An explosion in the Enterprise’s dilithium chamber begins a trail of intrigue that leads Worf to suspect a Klingon exchange officer. Noted investigator Admiral Norah Satie comes out of retirement to help conduct a probe of the incident.
The Klingon, J’Ddan, admits to smuggling plans to the Romulans but denies any role in the explosion. Satie’s Betazoid aide, Sabin, senses he’s telling the truth; the Admiral begins to hunt for co-conspirators.
During the investigation Sabin senses that med tech Simon Tarses is lying about some part of his testimony. Even after the explosion is found to have been an accident, Satie bullies Tarses into admitting a forebear was Romulan, not Vulcan as he had once sworn.
Picard, uncomfortable with Satie’s tactics, meets with Tarses to confirm the man’s innocence, and then the captain openly challenges Satie. She vows to bring him down before visiting Starfleet admiral Henry.
Picard’s reluctance to participate any further in Satie’s hearings leads her to question him as a possible traitor. When Picard uses her famous father’s words to rebut her charges, she begins a groundless tirade, accusing him of violating the Prime Directive. Her rage shocks everyone in the room, disgusts Admiral Henry, and breaks up the witch-hunt at last.
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What was to have been a money-saving “clip show” (like the second-season finale “Shades of Gray”) turned into one of the season’s most chilling episodes. Determined to mount a meaningful story on a slim budget with no visual effects, Berman and Piller turned to this tale, which rings with echoes of the McCarthy hearings and the Salem witch-hunts.
Jeri Taylor’s script, the one she is most proud of, was inspired by a Ronald D. Moore idea called “It Can’t Happen Here,” and echoes the groundless investigation of Picard from season one “Coming of Age” and weaves in references to his abduction by the Borg in “The Best of Both Worlds”, the alien parasitic invaders “Conspiracy”, the T’Pel-Selok spy scandal in “Data’s Day”, and the developing Klingon-Romulan intrigue. And it still came in $250,000 under budget!
In his second directorial outing, Jonathan Frakes recalls he had a good time and wasn’t too intimidated by the presence of Oscar nominee Jean Simmons, with whom he had worked on North and South. The acclaimed actress, a longtime unabashed Trekker, also played the matriarch of the Collins family in the short-lived revival of Dark Shadows.
After twenty-five years of Trek, we finally learn that the Federation’s governing document is called a Constitution, and its various Bill of Rights is composed of Guarantees, the seventh roughly corresponding to the U.S. Fifth Amendment’s ban on self-incrimination. Also, Tarses’s birthplace on the Mars Colony was noted in the original Trek as the home of the Fundamental Declaration of the Martian Colonies, mentioned in 1967’s “Courtmartial” as a landmark in interstellar law.
On the tech side, we learn here that an individual communicator provides a traceable ID on computer and other system use and that the dilithium “cradle” (“Skin of Evil”) is called the “articulation frame” ­ a defective one was installed during the post-Borg refit in “The Best of Both Worlds,” Part 2.
And for pure trivia fans: Picard says he took command of the Enterprise on Stardate 41124; that was after the ship was commissioned on SD 40759.5, inscribed on the bridge plaque, and before the first aired captain’s log entry of SD 41153.7, in “Encounter at Farpoint”.
