1:[3,#b],4:[2,#i]@1“Birthright, Part I”@2Next Generation episode #142
Production No.: 242
Aired: Week of February 22, 1993
Stardate: 46578.4
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Written by Brannon Braga
GUEST CAST
Lieutenant Julian Bashir, M.D.: Siddig El Fadil
Jaglom Shrek: James Cromwell
Gi’ral: Christine Rose
Ba’el: Jennifer Gatti
L’Kor: Richard Herd
With the Enterprise docked at Deep Space Nine for a Bajoran aid mission, Worf is disturbed to learn from the moley Yridian Shrek that the Klingon’s father may have survived the Khitomer massacre only to be held ever since in a Romulan prison camp ­ especially damning since an honorable Klingon would have died rather than be taken prisoner.
At the same time, a device found in the Gamma Quadrant that the station’s Dr. Bashir brings aboard the Enterprise to test accidentally jolts Data, causing the android to shut down and experience a surreal vision of his creator “father,” Dr. Soong.
Convinced by Bashir and La Forge that he was accessing images planted by Soong and in effect was “dreaming,” Data is compelled to paint images he doesn’t clearly recall, and for guidance asks Worf about a childhood vision the Klingon once described. The conversation convinces Worf to put conscience before pride, and he too sets out after his father, forcing Shrek to take him to the camp. Upon landing, he is stunned to be captured by the Klingons there, who have raised a new generation and don’t consider themselves prisoners.
Meanwhile, Data opts for a new daily “dreaming” shutdown period after he takes flight as a bird image, and image of Soong promises he will grow to be more than a machine.
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Intrigued with the Bridge Over the River Kwai-like conflict between inmate Worf and prison commander Tokath (played by Alan Scarfe, previously a different Romulan in “Data’s Day”), Michael Piller suggested expanding this story to two parts ­ though Jeri Taylor recalled that the staff initially thought their boss’s quiet and furrowed brow after their break session meant he didn’t like the story at all! Two premises were woven together for the Worf story: One pitched by George Brozak about captured Klingons too proud to go home got Echevarria’s interest but initially duplicated an MIA story in the works for DS9 that was later shelved. The other, from Daryl F. Mallett, Arthur Loy Holcomb, and Barbara Wallace, concerned the news that Worf’s father Mogh might still be alive after Khitomer (“Sins of the Father”, et al.).
When Worf’s capture was the moment chosen to climax the expanded first part and a B-story was needed to fill out the hour, the filler evolved under deadline desperation into the acclaimed sequence of Data’s dreaming ­ a chance to expand the android’s character with surreal images and metaphysical archetypes that Brannon Braga recalled coming up with while having pizza with Echevarria. Initially the bit had concerned “flatlining,” Echevarria recalled, until just before “Tapestry” mined the subject. Many fans greeted the lack of a follow-up to the Data plot in Part II with disappointment, but the staff praised the outing and promised a follow-up story in this new area of Data’s humanity ­ a plotline initially considered for the season’s cliffhanger. He would eventually get a chance to follow up on the nightmare side of those dreams (“Phantasms”).
As usual, FX supervisor David Stipes used storyboards in creating the dream sequence ­ featuring an airbrushed nebula by his boss, Dan Curry. Like the character, his motif was “breaking free” of the mundane ­ in this case, camera angles ­ and he joined Braga in crediting director Cliff Bole for the lyrical quality of the bird flight sequence and in keeping consistent feel through both the live and FX sequences. Jim Magdaleno, Alan Kobayashi, and Mike Okuda of the TNG art department provided Data’s paintings ­ except for a landscape Curry had done for the painting scene with Timothy in “Hero Worship”. Actor Brent Spiner was thrilled to take Data in a new direction, while the forties-ish Dr. Soong took far less effort to prepare than his initial appearance, though he wears the same lab wrap (“Brothers”, “Inheritance”).
