Chain of Command, Part I
Starfleet finally decides that Picard runs far too lax a ship, and assigns the Enterprise-D a hard-ass Captain instead
It’s the second shortest teaser in Trek history: Admiral Nechayev pops into the Captain's ready room and relieves him of command. Into his place pops Captain Jellico, who immediately starts reworking the entire ship in his image - much to the chagrin of Riker, who is left with his head spinning. It’s not just the first officer - soon everyone is griping about the new Captain. Meanwhile, Picard is busy training a hand-picked team consisting of Worf (good call) and Dr Crusher (under the ‘anyone but Troi’ rule). They have to play at being spies because the Cardassians have supposedly developed a deadly plot device with a silly name. During the raid, Worf gets to beat up a Cardassian (Worf 18, Aliens 18)... then is immediately shot by one (Worf 18, Aliens 19), failing to prevent the capture of Captain Picard. It turns out it was all a trap to capture our beloved Captain - drama!
Words
This one started as an idea from Frank Abatemarco, the experienced TV producer who was thrown into the lion’s den with TNG in season six. The idea was to bring in a ‘by-the-book’ captain, and so create dramatic tension with the regular crew - Jellico’s catchphrase “Get it done” is an intentional hammer to Picard’s more genial “Make it so”. Now fans tend to dislike Jellico just as the crew do - the episode draws us to that feeling. But nothing he asks for is unreasonable when it’s remembered that this is effectively a military mission.
The script ended up being crunched by Ronald D. Moore, and was originally envisioned as a crossover with Deep Space Nine. Rene Echevarria later recalled the set up, and how Rick Berman eventually nixed the idea:
We were going to go to DS9 and that’s how we were going to get to the planet in the show. The Enterprise was going to come to DS9 and get a ship. The scene with the Ferengi was written for Quark and I don’t think Ron changed a word except the guy’s name. We were going to borrow one of their runabouts which Jellico was going to ask for, but it just didn’t work out. Rick wanted to wait a little longer before doing a crossover. Actually, it was less expensive, because if you go to Deep Space 9 you have to use at least one of their regulars.
Actually, since the DS9 premiere was put back to January the following year, there was literally no point in including Quark in this episode, because nobody would have known who he was!
One of the problems with this episode is that it’s mostly just set up for the incredible second part next week. But that wasn’t because the episode ran away with its time... it’s that the show was (as ever) running short on money. Jeri Taylor remembered when Michael Piller first brokered the idea:
We were in budget trouble and Michael said, “You know, I think what we could do is make this a two-parter. Have Picard captured and then make it an episode about his relationship with his torturer that takes place in one room. It’s a fascinating two-person play and we’ll get another episode out of it that way and we’ll save a lot of money that will bring us even with the budget”.
‘Metagenic weapon’ isn’t the worst name, but I cannot help but notice that it’s concept of an airborne agent that wipes out all DNA, leaving a world ready for colonisation feels awfully close to the Federation’s deadly Genesis device that the Klingons were understandably miffed about in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. What is it with the Federation being the first ones to develop planet-destroying weaponry? Sheesh!
There’s a scene that ended up on the cutting room floor involving Jellico and LaForge that is worth reading solely because it nods at LaForge’s backstory:
Jellico and Geordi are in the tube. Jellico is opening a Mees panel and looking inside.
JELLICO: I understand you served on the Victory.
GEORDI: Yes, sir.
JELLICO (off panel): I want you to increase the flow to the deuterium fuel loader by a third... we may need the extra capacity.
Geordi notes Jellico's instruction on his PADD as Jellico replaces the panel.
JELLICO: Captain Zimbata and I used to play rugby together at the Academy.
GEORDI: Really?
JELLICO: Yeah. He was awful. (beat) But I was worse.
Jellico cocks his head to the side, listening for a moment.
JELLICO: Check the EPS power distributor, it sounds like you've got some kind of fluctuation.
GEORDI (listens): I don't hear anything.
Jellico looks back at him.
GEORDI: I'll check it, sir.
It goes on like this for a bit longer, but that’s the interesting part.
