Season 7 Episode 11: Parallels

[Rhinoflames]

Hi all!
So I’ve been watching through TNG again and it’s been some years since I last watched it fully all the way through. I’ve just watched the season 7 episode 11 Parallels and all was good until about the 39:29 mark when all the Enterprise’s appeared. Worf was about to enter the fissure using the shuttle craft and then the one Enterprise from an alternate reality starts firing on the shuttle.

Captain Riker hails them and alternate Riker from the reality where the Borg have almost completely taken over responds. When I heard Riker/Frakes voice and the feel of total fear and desperation that comes across from him I thought was one of the best displays of emotion from I had watched in TNG. It really struck me for some strange reason knowing they have to go back to their universe where nearly everything is gone and they were in the state you could see them in and there was nothing that could be done to save or help them, even though they asked for it. Eventually Borg reality Enterpise is destroyed anyway so they didn’t have to go back in the end but still. I think when you follow the series with so much admiration you become quite involved, was scary to imagine a timeline where all our favourite and loved characters had been over taken by the Borg! I just found that quite scary and have been thinking about it all day so thought I’d share!

To open this up to more of a conversation and discussion I was thinking maybe we could share our most favourite or memorable moments from TNG

That and if you felt similar or different at all to the above let us know and we can chat about that too!

 

[NCC-73515]

One of the best episodes of the whole franchise

 

[Orphalesion]

Eventually Borg reality Enterpise is destroyed anyway so they didn’t have to go back in the end

That always made me wonder, does that mean the reality-displaced Worf who had shifted to the Borg Enterprise (who's seen in the background frantically operating half-exploding consoles iirc) died with the ship...and that the Worf who originally came from that version of the Enterprise ended up in empty space when all the Worfs returned to their proper reality?

 

[Rhinoflames]

One of the best episodes of the whole franchise

Totally agree, few episodes have sat with me like this one has!

 

[Rhinoflames]

That always made me wonder, does that mean the reality-displaced Worf who had shifted to the Borg Enterprise (who's seen in the background frantically operating half-exploding consoles iirc) died with the ship...and that the Worf who originally came from that version of the Enterprise ended up in empty space when all the Worfs returned to their proper reality?

I thought that our Worf was taking their place but thinking back now you’ve said this makes a good point and something I may not have understood or missed on this first rewatch, I guess you could look at it from two ways either that Worf somehow remained on the Enterprise he ended up on and stayed in the reality he ended up in or like you said he is just floating about in space, if by some strange phenominon it’s the first one I bet he’s pleased So does that mean the Worf that was married to Counsellor Troi and had kids was returned to his reality with them?

this whole alternate reality stuff gets pretty complicated

 

[Orphalesion]

I thought that our Worf was taking their place but thinking back now you’ve said this makes a good point and something I may not have understood or missed on this first rewatch, I guess you could look at it from two ways either that Worf somehow remained on the Enterprise he ended up on and stayed in the reality he ended up in or like you said he is just floating about in space, if by some strange phenominon it’s the first one I bet he’s pleased So does that mean the Worf that was married to Counsellor Troi and had kids was returned to his reality with them?

It could just be my personal interpretation, it's been a long while since I've seen the episode. But I always understood the episode as a whole bunch of Worfs from different realities switching places with each other again and again, with more and more realities being dragged into it, the longer the whole crisis lasted.
Then Worf flying his shuttle into the anomaly bounced every version of him back to their "proper reality" That's why we're seeing a whole bunch of Worfs in the shuttle overlapping with each other at the end.

I always interpreted the words of that one version of Troi about getting "her" Worf back as her being pessimistic due to how little they knew about the situation and possibly being worried that "her" Worf was shifted to a reality where he was killed.There might be realities out there that are even worse than the Borg one. And I doubt that that one reality was the only one where the Borg took over..

You bring up an interesting idea with the "Borg Reality" Worf possibly staying behind in another reality to replace the counterpart that died with that Enterprise, but that would only work if he was in the place of that counterpart, for all we now he was shuffled to five other realities in the meantime and he was just dragged back to where he originated from.

this whole alternate reality stuff gets pretty complicated

It really is

 

[Qonundrum]

Hi all!
So I’ve been watching through TNG again and it’s been some years since I last watched it fully all the way through. I’ve just watched the season 7 episode 11 Parallels and all was good until about the 39:29 mark when all the Enterprise’s appeared. Worf was about to enter the fissure using the shuttle craft and then the one Enterprise from an alternate reality starts firing on the shuttle.

I loved it until the end, when they connived the most ridiculous explanation that pretends time travel was involved so that the episode never happened.

