Journey’s End (S70E20)
Airdate: 28 March 1994
Written by: Ronald D. Moore Directed by: Corey Allen
Running Time: 46 minutes
As Star Trek: The Next Generation approached its long-awaited conclusion, the producers found themselves confronted with the delicate task of wrapping up the character arcs they had nurtured over seven seasons — and that obligation extended even to those figures who had long since ceased to be main cast members and slipped into the ranks of recurring players. Few characters posed a more obvious challenge in this regard than Wesley Crusher, and it fell to the series' penultimate episode, Journey's End, the twentieth instalment of the final season, to provide him with a fitting farewell.
The premise sees Wesley taking brief leave from Starfleet Academy to visit his mother and his old friends aboard the Enterprise. Yet while everyone is delighted to see him, it soon becomes apparent that he is acting strangely, almost hostilely, with some unspoken burden clearly weighing upon him. This personal unease coincides with a diplomatic crisis that, if mishandled, could easily escalate into yet another devastating conflict with the Cardassians. The Federation and the Cardassian Union have only recently resolved their outstanding border disputes and established new demarcation lines, which unfortunately leave a number of colonies — on both sides — stranded on the wrong side of the frontier. Admiral Nechaev arrives with orders for Picard to relocate the Federation colony at Dorvan V, by force if necessary. The settlement was established some two centuries earlier by Native Americans of Pueblan ancestry, who had departed Earth seeking a world they could call their own.
Upon arriving to parley with the colony's elders, led by the redoubtable Anthwara (Ned Romero), Picard discovers that the colonists have no intention of leaving. They regard the world as perfect for their purposes precisely because of its spiritual properties, a conviction that renders practical argument almost meaningless. Meanwhile Wesley, too, has beamed down, and a colonist named Lakanta (Tom Jackson) invites him to undertake a vision quest. During the ritual, Wesley encounters the spirit of his late father, Jack Crusher, who counsels him that he must seek a life path very different from the one he has inherited — a journey of the spirit rather than a career in uniform.
The situation is further complicated when the Cardassians, under the command of Gul Evek (Richard Poe), dispatch an advance team to observe the handover, generating immediate tension that soon erupts into outright violence with the colonists. Acting directly against Picard's explicit orders, Wesley warns the settlers about the forced evacuation plans, provoking further riots and bloodshed. When he is rightly chastised for this act of insubordination, Wesley tenders his resignation from Starfleet — and his mother, however reluctantly, ultimately accepts his decision.
The final revelation is a satisfying one: Lakanta is revealed to be the Traveler in disguise, the enigmatic figure who mentored Wesley many years ago. As he explains, Wesley is destined for far greater things than the institution of Starfleet can ever accommodate, and he must not allow himself to be constrained by a conventional military career. The planetary tension is resolved when Gul Evek, displaying unexpected pragmatism, agrees to beam up his forces; the colonists, still refusing to leave, solve the impasse by renouncing their Federation citizenship and formally accepting the Cardassians as their overlords.
In crafting this resolution, writer Ronald D. Moore — one of the most celebrated authors in the franchise's history — was confronted with the unenviable task of closing out the Wesley Crusher arc, and he accomplished it with admirable consistency. Wesley had long been one of the most unpopular characters in early seasons, thanks to his near-superhuman, almost "Mary Sue" abilities that often strained credibility. Rather than ignoring or retconning these powers, Moore cleverly makes them the precise reason Wesley must leave Starfleet: an institution that would inevitably constrain such extraordinary potential. This is achieved even more effectively by resurrecting the Traveler, drawing directly upon the strengths of Where No One Has Gone Before — a genuinely fine piece of science fiction that marked the moment TNG stepped out of its predecessor's shadow, even if its insistence on Wesley's "Mozart-like" potential felt somewhat forced and unearned at the time. Journey's End repays that earlier investment handsomely.
Another interesting detail is the decision to make the colonists Native Americans, a choice that could so easily have reduced the episode to another moralistic sermon in the manner of early-1990s "political correctness." Yet the script is far more subtle than that. Through the actual words of Picard, the plight of the Dorvan V colonists is rendered explicitly analogous to the historical plight of their ancestors, complete with a direct reference to the late seventeenth-century Pueblo Revolt and the subsequent Spanish suppression, during which Picard's own ancestor, a Spanish soldier, committed atrocities. Crucially, however, the script avoids the simple, comfortable resolution. The Traveler does not intervene with cosmic solutions; Picard delivers no grand moralistic speech; and it is in fact Gul Evek who agrees to the practical diplomatic compromise, observing that a pragmatic settlement is vastly preferable to war.
The episode is also notable for setting the stage for major multi-episode developments that would play out both in the final instalments of TNG and across the early seasons of Deep Space Nine — most significantly the colonists' displeasure with the border arrangement and the consequent formation of the Maquis, a resistance movement that would ultimately play a pivotal role in the pilot episode of Star Trek: Voyager. If there is a flaw to be found, it lies in Wil Wheaton's evident difficulty in portraying an unsympathetic character; his performance occasionally feels strained. Nevertheless, under the direction of the respected veteran Corey Allen, in his final TNG outing, Journey's End stands as a solid, emotionally resonant episode that helps the series conclude on a high note — a fitting and thoughtful farewell to one of its most contested, yet ultimately vindicated, characters.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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