When Alexander shows little interest in warrior training, Worf takes him to a Klingon outpost’s colorful local celebration of their people’s Kot’baval festival, marking the Kahless-Molor battle.
But the day almost turns tragic when the two are nearly killed by apparent assailants from the rival Duras family, anxious to kill Worf’s only heir. Only the mystery appearance of K’mtar, a trusted family friend sent to avert such a surprise, saves the day.
Initially K’mtar helps the thankful father in piquing Alexander’s interest in the warrior ethic, but Worf is angered and the boy driven away when K’mtar berates his lack of a killer instinct.
The starship meantime helps track the Duras sisters to accuse them of the incident directly, but the assailant’s knife is traced to a child of B’etor’s that she only just learned she was carrying. Going to confront K’mtar, Worf is shocked to see the man poised to kill Alexander in his sleep.
Finally, K’mtar reveals the odd truth that he is Alexander from forty years in the future, time-traveling back to change the upbringing that allowed him to become a pacifist diplomat duped into allowing Worf’s eventual assassination on the Klingon Council floor. Worf, realizing he must change his own attitude, helps “K’mtar” realize that he can only die honorably if he allows Alexander to become his own person.
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Helmed by “rookie” director Jonathan West, the series’ two-year director of photography, this season’s Klingon show returns to the family theme for Alexander’s only appearance of the year. Kalbfeld’s premise concerned only a Federation-marked Romulan ship from a supposedly peaceful future that turned out to be a Trojan horse whose time-travel and “future Riker” were both a hoax.
But the idea of a “future fix” hung on, and once Piller again nixed Joe Menosky’s idea of an Alexander accidentally yet permanently aged thirty years in a time portal ­ ”I think it’s a hideous thing to steal somebody’s youth from them,” he said ­ the eventual Back to the Future-like plot evolved. It also reverberates with “Yesteryear,” Dorothy Fontana’s highly regarded 1973 animated Star Trek in which Spock restores a damaged timeline by saving himself as a child.
Jeri Taylor had been impressed with actor Sloyan ever since she screened “The Defector” in her crash-course on Star Trek but had to fight for him as her first choice for K’mtar, over Rick Berman and Michael Piller’s initial objection that he had portrayed Odo’s Bajoran mentor on DS9 only weeks before. “I finally went to Michael and said, ‘Look ­ we can take a lesser actor in this part or we can cast the actor who should be cast,’ “ she recalled, arguing that the Klingon makeup would help “hide” him. It was during this show that Patrick Stewart was able to miss four days of shooting to host the February 5 Saturday Night Live.
Originally, Echevarria had also wanted to include K’Ehleyr (“Emissary”, “Reunion”) as young Alexander’s climactic rescuer from K’mtar. Actress Suzi Plakson was interested in the reprise but declined on the timing, citing the beginning of hiatus after an exhausting year on her popular sitcom Love and War; a bedside photo had to make do. “The truth is, it was a blessing,” Echevarria noted. “There was enough exposition to explain at the end of the show as it is!”
The wide-ranging story more than holds its own, switching from Klingon pageantry ­ with the tale of Molor and Kahless once touched upon (“Rightful Heir”) ­ to the chase for the Duras sisters (“Redemption I-II”) on the eve of their feature debut in Generations. That subplot opened up when Piller wanted a tougher search for the sisters, and actor Shimerman agreed to do a DS9 scene for “a very reasonable price”; with Quark’s addition, the abandoned alien was switched from a Ferengi to a Dopterian, seen as their kin in DS9’s “The Forsaken.” The outing was the first for Brian Bonsall since his movie Blank Check, while Swetow had been Gul Jasad for DS9’s pilot.
Visual FX coordinator Michael “B” Baukaskas, getting a supervisor’s credit with Ron B. Moore’s ongoing absence to work on the feature, had fun with the Klingons’ holodeck fight with stunt coordinator Dennis Madalone as the “frozen” assailant. Baukaskas recalled how West and the crew were “sweating it” late one day before young Brian Bonsall’s time limit for work as a minor was running out; as it was, his parents acquiesced to go a few minutes over, and each of three angles needed was snared in one take without mishap. For VCR freeze-framers, watch the stilled fighter as K’mtar passes him: thanks to the interruption of the cutaway shot, the fighter had to be moved a few inches to the left for clearance after the planned pan-and-scan cheat (“Attached”) was abandoned for time. Also, live explosive “squibs” for the weaponry hits were eschewed in favor of optical add-ons (“Descent”, “Gambit, Part I”) to realistically tighten up the timing of the “speed-of-light” weapons.
