Lessons

Picard becomes romantically involved with a member of his crew sporting an incredible 1940s hairdo

Captain Picard cannot sleep, and everything he tries to help is blocked because all the Enterprise systems have been locked out by Stellar Cartography, which is a very disappointing location compared to how it looks in the movies. He goes down to chew out his mapmakers, and ends up meeting the new head of stellar sciences. The following day, he watches her perform in a musical trio with Data and some rando, and they end up making sweet music together. However, it all gets a bit too much for the good Captain when his new lover has to be sent on a dangerous assignment... she might even die, because let’s face it she’s a guest star and therefore completely expendable. Surprisingly, she lives, but Picard kicks her off the Enterprise anyway, because he cannot handle an office romance. And she was never seen ever again.

Words

Back in season five, Michael Piller floated the idea of Picard being attracted to someone under his command, what he later described as “sort of a Brief Encounter on the starship Enterprise”.

1945’s Brief Encounter, a possible explanation for the 40s hairstyle in this episode

Nobody was particularly enthused with this concept, with Jeri Taylor being the only one who saw any merit in it. But on the back end of season six, the writing team was getting tired from creating so many great episodes and willing to consider almost anything to fill the remaining gaps standing between them and their much deserved break between seasons.

Since nobody on the writing team was interested in this one, Taylor handed it over to freelancers Ron Wilkerson and Jean Louise Matthias, who had previously written “Imaginary Friend” and “Schisms”. Brannon Braga was supposed to provide a script edit, but he bailed since he’d been unhappy with his attempt at romance in “Aquiel”. Braga handed it over to René Echevarria, whose work he’d been pleased with. He later stated: “There’s always something about René’s writing that’s very touching. He always finds the genuine emotion.”

There was much work behind-the-scenes to get the music scenes to click, particularly the duet. Jeri Taylor strived to make this pay off:

The music had to reflect that she was making him feel comfortable and letting him kind of test these strange waters and being gentle with him, not overwhelming him with a ‘look at me – see how good I am!’ kind of attitude.

Director Robert Wiemer thought “the script was a pleasure”, and Jeri Taylor was pleased with how it all came out in the end:

It had an honesty and simplicity to it that was very engaging. Wendy Hughes, who is a wonderful actress, made the whole relationship believable. You believed that Picard would be enchanted with this woman and I was wrong with my lukewarm response to it at the beginning. It turned into something that was sweet and endearing.

However, Brannon Braga complained that it was a flawed concept since it did not have any significant science fiction element. I have to agree. While I am very open to episodes like “Family” that focus entirely on relationships, what made that previous episode work was that there were events to work through - Picard’s trauma from being Locutus, Wesley’s father’s death - that were all well-connected with the continuity and intersected with sci-fi elements. This is just a sweet romantic tale divorced from both the continuity and the sci-fi trappings of the Trek universe. Even the callbacks to “The Inner Light” don’t solve the problem. The episode works, but it doesn’t click with Trek as a whole very well.

Acting Roles

It’s all down to the chemistry between Patrick Stewart’s Picard and Wendy Hughes as Nella Daren, the only significant guest star this week. Her incredible hairstyle looks quite a bit like it escaped from a 1940s black and white movie to me - I mean, look at it!

The great thing about this casting, as René Echevarria was to later point out, is that they deliberately cast an actress who would appear close to Patrick Stewart’s age. ‘Appear’ is the keyword here, as there’s still twelve years difference between the two performers. As Echevarria said of the casting: “We wanted somebody who had weight as opposed to it being just purely sexual.”

Michael Piller was especially pleased with the choice here:

I thought that Wendy Hughes was perfect casting. You really had to have that magic to make things work. It was a low-key ending, but I thought it worked well rather than the potential hand-wringing.

There were, however, other ‘guest stars’ this week: pianist Natalie Martin served as Wendy Hughes’ double and recorded all the piano music in the episode. Patrick Stewart meanwhile performed his own flute fingering in most of the shots, although he’s faking it.

When you see a closeup, it’s either Noel Webb or John Mayhem doing the playing. There’s also professional cellist Jan Kelley performing in the musical trio, seen on the right of the still below…

T’was a good week at Paramount Studios for jobbing musicians, it seems!

Models, Make-up, and Mattes

It’s the bottlest of bottle shows, but there are some special effects. There’s even a matte painting, used to make the Jefferies tube look longer than it is! Look at the back of this shot - that’s the painting right there.

This one had been created for “The Game” and was also used in last week’s episode, “Starship Mine” for the same purpose. I didn’t mention it before because those episodes had so much more to talk about... but it’s slim pickings for SFX in this one. So much so that I’ve ended up using variations of that shot twice in this WAM, oh well…

This is the first time we see Stellar Cartography, and boy is it a retrospective disappointment after seeing the gosh-wow version in Star Trek: Generations. It’s a fine set for a TV show, though, we were just spoiled by the movie.

The one ambitious moment is the fire storm. This was created by visual effects supervisor Dan Curry and visual effects coordinator Ronald B. Moore by spilling liquid nitrogen on a sheet of black velvet that was draped over a table. They pointed an air hose at it in order to create the turbulence, then used a computer to enhance the image and colour it red-orange, before digitally painting it onto the background of the live action footage on good ol’ ‘Planet Hell’, AKA Sound Stage 16.

It’s a great effect, giving this episode some much needed excitement and danger that helps the story to go out with more of a bang than a whimper.