UNCUT REACTION - Star Trek TNG S3E5 - The Bonding

I'm into several personality theories, including some MBTI. In particular I think Kiersey's Temperaments help to explain the philosophical differences between something like Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek, and their fans respectively. I can definitely see why people can really like one and hate the other. I will by no means go into the full theories. But for what is relevant here, Kiersey divides all people into 4 main personality groups, or temperaments. The two groups relevant here are Artisans and Idealists. These two groups are kind of polar opposites in many ways. I'm pretty sure Ron Moore is an Artisan. Shows like Battlestar Gallactica, Rome, and Game of Thrones, definitely cater to Artisans. In fact, I'd say they completely embody the primary Artisan way of thinking. Artisans have a very pragmatic and gritty view of humanity and don't trust portrayals or characters that seem too "perfect" or idealistic. In fact, many of them are convinced that their counterparts, the Idealists, don't actually exist in this world, and are just as self-serving as they are and think everyone else is, and are just being fake to hide this. In reality though, nothing could be further from the truth. There are legit good and well-meaning people out there. Anyway, there is a LONG list of traits that work together to make someone an Artisan, and whatever I write here is going to be a massive over-simplification of the term, not to mention biased because I personally don't really care for artisan views. On the contrary, you have the idealists. Gene Rodenberry was probably an Idealist. Things like Lord of the Rings and Star Trek cater to idealists. These are the people who believe in the good of humanity and have hope for our future. These are the therapists that actually don't suck because they actually listen and understand human behavior (think Guinan as an example). These are the people who strive to be good for the sake of good because they want to be. These people are the Aragorns that Artisans are convinced don't exist (though granted, they're no where near as bad ass, and they'll probably never be in a position of power). Extreme examples are people like Bob Ross, Tolkien, Jim Henson, Walt Disney, and Mr. Rogers. But they can also be the nice guy next door, or the people who die first in shows like Battlestar Gallactica or Game of Thrones because they are "too nice". These groups each highly misjudge each other and each rub each other the wrong way. Artisans see Idealists as naive/ignorant, unrealistic, "goody-two-shoes", head in the sand, too perfect, dogmatic, having unrealistically high standards, or being inauthentic. Idealists see Artisans as "dark for the sake of dark", overly pessimistic, morally corrupt/ambiguous, overly self-serving, missing the big picture, creating the very problems they claim to hate, and never realizing that their view of "realism" isn't actually that realistic. Basically, both Artisans and Idealists each understand a part of the same truth. But neither side recognizes that they don't have the whole truth, and the other group actually contains the other half of the truth. they each have insight into humanity that is equally valid, but in vastly different ways. Each can get overly caught up in their own view and start missing the point. For example, This episode, "The Bonding" was written in part as a response to Gene insisting that in the 24th century, nobody will grieve. Obviously, that's TOO idealistic, and people like Ron Moore and other writers called it out. However, Ron Moore IMO has done more than his share of highly unrealistic things as well in his own work. For instance, I LOVE the Battlestar Gallactica Miniseries, and the first two episodes of the show because they actually had that truly realistic survival situation feel with real world scenarios that they had to figure out, and hard decisions that they had to make. If the show would have stayed like that, and focused on what humanity had to do in order to survive, I would have loved it. But i feel like pretty quickly the show starts doing things that throw that feel out of the water and completely break my suspension of disbelief. Whether it's characters showing up who IMO should never have survived, characters going completely out of character and turning evil for no reason, going to places we should never be able to go literally at any time, things being established as major problems all of a sudden not being an issue any more, or showing some stuff in the fleet just to be dark and gritty where if that was really how stuff was ran, that whole fleet would not be able to function. And don't even get me started on season 4. Ironically, sometimes I felt like Voyager was the more realistic of the two. I don't feel like Ron Moore "fixed voyager's problems". I feel like he created problems of his own. If you want some in-show examples Okana, Kirk and Riker are all Artisans. They aren't the best examples here though because they embody other Artisan traits better than the ones I described here, such as charisma, having multiple partners, charm, loyalty to their friends, and knowing how to relax and have fun. We'll be getting a few guest characters eventually though who are more opportunistic and more along the type of Artisans that I just described. Picard, Wesley, and Guinan are idealists. However, MUCH later once Ron Moore gets a chance to write a little about Picard in his youth, HE writes Picard as an Artisan. No surprise there considering Ron Moore is an Artisan. He writes what he knows. Even though in real life, people don't switch temperaments as they get older. I'm actually in the minority of really hating that episode because I view it through a type theory lens. I feel like one of the messages that Ron Moore was unintentionally sending was that life isn't worth living unless you live it like an artisan, and if you end up like an idealist, then you are a beta who never takes risks and are better off dead because you never really lived. I doubt anyone else got that message and I'm probably taking that way too personally lol. But more on that when we actually get there. As for this episode, I never knew Ron Moore wrote this one until now. I really like this episode, so I don't hate everything he's ever done. Sometimes the best Trek comes from Gene's idealism being challenged, and our true humanity being shown, like in this episode.

