A spat erupts when Picard finds out that Vash is setting off for an illegal dig and she discovers he never mentioned her to his friends. Q, a secret witness, decides to return the favor Picard did him a year ago by getting the stubborn lovers to admit their feelings for each other—in a special simulation of Sherwood Forest, that he creates.
With the couple cast as Robin Hood and Maid Marian and Picard’s senior officers as Merry Men, Q becomes the sheriff of Nottingham. He challenges the captain to risk his crew’s lives for the woman he loves. Picard sets out to rescue Vash, claiming he’d do the same for anyone else.
Picard as Robin Hood, and Vash (Jennifer Hetrick) as Maid Marian.
But “Marian” rejects his rescue, turning him in and agreeing to marry her captor, Sir Guy. Q is delighted until he sees her send a note to the crew for help; he then turns her in as well.
Heads are about to roll when the Merry Men come to the rescue; Picard, a skilled fencer, skewers Sir Guy. The game is over.
Back on the ship, Vash announces she plans to travel through the galaxy with Q. An uneasy Picard admits the two do have much in common—just before he kisses Vash goodbye and they promise to meet again.
Third-season producer and Vash creator Ira Steven Behr suggested Camelot as the best off-ship locale for Randee Russell’s original Picard-Vash-Q triangle until Piller suggested this venue, in vogue with the Kevin Costner movie. The romp included Worf’s “I am not a merry man!” and his smashing of Geordi’s mandolin: a Behr homage to Animal House. We also get hints about the Picard-Beverly duo after “The Naked Now” (103) and the tease of “Allegiance” (166); the capper would be “Attached” (260).
The expansive castle set was really made up of several inexpensive foreground set pieces shot through a long lens, noted director Cliff Bole; a day’s worth of location shooting at Descanso Gardens northeast of Glendale provided Sherwood Forest. Due to a stunt quarterstaff mixup, Frakes suffered a cut eye when his weapon broke under a broadsword blow just as he turned in to it.
Throughout the series, Picard had been shown as Jeffersonian in his interests in history, science, and literature—as well as archaeology (see notes, “The Chase”/246). Among the symposium’s delegates can be seen an Algolian (“Ménage à Troi”/172), a Bolian (see notes, “Schisms”/231), and a Vulcan. Q and Vash’s fate is unveiled later in “Q-Less” during spinoff Deep Space Nine’s first year.
Q (John de Lancie) becomes the Sheriff of Nottingham to repay his “debt” to Picard.
THE DRUMHEAD
* * *
Production No.: 195 Aired: Week of April 29, 1991
Stardate: 44769.2 Code: dr
Directed by Jonathan Frakes
Written by Jeri Taylor
GUEST CAST
Sabin Genestra: Bruce French
Simon Tarses: Spencer Garrett
Lieutenant J’Ddan: Henry Woronicz
Admiral Thomas Henry: Earl Billings
Admiral Norah Satie: Jean Simmons
Nellen Tore: Ann Shea
* * *
An explosion in the Enterprise’s dilithium chamber begins a trail of intrigue that leads Worf to suspect a Klingon exchange officer. Noted investigator Admiral Norah Satie comes out of retirement to help conduct a probe of the incident.
The Klingon, J’Ddan, admits to smuggling plans to the Romulans but denies any role in the explosion. Satie’s Betazoid aide, Sabin, senses he’s telling the truth; the Admiral begins to hunt for co-conspirators.
During the investigation Sabin senses that med tech Simon Tarses is lying about some part of his testimony. Even after the explosion is found to have been an accident, Satie bullies Tarses into admitting a forebear was Romulan, not Vulcan as he had once sworn.
Picard, uncomfortable with Satie’s tactics, meets with Tarses to confirm the man’s innocence, and then the captain openly challenges Satie. She vows to bring him down before visiting Starfleet admiral Henry.
Sabin (Bruce French) and Norah Satie (Jean Simmons) lead a latter-day Inquisition.
Picard’s reluctance to participate any further in Satie’s hearings leads her to question him as a possible traitor. When Picard uses her famous father’s words to rebut her charges, she begins a groundless tirade, accusing him of violating the Prime Directive. Her rage shocks everyone in the room, disgusts Admiral Henry, and breaks up the witch-hunt at last.
