Isn’t it likely that they’ll want to get rid of the humans at some point? I guess we’re not supposed to care about that for now. We’re only supposed to care that Picard didn’t force them to leave. OK, great. But it leaves me feeling unsatisfied.

Well, I could say a little more about this episode, but frankly, I’m not all that interested. It’s rather boring.

Of Note

Apparently, there are rumors that Commander Chakotay of Star Trek Voyager was from this colony. He presumably joined the Maquis after this planet was turned over to the Cardassians.

Also, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 mentioned during this episode was an actual event. It involved Spain, however, so perhaps British-Frenchman Picard has some Spanish ancestry.