Conundrum
Who could the bad guy be? Is it one of the characters we already know, or is it this complete stranger who just turned up this week? What a puzzle!
Everyone’s milling about the ship having fun when a scanning signal hacks into the Enterprise's computer, glitches Data, and goes on for an encore to give everyone amnesia. As if that wasn't enough, suddenly there’s a new Executive Officer on the bridge - Kieran McDuff. That’s not suspicious! Soon afterwards, Worf claims command, ready to lead the Enterprise to a splendid victory, while Data is serving drinks in Ten Forward. Sadly, this highly beneficial arrangement comes to an end when LaForge manages to pull up the ship’s manifest thus dashing Worf’s dreams of glory.
That said, Worf goes on to blow up a Lysian destroyer (Worf 14, Aliens 15) and a whole bunch of sentry pods (Worf 15, Aliens 15) - before being slapped down by McDuff (Worf 15, Aliens 16), and finally combining phaser power with Riker to take him down (Worf 16, Aliens 16). Don’t look now, but Worf has not only tied up his career stats against the aliens at sixteen apiece, he is now batting 7-3 for the season. Can he finish with a winning season? I for one cannot wait to find out!
Words
This one started as a pitch by Ronald D. Moore back in season four, about aliens drafting soldiers by rewriting their memories. In fact, that season had a whopping three amnesia episodes pitched - “Future Imperfect” and “Clues” were produced and aired in that season. This story never quite fired on all cylinders, however, and was held back for further work.
Don’t be fooled by the story credits here: the concept is credited to St. Elsewhere and Murder She Wrote writer Paul Schiffer, in whose soil the original concept seems to have germinated, with the teleplay credited to L.A. Law script editor and Law and Order writer Barry Schkolnick. But in fact the bulk of the final screenplay was the work of Joe Menosky, who didn’t get a credit in the end. As far as I can tell, so many people worked on the teleplay, the final credits ended up favouring the outside writers as a matter of etiquette.
This episode divides fans. For reasons I will get to later I enjoy this episode a great deal, but many dislike it largely for the obvious reason that there’s no mystery as to who the bad guy is. Rick Berman summarised it nicely:
It’s based on that whole concept of what if? If you have nine people who don’t know who or what they are, will they find themselves? Will they find the pecking order? Will the captain become the captain?
Well that takes care of the first two acts, but then what...?
This is sometimes described as a bottle show, but there’s quite a lot of SFX in the final act that somewhat undermines that claim. Still, there certainly was some budget-saving going on behind the scenes. Berman ultimately felt this one was “thought provoking” but “not one of the greats”, and Michael Piller thought the final episode didn’t do justice to the original pitch (although whether he meant Moore’s pitch or Schiffer’s isn’t clear).
The writing team is generally divided along the same lines as the fans about this one. Moore, Brannon Braga, and Jeri Taylor all loved the love triangle between Ro, Riker, and Troi, with Taylor also enjoying Michelle Forbes being given a chance to play for comedy. But Braga, in common with a great many fans, felt the mystery around the fake executive officer fell flat.
Surprisingly given the nature of the story, there are no keywords doing any heavy lifting here, with the screenplay being incredibly lean in terms of technobabble. However, the plausibility of the plot depends upon whether you believe that a culture that is wildly behind the Federation in terms of military technology could develop a means of hacking the Enterprise computer and wiping everyone’s memories. You know it’s an issue because the screenplay has to draw attention to this giant plot hole in order to try and ineffectually paper it over:
RIKER: With all the power that MacDuff had... to alter our brain chemistry, and manipulate the computers... it's hard to believe he needed the Enterprise.
PICARD: Satarran weapons technology is no more advanced than the Lysians'. One photon torpedo would have ended their war.
RIKER: It almost did...
For myself, I am happy to go along with the premise because the story requires me to do so, but I must admit that much like “The Game” it’s a bit of a stretch. That said, since we’ve already stretched credibility far into the depths of the cosmos, what’s a few more inches between friends!
Acting Roles
Never have I had such casting whiplash as I did in this episode. That’s because our villain of the week is played by Erich Anderson who was the loveable Billy Sidel in the later seasons of thirtysomething. Here he is in a blurry screencap marrying gravelly-voiced Poly Draper’s Ellen.
On the one hand, having a guest star from another show I love bribes me into liking this episode, but on the other the casting could not be more jarring. I struggle with this, but oddly I enjoy struggling with it. You may know Anderson as Ben from Boomtown, or Dr Porter from Felicity, or Dr Miller from Melrose Place - and if not, maybe you saw him brutally murdered by Jason in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, in his second career role. Regardless, Anderson has had a solid career mixing bit-parts and recurring roles, and as I say, I have a lot of love for him simply because he was in thirtysomething. Your warp speed may vary.
It’s a real ensemble cast story, with plenty for everyone to do - with the aforementioned love triangle being a particular standout.
Michelle Forbes really enjoyed making this one:
It was fun working with Frakes. It’s an interesting problem for a character, because you have a very defined character that leans one way. When you have amnesia you wonder if that brings out a side of you that’s always wanted to come out. Would you really be comfortable with that? It’s an interesting thing.
I personally love the Worf subplot in the early acts when he seizes command on the grounds that ‘if we don’t know whose in command, I should be in command!’ Love it! And Michael Dorn plays it so well it nearly makes the entire episode for me. I also enjoy watching Troi beat Data at 3D Chess… not because it’s plausible (chess is categorically not a game of intuition, as Troi alleges) but because the cast deliver the scene so well.
Hat tip to Liz Vassey’s Kristin as a below decks walk-on part. I feel confident this was supposed to be Colm Meaney’s Miles O’Brien… Notice we haven’t seen him much recently? That’s because he’s over in Dublin shooting Alan Parker’s adaptation of The Commitments.
You may recognise Vassey as Captain Liberty on the live-action version of The Tick (see below) although she’s perhaps best known as Emily Ann Sago Martin from daytime soap All My Children, having joined that cast at age 16 and shot over a hundred episodes of it.
She also played Louise on sitcom Brotherly Love for 40 episodes and Wendy Simms for 77 episodes of CSI. Considering this was her first time playing a part outside of her daytime soap origins, this might actually have been a breakthrough role for her! Certainly, other TNG guest stars can only envy Vassey’s career, which is full of more recurring roles than most actresses have any right to expect.
And introducing Erick Weiss as ‘Crewman’ (according to the screenplay)!
He’ll be back next season with a name and a rank. Stay tuned!
Models, Make-up, and Mattes
Firstly, hat tip to the horga’hn prop from “Captain's Holiday” that we see several times in Riker’s quarters.
And now, the studio miniatures!
The Satarran spaceship (top left) is of course the Pakled ship Mondor returning to action, while the Lysian destroyer (top right) is yet another reappearance of the Talarian warship. This model was also playing a wreck in the Qualor scrapyard in “Unification I”, where all four of its wings were taken off. For this episode, they were added back on but in a different position (revisit “Suddenly Human” if you want to see how they used to look).
The Lysian sentry pods (bottom left) were brand new for this episode, but will get used again (of course!) next season and in the first season of DS9 as well, whereas the Lysian Central Command (bottom right) was of course used as the Edo God in the first season episode “Justice”. Let’s be frank, it looks far more plausible as a space station than it ever did as a deity, although at least that particular god-like entity tried to kill Wesley.
But the big SFX moment is when Erich Anderson is blasted with the phasers. Check it out!
This sequence has great impact, and indeed this episode actually won an Emmy, for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Special Visual Effects (which it shared with “A Matter Of Time”). After being snubbed at the Emmys many times, TNG was finally getting some of the plaudits it so richly deserved.