“Suddenly Human”
Written by Ralph Phillips and John Whelpley & Jeri Taylor
Directed by Gabrielle Beaumont
Season 4, Episode 4
Production episode 40274-176
Original air date: October 15, 1990
Stardate: 44143.7
Captain’s Log: The Enterprise responds to a distress call from a Talarian observation craft. Data points out that the Talarians have used their observation craft as bait in the past—rescue teams have beamed over and then set off booby traps. Another Talarian ship is en route, but it’s hours away. Despite the risk, Picard sends a team over. They find four Talarian teenagers—and one human teenager. All the children, including the human, are in uniforms, and Riker figures it to be a training ship.
The kids are all injured with radiation burns, and Crusher beams them back to the ship. Jono is the human kid, and he’s the only one who isn’t suffering radiation burns. However, Jono has completely assimilated into Talarian culture—he considers himself one of them, and demands that he and his four brothers be returned to Captain Endar immediately. At one point, all five emit a high-pitched wail, which Jono later describes as the B’Nar—the mourning. When Worf escorts him to quarters, he lets loose with the wail again, until he is reunited with his brothers (who are still in treatment in sickbay). Crusher is also concerned because she finds many bones that were broken, and remnants of a concussion.
Jono, it turns out, is Jeremiah Rossa, the grandson of Admiral Connaught Rossa. His parents were killed in a Talarian attack on the Galen IV colony. It was believed that no one survived, but Jeremiah was apparently taken in by the Talarians when he was four.
The only person Jono responds to is Picard. The Talarians are a patriarchal, authority-driven culture, and Troi tells Picard that he is the only person who can get through to him. It has to be a male—Talarian culture precludes Jono from listening to women (Jono at one point expresses confusion when Worf takes orders from Crusher)—and it has to be the person in highest authority on the ship.
Jono informs Picard that he usually stays with his captain, which Picard very reluctantly agrees to. Jono makes a hammock out of his bedsheets because the comfy bed hurts his back. Picard shows him images of his parents, which prompts memories of the attack on Galen IV that he has apparently repressed.
The Talarian warship Q’Maire arrives. Captain Endar identifies Jono as his son. Picard deems this “unacceptable,” but to avoid conflict, he invites Endar on board. Endar explains that he found a four-year-old boy on Galen IV. Having lost his own son to the Federation, Talarian culture allows him to claim the child of a slain enemy in return. Jono’s injuries were all sustained in accidents and horseplay, not from abuse.
Picard reluctantly agrees to let Endar see Jono. They immediately touch foreheads, a sign of affection among Talarians. When Endar asks Jono what he wants, he says he wants to go home with Endar, though he does hesitate. Endar goes back to the Q’Maire, leaving it to Picard to decide what to do with Jono—and to take the consequences of the wrong decision.
The Enterprise receives a recorded message from Admiral Rossa for Jono. This only serves to confuse and frustrate Jono further, especially when he realizes that his grandmother, a female, outranks Picard. Picard takes him to play handball to blow off steam, and he starts to remember what happened on Galen IV. It only makes things worse, because Jono was strong before he remembered these things.
In the middle of the night, Jono, conflicted between his Talarian upbringing and his awakening human memories and feelings, stabs Picard.
Two more Talarian ships show up, and Endar demands Jono be returned to him. Riker tells Endar that that isn’t possible because Jono’s in custody for trying to murder the captain. Endar points out that if Jono’d been returned when he asked, this would not have happened.
Jono admits to stabbing Picard and now awaits being put to death, as is proper. It’s the Talarian equivalent of sucide-by-cop, but he doesn’t realize that Starfleet doesn’t kill people for stabbing a captain. Jono reveals that his growing happiness as a human was a betrayal of Endar, and he was suicidally ashamed.
Picard brings Jono to the bridge and tells Endar that he will return him, admitting that the only crime committed on the Enterprise wasn’t Jono’s when he stabbed Picard, but Picard’s when he tried so hard to convince Jono that biology mattered more than upbringing—or a father’s love.
Talarian tradition is that they always wear gloves when around aliens so they don’t have to touch them. Before beaming back, Jono removes his gloves for the first time, and touches his forehead to Picard’s.
Thank You, Counselor Obvious: Troi presents a maddening dichotomy here. On the one hand, she’s the only one who is even remotely considerate of the fact that Jono is, in all the ways that matter, Talarian. On the other, she is the most vocal advocate for restoring him to his humanity by exposing him to as much of his human background as possible.
There is No Honor in Being Pummeled: Jono and Worf have only one scene together, which is a lost opportunity in an episode filled with them. After all, Worf and Jono were in similar situations, but their responses to it were 180 degrees apart. Though raised by humans, Worf did not assimilate, remaining true to his biological heritage. Nowhere in the episode is this blindingly obvious parallel even mentioned. Worf would’ve been a much better person to act as Jono’s father figure than Picard precisely because he also was orphaned at a young age after an attack on the colony where he was living.
