Star Trek 279: Journey's End

279. Journey's End

FORMULA: The Paradise Syndrome + The Ensigns of Command + Where No One Has Gone Before

WHY WE LIKE IT: Creating the model for the Maquis.

WHY WE DON'T: Wesley's destiny as the Warp Messiah.

REVIEW: Journey's End is important for two reasons. One, it wraps up Wesley Crusher's arc begun in Where No One Has Gone Before, and two, it creates a template for the Maquis who will become an important aspect of both Deep Space 9 and Voyager. Unfortunately, despite its historical importance, the episode is a big failure.

Let's start with Wesley. His strained return from the Academy might make sense in the context of The First Duty, but only if he were some other character. He's just a big jerk, and that doesn't jibe with any of the relationships he's forged on the Enterprise. His thread has him meet Lakanta, who turns out to be the traveler who had prophesied that he had a great destiny. Just how long had the traveler been masquerading in the colony as Lakanta? And what about that vision of Wesley's dead father? We're sliding more and more into science fantasy every week, and that's not a good thing. From then on, he's beaming away like he's joined a cult. Creepy. So it turns out he has what it takes to become a traveler, which again, seems pretty magical. But is any of this in character?

The Cardassian/Federation DMZ is a good idea to intensify drama for Deep Space 9, but it could have used a more allegorical treatment. Asking American Indians to move AGAIN is just too on the nose. It's also ridiculous that the colony not trusting Picard hinges on the hitherto unknown ancestor's actions, especially when that ancestor is Spanish and the name Picard is not. It would have been incredibly easy to model the colony after Native cultures who clashed with New France instead. The word "Indian" itself makes me edgy, probably because Canada doesn't handle Native issues the same way as the U.S. and where the word is both inaccurate and very close to being a racial slur. In any case, Picard's diplomatic solution is so simple, I'm just surprised no one thought of it before.

The only redeeming features really are the time stop effect, which was pretty cool, and the way they treated Admiral Nechayev, redeeming her as a character, and a nice character detail in an episode equally devoted to diplomacy and curtosy.

LESSON: Apparently, Space Indians equate humanoids like Klingons with animals.

REWATCHABILITY - Medium-Low: The only reason to watch it is its relevance to other episodes, but you're going to be disappointed every time.