4x09 Final Mission

[7.2/10] The plot of “Final Mission” is pretty uninvolving. Picard and Wesley are stranded with a rando on a desert planet. Riker and the rest of the crew have to push a giant garbage barge into the sun. The former have to deal with a water shortage. The latter have to deal with an asteroid belt. But the jeopardy feels mild and the problem-solving feels rote. It’s the sort of episode with a lot of plot movement without much plot progression; things tarry along in the absence of much tension or excitement.

But the plot isn’t really the point of “Final Mission.” The whole thing is an excuse to put Picard and Wesley in mortal danger before the young ensign heads off to Starfleet Academy. It’s a fig leaf so that Mr. Crusher can tell a potentially terminal Picard how he really feels when he believes he might not have another chance to and the Captain can do the same. The whole episode builds to the heart-to-heart between the wizened leader of men and the wet-behind-the-ears adolescent just getting started.

Thankfully, that part is good! It takes a lot of throat-clearing to get there, but if the key aim of this installment is, as I suspect, to bid goodbye to Wesley and tie a bow on his relationship with Captain Picard, “Final Mission” does so commendably. The circumstances under which Jean-Luc is on death’s door in an isolated cave while Wesley is working to save them are a bit contrived, but the results accomplish what they need to.

They give Wesley the chance to speak to Jean-Luc not just as a commanding officer, but as a surrogate father. Wesley’s monologue, uttered to a half-conscious Picard, is overwritten and, god bless Wil Wheaton, not especially well performed. But the sentiment is an affecting one. Wesley is beyond grateful for his time on the Enterprise and for the chance to serve under this captain. Wes tells Jean-Luc that all of his efforts to do well and strive to be great were an effort to make Captain Picard proud of him. That kind of gives poor Beverly the short shrift, but affirms the slow-burning father-son relationship that’s emerged between the two men over the past three and a half years.

And for his part, the only semi-lucid Picard freely admits his own attachment to and even envy of the boy. He feels guilty for bringing Wesley along on this doomed excursion simply because he wanted to spend more time with Wes before the young ensign left for Starfleet Academy. He expresses his vicarious excitement over the chance to be at the beginning of the great adventure again. And most importantly, he tells Wesley that he was always proud of him -- something that feels like a fib, but an endearing one.

Those moments are worth the price of admission for this one. The dialogue isn’t always spotless. The plotting to get there is more than a little clunky. But using Wheaton’s farewell episode (more or less) to vindicate his character’s relationship with the reluctant but avuncular captain is smart, since it’s been the most important relationship for the character across the show’s several seasons. (This is, again, kind of an insult to Dr. Crusher, but it is what it is.)

TNG tries to build up to this moment by setting up a Goofus and Gallant dichotomy between Picard and Dirgo, the mining shuttle “captain” who Jean-Luc and Wesley end up stranded with. Despite the impressiveness of his ship and his rank, Captain Picard is polite and deferential to his “colleague.” He keeps a cool head in a literally hot situation, making smart choices for survival and rescue while trying to protect his fellow travelers and build consensus and accord between them. Dirgo, by contrast, makes a big deal out of his “sturdy” ship, questions Picard’s authority, gripes about problems without offering solutions, drinks to escape his problems despite the fact that it’ll make it worse, and recklessly attempts quick-fixes to their situation without taking the time to think things through.

“Final Mission” isn’t terribly subtle about this dichotomy, but the episode still works as a miniature fable about why Picard’s method works and the problems with the alternative. Dirgo is mostly a strawman, cartoonishly ornery and recalcitrant about doing the right thing and/or rushing headlong into stupidity. But he’s a nice reminder that people exist outside of Starfleet and not all of them share the Picard-esque sense of enlightenment that Wesley wants to emulate.

Meanwhile, Riker and the rest of the crew have tough decisions to make of their own, as they have to push a radioactive garbage barge into a nearby star, while avoiding an asteroid field, lest its harmful rays debilitate the population of a nearby planet. The crew has to figure out how to do this quickly enough that they can still go search for their missing captain and ensign, without exposing the crew to too much radiation. It’s a largely mechanical, treknobabble-filled exercise, without much tension or a particularly clever solution. Its only real purpose is to create a ticking clock and prevent Jean-Luc and Wesley from being rescued immediately, and it accomplishes that much.

Likewise, the prospect of a force-field surrounded water fountain in the desert doesn’t provide much except for a chance for Dirgo to prove the error of his ways and for Wesley to play wunderkind one last time. Dirgo gets fossilized after setting off the fountain’s automated sentry in his haste, while Wesley takes a more deliberate and methodical approach, and gets the lifesaving liquid that preserves him and Captain Picard long enough to be rescued. None of this is terribly deep or well-thought out, but it’s fine as a last opportunity for Wesley to science his way to a solution to the problem of the week.

Better yet, the desert and cave-bound setting gives director Corey Allen and the show’s production team a good excuse to do some desert and cave-bound cinematography. There’s some well-composed shots here, with some particularly cool blocking and framing to convey the vastness of the arid landscape our heroes are traversing. The rush of the ghost-like sentry blowing Wesley away with light and wind makes for a unique shot as well. And while it’s much more simple in its construction, there’s intimacy in how an ailing Picard, who sacrificed his own well-being to move Wes out of harm’s way, is framed next to his surrogate child.

Their relationship was not always quite so warm. It wasn’t that long ago that Jean-Luc was complaining about having children on the bridge and treating Wesley as a pest. But over time, The Next Generation has done a good job of thawing the relationship between the two, turning Picard into a glowing mentor and not just a reluctant minder. The mutual appreciation and understanding between the two has been well-earned on the eve of a new chapter for the officer-in-training, and taking some time to cement it before Wheaton’s departure boosts an hour that would be all but bereft without it.

It’s hard not to read beyond the text here. Gene Roddenberry had died not long before “Final Mission”’s release, and there’s bits of him in its two main characters. Roddenberry himself admitted that Wesley was modeled at least a little after himself at fourteen. In Chaos on the Bridge, his colleagues described Picard as in-line with the way Roddenberry saw himself in his later years, a wise and benevolent father figure imparting wisdom to the next generation.

The best thing to say about “Final Mission” is that it not only resolves the relationship between the two characters, but between the two parts of the man who created them. Wesley stands for all those young people at the cusp of something new and exciting, and Picard stands for the elder generation there to help usher in the new crop of leaders and guide their path.

As the two men leave their temporary shelter holding hands, a sign of their bond, the episode honors both sides of the man who kicked off Star Trek and who eventually passed it on to other storytellers and creatives to carry on his legacy. The plot mechanics to get there might not be worth much, but the impulse, and the emotion, give this swan song everything it needs.