The Boy!?: Wes gives Jono his banana split, but Jono isn’t used to using spoons, and wields it like a dagger, which results in Wes being splurted in the face with ice cream, which is sixteen kinds of awesome.
I Believe I Said That: “This no doubt is a variation on ‘pie in the face.'”
“Now do you see why it’s funny?”
“No, sir. But I will take your word for it. This is very amusing.”
Data and Riker after Jono accidentally splurts ice cream onto Wes’s face (which, I believe I mentioned, is sixteen kinds of awesome).
Welcome Aboard: Chad Allen does a very nice job as Jono, shortly before his career-making turn on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Sherman Howard, who at the time was playing Lex Luthor on Superboy, nicely combines menace and bombast with deep affection for his adopted son. Howard will return on Deep Space Nine as a Vulcan and Voyager as a Klingon.
Trivial Matters: The Talarians were first mentioned in “Heart of Glory,” and are first seen here.
The uniform worn by Connor Rossa in the image of him and his family that Data digs up from a decade and a half earlier is the old unitard seen in the first two seasons.
Picard still has the d’k tahg he was given when he was Worf’s cha’DIch in “Sins of the Father.” He keeps it on his desk, which makes it real easy for Jono to grab it and stab Picard with it.
Endar shows up as the Talarian ambassador to the Federation in Destiny: Mere Mortals by David Mack, which takes place a good fourteen years after this episode.
This episode is the first script by Jeri Taylor, who was hired to be on staff following this. She would go on to become Michael Piller’s second in command in the writers room on TNG, and become the show-runner for Voyager in its early years.
This was the second episode of the season filmed, and as with “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II,” LeVar Burton’s one and only scene had to be inserted later on due to having to undergo emergency surgery.
The episode apparently prompted outraged letters from people who viewed it as condoning sending a child back to an abusive parent, which were obviously written by people who didn’t actually pay attention to the episode.
Make it So: “I’ve always lived with my captain.” What a dreadful episode. It takes the entire 42 minutes for Picard to come to a realization that he should’ve had after spending any time at all with Jono. The crew comes across as arrogant and humanocentric to a degree that is the complete opposite of how we would expect a Federation crew to behave. This is a culture that has been shown to embrace cultural relativism to an almost appalling degree (cf. “Who Watches the Watchers?“), yet when confronted with this kid, suddenly they abandon all that?
There is a conflict to be had here, but Taylor doesn’t do anything with any of it. Picard, Crusher, and Troi speak in absolutes, that they must keep the kid and reunite him with his grandparents who thought he was dead, with nary a thought given to the possibility of letting him stay in the culture he’s been raised in. The issue of abuse is a legitimate one, but not one that’s given nearly enough weight—nor is the fact that it’s an admiral’s grandson we’re talking about. Political pressure from a ranking officer might have made this more compelling.
Some good ideas are presented and then just pissed away. To make matters worse, the Talarians just aren’t that interesting—Spartans with bumpy foreheads. Snore.
In the previous season, Michael Piller hired Ronald D. Moore and René Echevarria on the strength of “The Bonding” and “The Offspring,” respectively, two great episodes. The third time was not the charm, as there’s little in this script (or, indeed, much in any of her subsequent ones) to indicate why Piller thought Jeri Taylor would be a good hire.
The scene in Ten-Forward with the banana split is genius, but the rest of the episode is a gigantic wasted opportunity.
Warp factor rating: 3
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be a guest at Lunacon 2012 in Rye Brook, New York in the middle of March and at I-Con 31 in Stony Book, New York at the end of March. You should come see him. You should also go to his web site, as it is from there that you can a) order his latest books, b) go to his blog, his Facebook, and his Twitter, and c) check out the various podcasts he’s involved with: Dead Kitchen Radio, The Chronic Rift, and the Parsec Award-winning HG World.
I didn’t watch BoBW when it first aired, so I didn’t have the suspense of wondering if Picard survived. As a result, this may have been the most jaw-dropping episode of TNG that I ever saw. Looking back, however, I think that was a result of bad writing more than artful suspense.
The Picard and crew that I knew would probably have fought with the admiral about sending the boy back – defending his freedom to live as he would choose, etc. But, the majority of the episode had me convinced that they were supposed to keep him – that it would be an episode about the superiority of the Federation and its enlightenment over other backwards civilizations. When they let him go, I was shocked. I was sure the denounement would reveal that he attacked the captain to be forced to stay with humans and thus could leave without abandoning his “father.” Far-fetched, but it seemed reasonable based on the episode to that point. Like I said, not art.
The thing about Worf is what bugs me the most about this one.
