TNG S4E8 "Future Imperfect" Review by AnswerMan

Horrible:Meh:Adequate:Good:Fantastic

"Halt turbolift!"

Riker awakes from an away-mission-gone-wrong to find that 16 years have passed since his last memory, due to a strange virus. He is now captain of the Enterprise, and has a motherless son named Jean-Luc. Everyone has a twinge of grey hair. Sick bay has been re-decorated. Other things have changed as well, such as Data is now number one, Geordi has ditched his visor, Picard is an admiral, there is a Ferengi at the helm, and there is a blossoming peace with the Romulans. In fact, Riker is encouraged to pretend that his memory problem doesn't exist as he wines and dines Ambassador Tomalak aboard the ship.

"Halt turbolift!"

Something is not quite right, though, as the ship's computers are running uncharacteristically slow. When Riker decides to alter the course of the turbolift, there is a considerable delay. I'm going to use this opportunity to point out something that has always bothered me: Why is there never a wait for the turbolift? I mean there can only be so many of them operating at any given time, and people are always stopping those things to have private conversations with a "halt!" or a "belay that order!" while they continue to yap about the latest goings on. I swear they think those things are confessionals or something. Anyway, there are other computer difficulties as well, such as Riker being unable to pull up his own service record.

Creepy.

All the while the viewer knows that there will be a resolution to this, and a reset button will be firmly pressed. But we don't know how, and that is what makes it fun. All the regular theories come to one's mind while watching the episode play out. I was actually betting time travel, but I turned out to be wrong. Riker knows that he's being played when he pulls up video of his wife, and it happens to be a familiar character from the holodeck. Since he knows it's not possible to have a kid with a hologram, he pieces together that everything is fake. Then there is a fantastic scene where he rushes to the bridge and calls everyone out in a very dramatic fashion, culminating by screaming at Picard, "Shut up!" When Picard reacts to this, Riker screams "I said shut up! As in, close your mouth and stop talking!" It feels sort of like revenge for the famous "Shut up, Wesley!" that Picard dished out in season one's "Datalore." At any rate, it's all very well-acted and satisfying to watch. Suddenly everyone disappears, and it's revealed that (plot twist) Riker is on a Romulan Holodeck, and Tomalak was attempting to get him to divulge the location of some key outpost. Riker is then locked up with the young man whose image was used to create his son in the simulation. Together they bond and attempt to escape, but again something is amiss. The boy calls Tomalak "Ambassador," which was only his title in the simulation, which the boy should have no knowledge of. Again Riker demands for this nonsense to stop, and (plot twist) everything disappears again and it's just him and the boy in a cave. It turns out that the child was left alone on the planet, and has access to mind-probing and hologram-creating gear to keep him busy. Also, in real life he looks like a freaky squishy bug-eyed insect thing. So that's nice. Riker invites him to the Enterprise, where he presumably lives happily ever after, because nothing can go wrong with that plan.

Creepier.

This episode is really well acted by all the players, but especially by Jonathan Frakes. It contains two plot twists, one of which took me genuinely by surprise. "Future Imperfect" also has a lot of fun moments throughout, especially the bridge scene. The only down side is that the ending is a bit ambiguous and silly, and it uses the whole "none of this is real" trope that Trek has kind of done to death. I also liked the way that they aged the cast, particularly Patrick Stewart. Since he's already bald and grey, they gave him some hair on the sides and a wispy thin goatee. It definitely made him look older, and kind of creepy. Overall this is a  Good episode of Trek.

Published April 28, 2017