| The Next Generation | |
| 142 | |
| Birthright, Part I | |
| 46578.4 | |
The Enterprise has boldly gone to Deep Space Nine! Your mission Jean-Luc, should you choose to accept it, is to assist in Bajoran aqueduct repair. Should you or any member of your team be killed, Starfleet will disavow any knowledge of you. Wow, how exciting!
While on the promenade of DS9, Worf is accosted by a bipedal caterpillar with information to sell. Cocooning techniques perhaps? No, information about Mogh, his father. He claims that not all the Klingons died at Khitomer, some were taken to a Romulan prison planet! As is so typical in Klingon society, reappearances of previously assumed dead relatives is not something to celebrate. Worf threatens the slug for telling lies and then returns to the Enterprise to do some redecorating of his room - by breaking the furniture!
Strangely, on DS9 none of the regular characters are around. Maybe they're all on holiday, or maybe... they're playing on the Enterprise already! It's true enough for Dr Geeky Bashir. He's trying to test an alien medical scanner in the Enterprise's sickbay. Data isn't impressed and leads him down to Engineering to play with Geordi and the other kiddies. They hook up the gizmo and zap, Data takes a lightning bolt in the chest.
This sort of thing has happened before, but previously Data never had a near death experience! There's nothing else to call it - he sees himself walking through the corridors of the Enterprise, and finds a young Dr Soong working an anvil. Is there really a Silicon Heaven after all? Geordi manages to restore Data's cognitive processes and he "wakes up". So now we know, androids do not dream of electric sheep after all.
Data goes to see Worf about his visions. Worf tells him to find the meaning of it. After researching thousands of religious cultures, he's no closer to it, so he goes off to see Picard. The Bald Avenger tells him that he is a culture of one, and should look within not without. He must get inspired! Thanks for the sermon Reverend. Data decides to get inspired by painting. Lots of painting. To be precise, 23 paintings in 6 hours!
Worf convinces himself that despite the potential dishonour, he must seek out his father. So he goes back to see Mr Caterpillar. Worf is a convincing negotiator: he manages to haggle it from "you pay me for the information" to "you'll take me there and I'll pay you afterwards, and by the way, if you're lying I'll kill you". With an offer like that, who could refuse, especially when you're being dangled off a balcony. So it's off to Romulan space...
It's a jungle out there. Literally. Worf has to travel overland to get to the camp, but has only 50 hours to complete his mission or his ride home won't be there. There are strange things in the jungle, and few are stranger than a naked Klingon woman having a bath! Worf says that he's come to rescue her, but she says that this is her home. Things are not as they seem.
Data's inspiration didn't help him at all, and he says that the only way to understand his vision is to do it all over again. Wire up the electrodes! Zap! The vision starts again, but this time it changes. Soong says that he's "showing promise" and that he isn't supposed to understand. That's good, because neither do we. Ah, Data really is dreaming, and has started a wonderful journey. "You are the bird" says Soong, and Data becomes an astral budgie flying around and outside the Enterprise.
When he stops tripping, Data explains that the plasma shock activated previously dormant circuits that were only supposed to come online when he reached a certain level of consciousness. So now he's going to sleep just a little each night and see what he dreams...
Worf gets to the prison camp, and has no trouble getting in. He finds a group of Klingons having a campfire singalong, and rather than just go up and say "Hi" he abducts one of them and demands to know what happened to his father. "He died at Khitomer". The slug's in trouble! Things definitely not what they seem, as the elders grab Worf just as the Romulan guards arrive. "We are not leaving here, and neither are you".
