This episode managed to not work for me on multiple different levels.
Wow, did we not already adopt Native American in the common vernacular by the time this episode came out?
It's got the late 80s, early 90s "we're trying to be respectful of Native American culture, but we're still exoticizing it" clumsy storytelling.
We get an alien basically appropriate Native American spiritual beliefs to teach Wesley a lesson. Additionally, Wesley suddenly has a destiny as a cosmic being and doesn't want to be in Starfleet, which as a throwaway later gets "Daniel Jackson'd."
Also, Picard pretty much pulls a "what white privilege?" moment, even while he recounts his ancestors being related to Charlemagne, being nobles, and having an ancestral estate. It's not a good look.
I just couldn't get past the feeling that, instead of engaging with the actual events and conflict of the episode, we kept getting a patronizing "oh, look at this exotic culture we can't possibly understand with their quaint mystical religion, let us humor them and feel bad about what people absolutely not connected to use did to them."
S7E20 Journey's End
- Jared Rascher
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