78 – Suddenly Human

Grade: C+

Summary

The Enterprise finds a damaged Talarian ship which is sending out a distress signal. They also find several survivors on board, all of whom are teenaged boys. One of them is a human.

Commentary

This really isn’t one of my favorites. It’s not a bad episode, but I just don’t like it. It’s hard for me to say what it is that I don’t like about this episode, but I don’t think it’s particularly well-written. The characters seem a bit shallow, and the acting is pretty sub-par. About the only thing to like on this episode is that Captain Picard did the right thing by allowing this human boy to return to the only family he has ever known. But I just don’t like it much. It really pales in comparison to the very strong episodes we’ve seen in the last half of season 3 and the first few episodes of season 4.

One missed opportunity in this episode is Worf. We know from previous episodes that Worf was adopted by human parents (we just met them in “Family”), after the Klingons had been attacked by the Romulans. Yet this is never mentioned. The only time when it was mentioned was when Jono said “I am no more human than you are”. And yet Worf could very well relate to Jono’s situation. Why wasn’t this explored at all in this episode?

This is definitely an episode that could have been better. Oh well.

Of Note

In this episode, Picard plays racquetball. As far as I know, this is the only time in the series when this happens.