First-Time Watch – Star Trek: the Next Generation Season 5, Episodes 1-3
Season 5 of Star Trek: The Next Generation gets off to an excellent start with “Redemption II,” “Darmok,” and “Ensign Ro.”
This week gives us three episodes with very different scopes: a massive Klingon civil war, an intimate story about two people desperately trying to understand each other, and the introduction of a character carrying the weight of an entire conflict with her.
This week, we get:
Massive scale and scope
Communication when you understand the words but don’t know the meaning
Building lore around new characters
We covered:
Data’s command of the Sutherland
Klingon politics and society
Tasha Yar’s increasingly tragic legacy
Communication through metaphor
Memes, GIFs, and shared cultural references
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The limits of language and translation
Ro Laren’s introduction
Competing loyalties and motivations
Redemption II
An excellent start to Season 5—and essentially the second half of one enormous episode.
The Klingon Civil War gives “Redemption II” a scale and scope that feels bigger than anything we've seen yet, while the episode still finds room for a terrific Data story aboard the Sutherland.
Things we discussed:
An excellent start to the season
The massive scale and scope of the story
Treating season finales and premieres as a single episode
Data taking command
Data choosing not to follow orders
Whether Data actually became angry or simply accessed an “anger function”
Tasha’s daughter as a consequence of “Yesterday’s Enterprise”
Yet another tragic turn in Tasha Yar’s story
Balancing villains, enemies, and political factions
Klingon warriors drinking with people they may soon fight
Whether we sometimes judge all Klingons based primarily on their government and military
Darmok
“Darmok” is a well-known TNG episode that sounded familiar, even though Aaron hadn't seen it yet.
The Universal Translator can tell Picard exactly what the Tamarians are saying. The problem is that knowing the words doesn’t mean he understands what any of them mean.
Things we discussed:
Burying the lede in episode synopses
“Darmok” as a well-known TNG episode
Communication when you understand every word but still don’t understand the meaning
The episode’s very TOS-like feel
Memes, GIFs, quotations, and story references as modern metaphors
“Have you seen the episode where…?”
The universal human instinct to speak slower and louder when someone doesn’t understand us
How Tamarian children could possibly learn their language
Communication, depth, and Spaceships and Aliens
The Epic of Gilgamesh as an ancient example of stories carrying shared meaning
The limitations of communicating entirely through metaphor
Ensign Ro
Before Ro Laren even appears on screen, it feels as though we should already know who she is.
That led to one of the most interesting parts of the episode for a first-time viewer: did I forget something, or is the show simply doing an unusually good job of making a new character feel like she has always existed in this world?
Things we discussed:
Ro as an immediately interesting character
Why she seemed strangely familiar
Wondering whether I had forgotten an earlier appearance
Building a well-developed character before she ever appears
Riker’s visceral response to Ro
Managing competing loyalties
Whether competing loyalties can ever truly be reconciled
What actually motivates Ro
Final Thoughts
This is a great start to Season 5.
“Redemption II” gives us enormous political and military stakes, “Darmok” takes a familiar Star Trek first-contact premise and turns it into a thoughtful exploration of communication, and “Ensign Ro” expands the universe by introducing a character whose history already seems larger than the episode itself.
Three very different episodes, and three strong reasons to keep going.
Last week we covered:
Next week we will continue with:
If you want to see my journey from the very beginning, start here:
Also, be sure to check out Nate’s and my other podcast – The In Lap with Aaron and Nate – to listen to us discuss all things Formula 1 on race weekends, wherever you listen to your podcasts.