Violations
It's another Troi-in-agony episode... but this time, she thankfully spends most of it in a coma so we don't have to hear her whine about it
The Enterprise is conveying a delegation of telepathic historians to planet Who-Cares-Never-Gonna-Get-There, and they’re offering free rides into the misty past for the crew. Nothing sinister about that. Except the minor chord that plays at the end of the teaser... and the episode being called “Violations”. Anyway, in no time at all, Troi is busy being tortured by the thought of resuming her relationship with Riker, and the rest of the crew are imagining all sorts of other unpleasant things, like Wesley coming back, or having hair. It turns out - and stop me if you’ve heard this one before - the alien guest stars are behind it all! Well, one of them is. It’s not exactly a shock reveal, but that’s our story this week, folks!
Words
Evidently the expense of the two-parter “Unification I” and “Unification II” required some bottle shows to save on costs, and this was one of them. If I was never a fan of this episode in the past, I have come to appreciate it more and more over time, because if the plot is a little obvious, the experience of the episode - its ‘feel’, if you will - is striking and unique.
The origin of the story is rather odd, as it is credited to three people: Shari Goodhartz, the former-intern who wrote “The Most Toys”, then current-intern Pamela Gray (also the co-screenwriter), and someone called ‘T. Michael’ about whom I can offer nothing much at all. Since he was not an intern as far as I can tell, my best guess is that it was he who pitched the original idea, since otherwise how would these three people ever have ended up with a story together…? What I do know is that having committed to an episode dealing with rape, there followed many versions approaching it from a variety of different angles. As co-screenwriter Jeri Taylor later recalled:
It was very dear to my heart, because it was a rape story and we felt we wanted to avoid the classic rape story, which is someone gets raped and then we do the emotional aftermath. That’s a story that's been told and told and told and told. We felt we had nothing fresh to offer.
Eventually, she and Gray came up with the sci-fi twist of making it about telepathic assault. As Taylor said of this “Even though it's mental, not physical the violation is no less profound.”
A major writing issue was who gets a flashback. There were some abandoned concepts, such as Ensign Ro revisiting her experiences on Garon II, and LaForge going back to a childhood fire (an idea reused in last week’s episode, since it was produced after this one). Ronald D. Moore later explained:
It became an issue of what are those little dream sequences going to be and how are we going to present the antagonist and the victims, and what are they saying about the characters and what are going to be the things that are intimate and personal to them? We just wanted them to all look a little different.
To make them feel different, director Robert Wiemer beseeched the throne of Rick Berman to use different camera techniques - something Berman had always disliked. However, he accepted the value in creating visual differences between each vignette here. The non-flashback scenes were all shot conservatively, with close shots and simple framings, to heighten the contrast. A Panastar high speed camera with a low angle-wide angle prism and 14910 mm lens was used to create the WobblyVision shots.
The same camera with a 100mm macro lens was used so that it magnified the person in shot rather freakingly.
Best of all, Patrick Stewart and Gates McFadden sat on a camera dolly to create the surreal effect of them almost floating down the corridor.
Berman was pleased with how it turned out:
I thought it worked out quite nicely and Bob Weimer did a lovely job. It was his ability to get quite abstract in filmic techniques... I think we had a wonderful episode with some great acting. It was very mystical and very interesting.
Jonathan Frakes was less pleased with his flashback:
Where did Riker rushing people out of engineering come from? That’s a no-brainer. Riker would just say, ‘That's the way it is. People die, shit happens.’ His worst fear is not rushing people out of engineering. That didn’t come out of character.
Michael Piller pushed back against this, pointing out that these aren’t anyone’s worst fears, but rather Jev just going for an emotional joyride through people’s memories and messing them up, but Frakes bitching is still funny! Anyway, I think it’s clear that a flashback involving Riker’s true fears would not have been PG-13…
Jeri Taylor, who co-wrote the teleplay with Pamela Gray, was really pleased with how it came out:
It was spooky, weird, alien, unusual. It worked so well we said maybe we need more of that and maybe the science fiction aspect of Star Trek is not getting all the play that it needs. Sometimes we get political, we get emotional, but are we really going with the weirdness of the Roddenberry universe?