Minor Spoiler. Going forward, Ronald Moore is responsible for some of the really good Klingon story arcs.

I had not watched this episode in years, because I wasnt wild about it when I was younger. I figured you guys would not like this one either, but i'm glad I watched it again. I changed my mind about it, and am glad you guys enjoyed it so much.

This episode will really give weight to past and future episodes when unnamed characters die. It gives us insight into the grieving process the crew does experience but a 45 minute episode lacks the time to show.

I love watching Star Trek with you guys! ❤️ I’m always looking for more!

I kinda need the visual of some kind throughout, as my wifi likes to buffer. Not really sure if I can even trust it enough to watch this and keep track of where you are. Like I'm not trying to be mean or whatever or exaggerate, without the visual cues to fix it... I cannot watch the reactions

Really enjoy how you two appreciate the humanity in Star Trek. It truly is its best storytelling quality.

Solid episode, good performances, great writing. Loved your guys reaction to it, and looking forward to the discussion. Damn, just wait until you get to the REALLY GOOD episodes of this season!

Good reaction gentleman👍

I so LOVE your raw emotions!!! It is soooooo SEXY! 🔥

Great reaction guys. I honestly did not remember much of this one.

A: "Where has this been my entire life?... Just picturing how my life could have been different if I'd grown up with this instead of Star Wars." J: "This is better than most TV I've ever seen, ever!" Target Trekkies: Bwahahaha! Yes. Good. They are coming to understand. Soon, very soon now, they shall see...

This isn't one I have strong feelings about either way, and there's another episode I always get it mixed up with, but it ended up being a lot better than I remembered. I lost my dad when I was 17, so as an adult this one does hit home more. RDM really showed his potential with this being his first episode ever. We see he also jumps right into developing Klingon lore as well. Regarding the actor who played the kid, a lot of people are saying he sucked, but I actually think he did a decent job. At this point he's already lost his dad, and now he's an orphan. At that age death can just be numbing. You don't know how to react, so you just shut down. Intentional or not, I feel that's what he accomplished. One thing I think you missed was the purpose of the aliens in this episode. You wanted the whole thing to be about grieving. The thing is, it was. The point of the aliens isn't for us to care about these non corporeal beings on this planet, nor to draw away from Jeremy's story. The whole point was to put Jeremy in a position where it's that much harder to let go. That's what Star Trek does, it'll take a concept like that and make it manifest. Jeremy could have recreated his mother on the holodeck, but then he's putting himself in that position, and the crew could just shut down the holodeck. When someone is unable to let go of a loved one they lost, you can't just shut it off. Note that it wasn't their arguments to the alien that made it leave, it was Wesley and Worf relating their own experiences that helped him move on, and helped the alien understand it was for the best. I think this episode explains why Picard is so uncomfortable around kids as we first learned in Farpoint. Early on he just seems like a cranky old guy with no patience for kids getting underfoot, but I think that's a front. The scene where he says no one is alone on the Enterprise shows he does have some fatherly instincts. The turbolift scene reveals the true reason however. Knowing he had to tell Wesley his father died under his command, and now having to do the same thing again, he knows if there are kids on his ship, their parents must be there as well, and that may well lead to the very scenario this episode shows. Yes, if the ship is destroyed, the kids will die same as everyone, but Jeremy living somewhere else would have changed nothing, except that Picard wouldn't be the one to personally tell Jeremy about it. If that had been the case, it just means Jeremy would have had even less time with his mother before her death. Not the most instantly memorable episode, but a surprisingly good commentary on death and grief.

