Coming of Age (S1 ep 19)

You know, sometimes I lose myself in the minutia of Star Trek and sort of forget where I’m at in the bigger scheme of things. I’m sitting here, watching all these shows and by now I’m so ramped up and ready to hate what I’m watching that I sorta forget to try to enjoy the show.

So, this time, I tried.

How did it go? Well, by any reasonable standard, it sucked. However, and I don’t know if it was because I was actually trying to enjoy it, or if it had something to do with the actual product itself. But whatever the reason, I found this one… well, tolerable.

Not great, not as good as The Big Goodbye, which is far and away the highlight of the season to date, but certainly watchable if one is willing to slum it for a bit.

What happened? Well, Wesley scored high enough on some sort of exam to allow him to officially test for Starfleet Academy, he was overjoyed, and had to work hard to be sympathetic to his friend (I guess) that fell short and wouldn’t even get a chance to try for real along side of Wesley.

I get that, I had a friend that was obsessed with intelligence. I mean, really obsessed. He spent all this time and energy reading about IQ and differences in intelligence between people and correlations between income and wealth… I think he thought that if he was smart that he’d just get money handed to him or something, I’m not sure. But whatever it was, he was always taking these online IQ tests.

‘I scored a 136 on this one, but a 155 over here. And on this one I hit a 160! I’m a genius!’

We argued about it. A lot. Not angry arguing, but the way friends do. You know, when you know the other person is being a little weird but you also want to take their points seriously because they’re a friend and you want them to not feel bad about being weird (because I feel like it’s important that a friend should be able to tell me things that are weird without them having to worry that I’ll call them a moron about it, even if I think they’re being a bit nuts on whatever the topic is).

So, anyway, I was on the side of stating that taking online IQ tests until you find one that tells you you’re a genius (and subsequently wants to sell you a membership to their high IQ society) might not be a great idea… but then I remembered that Mensa was a real thing. And they had a pre-test you could take online to see if you could possibly join their high IQ society (I can see how there could be some irony here, but I’d point out that Mensa has known standards for admission, and it’s pre-test doesn’t pretend that it’s an IQ exam).

So, Mensa requires that your IQ put you in the top 1% of society before you can join. If you use an IQ test, it must be administered by a professional (like a psychologist) and be normalized. In other words, they don’t dick you around.

This pre-test though, it was just meant to say whether or not you should even bother making the attempt to join. He talked me into taking it. So, we talked over the phone, went to the website and took the pre-test at the same time so we could compare results when finished.

We did. And ‘lo and behold, they told me I was a pretty good candidate for their club. I was pretty surprised, that didn’t mean I could get in, just that they felt like I was swift enough of mind that it’s not ridiculous for me to attempt to join.

Cool. I could take the real test. My friend, he was very nicely told that while he’s more than welcome to try to take the real test, they advise against it. He just didn’t quite make the scores on the pre-test that indicates that he’d do well enough to become a member.

That told me a couple of things, 1) they weren’t so full of shit that they’d take anyone willing to take the test, and 2) I was invited and he wasn’t.

That second part made me feel weird. I was unexpectedly excited (what if I really am a super-genius?) and it also made me feel bad for my friend, who had wanted it much more badly than I did (my worry didn’t last long though, he was fine).

So, yeah, I got where Wesley was coming from here. And believe it or not, that whole long story of mine flashed through my head when Wesley and his buddy were having their conversation. I get Wesley’s issue.

So – like I was saying, I was excited that I was invited to move on up to the next level of Mensa membership, but I did feel bad for my friend, just like Wesley was excited to moving on up to Starfleet training but knowing that his friend won’t be joining him.

So, yay, I’m on board with this. And to be honest, they’ve really toned down Wesley’s awfulness in the back half of the first season. So much so that I think almost all of the Wesley hate was centered around that first half-season of the show. He got way less annoying.

That isn’t to say he’s in any danger of becoming my favorite character on the show, but he and Tasha both seemed to have quit with the crazy behavior that made me hate them both so much early in the show’s run.

Huh, I just remembered I was supposed to be doing a recap here. I know it’s tough to read this stuff, my eyes glaze over when I see a recap coming, even though that seems to be the new sexy thing to do on the internet these day. Goofy kids and their episode recaps.

So, uh, Wesley goes planetside and begins his Starfleet exams, meanwhile, Captain Picard gets a visit from an Admiral that orders Picard’s full cooperation in an investigation that his assistant, Commander Remmick, is to conduct about the short history of the Enterprise-D.

So, Remmick begins being a dick, Riker gets pissed, gets very petulant, complains to Picard, is told to quit being a baby, and then we get back to Wesley.

Wesley is competing with three other applicants for a single position in Starfleet Academy. It makes me think right away that they are being way too selective. Granted, Wesley is 15 years old, so I wouldn’t be jumping up and down to let him into Starfleet either, but they’ll only be admitting one (that’s 1!) person from that sector (or quadrant, whatever) to go to the Academy that year.

That’s pretty selective, right? How big is Starfleet? I remember that the Federation has something like 150 worlds, give or take, so that’s a lot of people. Seems like from a pool of, I guess, in the ballpark of at least a trillion people (150 worlds x 10 billion per planet = 1.5 Trillion. I rounded down in case 10 billion per planet is too high, but even if I’m off by an order of magnitude, and it’s 100 billion, that’s still a lot of people) they can come up with more than just a handful of applicants.

Which means that there is a lot of folks out there that might be exceptional people that don’t make the grade.

