“Unification I” (5×07) & “Unification II” (5×08)
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After watching “Unification III” on “Discovery” this week, I revisited “Unification I” and “Unification II” from the fifth season of TNG tonight.
It was a frustrating experience; on one hand, it does take some major swings with regard to the mythology of Star Trek and set up a more interesting direction for the Vulcans and Romulans. On the other hand, TNG only got one two-parter with Leonard Nimoy as Spock, and I feel like it didn’t make the most of the opportunity.
For all the faults of J.J. Abrams’s 2009 Star Trek, Nimoy doesn’t actually have a ton of screen time but the movie makes the most of every second of it. You really feel the journey of Spock over the course of the original series and the several movies with the original series cast.
His depiction in this two-parter feels a lot more shallow. There’s a whole lot of talking but very little with real impact is said. Making Picard an avatar for Sarek, and making the episode about Spock’s daddy issues, felt like a mistake. You’ve got Spock together with the newest captain of the Enterprise. Why wouldn’t you make the story about the legacy of the Enterprise, how Spock’s time aboard the original Enterprise and the Enterprise-A shaped the man he’d become in the decades since?
The casting of Denise Crosby as Sela is also really distracting. It’s just too obvious that it’s the same actress who played Tasha Yar, and the character’s convoluted origins as a hybrid daughter of a Tasha Yar from an alternate future just draw more attention to it.
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