Ten-Forward Crew: Diane Moser, Hayne Bayle, Maria Leone, and James G. Becker
Lal as Robot: Leonard John Crowfoot
Data sparks another legal row over the status of androids when he innocently sets out to further his creator’s work. He builds a “child” whom he names Lal ­ Hindi for “beloved.”
Troi and the others are delighted when Lal chooses a human female form; her personality soon blooms, despite growing pains. But Picard is not so pleased that she was developed in secret, and has a hard time calling her Data’s “child” even though the elder android duplicated his own neural nets for Lal’s.
Still, the captain becomes a firm ally of the androids when Admiral Haftel of Starfleet Research insists that Lal should develop in a lab rather than aboard a ship. Despite the protests of Picard, Data, and Lal herself, Haftel perseveres ­ especially after he finds the new android in Ten-Forward, where Guinan and Data thought she could best study humans.
But then Lal, who shows she can go beyond Data’s programming by using contractions, grows too quickly when the stress of the fight over her future leads her to develop emotions ­ a new trait she finds she physically can’t handle.
Haftel and Data unite to repair the damage to her system, but it is too great. Data, the supposedly unemotional android, bids his dying child good-bye and then tells his grieving shipmates that Lal will always live on in their memories.
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Hallie Todd, who played Joe’s daughter on the Showtime series Brothers, is the real-life daughter of Ann Morgan Gilbert who played next-door neighbor Millie Helper on the old Dick Van Dyke Show. She turned in a charming and poignant performance as Lal, the spark that aided Frakes’s long-sought turn in the director’s chair and made viewers forget that android rights had been addressed only a year earlier in “The Measure of a Man”.
After producer Rick Berman told him he’d “have to go to school” before directing a show, Frakes spent over three hundred hours observing editors, watching other directors, going to the dubbing stage, attending seminars, and reading. “I think the producers were hoping I’d lose interest, but I didn’t,” he once said, and judging by his subsequent directing assignments (“Reunion”, “The Drumhead”, “Ethics”) their reaction to his initial turn in the director’s chair must have been positive. This script was the first TNG sale for Echevarria, who joined the writing staff to season five.
Daytime viewers may recognize Nicolas Coster from his current role on Santa Barbara. Leonard John Crowfoot, in an uncredited role as the robot Lal, endured much less anonymity and special makeup during an earlier guest turn on TNG (“Angel One”). Once again the Daystrom Institute (“The Measure of a Man”) pops up; Haftel is mentioned as working at a Daystrom annex on Galor IV.
Rob Legato used a rare motion-control camera onstage for the sequence in which the robot Lal is picking holographic self-facade options. This scene includes the first appearance of an Andorian on the series.
The Enterprise visits Starbase 74 for an upgrade to the ship’s computer facilities ­ a task that will be performed by the Bynars. They are a race grown so dependent upon computers that they work in pairs and communicate directly in binary language.
While the crew puts in for shore leave, Riker tries out a new holodeck program for a New Orleans jazz bar where he can play trombone. There he meets Minuet, a sultry brunette and the most realistic character a holodeck ever created.
Soon Picard joins them, and he is amazed at the difference the Bynars’ upgrade has made ­ Minuet is almost too good. The reason why is soon discovered: the Bynars were using Minuet as a decoy, while faking a magnetic shield breakdown to empty the ship. The aliens’ ruse works and they hijack the Enterprise to take them home.
To avoid its capture Picard and Riker program the ship to self-destruct. But when they emerge on the bridge, they find the Bynars not defiant, but dying.
The aliens feared an electromagnetic pulse from a nearby nova would ruin their world’s master computer, so they wanted to “borrow” the Enterprise’s ­ the only mobile memory core large enough. But the pulse has already hit.
Now that they understand the problem, the officers use the ship’s computer to help rejuvenate the Bynars. But Riker discovers his Minuet is gone and can’t be re-created.
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Another sign that both script quality and overall continuity were on the rise was this tale by Maurice Hurley and Robert Lewin in which we finally get some insight into Riker’s character. The story even allows Jonathan Frakes to demonstrate his real-life trombone playing. His rendition of “The Nearness of You” would be repeated later (“Conundrum”), and Minuet would appear again in “Future Imperfect”. Number One’s relationship with Minuet and his feelings about it showed that Frakes could do things with Riker if given the chance, and the Bynars and their troubled homeworld computer proved to be one plot frame that worked.