Actually, let me think this through a bit more carefully, we’ll keep the 1 trillion number for the sake of easy arithmetic, if the average lifespan of an individual in the Federation is 100 years, and we assume a more or less even distribution of age in societies, then we’d probably have 10 billion souls, on average, at any given age you might pick. So if the prime age for applying to Starfleet is 17 – 20 then that means you’d have 40 billion people of the right age.

Let’s take the Mensa percentage of that, 1%, and say that’s our best and brightest, the ones that actually have the mental fortitude to learn Warp Theory and Klingon Poetry and all that, that still means you’ve got 400 million folks to deal with.

I mean, we can really do whatever we want to cut the numbers more. It’s ridiculous to think the top 1% will all apply (although it’s made clear that this is the single best thing to do in the 24th century and just about everyone wants to be in Starfleet, so I’d guess the application rate is pretty high). So let’s say of that top 1% that’s eligible, only 1% actually apply.

One percent of one percent means 4 million applicants per year to Starfleet Academy.

Remember, Wesley is in a group of only four people at this facility that will represent their quadrant (whatever) that year, and only one of them will actually make it. Unless there are a million quadrants (if there are, then future people don’t know what that word means, or I should pay attention to what word they actually used in the episode) or there has been a pretty intensive weeding out process.

But why?

I don’t know how big Starfleet is, but I get the impression that they’ve got ships scattered all across the explored portions of the galaxy, and terraforming projects, and starbases, and colonies, and science stations, etc. You need a large number of recruits to maintain that presence. I think we’ve decided that they can be as selective as they want to be and still have more people than they know what to do with at the end of the day. So what’s the deal with only one person making it? Do they plan on having a graduating class of 30 or something? They probably need to graduate 100,000 people per year to maintain all the infrastructure already in place (I pulled that number out of my ass, but now that it’s out there I might as well stick to it).

So, the whole thing here is pretty stupid.

Unless – all the people here are applying as an exception. Wesley is too young, the Benzite is too… um, blue, the Vulcan is too old, I don’t know. Maybe this is some sort of special case application to Starfleet. In which case it sorta might make some sense.

I don’t think so, but if I’m going to watch this episode, I have to come up with some rationale that doesn’t end with me throwing my own feces at the Television like an enraged monkey.

Where was I? Oh, Remmick continues to be a dick, Riker realizes that it’s Picard that’s under investigation, and then he and the crew all say how awesome Picard is, despite the fact that almost every week since they’ve taken the ship out of space dock they’ve all just about died. Often due to decisions that Picard is making.

Wesley bonds with another applicant, not he girl that won’t shut up about how unfair it is that Wesley is on a ship already, or that he’s smart already (she’s out, no complainers in Starfleet) and Wesley and his friend are clearly are the only two candidates for the only spot.

The psych test is the final part. It’s meant to show you your greatest fear. Wesley is scared it will reveal he’s a coward. No one will talk about it, but everyone says it’s pretty brutal. Turns out Wesley’s is just a big thing about having to choose who to save in a triage sort of situation (If it were me, it would be getting eaten by a shark, whilst drowning, in an underwater cave, in the dark… shudder).

Wesley kicks the test’s ass.

So that kid that Wesley beat out to get to take the actual Mensa test? Sorry, Starfleet exam? He steals a shuttle with plans of joining a space circus or something. Then immediately remembers that he can't actually fly a shuttlecraft. As he's plummeting to his death above the planet, Picard calmly saves the day by talking the shuttle out of crashing, not really, he talks the kid into a daring maneuver that keeps him from dying and Remmick, who saw the whole thing, is stunned by how great Picard is.

Remmick decides that Picard and his crew are the most awesome people in Starfleet and wants to be transferred under Picard asap. Picard and Riker roll their eyes and then the Admiral confides in Picard that he had to be sure – that something evil has invaded Starfleet at the highest levels of command and he doesn’t know what, nor can he provide any proof, but Picard better keep his ear to the grindstone… wait, maybe it’s his nose to the ground. Dammit. I can’t remember.

Wesley ends up not getting into Starfleet. It appears it’s because that it’s because the Benzite guy won the math completion, which he wouldn’t have except when the Benzite guy had a meltdown in the middle of the test, Wesley just gave him the gentle coddling he needed so he could finish.

Except that wasn’t it at all. Wesley just flat out wasn’t good enough. Despite the Traveler saying he’s a genius among morons. Everyone gets back aboard the Enterprise, confused, and they all leave.

I didn't really take notes during this episode, I was gonna, but I didn't. So I don't have much more to point out specifically, but for what it's worth, my thoughts:

• Why the Admiral continued to be so coy after the Enterprise checked out as a-ok is beyond me. Of course, knowing what's coming later I understand, but still, it bugs me.
• That Remmick berated the crew for some of the adventures they had over the course of season one seemed weird. Especially about the Traveller incident. Starfleet DEMANDED he be allowed to conduct his experiments, it was over the protestations of the crew that he was allowed to run his tests. 
• Wesley drug a man through liquid hydrogen? Holy Geebus, he's going to have some skin damage.
• Speaking of that test. Wesley was in room 101. I'm pretty sure that's a 1984 reference
• Still speaking of that test. What the hell? That's a very elaborate scheme for seeing how Wesley would react. 

I'm on the fence about this episode, it's not good, but it's not awful either. And for season 1, not being awful is actually a pretty big step in the right direction. I may put together a season 1 summary post ofter I'm done with it, and if I do, this one might be in a top 5 list of the season's best episodes. Maybe. I'm at least thinking that it could be, I don't know. Stop with all the pressure.

My rating?

2 out of 5