What was to have been a money-saving “clip show”—(like the second-season finale “Shades of Gray”) turned into one of the season’s most chilling episodes, Determined to mount a meaningful story on a slim budget with no visual effects, Berman and Piller turned to this tale, which rings with echoes of the McCarthy hearings and the Salem witch-hunts.
Jeri Taylor’s script the one she is most proud of, was inspired by a Ronald D. Moore idea called “It Can’t Happen Here,” and echoes the groundless investigation of Picard from season one “Coming of Age” (119) and weaves in references to his abduction by the Borg in “The Best of Both Worlds” (174-175), the alien parasitic invaders of “Conspiracy” (125), the T’Pel-Selok spy scandal in “Data’s Day” (185), and the developing Klingon-Romulan intrigue. And it still came in $250,000 under budget!
In his third directorial outing, Jonathan Frakes recalls he had a good time and wasn’t too intimidated by the presence of Oscar nominee Jean Simmons, with whom he had worked on North and South, The acclaimed actress, a longtime unabashed Trekker, also played the matriarch of the Collins family in the short-lived revival of Dark Shadows.
After twenty-five years of Trek, we finally learn that the Federation’s governing document is called a Constitution, and its various Bill of Rights is composed of Guarantees, the seventh roughly corresponding to the U.S. Fifth Amendment’s ban on self-incrimination. Also, Tarses’s birthplace on the Mars Colony was noted in the original Trek as the home of the Fundamental Declaration of the Martian Colonies, mentioned in 1967’s “Courtmartial” as a landmark in interstellar law.
Satie’s ferrying starship, the Cochrane, is of the Oberth class (a modified Grissom from Star Trek III), like the Tsiolkovsky from “The Naked Now” (103) and another namesake of the warp-drive discoverer “Ménage à Troi” (172). And Picard isn’t the only one with a reputation as an advocate: Riker seen previously in a lawyer’s role in “Angel One” (115) and “The Measure of a Man” (135) is chosen to defend first Tarses and then Picard.
On the tech side, we learn here that an individual communicator provides a traceable ID on computer and other system use and that the dilithium “cradle” (“Skin of Evil”/122) is called the “articulation frame”—a defective one was installed during the post-Borg refit in “The Best of Both Worlds,” Part 2 (175).
And for pure trivia fans: Picard says he took command of the Enterprise on Stardate 41124; that was after the ship was commissioned on SD 40759.5, inscribed on the bridge plaque, and before the first aired captain’s log entry of SD 41153.7, in “Encounter at Farpoint” (101).
HALF A LIFE
* * *
Production No.: 196 Aired: Week of May 6, 1991
Stardate 44805.3 Code: hl
Directed by Les Landau
Teleplay by Peter Allan Fields
Story by Ted Roberts and Peter Allan Fields
GUEST CAST
Lwaxana Troi: Majel Barrett
Dora: Michelle Forbes
B’Tardat: Terrence E. McNally
Lieutenant O’Brien: Colm Meaney
Mr. Homn: Caryl Struyken
Dr. Timicin: David Ogden Stiers
* * *
Picard is nervous when Troi’s mother returns for a visit, but this time the ebullient Lwaxana has set her sights on Dr. Timicin, a quiet scientist who’s abroad to test stellar ignition theories that may enable him to save his world’s dying star.
Timicin, who invested his life’s work in the plan, is crushed when it eventually fails. Lwaxana can’t understand why he’s so despondent until he tells her he is nearly sixty, the age of the resolution
: a ritual suicide to save children the burden of their parent’s aging.
Lwaxana (Majel Barret) questions Timicin (David Odgen Stiers) about his world’s custom of ritual suicide.
Enraged, Lwaxana demands that Picard intervene. He can’t, of course, so she turns on Timicin herself: why doom his entire world by committing suicide when his research is so close to success? At first he resists, but eventually he agrees with her and seeks asylum.
