The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion: Revised Edition

by Larry Nemecek

  DATA’S DAY

  * * *

  Production No.: 185 Aired: Week of January 7, 1991

  Stardate: 44390.1 Code: dd

  Directed by Robert Wiemer

  Teleplay by Harold Apter and Ronald D. Moore

  Story by Harold Apter

  GUEST CAST

  Keiko Ishikawa: Rosalind Chao

  Lieutenant O’Brien: Colm Meaney

  Ambassador T’Pel (Sub-Commander Selok): Sierra Pecheur

  Admiral Mendak: Alan Scarfe

  Transporter Chief Hubbell: April Grace

  V’Sal: Shelly Desai

  * * *

  Data’s understanding of human behavior is put to the test when his friend Keiko Ishikawa gets cold feet on the eve of her wedding to Lieutenant O’Brien and calls off the ceremony.

  Logically, the android reasons, if calling off the wedding makes her happy it will make O’Brien happy, too. Of course, when Data delivers the news to the transporter chief he quickly discovers otherwise. Geordi, however, assures him the ceremony will take place, so the android purchases a gift with Worf’s assistance and takes dancing lessons from Dr. Crusher.

  Meanwhile, the whole crew—except for Data—is made edgy by the presence of Ambassador T’Pel, a cooler-than-usual Vulcan en route to historic treaty negotiations with the Romulans in the Neutral Zone. But shortly after Data refuses to grant the ambassador access to security information for which she has not been cleared, she is killed in a mysterious transporter accident.

  With her death, the treaty negotiations are called off, and the Romulans prepare to depart. But a probe, led by Data in his Sherlock Holmes persona, turns up signs that her death was faked. Confronted with this information, Romulan Commander Mendak reveals the truth: T’Pel was actually a deep-cover spy for his Empire.

  The danger passed, the mood turns more joyful. Data walks his friend Keiko down the aisle, and she and O’Brien are married in a ceremony performed by Picard.

  The wedding party watches Miles (Colm Meaney) and Keiko O’Brien (Rosalind Chao).

  A marvelous and ambitious show relished by trivia fans, this day-in-the-life plot was the first attempted in any of Trek’s various incarnations. Harold Apter first pitched the story during the third season, and various viewpoints including Picard’s and that of the ship itself were considered for the narrative. Ronald D. Moore recalled that Data was the final choice because “he’s the only one who’s up twenty-four hours a day.” Michael Piller then agreed with Rick Berman that at least one plot arc should run through the story, and the Romulan-Vulcan spy intrigue was added.

  Director Robert Wiemer revealed that Brent Spiner and Gates McFadden worked up their own dialogue as well as their dance routine during after-hours rehearsals, and the lines they created were later accepted by the scriptwriters. The director, though, took credit for Data’s “pasted-on” smile at the end of the dancing scene. Spiner—who, Wiener said, did “99 percent” of his own tap routine—was as good as his double but was modest enough to let the double perform to ensure the routine’s quality.

  The writing staff had toyed with the idea of a shipboard marriage for some time. Piller at one point even quietly inquired about marrying Picard off to provide some new story dynamics. Pairing O’Brien with the female conn officer slated to replace Wesley was also considered. Finally a wedding was proposed for the day-in-the-life story and Keiko was conceived. The part is played by Rosalind Chao, a close friend of Elizabeth “Shelby” Dennehy and an earlier candidate for a recurring role on the show. Chao is probably best remembered as Corporal Klinger’s war bride on M*A*S*H and After M*A*S*H. Loads of Enterprise trivia can be found in this story. On SD 44390, for example, the 1,550th day since the starship’s commissioning (SD 40759.5—or October 4, 2363, according to Okuda and Sternbach’s technical manual. Data is still writing to Commander Bruce Maddox at the Daystrom Institute. For the first time, we see the android’s cat, an idea Spiner proposed; the cat would get a name later, in “In Theory” (199). Data records that the starship’s day included four birthdays, two transfers, four promotions, two chess tournaments, a secondary school play, a celebration of the Hindu Festival of Lights, various accidents, the birth of the Juarezes’ baby, and the O’Brien-Ihikawa wedding.