Although the two actors playing the Klingon Kot’baval grunted their lines on stage, both were good enough singers to reloop and synchronize a new melody to their filmed mouthings when it was decided to make the Klingon opera more lyrical and composer Dennis McCarthy was called in. “We did some temporary tracks for the stage but we wound up doing the whole thing in post-production,” said producer Wendy Neuss. “It was one of our biggest jobs all year ­ figuring out what the on-camera instruments would sound like, breaking down all the syllables, figuring where the offstage line would be.”
Young Eric, given the surname “Burton” in the script, makes his third showing (“Liaisons”, “Masks”); his “Fullerene” water balloon, noted science adviser Andre Bormanis, comes from today’s same-named synthesized molecule of carbon atoms that forms a hollow shell, named for geodesic dome designer Buckminster Fuller; the metallicized wax prop was actually thrown from off-camera for Worf’s dunking by propmaster Alan Sims.
Thanks to TV magic, Worf’s quarter-human son continues to mushroom; he’s already age ten, though he was age three at K’Ehleyr’s death only two seasons ago! Here he is said to have never seen the Home World and is said to be the only male-related heir of Kurn (“Sins of the Father”, “Redemption”). Other Klingon references include leader Gowron (“Reunion”, “Redemption”, “Unification I”, “Rightful Heir”), the annually marked Rite of Ascension and painstiks (“The Icarus Factor”), and the first-ever mention of Klingon currency, darseks. Whether intended or not, the trusted family adviser “Gin’tak” is also the word for a spear (“Birthright, Part II”); the Koh’manara block (“Second Chances”), the curse patahk for “animal,” Qapla for “success,” and gik’tal (“Lower Decks”) for “to the death” ­ the latter sung by the Kahless character ­ are also not new.
Trivia fans will note the mention of biomimetic gel (“Force of Nature”), bilitrium (DS9’s “Past Prologue”), the Corvallens (“Face of the Enemy”, “Inheritance”), the inept Pakleds (“Samaritan Snare”), another Yridian (“Birthright, Part I”, “Gambit, Part I”, and DS9) and his wasplike ship (“The Chase”), and the flashy explosive magnesite ­ which dates back all the way to 1967’s “Friday’s Child.” Echevarria not only created the U.S.S. Kearsage here after the historic Civil War ship but named the Vodrey Nebula after the fan who wrote in to suggest it. Finally, we learn that Riker is the only one at Quark’s to ever win “triple-down Dabo” and was due gold-pressed latinum, the first TNG mention of either, while Lursa’s offspring is not referred to again (Generations) but may yet be lurking out there for future sequels!
~1:[4,#b],5:[2,#i]@1“Fistful of Datas, A”@2Next Generation episode #134
Production No.: 234
Aired: Week of November 9, 1992
Stardate: 46271.5
Directed by Patrick Stewart
Teleplay by Robert Hewitt Wolfe and Brannon Braga
Story by Robert Hewitt Wolfe
GUEST CAST
Alexander Rozhenko: Brian Bonsall
Eli Hollander: John Pyber-Ferguson
Annie Meyers: Joy Garrett
Bandito: Jorge Cervera Jr.
Computer Voice: Majel Barrett
With some spare time to enjoy, the Enterprise crew head in different directions: La Forge tests a hunch that Data can be used as a backup to the ship’s computer, and Alexander coaxes his father and later Troi into taking part in an “Ancient West” holodeck role-play scenario he’s written.
But after the test linkup to Data, minor glitches become obvious in ship’s systems: the android’s bad poetry showing up in a play script Dr. Crusher is rehearsing, for one. Far worse is what the holodeck gamers discover when Alexander is kidnapped by outlaws and the game won’t stop: the weapons failsafes won’t work and the “bad guys” confronting them one by one assume not only Data’s look but his abilities!
