Returning to a planet outpost whose unstable atmosphere and infrequent transport window almost left him stranded while a lieutenant on the Potemkin, Riker is shocked to find a double of himself ­ created years ago by an odd transporter reflection.
Nervala IV’s atmosphere allows only brief transporter use just once every eight years, and the Enterprise is back now for the same database sought earlier. But “Lieutenant Riker” ’s appearance is more than just a scientific shock ­ it upsets Troi, since he’s ready to resume the passion they shared at the time.
While Troi finally decides to renew the affair, the two Rikers clash on the current mission when Picard chooses “Lieutenant Riker” ’s plan. Meanwhile, Number One gently reminds Troi that this one will likely become just as involved with his career as he did.
Back for a third and final try to retrieve the database, Commander Riker saves his twin from plunging to his death from a collapsed bridge in the outpost’s underground caverns.
Safely aboard again, Lieutenant Riker is preparing for his new posting on the U.S.S. Gandhi when he receives two going-away gifts: a trombone, from his twin, and Troi’s promise to consider marrying him in six months when he can have family aboard his ship. Until then, Commander Riker promises to watch over her, the same as always.
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First-time director LeVar Burton won praise all around for his preparation and unruffled handling of one of the toughest of FX shows, one that turned the Riker character on its ear and finally satisfied the clamoring Riker-Troi romance fans. And, to unleash the two-Riker trick without a cheap tech breakdown as catalyst, Rick Berman and Michael Piller were adamant that the transporter mishap be established as a once-in-a-trillion occurrence due to Nervala IV’s unique atmosphere. Echevarria, who recalled that the script practically wrote itself, relished once again getting to call a premise-pitcher about his story sale ­ though he recalled with a laugh that Medlock’s tale of a Riker twin almost got him booted from the office until he added the hook: the premise of the renewed romance.
If Riker’s future seems boggled by these events, consider what might have been: Taylor and the staff originally wanted to kill off Commander Riker, installing a hungry, career-climbing “young” Riker at the helm with Data as first officer ­ and greatly complicating Troi’s life. Berman and Piller, eyeing the character’s stability and its future in films, nixed that idea outright ­ and so it seemed that Lieutenant Riker would bite the dust until Piller suggested they salvage some of the unexpected and keep both alive: “I mean, what other show could do it?” he asked. At the time, Taylor said she had no idea what direction to take the twins in, but Thomas was to be featured in a third-year DS9 story called “The Defiant.”
The brief appearance by Dr. Mae Jemison, who like Whoopi Goldberg credits Nichelle “Uhura” Nichols from original Trek as one of her inspirations, came at Burton’s invitation and marked the first time any real-life space traveler had appeared on-camera in the Trek universe. Jemison, a general medical practitioner and the first black woman in space, had left her six-year NASA career by the time she appeared here to found a Houston-based communications company.
For background buffs, Riker’s chance to command the Aries and his rocky years with his father are recalled (“The Icarus Factor”), and a move from Worf’s Mok’bara exercises gets a name: Koh-man-ara. Despite prior word of transporters being largely unchanged in recent decades (“Relics”), here we learn there have been advances enough just in the last eight years. And once again (“Imaginary Friend”) we learn that the Galaxy class was not the first to allow families on board: Troi could have joined Riker on the Potemkin two years before the 1701-D was launched. Past references include Riker’s trombone (“11001001”, “Future Imperfect”, “The Next Phase”, “Thine Own Self”, “Timescape”) and Parreses Squares (“11001001,” “Future Imperfect,” “Silicon Avatar”, “The First Duty”).
Scheduling problems kept Jonathan Frakes from pre-recording his own trombone tracks for the Ten-Forward jazz quartet scene, but co-producer Wendy Neuss said he would likely do so in the future. Frakes got to join castmate Brent Spiner in the hassle of photo doubling and other FX needed to create a twin, though relying with much-praised success on the subtleties of acting with little aid from makeup. The collapsed bridge was built and filmed live in Stage 16’s “Planet Hell” pit, with cavern depths added in the computer paintbox.
Following her grandmother Felisa Howard’s funeral on Caldos IV, Dr. Crusher finds diaries revealing that the centenarian had a young lover named Ronin ­ and then fights off a friend, Ned Quint, who wants the doctor to throw away a candle he says has brought the Howard women bad luck for over eight hundred years.
Soon Ronin appears to her as an apparent “ghost” who has romanced her family’s women for centuries. At the same time, malfunctions beset Caldos IV’s weather-control net and it gets a power transfer from the Enterprise.
Ned warns Beverly about the candle and Ronin, but after some resistance ­ and odd nighttime sensations of pleasure ­ she is lulled by the loving “ghost” into resigning from Starfleet and taking Felisa’s place there as a healer, joining him as his latest lover.