  Meanwhile, original Trek fans will note that Picard’s wedding remarks are almost the same as those which Kirk used in 1966’s “Balance of Terror.” The Murasaki Quasar mentioned here is the same as Murasaki 312 from 1967’s “Galileo Seven,” Moore said. The Andorians are mentioned for the first time in a year (“The Offspring”/164) with their bizarre wedding ritual; likewise, the Bolians reappear (see “Schisms”/231) with Shelly Desai playing the first in a string of different Bolian barbers (“The Host”/197, “Ensign Ro”/203, “Schisms”). And the U.S.S. Zhukov, which ferries the Romulan spy, had been Barclay’s last assignment (“Hollow Pursuits”/ 169). Alan Scarfe would return in “Birthright” (242-243).

  The ship’s arboretum, mentioned on several other occasions as a socializing site, makes its debut here—but as a work site for Keiko, a biologist. Another first is this show’s glimpse of people “shopping” at the ship’s replication center, where we discover Worf’s appreciation of fine glass bird sculpture.

  THE WOUNDED

  * * *

  Production No.: 186 Aired: Week of January 28, 1991

  Stardate: 44429.6 Code: wo

  Directed by Chip Chalmers

  Teleplay by Jeri Taylor

  Story by Stuart Charno, Sara Charno, and Cy Chermak

  GUEST CAST

  Captain Benjamin Maxwell: Bob Gunton

  Keiko Ishikawa O’Brien: Rosalind Chao

  Gul Macet: Marc Alaimo

  Lieutenant O’Brien: Colm Meaney

  Glinn Telle: Marco Rodriguez

  Glinn Daro: Time Winters

  Admiral Haden: John Hancock

  * * *

  Picard is shocked to learn a renegade Federation starship under the command of Captain Benjamin Maxwell is destroying Cardassian ships, threatening the fragile peace that the Federation and the Cardassian Empire have achieved after years of skirmishes.

  He invites the Cardassian, Gul Macet, aboard to witness the pursuit of the ship, the USS Phoenix. Both watch in horror on long-range scan as two more Cardassian ships are destroyed.

  O’Brien, Maxwell’s former tactical officer, says he finds the decorated captain’s acts hard to believe. Maxwell, he says, must have a reason for the attacks. Intercepted at last, Maxwell gladly comes aboard to tell Picard that he has proof the Cardassians are rearming for war.

  Picard refuses and orders Maxwell to surrender, but he aims to fight until O’Brien breaks the standoff by beaming over and quietly persuading his old captain to give up. Macet is relieved, but Picard sternly warns him that despite Maxwell’s crimes he knows he had the truth.

  This wonderful show not only offered a tragic figure in Bob Gunton’s Captain Maxwell but added long-overdue depth to O’Brien and introduced new adversaries, the Cardassians. Even the scientific deus ex machina—transporting through the one-fiftieth-of-a-second break in recycling shields-was well done. Note too the mention of the depleted post-Borg fleet and the shield-dropping prefix code, seen in Star Trek II.

  While the philosophical conflict was between the two captains, it was O’Brien who butted heads with his counterpart Cardassian and sang an Irish song with his former commander—a gem of a scene suggested by Michael Piller (which Rick Berman picked)—helping to diffuse a tense situation and returning Maxwell to a sane but broken state. (The song, “The Minstrel Boy” by Thomas Moore, figured prominently in the movie The Man Who Would Be King.) We also learned that young Miles Edward O’Brien was a peaceful, nature-loving boy who never killed until a Cardassian patrol forced him to. Mentioning his stint as tactics officer on the Rutledge provided a nice setup for future bridge duty (“Redemption II”/201, “Disaster”/205).

  Only Mark “Sarek” Lenard had played three different aliens in the Trek uni
verse until Marc Alaimo did it here as a Cardassian, after stints as an Antican and a Romulan (“Lonely Among Us”/108, “The Neutral Zone”/126); he was next a human (“Time’s Arrow”/ 226) before getting the recurring Cardassian Gul Dukat in spinoff DS9—but without the facial hair here, never seen again in the species. Rodriguez had been a human (“The Arsenal of Freedom”/121), while Hancock, seen in A Soldier’s Story, Foul Play, and L.A. Law, died of a heart attack at home in late 1992 soon after costarring as bartender Ike Johnson on Love and War. Gunton, known for Broadway’s Sweeney Todd, played a Maxwell whose Queeg-like turn echoed Matt Decker of 1967’s “The Doomsday Machine.”