Rick Berman was a fan of this two-parter:
I think that money and creativity have never really gone hand in hand when it comes to Star Trek. Episodes like “The Measure Of A Man” was one of our cheapest episodes and one of our best, but an episode like “Yesterday’s Enterprise” was quite expensive and it was wonderful. “Chain Of Command” was a very inexpensive episode and one of the greats.
While I have to agree, it’s the second part that makes it such a classic.
Acting Roles
Let’s start by welcoming Natalija Nogulich as Admiral Nechayev, debuting in the teaser and reappearing in four TNG episodes (and one DS9). We’ve long needed a recurring Admiral, as we’ve been stuck with an Admiral-of-the-Week situation for quite a while. Nogulich is it.
I rather like her. She’s bossy, firm, and annoying, without ever seeming villainous. The most likely thing you'll have seen her in other than Trek is National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, where she plays the wife of the boss who has to report her husband’s disappearance to the police.
She’s had more than a hundred and fifty roles - including two different roles in L.A. Law before appearing in TNG.
However, the real guest star this week is the wonderful Ronny Cox as Edward Jellico.
Cox had a blast playing Captain of the Enterprise for two weeks!
I think there were a lot of things that he did that were really important for that show. Having Troi put on a damn uniform? Give me a break! This is an officer on a ship and she’s running around with her boobs hanging out?
Indeed, from hereon in, Marina Sirtis’ Troi appears in uniform nearly every time she is on duty. Talk about impact!
Cox also reported that the removal of Livingston from the Captain’s Ready Room was actually because Patrick Stewart objected to the fish, feeling it was inappropriate to have a captive animal in a TV show that was about valuing the dignity of all species.
As for Cox’s career, well you’ve seen him in a million things but he’s probably best known for three roles - the villainous Cohaagen in Total Recall, the even more villainous Dick Jones in RoboCop, and the not at all villainous Drew from Deliverance, who plays duelling banjos with a hillbilly kid and later meets a horrible fate. Let’s not forget twenty-two episodes in St. Elsewhere as Dr John Gideon, eleven guest spots on Stargate-SG1 and - of course - L.A. Law, which he appeared in after this episode, continuing the long standing exchange programme between the two shows.
Here, the villain is John Durbin’s Gul Lemec.
He’s good fun as the bad guy - and this isn’t his first time in TNG either! He played one of the Selay in “Lonely Among Us”. They also get him back in both DS9 and Voyager - why not make good use of a great guest star, after all... You might have seen him as ‘Radio Corpse #1’ in 1985’s The Return of the Living Dead... but probably not.
As for Lou Wagner’s Solok, he’s a fine substitute Quark. Indeed, they will get him back as a Ferengi in DS9 later.
But what a wildly eclectic career Wagner's had! Aside from the more than eighty episodes as Harlan Arliss in CHiPs, he was a passenger in 1970’s airplane disaster movie Airport and - one of his first roles! - he played Lucius in the 1968 Planet of the Apes (and a busboy in 1972’s Conquest of the Planet of the Apes). Oh, and yes, he too was in L.A. Law, once again after this role in TNG.
And then there’s... well, let’s save the best for next week’s episode!
Models, Make-up, and Mattes
The Excelsior stock footage is back!
Also returning here is the matte painting from “The Masterpiece Society”.
There’s a lot of latex work with the Cardassians, of course, and TNG gets to be the first to show off the new uniforms created for DS9 but revealed to the world here for the first time.
But it’s not really an SFX episode. It’s a bottle show half set on the Enterprise sets and half set on Paramount’s Sound Stage 16, which is back in its familiar form as a set of unconvincing tunnels - home to this corking candidate for most unconvincing polystyrene boulder moment in TNG:
Apparently, during shooting there were a lot of stray cats roaming around the Paramount lots, and since the set was strewn with sand, they used it as makeshift kitty litter. At one point, Michael Dorn caught Patrick Stewart laughing uncontrollable on set. When he asked him why he was laughing, he replied: “I don’t know how I got here. I was at a seminar at Santa Barbara, the next thing I know, I’m crawling around in cat shit!” The strange and wonderful world that lies behind-the-scenes on TNG!