His decision causes an uproar among his people, and armed ships are sent to retrieve him. Timicin stands firm, though, until his daughter beams up to plead with him to stand by the heritage he taught her. Touched, he agrees, and tells a tearful Lwaxana that the revolutionary will have to be someone else.
Later, Timicin is surprised when Lwaxana shows up as he prepares to beam down. If she is one of his loved ones, she tells him, she wants to be there with all the others when he says goodbye.
Fans had looked forward to the guest appearance of M*A*S*H regular David Ogden Stiers in this outing, but it was Majel Barrett who surprised them by pulling off a well-done first look at the noncomic side of Lwaxana Troi; the segment features the two guest stars as perhaps no other TNG hour ever has. Its theme, the worth of older citizens and the problems of the aged, was handled in a thought-provoking way by Peter Allan Fields, who was hired as a staff writer the following season.
Though she had only one small scene, actress Michelle Forbes more than stepped out of the shadow of the two guest leads with her performance as Timicin’s loving yet embittered daughter, Dara—so much so that she would land a new recurring TNG role in the coming season. A student at the Performing Arts High School in Houston, she moved to New York at sixteen to audition for a movie and wound up staying. She worked on The Guiding Light for almost three years and moved on to TV guest roles.
The mention of oskoid leaves dates back to Lwaxana’s visit last year in “Ménage à Troi” (172) while her nickname for the security chief—“Mr. Woof’—first appears here. And Rigel IV, where Lwaxana says she once persuaded a young astronomer to name a star after her, was the home of Argelian administrator Hengist, who was possessed by the Redjac evil spirit in 1967’s “Wolf in the Fold.”
THE HOST
* * *
Production No. 197 Aired: Week of May 13, 1991
Stardate: 44821.3 Code: ho
Directed by Marvin V. Rush
Written by Michel Horvat
GUEST CAST
Governor Leka Trion: Barbara Tarbuck
Kareel: Nicole Orth-Pallavicini
Kalin Trose: William Newman
Nurse Ogawa: Patti Yasutake
Odan (Trill host): Franc Luz
* * *
Dr. Crusher falls in love with Odan, a Trillian mediator en route to settle a bitter dispute between Peliar’s Alpha and Beta moons.
But while shuttling down to the surface he is mortally wounded by a marauding ship; in surgery his “Dr. Beverly” is shocked to find a parasite living inside him. Her surprise is compounded when she learns that Odan himself is the parasite occupying the host body in a joint symbiotic arrangement the Trill have used for generations.
As the dispute grows more intense, Riker volunteers to be Odan’s host while a replacement is sent. Although Riker’s human body adjusts to its new “co-tenant” Dr. Crusher cannot accept the first officer as her lover. Odan agrees to stay away.
The moons’ delegates are just as uneasy about the situation, but Odan convinces them he can be trusted. Finally Dr. Crusher decides she can accept Odan, even in Riker’s body, and they spend one more night together. Odan then settles the political dispute in a marathon session that greatly weakens Riker’s body.
Dr. Crusher removes Odan to save Riker’s body; both recover well. Then the expected Trill host body replacement arrives only to turn out to be female.
Crestfallen, Beverly admits she can’t take Odan’s constant changes. The two do, however, exchange vows of love before he leaves.
Crusher and Ogawa (Patti Yasutake) prepare a new host for Odan.
Another tale that could only be told in science fiction, Horvat’s script gives Gates McFadden a rare chance to show Beverly as a woman of passion, and even dallies with homosexuality (more precisely, asexuality) until the doctor admits she is unable to accept Odan in a female form.
Marvin Rush, director of photography since season three, became the first of three in-house staffers in a row to get a turn in the director’s chair, Rush started out on the original WKRP in Cincinnati as a camera operator before moving on to low-budget films and sitcoms such as Dear John and Frank’s Place, where he caught the eye of the TNG staff. He recalls that much of his effort went into helping Franc Luz and Jonathan Frakes establish a continuity for Odan—and into disguising McFadden’s seven-month pregnancy. James Cleveland McFadden-Talbot, her first son, would be born over the hiatus on June 10 in Los Angeles—a well-timed delivery.
