PRIORITY ONE MESSAGES for TNC TNG s7e23 "Emergence"

This episode is a perfect chance for me to jump into the conversation, and forgive me that when I say “conversation” I actually mean shout into the void and then get back to work — I really should be lesson planning this morning (high school English). The fan communities around TNC are awesome but I usually only have time to listen and I’ve only recently joined the Patreon in celebration of the end of TNG. “Emergence” is a core memory of Trek for me. While Star Trek as a franchise has lauded moments of deep and mature philosophical storytelling in its library, there’s this other side of it’s traditional episodic history that is the cause of so many 80s and 90s coming of age sci-fi fans to latch on and never let go. “Emergence”, when I was 13, blew my mind. As a quick aside, much earlier in the show’s run, my parents would watch the show in syndication, and a much younger me walked in on the admiral being blown to bits in season one’s “Conspiracy”, so, yeah, it took a while for me to come back. But, that’s why old school syndication Trek was the golden era of it. Any given episode of the show was a pilot episode for the right person at the right time. Look at the conference room scene of “Emergence”, and you can see how Junior High me, a kid now playing AD&D and drawing comics during Spanish class, is being fed premium grade sci-fi dope. The crew takes turns giving this silly rundown of how the ship systems match biological systems, right? That’s perfect, though! The SENSORS see! Cool! The communications systems are how the ship listens and talks. Great! Now I know that! What’s a replicator? THAT’S a replicator! Baller! Oh, and by the way, this whole meeting is conducted by this instantly lovable robot that is revealing that the ship, you know, a machine, is developing sentience — look how the ship’s made up sci-fi brain is a pretty LCARS picture just like MY brain is a pretty LCARS picture. No way, so cool! It’s shortly after this that Troi is given this task to do and adult us break it down to more misuse of her character, but these were the hints that the rediscovering TNG kid that I was needed to round out the crew in my head. Picard does this. Riker does this. Geordi and Data do a lot of things together (hubba hubba). Troi does this. Word gets made fun of. It’s an instant buy. Junior High was this brilliant age where you’re old enough to feel your mind expanded by possibility, but young enough that after “Emergence” is over you head to the back yard with your buddy to replay the episode with homemade wooden tricorders. Holodeck episodes are so tiresome, except when they are your first one, and then it doesn’t matter how incomplete the train metaphor is — you fill in the rest with your own developing mythos. After all, you only have a couple of out of sequence syndicated re-run episodes to work with in your personal watch history. “Emergence” is a bad Junior High level fantasy comic, and I love it for it. This is why TNG became my show because it was my SHOW. I remember how quickly my identity got wrapped in it, and almost immediately I had to deal with the upcoming series finale. Do you remember the first time you realized your favorite show doesn’t go on forever? I was shattered. I just GOT this thing. Anyway, this is why I love Star Trek still in my 40s and why I am still trying all the new Trek — it’s my identity. But, it’s also why so much new Trek fails. Every episode of Star Trek should be like a single comic book: I like the cover, hey I’ve got five bucks, that was a fun little read, I wonder what else is possible in this world? The heavy trudge of serialized storytelling just doesn’t match the magic of my first love.

Okay so I finally listened to my podcast episode and this episode is the nerd equivalent to Attached for me in terms of episodes that come so close to being the culmination of my fanfic desires before dashing them entirely. I want to believe that Picard and Beverly are super duper in love and I want to believe the Enterprise-D is alive. There was a chance here for a truly unique intelligence but there just wasn't the writing to deliver upon that. Forget Kirk, the most disappointing death in Generations is the Enterprise-D. Oh and I deliberately skipped the episode Preemptive Strike because I choose to believe Ensign Roe is in a loving committed relationship with Riker and Troi where everything is fine for them.

Alex Jahans (Dyah-hans)