When the Bough Breaks (S1 ep 17)

So, remember when I used to talk about my childhood and stuff? Weird, I’ve got a lot more to say about all that, but at this point I’m honestly just trying to get through this first season… sigh, and the second, which might be better, but ain’t great. This shit is really wearing me down. I want to bang on my TV and shout at it to be better.

But it’s too late to save these old episodes, they were all made over 25 years ago - it’s probably too late to do re-shoots.

So what happened in this week’s mess? Well, Picard and the gang wonder into a system and happily discuss the legend of a whole world that was believed to be super awesome and all that, that is hidden in this system. Almost upon uttering those words, a planet appears and the crew are told they’ve reached the mythical world of Aldea.

Tori warns the crew that they’re (the Aldeans) up to no good because of her psychic mojo, and then before they know what’s happening the kids are all kidnapped, well, not ALL the kids, just the talented ones.

Because the population of Aldea is made up of morons, they decide that since they cannot have kids of their own any longer, for reasons they can’t figure out, they will just steal the children of the Enterprise to repopulate their planet - weird that they only took a few children for this, they must have a repopulation program that involves each child having about a million children of their own when they reach maturity.

But whatever, Picard tries to negotiate for the release of the children, but the Enterprise crew is helpless to take action, those Aldeans’ technology is way to advanced for anything the Enterprise can do.

Despite that, they figure out how to circumnavigate the shields around the planet and sabotage that computer, which is all fine and well I guess, and it’s probably the first time I think I’ve ever seen TNG do anything remotely like that. I mean, every other time they’ve had a problem they talked their way through it… well, except for when Wesley was kidnapped before and they were going to just kidnap him back… but that didn’t work out because they didn’t have the power to do it, so they ended up talking their way out of that problem anyway.

Whatever. So Dr Crusher takes about five-minutes and cures the Aldeans and now they can have kids, they’ve disabled their computer thanks to Riker and Data, and Wesley, who had talked all the kids into a hunger strike previously, get’s to go back home to the Enterprise.

Good god.

Below are some thoughts I had during the episode:

• Kids in the future do calculus when they're  pretty young. So, mathematical skills go way up - social skills go way down. Everyone in the future has Aspergers? I know, it’s not a real thing now, whatever.  
• A cloaked planet - can they cloak gravity? That seems like it would be really hard to do. I mean, Throw a rock out the window and see where it goes. I just figured out how to defeat planetary cloaking tech in about 2 seconds. I should be on the Enterprise. 
• I did like the music in the teaser. 
• Humans as aliens - again 
• Troi and her cryptic prophecies - actually, probably her most helpful piece of advice in the show to date. 
• Riker is eating with a two-tonged fork. I don’t know, seems dangerous. 
• I have a solution to the Aldean dilemma. Just call earth and have them ship over all the orphans. 
• Seriously, the Aldeans solution to their problem is so stupid. 
• Kid actors - not always great. 
• Some trivia I picked up somewhere - McKenzie Westmore was one of the little girls in this episode. She’s grown up to be the host of the awesome SyFy show, Face Off. 
• Their computer is ‘hundreds of centuries’ old. My iPhone 4 died after about a year. 
• That tool for producing sculptures seems an awful lot like cheating. You just point it at an object and it becomes art. 
• The lady explaining to Wesley how the world works has no idea what is behind the door next to their main computer. That’s a bit odd. 
• “Why do you want them [your children] back so badly? You can always have more.” When you put it that way… 
• After dismissing, out of hand, every request to see the children, Picard asks again and the guy is like, ‘okay.’ If you’re going to have convictions you need to stick by them. 
• The covert medical exam of the Aldean lady is an awkward scene 
• Don’t get the whole, ‘you have to accept our offer’ business. They’ve already taken the kids, they might as well just dump the promised trade (info or tech, I forget) and lock up their planet again. 
• The musical instrument is just as much cheating as the sculpting tool. You just think of music and their machine produces it. Um, okay. That’s not what I think of as artistry. 
• Wesley even sleeps in his Rainbow colored sweater 
• The Aldeans have had undiagnosed radiation poisoning for a long time. Maybe they aren’t so advanced after all. 
• The Plan for Riker and Data to sneak down and sabotage the planet’s shield is the first overtly aggressive action I think I’ve seen them take on the show. And this is the second time so far this season that having kids on the enterprise has led to trouble surrounding aliens (remember when Wesley was sentenced to death for stepping on some flowers?). 
• The model for the planet’s shield generator is amazing! Wow, the whole set looked super shitty and then this amazing looking model shows up at the end. So all over the place with the production in this show. 
• And Dr Crusher managed to cure everyone on the planet of radiation poisoning. Of course. 
• The little girl runs onto the bridge and give Picard flowers, and apparently sticks a Tribble on his back because she wanted to play a prank, I guess. Or maybe Wesley put her up to it. I don’t know. The whole thing reeks of weirdness. 

So, in the end, this episode is pretty awful. I hated it because it was based on a pretty stupid premise and then they tried to treat said premise seriously. Also, kids tend not to be great actors and the production wasn’t great (aside from the great shield generator which looked great). Great. 

In all, this shows continues to amaze with this long run of horrid episodes right out of the gate here. Aside from The Big Goodbye nothing has been even remotely well done. At this point I don’t see a lot of hope for this show ever being good.

My rating?

1 out of 5