WARNING:  Spoilers for the TNG episode "Homeward" are heading homeward at a 
rapid pace.  Duck and cover, unless you want to be exposed to them.

In brief:  substantially more preachy than it should have been, but not bad.

First, a disclaimer.  As I think anyone not confined to an information-proof 
capsule orbiting a different planet has heard by now, LA suffered a major 
earthquake on Monday morning.  Although I and everyone I know are fine 
(fortunately), it was a wee bit ... distracting ... to watch TNG last night 
while the building moved around us.  Thus, my reactions may not be "normal", 
if they ever are.  :-)  [Many thanks to all those that have written with 
concerns, by the way.]

At any rate, time for a synopsis before I go into commentary.  Onwards:

The Enterprise reaches Boraal Two after Worf's foster brother Nikolai sends 
a distress signal.  They find that the atmosphere is being wiped out by 
plasmonic reactions, and that the planet will be dead in less than 38 hours.  
Worf, seeing possible signs of a deflector shield in caverns near Nikolai's 
observation post, beams down (after alteration to look like a Boraalan) to 
look for Nikolai -- but he finds not only Nikolai, but a group of Boraalans 
looking for Nikolai and Worf to save them as well!

Worf and Nikolai, pretending to return to the surface, return to the 
Enterprise, where Nikolai argues in favor of saving one Boraalan village, 
despite the gross violation of the Prime Directive everyone else believes it 
to be.  Picard refuses outright to approve Nikolai's request to create an 
atmospheric shield, and orders Nikolai to stay off the planet, retrieving his 
research only via Enterprise comm-link.  

Nikolai finishes his retrieval just as the final stages of the atmospheric 
dissipation commence, and leaves the bridge in disgust.  Shortly thereafter, 
Worf's security grid picks up a power drain, and he takes a team to 
investigate.  He finds a holodeck in use, and inside -- is Nikolai, who shows 
Worf that he's made a reproduction of the Boraalan caverns, and beamed the 
village up into it!

Worf, not surprisingly, feels that Nikolai's actions have brought them both 
complete disgrace.  Picard doesn't even look on it that fondly, demanding to 
know what Nikolai possibly thinks they can do now.  Nikolai suggests finding 
a new world to settle this village on, and altering the holodeck in the 
course of a "journey" to resemble this new world.  With no other options 
presenting themselves, Picard grudgingly agrees -- but orders Worf to go back 
into the holodeck with Nikolai to keep an eye on him.  

Nikolai and Worf prepare the Boraalans for their "journey", but problems 
quickly develop, as damage from the plasmonic bursts begins to destabilize 
the illusion created by the holodeck.  Some quick thinking by Worf turns an 
appearance of the grid into "the sign of LaForge", an omen blessing their 
journey, and they prepare to depart.  As the Enterprise heads for Vacca Six 
to resettle the Boraalans, however, the Boraalan chronicler, Vorin, 
accidentally finds the exit to the holodeck -- and exits.

He finds himself on the Enterprise, quickly making his way to Ten-Forward, 
where Troi and Riker help comfort him and put him at ease.  Unfortunately, 
his mind is such that Beverly cannot erase his memory, leaving Vorin with 
some difficult decisions.  Picard meets Vorin and explains the situation to 
him, but Vorin is unenthusiastic about resettlement.  "How can we grow," he 
asks, "if everything that made us who we are is gone?"

As the Boraalan "journey" continues, Worf and Nikolai continue to argue, set 
off in particular by Vorin's departure.  The arguments are a continuation of 
strife between them since their childhood:  Worf sees Nikolai as wild and 
irresponsible, always looking for others to get him out of messes he creates; 
while Nikolai sees Worf as too much a slave to duty.  Worf eventually stalks 
off.  Later that evening, however, a Boraalan woman, Dobara, asks Worf to 
settle his feud with Nikolai and become part of the family -- after all, she 
points out, Worf *will* be the uncle of her unborn child!