There are very few episodes I would rate worse than this one. I give a deuce out of ten. If you didn’t show me the pictures I would have never remembered this awful episode even with the complete description. This is where Keith earns his pay. I recommend a bonus.
Ugh. Double-post. I’ll take this opportunity to ask if anyone else is going to the Tor.com leap-year party tomorrow?
I never really cared for this episode either, mainly because I saw no incentive to seeing an episode where the guest star acts like a brat the entire time, and then is contrite at the end. This episode is also what is preculding me from finishing the most recent Typon Pact novel, The Struggle Within (which is doubly shameful since it’s written by Christopher, and I love his work). Maybe I’ll be able to get past my prejudices for this episode, if anything so I can finish the novel, but the Talarians just aren’t interesting to me.
I rank this as one of the worst “Picard deals with children (something he hates)” episodes. “Disaster” is of course the best, but this one is almost as bad as him finding out he has a “son” in the 7th season…
Man, do I wish I had re-watched Disaster instead of this thing.
Count me as one of the people shocked that apparently no one on either side even vaguely considered having our “Suddenly Human” boy ponder making a visit to his relatives without pressuring and obligating him to give up everything he was raised with.
Jeri Taylor is a somewhat divisive individual, but it seems to me that Keith is needlessly harsh about her in this post. Her Trek writing credits include, among others, Final Mission, The Wounded, Galaxy’s Child, The Drumhead, Silicon Avatar, Unification Part I, The Outcast, Descent, The Maquis Parts I and II, Caretaker, Eye of the Needle, Resolutions, Real Life, Hunters, and One. Are those all classics? No, but none of them are without merit. So, despite the weaknessed of this particular episode, it’s flat-out wrong to say, as Keith did, that there’s little in “any of her subsequent [scripts]” to justify her hiring.
This gets to a larger issue, though. There’s a startling lack of nuance to Mr. DeCandido’s TNG rewatch, especially when compared to some others such as the TOS rewatch that preceded it and the ongoing Trek rewatch from The AV Club. Instead of thoughtfully critiquing the episodes as they are, many of his reviews boil down to, “Well, it would have been a better episode if this very specific thing had happened, or, this character should have done this instead of that.” This is just grousing and silly speculation, which really is not the job of a critic. KRAD, if you’re reading this, you’re a fine writer but you’re a poor critic, and you need to read some of the greats for guidance.
Forget the dodgy plotline – the worst thing about this episode by a country mile is the hideous ‘pop music’ Jono is listening to when Picard walks in. It’s as though the composer for the episode suddenly thought, ‘Well, this has to sound really awful, loud, and grimy… so, a bit of jazz noodling on the synths, then!’ Urgh. At least Patrick Stewart actually sells the line that he can’t hear a thing. Most of the time, when actors act as though they’re in a noisy room, they hardly raise their voice above talking level. This time, Picard screams his line.
Dyfta: Sorry you’re not liking my approach to the rewatch. FWIW, the Taylor-penned episodes you listed range, in my not-so-humble opinion from good-but-flawed to out-and-out awful. (Fair warning: Anybody who actually likes “The Drumhead” will probably want to skip my rewatch of that one.)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I agree that the Starfleet characters should have been more open to the idea that a human by biology could be a Talarian by culture — but what I like about this episode is that it’s refreshing to see a TNG episode where the heroes don’t behave as they should. “Suddenly Human” is cool because it exposes a blind spot in the Federation’s idealism, one that’s all too common in cultures that consider themselves to be especially enlightened and benevolent. I’ve always felt the reason the characters assumed Jono had been mistreated was because the Talarians were a warrior culture (and a very sexist one) and so the Federation folks unconsciously thought of themselves as superior to it and were predisposed to judge it harshly. True, they accept the Klingons, but they’ve had time to get to know them as allies and rise above that prejudice, whereas the Talarians, at the time of this episode, had historically been a hostile culture.
And let’s face it, the key difference between Jono and Worf is that Khitomer wasn’t attacked by the Intrepid. Jono/Jeremiah was adopted by the commander of the same military force that killed his parents — in a real sense, the man responsible for their death — so it’s not that surprising that our heroes perceived him as an undeclared prisoner of war rather than an adopted refugee. And that colored their perception of the situation. They didn’t know enough about Talarian customs to understand the real situation. True, they should’ve been more open to learning; I grant that the episode makes them a bit too parochial and slow to open their minds, and that’s a flaw. But I appreciated that the show was willing to tell a story where the whole crisis arose from the good guys making a mistake. TNG too rarely allowed its protagonists to be wrong.
You nailed it. The banana split scene is the best part of the episode.
They touched on so many topics, but didn’t go into them in depth, I think this was the biggest let down about the writing.