Time constraints and a broken leg suffered by actor Cromwell (also in “The Hunted”) over the holiday break between the two segments’ filming forced the trimming of the part of Jaglom Shrek ­ a name Braga coined from Henry Jaglom, independent film director, and the old Yiddish/Hebrew word for “shriek.” A sympathetic scene in which he confesses he was once a prison camp inmate himself was lost, while another cut before filming would have contrasted with Worf’s actions even more by having Shrek assassinated during a shipboard interrogation by one of the captured Klingons’ grown sons who was determined not to hear the truth about his father. Shrek’s craft was the old “alien shuttle” live set and miniature (“Legacy”, “Final Mission”, “A Matter of Time”, “Liaisons”, “Gambit, Part II”), re-dressed once again.
One of the oddest bits of casting here is the debut of the “new” Spot, since producers had lost track of the original source (“Data’s Day”) until the day of filming, when it was too late to change. The result was a breed change from Somal to mixed short-hair. With full-time prop master Alan Sims now using Rob Block’s Critters of the Cinema for most animals, Brandy now would be “passive Spot,” with backup “active” Abbott, eventually replaced once by Bud and for the duration by Monster ­ the animals “cast” by photo alone. “I did suggest they have Data give Spot away and get another cat (to cover the change), but they turned it down,” Block recalled. The legendary Spot would be seen again in “Descent”, “Phantasms”, “Force of Nature”, “Genesis”, and Generations ­ and even undergo pregnancy after being male here!
We find here that Data does indeed “grow” hair, “breathe,” and have a “pulse”; his room is still adorned with his Sherlock Holmes garb (“The Last Outpost”, “Elementary, Dear Data”, “Ship in a Bottle”), his violin (“The Ensigns of Command”, “Sarek”, “Lessons”, “Inheritance”), and the supposed “holodeck” Musketeer cap and foil (“Hollow Pursuits”). The Merrimac, mentioned briefly, was part of Picard’s blockade (“Redemption, Part II”), and had provided transport for Wes Crusher (“The Game”) and Sarek (“Sarek”). Along with Bashir we get a glimpse of a Bolian and the recurring silent alien Morn from DS9, learn that the Ktarians (“The Game”, “Timescape”, “Liaisons”, “Phantasms”, Generations) had spacegoing technology three hundred years ago, and hear that the hammer is a Ferengi archetype for sexual prowess, building on that old joke (see “The Price”). And thanks to prior clues (“The Bonding”) we know that Worf was younger than six during the ritual hunt L’Kor speaks of.
~1:[3,#b],4:[2,#i]@1“Birthright, Part II”@2Next Generation episode #143
Held captive by an unlikely, peaceful Romulan-Klingon colony on Carraya IV, Worf discovers that the tale of his father’s survival that lured him there is untrue.
Kept hostage so the Klingons’ survival during capture will not dishonor their survivors, Worf learns from Klingons L’Kor and Gi’ral of their eventual peace in the camp ­ and even Gi’ral’s marriage to Romulan leader Tokath, somewhat of a rebel himself for keeping them alive and staying there with her.
But Worf, hating Romulans since his family’s death at Khitomer, is disgusted by the intermarriage and his realization that their lovely daughter Ba’el, who was attracted to him, is a half-breed. An escape try foiled by the cynical young Toq leaves Worf a caged animal in the compound, but even more so he is disturbed to see the Klingon youths ignorant of their heritage. A wary Tokath and L’Kor allow his stories and teachings, even letting Toq go with Worf to take part in ­ and insure his return from ­ the Klingons’ ritual hunt.
But Toq and the other youths grow so restless following his truths that Tokath sadly decides to kill Worf rather than lose the historic peace of the village. But the youths and the elders stand with Worf, who takes the youths with him under guise of “crash survivors” while keeping the elders a secret and their honor intact.