The Enterprise reaches Vacca Six and is nearly ready to beam the Boraalans 
down, but by now the holodeck simulation is hanging by a thread.  Picard 
leaves the bridge to find out if Vorin's decided what to do.  Unfortunately, 
Vorin seems to be trapped without options:  he can't tell his people the 
truth without ruining their lives or being considered a madman, and he can't 
live a lie.  He asks for more time.

In the holodeck, Worf and Nikolai argue again, this time about Dobara and 
Nikolai's refusal to leave these people.  Just as their squabbling reaches a 
head, the holodeck simulation begins to completely destabilize, creating a 
"reality storm" of sorts.  Nikolai orders everyone into the tents to protect 
them from "the storms", and while they're there the Enterprise beams them 
down to the planet.  They emerge on what appears to be the very campground 
they were just on, and are pleased to hear that the storms are gone for good.

Although the Boraalans' fate has turned out well, there are difficulties in 
the end.  Vorin is dead, a suicide; and Worf has to deal with Nikolai's 
decision to stay with the Boraalans for good.  In the end, he decides to 
leave Nikolai on Vacca Six, and says that he will tell their parents "that 
you are happy."  

----------

That should cover it.  Now, some comments:

Even after watching "Homeward" twice, I'm just not sure about it.  While I 
definitely liked seeing Nikolai finally make an appearance, and much of the 
Worf/Nikolai interplay was top drawer, much of the show just struck me as 
pedestrian.  I just don't know, really.

First of all, while I've gotten into some serious debates on the Prime 
Directive in my years here on the net and enjoyed them, even I had trouble 
stomaching the very serious preachiness about it early on.  In the very early 
mentions of it, I tended to agree with the claims being made while 
simultaneously wondering how many times it was going to get pounded on in the 
course of the episode.  However, considering how often I agree with Picard, 
it's rare that I can say that a speech of his really made me want to hit the 
mute button -- however, his "these are the ramifications of the Prime 
Directive we all have to face from time to time" bit did just that.  Ugh.  
Definitely the low point of the show.

Fortunately, once we got past the Prime Directive-thumping opening, the rest 
of it became a "how do we get out of this mess that we've already gotten 
into?" question.  And, while I still prefer "Who Watches The Watchers" for 
shows of this type, "Homeward" did it reasonably well.  The plan, at least 
in its broad strokes, *mostly* made sense (some exceptions will pop up later), 
and the other issues swirling around seemed to fit most of the time.  

I suspect "Homeward" wouldn't have worked to the level that it did, however, 
were it not for Paul Sorvino.  Even when stuck with dialogue like "You will 
have to kill me first!", he seemed pretty believable as Nikolai through and 
through.  I could believe his ideals -- and what's more, I could believe he 
was Worf's foster brother and son to Worf's parents.  Even little things, 
like Nikolai leaning forward onto his knuckles on Picard's desk when he 
argued his case, just seemed to fit.  Grabbing him for the role was a major 
plus, and I'm glad he did it.

Despite the generally positive way I felt about the last three quarters of 
the show, however, there were several instances where I felt they ignored 
obvious outs that would have shortened the story.  For instance:

-- If it would take a few hours with a shut-down holodeck to fix it, I see an 
easy option.  Wait until they've gone to sleep, pump in some kind of 
tranquilizer to knock them out, then shut down the holodeck and do the 
repairs.  I don't see a problem here -- it's not like engineering repairs 
still need jackhammers or something.

-- When Vorin has to go back to get the scroll, Worf was clearly concerned he 
might run into something.  Okay, so Vorin won't leave without it -- why 
didn't *Worf* go back and get the scroll?  He'd have seen the exit, yes, and 
been worried -- but that's a bit different than letting Vorin wander out.

-- When Vorin does get out, it might have made sense to try to convince him 
it was all a dream or a hallucination.  It might not be easy, but simply 
giving up and saying "okay, you caught us, here's information that's 
centuries ahead of what you know, have fun." seems absolutely outrageous for 
someone who was willing to die for the Prime Directive a few years ago.  
(Given the time involved, I can see that Troi and Riker might not have 
thought about it -- but Picard shouldn't have gone along.)

