The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion: Revised Edition
Page 51
Shankar was disappointed that budget limits prevented more FX shots from heightening the crisis of the failing holodeck, but FX supervisor Ron B. Moore did save time and money by using retouched old grid elements (shot at numerous angles for “Schisms”/231) for all the “signs of La Forge” save one—the grid in the water, which was done with a “live” grid under the small pond.
SUB ROSA
* * *
Production No.: 266 Aired-Week of January 31, 1994
Stardate: c. 47500 Code: sr
Directed by Jonathan Frakes
Teleplay by Brannon Braga
TV story: Jeri Taylor
Based upoin material by: Jeanna F. Gallo
GUEST CAST
Governor Maturin: Michael Keenan
Ned Quint: Shay Duffin
Ronin: Duncan Regehr
Felisa Howard: Ellen Albertini Dow
* * *
Following her grandmother Felisa Howard’s funeral on Caldos IV, Dr. Crusher finds diaries revealing that the centenarian had a young lover named Ronin—and then fights off a friend, Ned Quint, who wants the doctor to throw away a candle he says has brought the Howard women bad luck for over eight hundred years.
Soon Ronin appears to her as an apparent “ghost” who has romanced her family’s women for centuries. At the same time, malfunctions beset Caldos IV’s weather-control net and it gets a power transfer from the Enterprise.
Ned warns Beverly about the candle and Ronin, but after some resistance—and odd nighttime sensations of pleasure—she is lulled by the loving “ghost” into resigning from Starfleet and taking Felisa’s place there as a healer, joining him as his latest lover.
Ned, found trying to sabotage the weather net’s power beam, shouts “He’ll kill us all!” just before a green plasma bolt leaps out to kill him. The same kind of energy is traced to Felisa’s grave, leading Picard to follow Beverly, confront Ronin about his mysterious origin, and order Felisa’s body exhumed.
Ronin goes on a rampage, blasting Picard, Data, and Geordi in turn before reanimating Felisa’s body and shocking Beverly with the truth: he is really an anaphasic plasma being who has used her family to stay alive and corporeal, via the candle and even the weather net. She has no choice but to destroy the candle—and then his form as well.
As one of the most atypical TNG episodes ever, this lushly mounted “romance novel in space” was named the favorite of the year by the slightly biased story writer Jeri Taylor, a self-professed “addict of a number of trashy genres” such as gothic romances and historical novels. Actress McFadden, who called it a highlight of her own season, won kudos for her all-out performance: “The lovemaking without a partner—this is not easy stuff to do,” Taylor said, “and she committed herself to it completely.”
Still, Braga noted that the show was not a favorite of what he called “hard-core fans” but defended it as simply stretching the Trek envelope; “I’ve come to notice that whenever you infuse a show with sexual themes, some of these fans seem to short-circuit. I mean, the weather array malfunction causing thunderstorms—it was fun!” Countering some reports, though, Taylor said the story and its roots in fan Jeanna Gallo’s year-old spec script was a nod to The Innocents, the film version of Henry James’ Turn of the Screw—Braga’s all-time favorite—and not the Scottish succubus Lasher of Ann Rice’s The Witching Hour: the title is Latin for “under cover” or “not out in light.” Gallo’s Scot-based world focused on Beverly and her living grandmother, with aliens who had possessed humans for centuries as an explanation of paranormal activity. Attracted to and yet dissatisfied with the premise, Taylor recalled creating the unassigned story in a stream-of-consciousness session and then praised Berman and Piller for allowing the off-format show to go ahead.
The designers’ showpiece featured a Wuthering Heights-like score by Jay Chattaway and an all-indoor set by Richard James, deceptively lit by director of photography Jonathan West and showcased by Frakes in his much-praised eighth turn as director. It came complete with a “raised” cemetery lawn to accommodate the buried casket and an organic tree assembled by greensmen working a solid weekend on Stage 16, using a real trunk anchored to the set and cutoff branches refastened and tied off from above; interiors were built within the cargo bay/ shuttlebay set area. Look close and notice the art department’s gag tombstones for the dead such as “Vader,” “McFly,” and others culled from the science fiction genre.
