The First Duty does a good job of painting the portrait of an ambitious cadet that disproportionately values loyalty. They could’ve made the character an easy villain, but went for something a little more nuanced, which was refreshing. Putting Wesley in a high stakes peer pressure situation after years of having Picard as a mentor was a nice direction to take Wesley in. We’re going to pretend this is the last episode with Wesley in it.
The Enterprise returns to Earth! So Picard can give a commencement speech! But then they find out Wesley and his pals crashed their ships. They find this out in a room that looks a lot like that trial room from The Outcast, but that was on a totally different planet??Paris, er… Locarno… is the team leader.These are normal positions for people to be in when they’re talking to each other.Boothby makes his first appearance! Send your copy of this ep into CGC and get it graded, maybe it’ll be worth some money. Paris says the student that died was a lovable loser and it was all his fault. This is Sito. She’ll be back, too, and she gets to keep her name!The surviving team members have a totally casual hang out session and definitely aren’t trying to cover anything up.The father of the student apologizes on behalf of his son for not being ready, and risking everyone’s lives. GULP.When it’s Wesley’s turn to give his testimony he says the ships were like this…but then another camera shows the ships weren’t like that!Sorry… I keep getting distracted by the weird pipe art on the walls… what’s happening? Wesley’s a liar?Beverly tells Wesley that she still believes him, and that she won’t let them bad mouth Wesley because of a faulty camera reading or something. G-U-L-P.But then Picard figures out what happened and he gives Wesley a Picard speech where he says the name of the episode.The students get away with minor reprimands since there was no real evidence of another cause of deathBut then Wesley tells the truth. They were trying some crazy maneuver that got him killed … pipe art