I’ve always thought the Talarians were a roughdraft for the Cardassians — harsh and militaristic, but with a proud cultural heritage that allows them to call the Federation on their overly smug attitudes. Thank God the Cardassians turned out better than this.
I have to disagree with your evaluation of Chad Allen in this episode. I thought his acting was atrocious. I don’t know if a lot of his dialogue got redubbed, but he never sounded like he was responding to the other character(s) in the scene. He sounded very much like the lead alien in “The Ensigns Of Command” (whose dialogue was redubbed by a different actor).
It didn’t help that most of his dialogue was incredibly stilted. The line explaining why he wore the gloves stands out in my mind as one particularly bad example. The line wasn’t needed. Just show him wearing the gloves throughout, and at the end, when he says goodbye to Picard, he takes them off. The symbolism of the act would have been self-evident.
I do, however, agree with you 100% that Worf would have been a better mentor for Jono given the parallels and contrasts between the two. It would have gone against the earlier line about how Jono would only respect the Captain, but that was another completely unnecessary piece of business, and only served to give Jono the opportunity to stab Picard in his sleep. (I like Rancho Unicorno’s suggestion that Jono attacked Picard only to give Starfleet an excuse to hold him, but that suggests cunning that Jono, as performed, never demonstrated.)
Can’t wait for your trashing of The Drumhead, Keith. There are much better examples of Federation hypocrisy than this episode. However, in the Unification episode part 1 (which was on last night – part 2 is tonight) is imo a much better episode than part 2. Of course, I discount any Crosby episode by a minimum of 1 (part 2 is -2) just on general acting principles. I’ve gotta agree with Lance about Chad Allen’s lack of acting chops. The only reason I give this episode a deuce is because Shades of Grey exists and I can’t give a zero like Keith did.
So the Federation recognizes “right of conquest” as a valid argument in ajudicating custody disputes?
In my mind this is one of the more cowardly and morally relativistic acts made by Picard in the series.
One more gripe I have with this episode is that the Talarians are annoying as hell.
First, there’s their disrespect of women.
Second, we have Endar threatening to destroy the Enterprise when A) he’s an idiot if he thinks he can since, as Data points out, his weapons suck, and B) you killed this kid’s parents and then kidnapped him, you jackass. No, it would not have been cool to just leave him there to starve to death, but you might have sent him back to Earth. Your customs are stupid.
Third, for all that KRAD said about the Federation people speaking in absolutes, the Talarians are just as stubborn, if not moreso. At least on the Federation side, we have Crusher saying that as a parent, she understands why somebody might go to war to get a son back. On the Talarian side, it’s all just “I’m his father, that’s all there is to it, I’m not interested in trying to understand your position, your opinions don’t matter, give my son back or I WILL BLOW YOU UP WITH MY PRIMITIVE WEAPONS!”
Fourth, there’s the fact that they made that infuriating wailing sound and that Jono tried to assault everybody in sick bay because they wanted to look at his hands.
Fifth, there’s his reason for flipping his shit when they wanted him to take off his gloves: Talarians don’t want to touch aliens, because apparently aliens are filthy or unclean or something and they don’t want to get human cooties on them.
They’re almost as bad as the Sheliak. But at least Picard was eventually able to give the Sheliak a taste of their own medicine. Here, the Starfleet people just take a lot of crap from the Talarians and finally end up saying “We’re so sorry, please forgive us.” And Endar is like “Yeah, you should be sorry, fucksticks! Let that be a lesson to you to jump when we tell you and to ask how high on the way up!”
If we were talking about a real world culture here, then I would be more understanding, I would not be in favour of any individual physically hurting any other individual. I would advocate diplomacy, I would be totally against war for precisely the reason that Endar mentions: in war, innocents–like Endar’s biological son–are inevitably killed or worse.
Since this is fictional, though, I found myself wanting to see Worf knock Jono on his ass when he went crazy, and I found myself wanting to see the Enterprise fire on the Talarian ships and at least disable them without killing anybody. Because Jono was driving me crazy (I’m sure that Worf was tempted to get violent, but restrained himself because he’s professional like that), and the Talarians were talking to Picard and Riker like they were underlings that better damn well know their place and do what they were told. It would have been immensely satisfying to me as a viewer if Riker had fired phasers, knocked down the Talarian shields with one shot, and then said something like “You don’t seem to be in any position to make threats, Endar. Now you have a choice. You can either power down your weapons, calm down and we can discuss this like reasonable people, or you can continue to be bellicose, in which case we’ll target your weapons systems and take them down just like we did your shields. Besides, this isn’t your decision; as you said yourself, it’s up to Jono. So until and unless he says that he still wants to go back to you instead of staying here, then according to your own customs there is no reason to turn him over to you.”
I’m sure that’s not how Riker would have phrased it, but something along those lines.