Knowing they can only end the game by surviving till story’s end, the outgunned Troi and Worf prepare for the inevitable gunfight, while back in “reality” Data begins lapsing into a Western drawl that tips off what the problem is; his memory has been crossed with the ship’s holodeck database.
While La Forge works to repair it from outside, Worf saves himself from an ambush at the attempted hostage switch for Alexander by jury-rigging a forcefield to repel the outlaws’ bullets. Even that, though, cannot save him from the big pucker of the saloon owner Annie ­ who now also looks like Data.
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This offbeat show, writer Wolfe’s pitch script that got him hired to work on DS9, received a polish by Braga with a little help from Ron Moore and practically everybody ­ including, by the luck of the draw, an English Director named Patrick Stewart. “I’m not a Western fan, I never really saw Westerns,” Braga observed, “and Patrick Stewart, a British guy who’s not familiar with the Western genre ­ and here we are doing our big Western show! But, I think, we brought a fresh sensibility to it.”
“Patrick approached this with such zealousness ­ he went out and rented two classic Westerns every night,” Taylor recalled. “The next morning he’d come in and tell us what great ideas he’d had, and we could always tell just what he’d watched!”
Originally the story concerned a greedy land baron, but after Ira Stephen Behr’s suggestion from the DS9 office down the hall they switched the homage plot to Rio Bravo. At first Worf was to play the Clint Eastwood “man with no name” type from the Sergio Leone “spaghetti Westerns” with Troi as a dance-hall girl and Alexander her son ­ complete with a Leone-parody title, “The Good, The Bad and the Klingon.” But it was decided that the boy would likely write the program to feature himself, so he became a deputy to “Sheriff Worf” and Troi got the strong, silent role of Durango in a victory for off-type writing.
“This was a hoot! It was never meant to be anything more than old Star Trek,” said Piller, who noted that the script met two of his pre-season goals: be more lighthearted and give Brent Spiner something more interesting to do. Braga said Data’s bad poetry (“Schisms”) and Spot’s cat food (version 127!) in the replicators were his way of making the shipboard scenes just as fun as the holodeck tale: “The tricky part was not to make it broad parody but make it believable Western storytelling and still have fun just from seeing the characters in those situations.”
The opening big boots/little boots scene was right from Leone ­ whose Eastwood vehicle “A Fistful of Dollars” inspired the title ­ while the Enterprise flying off into the sunset at tale’s end was just the right touch. Even the music had a familiar feel: harmonica virtuoso Tommy Morgan, veteran of all those distinctive Western soundtracks of the past, was brought in with his packet of hand-filed instruments to record the soundtrack, Peter Lauritson recalled. The uncredited “henchman” Nick Dimitri also is seen later as a taxi driver (“Emergence”), among other assignments, while, sadly, actress Joy Garret died the next year of liver failure.
Two fun scenes that had to be cut for time included a homage to “The Ransom of Red Chief” between Data/Bandito and Alexander as the testy captive, and a funny moment where Worf nearly shoots himself in the foot after a quick-draw lesson from Troi ­ which closes with Deanna trying a little therapy on the criminal son. Watch out too for the blooper when Worf’s gun switches hand between takes.
Eli Hollander was named for one of Braga’s film school professors at UC-Santa Cruz, and the place-names reflect hometowns of his family: his own Bozeman, Montana (see “Cause and Effect”), along with Rapid City and Deadwood, SD. “Miss Langford’s House of Pleasure” was kept even though Moore forgot he’d suggested Langford for a name in the prior episode (seen “Rascals”), while the Biko pays homage to the slain black South African leader.
The exterior scenes were all filmed in a day on the Western Street at Warner Brothers’ backlot, while the interiors were all built on Stage 16. Picard’s Kataanen flute turns up for the first time since “The Inner Light”, so does a mention of Reg Barclay and the old Grisson miniature posing as the Biko. Meanwhile, La Forge is ribbed in the first of two consecutive episodes about Le Var Burton’s beard, “Ms.” is heard to be still in use in the twenty-fourth century, and we learn that Troi is a Western fan thanks to her late father’s reading aloud when she was young. From his boorish start here, Riker’s acting under Beverly’s direction apparently takes off, judging by his later efforts (“Frame of Mind”); the Observation Lounge is not-so-subtly redressed as their rehearsal room. Finally, it seems programmer Alexander needs to study his Ancient West geography: a map of Arizona is seen hung in the sheriff’s office in the supposedly South Dakotan town.
