Lieutenant "Broccoli" Learns to Embrace the Real World in Star Trek TNG's Hollow Pursuits

Last week, I was doing some late-night channel surfing and happened upon Genesis, one of the few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation featuring Dwight Schulz’s nervous, severely socially awkward engineer Reginald Barclay. I was excited to see the character, who I fondly remembered, mainly from season three’s Hollow Pursuits, which introduces him. When I looked that episode up, I was delighted to find that it would be airing on Thanksgiving night. The episode was just as charming as I remembered.

Schulz gives a performance that is extremely comical but also sympathetic. At one point in the episode, he confides in his immediate superior, the kind and competent Geordi La Forge (LaVar Burton), that he is the guy who always writes down things to say before he goes to a party, then ends up spending the evening in the corner studying a potted plant. For a wallflower like me, this poor fellow who has earned the whispered nickname “Broccoli” from his crewmates is easy to relate to.

Not only is Barclay a wonderful character, but Guinan, the serene bartender portrayed by Whoopi Goldberg who is probably my favorite occasionally recurring character on TNG, has a terrific heart-to-heart with Geordi during which she encourages him to show oddball Barclay a little empathy. She relates the story of her brother, the black sheep of the family, who had a fantastic sense of humor that no one else got a chance to appreciate because they wrote him off so quickly. When Geordi explains how unpopular he is with the rest of the officers, complaining that he’s never on time and is always agitated, Guinan responds that if she were surrounded by people who didn’t like her, she’d probably be late and nervous too. Geordi is a very nice guy already, but this conversation is an important aid in helping him give Barclay another shot.

Anytime the holodeck comes into play, it’s a treat, because we get to explore entirely different settings from the sterile starship, often with fancy costumes for those usually stuck in the same uniform all the time and with literary or historical characters springing to life to interact with the crew. One of my all-time favorite posters is the American Library Association’s one featuring the members of Captain Picard’s crew holding their most beloved books. This doesn’t seem like much of a stretch because the show frequently includes allusions to various literary figures, particularly Sherlock Holmes.

In this episode, we get the Three Musketeers, with Barclay programming his idyllic escape from reality with Picard (Patrick Stewart), Geordi, Data (Brent Spiner) as the famous swordsmen and Riker in the role of eager young D’Artagnan. All are accomplished duelers, but none can match the skill of Barclay, who, within his own little world, demonstrates none of his characteristic jitteriness. The Crushers (Gates McFadden and Wil Wheaton) and Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) also have amusing holoworld counterparts, and it’s especially entertaining to see how the real Geordi, Riker and Deanna react to them when they crash the program in search of Barclay.

This is an episode that seems very ahead of its time. Though it aired in 1990, it is the perfect cautionary tale on the dangers of getting too sucked into the Internet, particularly role-playing games. Sally Caves, who wrote the teleplay, seems to have anticipated the extent to which people could get drawn into this illusory world, particularly those who have trouble with real-life social interaction. Of course, the message could apply to any number of fiction-based entertainments, from books to Dungeons and Dragons. But it seems to fit the Internet especially well.

Hollow Pursuits is one of the funniest episodes of TNG, but it’s packed with meaning, with a lesson to the Barclays of the world not to retreat so far into their own imaginations that real life eludes them and to those who know such people not to let them feel so isolated that such pursuits seem like the only way to find peace.

A Little Child (Named Wesley) Shall Lead Them in When the Bough Breaks

Now that WGN has started showing Star Trek: The Next Generation, I've been getting reacquainted with Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his crew. Most recently, I watched When the Bough Breaks, an episode that had always stuck out in my mind because of the prominence of children in it.

The beginning of this episode finds second-in-command Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) geeking out over the Enterprise's proximity to a utopian world called Aldea. Though the planet, a place of peace and prosperity, is widely considered a fairy tale, Riker is intrigued by the possibility that it could actually exist but be cloaked. When the Aldeans suddenly initiate contact, he is especially eager to communicate with them.

The captain, too, is fascinated, and he readily agrees to a conference. What the men discover, however, is unsettling. Yes, the Aldeans have an advanced civilization dedicated to peaceful pursuits and possessing great stores of knowledge. But something has happened to make them lose the ability to procreate. Desperate to preserve their culture, they propose a trade. If the Enterprise will hand over its children, the Aldeans will share their carefully guarded information.