Geez if you guys really like the weepy stuff you might actually like nutrek, all they do is cry and talk about their feelings

I agree that they didn’t need the alien aspect

Excellent reaction.

You appreciate episodes like this way more as an adult, Alex. As a teen it was too much talking for me.

I would definitely appreciate the visual synchs back. I'm watching along with you guys with actual off air recordings of the episodes which have the original bumpers going into the commercial breaks, so every break you are automatically jumping ahead by about four or five seconds from me. So having that visual que helps greatly to re-synch with you.

Also, Alex pining that he wasn't a Star Trek nerd.

This is an episode I grew to like more as I got older. I remember strongly disliking it when I first got into Trek. I came around to it a bit more in recent years. It's not one of my favorites but it's solid enough.

Waitaminute, you guys are sitting on the wrong side still! IS THIS THS MIRROR UNIVERSE!? WTF!?

Not an episode I particularly like. I figured you guys would like it more than I did. But I didn't expect you all to like it this much. Still glad y'all enjoyed.

This was not only the first Star Trek script, but the first TV script ever written by Ronald D. Moore, who would later become the showrunner of the revived "Battlestar Galactica" and the creator of "For All Mankind." Moore gave the script to Gene Roddenberry’s assistant, Richard Arnold, while visiting the TNG set during the filming of Season 2’s “Time Squared.” Arnold helped Moore get an agent, who submitted “The Bonding” to TNG as a “spec script,” that is, a script intended to get the writer’s foot in the door to pitch other stories. Normally, TV series never purchase spec scripts. Sound familiar? Due to the lack of scripts available for production when Michael Piller took over from Michael Wagner as co-executive producer, Melinda Snodgrass and Piller found it necessary to read through the “slush pile” of unsolicited scripts, which TV producers normally never do. Although it needed work, “The Bonding” was the only script in the pile which Piller considered suitable for TNG. Piller bought it and asked Moore to submit another story, beginning Moore’s storied career in television science fiction. Piller and Melinda Snodgrass extensively rewrote “The Bonding” (significantly improving it, in Moore’s opinion), but Moore receives sole screen credit. Moore originally had Jeremy Aster recreate his dead mother on the holodeck; the aliens picked up on what Jeremy was doing and planned to recreate Marla on the planet on a permanent basis. Gene Roddenberry vetoed this version, saying that 24th-century human children were better at grieving than their 20th-century counterparts. Therefore, the rewrites changed the eidolon of Marla Aster from a holographic version to the alien impersonating her, making it more believable that Jeremy could delude himself into thinking that his mother’s death was “a mistake” and could be tempted to retreat into the fantasy of his lost past. Also, in Moore’s draft the Ten Forward scene involved Riker, Geordi and Guinan discussing the loss of a friend rather than Riker and Data; perhaps Whoopi Goldberg was unavailable that week. (Unfortunately, Alex and Josh talked over the hint in the final version of the scene – “We spent some time together” – that Riker and Marla Aster may have hooked up at some point.) It was Piller who added Patches, Jeremy’s cat, to the script. Dennis McCarthy’s score is more noticeable than usual in this episode, demonstrating his immense talent as a composer. The quiet, restrained nature of the story allows the “wallpaper” Rick Berman wanted him to compose to come into sharper focus (especially in the final scene of the bonding ritual), and it is exceptionally beautiful wallpaper. The scene in which Geordi shows Picard the mines from the planet’s surface seems at first glance to be a non sequitur that does not connect to anything else in the episode. From subsequent events, however, one can guess that the energy beings excavated and deactivated the mines after Marla Aster’s death for the Enterprise crew to find, so they could understand the cause of her death without endangering themselves, and so that the mines would not harm any other visitors to the planet in the future. Note that this is the third consecutive TNG episode involving a character (Kevin Uxbridge, Liko, Jeremy Aster) struggling to come to terms with the death of a loved one, and that two of the three episodes feature an illusory recreation of the person who has died. The episodes are all good enough, however, that this repetitiveness of theme is not bothersome. Here comes the paragraph of this comment that people will dislike: The heteronormativity in this episode is through the roof. Perhaps Picard asks about Jeremy’s “father” because he was acquainted with Marla Aster well enough to have sensed she was heterosexual, but how does Troi know Jeremy will want a “wife” rather than a husband when he grows up? Ronald D. Moore met Patrick Stewart on the set of “The Bonding” and told him he was working on another episode. According to Moore, Stewart said, “Just remember one thing… the Captain doesn’t do enough screwing or shooting in this series.” I wonder if that is an exact quote, or if Moore bowdlerized another alliterative phrase with the same meaning.