RIKER: Did they send the right shuttle?
DATA: Yes, sir. It matches Commander Worf's quantum signature precisely. I have remodulated the shuttle's engines to emit an inverse warp field. You will need to activate the field at the precise moment you enter the fissure.
WORF: Assuming it works, will I find myself near my own ship?
DATA: That is one possibility. However, the uncertainty principle dictates that time is a variable in this equation. You may end up several days before the event or several days after. There is no way to tell.
DATA: That is one possibility. However, the uncertainty principle dictates that time is a variable in this equation. You may end up several days before the event or several days after. There is no way to tell.

Let's just fix up that last sentence to remove the uncertainty:

DATA: That is one possibility. However, we need to find a neat little way to pretend none of this ever happened because we love our big red shiny reset buttons and it's not like you'll remember any of this anyway, because the scripts say so.

(Seriously, the overkill in the minutiae to wiggle in a some cod time travel so that none of the crew will know it ever happened was just a way out of explanations, when Worf would get back home and everyone would hug and sing songs and eat chocolate smores by the campfire.

Captain Riker hails them and alternate Riker from the reality where the Borg have almost completely taken over responds. When I heard Riker/Frakes voice and the feel of total fear and desperation that comes across from him I thought was one of the best displays of emotion from I had watched in TNG.

He could look at ten random pages in a phone book and act out a wide gamut of emotions and inflections for every name in it. Hell, he

Spoiler: Possible PIC spoiler but a very teensy tiny one

made "bunnicorns" come across less lamentable than it otherwise was. (Unless the kid coined the term and all the adults humored her, I don't recall but it's unlike the TNG universe for that level of informality, even by civilians and children. It's not impossible; the closest real life example might be comparing schools to 50 years ago when various outfit styles and verbal candor were more mandated compared to nowadays, so maaaaaaaaybe.)

It really struck me for some strange reason knowing they have to go back to their universe where nearly everything is gone and they were in the state you could see them in and there was nothing that could be done to save or help them, even though they asked for it. Eventually Borg reality Enterpise is destroyed anyway so they didn’t have to go back in the end but still. I think when you follow the series with so much admiration you become quite involved, was scary to imagine a timeline where all our favourite and loved characters had been over taken by the Borg! I just found that quite scary and have been thinking about it all day so thought I’d share!

Despite the plot focusing on a zillion alternate realities, I wasn't expecting them to focus on a post-Borg one. How they handled it was magnificent, from script to screen. The Borg were rarely more scary after TBOBW than that brief moment in Parallels. And maybe Scorpion.

Just think of the alternate timelines where the Enterprise had been destroyed long before getting to that point in time.

To open this up to more of a conversation and discussion I was thinking maybe we could share our most favourite or memorable moments from TNG

That and if you felt similar or different at all to the above let us know and we can chat about that too!

Parallels is quite a breath of fresh air in season 7, which was going down new roads because they were straining for ideas. Brannon Braga must have had something to do with this one because it's a high concept one and when it comes to 90s Trek with awesome sci-fi concepts or new innovative takes on them, or even takes cliched ideas and un-cliches them because he's genuinely that good, Braga is a total legend... (I just looked up the story's credits and, woohoo, I remembered right! I hate it when that happens.)

So legend status aside, he's still human and the contrived temporal woozywuzzit wasn't really necessary to do. There, I said it. I'm going to make a pizza, with tomato sauce and cheese and pepperoni... and grated broccoli because broccoli is healthy and I was doing it before it became popular. And pineapple, except I never thought of doing that. Mmmm, pineapple stuffed crust... nom nom...

 

[Court_Vince]

Its pretty good with both some funny moments while still having pretty good drama. It usually manages to fly under the radar for me a bit, I should do a rewatch of it sometime soon. And I agree, The part showing Riker totally terrified and traumatized from The Borg always gets me right the gut.

 

[Finn]

That always made me wonder, does that mean the reality-displaced Worf who had shifted to the Borg Enterprise (who's seen in the background frantically operating half-exploding consoles iirc) died with the ship...and that the Worf who originally came from that version of the Enterprise ended up in empty space when all the Worfs returned to their proper reality?

I thought that our Worf was taking their place but thinking back now you’ve said this makes a good point and something I may not have understood or missed on this first rewatch, I guess you could look at it from two ways either that Worf somehow remained on the Enterprise he ended up on and stayed in the reality he ended up in or like you said he is just floating about in space, if by some strange phenominon it’s the first one I bet he’s pleased So does that mean the Worf that was married to Counsellor Troi and had kids was returned to his reality with them?

this whole alternate reality stuff gets pretty complicated

Good points. When we saw Worf appear in that last reality where Riker was Captain, they were testing the visor's effeft, meaning they already had a different version of Worf before our Worf showed up, that didn't belong there as well. That would suggest there were actually millions of Worfs shifting around... I was a bit disappointed that they didn't put a blue shirt Worf on that shuttlecraft.