Ned, found trying to sabotage the weather net’s power beam, shouts “He’ll kill us all!” just before a green plasma bolt leaps out to kill him. The same kind of energy is traced to Felisa’s grave, leading Picard to follow Beverly, confront Ronin about his mysterious origin, and order Felisa’s body exhumed.
Ronin goes on a rampage, blasting Picard, Data, and Geordi in turn before reanimating Felisa’s body and shocking Beverly with the truth: he is really an anaphasic plasma being who has used her family to stay alive and corporeal, via the candle and even the weather net. She has no choice but to destroy the candle ­ and then his form as well.
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As one of the most atypical TNG episodes ever, this lushly mounted “romance novel in space” was named the favorite of the year by the slightly biased story writer Jeri Taylor, a self-professed “addict of a number of trashy genres” such as gothic romances and historical novels. Actress McFadden, who called it a highlight of her own season, won kudos for her all-out performance: “The lovemaking without a partner ­ this is not easy stuff to do,” Taylor said, “and she committed herself to it completely.”
Still, Braga noted that the show was not a favorite of what he called “hard-core fans” but defended it as simply stretching the Trek envelope; “I’ve come to notice that whenever you infuse a show with sexual themes, some of these fans seem to short-circuit. I mean, the weather array malfunction causing thunderstorms ­ it was fun!” Countering some reports, though, Taylor said the story and its roots in fan Jeanna Gallo’s year-old spec script was a nod to The Innocents, the film version of Henry James’ Turn of the Screw ­ Braga’s all-time favorite ­ and not the Scottish succubus Lasher of Ann Rice’s The Witching Hour: the title is Latin for “under cover” or “not out in light.” Gallo’s Scot-based world focused on Beverly and her living grandmother, with aliens who had possessed humans for centuries as an explanation of paranormal activity. Attracted to and yet dissatisfied with the premise, Taylor recalled creating the unassigned story in a stream-of-consciousness session and then praised Berman and Piller for allowing the off-format show to go ahead.
The designers’ showpiece featured a Wuthering Heights-like score by Jay Chattaway and an all-indoor set by Richard James, deceptively lit by director of photography Jonathan West and showcased by Frakes in his much-praised eighth turn as director. It came complete with a “raised” cemetery lawn to accommodate the buried casket and an organic tree assembled by greensmen working a solid weekend on Stage 16, using a real trunk anchored to the set and cutoff branches refastened and tied off from above; interiors were built within the cargo bay/shuttlebay set area. Look close and notice the art department’s gag tombstones for the dead such as “Vader,” “McFly,” and others culled from the science fiction genre.
Set decorator Jim Mees recalled having to come up with a room full of camellias a month out of their season. The original order of three hundred silk camellias ­ clipped from their unconvincing wire stems and attached to real yet barren ones ­ was deemed not nearly enough on the Friday night before Monday’s shooting, so the floral vaults of Paramount were opened up to fill the room with all manner of flowers, topped by the camellias for show. Propmaster Alan Sims had another surprise when “Felisa” turned out to be actress Dow, a college drama teacher he hadn’t seen since 1972.
The Howard name, an homage to line producer Merri Howard, had actually first been glimpsed on Beverly’s bio file (“Conundrum”); of course, given Terran paternal lineal naming, each “Howard woman” would have carried her husband’s name unless Beverly was the first in a long line of feminists who chose not to! We’ve already learned back in Season 1 that she survived a disaster with her grandmother/healer (“The Arsenal of Freedom”), while Braga revealed that he’d named Felisa after his own grandmother who’d died shortly before the story was written. In a scene cut for time, Beverly opens the show with the same eulogy Braga’s own mother used for his grandmother: a recipe, recalling her love of cooking, for gingerbread baked in the “arms of a welcoming pan” in a “happily” heated oven. Another cut line tells us Beverly did not leave Caldos II for good until she wed Jack. Also, Braga took “Jessel” and “Ned Quint” from Turn of the Screw and was surprised to learn later that his made-up name “Ronin” was actually Japanese in origin.
The guest cast includes Regehr, a soap opera staple, and Keenan, best known as Picket Fences’ first-season mayor who spontaneously combusted. We learn here that terraforming was new a century earlier when Caldos Colony was built, while weather control (“True Q”, “Force of Nature”, “Journey’s End”) was at least that old. Also recalled here are the still-unseen Dr. Selar (“The Schizoid Man”, “Remember Me”, “Tapestry”, “Genesis”, “All Good Things . . .”), Worf’s mok-bara class (“Clues”, “Man of the People”, “Birthright, Part II”, “Second Chances”, “Lower Decks”, “Genesis”), and the drama masks in Beverly’s room (“Suspicions”).
