Jammer's Review

Star Trek: The Next Generation

"Redemption, Part II"

Air date: 9/23/1991
Written by Ronald D. Moore
Directed by David Carson

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan

TNG's fifth-season kickoff is an entertaining blend of the earnest and the absurd, highlighting the series at perhaps its most eclectically versatile — or tonally schizophrenic, depending on your point of view. With the Duras sisters making their bid against Gowron to take over the Klingon Empire — and the Romulans pulling strings behind the scenes — "Redemption II" rotates through a sprawling A/B/C-story structure.

We have energetic space opera in the form of boisterous Klingons engaging in glorious battle — and then drinking in the same hall in the evenings between engagements. Apparently civil war is a 9-to-5 job. (Amusing detail: arm-wrestling with knives thrown in for good measure.) We have a more grounded storyline where Data is put in command of a ship whose first officer does not think an android is capable of command. And we have the Enterprise on a mission to expose the Romulan involvement in the Duras' attempted takeover. Of course, the wild card here is the relative sci-fi soap opera that is the Sela situation.

Since they are all servicing the same plot, "Redemption II" finds an admirably workable balance between all of these pieces. For my money, the most engaging is Data's command story. While we've been down the road documenting the prejudices against Data before, this one is a suitably engaging retelling. Timothy Carhart as Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Hobson hits the right notes of a wrong-headed jackass whose public disrespect of Data should've landed him in the brig immediately, if not sooner. As always, Data's unflappable nature is the key here. He never gets emotional, although he raises his voice when deemed logically necessary.

As for the nature of the woman who looks exactly like Tasha Yar, that one is a little trickier. On the one hand, I appreciate the commitment of the writers in revealing Sela's backstory and the paradoxical implications that come with it, explicitly referencing "Yesterday's Enterprise" and bringing in Guinan to lend credence to the whole thing. If anything, the writers show a willingness to take a ridiculous idea and try to make it absolutely credible in TNG's sci-fi terms. On the other hand, casting Denise Crosby to play a character who looks exactly like the character's mother is just a dopey soap-opera conceit to begin with. (The paradox here: You can tell this story, but to do it with Crosby is to just remind us all that it's a conceit; but to not use Crosby means you don't have the story's WTF-baiting justification in the first place.)

In the end, the Romulan conspiracy is exposed and the Duras insurrection is put down (though Lursa and B'Etor themselves escape, naturally), thanks to the Enterprise's efforts and Data's ingenuity. Worf finds his two worlds in conflict, as he often does, and makes the choices we expect him to. Still, Worf's return to the Enterprise is handled a bit pat for my tastes. After the big deal that was made of his departure at the end of "Redemption, Part I," this feels like a swift and easy reset. As season-starting TNG cliffhanger resolutions go, this outing would become typical of the model.

Previous episode: Redemption, Part I
Next episode: Darmok

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13 comments on this review

Mentor397 - Sat, Apr 2, 2011 - 10:05pm (USA Central)

I didn't have much to say really, I enjoy your take on these episodes, even if I don't always agree with them. I wanted to point out, politely, before anyone else in a mean way might, that it's "brig" not "bring".

Seriously, good work.

Grumpy - Sun, Apr 3, 2011 - 7:58pm (USA Central)

Revisiting TNG gives me a better sense of Ronald D. Moore as a writer, after seeing what he did with BSG. The grittiness, the darkness, the intrigue. Especially where BSG contrasts with what other TNG writers were doing.

angel - Tue, Apr 5, 2011 - 10:27am (USA Central)

Jammer,
If you want to consider Crosby playing her own daughter as a 'soap-opera conceit,' fine, but, based on your other reviews, if this had been a DS9 episode, I have the feeling you'd have given this 4 stars for precisely that reason.

lvsxy808 - Tue, Apr 5, 2011 - 9:22pm (USA Central)

I get the feeling the entire idea behind Sela was that Denise Crosby regretted quitting in season one once TNG got famous, and begged to be on the show again. Then they had to come up with a plot to make it happen. In one way it's nice that TNG never forgot the character (she appeared at least once per season after she died), but in another way, it's a pretty transparent attempt by Denise to ride on TNG's coattails.

Matthew - Thu, Apr 7, 2011 - 10:35am (USA Central)

@ angel: Yeah, except that DS9 would have done it better - and Denise Crosby's performance would never have been allowed to be so over-the-top both here and elsewhere (Reunification).

angel - Fri, Apr 8, 2011 - 10:54am (USA Central)

How the hell do you know DS9 would've done it better?
Knowing that show, we would've gotten a threesome with her, Dukat, & Nurse Ratched

Lenore - Sat, Apr 23, 2011 - 4:03pm (USA Central)

Agreed about Crosby as Sela - what was the point? (I know in real terms, it was "Denise wants to play one more time", but other than that...) What difference does it make to have Tasha's daughter involved in the plot? Momentary confusion for the crew, and then... nothing. She's just another Romulan bureacrat. Her lineage has no significance at all.

