A runaway train appears suddenly in Data’s The Tempest program . . . the Enterprise suddenly goes into warp for no reason . . . and Picard is convinced he’s lost control of his ship, especially after sensors show it would have exploded had the warp jump not occurred.
Amazingly, Data and La Forge discover a network of self-erected nodes cross-connecting ship’s functions, much like a life-form’s neural web. On the holodeck, the crew finds a train program running with a conductor, engineer, and characters from various existing programs ­ a hayseed, flapper girls, a hit man, a knight ­ that they realize represent different ship’s functions.
But when the characters all stop Data from shutting down the power grid within the program, he realizes that the ship is fostering its own embryonic intelligence. A molecular-like form is discovered “growing” in Cargo Bay 5, nurtured by the ship’s arrival at a white dwarf star to “feed” it vertion particles via a tractor beam.
The whole process shuts down when the vertions are exhausted, and the crew must step in to help when ship begins a trip that will exhaust their life support. The colorful train “passengers” are finally convinced to try a nearby nebula as an artificial vertion source, but they disappear when the new life-form departs into space fully matured.
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An actual Orient Express parlor car graced this wildly imaginative romp through the unconscious by Joe Menosky and Branon Braga, the series’ lone joint effort by both its offbeat writers. It was “even weirder,” in Jeri Taylor’s words, before staff writer Naren Shankar pulled it back to a more produceable level in an uncredited polish. “Again, I thought Menosky mighta had a couple of mushrooms when he wrote the first script,” laughed director Cliff Bole, preparing his record twenty-fifth and final TNG outing. “We all read it and thought, ‘Jeeesus, you can’t shoot this in thirty-five days!’ I mean, marvelous crazy ideas, but it had to be downscaled.”
Looking to include one more holodeck story, Braga said the staff discarded a final Dixon Hill adventure in development as “too familiar” in favor of this idea for the “ultimate holodeck show” he’d stewed on but only put into written form at the last minute. With Braga and Ron Moore busy on the finale, Jeri Taylor leaned again on Menosky, still writing from Italy, who took Braga’s idea of the ship achieving sentience and added the concept of the new life-form’s birth ­ almost a small-scale version of the Ilia/Decker/V’Ger creation from the first Trek feature.
The cast, which includes script coordinator Lolita Fatjo’s husband, Arlee Daniel ­ previously seen as an alien terrorist (“Starship Mine”) ­ and the familiar face of character actor David Huddleston, also includes Patrick Stewart’s longtime stand-in Dennis Tracy as the “man in the gray-flannel suit.” The taxi driver is longtime TNG stunt man Nick Dimitri (“A Fistful of Datas”), here driving for the “Sunshine Radio System” ­ phone Circle 7-232 ­ in location shots on Paramount’s own New York Street, largely unaltered for this show.
Richard James’ ambitious Art Deco designs for a scratch-built car were about to be reined in to save money when a shop carpenter mentioned he’d worked on the train car used for Bram Stoker’s Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola. The car, rented and delivered to the studio’s Stage 6 on a flatbed trailer, saved enough to still allow extensive refurbishing of its Edwardian interior to the desired 1920’s look. “That train was marvelous,” Bole said. “If we’d built that there would have been another 120 grand that would have been subtracted from everything else.” Stock footage from the classic Murder on the Orient Express in Paramount’s vaults added an odd period mystique to the show, but Bole had to beg Rick Berman to get a close-up of the wheels braking and ignore the point-of-view logic that no one would be in the holodeck to see them. “The sparks coming and all that ­ I had to have it!” he said. “Sometimes for drama’s sake you gotta break the rules, so I got away with it once.”
Series visual FX coordinator Phil Barberio, this episode’s fill-in supervisor for Ron B. Moore, opted to take Rick Sternbach’s open-spaced design for the “helix” directly to computer creation to avoid a miniature’s matting and mounting problems. Amblin Imaging, the Steven Spielberg auxiliary that handles the FX for SeaQuest DSV, brought it to live on a Video Toaster. The MacPherson Nebula was taken from never-used elements Dan Curry shot years ago of lasers bouncing off plastics.