In a nice echo of the workout scene from “The Price” (156), we now see Beverly talk to Deanna about her new lover, The scene is played out in the ship’s barbershop, where we meet another Bolian barber, as in “Data’s Day” (185) and “Ensign Ro” (203). An uncredited Robert Harper played the speaking role of Lathal Bine, representative from Reliar Zel’s Beta moon.
The large shuttle seen here—named the Hawking for American physicist Stephen F. Hawking—is not new; it is the original full-scale set, little seen due to its piecemeal construction history (“Coming of Age”/(119).
THE MIND’S EYE
* * *
Production No: 198 Aired: Week of May 27, 1991
Stardate: 44885.5 Code: mi
Directed by David Livingston
Teleplay by Rene Echevarria
Story by Ken Schafer and Rene Echevarria
GUEST CAST
Ambassador Kell: Larry Dobkin
Taibak: John Fleck
Lieutenant O’Brien: Colm Meaney
Governor Vagh: Edward Wiley
Computer Voice: Majel Barrett
* * *
En route to a vacation and seminar on Risa, La Forge is kidnapped by Romulans as part of a complex plot to split the Federation-Klingon alliance.
Picard disarms the mind-controlled La Forge and the Romulan assassination plot.
While he is gone, Klingon Ambassador Kell comes aboard the Enterprise to investigate a Klingon governor’s charge that Starfleet is aiding rebels fighting for independence on his colony. La Forge, who returns with false memory implants of his Risa trip, and Data work to show that phaser rifles seized by Governor Vagh are really Romulan replications. Their work does little to change Vagh’s mind, though, especially when a shipment of arms is detected being beamed from the ship.
The cargo was beamed over by La Forge, who is being mind-controlled by the Romulans. The engineer’s next task: assassinate Vagh and split the Federation-Klingon alliance.
Kell, ostensibly the cool-headed mediator, turns out to be the Romulan sympathizer manipulating La Forge. Data, meanwhile, has been tracking strange Å-band emissions and finally discovers what is going on, and warns Picard, who knocks La Forge’s phaser fire astray just in time. Vagh is furious, but even more so when Data explains the story.
Kell’s quick asylum request is refused by Picard and he uneasily departs in Governor Vagh’s custody, while Troi sits down to the painful task of helping La Forge regain his memory.
Line producer David Livingston had come from ABC way back in February 1987 to be production manager for the “Farpoint” pilot (101-102). He got a powerful story for his first shot at directing: a retelling of The Manchurian Candidate that foreshadowed the mounting Klingon civil war that would reach its climax at season’s end. It features a chilling depiction of Geordi’s reprogramming aboard a warbird and the first use of his VISOR as the camera’s point of view since season one’s “Heart of Glory” (120).
Livingston, an unabashed fan of The Manchurian Candidate, tried unsuccessfully to get someone from the movie to appear in
this episode as an extra. There’s even an homage camera shot in which the possessed O’Brien is shot in Ten-Forward.
Geordi’s preference for guitar music on his lonely ride is an echo from his dinner date with Leah Brahms in “Galaxy’s Child” (190). His Shuttlepod 7 is the Onizuka from “The Ensigns of Command” (149), formerly Shuttle 5, which was seen earlier as the ElBaz in “Time Squared” (139).
For some time Rick Sternbach had played with various designs for a phaser rifle, and when it was at last needed for this show Livingston made the final choice. And the first TNG look at the Klingon and Romulan transporter beams occurs here. The Klingon beam is a quick solid red wipe from top to bottom with a few residual gold sparkles; the Romulans use a green beam that dissolves rapidly with little shimmer.
The reality of the new Klingon Empire is artfully brought home when Vagh longs for the old days when an insurrection could be violently put down. Curiously, Krios may be a Klingon colony fighting for independence, but somehow it is also involved in a centuries-old civil war with Valt Minor, as seen in “The Perfect Mate” (221).
IN THEORY
* * *
Production No: 199 Aired: Week of June 3, 1991
Stardate: 44932.3 Code: it
Directed by Patrick Stewart
Written by Joe Menosky and Ronald D. Moore
The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion: Revised Edition Page 28