TNG S5E10 "New Ground" Review By AnswerMan

Horrible:Meh:Adequate:Good:Fantastic

I don't think kids should be on Starships. It's not safe and requires insane amounts of resources. I know I'm not exactly the first person to point this out, but while I've known this for some time it has really just become even more clear recently. Probably because TNG was the first Trek that I watched, I used to just take it for granted. Of course there's kids on starships, because there's kids on the Enterprise-D. But none of the other Trek have kids on their ships. The closest is DS9, but that's not a ship it's a base. In the military often families do move on base, but they don't go out on the submarine for a six month tour with Lt. Dad. Watching Alexander become acclimated to life there, I realize just what an incredible amount of space and time must be devoted for the children. There's school rooms, and a school teacher, and medical care, and a museum animal sanctuary thingy with some dying lizards. On a ship, where space is at a premium, and war is always right around the corner, this just makes no sense.



Watching Worf deal with his child's behavior problems at school while simultaneously trying to save a planet of people from being destroyed was both absurd... and familiar. As a parent (especially in the modern day where being at work no longer means you can't be reached) I can relate to my children's drama interfering with my work day. My bosses pretty much take the same attitude that Picard does with Worf: deal with your kids first, work can wait. Except I'm not putting off evaluating new security officers and procedures on a military ship that gets into a fire fight with somebody about once a week. That sounds a lot more important than what I do.

Anyway, our story consists of Worf's mom showing up and dumping Alexander back on him, since they're too old and tired to deal with him. It turns out that Alexander has become quite the little shit. He lies, he steals, he blames others, he back-talks. Worf tries to reason with him, which of course doesn't work. Then he threatens to send him to Klingon school, which I can only imagine is horrible. The kids are probably required to disembowel the kid that screws up the curve or whatever. But Troi actually steps in and helps here, and points out that perhaps Alexander is a bit screwed up because he was raised without a dad, then met his dad, then watched his mom get gutted to death, then was abandoned by his dad, then was abandoned by his grandparents, and is about to get abandoned by his dad AGAIN. Golly Worf, do you think any of that could have anything to do with his anger issues and behavior problems?

The show culminates in an absurd scene where Alexander is in peril, and the only (and closest) people that can be bothered to save him are Worf and Riker. Picard allows Worf to go, and coldly orders Riker as well. Then he makes the order to kill them all. But of course they just make it. But isn't there a ship full of security officers, presumably ones that might already be in the vicinity?

In the end, Worf and Alexander decide together that he will remain on the Enterprise. They do this knowing full well that for a variety of reasons this is actually the more difficult choice (and not just because the Enterprise is always a few seconds away from a warp core breach). I like that the problem of Alexander's behavior is not resolved all nice and tidy at the end of this one. They have a long road ahead of them, and it can't be fixed in one 40 minute episode. However, this episode is still only Meh, because what exactly is the point of all this? Is this just an episode to show what a horrible father Worf has been? The answer is no, it is also an episode that shows how using a space wave to propel a ship only results in a blown up ship and a destroyed planet.

Published August 8, 2019