6x16 Birthright (1)

[7.7/10] There’s enough daddy issues to go round on the U.S.S. Enterprise. The show’s last episode saw Picard still wincing at his father’s recriminations. Riker took out his paternal frustrations with the help of a vaguely East Asian event from American Gladiators. Deanna has fond memories of her father, but carries the scars of his untimely passing. And Wesley Crusher’s efforts to grapple with the same are a big part of what led him to see Jean-Luc as a surrogate father figure.

But while Data and Worf fall into the same category, their stories are the closest. They’re both orphans from a young age. They’re both the only members of their kind in Starfleet. They both have trouble relating to their human counterparts despite their attachments, and what they aspire to is deeply influenced by fathers they barely knew.

“Birthright”, then, is kind of an odd duck. It’s part setup for an epic Worf story to come. It’s part a standalone Data story with little in the way of stakes or drama. On the face of it, it’s a peculiar decision to pair these two plots together.

What unites them, though, is the impetus for Data and Worf’s journeys -- a quest to find their fathers, in some way shape or form, in the hopes that confronting this missing part of their pasts will help inform their futures, no matter how difficult it may be. The thematic resonance between the two men and their two stories holds the episode together better than it has any right to.

I’ll still take a good introspective standalone tale any day of the week though. Data’s subplot gets literal when exploring that famous question, “Do Androids dream of electric sheep?” A chance plasma pulse from a mysterious piece of gamma quadrant machinery spurs a “vision” in Data. He sees a glimpse of his father as a young man, among other confounding imagery, and it leads to some soul searching, for lack of a better term, in the synthetic commander.

Look, I’m a sucker for some nice dream-like imagery. (It’s about the only thing that got me through Twin Peaks.) Watching Data wander the decks of the Enterprise with a wide-angle lens and strange, slow-motion gait is just my jam. Seeing the man who made you, cast as a blacksmith, and trying to figure out what it all means is the exact sort of puzzle Data isn’t suited to solve, and that’s what makes it so tantalizing.

I like the help Data gets untangling this knot too. Of course, he gets some more sage wisdom from Picard, still ushering his robotic son through an extended maturation process. And he gets engineering assistance from Geordi, as usual. But he also gets an unexpected assistance from Deep Space 9’s Dr. Bashir, and it’s the most I’ve liked that character so far.

In truth, it’s still a minor thrill just to see the Next Generation cast walking the promenade or traipsing through one of those Cardassian airlocks. I hadn't recalled the two shows crossed over again so soon, and the mix of two familiar Trekkian things is fun for its own sake. But it also allows Julian to provide a different perspective than the folks typically trying to help Data solve his unique android problems.

(As an aside, there’s some extra meaning in Julian helping Data here given the places where their lineage overlaps, so to speak. But the writers in 1993 hadn't come up with those ideas yet, so it’s obviously something later viewers import into the scene rather than something intended at the time.)

In short, while others see Data as a marvel of engineering or a being coming into its own, Dr. Bashir sees Data as something made to be human. It is, perhaps, a little facile that he’s the only one who seems to be able to process what Data’s going through as dreaming, the way a flesh and blood human might. And he’s still a little full of himself and too opportunistic to be fully likable here. But he fits well into Data and Geordi’s onboard nerd club, and his insight into Data, his appreciation for the little ways he approximates humanity, helps him to uncover this one big way.

But so does Worf. When Data comes to the Enterprise security officer for advice on visions, after recalling a story of Worf’s childhood experience with one, Worf gives him the push he needs to keep searching for an answer, despite the risks. Unbeknownst to Data, Worf himself is trying to decide whether to push further in his own quest to find his father, in one way or another, and the experience gives both of them the necessary nudge to do the hard but necessary work on that front.

I like the synchronicity of their moment together. Plenty of TNG episodes will do a loose thematic tie between episodes without having any real narrative intersections. (See also: “Family”, which likewise touches on Worf’s parental issues.) But “Birthright pt. 1” not only finds a natural reason for Worf and Data’s paths to cross, but also writes a strong scene for why their conversation would spur both to action.

In truth, I like the internal parts of Worf’s journey here better than the plot mechanics. The stakes here are simple. Worf hears from a rando on Deep Space Nine that his father didn’t die at Khitomer, but was captured at a secret Romulan prison camp and is still alive. Worf’s torn up by this information. On the one hand, it’s a chance to seek answers, to meet the father he never knew. On the other, finding Mogh would mean that his father did not die in battle, and his capture would bring shame on their family for generations. On the third hand, (possibly one from a piano player on Qualor II), the random guy trying to sell Worf “information” could be a grifter whose lies only serve to get Worf’s hopes up and dash them.

But after wrestling with the decision, Worf decides to go forward. Reconciling with his past, embracing the importance Klingon culture puts on the connection to one’s father, is too much for him to ignore. That’s the key decision he makes here, and it’s stirring to see Worf set aside his fears and hesitation, and choose to search for the real answers, no matter how painful they may be.

The problem is that the rest of this is just set dressing. Full disclosure, I recalled the truth about the Roumlan prison camp the random alien tells Worf about here, so maybe there’s more excitement and intrigue if you don’t already know what rests within the mystery box. But watching Worf harangue, threaten, and eventually team-up with even the likes of Star Trek legend James Cromwell doesn’t do much to move the needle. And while there’s some excitement from Worf meeting one of his father’s friends only to seemingly be turned over to the authorities, most of this is mere table-setting for what’s to come.

Data’s story, however, ends in a more satisfying and yet unresolved place. The gist is that Dr. Soong gave Data the ability to dream, with a set of circuits that were only supposed to unlock once Data had reached a certain stage of development. But the group figures out that the blast from the gamma quadrant device kickstarted it early. It’s a sound mechanical explanation (at least by Star Trek standards), but more important is the personal, and even spiritual realizations that follow.

I love dreams as another way in which Dr. Soong tried to give his son a genuine piece of the human experience. I’m no expert on dreams, but I know from personal experience they are both a way to process difficult events and emotions, and also a way to experience the incredible first hand, in a way that reality’s tethers cannot touch. Using that liminal plane to have Data and Dr. Soong connect, allowing Data to be the raven who flies through the ship and nigh-literally becomes a great bird of the galaxy is grand and wonderful. Though plumbing the depths of his own peculiar experiences, a type of creativity and uncertainty that are unfamiliar to our favorite android, Data’s father has given him another gift, another step toward humanity.

Those sorts of parental issues don’t just go away. Picard will always be running away from his father. Troi will always miss hers. And Data and Worf will always be piecing together the men who gave each their lives and then disappeared from them. It’s not an easy thing. But it is, despite the android and alien nature of our heroes in “Birthright”, remarkably human.