Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 5

The Review

Season 5 of Star Trek: The Next Generation contains many predictable elements. Big surprise, the Enterprise encounters new aliens that test the crew's versatility and quick thinking as well as meeting old foes, like the Crystalline Entity and the Borg, who make them debate good and evil, right and wrong. Season 5 includes time travel, body possession, and transporter malfunctions. For a little titillation, the audience can count on Cmdr. Riker [Jonathan Frakes] seducing any pretty young thing in sight, including an extra bumpy Ktarian and a board-flat androgyne.

In addition to its predictable subjects, Season 5 focuses on the senior crew, who are such consummate professionals that the audience can hardly relate. We don’t want the stress Capt. Picard [Patrick Stewart] must feel as he seeks solutions to life-and-death problems. And we certainly don't want our free time spent in a stuffy little ready room reading smelly old books and watching the lion fish swim in its claustrophobic aquarium—not when there's a poker game happening on another deck. We might enjoy Counselor Troi [Marina Sirtis] listening to us, but we wouldn’t want her job of listening to everyone else. We would want the health, safety, and security that Dr. Crusher [Gates McFadden], Lt. Cmdr. La Forge [LeVar Burton], and Lt. Worf [Michael Dorn] provide, but we don't want our days filled with the work and responsibility—not unless we can bitch about the boss and trade porn jokes via communicator, activities the senior crew would never do.

So why aren't we bored? How does STNG still manage to fire up our imaginations? Season 5 captivates its audience with a foolproof formula: It introduces a neophyte who, because of limited experience, thinks like the audience who are just as ignorant. We relate to this character because in our own lives, most of us are not the doctors, lawyers, cops, or starship crew overrepresented on TV. Situations and veteran characters then guide the neophyte to understand issues and responsibilities in fuller, deeper ways, schooling us in the process.

The first four seasons, we had young Wesley Crusher [Wil Wheaton] as our stand-in. For Season 5, with Wes toiling away at Starfleet Academy, the writers introduce Ensign Ro Laren [Michelle Forbes], a Bajoran with Starfleet experience but no familiarity with the professionalism and community that characterize the Enterprise. Ensign Ro does more than give the audience a new neophyte to learn from; she appeals to a different variety of geek.

Geeks—the primary audience for sci-fi television like STNG—fall somewhere on this continuum: At one extreme point are the folks who desire idealized social conformity. They yearn to participate in a cool group—just not the imperfect cliques at school or work. They want a community without pettiness, bullying, and other human flaws. Folks at this extreme desire to be members of the near-utopian Enterprise, and they relate to Wesley because they would love the opportunity to come up in the culture as he has. At the other extreme of the geek continuum are the rebels. During the original Saturday night broadcasts, they were watching STNG because they couldn't bear to attend football games or parties like the mindless sheep they labeled their peers. So they stayed home, ridiculed Wesley for his desire to please, and hoped to identify with the misunderstood aliens the Enterprise was bound to meet. These folks embraced Ensign Ro, whom Big Daddy Picard rewarded with attention despite her being standoffish, disobedient, and untamable.

To explain her atypical behavior, the writers give Ensign Ro this back story: She and her race lost their home planet to the Cardassians. Orphaned and living in refugee camps, Ro grew up feeling discarded and so is herself quick to reject. She abandons her own people to join Starfleet but then disobeys orders with disastrous results, including the forfeit of her commission and personal freedom. Ro boards the Enterprise with a sullen attitude and non-regulation Bajoran earring, happy to throw away a good first impression on Cmdr. Riker. When in 10-Forward Dr. Crusher and Counselor Troi ask if she would mind their company at her table, she answers simply, “Yes,” dismissing their offer of friendship.

Forbes does an excellent job communicating the coltish energy of an exasperated teenager. Although her character never utters the word, we hear a "Whatever!" in the way she throws her body around. We soon forget that Ensign Ro is a Starfleet officer as Forbes has Ro assume sloppy, defensive posture, barely able to contain her contempt for the old farts who just can’t appreciate her radical ideas and maverick methods. Whenever Ro knits her brow, either to signify anger or perplexity, those signature eyebrows emphasize the emotion.