~1:[3,#b],4:[2,#i]@1“Force of Nature”@2Next Generation episode #161
Production No.: 261
Aired: Week of November 15, 1993
Stardate: 47310.2
Directed by Robert Lederman
Written by Naren Shankar
GUEST CAST
Dr. Rabal: Michael Corbett
Dr. Serova: Margaret Reed
DaiMon Prak: Lee Arenberg
Computer Voice: Majel Barrett
While tracing the missing medical ship Fleming through the Hekaras Corridor ­ the only safe route through an area filled with tetryon particles, a hazard to warp-driven ships ­ the Enterprise is fired upon by a Ferengi ship that had seemed to be dead.
After DaiMon Prak asserts that an object presumed to be a Federation buoy emitted a disabing verteron pulse, the Enterprise helps the ship on its way ­ only to be attacked in the same way hours later.
A Hekaran brother and sister, Rabal and Serova, board the ship forcibly to explain their goal: to demand that the use of warp drive be halted before it destroys the fabric of space near their world ­ even if that means isolating it from the UFP.
An angry Picard softens after Data finds their theory merits study, but the impatient Serova sacrifices herself and her own ship to create a rift that sucks in the Fleming and threatens the Enterprise. A shaken La Forge, upset at the newfound dangers of warp drive, helps find a way to “coast” into the rift on a brief warp pulse and recovers enough to “ride” another wave out when the Fleming tries to restart its warp drive, damaging both ships.
With the UFP declaring a new warp five speed limit, La Forge consoles Rabal over his sister’s sacrifice and joins Picard in mulling their careers’ use of warp drive, resolving to put their new awareness to good use.
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This disappointing though worthwhile “message” show finally beat the staff’s so-called Limits Curse of Season 6, when Joe Menosky’s environmental theme of warp-drive damage was tried but dropped from several stories (“Suspicions”). Or did it? Shankar, admitting “it wasn’t one of my finer moments,” was disappointed to lose his original version and its emotional underpinnings: a visit by Geordi’s sister Ariana (only mentioned in “Interface”) to confront his emotional denial regarding their mother’s death.
“I’ve been on enough series and tried to do environmental issues to realize that they are so hard to dramatize,” Taylor said, “because you’re talking about the ‘ozone hole,’ and . . . it’s so, so hard to make it emotional and personal and give impact on that kind of level.” Shankar agreed: “You oversimplify the issue, you oversimplify the solutions, and you end up with boilerplate and platitudes and nobody’s happy.”
Shankar, having championed the rebirth of the eco-premise to Jeri Taylor after returning “galvanized” from an environmental film group breakfast, first wrote of Geordi as a “control freak” who was throwing himself into his work rather than mourn Silva’s loss; the warp-drive revelations shook up the one thing he had been able to control ­ his engines ­ and led to much soul-searching. Taylor agreed with Piller that the Ariana plot was too forced and trite, though Shankar wished it had been worked out rather than dropped altogether; a conflict for Geordi with another crewmate didn’t pan out, shooting deadlines approached, and the stripped-down script shows the padding of hastily written scenes concerning a rival engineer and Spot, of all things ­ in part thanks to the fast pace of editor-turned-director Lederman. “Somewhere about Act III the story finally starts, and by that time I don’t think anybody even cared,” added Taylor, who praised Shankar’s attempts to deal in vain with a “doomed premise.”
~1:[3,#b],4:[2,#i]@1“Frame of Mind”@2Next Generation episode #147
Production No.: 247
Aired: Week of May 3, 1993
Stardate: 46778.1
Directed by James L. Conway
Written by Brannon Braga
GUEST CAST
Dr. Syrus: David Selburg
Administrator (“Lt.”) Suna: Andrew Prine
Mavek: Gary Werntz
Inmate Jaya: Susanna Thompson
Wounded crew member: Alan Dean Moore
With a few days’ rest before leading an undercover mission to rescue Federation hostages on the newly anarchic Tilonus IV, Riker takes on the demanding role of a mental-health patient turned prisoner in the play “Frame of Mind.”