It's possible that at least one Worf didn't get home... That would mean there's a reality out there where their Worf mysteriously vanished.

 

[Mojochi]

That always made me wonder, does that mean the reality-displaced Worf who had shifted to the Borg Enterprise (who's seen in the background frantically operating half-exploding consoles iirc) died with the ship...and that the Worf who originally came from that version of the Enterprise ended up in empty space when all the Worfs returned to their proper reality?

Well, in the end, they reset everything back to before the birthday party, like it or not. Original Borg war Worf & his replacement get reset too, & Borg war Enterprise never gets destroyed by Prime Enterprise.

Whether you like how it turned out or not, it's still a season 7 high point, for no other reason than Worf almost never gets Future Imperfect type episodes. In fact, he doesn't factor much into Cause & Effect, & they cut him from Yesterday's Enterprise altogether.

It's about time he got his own alt reality episode, & I bet they were thinking along those lines when they came up with it, knowing there wouldn't be any other chance, with the show ending

My favorite Easter egg in this episode is that in one reality... Data has blue eyes

 

[Finn]

It wasn't a reset button episode

 

[gakelly]

it was just the ...and then they woke up and it was all a dream episode.
That was basically every other episode of Star Trek Voyager. While Parallels was pretty cool, the ending was complete trash. Nothing really mattered because every thing was back to normal and it never happened at the end.

 

[Orphalesion]

Well, in the end, they reset everything back to before the birthday party, like it or not. Original Borg war Worf & his replacement get reset too, & Borg war Enterprise never gets destroyed by Prime Enterprise.

Whether you like how it turned out or not, it's still a season 7 high point, for no other reason than Worf almost never gets Future Imperfect type episodes. In fact, he doesn't factor much into Cause & Effect, & they cut him from Yesterday's Enterprise altogether.

True, so it's quite possible the Borg Universe Enterprise was also reset. Truth be told I don't have any problem with the ending doing a reset. It doesn't make all that much sense for time to be reset, but well it's a high concept episode diving into completely theoretical territory, so who's to say what happens in a situation like that?

 

[Oddish]

I liked the episode, but Worf/Troi just doesn't do it for me. I'm glad that both found, in Riker and Dax, more suitable partners.

 

[gakelly]

While it may be a high concept episode, it was a low concept ending. I think that is typical of Braga episodes-the ending is just a reset and everything in the episode never really happened.
All Good Things
Eye of the Beholder
Parallels
Timescape
Frame of Mind

These episodes are really all the same. Crappy endings that just reset everything. If you want to argue they are just entertainment, sure. They aren't horrible episodes but the ending of all these bring them down a notch in my opinion.
I couldn't even watch Voyager because of the constant resets almost every 3rd or 4th episode. I get it that it is just fiction, but could you imagine reading a really long novel, War and Peace or Moby Dick and the ending is somebody just wakes up and it was all just a dream? You would be disappointed and probably never read another book by that author.

 

[Oddish]

That's pretty much how television WAS in the 20th century. You might as well criticize old movies for being silent.

Even DS9, the least serialized of 20th century Trek, smacked the reset button fairly often. Li Nalas was a particularly obnoxious example.

 

[NCC-73515]

I get it that it is just fiction, but could you imagine reading a really long novel, War and Peace or Moby Dick and the ending is somebody just wakes up and it was all just a dream? You would be disappointed and probably never read another book by that author.

and how many trek episodes did that?

 

[Mojochi]

I get it that it is just fiction, but could you imagine reading a really long novel, War and Peace or Moby Dick and the ending is somebody just wakes up and it was all just a dream? You would be disappointed and probably never read another book by that author.

Not all fiction is akin to an epic novel. Some, especially 90s Star Trek, is more akin to comfort food, & in order for it to deliver want the recipients are fond of, the recipe has to stay the same. It's the nature of that format

 

[Oddish]

True. Modern Trek is darker, edgier, and far more morally complex. It's proved tough to get used to, which may be why I prefer streaming Trek shows from the TNG thru ENT era.

 

[Lady Mondegreen]

I don't think of time-travely endings as being "just a dream" -- while the crew may not remember the events, Worf really did experience them and they would have an effect on him in a way that a dream wouldn't. I quite liked this episode, and I actually vastly prefer Troi/Worf to Troi/Riker (though I haven't gotten to Worf/Dax yet -- not that far into DS9). The ending of the series did feel like it was paving the way for Worf and Troi to deepen their relationship, so it kind of disappoints me that she ended up back with Riker in the movies (but I'm not a shipper to that great an extent, so it doesn't bother me too much).