The show features the last Shakespeare theatrics of the series (“Hide and Q”, “The Defector”, “Devil’s Due”) ­ shot here on a darkened corner of the late season’s much-used village set (see “Journey’s End”) ­ and the only TNG mention of vertions, another artificial kind of matter in the vein of verterons and tetryons.
Answering a distress call from the border world Galorndon Core, an Enterprise away team finds a crashed Romulan craft and an injured survivor. La Forge loses contact with the rest of the away team and can’t be located due to the planet’s severe electrical storms.
Picard and Riker suspect the small craft was spying, since it was destroyed after crashing, but its mother ship’s Commander Tomalak smilingly insists that his man ­ one man ­ was merely swept off course.
Meanwhile, efforts to rescue La Forge center on a neutrino beacon that can transmit through a break in the storms. But La Forge soons discovers what the crew above can’t: there is a second Romulan, Bochra, who captures the chief engineer.
La Forge finally convinces Bochra that they must work together to survive, especially since their nervous systems are degenerating due to the planet’s magnetic fields.
Tension mounts topside as Worf, the only possible blood donor, refuses to provide the injured Romulan with a necessary blood transfusion, and Picard won’t order him to do so. Tomalak enters Federation space, against Picard’s wishes, to pick up his man.
The Romulan dies just as his ship arrives for a fight, but the two lost below are found just in time, allowing Picard to drop shields for beam-up ­ and show goodwill.
War is averted and Tomalak, still feigning innocence, is curtly escorted back to the Neutral Zone.
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David Carson left a declining industry in his native England and got this episode as his first directing assignment, having worked with Sirtis on one of the many Sherlock Holmes episodes he’d helmed. The second Geordi show in a row uses the chief engineer’s unique abilities, shortcomings, and sense of humor well. In an early draft he was joined on the planet’s surface by Troi, who had to incapacitate the Romulan.
Another story point ­ that of Worf letting a Romulan die by refusing to donate blood ­ met resistance from the writing staff and from Dorn himself when Piller first suggested it. But allowing it to stand reveals how the series was beginning to get an alien perspective on Worf. It also shows that these “perfect” twenty-fourth-century characters could come into conflict with one another after all. And, with an audience still close to the conflicts of Kirk’s earlier era, Riker’s gentle reminder to Worf that Klingons once hated humans as much as they now hate Romulans is a nice way to set this Trek generation apart from the last. Beverly’s shock at Worf’s stand is likewise a reflection of polite human society’s reaction; we also learn that she had never operated on a Romulan before.
Andreas Katsulas makes the first of three appearances on TNG as the quintessential Romulan, the snidely villainous Tomalak. He will return in “The Defector” and “Future Imperfect”. The planet Galorndon Core will figure prominently in Romulan plans again later in “Unification,” Part 2.
As part of the most realistic use to date of Stage 16, the palm beacon flashlights introduced here were too strong to be run on small batteries; as a result, a cable running down each actor’s sleeve to an off-camera power source can sometimes be seen.
After Bajoran extremists attack a Federation colony, Ensign Ro, a troubled young Starfleet officer, comes on board the Enterprise. The crew resents her presence: Ro was court-martialed after disobeying orders on an away team mission that led to eight deaths.
Starfleet Admiral Kennelly has pardoned Ro, who is also Bajoran, hoping she can help persuade the militant Bajoran leader Orta to call off the raids and agree to resettlement. The Bajorans were displaced from their home world by the Cardassians some forty years ago.
Already uneasy at Ro’s presence, Picard angrily confines the ensign to quarters after she gets his away team taken hostage while tracking Orta. But Picard soon learns the Bajorans were not responsible for the raid on the Federation colony. Guinan then befriends Ro and persuades the ensign to reveal Kennelly’s secret reason for sending her on the mission to Picard: in return for her freedom, Ro is secretly to offer Orta arms and ships, then allow his vessel to be destroyed by a Cardassian ship once he comes out of hiding. Kennelly will order the Enterprise not to interfere, in order to protect the peace treaty with the Cardassians.