She also remembered the tidal wave of letters from disappointed fans who hoped this episode was reopening the Riker-Troi romance. But that wasn’t the intent of their flashback, and to be frank, I’m glad they did not go down this path, and was disappointed that the movies eventually resorted to 'shipping these two back together.
Acting Roles
This is an episode that depends upon performances, and everybody is given something to do - a great deal of it being genuinely engaging. I was always greatly taken with the flashbacks of Patrick Stewart’s Picard-with-hair taking Gates McFadden's Dr-Crusher-without-wig to see Doug Wert reprising his role of Jack-Crusher-as-ice-cube. It’s worth mentioning here that McFadden always wore wigs in season five, but in this flashback she took it off so we could see her real hair.
The opposite technique was used with Stewart!
My wife wondered what was going on with Picard’s temple in this shot - I found the answer in the screenplay:
A younger Beverly -- with a different hairstyle -- and a younger Picard, she in civvies and he in “Stargazer” uniform. His head sports a bandage. The two walk toward a body on a gurney, covered by a drape.
So that’s a high-tech bandage you see there, and not a flash-forward to the Borg as you might have expected. Even more surprising than the hair - which all in all is pretty surprising!
This story opens with Rosalind Chao’s Keiko O'Brien and this is the only episode in TNG or DS9 in which she appears without Colm Meaney.
There’s really no role for Meaney’s Miles O'Brien here, though, whereas Chao gives a great scene-setting performance as the only member of the crew having a good time in her trip down psychic memory lane.
Of course, we also have three guest stars in the Ullians.
David Sage’s Tarmin (left) gives a great performance that is friendly and warm to everyone except his own son, whom he undercuts at every turn. A perennial bit-part player, Sage is also an odd case as he appears in L.A. Law both before and after this episode (in different roles). He also had two different roles in Babylon 5, including as a Centauri merchant, which probably required even more time in the make-up chair than this role.
Eve Brenner’s Inad (centre) has the smallest role in the piece. Her job is... erm... I’m not sure, to be honest: to be old, I guess? They must have thought she was good at it, as they got her back in another role in Voyager.
But it’s really Ben Lemon’s Jev (right) who has to carry the episode, as we have to simultaneously believe he’s capable of mind rape and at the same time doubt that it’s him. He gives a strong and sinister performance - so much so, that I wish they hadn’t ended the teaser by showing him while playing the minor chord, as it completely gives the game away. Another actor with a bit-part career, he did manage a few breakthrough movie roles, including Randy in Liar, Liar and ‘Sergeant’ in Die Hard 2.
Finally, a new below decks non-star is revealed!
It’s Rick Fitts as Dr Martin. The script says of him:
Troi is unconscious, lying on a bio-bed. Picard and Riker watch as DOCTOR MARTIN, an African-American male, examines her with a tricorder. Beverly approaches.
Honestly, it’s seldom a good idea to indulge in diversity hires... roles require reasons, and there’s no good reason to specify an ethnicity for this bit part. Not to mention, this appearance we never going to significantly help Fitts’ career, as he’d already had 120 episodes on Generations, the first African-American daytime soap, and was going to go on and have short recurring roles in three more soaps, not to mention an endless raft of bit-parts.
Anyway, Fitts is a solid workhorse performer, but he has nothing to do here. Not so much Doctor Who as Doctor Whatever…. Thankfully, they give him slightly more material when they get him back in a bit-part for Voyager, but I’ll wager you still didn’t notice him there. Honestly, TNG is a show with eleven regular cast members at this point and three of them are black. There wasn’t an imbalance to compensate for here, although to be fair this is the first male doctor serving on the Enterprise since classic Trek.
Models, Make-up, and Mattes
Not much for the SFX teams this week. Even the Ullian make-up is pedestrian, although it is an interesting design that basically puts a mouth in the side of their ears (see the images above!). However, there is one utterly awesome choreographed moment when Marina Sirtis's Troi gets to kick the ass of Ben Lemon’s Jev…
…then Michael Dorn’s Worf steps in and bitch-slaps him down in one stroke (Worf 13, Aliens 15) before nonchalantly handing a zonked Jev to his security detail.
Priceless! And this puts Worf's stats up to 4-2 this year - he is actually in line for a winning season for once!