The Defector

A Romulan defector may be a contradiction in terms, but it's all we need for a brilliant episode!

We open on the holodeck, with Data practicing his acting skills by playing King Henry in a Shakespeare play, because nothing says ‘the future’ like raiding the past. Soon after, we see a Romulan Warbird chasing down a Romulan scout ship - exciting! It turns out that the ship is carrying a defector. But can the Enterprise crew trust him...?

Eventually he reveals himself to be a high ranking Romulan military officer, Admiral Jarok, who has defected in order to prevent a war between the Romulans and the Federation. But it’s a set up! Our favourite Romulan ne’er-do-well, Commander Tomalak, manipulated Jarok in order to get revenge on the Enterprise for embarrassing him three episodes again. But the jokes on you Tommy-boy, because Worf has called in his Klingon chums to set up an interstellar Mexican standoff. The Enterprise escapes unharmed, but Jarok is so humiliated he swallows his suicide pill. Bummer.

Words

How do you save yourself some time when you’re writing a screenplay? Why, have one of your scenes stolen directly from Shakespeare’s Henry V. Actually, this was intended to be another Sherlock Holmes holodeck scene, but there were legal conflicts with the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, so Shakespeare was brought in as a pinch hitter. Guess who suggested that substitution…? Yup, it was Royal Shakespeare Company alumni Patrick Stewart.

Head writer Michael Piller was especially pleased with the call back to the teaser later in the show:

There’s a scene where Picard and Data are talking about how the crew is holding up, and then Picard says a line or two that echoes the play. Then, in the confrontation with the Romulans, there are suggestions of Henry V in Picard's stance, bravery and decisions, and what the argument is about. If you are a musician, as I am, it is a trick that you throw into arrangements to echo other songs and play on a melody that reminds you of something else. I was very proud of that.

You’re going to get tired of me saying ‘this is one of my favourites!’ every time a Romulan episode comes up, but I can't help it: this is one of my favourite episodes of Trek from any franchise. It’s that great mix of a strong character story, brilliant action shots with multiple studio miniatures (many of them new to this episode), and interstellar politics.

However, this episode had a troubled production history. The original premise came from Ronald D. Moore, who described it as follows:

A Romulan defector is picked up as he escapes across the neutral zone. He is a significant enough player to attract the attention of Federation Intelligence who send an envoy to debrief him. His information is suspect. And inflammatory. He could be a plant to provoke the Federation into making a move that could lead to war – which a vocal faction of the Romulans favor. But if he is telling the truth, this information could save lives if the Enterprise is willing to intervene, but it means crossing the neutral zone and violating their treaty. The defector gives us lots of reasons to distrust him. The crew is divided. Finally, Picard takes his chances and finds the defector was telling the truth; he saves the lives after which the ironic message from Starfleet headquarters comes – do not cross the neutral zone.

Originally entitled “A Question of Trust”, at one point it featured a romance between Jarok and Dr Crusher, a subplot which fell out over time. Moore’s draft was eventually ‘torn apart and rebuilt as a group effort. Chunks of scenes were handed out to different members of the writing team and they cobbled it together while working in parallel. The teaser and Act I were Moore’s work, but everything else came from other writers on the team. It’s a brilliant reminder that TV shows of this era were always a team effort, and it’s an impressive achievement that the final episode hangs together so well. Moore summarised the final episode as “the Cuban missile crisis at the Neutral Zone”, which is fair, but there’s so much more to this screenplay than just that.

Acting Roles

James Sloyan is spellbinding as Admiral Jarok, and would go on to be a regular on most of the Trek franchises in the original production run. He brings an intensity to the role that gives him great presence, and his exchanges with Brent Spiner’s Data and Patrick Stewart’s Picard are among the highlights of the many character scenes in this episode.

Director Robert Scheerer was full of praise for Sloyan’s performance:

The actor who played the defector, James Sloyan, was excellent. His feeling about The Next Generation was that it’s the only place left where you can do Shakespearean acting and make it work for you on television. Because of the characters’ nature and size, you can bring something to it that you can’t do anywhere else on television. It had a nice anti-war message, but it didn’t preach the message; it told the story. It was important. I tried to be subtle, but make sure the point was made.

Sloyan reappears in a later TNG episode as a future version of Worf’s son, and has a major role in a Voyager episode, but his key role in the Trek franchises is as Odo’s ‘father’ Dr Mora Pol in Deep Space Nine.

Andreas Katsulas returns as Tomalak - hooray!

Honestly, I’m still bummed to this day that his other two appearances in Trek are tantamount to dream sequences. I would have liked a lot more of Katsulas. His scene with Stewart in this episode is even better than in “The Enemy”, and probably did a great deal to elevate my love of the Romulans as antagonists.

John Hancock appears as Starfleet Admiral Haden, which is one of those exposition roles that isn’t very noteworthy, but he’s back next season in this role in "The Wounded", which uses this character much more substantially.

Colm Meaney is seen only briefly, and has no speaking lines, but he’s there! He doesn’t appear in the script at all, so they probably shot the footage with him while he was in for another episode.

And let’s not forget Patrick Stewart as Michael Williams in the scene from Henry V.

Obviously Stewart was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, so this was an easy bit part role for him, but I have to say his accent sucks. Stewart is just too well-bred to pretend to be a commoner.

Models, Make-up, and Mattes

Incredibly, this episode features no fewer than three new models! You can see all but one of them in this brilliant and pivotal shot, along with old favourite the Klingon Bird-of-Prey, which looks huge in this shot, but only because of a trick of perspective.

The Enterprise studio miniature is the new four-foot model created for this season, the second Warbird was created especially for this episode (not sure why, to be honest, as they could have just shot the one they had from two angles). But the star new model is the Romulan scout, which looks just brilliant.

In fact, it’s so good in that opening chase scene that we should see the whole sequence again!

This is one of the most pulse-pounding sequences in TNG, and the way it spans the credits is wonderful!

Nelvana III gets a swanky new planetary matte too, which we’ll see again next season for “The Host”.

All this, and a wonderful matte painting of the Valley of Chula on Romulus, although I am unable to establish who the artist was.

This episode has everything you could want - fantastic model shots, brilliant roles by outstanding acting talent, great matte paintings, and even a bit of Shakespeare. No wonder this is one of my all time favourite episodes of Trek. Bravo!