I wonder if Dyfta IS Jeri Taylor.
Don’t worry Krad, I completely agree with you about taylor. I don’t think she is “bad” at writing, and I always like the ideas behind her stories, but after looking at the series as a whole, her episodes always feel like the one where the characters aren’t quite acting “the way they should”. I can’t quite point it, but I feel like it is a forced friendship issue that some writers have. I feel she got the show, but never quite got how the characters worked with each other.
All that being said, I actually LOVED the Drumhead. And this one, for the matter. Taylor got worse with age.
Season 4 got off to a rough start. With the exception of ‘Family’ the episodes have been pretty meh so far.
Well, apparently the people who sent letters to the writers of the episode weren’t the only ones who didn’t pay attention. I say that because you, Mr. Decandido, are oblivious to the fact that Chono is a Federation Citizen who was kidnapped by the Telarians during A time of war. He did not become a Telarian of his own volition, and this is the reason why Picard, along with the rest of the senior staff, are so insistent that he be returned to his planet of origin.
Sometimes, I question your ability to accurately judge the quality of Star Trek episodes.
This is certainly late to the party but the internet is forever, as even the Snapchat folks now know …. Taylor admitted that she had no clue about science fiction (OR Star Trek) before this, that the techno babble she used in the episode was cleaved word-for-word from a previous script provided to teach her about ST and just dumped in by her for Suddenly Human. It’s different to re-watch TNG as an adult; as a pre-teen, the ending was jarring and confusing to me but otherwise wouldn’t have called this dreadful then – without even considering the treatment of females, Troi’s outfits (much less most of the outfits for females on this series), humancentricity, etc.
I’d agree that the biggest problem with this particular episode is that many ideas are raised but not carried forth; the entirety of making Jono’s main living relative a Starfleet Admiral is merely dismissed as a female out-ranks Picard. As mentioned, it could have provided an added dimension, but got bumped for the ‘war’ over a ‘child’ idiocy. Even before TNG, I realized people on TV did not die and wars/engine failures/what-have-you got resolved right before the end of the episode – this particular one was just, frankly, a dumb way of doing that.
Chad Allen was fine, it’s a good example of TNG doing a bad job to differentiate how humanoid aliens differ from Terrans; the dialogue he was given to deliver was incredibly stilted, awkward; again, this goes back to Taylor but in her defense, I have to say that there were show runners overseeing her, other writers on this, and a director (plus actors who, by this point, had been on the series for some time), etc. to chime in. Perhaps they had spent too much energy (or were doing EFX, editing or other on BoBW to spend time on this?), but they should share in any of her blame.
It’s a good recap, detailed enough without being a scene by scene rehash as these sometimes can be. As an analysis and critique, agree that it does not come up to what one generally finds (and come to the site for) on TOR.
Finally, even as someone who likes and knows a lot of the entirety of Trek (excepting DS9 which I’ve watched less than 10%), while re-watching this on Netflix tonight, I had spaced the whole back history of Worf’s non-Klingon family; I fully appreciate the comments folks have made and agree that it might have at least been mentioned/explored by Troi (if she was really doing her job – and therefore fully endorse the reviewer re her characterizations here and elsewhere), and agree the whole Picard hates children became tiresome over the series run, the failure to use Worf did not feel like a make or break item to me (unlike the failure to mention the possibility).
I simply cannot agree with your assesment, Keith. I wouldn’t go as far as #19 and say that “I question your ability to accurately judge the quality of Star Trek episodes”, as I believe they are usually spot on, but I do agree with that poster that Jono was an undeclared prisoner of war, and I would add that he’s a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, he was kidnapped by the Tallarians, and he should not remain in their care under any circumstances.
They should get him back to the Federation, not only because he’s the grandson of an Admiral (who certainly would have more clout than a random citizen), but because the duty of the Federation government would be to get him back, as with any prisoner of war. This is not Worf being adopted by a crewmember of the ship that came to his rescue (though I agree that they should have used him with Jono), this is a child that was appropiated by the people who murdered his parents, the same way military officials in countries with dictatorships (like in my country, Uruguay, and its neighbor, Argentina, both in the 70s) appropiated the children born of female political prisoners, and raised them as their own, denying them contact with their real families and contact with their heritage.
In this case, I believe you made a grave error in judgement, and it’s not a matter of opinion like our disagreement about the “terrorist” label in “The Higher Ground”.
This is not about respecting the customs of another culture, or the feelings of an orphan boy from a marooned ship. This is a war crime, pure and simple.
Just happened to rewatch this episode and here’s a point no one brought up: how did Picard square his decision with the admiral? You tell a superior officer you’ve found the last living member of her family, then you have to say “oops, well, we gave him away to the guy who killed his parents”?
Aloysius: That is less important than the fact that what the Tallarians commited is a war crime.