Set decorator Jim Mees recalled having to come up with a room full of camellias a month out of their season. The original order of three hundred silk camellias—clipped from their unconvincing wire stems and attached to real yet barren ones—was deemed not nearly enough on the Friday night before Monday’s shooting, so the floral vaults of Paramount were opened up to fill the room with all manner of flowers, topped by the camellias for show. Propmaster Alan Sims had another surprise when “Felisa” turned out to be actress Dow, a college drama teacher he hadn’t seen since 1972.
The Howard name, an homage to line producer Merri Howard, had actually first been glimpsed on Beverly’s bio file (“Conundrum”/214); of course, given Terran paternal lineal naming, each “Howard woman” would have carried her husband’s name unless Beverly was the first in a long line of feminists who chose not to! We’ve already learned back in Season 1 that she survived a disaster with her grandmother/healer (“The Arsenal of Freedom”/121), while Braga revealed that he’d named Felisa after his own grandmother who’d died shortly before the story was written. In a scene cut for time, Beverly opens the show with the same eulogy Braga’s own mother used for his grandmother: a recipe, recalling her love of cooking, for gingerbread baked in the “arms of a welcoming pan” in a “happily” heated oven. Another cut line tells us Beverly did not leave Caldos II for good until she wed Jack. Also, Braga took “Jessel” and “Ned Quint” from Turn of the Screw and was surprised to learn later that his made-up name “Ronin” was actually Japanese in origin.
Beverly is troubled by a ghostly presence.
The guest cast includes Regehr, a soap opera staple, and Keenan, best known as Picket Fences’ first-season mayor who spontaneously combusted. We learn here that terraforming was new a century earlier when Caldos Colony was built, while weather control (“True Q”/232, “Force of Nature”/261, “Journey’s End”/272) was at least that old. Also recalled here are the still-unseen Dr. Selar (“The Schizoid Man”/131, “Remember Me”/179, “Tapestry”/241, “Genesis/271, “All Good Things …”/277-78), Worf’s mok-bara class (“Clues”/188, “Man of the People”/229, “Birthright, Part II”/243, “Second Chances”/250, “Lower Decks”/267, “Genesis”/271), and the drama masks in Beverly’s room (“Suspicions”/248).
TNG’s first use of the Amiga-based Video Toaster, provided by contractors Joe Conti and Tim McHugh, was an effort to get more creative control in contrast to what visual FX supervisor David Stipes called the “act of God” luck of liquid nitrogen “smoke” filmed against black velvet, “The challenge really was to get the ghost,” he said. “I thought everyone was really courageous in tackling this story. But if we didn’t make that work, the whole story wouldn’t sell: how to do purposeful, borderline-erotic ephemerals to look like it’s caressing and hugging Beverly—without looking ridiculous or lewd?”
LOWER DECKS
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Production No.: 267 Aired-Week of February 7, 1994
Stardate: 47566.7 Code: Id
Directed by Gabrielle Beaumont
Teleplay by René Echevarria
Story by Ronald Wilkerson & Jean Louise Mattias
GUEST CAST
Lieutenant (j.g.) Sam Lavelle: Dan Gauthier
Ensign Sito Jaxa: Shannon Fill
Lieutenant (j.g.) Taurik: Alexander Enberg
Ben: Bruce Beatty
Lieutenant [j.g.] Alyssa Ogawa: Patti Yasutake
Joret Dal: Don Reilly
* * *
Four young Enterprise ensigns find their friendship strained during personne
l evaluations, as Sam Lavelle and Sito Jaxa learn they are both up for the same job as ops relief. Joined by their civilian waiter pal Ben, they learn that promotions seem assured for Nurse Ogawa and engineer Taurik—though the young Vulcan has his people’s historic problem in reading his human friends and superiors.
Riker, blind to how similar he and Lavelle are, is not high on the young officer, while Worf has much faith in Sito—even though she receives a surprise tongue-lashing from Picard, who recalls her role in the cover-up by Wesley Crusher’s Academy flight team.
The tension of promotions is abruptly broken by a baffling secret mission that all but Lavelle have a hand in: Ogawa must keep mum about a recovered Cardassian, and Taurik intentionally distresses a shuttle with phaser fire. Then Sito, after a lesson from Worf, stands up to Picard, giving him what he needed to see: the guts to volunteer to pose as a Bajoran captive taken by the Cardassians.
Sadly, Sito is lost on the mission, leaving behind only scattered escape-pod debris. Lavelle’s promotion and new job leave him empty after her presumed death, but his spirits—and those of her mentor Worf—are bolstered by their friends’ support.