Her appearance bugs the hell out of me. Are Romulan genes so recessive that she looks like she sprang direct from her mother's forehead? Couldn't they at least have given her a black wig, or a little prosthetic lump on her forehead, or sallow skin, or something? Lazy and moronic.

Then again I always felt the "unprofessional jackass won't follow Data's orders" plot was pretty dumb too - by-the-numbers and tedious. When Data ignore's Picards orders, why doesn't he just explain what he's doing? He can multitask, we know that. A dumb episode all round.

Paul - Thu, May 12, 2011 - 11:59pm (USA Central)

I really dislike this episode in the same sort of way I dislike DS9's O'Brien&Bashir VR Section 31 episode. It had such promise, but the guys at the top really missed the mark here. They abandoned everything that made Part I interesting in favor of stuff that was completely irrelevant to matters at hand.

Part I essentialy had two related storylines: political turmoil in the Klingon Empire and Worf's struggle to regain his family honor. Though the episode wasn't perfect, I think it was a very good culmination of the arc that had been brewing for two years. It is anenjoyable hour, especially when put alongside its great thematic predecessors "Sins of the Father", "Reunion" and "In the Mind's Eye". Part II, though kinda OK when viewed on its own terms, inexplicably drops all this rich backstory.

Klingon political manoeuvring, scheming and backstabbing? Virtually gone, replaced for unknown reasons with Romulans. It's not even Romulan *scheming and backstabbing*, just a random and uninteresting plot involving Romulans smuggling some supplies, without the episode even trying to devote some time to fleshing out their motivation and to delving into political repercussions of this whole affair.

Worf's storyline was especially butchered. The guy spent the whole episode imprisoned; no tough choices, no impact on anything transpiring on the screen. It's obvious screenwriters didn't know what to do with him, so they just eliminated him as a player in the unfolding drama.

Basically, they abandoned the two main storylines of Part I and replaced them with unrelated material that belonged in a completely different episode -- Tash...err, Sela's reveal, Picard's blockade of the border and Data's first command. I'm not saying it's utterly uncompelling, but it simply has no thematic cohesion with the plot points set up in the previous episode.

And lastly, I just have to mention the ridicilous notion that a fleet of twenty ships can blockade (in three dimensions, remeber!) the whole Klingon-Romulan border that is probably dozens upon dozens light years long. It has a similar vibe of nonsensicality :) as the idea in "Unification" that you can conquer a planet with 2000 soldiers.

Yeah, I really didn't like this one...

........ would have done it better - Sun, May 22, 2011 - 8:58pm (USA Central)

never really understood why fans of star trek are become divided over which show was better (ds9, voy, tng, ect.) Why can't you just enjoy all things star trek and leave the petty bickering to the old ladies.

Jay - Sun, Sep 25, 2011 - 10:15pm (USA Central)

@ Paul...

Stellar cartography is always ignored. Even if the Romulans had managed to conquer Vulcan, how the hell could they hold it...Vulcan is in the hjeart of the Federation...supply lines would be nonexistent.

Even worse, on DS9, we had for a time the Klingons and the Cardassians at war, never mind the fact that the Cardassian Union and the Klingon Empire are geogr-, er, astrometrically on opposite sides of the vast bulk of the Federation.

Paul - Tue, Sep 27, 2011 - 3:10am (USA Central)

@Jay

Sigh... such is the life of a Star Trek fan... what are we to except to fanwank an explanation :)

Jay - Sat, Oct 15, 2011 - 11:28pm (USA Central)

Indeed Paul...we should write a novel about a ground war between Canada and Mexico which somehow has absolutely no effect on the United States whatsoever ;)

Corey - Wed, Apr 25, 2012 - 2:30pm (USA Central)

@Jay - while I love your analogy, a ground war between Mexico and Canada IS possible without affecting the US, if they both bought a huge number of tomahawk missiles to use on the other. Tomahawk is ground-to-ground missiles. But of course, without boots on the ground, no territory would change hands. U.S might be a bit annoyed about so much missiles flying over its territory.

As for the episode, I'm with Jammer, the Data command subplot was the most intriguing. But it did seem rather silly for Worf to resign, just to be captured until the end of the war!

I'm not sure why everyone are attacking Data's first officer, even today, we have people suspect of various technologies (e.g., anyone want screensavers free, that also come with malware?). Data is the ONLY sentient android in the entire federation, it would take time to get over people's misconceptions. At least Data's first officer's concerns made much more sense, than Engineer Logan abandoning his post in battle just to argue with Geordi in the episode, "Arsenal of Freedom".

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