4x04 Suddenly Human

[6.8/10] I wish I liked “Suddenly Human” more than I do. The guts of it are good and involve some time-tested Star Trek ideas. Picard is uncomfortable with children and yet forges a connection with one. Human values have to be balanced against respect for other cultures. It’s a character story that focuses on the internal experience of a new player whose story is sci-fi and yet has resonance to real life events. Those are all solid building blocks for a good episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but “Suddenly Human” just doesn’t reach the heights it ought to.

The episode centers on the Enterprise encountering a disabled Talarian ship, where the away team unexpectedly discovers a human boy mixed in with the aliens aboard. They discover this young man, named Jono, was taken by the Talarians as a child after they destroyed a Federation colony, and that he’s actually the grandson of a noted Starfleet admiral. Picard in particular has to wrestle with whether to teach him about his past and return him to his remaining relatives, or return him to the only family he’s ever known despite the harsh expectations of Talarian life.

There’s plenty of potential to that story. If there’s one Star Trek plot that almost never wears out, it’s characters struggling with how far their tolerance for other cultures and Starfleet protocols can extend when their gut tells them something’s wrong. The situation with Jono is particularly acute because it involves a wrong affecting an innocent child, taken by the people who killed his parents, and raised in a sexist, militaristic society that offends Federation sensibilities.

But despite some initial concerns about abuse (handled surprisingly well by the show, honestly) Picard eventually discovers that Jono is well-loved by Talarian standards. His injuries are from youthful exuberance and recklessness rather than abuse. His adoptive father, a Talarian captain named Endar, cares for the boy and would go to war for his return. Endar even lost a son of his own in a battle with the Federation and is permitted by his people’s custom to adopt a child of his enemy in return. This isn’t a simple case of “villainous species does bad,” but a much more interesting case of “shades of gray species has different, but comprehensible values.”

A few problems, however, keep “Suddenly Human” from reaching its potential in exploring these ideas. One of them is that Jono is just kind of annoying. Actor Chad Allen (Tommy Westphall himself) doesn’t do a bad job exactly, but his performance is very outsized, with a lot of high volume emotions and not a lot that feels intimate and real. It doesn’t help that Jono is petulant and grouchy. That makes sense for a teenager ripped away from the only home he’s ever known! But that doesn’t make it much fun for the audience to hang around with him for forty-five minutes.

There’s also just not enough time for the stories the episode wants to tell. You have a fairly traditional “characters who are initially at odds become close with one another’ tale between Picard and Jono here. Picard bristles at having to look after an adolescent (for convenient reasons). Jono chafes at having to live by human standards rather than amid the Talarian culture he’s used to. By the end, the two understand one another better, and there’s even a very wholesome, low-key moving moment at the close of the episode. Jono demonstrates that he no longer sees Picard as an alien or a walking contaminant, by removing his glove and embracing Picard as he did his father, a gesture of kindness and intimacy set up by prior lines of dialogue and Jono’s similar embrace with Endar.

But as touching as that gesture is, it’s not as impactful as it could be because there’s not enough intermediate steps between the two points. That’s not the episode’s fault, exactly. There’s some token connective tissue, but dethawing from a lifetime of being raised in one culture and then suddenly being exposed to another would take weeks, maybe years, and “Suddenly Human” tries to cover it in days, maybe hours. Prickly Picard having to deal with a teenager against his will and coming to care for his unexpected ward is a good story, but it would take time to really sell that similar melting period, and though it tries, this installment just doesn’t have the real estate to do so.

It doesn’t help that the dialogue here isn’t particularly strong or convincing. As compelling as the issues of one’s biological history versus one’s cultural upbringing are, especially as complicated by war and kidnappings, this is one of those episodes where the crew of the Enterprise discusses them as though they’re all a part of some sort of essay contest rather than like human beings who are emotionally invested in the situation. As a show that deals with high-minded philosophical questions, there’s always the risk of falling into stollid speechifying, but that’s particularly damaging here with a story that depends so heavily on emotional investment.

Because the crux of “Suddenly Human” is Jono being unable to cope with the pain of being a child of two worlds, to the point where he’d seemingly rather die than be torn away from his adoptive father and the culture he was raised in, especially when it would mean the trauma of confronting the loss of his biological parents.

There’s a tough decision there: respecting Jono’s autonomy despite his young age, forgiving on a de facto basis the trespasses of the Talarians in taking him away in the first place, knowing that Jono will be seemingly stripped of the joyous parts of Federation life like laughter and banana splits. But that makes it meaningful when Picard averts war and honor’s his son-for-a-day’s wishes, because however hard it is to let him return, emotionally and philosophically, it’s the best thing for the boy’s well-being.

I just wish “Suddenly Human” did a better job of exploring those worthy ideas. Sometimes the most frustrating episodes of Star Trek are the ones where you can see the raw possibilities of the ideas, and a few shining moments give you a glimpse of a better and possibly even profound version of the episode we’re left with instead. The story of Picard and Jono definitely falls into that category -- a good idea practically begging for more time, greater conviction, and realer emotions.