5x19 The First Duty

[7.6/10] There’s no shortage of stirring speeches from Captain Picard, but this one belongs somewhere in the top five: “The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based, and if you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don't deserve to wear that uniform.”

I don’t know if it’s true. Or at least, I don’t know if the behavior of Starfleet leaders lives up to it on a regular basis. But it’s something to aspire to -- the notion that if we can just stick to what’s true and right, in senses both private and public, we can fulfill our obligations to our communities and ourselves.

What I like about “The First Duty”, though, is that it acknowledges the difficulty of that seemingly simple maxim, the way it’s complicated by an intersecting, contradictory web of obligations. None other than a returning Wesley Crusher is caught in that web in this episode. His Starfleet Academy flight team is in hot water after one of their own dies in an accident during a showy maneuver for the graduation ceremony. Our own Jean-Luc Picard is there, nominally to give the keynote speech at commencement, but in narrative terms, to do what he’s done so many times: to set Wesley on the right path.

The path becomes tricky when it becomes clear that this was no ordinary accident as part of routine maneuvers. Instead, the vaunted Nova Team, led by hotshot senior Nicholas Locarno, was attempting a dangerous, banned stunt. Wesley must decide whether to lie, either actively or by admission, at Locarno’s behest during the Academy inquest, or whether to tell the truth, potentially at the cost of his place in Starfleet.

What I appreciate about the episode is that it doesn’t make the decision easy. On the one hand, Wesley has to consider the ideals that Captain Picard has instilled in him, the titular duties that come with his uniform, the obligation to tell the truth, and his desire to provide absolution to a grieving father who thinks his son caused the accident. On the other, he has to think about his obligations as a member of Nova Team, his desire to stick with people who’ve been through the same thing, his realization that truth-telling wouldn’t just jeopardize his career, but those of the other team members he’s served with as a cadet.

In short, there are stakes here -- the well-being of a parent in mourning balanced against the futures of four promising young men and women. The answer is not a simple one, with the ideal of loyalty to the truth conflicting with the ideal of loyalty to the comrades who’ve formed a team and family with you. Both are pillars of Star Trek as we’ve known it. And Wesley’s struggle with whether to listen to his former captain’s insistence that the truth be known, or his current team leader’s insistence that he stay quiet to protect the people who trusted him, is the latest in a long line of Star Trek quandaries where you’re forced to contemplate what you’d do in a situation that would provoke such inner turmoil. “The First Duty” deserves credit for suggesting an answer without suggesting it’s easy.

It does suggest, however, that adolescent boys and girls who do wrong should be given a second chance to “listen to themselves” with the guidance of caring mentors. Wesley does wrong here, for understandable reasons, but even those annoyed by him have to accept that he’s a good kid who means well and could be an asset to Starfleet if his early potential bears fruit.

More than that, we learn that Jean-Luc himself was once an unruly adolescent who needed the understanding and assistance of the famed Boothby -- whom we meet in person for the first time here -- to save him from the disaster. There’s a generational tone (no pun intended) to “The First Duty”, where Captain Picard thanks his former mentor for showing such kindness and giving him direction, while the captain himself tries to do the same for Wesley Crusher.

In principle, it’s a good lesson, and one keeping with the optimistic, aspirational tone of the franchise. But in the present day, it’s hard not to hear the “Don’t allow a bright future to be ruined over one foolish, youthful mistake” without thinking of Brock Turner, the Stanford rapist who received a light sentence based on the same principle. It’s hard not to think of all the young men of color who don’t receive the same level of understanding, whose youthful mistakes and crimes aren’t excused in the way Turner’s was.

The situation here is obviously different. It’s likewise hard for longtime Star Trek fans to look at Nicholas Locarno and not see a proto-Tom Paris (hello Voyager fans!) and likewise see him as a well-meaning kid who sometimes gets over his skis and merely went too far over the line this time. It’s easy to look at Wesley as a young cadet trying to fit in, flattered by the achievement of being part of Nova Team, and listening to a leader whom he owes reflexive loyalty to in the chain of command. When Wesley does the right thing and comes clean in the end, we want the best for him, we want him to be rewarded for his honesty in a tough situation, just as we understand his dishonesty amid social and structural pressures not to rock the boat.

While Locarno’s expelled, Crusher merely has to repeat this year at the Academy and carry the shame of his lies. That commutation owes to Locarno taking the blame, another sign of a certain nobility to him, despite his “big man on campus” energy and efforts to maintain a mob-like code of silence with teammates. The show leaves us on a note of bittersweetness, of Picard helping his surrogate son find the right way, but it coming at a cost, as all things must in good stories.

But in the universe of the show, a young man is still dead. In the real world, a rapist served a three month sentence while other young men spend years in prison for lesser crimes. That too is a truth. And as moved as I am to hear Patrick Stewart provide another foundational lesson to young men like me who watched The Next Generation as children, it’s hard not to acknowledge the ways in which so many adolescent men and women who don’t have the advantages or guidance Wesley Crusher enjoys also don’t have the benefits of seeing their futures preserved when they make a mistake and come clean about it. The real world is grayer and sadder than that, which can make it both welcoming and frustrating to see a glimpse of a world where the truth always wins out.