Picard allows the plan to proceed, but with a twist: the Cardassians destroy an empty ship. At first furious, Kennelly is shocked to find the Cardassians staged the raid on the Federation themselves to enlist aid in destroying the Bajorans.
Afterward, Picard offers Ro a chance to remain in Starfleet ­ aboard his ship. She accepts.
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This episode’s roots were simple, according to Rick Berman: the show was specifically designed to introduce a sharp-edged character, an idea that had been floating around as far back as Wesley’s departure from the conn seat a year earlier. “The other characters in the cast are relatively homogenous; some might even say bland,” Berman explained. “So we wanted a character with the strength and dignity of a Starfleet officer but with a troubled past, an edge.” The introduction of a strong woman often embroiled in conflict and her acceptance by the fans and writers was “one of our greatest achievements of the season,” Michael Piller added. Michelle Forbes was asked back to play the new recurring character after making a strong impression as Timicin’s daughter Dara in “Half a Life”.
Actor Harley Venton’s character, a transporter officer, gets no on-screen name in either appearance, but he is named Collins in the script for this show and Hutchinson eight shows later, in “Hero Worship”.
Though it was not known at the time it was written, this episode would lay much of the groundwork used for the new Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series, set aboard an abandoned Cardassian space station in the Bajoran system. This episode establishes that Bajora was occupied forty years ago; that Ro served on the Wellington, one of the ships the Bynars upgraded in “11001001”; that she is not the only Bajoran in Starfleet, as we’ll see in “The First Duty”; and that her father was tortured to death before her eyes when she was only seven.
The Bajorans, Berman added, were not modeled on any one real-life ethnic group: “The Kurds, the Palestinians, the Jews in the 1940’s, the boat people from Haiti ­ unfortunately, the homeless and terrorism are problems [in every age].”
Scenes of the Bajoran encampment were shot in one day in Bronson Canyon near the area used in the preceding episode. Michael Westmore’s subtle Bajoran makeup makes use of a nose-bridge piece reminiscent of those worn by actors who play Ornarans and Brekkians in “Symbiosis”.
Neurospecialist Dr. Toby Russell comes aboard to help treat Worf after an accident leaves the Klingon paralyzed from the waist down, but she and Dr. Crusher clash over Russell’s proposal to use genetonic replication to replace his spine. Beverly considers the life-threatening procedure an unnecessary risk to her patient, who is in no danger of dying.
Worf feels that he is dead already; his shame at being helpless is so great he won’t let Alexander see him. He even asks Riker to help him commit ritual suicide to avoid being pitied. Riker is torn, weighing his values against Worf’s, until he learns that Klingon custom requires the son to assist in the ceremony anyway.
After Worf refuses to consider the partial mobility offered by neural implants, Beverly is shocked when Dr. Russell tempts him with her untried genetonic process. It has only a fair test success rate and has never been tried with humanoids ­ and failure would mean death.
Meanwhile, during a rescue attempt, another of Russell’s experimental techniques costs a patient’s life. Angered, Crusher relieves her of all medical duty. But when Worf can’t bring himself to ask Alexander to complete the suicide ceremony, both he and Beverly relent, and agree to try Dr. Russell’s procedure.
The Klingon dies in surgery, but mourning turns to joy when a redundant Klingon body system kicks in. Worf again asks his son for help ­ but this time with his therapy.
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This examination of medical ethics once again shows how conflict can be drawn out of the regulars using a guest star as catalyst. The story faced off not only the two doctors but Riker and Worf as well ­ seen here battling over Klingon ritual suicide. Picard’s willingness to respect Worf’s Klingon beliefs echoes his decision in “The Enemy” not to force Worf to donate blood to a Romulan, but here the captain almost seems to be taking the easy way out, even given Trek’s multicultural philosophy, in light of Riker’s aggressive condemnation of suicide.
