Dark Page

Lwaxana Troi has a secret... but does anyone really care what it is?

Jun 25, 2025

Ambassador Troi is torturing the Captain at a reception for a species of telepaths who are struggling to learn to speak with words, which they have to master in order to join the Federation. Meanwhile, Lwaxana Troi is starting to behave rather oddly, and one of the telepaths reports that she has a ‘dark place’... I’m not sure we want to know what Lwaxana keeps in her dark place, to be honest! However, when she collapses Deanna is forced to pop into her mother’s dreams to go fishing for answers...

Words

Hilary J. Bader, who drafted this screenplay had previously contributed “The Loss” and “Hero Worship”. As the WAM mentioned, she was an intern when she provided the sci-fi subplot to “The Loss”, but it seems unlikely she’d still be an intern three years later. That said, this concept had definitely been floating around for a while, so perhaps she pitched it while still an intern, and Jeri Taylor brought her in as a freelancer to flesh it out in the final year.

Bader carved out quite a career from that internship. As well as contributing one story concept to Voyager and four to DS9, she went on to work on an episode of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, multiple episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess, before eventually scoring a writing room position on The New Batman Adventures, Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, and Gotham Girls, to which she contributed nearly a hundred and fifty episodes. Nicely done!

This episode suffers greatly from its position in the running order. As Jeri Taylor recalled:

There was a great reluctance to do this episode and “Phantasms” back-to-back, but it was one of those predicaments where we didn’t have anything else ready to go. “Dark Page” had been around a long, long time and it had undergone many permutations. Hilary Bader had pitched this story and it just never seemed to work. It started as a Dr Crusher story and went through every possible combination of people on the Enterprise. It wasn’t until we hit upon Troi and Mrs. Troi that it really seemed to work, and then it was a long time before we could figure out what the secret was that is hurting Mrs. Troi.

René Echevarria was assigned to provide an (uncredited) polish to the screenplay. Exactly as Taylor suggests, his biggest problem was finding a secret dark enough to be interesting without it making Lwaxana appear to be a monster. Nobody seems to have mentioned what the original secret in Bader’s draft was, but reading between the lines it was either something that would have destroyed seven years of charming goofiness, or something too milquetoast for anyone to care. Apparently, Echevarria was also asked to tone down the comedic attempts by the aliens-of-the-week to practice speaking, which he was annoyed by. I imagine there were some concerns about mocking the deaf entailed in this aspect of the revisions.

Naren Shankar was impressed with Echevarria’s edits:

I think Rene, who did the production re-write on the episode, did a magnificent job on the show. It’s sort of like The Joy Luck Club. It was better than I expected. It was quite touching in many ways.

Jeri Taylor was also pleased with the outcome:

Ultimately, I think it worked really well and was an emotional episode. It provided a depth to Mrs. Troi's character that we had not seen before.

I hated this the first time I saw it, but watching it again, I have to agree that this is actually a rather touching story - but it does suffer from being so close to “Phantasms”.

Acting Roles

This is the last time that Marina Sirtis’ Deanna Troi appears on screen with Majel Barrett’s Lwaxana Troi anywhere in Trek (although Barrett reprises the role three times on DS9).

Although their scenes together are solid, and benefit from the rapport they’ve developed over the years, most of the episode has Lwaxana in a coma, with the unusual consequence that this is a Lwaxana episode that focuses primarily on Deanna - the first time and only time this has happened since season one’s “Haven”. However, Barrett really goes for it in the final act, and Sirtis and Barrett land this story successfully precisely because they handle the emotional climax so well.

Amick Byram appears as Ian Troi, Deanna's mother - the only time we’ll see Troi’s dad in Trek. It’s only a short scene, and the performance is slightly unearthly, but this works well in the context of the episode, as the vision of her father is meant to distract Deanna from pursuing her mother’s secret.

Byram had played one of LaForge's crew mates from the USS Victory back in “Identity Crisis”, and has an amazing career - he’s been cast many times because of his singing skills! The vast majority of his roles have him playing someone who sings, and he has three times as many soundtrack credits as acting credits. This also explains why he was cast as Ian Troi, since this role is expressly a singing role (“Down in the valley…”), and he delivers his brief extract of this song very well.

Norman Large is brilliant as Maques, I truly enjoy his performance in this episode as a telepath learning to speak for the first time. His delivery is measured and effective, he sells the concept behind his character very well.

Large had previously appeared as a Romulan Proconsul in “Unification”, and he also had two roles in both DS9 and Voyager - not to mention an appearance on L.A. Law after this episode. And oddly he also has singing credits, like Byram, although only five and not nearly seventy.

But all of this is slightly overshadowed by this appearance of an absurdly young Kirsten Dunst as both Hedril and a dream-distortion of Kestra Troi in Lwaxana’s coma dreams.

It was her eighth role, and two roles before her movie breakthrough as the young bloodsucker Claudia in Interview with the Vampire. I’m pretty sure she’s the most famous child star to appear anywhere in Star Trek!

Models, Make-up, and Mattes

I rather like the Lobot-ish make up on the Cairn, although from the side it looks like their brain is trying to escape!

This is a bottle show to be sure, and even the dream sequences are pretty cheap, largely relying on lens effects. However, there was one particular challenge this week, which was the appearance of a genuine canis lupis wolf, played by two animal performers, Buck and Teddy.

Although the wolves were very well trained, they were still considered dangerous and split-screen shots against a blue screen were used whenever character interacted with them. As producer Peter Lauritson recalled: “Nobody wanted to be there with the wolf except Dan Curry.” Once again, VFX Supervisor Curry goes above and beyond!

Kirsten Dunst petted a wooden stand, with the wolf digitally composited in later, which is why this still image looks a bit odd:

The wolf’s growl, which had always intrigued me, was achieved by getting it to lick a meaty bone and then filming its reaction when the trainer moved as if to take it away. Despite my initial impression that it was faking its reaction (based on the tail wagging), actually this was a sincere performance! I have learned in the years since I originally saw this that tail wagging is linked to excitement, which can be friendly or hostile. I guess I just didn’t know many aggressive canids growing up!

And once again, Marina Sirtis gamely performed her own stunt when she seems to be jumping into space!

She leapt off a platform against a blue screen and landed on an air mattress, with the star field and corridor walls composited in later. It’s a tiny part of the episode, and very easy for the SFX team to do, but I tip my hat to Sirtis for not using a body double!