The Dauphin
Wesley's got himself a monster of a girlfriend!
The Enterprise is transporting dignitaries from Klavdia III, Salia and her governess, Anya. Suspiciously, they talk with the viewscreen off and Anya asks what species they are… Picard, in an act of careless racism, says ‘human’. Never mind Worf, Troi, Dr Selar and all the other non-humans on board! Anyway, they beam aboard, and look human enough so it’s not at all suspicious.
Salia bumps into Wesley in the corridors: “Is that a superconducting magnet in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?” And just like that, Wesley is smitten. So he moons about the ship asking all the other members of the crew about love before bribing her with chocolate. Anya nags everyone in the crew about just about everything, and is furious that Dr Pulaski is treating someone with an infectious disease. She transforms into a monster and kicks Worf ass (Worf 2, Aliens 5), and Pulaski mentions that there’s a creature known as an ‘allasomorph’ mentioned in the galactic zoological catalogue that can alter their molecular structure. Not to be confused with a Chameloid. Or a Changeling. Or anything else that can change shape in the Trek universe.
Salia gets upset and storms out on Wesley after he breaks the Prime Directive and invites her to stay on the Enterprise, so Picard has to play dad and order Wesley to leave Salia alone. But she has other ideas and drops by for a smooch - leading to the big reveal that Salia is an allasomorph too, with a monster-form even more ridiculous looking than Anya’s! So they fight, then make up, and Salia lets Wesley see her naked before she beams off to end the war on Daled IV.
“Seeing her on the transporter pad was like seeing pure light,” Wesley mopes. Teenagers, eh?
Words
‘Dauphin’ is an odd choice of title. It the beginning, perhaps, of Trek having used up so many of the good words that they have to open up the thesaurus and go fishing. I don’t believe this term could possibly be appropriate in this case, since the Dauphin was the title of the eldest son of the King of France, and has no feminine form. The writers are just fishing for a title meaning ‘heir to the throne’, but this one doesn’t sit very well against its historical context.
Leonard Mlodinow and Scott Rubenstein's screenplay is almost unchanged from draft to what we see on screen. Mlodinow is a theoretical physicist, better known for his popular science books than screenwriting, although he worked for several shows in the 1980s, including MacGuyver and Night Court. Rubenstein was his writing partner during this part of his career, but doesn't seem to have done much after Mlodinow hit it big in non-fiction with books like this one:
Mlodinow’s fingerprints are all over a few small details in the script, though, like the tidal-locked Daled IV, which has a day-side and a night-side. It’s a throwaway line, although it is used to explain the war (“One might surmise that the two hemispheres developed disparate cultures, which is a major cause of most wars,” Data states). As an ex-astrophysicist myself, I can testify to the way that small aspects of the scientific literature leap out as plot points for potential sci-fi stories, and its enjoyable to find a few paraded around in this story.
Acting Roles
Meet the allasomorphs!
Jaime Hubbard, who plays Salia, only had six acting roles before settling on becoming a licensed psychotherapist as a career. They credit her in the show as ‘Jamie Hubbard’ - I don’t know if that was just a typo, or if it was her choice, but it does seem odd that they didn’t get her name right. Mädchen Amick, who plays Anya in her younger form, was the runner up to play the role of Salia.
But the awesome guest star of the week is Paddi Edwards, who plays grumpy old form Anya. Don’t think you've seen her anywhere else? Possibly not... but I bet you've heard her. She not only plays Atropos in the Disney Hercules but she’s also the voice of those wicked moray eels, Flotsam and Jetsam in The Little Mermaid. But that’s not even the kicker - this actress was the voice of Gozer the Destructor, the big bad in the 1984 Ghostbusters. Kind of gives a whole new meaning to her line “Choose! Choose the form of the Destructor!”, doesn't it!
Worf has a lovely little scene instructing Wesley on Klingon love rituals, another great example of playing Michael Dorn for comedy, which he delivers perfectly.
But it’s not just Dorn, there's a great comedy scene between Jonathan Frakes’ Riker and Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan as well. All this material comes straight from the screenplay, which appears to have been in very good shape when they started filming. Nice to see drama and comedy combined in an episode, even if the drama is not quite as good as the comedy.
Speaking of Dorn, I’m counting Worf’s battle with Anya as a loss, even though you could argue that it was a draw. But since I can’t imagine Klingon's treating a draw as anything to shout about, I’m going to rack this up as his first loss of the season.
And if it seems like Colm Meaney's role has devolved this week, it has. He has nothing more than a couple of measly ‘aye sir’ lines.
The screenplay for last week’s “The Measure of a Man” had him listed as ‘O’Brien’, while this screenplay has him only as ‘Transporter Chief’. I suspect this is an artefact of the production sequence, since multiple scripts are always being developed in parallel, and he never again appears as ‘Transporter Chief’ in the cast breakdown at the beginning of the screenplays. In a sense, this is Meaney’s last appearance as a bit player.
Models, Make-up, and Mattes
It’s not a great week for the special effects department, alas. The monsters that Anya changes into are, frankly, dreadful, and would have looked perfectly at home in Space, 1999. Okay, I love Space 1999, but it was more than a decade earlier than TNG! Honestly, it’s tough to decide which of Anya’s monster costumes is worse, but fortunately Salia’s monster is even more dreadful and takes the bad monster design biscuit!
They also reuse the new planetary matte for both planets in the same episode, which feels a bit cheap.
There's also a very striking shot with a matte painting when Wesley and Salia are on the holodeck…
…actually, I say ‘painting’, this is a composite of at least three elements - the foreground, the planet, and also its rings. The rings are identical to those we saw for Gravesworld back in “The Schizoid Man”, and the planet is a separate element to the foreground painting. All in all, this makes for a great moment on Wesley and Salia’s date, and given the rather weak effects this week, it’s essentially the highlight of the episode.
All I can say about this episode is 'Cringe'!
I'm actually not quite sure how to process that Space 1999 was only a decade before T:NG.