Jammer's Review
Star Trek: The Next Generation
"Birthright, Part II"
Air date: 3/1/1993
Written by Rene Echevarria
Directed by Dan Curry
Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan
Worf discovers a secret community that a quarter of a century ago began its life as a Klingon prison camp for the Khitomer massacre survivors but has since evolved into a place where Romulans and Klingons coexist peacefully. Once the warden of this facility, Romulan Tokath (Alan Scarfe) now leads it as its patriarch, having long ago abandoned his life as a military officer to instead build a community and a life that eschews the hatred that Romulans and Klingons typically hold for each other. Fearing Worf will bring others that will dismantle this way of life, Tokath forbids Worf from leaving, instead telling him he must assimilate into this community.
"Birthright, Part II" contains interesting issues worth exploring but is a failure at turning those issues into compelling drama. On the one hand, we have Tokath, who is wearing blinders in thinking he has done everyone a favor in turning a POW camp into a closed community that, make no mistake, is still very much a prison, even if it might be a pleasant one. On the other hand is Worf, who wants to expose the lie that is this place, where Klingon culture has been all but eradicated, resulting in a generation of youths who have no idea how Klingons elsewhere live. (Tokath and the Klingon elders have fed the new generation plenty of lies about life outside the community.)
Unfortunately, some rather clunky execution makes this a deadly dull affair. This community is depicted with such confined sterility that it's hard to imagine the Klingon elders didn't revolt against it decades ago. And when Worf begins trying to win the hearts and minds of the younger Klingons, including a young man named Toq (Sterling Macer Jr.), the lessons are so simplistically depicted that the storytelling never transcends that of a wooden, preordained parable. Worf takes Toq — initially a staunch skeptic — on a single ritualistic hunt that magically awakens the Klingon blood inside him and turns him into an instant believer.
Meanwhile, a superfluous romantic angle between Worf and Ba'el (Jennifer Gatti) is established for no good reason except, apparently, because she is Klingon and female. It's certainly not because Worf and Ba'el have a single thing in common or any sort of chemistry, because they don't. Actually, Ba'el is half Romulan, and Tokath is her father, which results in predictable Worf reactions of disgust, then reconsideration, then begrudged acceptance.
Ultimately, Tokath gives Worf an ultimatum: stop stirring dissent, or be put to death. Worf, naturally, chooses the honorable choice of death (which, ultimately, is averted by a display of Klingon solidarity). That Tokath thinks he can, by killing Worf, undo the power of knowledge that Worf has unleashed is a testament of Tokath's willful self-delusion. Tokath has essentially traded everyone's freedom of mind for the manufactured illusion of peace while telling himself he has created something grand — which is destroyed here when the lie is revealed. That's not a bad story. The problem with this episode, however, is that it tells this story without ever bringing a moment of tension or drama to it. It's a static recitation of ideas, painfully short-changing what could've been an admirable tale of the power of Worf's righteous will.
Previous episode: Birthright, Part I
Next episode: Starship Mine
Season Index
10 comments on this review
God, I'm such a nerd.
Holeecow that's perfect
One of the worst of the series' run.
So, the Romulans and Klingons live together peacefully (albeit perhaps a bit too neatly) to the point of interbreeding. That's an interesting idea and it's a major point of relevance to the Trek universe. But all Worf cares about is whether the Klingons still hunt live game and sing old songs. Preserving cultural traditions is important and Tokath's fear that retaining old customs will undermine the new peace is also a reasonable character trait and an interesting issue.
We've got Idea A (Tokath) and Idea B (Worf) with plenty of time and room for a classical dialectical synthesis into Idea C, but the best the writers can do is to literally combine a Klingon and a Romulan into Bile. If that weren't stupid enough, instead of exploring the issues with her, they make her some generic Juliette character whom Worf loves for no reason.
Padding out the episode is a laundry list of clichés: hidden heirlooms, spontaneous singing (and banging of tankards), and the "Klingon solidarity" moment (this hilarity echoed so well the buffoonery from Part 1's dream sequence--what balanced storytelling).
1.5* I think at best.
Like Jammer, I think the themes were compelling: mortal enemies learning to live in peace, and a closed community that values harmony over freedom. I bought Ba'el's attraction to Worf, the bold outsider, and Worf rejecting her because she was part Romulan was sad, and well written.
I guess it comes down to the standalone episode having only a short time to develop its story, and that TNG episodes relied on suspense and tension for excitement. In "Birthright II" it was a lot of people standing around talking (and a lot of grey, ;), but not a lot of jeopardy, which made it dull and wooden in parts.
Also, I think you have to be willing to accept "archetypal" characters and themes, like those used in myths, and accept symbolic sets, like those used in plays, to enjoy many Star Trek episodes. TNG and VOY, like others have said, are not usually told with consequences and complex emotional threads connecting the different stories.
"Heart of Glory" (Season 1) has rogue Klingons harping on Worf for assimilating to Earthlings... the fact Worf would later grow his hair into a ponytail (while every other Klingon in existence never had) only solidifies that. By season 6, I started calling Worf "My Little Pony" as a result. It's a shame they can't use CGI to restore his hair, back to when it looked cool (seasons 4 & 5). But with all this assimilating, Worf doesn't realize his own assimilation, while whining to the other Klingons about lost heritage, smelling the blood, blah blah blah. There's a disparity, or rather a context I've yet to find that conclusively makes Worf's POV worthwhile rather than forced.
The episode wants to tell something very poignant, but it ends up being all over the map and not really knowing why, apart from heavyhandedly putting out one POV (a one-sided preach was normal for TNG by this period...)
I want to like the episode, but one has to ignore so many previous episodes, never mind Worf's abhorrent racism toward the girl of the story, who never did anything wrong but is treated as if she's a killer on death row once Worf finds out that - gasp - she's partly Romulan. No, he didn't learn from "The Enemy" about such compassion to an innocent person, but the circumstances of "Birthright II" really make Worf's reactions unpalatable.
It's got a good ending; Worf lying and Picard seeing through it (but having enough sense to leave it be).
By season 6, the Klingon multi-season arc had been done with, and this episode felt like it was burying the lore even further into the ground. Never mind DS9 digging things down another 500 feet... The TNG Klingons had some absolute mojo, but it got worn out. Mixed with TNG's preachiness of its latter years and, yeah, it's a clunker, regardless of what it's trying to say.
It's also amazing how quickly Worf gets his fellow Klingons to blindly side with him at the story's climax, where he's about to die. Or maybe it's an irony, but it felt contrived.
Thankfully the compound is a compound and not a real "melting pot" society being made for the benefit of all within. Otherwise I really would dislike this episode, since Worf would then be doing to these Klingons what the Klingons in "Heart of Glory" tried to do with him!
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