The four actors used for the Bynars were all women dancers whose voice track was mechanically lowered in pitch; initially, covert dialogue among them was designed to be subtitled. Gene Dynarski should be familiar to longtime Trek fans as Ben Childress in “Mudd’s Women” and Krodak in “The Mark of Gideon” from the 1960’s series. His character, who says he headed the team that put the Enterprise together, is given the first name of Orfil in the script.
This episode features several subtle optical effects. The Enterprise seen outside a Starbase 74 window is reflected in the wall controls, and Probert’s painting of the docked Enterprise includes matted-in figures walking through the gangway tunnel. The shots of the planet Tarsas III, its moon, and the orbiting starbase are stock shots reused from Star Trek III. The autodestruct sequence is much more informally worded than the three-person code used in the Kirk-era’s “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” and in Star Trek III, and for the first time an emergency evacuation of the starship is shown. Also, a scene with a nonspeaking character named Dr. Terrence Epstein, a twenty-six-year-old research hero of Beverly’s, was cut to save time, and he became only a mention.
The J’naii, an androgynous race, ask the Enterprise for help in locating a missing shuttlecraft. An abnormality called “null space” proves to be the cause of its disappearance. Riker works to recover it with a J’naii shuttle pilot named Soren. The two become fast friends, even to the point of comparing their cultures’ mating habits. Soren tells Riker that sexual preference is banned on J’naii and that all nonconformists are treated to a brainwashing “cure.” Soren insists on coming along on the rescue mission with Riker, where “she” reveals the female tendencies she has always been too scared to admit.
Soren is injured on the flight, delaying their search, but now grows bolder and admits her feelings for Riker. He finds himself falling too, but they present a professional front while rescuing the shuttle and its near-dead survivors.
But after the two share a kiss at that night’s celebration party, the J’naii Krite detects what’s going on and takes Soren into custody with no warning. Enraged, Riker crashes Soren’s “trial” and tries to defend her, but she admits her feelings in an impassioned plea for acceptance that falls on deaf ears.
Despite Picard’s warnings that a rash act could ruin him, Riker tries to free her with Worf’s help, but it is too late: the “therapy” has already taken hold, and Soren renounces her feelings for him.
A bitter Riker returns to the ship and assures Picard his business on J’naii is finished.
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For over twenty-five years Trek’s two television series had pioneered the intelligent and fair-minded depiction of various sexes, races, and ethnic groups, including aliens. One notable and controversial exception, though, was homosexuals. With the relative freedom of expression granted TNG, various letter-writing campaigns over the years grew more and more insistent that one or more gay crew members be seen.
Jeri Taylor jumped at the chance to take on this teleplay, the first of the late-season run that emerged from the writers’ Mexican weekend, and she brought to the script a real empathy for the feelings of the powerless and disenfranchised.
After the show aired, Taylor received mail from viewers who ranged all the way from fundamentalists on the religious right who thought the episode “ ‘should have been balanced with the other side,’ whatever that means,” to gays who thought the ending might be misinterpreted as “sanctioning” Soren’s brainwashing therapy.
“I did get lots of thank-yous from both gay and straight people who appreciated the story as a science fiction treatment of the intolerance of choice and need as a tragedy,” she said. “It really woke up the audience,” Michael Piller agreed. “We didn’t want to just blow off the issue by showing a same-sex couple holding hands in the corner.” Added Rick Berman: “We thought we had made a very positive statement about sexual prejudice in a distinctively Star Trek way, but we still got letters from those who thought it was just our way of ‘washing our hands’ of the homosexual situation.” TNG’s executive producer added that he considered the letter-writing fan on any issue very rare ­ about one-tenth of a percent of TNG’s total audience. And the massive write-in campaigns “where you receive three hundred letters with the same sentences” didn’t carry as much weight as the simple individual letters.
Aside from the question of sexual preference, this story shows a maturity of another kind in dealing with Riker. He was the first regular to be out of control over an emotional attachment, other than Worf, whose actions were always explained away by his Klingon nature.