Seen again are the red surgical outfits used during Picard’s heart surgery in “Samaritan Snare”. For much of the surgery sequence, Michael Dorn’s photo double, Al Foster, stood in as the Klingon exo-backbone was glimpsed for the first time. We also learn about the redundancies of Klingon anatomy, discovering that Worf has twenty-three ribs, two livers, an eight-chambered heart, a double-lined neural pia matter, and of course a backup synaptic system.
Continuity with earlier Starfleet medical references was maintained with the use here of “motor assist bands” and the drugs inoprovaline in “Transfigurations” and cordrazine in “Shades of Gray”. Other echoes of the past include Russell’s ferrying ship, the Potemkin, mentioned in “Peak Performance” as one of Riker’s prior assignments and, in “Legacy”, as the last ship to visit Turkana IV. A gravitic mine, the Cardassian War leftover that does in the USS Denver, was referred to earlier in the Kobiyashi Maru scene in Star Trek II.
La Forge is seen briefly in the teaser sporting a beard ­ a test that the producers allowed LeVar Burton to try, once.
~1:[4,#b],5:[2,#i]@1“Eye of the Beholder”@2Next Generation episode # 170
A suicide by promising young Lt. Kwan in the plasma stream of the isolated nacelle’s warp coils is baffling to all those who knew him, but the first clue comes when Troi gets an overwhelming sense of panic and fear while visiting the site.
Guessing somehow she’s detected an empathic echo, the counselor checks again with Worf as an escort. This time she suddenly sees the room in its unfinished state as it was back at Utopia Planetia eight years earlier, along with images of a terrified woman, her lover and a mysteriously menacing man ­ and Worf mysteriously disappeared.
Suspecting the empathic echo dates back to the Enterprise’s construction phase, a records check finds that Kwan and the mystery man, Walter Pierce, both were still aboard after having worked at the shipyard. Meanwhile, Troi and Worf find themselves drawing closer and actually consumate their newfound love, but she just as suddenly succumbs to pangs of jealousy at the sight of Worf working with Kwan’s girlfriend, Lt. Calloway.
Pierce proves evasive but fans Troi’s jealously, tipping her off to catch Worf with Calloway in her cabin. Enraged, Troi shoots Worf and rushes to kill herself in the plasma stream ­ only to realize Worf, alive, is trying to stop her. The entire episode has been played out in her mind, a reaction to the echo left behind by the partly-empathic Pierce in his fatal love triangle at Utopia Planetia. But unlike Kwan, a partial empath, Troi had help in averting disaster.
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Jeri Taylor recalled that this latest unreal chapter of the ongoing Worf-Troi “romance” was a brief year-old Brannon Braga “haunted room” idea, rushed directly from a memo to the story break as the late-season panic of dwindling premises set in again. Before he handed it off to Echevarria for the teleplay, Braga had already pegged the story to feature a rare suicide ­ albeit externally motivated ­ and a dramatic look inside the oft-discussed but never-seen nacelle tube, complete with warp coils and plasma stream.
Though happy with the mystery, the writers all worried the hallucination’s beginning point might be a bit vague ­ including the fact that Worf’s bumbling request to Riker for Deanna’s hand came in reality. “That was confusing, even for the actors,” Echevarria recalled. “They thought that was part of the hallucination; that’s why Jonathan played it so broadly. They thought they would have to reshoot it.” The highbay door is already up for her second visit to the nacelle room; another clue, he said, is knowing that an external space shot such as the one following her first visit would be a Trek point-of-view violation never used during a dream or hallucination. Even so, he noted, a POV flaw occurs later when the camera cuts down to caller Beverly during Worf and Troi’s “morning after.”
The centerpiece is the nacelle set ­ a previously unconceived shipboard area that continuity tenders Rick Sternbach and Mike Okuda had to locate on their plans before consulting with Richard James for his designs; for the record, the room is at the nacelles’ rear (in this case, the starboard) on Deck 25, accessible only via Jefferies Tube. Braga initially visualized a catwalk with plasma access the length of the nacelle, but Sternbach felt it took away from the “hot” feel of the engine and pushed instead for the isolation door approach ­ though he noted the flaw in not only a “one-way” forcefield but one more powerful by definition than the plasma itself!