You can’t call a child a prisoner of war when he would have died had they not taken him. Now, you can argue they should have contacted the Federation, but they weren’t exactly on good terms.
And, note, this doesn’t mean that I agree with this episode. But that’s because neither side has an unassailable claim.
In my mind, the real problem was the lack of diplomacy. They should have been able to talk this out. I think Picard could reference his grandparents who also want to see him, and come up with an agreement that would work. There’s no reason for this to have been “We’ll lie about our ‘crimes’ to prevent you from going to war with us.” That’s appalling.
He still is a prisoner of war, like a wounded soldier who would have died had the Tallarians not taken him in.
I know what this episode was trying to get across, I think, but I’ve always hated it. The Talarians, noble perhaps in their endeavour to save a child from a warzone, still captured a Federation citizen for years. While I’d call this a kind of war crime, I doubt the Federation would go to an actual state of war over it – the whole premise of the Federation (indeed, Starfleet), is to look at the bigger picture and go to greater lengths to solve these kinds of issues diplomatically, obviously their raison-d’etre given their relatively peaceful cohabitation with ostensibly hostile civilizations nearby. (Also, given Worf’s assessment, I’m curious how any conflict between the two resulted in an actual war – it’s implied that Starfleet might is overwhelmingly superior to the baddies-of-the-week… anywho…) Had the writers made better use of Troi, Worf, and Picard, some reasonable compromise could have been made and some ending contrived with Jono ending up in Federation custody, with the caveat that he’s free to return to Talar after they’re sure he genuinely knows where he came from first, he’s ok, his spoken with his next of kin.
Bad writers, bad!
I’m not really sure how there was a “war” between the Federation and Talarians when their “observation crafts” were vastly outclassed by Federation starships. The Talarians had neutral particle weapons and Merculite rockets; the Enterprise, state-of-the-art phasers and photon torpedoes. I don’t feel Endar has no right to act so belligerent; Jono isn’t his son, he’s his prisoner. It’s like saying Tasha Yar willingly became the Romulan general’s wife when she was captured with the Enterprise-C crew and bore Sela. Jono’s human, not Talarian. The only reason Endar got Jono back is because Picard was as usual, culturally relativistic and backed down. I would have at least contacted Jono’s grandmother; he clearly had memories of his parents during the attack. And I think Jeri Taylor wrote many great episodes of “Star Trek.” Just because she was a woman in her 50s doesn’t mean she didn’t know how to write “Star Trek.”
Regarding Jeri Taylor being brought on staff back in season 4, here’s the thing. She was an experienced writer, having written for other shows, while Moore and Echevarria had no prior scripts to show on their resumé. Michael Piller had little luck hiring experienced writers on TNG. Ira Behr was the only one who lasted a full season, and even he quit.
While Michael Piller had the final say in hiring Taylor, I believe it was writer/producer Lee Sheldon who first contacted her with the opportunity to rewrite Suddenly Human and ultimately recommended her as a prime candidate for taking his job, since he was the experienced senior writer on staff at the time. Taylor would try the same thing by hiring Frank Abatemarco a couple of years later to take her old position as senior staff member, and it would backfire.
covid 19 rewatch. i cant believe picards favorite way to blow off steam is space-squash
This episode was pretty terrible. First I shall add a little about what was terrible, but then I’ll add a little about what I feel it wanted to be, the poor thing.
The obnoxious kid was slightly more believable than lots of obnoxious kids on shows, but was still a trope. We are supposed to feel things I just don’t feel. Kids are terrible, people are terrible, kid acting is terrible… take me back to the show I love… these are the things I think at such times. In very few moments is the experience of watching this episode actually enjoyable. Captain Picard even says things like “I should be doing captain things” but then he doesn’t seem to have a lot of those to do, so, cool. Basically this episode was what was wrong with drama TV of the 1970s and 80s. It was trying to be kind of edgy or challenging but was basically always unredeemably simplistic and cardboard.
But the basic pitch was actually an okay one! Super white American kid is raised by abhorrent warriors; where does he belong? That’s fine. That’s got potential. Had it been something like Klingons, that could be awesome. It almost feels like they wanted it to be Klingons and then changed it for some reason. But the minute we meet the dad, he’s obviously a decent fellow who loves his son; the whole thing falls apart and never makes sense afterward. Had he been a gruff serious Klingon or something, this could have been an episode about biases and perspective. And no matter how it ended, there would be ambiguity, and some episodes of STTNG are unafraid to lean into that.
But no, we got a total TV ending, with all the principles talking in one big sitcom scene where everyone hugs, more or less; no layers, no consequences. So many TNG episodes before this one did so much better. Had the series been made of this kind of thing, it would have gone down in history as one of the worst, rather than the best of the lot.