When Picard and Riker refuse, the Aldeans resort to kidnapping, beaming the children down to the planet against their will. The oldest of these is geeky 14-year-old ensign Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton), and he quickly assumes a leadership role among the others, who include musical, melancholy Katie (Jandi Swanson); artistic, rebellious Harry (Philip Waller) and tiny, affectionate Alexandra (Jessica and Vanessa Bova). While the Enterprise crew try to figure out a way of retrieving the children, the youngsters plot a way of quietly resisting their benevolent captors.

The one image that had really stayed with me from this episode was Harry using a fascinating sculpting tool to create a dolphin out of wood during his time with a pair of encouraging artisans. More than any of the others, this boy, who had recently squabbled with his father (Dierk Torsek), takes to his new environment, feeling nurtured and appreciated instead of ignored and pressured. The subject of the fight, incidentally, was Harry not wanting to take calculus, and I remember thinking that he looked way too young to be worrying about calculus, but I suppose they teach these subjects to increasingly lower grades... The character really made an impression on me, so it's a shame he doesn't show up in any other episodes. Neither do Katie or Alexandra.

The leader of the Aldeans is a man named Radue (Jerry Hardin). While he is incredibly invested in the difference he believes the children will make for his people, he feels rather uncomfortable around them. Not so Rashella (Branda Strong), the youngest member of the society, who immediately takes to little Alexandra, adopting her against Radue's wishes, since a parental match was already provided for her by the computer on which the Aldeans depend for every aspect of their daily lives. When Wesley is taken to the computer, his guardian is baffled by his question about how the machine works. It soon becomes clear that his zeal for poking around with circuits may serve him well here.

It's nice to see so much focus on the children of the Enterprise and how they react to being whisked away from their families and treated like royalty. The conclusion seems to be that most children would rather remain with their loved ones than live a life of luxury among strangers. The episode also warns against letting one's brain get soft by becoming too dependent upon technology, and it shows that you don't have to be all grown up to make a difference. Though it makes little use of the main crew aside from Picard (who shares a couple of uncharacteristically tender scenes with the children), Riker and the distraught Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden), When the Bough Breaks is an intense and emotional episode that is one of my favorites.

Captain Picard Says Hello to the 20th Century in The Big Goodbye

When Star Trek: The Next Generation was on the air, my family used to watch it every week, so I was pleased to discover that WGN has recently begun running the series, though I keep forgetting it's on. Last night, I was flipping through the channels and caught it right at the beginning. I can't say I remember this particular episode, a season one outing called The Big Goodbye, but when it opened with stately Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) getting all giggly in the Holodeck, I figured I was in for a treat.

The Holodeck is a wonderful Next Generation invention that allows the Enterprise's officers to immerse themselves in any surroundings they choose. This often means trips to fictional or historical settings, which is a nice change of pace, particularly since it gets the characters out of their familiar uniforms. Picard's destination of choice is the early 1940s, where he steps into the trenchcoat of his favorite gumshoe, Dixon Hill, and finds himself in a world of sultry women and snarling mobsters.

He's so impressed upon his first Holodeck adventure that he returns with the ship's historian, Whalen (David Selberg), and Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden), who hopes the trip will present an opportunity for some alone time with the captain. That prospect becomes more unlikely when the ever-curious Data (Brent Spiner) reads up on the detective and decides to crash the party, confusing Holodeck characters with his pasty skin and matter-of-fact statements about the future, reminding me of Spock in The City on the Edge of Forever. But he's along simply to have fun and becomes increasingly comical as he adopts not only the colloquialisms of the time but also a cheesy accent.

Little does Picard's merry band know that their little game is about to turn deadly, as there are dangerous men on their tail and the Holodeck has malfunctioned, leaving them trapped. What's more, Picard has an important job to do on the bridge - recite the proper greeting to an alien race in hopes of restoring peace after another captain's pronunciation gaffe twenty years earlier deeply offended them. If he doesn't escape soon, it could be a diplomatic disaster.

Most of this episode takes place in the Holodeck, making it especially entertaining, though the action on the ship is engaging too as second-in-command Riker (Jonathan Frakes), engineer Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) and geeky teenage ensign Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) rush to fix the Holodeck in time. The most amusing performances definitely come from Stewart and Spiner, both on the Holodeck and off - Stewart because we're not used to seeing Picard swept away in childlike wonder, Spiner because childlike wonder is what he does best. Generally speaking, I find Data to be the show's funniest character.

Despite some high stakes, The Big Goodbye is a lighthearted episode, even down to what Picard has to say to the alien envoy. It's one of the best examples of how fun Next Generation could be.