This felt like one of those DC Comics imaginary tales from back in the Sixties where Superman would find himself in some oddball situation and the reader wouldn't be made aware of it until the very end, or one of those Mr. Mxyzptlk stories where the imp from the Fifth Dimension would bedevil the Man of Steel until he was tricked into saying his name backwards. Even so, it was a real life situation for Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes), fooled for a time believing he might have been in a coma for a few days and lost all memory going back sixteen years to an event that occurred on planet Alpha Onias III. With personnel changes aboard the Enterprise, he finds himself addressed by Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) as Captain Riker, and we learn that Jean-Luc Picard is now an admiral aboard the Romulan vessel Decius, with Deanna Troi alongside him as counselor!! The surprises don't end there either, as soon enough he finds out he has a son, and that his wife died two years earlier. It's not until he views a personal history log of his lost years that Riker realizes he's in a rigged game, because the wife he didn't remember only ever existed in a holodeck simulation. The whole ruse was concocted by the Romulans, posing as allies of the Federation, in an effort to learn the location of Federation Outpost Twenty Three where secret defense system information was said to be stored. With the Romulans exposed, things are restored to normal aboard the Enterprise, although that doesn't fully explain the presence of the alien Barash on hand posing as Riker's son. He would have had to be in league with the Romulans, but that didn't seem to be the case, as his transformation back to alien form mimicked in reverse the finale of the original Star Trek series story, 'The Corbomite Maneuver'.
Review of Future Imperfect
