‘LESSONS’ (TNG)
Please feel free to comment on my review.
This ‘Star Trek: TNG’ episode has Captain Picard falling in love again. Picard has had his fair share of women over the series. What with Varsh in ‘Captain’s Holiday’ and ‘Qpid’ and now with Nella Daren.
In the episode, Picard finds he can’t have his cup of earl grey tea or access any computer systems aboard the Enterprise. This is due to the stellar cartography department closing down many systems.
Picard goes to stellar cartography to see what’s going on. There he meets the head of the department, Wendy Hughes as Lt. Commander Nella Daren, who’s a little annoyed on Picard’s entry.
By the way, stellar cartography looks very different compared to the one we see later in ‘Star Trek: Generations’. I suppose the production team had more money to spend when it did it for the movie.
Despite a little tension between them at the beginning, Nella Daren seems to have made quite an impression on Picard. He even shares his meeting with Daren to Beverly Crusher over dinner, I think.
This is before Picard, Beverly and others go to see a musical concert performed by Data with Nella Daren at the piano. Picard becomes pretty impressed by Daren’s incredible ability to play the piano.
After the concert, they discuss music. Daren soon visits Picard in his quarters. They both participate in a duet with her playing a portable piano and him playing his Ressikan flute from ‘The Inner Light’.
It was nice to see a follow-up to Picard’s flute-playing from that Season 5 episode again. It had been addressed briefly in ‘A Fistful of Datas’, but here Picard shares his music-playing with somebody else.
The performances of Patrick Stewart and Wendy Hughes are very good in this episode. You can see Nella Daren becoming a potential love interest in Picard as they’re both sharing their love for music.
As the episode progresses, Picard and Daren see each other more often, as they both go into a Jefferies tube to play more music with their instruments. Apparently the acoustics are better there.
They play their musical instruments in this private setting, which even Geordi can hear in engineering but Data doesn’t. Picard and Daren soon have a kiss together when in the Jefferies tube.
Despite seemingly starting a relationship together, Picard’s intimacy with Daren fleets away when one crewmember joins them in a turbolift. He resumes his professional demeanour as Captain again.
This somewhere puts Daren off a little bit, but Picard soon consults Counsellor Troi on the matter. He asks advice on how to pursue his relationship with Daren and Troi gives some encouraging words.
Picard eventually sees Daren in stellar cartography and apologises to her before explaining. He eventually shares with her his life experience from ‘The Inner Light’ where he had a wife and family.
It seems that Picard has never shared his ‘Inner Light’ experience with anyone else before. He’s sharing with Daren since the two shares a deep appreciation of music and he’s so pleased to share it.
However the relationship isn’t all that easy. For one thing, Daren speaks to Riker about transferring another crewmember to stellar cartography. There’s a little bit of friction between the two about it.
Riker shares his concerns with Picard, hoping the decision made about a crew transfer will make things complicated. I do like how Picard shares with Daren about the talk he had with Riker later on.
Eventually, the Enterprise arrives at a Federation outpost where its crewmembers are in trouble from a firestorm. The Enterprise crew find a way to save the crewmember, but it puts Daren in peril.
Daren is sent to surface with a team of Enterprise crew to hold back the firestorm and save the Federation outpost crew. But it puts her at risk when the firestorm overpowers the defences made.
Picard believes Daren to be dead at first, but thankfully she’s still alive when he returns with a number of survivors. Sadly Picard and Daren’s relationship ends, as they consider dangers involved.
‘Lessons’ has been a beautifully well-thought out episode about Picard having a romantic relationship with someone. The dialogue is beautifully handled and the cast performances are good.
‘Lessons’ (TNG) rating – 8/10
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