Any one of those would have removed a fairly integral dilemma to the story.  
Thus, these three strike me as fairly serious mistakes, a la taking the pylon 
in DS9's "The Alternate" last week.  They were stupid moves on the part of 
the characters, that were _required_ to be stupid in order to make the story 
work.  That cheapens the characters, in my view, and I can't say I'm thrilled 
about it.

So much for griping.  The strength of "Homeward" was in the Worf/Nikolai 
arguments, and they worked just fine, not surprisingly.  Although I find it a 
little hard to believe that someone that loose of a cannon would be placed in 
a position where he could compromise the Prime Directive so easily, that's 
not his fault, it's the Federation's, and heaven knows *they've* made 
mistakes far worse in their time.  :-)  Worf's and Nikolai's conflict felt 
real and sounded real, and so that part of the show *was* real for me.  Much 
of the rest was window dressing and serious exposition (poor Bev, relegated 
to Dr. Philosophizing again -- eegh).

I should make an exception, though, for the big Picard/Vorin scene where 
Picard needs to know what Vorin will do.  Although I've said before that I 
think Vorin ending up in the Enterprise proper and in full knowledge of the 
facts is incredibly silly writing, this scene worked about as well as any 
scene in the entire show did.  Vorin reminded me a little bit of Tumak from 
DS9's "Sanctuary" -- only Vorin was written and acted well.  His slightly 
hysterical laughter when Picard asks whether he'll be believed hit me harder 
than any other reaction I saw in the entire show -- right then, Vorin 
actually seemed like a desperate, uprooted man.  Kudos to that scene.

That's it for the serious discussion.  Now a few short bits and I'm gone:

-- Exactly what did Nikolai do to lock even *Worf* out of the holodeck?  That 
didn't ring true...

-- On a technical point, it was always my impression that beaming things in 
and out of a holodeck was *dangerous* for some reason.  If so, Nikolai's plan 
seems even odder.

-- After such an incredible job last time around, Stewart seemed very ill at 
ease for most of this show, particularly early on.  His "okay, let's give it 
a try" sounded like someone doing a Stewart impression rather than Stewart 
himself.  Ugh.

-- I noticed something interesting in the credits.  Very often, there's a 
separate credit for story and teleplay, and that's nothing new.  This time, 
though, the front credits had a teleplay listing and a "television story by" 
listing, and hidden towards the end of the end credits was a "based upon 
material by" credit.  I don't recall seeing something like that before in 
TNG, and certainly not where the last credit is tucked quietly away like 
that.  What gives?

That about covers it.  I can recommend "Homeward" for much of the acting and 
for some of the problem-solving, but the problem-making is, well -- a 
problem.

So, wrapping up:

Plot:  I've seen much better.  Way too many kludges were needed to get this 
	working in the first place.
Plot Handling:  Decent directing:  nothing stands out as good or bad.  The 
	presentation of the issues was strictly by-the-numbers, though:  no
	subtext got within a mile of this one.
Characterization:  Fairly good.  Picard was a bit off, but Worf and most of
	the guest characters were good.

OVERALL:  6.  Watchable, but that's about it.

NEXT WEEK:  A rerun of "Phantasms".  Data's nightmares are back...

Tim Lynch (Harvard-Westlake School, Science Dept.)
BITNET:  tlynch@citjulie
INTERNET:  tlynch@juliet.caltech.edu
UUCP:  ...!ucbvax!tlynch%juliet.caltech.edu@hamlet.caltech.edu
"If I'd been more like you, we wouldn't have had so many problems."
"If you had been more like me, these people would not be here now."
		-- Nikolai and Worf
--
Copyright 1994, Timothy W. Lynch.  All rights reserved, but feel free to ask...
This article is explicitly prohibited from being used in any off-net
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