Designed to give the leapers somewhere to fall from, James’ cramped, two-level set created tension in more ways than one: director Bole, now on his 24th TNG outing, recalled the “endless” shooting day in the tiny room as the longest of his television career: The room cried out for a vista of the nacelle interior beyond, so with both time and budget in mind James huddled with the visual FX team to consider the varying angles of the view beyond. The two-step result: a distant Dan Curry background matte painting representing the inside rear of the forward Bussard ramscoop (“Samaritan Snare”, “Night Terrors”, “Cost of Living”, “Liaisons”), and a 30-inch-long model of seven warp coils optically doubled to 14, built by Anthony Frederickson of the DS9 art staff. With no money to spare, his “quick and dirty” model was built around vacuum-formed styrene coils from a wooden prototype and included foam coffee cups for dividers, blue-gelled plastic with black tape to set off the glowing nacelle “grills,” and optical touch-ups of added “runway lights” lengthwise and a ceiling piece.
The plasma stream itself was more Video Toaster animation (“Sub Rosa”) with some elements taken from a WaterPik stream, noted visual FX supervisor David Stipes. Stunt coordinator Dennis “Danger” Madalone himself provided Kwan’s suicide leap, but the shallow arc from his standing start was digitally stretched in post-production farther over into the bottom injector, which was reinserted after taking out the floor landing pads. The skeleton glimpsed behind the wall panel was none other than a “Visible Man” model FX coordinator Joe Bauer glued to a piece of glass, while the skeletal fragments in Sickbay are human remains obtained from India, complete with a hard skull that prop master Alan Sims had to bash when Bole wanted smaller pieces.
For true trivia buffs, a flurry of faces and names on briefly glimpsed bio file Okudagrams includes that of longtime Marina Sirtis stand-in Nora Leonhardt, who got a speaking credit as Ensign Marla Finn, the murdered woman; her lover, unidentified in the script, was labeled “Man” for the on-screen credits, dubbed “Indie” on production call sheets ­ for “N.D.” or non-descript, the term used for unnamed extras ­ and given the name “Lt. William Hodges” on his file. Guy Vardaman, whose longtime extra finally gained the name “Wallace” last season (“Descent”), is another, here with the first name “Darien”. Dan Kwan was an old family friend of Braga’s, while the mentioned “Lt. Amanda” Ziff and “Ens. Bruno” Salvatore, with surnames given only via bio screens, were named for Echevarria’s friends Bitsy Ziff, a member of the all-girl band “Betty,” and a bandmate’s boyfriend Tony Salvatore.
Elsewhere, the story has the first permission granted to break the Warp 5 speed limit (“Force of Nature”) and recalls Worf’s fire vision (“Birthright, Part I”, “Rightful Heir”), psilosynine (“Dark Page”), tea from the Yridians (“Birthright, Part I”, “Suspicions”, “Gambit, Part I”, “Preemptive Strike”), and the Utopia Planitia yards (“Booby Trap”, “Parallels”, et. al.). We also learn that Data’s post-activation months were tough, Napeans are another partially empathic race, Lwaxana Troi’s father looked down upon verbal communication, and Troi’s security override at the time is “Troi delta 2-9.”
Finally, although Kwan’s suicide was not self-motivated, one wonders whether the late “Great Bird” Roddenberry would have sanctioned outright murder among his “flawless” Starfleet personnel, such as Pierce. Ironically, that old GR dictum ­ usually applied to only humans, amounting to a backlash Echevarria labeled as a form of meta-racism ­ did survive in the guise of the alien junior lieutenant Nara, Kwan’s superior. A human until she was described as perhaps jealous of Kwan’s ambition, Echevarria noted, the character species was changed after Michael Piller memoed: “Make her an alien ­ that’s not a Roddenberry thing to do.” But humanity was uppermost when cast and crew took one morning to film a two-scene sketch written by Merri Howard assistant Dave Rossi for Comic Relief, the annual HBO benefit for the homeless co-hosted by recurring castmate Whoopi “Guinan” Goldberg ­ an irony that formed just one of the scene’s many subtle funnies.
