Attached
Did anyone ask for an exploration of Picard and Dr Crusher's relationship...? No? Well, we're getting it anyway.
Picard and Dr Crusher are having exposition for breakfast: it seems that the Kes want to join the Federation as ‘Associate Members’, while excluding a quarter of the population of Kesprytt III, since that bunch are isolationists and won’t play nicely with others. Worf beams the two breakfasting chums down to the planet - and they disappear! They've been captured by the other half of the planet’s name, the Prytt, the xenophobic crazy folk, but they escape in the first scene and off they go. It seems the Prytt have implanted transceivers in Picard and Crusher’s brainstems in order to extract evidence that they’re spies working for the Kes... but when they jailbreak out, the transceivers have an unexpected side effect: they can hear each other’s thoughts. And it seems they have a lot of secrets they’ve been hiding...
Words
Back in season one, there was a real appetite for ‘shipping’ Picard and Dr Crusher together. Remember the pilot and “The Naked Now”...? Then the writers cooled their boots on this storyline, and it didn’t make another appearance until season three’s “Allegiance”. After that, nothing. But now it’s season seven, and story ideas are running low, so more or less anything goes. Let’s explore Picard and Crusher’s relationship, then, whether we like it or not…
The origin of this episode is a bit of a mystery. The same day that the final draft script for “Descent, Part II” landed, Jeri Taylor sent a one page memo to Michael Piller containing the pitch for the episode. But the screenplay was developed by freelancer Nicholas Sagan, the son of astronomer and science fiction author Carl Sagan (one of two episodes he contributed this season). Taylor doesn’t get a ‘story by’ credit, so either the idea came from Sagan and she was just relaying it to Piller, or else it was Taylor’s idea to begin with but she let Sagan run with it.
I honestly don’t know the true situation, all I can say is that Sagan was already writing in Hollywood in 1993, having written an episode of an obscure drama called Jack’s Place. But Taylor must have liked his work, as he later became a regular contributor to Voyager, and she once remarked that “he was one of the most comfortable freelancers we’ve ever had.”
The original version of the story was even more into ‘shipping’ than the final version. Early versions had Picard and Crusher share a kiss and have implicit sex around the campfire - but Rick Berman and Michael Piller nixed this because they were mindful of the forthcoming movie opportunities. On the relationship between the two characters, and keeping them at arms length, Taylor commented:
Where do you go from there? It starts to become a soap opera, and Picard would be sealed off from other stories. Also it seems perfectly legitimate to me, emotionally, that two people who have gone that long, without ever coming together - there must be a reason for that.
I agree. This story is stronger because they don’t act on their feelings.
The B-plot regarding Riker and Worf having their patience strained by the paranoia of the Kes was originally intended to be played even more overtly for comedy. At one point, Riker would have been put on hold with the equivalent of 24th century ‘elevator music’, and later Worf would have smashed a ‘sound altering device’ that created an effect preventing anyone from hearing themselves think.
This episode is Jonathan Frakes penultimate directorial outing. His final at-bat is six weeks away, is another Dr Crusher episode, and is... well, divisive, to say the least.
Acting Roles
I very much enjoy the pairing of Gates McFadden’s Dr Crusher and Patrick Stewart’s Captain Picard throughout this story.
McFadden is outclassed by Stewart in terms of acting skill, but the two performers are very comfortable with each other, and the concept of them having been mentally bonded together leads to some wonderful scenes. McFadden even praised Sagan for “turning her season around”, having thoroughly appreciated this episode.
Jonathan Frakes has the unenviable task of directing himself, but he’s lent enormous support by Michael Dorn who has essentially no significant speaking lines in most of his scenes. Still, it’s all Dorn’s brilliant reaction shots to the increasingly insane behaviour of the Kes representative, Mauric, played by Robin Gammell that make it all work.
Gammell is a lot of fun here too, and I note that not only was he in L.A. Law prior to this episode, but he also appeared afterwards in the movie Contact, adapted from the book by Nicholas’ dad, Carl.
Less effective is Lenore Kasdorf's performance as the Prytt representative, Lorin.
It’s just a little bit clunky and lacks the sincerity of Gammell’s delivery when they are paired together. But on the back of this gig, she landed three appearances as an ISN Reporter on Babylon 5, which is a role much more suited to her acting style. She also got to play Casper Van Dien’s mother in the Starship Troopers movie, another role that didn’t require enormous acting chops to deliver.
But where is LeVar Burton’s LaForge this week? He must have had the week off for some reason, as he doesn’t appear at all. It’s the only time this season that one of the regulars isn’t featured, and the writers knew about it long in advance as his name doesn’t even appear on the cast list on the screenplay. A bit of a mystery, to be honest!
Models, Make-up, and Mattes
Say goodbye to Picard’s jacket uniform and beige shirt combo. He discards the jacket in the cave, and we never see it again!
The fire cave sequence only lasts for a very short while on screen but it was a royal pain for the SFX team, taking six hours of blue screen shooting and a great deal of split screen wrangling. Disappointingly, it doesn’t even look that great in the final version. Judge for yourself!
All the location shooting took place at Bronson Caves in Griffin Park, which is so close to the Hollywood sign that you can see it behind Jonathan Frakes in this behind-the-scenes shot (below left)!
Once again, the outdoor work is taking place less than an hour's drive from Paramount Studios, in this case it’s just 3 miles away up Canyon Drive directly to the north, which only takes a little over ten minutes to drive in part because - mercifully! - you aren't driving across Los Angeles but up Mount Hollywood, which is one of several mountains ‘citylocked’ inside the vast sprawling suburbs of that dreadful metropolis.
I also like the rather eminently visible forcefield between Kes and Prytt territory at the end of the episode, which is a simple effect but removes the need for the clunky ‘walking into an invisible barrier’ scene that happens rather too often in sci-fi for my taste (although I unequivocally pardon the 1975 Doctor Who serial “The Pyramids of Mars” in this regard).
All in all, I’m a big fan of this episode, which has a thoroughly engaging A-plot and a genuinely wry and amusing B-plot, both of which are tied together seamlessly. Although I had no real interest in exploring the potential relationship between Picard and Crusher, it’s rescued here by Dr Crusher’s refusal to explore the relationship further, which not only feels appropriate, it gives the episode some gravitas at its conclusion. Season seven may be patchy, but this one is a hit!