Ensign Ro obviously has lessons to learn, and since we have all had occasion to feel that we will never fit in or do things right, we get schooled along with her. In “Disaster,” for example, Counselor Troi finds herself in charge of a ship about to explode. Ro recommends abandoning the drive section despite the survivors it might contain. Troi refuses to separate the saucer, a successful maneuver that teaches Ro that an officer should not so callously abandon her crew.

In "Power Play," however, Capt. Picard demonstrates when an officer must sacrifice life. The Enterprise encounters penal colony escapees who board the ship in the bodies of Counselor Troi, Chief O'Brien [Colm Meaney], and Lt. Cmdr. Data [Brent Spiner]. Picard tricks them into a cargo bay where he can blow the hatch, sacrificing himself and the other officers but taking the prisoners with him and thus saving everyone else on the ship.

In "The Next Phase," Ensign Ro awakens on the Enterprise after a transporter accident. Since no one can see her, she believes she is dead, a suspicion confirmed when she discovers Dr. Crusher filling out her death certificate. Lt. Cmdr. La Forge, cloaked in the same manner, convinces her not to abandon her place among the living so quickly, that another explanation besides death might account for their predicament. Working together, they find a solution to their invisibility rather than haunt the ship as ghosts.

What Season 5 needed was one more episode to show whether Ensign Ro grew as a result of her experiences on the Enterprise. The writers should have put her in a situation similar to the disastrous away mission from the Wellington when her disobeying orders caused the deaths of eight crew members. With flashbacks or another storytelling device, the writers could have given the audience the opportunity to learn the events of that day and make up its own mind whether Ro behaved poorly or not. The Enterprise crew knows the story; it's unfair that we don't. Was her decision a calculated loss of life? Would by-the-book have definitely failed? Was the captain of the Wellington an ineffectual leader prone to giving bad orders? A drunk? The paralleling new situation would have allowed us to observe what Ro had since learned.

If the Enterprise resembles a plastic surgeon's office with its calm pastels, uncluttered surfaces, and recessed lighting, the characters often seem victims of the doctor's knife, sliced a little too tight, as with Ensign Ro. Or perhaps the real characters of the series are the controversial issues each episode addresses, the crew just flat pieces, like plastic checkers, pushed around as the two sides face off.

Geek-O-Meter

Just so you know, owning an Ensign Ro Laren action figure sends the needle to the far right, Hopeless Nerd, on the Geek-O-Meter. On the con side, the doll doesn't look a bit like Michelle Forbes, even with the widow's peak and painted mole. It does, however, bend at the limb joints for posing and comes with a phaser, tricorder, and iPad precursor that fit in her hands.

If you need a talisman to access your own inner Ro, this action figure is just the thing. You can sit her near your computer at work. Then when Mr. Paranoid comes over to ask if you want to hear his latest conspiracy theory about how the bosses are trying to cheat everyone out of rightful compensation, you can touch your Ro doll to draw on her impatience with stupidity and say, "Not right now, Peter." When Ms. Annoying arrives to bemoan how the evil fifth-grade teacher treats her precious little princess like Cinderella—or wants you to order Girl Scout cookies despite your vow to eat better this year—you can glance Ro's way, remember her penchant for directness, and say, "Another time, Jane. I have to finish this report."

Just be careful. My experience in the working world has me conclude that the Captain Picards are few and far between. What an effective leader might see as spunk—an initiative to harness for good—your boss might see as defiance or insolence, qualities that will get you in trouble at your next review.

I have one. You can purchase your own here.

Video Teasers

You can view every Ensign Ro episode at YouTube: "Ensign Ro," "Disaster," "Conundrum," "Power Play," "Cause and Effect," "The Next Phase," "Rascals" [Season 6], and "Preemptive Strike" [Season 7].

To Own the Season

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 5, is an easy purchase at Amazon US or UK.

Cross Post

A shorter version of this review exists at Amazon US.