Once again, Jeri Taylor regretted not being able to give veteran TNG freelancers Wilkerson and Matthias a shot at the teleplay of their “great, great concept” of the self-styled “little people”—which was so popular it fueled erroneous rumors that the junior officers were being primed for Voyager. The writing team presented this pitch—partly inspired by Wilkerson’s love of the BBC classic Upstairs, Downstairs—in the unorthodox manner of fleshed-out character notes.
“Again, like our lessons’ [245], what was important was not the mission but the relationships of the people,” Wilkerson said: “What it is like to work for Riker, to work for Worf, to wonder what goes on in secret briefings in the observation lounge”—and to put faces to the always-nameless crew. The lineup saw the writers return to the known character of Sito (“The First Duty”/219), develop TNG’s first fully realized Vulcan (Matthias’s favorite Star Trek race), create a “young Riker,” and lean on an already established regular like Ogawa—Barclay having been considered but dropped as too well-known; a fifth, “nerdy” character was scrapped, Echevarria added the civilian waiter Ben, perhaps the first ever in Ten-Forward besides Guinan allowed to speak, just to have a character “who hitched aboard the ship for fun, who’s unconcerned about rank, and who passes along stupid rumors!”
For his part, Echevarria enjoyed getting more humor into less “buttoned-down” Starfleet characters with this story, which like his “Second Chances” (250) went practically unchanged from first to final draft. All the cast won praise, with Enberg’s Taurik mentioned as a recurring guest had the series gone on; he had already played the reporter dogging Mark Twain (“Times Arrow, Part II”/227). Though the original name Sorik was changed to echo the new “T” Vulcan male name, as with Tuvok of the uncoming spinoff Voyager, all three writers’ concept for Taurik matched: an odds-figuring “young Spock” barely concealing his pithy sarcasm as a junior officer.
Sito gained a first name unheard in her first appearance (“The First Duty”), while visual FX producer and martial-arts adviser Dan Curry marveled at actress Shannon Fill, a trainied dancer and acrobat but new to martial arts: “I’ve never seen anybody learn it that quickly and so convincing.” After seeing the idea first nixed and then approved for development by Michael Piller based on Fill’s performance, Taylor hinted that Sito may yet turn up on Deep Space Nine as a former Cardassian hostage. “I’ve gotten more mail on that—how could Picard send Sito to her death?” she said. “A lot of people were very upset by that and felt that was very inappropriate for him, and didn’t behave as even the military now would behave.”
Ogawa, who was almost cut from the story to make more room for the other characters, gets her personal life in order in a hurry: a new fiancé, only seven episodes after her last boyfriend (“Attached”/260), who conceives a baby only four episodes later (Genesis”/271), Taurik’s research guru was named for Cuban nuclear engineer Nils Diaz, Echevarria’s true-life godfather and a propulsion-system researcher. And for true trivia fans, Sam Lavelle’s name can claim two sources: a close friend of Echevarria’s and, initially, Wilkerson’s Canadian labrador Samwell.
Worf trains Ensign Sito (Shannon Fill) to trust her instincts.
Though the segment is light on visual effects, supervisor Ron B. Moore singled out computer “Harry” artist Adam Howard’s nice touch of dimming Taurik’s phaser-rifle beam behind the smoked glass of the shuttle window in only the weapon’s third appearance (“The Mind’s Eye”/198, “Descent”/252). The tough Curie was Worf’s quantum-crashing craft (“Parallels”/263), where it was seen to be Shuttlecraft 3—the same as the onetime Justman (“Suspicions”/248). Other notes: Echevarria originally had Sito not only track a lost puppy at ops but deal with a “turbolift traffic jam” Worf adds a red lapel to his mok’bara gi here (“Clues”/188, “Man of the People”/229); Riker learned poker on the Potemkin, a stay of only six weeks (“Second Chances”); Cardassian dissidents would next be seen on DS9’s “Second Skin”; and though the Klingonese gik’tal is not a mok’bara manuever, it does relate to death (“Firstborn”/273). This outing provides the first TNG mention of DS9’s Bajoran religious vedeks, implies that Canada was still a Terran entity two generations earlier, recalls Riker’s Alaska roots (“The Icarus Factor”/140), and reveals that a probe sent into Cardassian space is a treaty violation, Bridge duty shifts are apparently not long-lived: we see “alpha shift” with Worf and Data, while “beta shift” has Ensign Gates (“Phantasms”/258. “The Pegasus”/264) and extra Tracee Cocco’s character—usually all seen working together. Also on ship, we learn that ensigns must share a cabin while junior lieutenants do not.