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Though he had worked in live theater in college and had long been directing TNG second-unit and pickup shots, visual FX producer Dan Curry got his first crack at directing in the long form here and credited director of photography Jonathan West, sound mixer Alan Bernard, and Dorn himself for easing his transition. Sadly, he had to cut some seven minutes of character scenes due to time, including “steps” showing Worf and Ba’el’s relationship, and the confrontation between Worf and Gi’ral in which the Klingon woman who married a Romulan stands up to the presumptuous interloper about her mixed-race marriage.
Surprisingly, Echevarria said that so much effort went into making both the Klingons and Romulans sympathetic here in the two-parter’s main story arc that many fans felt Worf came off looking like a fascist racist who ruins a peaceful place. “His motives are in fact racist, when he’s dealing with Romulans,” the writer said. “But his actions are different; all he said was these people should know the truth and be free to leave. He never advocated violence and bloodshed.” A smaller in-house debate raged over the depth of the Worf-Ba’el affair: whether a rendezvous would have been dramatically correct or too contrived for a one-hour episode.
Curry’s hands-on mark shows up throughout the episode ­ and not just from throwing the spear through the wheel for the insert shot during the Klingon youths’ game sequence. Drawing on the same background in swords and weaponry that produced Worf’s bat’telh, he designed the blade for the Gin’tak spear (see notes, “Firstborn”), modeling it on the wavy-bladed Balinese kris dagger with the “capturing flanges” inspired by Northern Chinese weapons, while Sternbach designed the shaft. Curry’s tai chi expertise also came to the fore when Worf’s Klingon movement, first seen briefly in “Data’s Day”, finally gets a name, Mok’bara ­ though a reference to Kahless as its creator was yet another cut for time. One of the most famous Klingon weapons, the spring-loaded dagger first seen in ST III, is finally christened here as a D’k tahg.
The Romulan fortress miniature, complete with computer animation that added tiny walking figures and flying birds, was computer-inserted into Laotian jungle photos Curry snapped in the sixties during his days in Southeast Asia. The large fortress live set, also designed by Richard James, built from a budget spread over two episodes; in one shot it appears to include a wheelchair-access ramp over a curbstone (though that’s just for mundane camera work). With filming for the two episodes split by the December holiday break, all the live plants and trees from the substantial jungle and garden sets died untended on the dark, sealed-off soundstage and had to be replaced!
Listen for the blooper as Picard transposes two digits in his log’s stardates, saying “46759.2” instead of “46579.2”; compared to Part I’s stardate the difference means Worf was gone for over two months! Another curiosity is the location of the Carraya system, since it is seen on an Okudagraph map to be just outside Romulan space though apparently here not lying too far from DS9 in the Cardassian border area, which had earlier been set as on the opposite “side” of the Federation; the same map displays an unmentioned third star as “Echevarria.” Throughout the two-parter the massacre at Khitomer (seen in the same map as within Romulan space) is referred to variously as occurring twenty-five, twenty, and twenty-three years ago, though by taking the period of “twenty years ago” literally in Season 3’s “Sins of the Father” only the latter can be correct. Further mythic conflict between Kahless and his brother Morath (“New Ground”, “Rightful Heir”, “Firstborn”) is also featured. Among the guests, Alan Scarfe had played a Romulan already (“Data’s Day”) while Richard Herd was well known to V and later SeaQuest DSV viewers.
With music composed by Jay Chattaway, Braga said it was the writing, broadcast, and residual payments for this episode’s Klingon lyrics ­ along with those for the “Song of Aquiel” and Data’s bad poetry (“Schisms”) ­ that ironically won the self-described nonmusical Chattaway an invitation to join ASCAP, the songwriter/lyricist union. “We did a Klingon rap version of it too,” co-producer and sound overseer Wendy Neuss recalled, and then joked: “I’m going to do an album someday, Songs From Around the Universe.”
DaiMon Bok blames Picard for his son’s death in the first UFP-Ferengi meeting, and emerges from prison to taunt the captain again ­ this time with news that he would kill the son that Picard never knew he had.
