4x07 Reunion

[8.0/10] K’Ehleyr lays dying. With her last breath, she speaks not to identify her killer, but to beckon her only son. She puts his tiny hand in Worf’s, a small but momentous gesture to forge a bond between father and son in her absence. Her own hand goes limp as the life fades away from her, and Worf howls in grief and mourning.

Reader, it moved me. By all accounts, it shouldn’t have. It’s more symbolic than it is naturalistic. It smacks of contrivance that Worf and Alexander find her together at just the right time to experience her last moments. The moment feels big and showy and staged for television, rather than small and intimate and true-to-life. On any measure, it should run directly contrary to my tastes and sensibilities.

But far be it from me to deny the power of that moment. The relationship between Worf and K’Ehleyr has been fraught from the beginning. The sense of desire for friendship and family between them, held back by their differences and by cultural shame, is a painful one. Worf wants to be K’Ehleyr’s husband. He wants to be Alexander’s father. But he refuses to subject either to the shame of his discommendation, refuses to let them be infected with his ignominy, despite his efforts to spend time with both.

And yet, in the end, it is the only choice for him. It is both Klingon and human, to set aside duty and decorum because of deeply-held personal feelings. Worf sets aside his reluctance to be a parent, sets aside his duties as a Starfleet officer and an excommunicated Klingon warrior, because someone dear to him has been taken away. There is power in that, in great loss forging great pain but also great connection, and it fuels the heights of “Reunion”.

It’s a good thing that the episode can pack that emotional punch because it’s a startlingly plotty episode. “Reunion” is a sequel not only to “The Emissary”, with K’Ehleyr returning to the Enterprise with a child conceived during that episode, but also to “Sins of the Father”, with the Klingon Chancellor dying, Duras vying for the throne, and Worf having to reckon with his discommendation. That alone would be a lot to deal with in a single hour, but then TNG throws in a murder mystery and Picard as the arbiter of succession on top of it. Despite its overall success, this one really should have been a two-parter to be able to fully sell everything going on.

Still, despite feeling very packed-in in places, the episode is economical about the notes it needs to hit. A few short scenes between Worf and Alexander stand in nicely for the pair’s budding relationship. A quick description of Worf’s bat’leth and its familial importance sets up the added resonance it has when he uses the weapon to slay the Klingon who befouled his family name. Brief moments with Duras and Gowron work to establish each as suspects in K’mpec’s murder. There’s not time for much more, but these brief interludes give the audience the flavor of these relationships and setups.

The murder mystery even works well as a spine for the proceedings. All else equal, I’d rather we had more time to spend with Worf’s reactions to both the personal and political in “Reunion”. But the question of who killed the Chancellor gives Picard something meaningful to do. His efforts to delay the proceedings with arcane law and ritual to fulfill K’mpec’s investigatory request are entertaining and clever, and as always, Picard shows an admiral steeliness that makes him well-suited to deal with the Klingons. And it also lets the audience play the guessing game. Between Duras’s past mendaciousness and Gowron’s reputation as an outside agitator and loaded threats toward K’ehleyr, there’s a genuine question of who’s to blame for poisoning K’mpec.

But as superficially compelling as the intricacies of Klingon politics are, the real meat of the episode comes in Worf’s reaction to all of this. The man who sullied his father’s good name is at risk of becoming chancellor. He has a child he cannot acknowledge and a mate he cannot marry for fear of contaminating them with his shame. There’s a lot of high volume emotions in this one, but it works given what’s at issue and what’s at stake: a deep desire for family and community held at arm’s length by cultural disapprobation.

Of course, those two things combine when K’Ehleyr figures out what happened with Duras and is killed for her trouble. Suzy Plakson’s sly wit is always welcome on the show, and it’s a shame to see her go here. But she dies unraveling the conspiracy and standing up to a craven bully, going out while staying true to who she is, which I can appreciate.

At the end of the day, Worf has to be true to who he is as well. It’s not just an empty gesture when he sheds his Klingon baldric and his Starfleet combadge to go challenge Duras in combat. It is a recognition that this is an action he takes for himself, as a person who feels for his lover and his family, not as a member of his species or a citizen of the Federation. He acknowledges K’Ehleyr as his mate and cuts through his discommendation, along with Duras’s chest. The normally reserved Klingon loses control in his way, consumed with emotion over the accumulation of so many wrongs, taken out upon their author.

To be honest, it’s a little shaky in terms of world-building that Picard lets him off with a reprimand for it. I can buy that the Klingons accept it as a matter of right and there’s no international incident. But Picard’s speech about the people who choose to serve in Starfleet needing to accept its rules and principles no matter their personal beliefs is fair. However exemplary Worf’s service, however understandable his rage, however justified his actions are by Klingon custom, it’s questionable, at best, that Starfleet would tolerate one of its officers perpetrating and extra-judicial killing, no matter the circumstances.

Still, I’m willing to let it slide because (a.) I obviously want Worf to remain on the show, even if discharge or reassignment or at least a tribunal seems like the more likely outcome and (b.) because Worf killing Duras is an acceptance that his feelings, his bonds with family and friends, mean more than rituals and protocols. He stands up to his foe despite discommendation not merely for honor, but to avenge someone he loves. It is very Klingon, in a way that K’Ehleyr might easily have both appreciated and disdained at the same time.

And yet, I’d think she’d cherish what comes next. Worf’s liberation from the strictures of Klingon custom and expectation, sacrifices made for the good of an Empire that doesn’t return his loyalty, truly takes hold when a little boy’s future hangs in the balance.

Whatever the costs, Worf tells Alexander that he is his father. He knows what it’s like to be an orphan at the hands of a conniving Duras plot. He knows what it’s like to need a family, to need support and guidance on how to navigate the world. So he embraces his child, literally and figuratively, honoring the dying wish of the woman he loves. And more than that, he gives in to his own wishes, unburdened by the hollow structures that would caution against it. Subtle, it is not. But it is moving, sad, and triumphant all at once, to see Worf take his son’s hand, with everything that comes with it.