I agree, so many wasted opportunities. Why squash and not the holodeck? Why Picard and not even a little Worf? Why not give the kid more cultural layers, have him do some surprisingly kind and peaceful things? Why stab the Captain – what a first draft idea that is – why not have him do other questionable or downright horrible things and make it more interesting? What if he had crafts, beguilingly complex skills, some of which turned out to be murderous for a twist? What if his caretakers could learn a thing or two from him? What about pressure from Starfleet?
And if he can’t visit his relatives, why not give reasons? Why not show more of the grieving Federation side? Or have images or descriptions of the destruction on both sides, so we feel more empathy? Why not have an enemy equivalent of Troi, whose job it is to basically custody-lawyer the situation?
Ron Moore must have been tearing his hair out. Pick any episode of BSG at random and it probably does most of the things I am suggesting and more.
@29 — Yeah, I expected him to take the kid to the holodeck for some lessons in dressage, or maybe challenge him to a fencing duel. Another reason it would have been fun for Worf to have been Jono’s mentor — imagine how HE would have shown the boy how to “blow off steam”! (I’m another, though, who thought Chad Allen was pretty underwhelming as Jono. Maybe it was the lines he was given, maybe he wasn’t sure how to rise to the challenge of combining young-warrior stoicism, adolescent angst, and little-boy-lost mourning for his mom and dad (admittedly, a pretty daunting challenge) — but from the first he didn’t convince me at all.)
I always find the message of the episode to be absolutely morally repellent. Apparently killing some people and abducting their child makes you the rightful parent of that child as long as you evade justice long enough to brainwash him into thinking he belongs with you. I wonder exactly how long you need to keep your abducted child away from his real family before you gain this moral right to him. I guess if you’re one of those people who cuts a baby out of its mother’s womb and runs off with it, you’re automatically the rightful parent and should get to keep it, because, hey, it’s never known any other parent, right? Just appalling and disgraceful.
Gaius: I agree, see my comment at #21.
Yeah, sure they murdered his parents and stole a baby, but by all means give him back. After all they did take the time to indoctrinate him.
Wow, very one-sided reactions here. It’s not like this really happened — it’s just a story, with nobody hurt by it, so we should be able to approach it objectively and consider how it looks from the other perspective. You don’t have to agree with a point of view to find it worth exploring and understanding. It’s the clash of cultural viewpoints that makes this episode interesting.
As Endar said, humans killed his son during an earlier battle. By Talarian custom, taking a human child in return to fill that void was his right. (Many Eastern Native American cultures had a similar custom. Much of their warfare was waged to take captives from other communities to replenish their own losses.) From his perspective, what the humans did was worse — they killed his child, he rescued someone else’s child. Frankly, he has a point about that.
Endar also appeared to believe the Federation presence on Galen IV was an occupation, that they were the aggressors and he was the defender. His side may have killed the Rossas, but his belief was that it was in self-defense, that they brought it on themselves, and were irresponsible enough to bring their son along for their invasion. He probably didn’t trust the Federation to take care of the boy as well as he could. Objectively, of course, he was wrong about that, but his belief seemed sincere, and thus, from his perspective, his intentions were benevolent.
In a way, Endar’s view of what he did was analogous to Odo’s effort to adopt the Jem’Hadar boy in “The Abandoned.” He thought he was rescuing the child of an enemy culture and giving him a healthier upbringing than the boy’s own people would’ve given him. The difference is that humans are more psychologically adaptable than Jem’Hadar, so Jono assimilated more successfully than the J’H boy did. (Also he had much more time to adapt, years rather than days.)
@35, really good point that Endar might have believed his parents were reckless bringing the boy to a war zone and that he was safer with him. Seems like the Talarians don’t have much contact with humans and may very well believe humans have demented values.
That would have been an interesting angle, but this episode certainly does waste endless opportunities. Sports with Picard, loud music, panic about gloves, sigh.
They only barely touch on Stockholm Syndrome type issues, but such things should have been major focuses. The broken bone thing with Endar was believable, and he seems to genuinely love the kid, but sorry, I really rather think professionals should have looked at the situation. Not Picard, Troi and Beverly.
And making Jonah’s surviving relative an admiral was nuts. It was solely done to make her a female massively outranking Picard, so we could see that the Talarians are sexist. Well, great, except, isn’t she going to raise bloody hell the kid was sent back? Picard could face charges for this.
It’s not hard at all to see the admiral orchestrating a Jonah rescue mission.