A minor story throwaway line but a major point for trivia fans is the revelation that the UFP was founded in 2161. Michael Okuda, who calculated the in-house chronology of Trek events taken from series facts throughout the years, assumed the Federation was founded after the Romulan War, a century before Kirk’s time, based on the statement in 1966’s “Balance of Terror” that “Earth,” not the Federation, fought the alien empire.
We also received a better view of the starship’s Magellan shuttlecraft, first seen in “Darmok”. The J’naii shuttle Taris Murn, briefly seen, is the same craft used as the Nenebek in “Final Mission” and as Rasmussen’s time pod in “A Matter of Time”.
Story by Les Menchen, Lance Dickson, and David Landsberg
GUEST CAST
Captain Thaduin Okona: William O. Campbell
Debin: Douglas Rowe
Kushell: Albert Stratton
Yanar: Rosalind Ingledew
Benzan: Kieran Mulroney
Lieutenant B. G. Robinson: Teri Hatcher
The Comic: Joe Piscopo
Guinan: Whoopi Goldberg
Near the twin Madena planets, the Enterprise picks up young trader Thaduin Okona while helping him repair his small craft. The roguish charmer quickly makes friends, especially among the female crew members.
Intrigued by Okona’s wisecracks, Data lets Guinan talk him into a stint on the holodeck as a comic. He conjures up a twentieth-century comedy club and a stand-up of the day to coach him.
Meanwhile Picard faces a confrontation that’s more of a headache than a crisis: the two hotheaded leaders of Madena’s twin worlds are demanding Okona’s hide. Straleb’s ruler accuses him of stealing their sacred Jewel of Thesia, while Atlec’s raves that Okona made his daughter pregnant.
Picard faces the exasperating prospect of the two tiny vessels actually opening fire on his ship or each other, until an inquisitive Wes Crusher persuades the trader to “fess up.”
Okona baits the Straleb leader’s son into admitting everything: the two fearful children used Okona as go-between for their romance and used the jewel as a nuptial vow.
With the two planets now bound for union, a Data despondent over his bad luck with humor unintentionally spouts a Gracie Allen nugget ­ and cracks up the bridge.
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Destined to soar three years later in Disney’s Rocketeer, William O. Campbell ­ no relation to the same-named actor behind the original Trek’s Squire Trelane and Klingon Captain Koloth ­ had almost been cast as Riker when the regulars were being assembled. Rick Berman, echoing Justman’s recollection, said that the studio executives, who had the final say, considered their runner-up “too soft.” Funny, if a bit predictable, and helped by the misplaced arrogance of the two planet’s leaders, this teleplay by producer Burton Armus features a main plot that actually has to compete for attention with the subplot of Data’s holodeck comedy adventures.
Joe Piscopo, the Saturday Night Live veteran, does a good turn as a buck-toothed Jerry Lewis character. Lewis himself was to have played the part, but a schedule conflict with his guest spot on the show Wiseguy got in the way.
In-jokes include the Charnock Comedy Cabaret sign, which honors crew paint foreman Ed Charnock, Jr., and a holodeck menu of “humorists” taken from the office phone directory for the TNG staff, producers, and aides; the file chosen is actually that of visual-effects associate Ronald B. Moore. And when Data asks for the funniest performer available, those listed besides “Stano Riga” ­ seen only briefly ­ include the Great Bird himself as well as Maurice Hurley and Farouk El-Baz, a planetary geologist at Boston University who, during his NASA days, worked with Berman on a documentary and who later had a shuttlepod namesake in “Time Squared”).
Of the three vessels seen, Okona’s Erstwhile is a re-dress of the Talarian Batris (“Heart of Glory”); Debin’s Atlec ship is the merchant ship from Star Trek III, with more length; and Kushell’s Straleb ship was new, a design Rick Sternbach said was simply modeled after “a big Easter egg.”
Another of Greg Jein’s contributions turns up here in the background: a tridimensional chess set that’s a tip of the hat to its original-Trek cousin. This set, however, features among its pieces the Jupiter II spacecraft from Lost in Space for bishops. The kings are modeled after the robot from that same old sci-fi series.