  In creating a new ongoing race, costume designer Bob Blackman and makeup designer Michael Westmore worked together to give the Cardassians an overall “snakelike” look; the dress helmets briefly seen here were never used again. Westmore based the unusual makeup and shoulder pieces, which take at least two and a half hours to apply, on a passing image that had struck him two years earlier: an abstract painting in a Ventura Boulevard store of a wide-shouldered woman with what looked like a spoon in the center of her forehead. Modelmaker Greg Jein built Ed Miarecki’s original Nebula-class design (“Future Imperfect”/182) into the U.S.S. Phoenix, NCC-65420, while Rick Sternbach evolved the first Galor-class Cardassian ship seen, the Trager, from a pod ship to a scorpionlike design to the simple Egyptian-ankh look; Miarecki and Tom Hudson built it. The new race would be located “west” of the UFP on art department maps and sector numbers, opposite the Klingons and Romulans; their energy weapons were pink here but made to be amber afterward.

  O’Brien (Colm Meaney) and Cardassian Daro (Time Winters) confront old prejudices.

  DEVIL’S DUE

  * * *

  Production No.: 187 Aired: Week of February 4, 1991

  Stardate: 44474.5 Code: dv

  Directed by Tom Benko

  Teleplay by Philip Lazebnick

  Story by Philip Lazebnick and William Douglas Lansford

  GUEST CAST

  Ardra: Marta Dubois

  Dr. Clarke: Paul Lambert

  Jared: Marcello Tubert

  Devil Monster: Thad Lamey

  Klingon Monster: Tom Magee

  Marley: William Glover

  * * *

  An emergency transmission from a Federation science station sends the Enterprise to Ventax II, where Picard and crew discover a peaceful but meek people about to hand over their world to a woman who claims she is the planet’s devil, Ardra.

  It seems the pollution-plagued, war-torn Ventaxians generations ago made a pact with Ardra: a thousand years of peace and health in return for their eternal slavery. The Ventaxians had long thought the tale a legend until the shape-changing Ardra showed up.

  Picard draws Ardra’s wrath when he refuses her sexual advances, and she makes the starship “disappear.” As La Forge races to discover a power source behind her “special effects,” Ardra agrees to a legal contest on the real-enough contracts and her identity, with Data as magistrate.

  Picard tries to convince the Ventaxian leader, Jared, that his people are responsible for their own prosperity, but when Ardra runs through her illusions again, Jared agrees to submit to her judgment.

  Finally, La Forge locates her cloaked orbiting ship and enables Picard to tap into its power systems, revealing Ardra as just another con artist.

  Picard must outwit Ventax II’s “devil,” Ardra (Marta Dubois).

  Like “The Child” (127), this story predates TNG—to at least August 16, 1977, when the Lansford story turned up in a status memo for the 1970s Star Trek II TV series. Its “Devil and Daniel Webster” plot, originally unearthed during TNG’s third-season story pinch, eventually bore the mark of a score of TNG staff writers. In the end, it was Trek fan and Wings staff writer Philip Lazebnick’s comic touches that survived, along with Piller’s idea of making the “devil” a female.

  The 1977 outline reads like a 1960s Trek episode. In it a demonstrative Captain Kirk fast-talks planet Neuterr out of falling for an impostor’s scam, exposing the “devil” as merely the mental energy of a surviving planetary elder and his original fellow council members.

  Although familiar actresses like Stella Stevens and Adrienne Barbeau were considered, the role of Ardra went to Marta DuBois, Magnum’s estranged wife on Magnum, P.I., after several prior auditions. Paul Lambert had already played an Aldean (“When the Bough Breaks”/118).

  Though some may regard it as the Klingon devil, Fek’lhr as seen here is carefully described as the guardian of Gre’thor, the hereafter where the Klingon dishonored go after they die. This is consistent with the fact that Klingons have no devil—a detail that was revealed in 1969’s “Day of the Dove.”

