5:10 New Ground – And then someone said, “Since Wesley left, I miss having an annoying child around. Let’s bring back Worf’s son Alexander!” So they do, from here on out being played by Brian Bonsall, previously of Family Ties. (I guess there was just something about lil Brian that suited him for characters who started out as an infants but were magically aged a few years so they could be real characters.) This episode thus joins several from this season that prove that Having children on the Enterprise is a frickin’ bad idea.
By the way, here’s Brian Bonsall’s mugshot from 2009:
…thus answering for him the question, “Could I really have a worse look than sticking a turtle shell to my forehead?”
5:11 Hero Worship – Aw, lookit, a boy who’s the only survivor of a starship accident decides to become Data’s own “Mini-Me” to deal with the trauma of losing his parents (possibly because of his own mistake). I think we can now expand this to Having children on the Enterprise [or any starship] is a frickin’ bad idea.
On the other hand, all of us who wanted to be Spock from the original series (i.e., every male Trekkie until he hit puberty) can totally dig where the kid is coming from. Being a super-smart, indestructible android is cool.
5:12 Violations – Creepy creepy mind-rape! Psychic aliens who can help people revisit their memories are being transported to one of those omnipresent conferences. Unfortunately, one of them is a psy-perv who likes to invade people’s minds, bring up a strong memory, and then make it bad (or even worse, if it was bad to begin with) and revel in his masochistic juices while the victim goes into a coma.
You know, people on the Enterprise really go through a lot of trauma on a regular basis. I’m not surprised that Ship’s Counselor is now a thing; I’m surprised that more Starfleet officers aren’t walking around with PTSD. And since Deanna is the recipient of the mind-rapist’s darkest attentions… well, who counsels the Counselor?
But man, it’s good to see Worf get to drop someone with one punch, especially since it was the pervy mind-rapist. Too bad he couldn’t follow it up by throwing him out an airlock.