The Price

Deana Troi is finally allowed to have an episode that isn't about her mother - and it inadvertently establishes the geography of the Trek universe forever after

Troi is in her quarters, trying to unwind from a busy day listing synonyms for emotions. The Captain summons her to Ten Forward because she wouldn’t want to miss the first look at the wormhole, apparently. It seems that the Barzan, who previously have had no way of selling out to the galactic marketplace, have stumbled upon a stable wormhole. The Federation, the Caldonians, and the Chrysalians all want it - as do the Ferengi, who are late to the table.

The story plays out as a negotiation drama... When the Ferengi hobble the Federation representative, Riker steps up to the plate to go toe-to-toe with Devinoni Ral, the negotiator for the Chrysalians who Troi leaps into bed with so swiftly it’s hard to decide if she’s being played or just has terrible judgement (she did date Riker, after all). Anyway, he confides in her, she betrays him under the cover of doing her duty to Starfleet, and the wormhole turns out to be only pinned down on one end, with the other side flapping about like a bedsheet in the wind. So by the end of the episode nobody gets anything they want, including the audience.

Words

It may not all come together as a great episode on screen, but this screenplay by Hannah Louise Shearer transforms the Trek franchise by setting up the division of the galaxy into the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta quadrants. The term ‘quadrant’ has cropped up before in Trek - classic and TNG. Heck, we ran into the Morgana Quadrant in “Where Silence Had Lease” last season. But now there is a geography to the galaxy that we previously hadn’t needed and won’t ever escape from again.

Trek until now is given the Alpha quadrant. DS9 picks up the ‘stable wormhole’ plot device from this episode and sets up shop in the Gamma quadrant. Voyager gets whisked away to the Delta quadrant. In two years time, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country will see Sulu returning from a boring assignment to the Beta quadrant, the ghetto of the Trekverse. From the needs of this episode to handle its plot about a wormhole with one end jumping about willy-nilly, suddenly there is a shape to a galaxy that previously had none.

A map of the quadrants of the Milky Way from Star Trek: Voyager. Notice in particular how utterly boring any map drawn from this concept will be!

‘Wormhole’ is of course a load-bearing term in this story, and is such a great candidate for plot device that Rick Berman and Michael Piller recycle it as the entire foundation to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

However, they’re still not quite ready to play the Ferengi for comedy, alas. They also have Troi sense emotions from the Ferengi in this episode, which is contradicted by later lore, but it’s no big deal.

There are several scenes in the screenplay that didn’t make it onto the screen, though. The original opening saw a counselling session between O’Brien and Troi, which would have namechecked a girlfriend (Mitzi) who we never hear from again, after which she runs into Wesley looking for advice for dealing with his mother. No wonder she’s so exhausted when we see her at the start of this story!

Acting Roles

It’s such a shame that it takes TNG so long to find something good for Marina Sirtis to do. This episode categorically isn’t it. Giving her a romantic interest so they can try and set up a love triangle with Riker is a bad concept, although Jonathan Frakes gives one of the better performances in this episode.

That said, it’s strangely pleasing to see Sirtis’ Troi working out with Gates McFadden’s Dr Crusher, even if they are just there to giggle about boys, which is a big no-no in contemporary writing. It’s still one of the more charming scenes in this episode, if only because we don’t often get to see these characters being human (or half-human, at least).

The main cast has only a little room to move, though, since it’s an episode chock full of guest stars. First and foremost is Matt McCoy as Devinoni Ral, who of course has to carry much of the story. That’s a shame, as he’s not very likeable and his wooing of Troi comes across rather creepily. He pops up again in Voyager in a different role.

Elizabeth Hoffman is fine as Bhavani, who has to decide which of the bids to accept, but the role doesn’t involve much more than sitting at a table and looking serious.

Elizabeth Hoffman’s Bhavani (right) trying to take all this seriously

Hoffman had a recurring role as Nancy’s mother, Eleanor, in thirtysomething as well as playing Beatrice in the long-running show Sisters, but sci-fi fans are more likely to have seen her in Stargate SG-1 as archaeologist Dr Catherine Langford, a character with a prime position in the lore since her father discovered the Stargate on Earth.

Our three Ferengi are okay. Scott Thomson’s DaiMon Goss doesn’t move the Ferengi any further forward in the viewers interest. He was Arnold in 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Copeland in the Police Academy movies... maybe they should have played him for comedy here? It might have worked.

He’s supported by Dan Shor as Arridor and J.R. Quinonez as Kol, who of course will be back to reprise these roles in a Voyager episode.

Castulo Guerra plays the Federation negotiator, Mendoza, whom you might recognise from his small role in Terminator 2 as a survivalist whom Sarah Conner visits to load up on weaponry before storming the Cyberdyne offices.

He also had a small role in The Usual Suspects as the smuggler Arturo Marquez, who is killed off because he knows the identity of Keyser Söze. He has very little to do here except keel over in a corridor, which must have been one of the more fun moments during shooting this episode.

Kevin Peter Hall appears as the Caldonian delegate, Leyor, who like most of the characters in this story has nothing much to do.

Hall has to wear an absurd amount of prosthetics for his role, but he was used to it - he played the Predator in both the 1987 movie Predator and its sequel, not to mention Bigfoot in Harry and the Hendersons. When the time came to audition for this role, he probably couldn't believe his luck: the audience is actually going to see my face this time! Speaking of auditions, Hall also auditioned for the roles of both Data and LaForge, although obviously unsuccessfully. Notice that both those roles also require a lot of time in make-up, most especially Data. His entire career has been in prosthetics - he even played the Gorvil in the classic so-bad-its-good 1982 TV movie Mazes and Monsters.

Models, Make-up, and Mattes

It’s a great week for the make-up team, as the images above make clear. Lots of interesting species, with very distinctive prosthetics, it all works very well. And let’s not forget the costume department, who also have to dress everyone - including swanky new Ferengi uniforms (see above) that are much classier than those we saw in the first season (remember all those furs...?). For the Barzan, they introduce a more subtle version of the Benzite breathing apparatus that unfortunately comes across more like a bridle than a respirator but at least it looks distinctive!

In terms of studio miniatures, we get the Marauder back and say hello to the never-popular Ferengi pod.

I mean, what can you say about this? It’s ugly, but it looks like it came from the same culture that thought the Marauder was a good looking ship. In this episode, it’s the same size as Federation shuttlepod, but watch as this ship is going to get bigger and bigger every time we see it!

No new matte painting, but we revisit the one used for Gagarin IV in “Unnatural Selection”, and the wormhole effect is not at all bad, even if in retrospect it feels like a step down from DS9’s elaborate and overused wormhole opening sequence.

All in all, it’s another episode with more to admire in the details than to enjoy in the storyline.