THINE OWN SELF
* * *
Production No.: 268 Aired: Week of February 14, 1994
Stardate: 47611.2 Code: th
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Teleplay by Ronald D. Moore
Story by Christopher Mutton
GUEST CAST
Talur: Ronnie Claire Edwards
Garvin: Michael Rothhaar
Gia: Kimberly Cullum
Skoran: Michael G. Hagerty
Apprentice: Andy Kossin
Ensign Rainer: Richard Ortega-Miro
Computer Voice: Majel Barrett
* * *
Sent to retrieve radioactive debris from a downed probe on preindustrial Barkon IV, Data loses his memory and unwittingly spreads the fragments throughout a village, where radiation sickness begins to sicken the inhabitants.
Limited by the culture’s unenlightened primitive science, the town’s healer has no clue to the sickness, but all signs point to the odd-skinned man as the reason behind the outbreak. As it soon engulfs his befriended “family,” a man named Garvin and his young daughter Gia, an angry mob confronts Data and reveals his inner circuitry, scaring them but intriguing the android, who was already far along in discovering a cause and cure.
The mob finally “kills” the “monster” and buries him, but with the starship’s return Riker and Crusher arrive to locate and beam up the overdue android. Upon reactivation Data cures the villagers and finds he is now outranked by Commander Troi after she opted to take the bridge officer’s test.
If moments of this story feel like an old Universal movie, it’s no accident: Chris Hatton’s “Data as Frankenstein” pitch, his second sell of the season (“Gambit”/256-257), quickly caught the staff’s attention, “He wanders into the medieval village, is befriended by the little girl, and villagers come out and chase him with torches!” joked writer Ron Moore, who liked the show even though he never had a “close feeling” about it. Ironically, director Rick Kolbe felt it provided him a personal chance to improve on TNG’s other “little girl” show, which he’d also helmed, “Pen Pals” (141): “I felt we had more character in there and didn’t veer off into tech talk.’”
That welcome ste
p was mostly due to Moore’s avoiding a predictable “We’ve lost Data and we got to find him!” plot back on ship by reviving the B-story of Troi’s test and promotion shelved earlier in the season (“Liaisons”/254). But Moore, who traced the idea of Troi’s need for a stretch back to not only the mentioned roots (“Disaster”/205) but also Jeri Tayior’s Pocket Books novelization of “Unification,” wanted to correct the vague impression that in Starfleet one need only pass a test to get a commander’s rank. “The action was an amalgam of both: if she became a bridge officer after the test, they’d also give her the promotion,” he explained. Likening Crusher and Troi to today’s naval medical officers of restricted line rank, he and the other writers posited that neither one initially attended Starfleet Academy despite Academy dates on their bio files (“Conundrum”/214)—a fact never addressed onscreen, aside from Troi attending “university on Betazed” (“Ménage à Troi”/172); a cut opening line had her returning from a class reunion of the unsited Carvin Institute for Psychological Studies. The backstory here explains Troi’s standing watch later (“Genesis”/271) as well as Beveriy’s skills in “Descent” (252-53) and her future captaincy (“All Good Things …”/7277-78)—and in hindsight backs Pulaski’s comment that she was not a bridge officer despite her commander’s rank (“Where Silence Has Lease”/128).
For what construction coordinator Al Smutko called a $104,000 investment, production designer Richard James’ Barkon IV village saw action many times throughout the spring, lasting through three major revampings for TNG (“Journey’s End”/272, “Firstborn”/273, “Preemptive Strike”/276) as well as a shot on DS9’s “Shadow-play.” Among the segment’s few visual effects, producer Dan Curry noted that computer “Harry” animator Adam Howard at Digital Magic designed the arcing around the pole spearing Data, while Harry animation and dry-ice elements provide the luminous cloth shimmers. Visual FX supervisor David Stipes joined Kolbe in seeking, for once, an instantaneous warp-core breach during Troi’s crisis simulation—done inexpensively with a white-out wipe begun with blinding flash bulbs from onstage FX man Dick Brownfield.