  CLUES

  * * *

  Production No.: 188 Aired: Week of February 11, 1991

  Stardate: 44502.7 Code: cl

  Directed by Les Landau

  Teleplay by Bruce D. Arthurs and Joe Menosky

  Story by Bruce D. Arthurs

  GUEST CAST

  Lieutenant O’Brien: Colm Meaney

  Ensign McKnight: Pamela Winslow

  Madeline: Rhonda Aldrich

  Guinan: Whoopi Goldberg

  Nurse Alyssa Ogawa: Patti Yasutake

  Gunman: Thomas Knickerbocker

  * * *

  As the Enterprise is on its way to investigate a mysterious planet, a wormhole suddenly appears in the ship’s path, knocking the crew unconscious. As they begin to come to, Data, who is immune to the wormhole’s effects, tells them only thirty seconds have passed since their encounter with the phenomenon.

  But soon evidence mounts that the crew was out for much longer—an entire day, in fact. A twinge of pain in Worf’s wrist reveals a recent fracture, a botany experiment records a full twenty-four hours’ growth, and the ship’s chronometer has been tampered with.

  A check of Data’s systems shows nothing wrong, but an analysis of the probe he sent shows it was rigged to send false information.

  Picard finally orders the crew to proceed to the mystery planet, over Data’s objections. The android refuses to say why, but he does tell Picard the captain himself ordered him to lie.

  Suddenly a being called a Paxan inhabits Troi’s body. Data then explains the truth: the horribly isolationist Paxans stun intruders and send their ships on their way, but Data’s presence foiled their plan. The Enterprise did go to the planet, but the Paxans demanded the starship be destroyed. Picard, though, won agreement to a short-term memory wipe for all the crew, with Data ordered to keep the secret.

  During the second visit Picard assures the Paxans that the bugs in his plan can be worked out so that their existence will remain a secret.

  Story creator Bruce D. Arthurs proved it can be done: the fan and Phoenix, Arizona, mail carrier had his spec script for TNG bought and turned into an episode, helped along by a rewrite that won Joe Menosky a staff job. Michael Piller called this bottle-show mystery, which includes the first appearance of Dixon Hill since “Manhunt” (145) in season two, one of his favorites for the season. Notice director Les Landau’s use of longer and more fluid camera takes for the flashbacks, in contrast with a choppier style with more cuts back and forth for real time.

  Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) doesn’t share Picard’s thrill at playing detective.

  In addition to bringing back Rhonda Aldrich as Madeline, Dixon Hill’s secretary, this segment includes the only mention of Nurse Ogawa’s first name—Alyssa. There’s also a fleeting glimpse of a t’ai chi class led by Worf, with Riker, Troi, and Geordi among the participants. We also learn the transporter trace records can be used to determine elapsed time judging by cellular cycle, and that a ship’s clock exists apart from the chronometer—which only La Forge and Data can reset—used by the computer system. Wormholes have previously been seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Data mentions having encountered them twice in his own career: during the Barzan affair in “The Price” (156) and during his service aboard the Trie
ste, mentioned already as a previous assignment (“11001001”/116).

  FIRST CONTACT

  * * *

  Production No.: 189 Airdate: February 18, 1991

  Stardate: Unknown Code: fc

  Directed by Cliff Bole

  Teleplay by Dennis Russell Bailey, David Bischoff, Joe Menosky, and Ronald D. Moore

  Story by Marc Scott Zicree

  GUEST CAST

  Chancellor Avill Durken: George Coe

  Mirasta: Carolyn Seymour

  Berel: George Hearn

  Krola. Michael Ensign

  Nilrem: Steven Anderson

  Dr. Tava: Sachi Parker

  Lanel: Bebe Neuwirth

  * * *

  A reconnaissance mission on the planet Malcoria III goes disastrously wrong when Commander Riker (in native disguise) is injured and taken to a native hospital. There, Malcorian doctors soon uncover his true identity.

  To prevent worldwide panic, Picard and Troi beam down to meet with the astonished planet’s leader. But though Chancellor Durken and his science minister Mirasta (in charge of Malcor’s fledgeling space program) are both convinced by the Enterprise crew’s message of peace and friendship, Durken’s security officer Krola remains suspicious. After Riker unsuccesssfully attempts to escape from the hospital, Krola steps in to interrogate him, using potentially lethal drugs.

  Krola (Michael Ensign) is not about to let “aliens” on his world.