After the young man is hunted down, DNA tests prove that Jason Vigo is Picard’s son, the apparent result of a long-ago brief fling with the now-dead sister of a Stargazer officer. Living a hard, troubled life after his mother’s death, Jason approaches his newfound “father” warily and awkwardly. Bok then appears via a new long-distance subspace transporter to tease Picard all the more.
Bok eventually uses the device to kidnap Jason and threaten his life, but not before the young man’s sudden attack of a genetic disease reveals Bok’s ruse. Suffering from a syndrome that neither Picard nor his mother could have passed on to him, Jason is found to have had his DNA resequenced to match Picard’s. Armed with that fact, the captain uses the risky subspace transporter, races to free the boy, and reveals Bok’s profitless insanity to his mercenary crew, who depose him.
After Jason is cured, he and his would-be father acknowledge the bond they developed and agree to visit in the future, both having grown from the experience.
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This story traces its roots directly back to a set visit during “Masks”. Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart were asked about any hanging character threads that could be turned into stories. When Stewart recalled the unsatisfied vengeance of DaiMon Bok (“The Battle”), Taylor tossed the brief idea at writer Sagan, asking him (“Attached”) to flesh out his pitch about a “created” Picard son.
Both writers were sad to lose the sentiment of the original ending, in which Jason and Picard confide mutually that they wish their newfound kinship were real ­ a moment likely muted to make way for Picard’s “end-of-the-family” moroseness in the coming feature (Generations). While praising the freelancer’s work and the sympathetic explanation Taylor created for Miranda Vigo’s actions, Echevarria was also delighted that no one flagged Picard’s self-deprecating line about his hairline ­ including Stewart, who loved it. Sadly, a funny line was cut when Picard realizes Ferengi like Bok can “buy” their way out of prison and Birta shrugs it off: “He paid his debt to society.”
Vigo, of course, was the only Stargazer bridge crewman Picard called by name during the “ghost” sequence of “The Battle,” and a cut line from Sagan’s script actually made Miranda the weapons officer’s sister; he must have been a longtime officer. She and Picard’s involvement “twenty-four years ago” works out to be four years after he stood up Jenice (“We’ll Always Have Paris”), or nine years before the Maxia incident. Miranda’s birth “fifty years ago” ­ or in 2320, reckoned by the “2364” date of Season 1’s “Neutral Zone” ­ would have been seven years before Picard’s Academy “Class of ’27” graduation and made her twenty-six and he about forty-one. Her New Gaul birthplace is apparently not to be confused with New Paris (from 1966’s “The Galileo Seven”) or New France (DS9’s “The Forsaken”), although the prior Bok-Picard confrontation was unknowingly changed in a late draft to Xendi Kabu instead of Xendi Sabu.
Sagan, another Trek baseball fan, named security officer “Garvey” after one of his favorites, Steve, while Jason’s rare disease was dually named for Larry Forrester, the original writer of “The Battle,” and Trent Reznor of the alternative rock band Nine-Inch Nails, a favorite. The other guard’s name, Lieutenant Sandra Rhodes, honored an Air Force officer and Trek fan whose family wrote Taylor and asked about the homage. Picard again here speaks wistfully of his and his father’s estrangement (“Family”, “Tapestry”) and exceeds the warp five limit (“Force of Nature”) for the first time without express approval ­ though it is a life-or-death matter. His Saurian brandy harks back to The Original Series (and “In Theory”), and ­ according to Echevarria ­ the Gorlan prayer stick among Picard’s relics was not intended to be related to the Gorla Colony mentioned in 1967’s “Mirror, Mirror,” but it could be.
The show’s few visual effects include David Stipes and Joe Bauer’s “Princess Leia” hologram of Bok and the “battling transporters” effect; the Ferengi probe was fashioned by Dan Curry from an underground sprinkler sleeve.