Haunted by the face of a strange alien lieutenant, Riker finds reality and theater shifting back and forth in a series of baffling segues as he finds himself first on the stage set and then in a real asylum, where his doctor ­ played by Data in the play ­ tells him to shed his “starship” fantasy. Haunted by doubt, and a recurring bleeding temple when he’s on the starship, Riker is finally convinced that his Starfleet career is an illusion, the alien he saw is the clinic administrator, and that he will soon stand trial for murder.
Worf and Data retrieve him, but aboard ship he still refuses to believe he’s a starfleet officer. Finally, when his temple continues to bleed despite Dr. Crusher’s care, Riker senses he can’t trust any of these “realities,” and he mentally breaks through each one in turn to finally wake up on a lab table, a probe attached to his temple.
Eluding the Tilonians for an emergency beam-out, he realizes that the memories of his starship and the play were the only thing that kept him “sane” while he had been drugged by his captors.
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After a drought of Riker stories in Season 6, Frakes won praise this time for his intense yet controlled performance on a roller coaster of a part in what Braga mused was his best work to date, using his favorite “underused” character: “Riker’s a friendly character, he’s the one human you can do humor with, you can do action ­ and here you can jerk him around and drive him crazy!”
Considering the late-season time crunch, it’s amazing that this desperation premise to fill the slot when another story fell through works at all. Braga came up with the barest idea ­ ”What if Riker wakes up in an insane asylum?” ­ and, due to the time crunch, took it right from a brief memo barely approved by a skeptical Piller and Berman into the most torturous yet creative break session this staff had ever seen. “We didn’t have time to do a story, so we went ahead and ‘broke’ this which is the most risky thing in the world to do,” Jeri Taylor said. “ They’re painstaking, they take days, and if you lose it you’re doomed!” Finally, after three days in the same room, they let Piller in to hear the story and, hearing it fresh without a story outline, he was instantly hooked on what had emerged.
In an interesting twist, Braga noted that another challenge was to write the compelling last scene to the same-named play within the play ­ or, in other words, “write a famous play without ever having been famous!” The writer also said he’d had second thoughts about his frequent use of the word “crazy” in light of current mental-health trends but decided to shrug it off. “People use this word, it’s a good word, and I decided to use it,” he said. “When you get too ‘politically correct’ it shows, and what’s ‘PC’ today won’t be five years from now. Star Trek is a show that transcends time, and we try not to date it.”
Berman recalled that James Conway had been a well-received director way back in Season 1 (“Justice”, “The Neutral Zone”), but had simply been too busy in the nineteenth century as executive producer on The Guns of Paradise, among other projects, to “return” to the future before this skillfully handled outing. FX supervisor Ron B. Moore praised the cast, recalling how the five-minute scene with Riker and his mates as holograms was shot all in one take with just a little rehearsal and no slips ­ and then repeated perfectly for a second angle. The initial look of Riker’s “immolation” was thought too similar to the Time Trax effect, so a simple fade-out was used; the “shards of glass” shatter was done by Joe Walter.
Like Barclay (“The Nth Degree”), the first known student in Beverly’s new backstory of amateur theater, Riker too shows the miracles her coaching can do (“A Fistful of Datas”); for the performance she wears her off-the-shoulder dress from “Allegiance”. Through the makeup, two familiar TNG faces can be seen here: David Selburg was lit-historian Whalen in “The Big Goodbye”, while Susanna Thompson had earlier played Varel, the female Romulan officer of a disabled science ship (“The Next Phase”). Her inmate here mentions several “real” starships, the old Yorktown (from 1967’s “Obsession”) and the Yosemite (“Realm of Fear”). Another TNG vet, stunt coordinator Dennis Madalone (seen without makeup in “Identity Crisis”, among others), steps out once again as an extra as Mavek’s assistant guard. And pattern enhancers have been used before (“Power Play”, “Time’s Arrow”, “Ship in a Bottle”, then “Inheritance”).