It's funny seeing you guys change gears in your reaction as soon as the alien element was added. You still liked it, but you went from fully engaged to confusion for several minutes. I think the original holodeck idea would have been a better, but less action-y, episode.

Having lost a parent at 21, parents leaving behind their kids too soon as a story is a definite emotional button for me. This one almost got me a few times, but focusing on how you guys were responding to the writing and performances were enough to distract me. There's another episode that really gets me, and heck, a S32 Simpson's episode of all things got me recently too. I think one could critique this child actor's performance, but I think he did a pretty good job considering he had a lack of professional acting experience and a lack of life experience playing against him. Like, telling an 8 year old to act out absolute despair and sadness, that's about as good as you're gonna get. And what's the alternative? Wishing absolute hell on this poor kid so he can ACT better? Nah man, let him have his happy childhood.

I was way less noticing of the delay, I paused once just to make sure. I only noticed it when the two security mooks got knocked down by the energy intruder, you shouted just as they got hit. If there isn't a 'beat' between the action and the reaction, then it feels off.

The Bonding is my least favorite episode of the season, so if you guys call this the best one yet, you're in for a great ride.

I miss the little picture-in-picture window with the blurred background. It helps me maintain a correct sync. Pretty please bring it back...

Is it just me or is the green screen keying much better? I don't see as much leak

The Trek series generally gives you sci-fi elements to comment on the real world human condition. I wouldn't say that Trek never does the kind of "low stakes" episode you'd like, but it's often done like this.

When encoding and editing, have you thought about converting your reactions to 23.976 so it syncs better?

Great direction with that Riker and Data scene which was almost entirely done in close-ups.

And the show isn't even firing on all cylinders yet. Close to it though!

So I put this down in the Patron takes as kind of a meh. I should have reviewed the episode before I did, because I confused it with a different episode. But still, there are better episodes to come. This kind of thing being the baseline or maybe slightly above average... is why, when fans look back, Seasons 1 (and 2) are... bad. Or, if not bad, simply... not good. Comparatively.

The thing is, the show still gets better. I haven't watched this one for years. I lost my mother almost 10 years ago and watching your reaction made the episode hit a little harder than it ever did before. For her, it wasn't quick like here. She suffered for years with a combination of dementia and lupus, and a few months before she passed she also had a heart attack.

50:35 LOL! Alex: "...how my life could have been different... had I grown up with this..." Just. You. Wait. 😂

This is one of those that got better with the rewatch. I hear many people didn't particularly like this one, and I too didn't remember it fondly. But yes, it nails the emotionality and the character moments. I suspect many people (myself included) watched this when they were younger, and only now that they have grown up a bit more they have the (emotional) maturity to really appreciate the episode. Just a theory though :)

51:16 A great reminder that everyone is different. And you can't please all the people all of the time!

48:00 Many have told you... the show gets *good* 50:05 Yeah. Wow. 😀 This... this is why it's so fun to watch you guys watch this!

You were spot on about the show starting to click,the gradual move towards more character based episodes is a result of a more cohesive writers room this season.

43:52 Almost perfect Sean Connery impression! LOL!!

I think the child actor did a great job!

Sure would be nice if the companies at least allowed for like, a big watermark across a tiny video image or something. Early on some reacters had some shows where they did that on Patreon but then even had to change that. Too bad. As if someone would use something like that as a substitute for actually watching an episode.

3:05 The what was obvious. It was the who that was the mystery. And then the "why are these two people still here??"

Meh. I sync with Paramount Plus so I have to resync after every commercial so it's not a big deal for me. First World Problems abound!

The visual sync was helpful to adjust a couple of times through the sho we. Would you consider putting a couple of them back, maybe 1/3 of the way in and 2/3 in?

My OCD thanks you. This episode was written by Ronald D. Moore...from BSG 2004.

Started new job this week, have to wait to watch till this evening!