Chain of Command, Part II

Picard goes on a Cardassian team building exercise, while Riker gets fired for insubordination

Picard is captured by those mean old Cardassians. Gul Madred drugs him, strips him naked, hangs him from the ceiling, implants him with a pain inducer, and makes him repeatedly watch “Shades of Gray”, all in an attempt to break his spirits. Meanwhile, Riker gets snippy with the Enterprise-D’s new Captain, who promptly removes him from duty. This means Data becomes first officer, which is extremely awkward as our beloved android looks dreadful in red!

Will Picard crack under torture? Will Riker (pun intended) get his job back? And can anyone take those smug Cardassians down a peg or two? We know two Starfleet Captains who might just get the job done…

Words

Desperately have I sought for the admission from anyone on the writing team that this episode was influenced by George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. It has not surfaced. Rather, the writing team draw attention to the 1991 independent film Closet Land, as well as the previous TNG episode “Ensign Ro” - not only because it introduced the Cardassians, but also because Ro mentions in that story how her father was tortured before her eyes.

Alan Rickman and Madeleine Stowe in 1991’s Closet Land

Frank Abatemarco, who you’ll recall came up with the idea for the “Chain of Command” story, got the sole writing credit for this second part, although Jeri Taylor performed a full rewrite of the teleplay. Abatemarco got just two writing credits while on the show (although he was credited as Supervising Producer for thirteen episodes - all this season), and I suspect that Taylor just let him have this one, as by all accounts Abatemarco was struggling to fit into what is, after all, a very unique show to work upon. That said, the scuttlebutt says that the other members of the production team weren’t very happy about Taylor not getting a writing credit for this one.

Abatemarco conducted extensive research into the psychological dimensions of torture, and consulted at great length with Amnesty International. Patrick Stewart was delighted by Abatemarco’s draft and worried when he heard about it being rewritten. As Taylor later remembered:

Patrick got very concerned because he assumed that meant we were going to back off from the very strong nature of it. He said, “I don’t want that to happen. I think that this hits it head on. I want to do that. I don’t want this to become another talky episode where we simply talk about and around something and don’t really tell it the way it is.”

As it happened, Taylor shared his concerns. Stewart was extremely happy with the final screenplay because (as Taylor put it) “we didn't back off an inch. It was very strong stuff.”

At one point, there was to be a fight between the Enterprise and the Cardassians in the nebula, but the expense was prohibitive and it ended up getting scrapped. Also on the cutting room floor are a few lines that would have pleased all you starship spotters:

JELLICO: Starfleet now believes the Cardassians are preparing to invade Minos Korva. (beat) That will not be allowed to happen. The Sutherland, the Berlin, and the Aries have been dispatched to this sector. But they’re still three days away. Until they arrive, it’s up to us.

Jellico lets that sink in for a moment.

JELLICO: I’m convinced that their invasion fleet is hiding in the McAllister Nebula. I intend to hit them before they leave it.

The USS Sutherland was part of the blockade in “Redemption, Part II”, the USS Berlin was mentioned in “Angel One”, and the USS Aries was the command Riker was offered in “The Icarus Factor”.

This was the very last episode of TNG to air before the debut of Deep Space Nine, which is fair enough as this one really helps secure the Cardassians as worthy bad guys to hang a spin-off onto. But what a harsh contrast that is! I love DS9, but there was no way its pilot could possibly match up to this barnstorming tour-do-force. As Michael Piller put it:

I can’t imagine a better show than “Chain of Command, Part II” and it had no tricks or whiz bang stuff and it was one of the least expensive shows of the season. David Warner was sensational and Patrick Stewart was even better. I don’t think there’s been a better show in the history of this series, and certainly there was not a better hour of television on that year.

So, the Emmies just rolled in, right? Yeah, right. The first part won Outstanding Individual Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Drama Series and Outstanding Individual Achievement in Sound Editing for a Series, and this episode got absolutely nothing. I consider this one of the most insulting moments in the history of the Emmies, but maybe that’s just me.

Acting Roles

The heart of this episode is the incredible double act of David Warner as Gul Madred and Patrick Stewart as Picard.

As I discussed in my obituary to David Warner in the first year of WAMTNG, Warner took on this role on three days notice, apparently on the recommendation of Patrick Stewart (who Warner called “Pat”, having known him from the Royal Shakespeare Company). If you want to know much more about Warner, please follow the link and join the Away Team. We have less than a year to go now, so I’ve made it super-cheap for you so you can go back and read that David Warner obituary and more than 25 other Away Team only pieces. You have until the end of January to accept this offer!

Stewart is amazing here, this is his finest performance in anything I’ve seen him in. He prepared for the torture scene by reviewing harrowing videotapes provided by Amnesty International. At his own insistence, Stewart performed the opening part of the torture sequence naked on a closed set - so that shadowy man-butt you can see is genuine Stewart-ass.

Everyone on the production team was stunned. As Jeri Taylor enthused:

It is not possible that there are five better male actors in this town than Patrick Stewart! It’s probably his finest performance – he literally threw himself, physically and mentally, into that.

But some viewers wrote letters of complaint over the rather graphic content of the torture scenes:

They didn’t want to see Patrick Stewart or anybody else writhing in pain. They felt that it was excessive, that it went too far and that it was disturbing to children. I can’t disagree. It’s certainly very intense for children. I wish there had been a disclaimer.

The amazing thing about this episode is that no matter how electric the scenes with Warner and Stewart are, they don’t stop the B-plot from holding our interest either.

Ronny Cox’s Captain Jellico works brilliantly here, precisely because he rubs everyone on the Enterprise up the wrong way (as intended). As Cox later observed:

Just about everything on the ship was between Riker and Jellico. And I loved that aspect. Gene Roddenberry didn’t like conflict between the characters, so my guy was the first guy to come in and sort of ruffle everybody’s feathers. I liked that aspect of him. I also liked that he was a by-the-book guy. I loved it when Picard comes back to the Enterprise at the end and Jellico says, “Here’s your ship back, just the way you left it… maybe a little better.”

Jonathan Frakes’ Riker gets the best scene with Cox - as they chew each other out while fuming.

But special mention for Marina Sirtis’ Troi, who gets the closing scene with Stewart.

Of course, all she has to do is let Stewart do his stuff, but she delivers her lines perfectly, and with a constraint that helps that closing scene land flawlessly.

Models, Make-up, and Mattes

This is not an expensive episode, and although there’s a lot of latex for the make-up team to slap onto the guest cast, there’s very little by way of fancy effects. All the Cardassian warship shots are from “The Wounded”, the nebula is from “In Theory” and most of the shuttlecraft footage is from “Unnatural Selection”. There’s a nice Okudagram of the Cardassian warship, though:

The biggest job for the effects team this week was the set for the torture scenes.

Set designer Richard James was keen to avoid comparisons with Closet Land, which I guess the production team thought well-known enough to distance from although James himself hadn’t seen it:

I wasn’t familiar with it and I didn’t want to be influenced by that because I was fighting Silence of the Lambs at that time as well. I really wanted to try and keep myself open to my own kind of vision of it and as it turned out, the lighting played a very important role in what I was planning to do with it and the starkness of it. I wanted it to feel big as opposed to feeling like they were stuck in a small dungeon-type thing.

It’s a great set, and it’s beautifully used in this powerhouse of a season six classic. There are other great episodes in this season, but there’s no performance quite as knockout as Warner and Stewart’s ‘Royal Shakespeare Company reunited’ double act!