And why is it so binary, is it just not possible for Jonah to visit with humans? Space travel seems to be very inexpensive in this world, certainly for someone with family in Starfleet. (What I assume would have actually happened is more peaceful contact would have later occurred after tensions of the situation eased. )
This is a straight lift from the Western tale of a white child raised by Native Americans, which formed part of the recent Tom Hanks Western movie News of The World. I agree the episode is a bit of a mess but I don’t hate it. Agreed Worf was a much better fit as mentor. Also the binary choice presented makes less sense than it does in a Western. I also think the admiral was a bad idea. The actor didn’t seem like an admiral, no presence and not helped by her hair looking less than neat, while TNG usually presents convincing female officers. She also left an annoying loose end. I feel the current run of episodes are not varied enough and a different run order might have helped. I am not encouraged to see that after this comes an episode all about Dr Crusher’s angst. (It’s not a rewatch for me really, I either missed or forgot a lot of the show).
The name Galen crops up quite a bit in TNG, doesn’t it? If this had been VGR, the crew would never have got through to Jono. Krad must have loved to see Wesley covered in ice cream because he uses the same picture twice. The crew’s arrogance here reminds me of TNG’s early years before Q’s ultimate lesson in humility in Q Who. Wasn’t Suddenly Human a working title for Deja Q? How many races has the Federation been at war with (for what’s supposed to be a peaceful organisation)?
5: Picard has acted with two kids from Dr Quinn (the other was in Disaster). 10: Good intentions do indeed backfire on us. 13: Gosheven was human – the actor’s voice was dubbed because he wasn’t happy with his performance. 16: The Talarians, the Ferengi, the Kazon, all misogynistic and all equally difficult to watch. Is this the first example of how Worf totally sucks when it comes to dealing with kids? Your written response sounded like something Picard would say rather than Riker.
30: Sherman Howard later played a gruff Klingon in the VGR episode Prophecy. 35: The Federation must not have known the Talarians had a claim on Galen IV or they never would have settled a colony there. It was the same with New Bajor until the Jem’Hadar destroyed it.
This episode raised some really important and compelling questions, and then did a piss-poor job of trying to answer them. That said, the scene at the end where Jono takes off his gloves and touched foreheads with Picard I did find genuinely touching. I give it an extra point for a 4
I agree that this episode was a mess. Endar participated in the attack that killed the boy’s parents so he wasn’t someone rescuing the child from a misfortune caused by nature or a third party. Picard was right to point that out. The Worf thing, though, didn’t bother me because the kid was trained to respond to the rank of captain. The issue of the grandmother was kind of a red herring because, even though he wasn’t legally an adult, he was old enough to choose what he wanted. So, even though the outcome seemed to reward the man who helped kill the boy’s parents, forcing him to leave what he knows would probably harm him further. That said, having the father threaten to destroy the ship that had his son on it kind of puts the lie to Endar’s claim that he loved the boy more than anything (“if I can’t have him, no one can have him!”)
I can’t help but think that even the writers must have found the Talarians to be rather dull. With their backstory, they could easily have been repurposed later in the season as the antagonists from “The Wounded.” Instead, the writers created the Cardassians for that purpose, for which I’m sure most of the fandom is very grateful.
That said, between the Talarians, the Cardassians, and Tzenkethi, it does raise the question of just how many wars the Federation got into during the supposedly peaceful decades after they resolved their conflict with the Klingons.
@41/Iacomina: The thing is though wars happen on completely different scales. The 23rd century war or antagonism between the Federation and the Klingon Empire was of a widespread scale because they’re both essentially “superpowers.” I imagine the “wars” with the Cardassians and the Tzenkethi and the Talarians and such are relatively minor and self-contained. It’s kind of like how the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are in a very specific region whereas the World Wars were more global conflicts spanning larger areas and many different players.
Giving Jono back was the equivalent of allowing a kidnapper to take back the child they took. Imagine the police taking Steven Stayner back to the man that kidnapped him as a child because gosh, it’s been so long that’s his dad now! There is nothing redeeming about this episode. And Admiral Rossa should have handed Picard his balls for his actions.
It seems to me that this is one of those situations with no good answer. Giving the boy back to the aliens who killed his family is obviously wrong, but is taking him from the family and culture he considers ‘his’ right?
I had little memory of this episode and was sure that we’d get a mention at the end of Jono wanting to correspond with his grandmother or questioning whether Picard will get in trouble for letting him go.
“Picard still has the d’k tahg he was given when he was Worf’s cha’DIch in ‘Sins of the Father’.”
The failure to use Worf more — his biological heritage being one that also values to a fault the projection of strength and stoicism — is such a missed opportunity. Picard demurring when Troi insists he’s the right man to bond with Jono, and her feigned surprise in response to “You’re probably not aware of this, but I have never been particularly comfortable around children,” is pretty great, though.
Whenever I see the objects d’art, mementos, and other decor in Picard’s cabin, the ready room, and similarly well-appointed quarters, I think of what a mess they must frequently make getting toppled and smashed every time the ship gets hit by enemy fire, sudden cosmic anomalies, etc.