4x02 Family

[10.0/10] Picard punches his brother in the face. Old wounds beget anger. Anger begets laughter. Laughter beget tears. In a moment of vulnerability for the unflappable captain, he comes clean to one of the few people in the universe with enough shared history to understand him. He talks about the torture he was put through, about the things he was made to do against his will, about his self-loathing at not having been strong enough to resist. He tells his brother, in so many words, that he’s not okay.

And it’s the most powerful moment in all of Star Trek.

Spock’s sacrifice is outstanding. The losses of the Dominion War would give us plenty reason to be moved. And even the likes of Voyager and Enterprise had their moments of pathos and catharsis. But for all the drama and tragedy this franchise has explored over the past fifty years, just give me Jean Luc Picard, the unshakable leader and decorated officer, spilling his guts in the mud, and soon enough I’ll be right there with him.

“The Best of Both Worlds” doesn't fully work without that scene, without this epilogue to show the effect it had on our hero. If the Borg capture and assimilation were just another bump in the road, another weekly challenge conquered and forgotten, it would diminish its impact. Instead, The Next Generation gives us the personal aftermath of those events. We see the after effects of the tear that rolled down Picard’s cheek as he faced assimilation, of his shell-shocked pronouncement to Riker that he remembers “everything,” of his unsteady grip on his trademark cup of earl grey tea as he reflects on what he’s been through.

“Family” gives the events of the Borg attack a price and a cost, and that’s a big part of what makes this stealthy trilogy of episodes still so gripping and meaningful all these years later.

But it’s not just about the trauma that emerges from misfortunes and injustice and unspeakable events. It’s about the bonds with the members of our families who help us through them, who give us strength in our weakest moments and solace in our hardest ones.

Occasionally, though, they can just embarrass us in our proudest moments. For as heavy and moving an episode as “Family” is, it’s also a hilarious one. Most of that falls on Worf or, more accurately, his parents. While the Enterprise is undergoing repairs and much of the crew is enjoying a bit of well-earned shore leave, Worf gets an unexpected visit from his mom and dad, seemingly there to fawn over their not-so-little boy and, in his father’s case, tour every last bulkhead he gained access to.

What follows is some endearingly relatable parental cringeyness. The parents who bring up amusing but awkward stories about a solemn adult’s less distinguished childhood (something Spock can relate to), the dad who’s a bit of a busybody, the mom ushering him along, are all a little broad but still such warm and real touches. This is an episode big on speeches and tender moments, but it’s those smaller, sillier bits, like parental shtick that could make a Klingon blush, or playful banter between an old captain and his young “uncle” that make these characters truly feel like family.

Wesley Crusher’s story, on the other hand, has no such luxury. Instead, Wesley can only watch a hologram message from his father, recorded ten weeks after he was born, that his dad intended him to see when he grew up. It’s a tough thing to deposit into the episode with little build, freighted with the baggage of Jack Crusher’s death and the blow that was to Wesley, Beverly, and even Jean Luc.

But it’s a beautifully written piece that manages to soar despite the degree of difficulty, one that conveys the overarching theme of the episode. Even across distances, family gives us strength and connects us. Jack Crusher may be gone. Wesley Crusher may still be reaching for the father he never truly knew. But Jack is still a part of his son, in the same way that Beverly is, that his grandparents are, that the lifeblood of people who loved Wesley and who loved the people who loved him lives on him. There is a connection there that can’t be broken, even if it’s hard for Wesley to feel it sometimes.

Worf, against all odds, feels it too. The story of his parents’ visit isn’t just about the silly annoyance that parental visits bring. It’s about whether his human mother and father can understand him or his dishonor, given how both are draped in Klingon tradition and culture. Worf verbalizes his concern that no human could, and Sergey and Helena recount the hardship of raising a Klingon boy in a human world.

But Guinan reassures them that however Worf immersed himself in Klingon culture, he still thinks of the two of them as home. Worf himself tells them that he wasn’t sure he wanted them to come at first, but that he’s glad they’re here. And in episode’s most touching moment (no small feat), his parents reassure him that even if they don’t understand all the details of Klingon honor, they understand enough to know what it means to their son, and that they love and support him and are proud of him no matter what.

The moment where Worf takes his father’s hand, and his mother embraces both, tugs the heartstrings in the best way. Worf is the obverse of Wesley here. He is not related to these people by blood, or even by culture, but nonetheless they are his family, and that cuts through all else that could divide them, and makes them loving kin.

That’s what Picard needs in order to make it past the trauma of his assimilation, or if nothing else, to at least admit it to himself so as to take the first step toward healing. As his brother Robert makes sure to let him know, Picard is a proud man, one who could hardly brook the notion that he is scared, hurt, and unsure of himself. “Family’s” opening scene lays it on a little thick, but Picard needed to return home to find himself again, after the Borg “took everything” from him.

At first, that seems like a dead end. His family home is not immediately a place of warmth, but a place of old disagreements and resentments. As Picard’s old friend puts it, Jean Luc always looked to the future while his brother (and father) tried to hold onto the past. Robert is striving to preserve the old ways and with them, his old values, while Jean Luc wants to respect his family’s traditions without being bound by them.

It is a struggle of old and new that seems to be the thrust of this piece of the episode, one exacerbated by Robert’s son, Renee, and his seeming desire to follow in his “nephew”’s footsteps. That’s no pleasure for Robert, who apparently described his brother as an “arrogant son of a bitch,” admits to being jealous of his champion younger sibling over the years, and gives his brother a frosty reception after twenty years apart.

And yet, it’s not the conflict between past and future that drives the Picards’ story. It’s the internal conflict within Picard, about whether to give up his life in Starfleet to supervise the Atlantis Project (something just nerdy enough to rouse his interest), and, more broadly, about whether to continue in the fight having been through so much or to retreat to the terrestrial life his father might have wanted for him.

Savvy viewers know there’s little danger of Picard ceasing to be the captain of the Enterprise, even in 1990. But “Family” earns that moment. It earns it in mud and tears and genuine wine. It earns it in the unexpected embrace of an older sibling who never liked his little brother, but who’s still looking after him decades later. It earns it in how even that vineyard-ridden grump lets his son dream about the stars, seeing that his rotten, stuck-up younger sibling didn’t turn out so bad after all.

In the end, Robert helps Jean Luc accept his trauma, and Picard returns to the Enterprise, knowing himself, and his family, a little better. It’s a testament to the ability of our familial connections to bridge great divides, between humans and Klingons, between past and future, between parents and children, and between life and death itself. In that, “Family” is the necessary afterimage of the Borg attack, one that acknowledges how much our hero has suffered and breaks him back down, so the people who care about him can build him back up.