TNG’s first use of the Amiga-based Video Toaster, provided by contractors Joe Conti and Tim McHugh, was an effort to get more creative control in contrast to what visual FX supervisor David Stipes called the “act of God” luck of liquid nitrogen “smoke” filmed against black velvet. “The challenge really was to get the ghost,” he said. “I thought everyone was really courageous in tackling this story. But if we didn’t make that work, the whole story wouldn’t sell: how to do purposeful, borderline-erotic ephemerals to look like it’s caressing and hugging Beverly ­ without looking ridiculous or lewd?”
Dr. Crusher’s foray into “science diplomacy” is cut short when the Takaran scientist Jo’Bril, one of those responding to her call to witness new shield technology developed by the Ferengi scientist Dr. Reyga, is killed while testing it.
Dr. Reyga vows to prove himself when Dr. Crusher stops the tests of the “metaphasic shield,” designed to protect a vessel even within a sun’s corona, but soon he is found dead of an apparent suicide. Crusher suspects foul play, especially after a Klingon scientist admits she threatened Reyga when the Ferengi accused her of sabotage in the first test.
Crusher wants to do an autopsy to gather clues, but Takahan customs ­ and thus the prime directive as well ­ forbid it. She proceeds anyway, finds nothing, and is relieved of duty to await court-martial after Reyga’s family and government protest her act.
With Guinan’s reassuring advice to pursue her gut feelings, and with nothing left to lose, Crusher presses on. When Data guesses that a shield disruptor might leave tetryon traces, Nurse Ogawa risks her career to help Crusher find that tetryons were indeed present in Jo’Bril’s body.
But it is not proof, and Crusher desperately tries one more route: testing the shield herself to see if only sabotage ruined the first test. It works, but Jo’Bril ­ actually alive thanks to the deathlike self-stasis ability of his race ­ has stowed aboard to steal it for use as a weapon. During a fight Crusher gets the upper hand, Jo’Bril is killed ­ and Reyga’s work is vindicated.
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Like Marina Sirtis earlier, Gates McFadden finally gets the chance to step out in a nontraditional role with a story the staff dubbed “Beverly as Quincy,” after Jack Klugman’s great series about a crime-solving medical examiner (and one of Jeri Taylor’s past producer credits). But if “Frame of Mind” had the longest single break session in recent TNG years, this tale started had the most break sessions ­ five through both seasons, by Shankar’s tally, with three rewrites once in script form.
Menosky’s original story ­ his second resurrected this year, after “The Chase” ­ had the same murder mystery of a Ferengi scientist but set up the shocking discovery that warp travel is pollution that rips holes in the fabric of space. Like Piller, Shankar took an interest in that environmental theme and its impact on the future Trek universe and he agreed to take on the reborn project ­ only to endure delay once again when everyone almost immediately agreed to rip out the eco-angle (later used anyway in “Force of Nature”) to focus on the mystery. It began as a Worf vehicle done in forties black-and-white film noir style with flashbacks, dissolves, and voice-over narration ­ styles that TNG had never used before (see notes, “Manhunt”) that finally got grudging one-time-only approval from Rick Berman. When the many Worf stories this season led to using another character, Ron Moore suggested Crusher as the focus and the search for a truly suspenseful mystery began anew; Piller’s nixing of various drafts as too dull finally led to the twist of a victim being the perpetrator. “It was just a never-ending, never-waking nightmare,” Moore recalled. “Keep the murder mystery, lose the warp thing, move Worf out, keep the flashbacks, loose the film noir, insert Beverly ­ it was just arrgh!” On top of it all, Taylor said, the crew learned early on that this show’s slot would be the only other one for which Whoopi Goldberg would be available, leading to another series of rewrites.
Past Trek “tech” abounds: real baryon particles (“Starship Mine”) and fictional tetryons (“Schisms”), the stimulant inoprovaline (“Tapestry”), “Man of the People”, et al.), the cortical stimulator (“Tapestry”), and ­ from 1967’s “Journey to Babel” ­ the first TNG mention of the Vulcan Science Academy, where Sarek initially would have preferred young Spock devote his life rather than Starfleet. The ship’s morgue is new (with its automated covers), and we discover the first shuttlecraft named for neither a real nor a Trek-fictional scientist/explorer: the Justman, paying homage to the sixties Trek and first-year producer. Other trivia: the Enterprise has at least sixteen numbered sciences labs, tennis is still popular in the twenty-fourth century, Ferengi don’t allow autopsies before their elaborate death rituals and burial, and, as seen in an Okudagraph, the Takaran body has three hearts. Reflecting her interest, Beverly gets a set of theater masks on her walls, courtesy set decorator Jim Mees, and for only the second time we hear Nurse Ogawa’s first name, Alyssa (“Clues”).
Hurdling his biggest FX challenge of this story, supervisor David Stipes portrayed the Vaytan sun’s corona accurately with actual NASA footage.
