One of the best episodes of the series; one of my personal favorites. It took some flack for being too aggressive as far as military operations go, but I think it was wonderfully done and these kinds of episodes helped to support DS9 which made it such a good series.
It begins with Troi and Riker doing crew evaluations again in Ten Forward. They'd fit in lines about doing crew evaluations in several episodes up til now and usually something happens which displaces the event. In a way, it's no different this time but at least they're actually doing the job. They've obviously been at it a while and they're tired, so they jokingly decide to promote everyone including themselves. Across the room a group of ensigns sit at a table together watching them. One, Lavelle, is ambitious and doesn't see the humor in being evaluated on job performance. He also wants a promotion and is trying to will it to happen while his fellows laugh about it. His Vulcan roommate Taurik doesn't understand the humor of his desire to have a private room with a promotion and the girls, Sito Jaxa and Nurse Ogawa just want to have a relaxing evening. There was an excellent balance of characters in this episode. Ogawa is familiar already as is Sito from The First Duty, though one may wonder how she came to be there at first. The Vulcan has the typical arrogant attitude of that race, but he's also just a low ranking officer who's just starting out like all the others and every bit their equal while the Lavelle character is the type of person that we all know in our lives. It's because of this that the audience can feel immediately comfortable with so many new faces at once. There's also a civilian waiter roaming around serving both tables. He's likable too. The only problem I ever had with him was they way they dressed the wait staff of Ten Forward. Holy cow, what awful clothes! They wanted an observational perspective from someone who is unconcerned with things such as rank. I assume Whoopie Goldberg was busy, or that would've fallen to Guinan. But the waiter, Ben, is a good character too. He overhears Riker and Troi discussing who to promote to the Ops position - either Lavelle or Sito. So when the ensigns press him for information, he tells those two that their up for the same job. On the bridge the next day Riker is presiding over drills with Sito at tactical and Lavelle at the helm. She doesn't do as well as she could and Riker divulges a few tricks to help her. He gives a heading to Lavelle and stymies his overenthusiastic "aye, aye" (one aye is sufficient) but Picard comes in quickly and changes the heading to coordinates that are very close to the Cardassian border. He also calls for the senior officers to meet and discuss the new orders. But this time the camera doesn't stay with the main cast. It stays with Sito, who Riker orders to take over at ops, and Lavelle. Like anyone who's not in the know, they gossip curiously about what could possibly going on near the Cardassian border. And even though they're competing for the same post, there's no animosity between them. They encourage each other as Lavelle voices suspicions that he won't get the job because Riker doesn't like him personally.
This script is heavy on dialogue and crew interaction and that's always a challenge since there usually needs to be a focal point of action to keep the story moving. Mostly when they spend time on personal stories, it ends up being too much time and it either short changes the action, or it's too random and irrelevant to the franchise in general... In Theory, Qpid, Lessons, and Sub Rosa are good examples. But other times it's done right like Family, Data's Day, and this one. A lot of time is devoted to simply painting a broad picture of how the senior officers and junior officers view each other and react to each other with each group learning and growing from their interaction with each other. The story moves on to show a junior officer paired with a senior officer. Taurik is Geordi's responsibility. Taurik is an assertive ensign who is eager to try out experimental techniques to improve warp field integrity. As a Vulcan he has no ego,but he comes off as a little too ambitious to Geordi who has to gently curb his enthusiasm to maintain a sense of order and doing things properly. We've already seen a lot of nurse Alyssa Ogawa at this point so when she and Beverly are talking, her promotion is pretty much a given and they lapse into discussing Ogawa's boyfriend issues. This is the weak point of the episode for me, but not because of the content. They wanted to build another ground-up family like they did with the O'Brien's (except we never see Alyssa's man) and it begins with this conversation where she's wondering if he's serious about their relationship while Beverly is providing motherly counseling. The reason it makes me uncomfortable is because I've always disapproved of that much familiarity between supervisor and employee. From my experience it's not usually a good thing in real life, and I have to remind myself every time I see this episode that this isn't real life. Worf is Sito's mentor and she sits at the bar with him in Ten Forward reciting all of the different things she had to do at the Ops post that day. It's an insightful and creative list of job responsibilities that the audience doesn't usually think about, by the way. She doesn't understand why she's even being considered for the post and Worf tells her that he recommended her which is a great confidence booster for her that was necessary since the audience can see that she's not as confident as the other three. At a table nearby Lavelle is a little jealous of the way her conversation with her superior seems to come so easily. He marvels that Ben the bartender is on a first name basis with Riker and Taurik, after brooding over Geordi's lack of enthusiasm for his work, suggests that Lavelle try to have a friendly conversation with the commander about things they may have in common. The situation becomes completely awkward, of course, as he brings his full drink with him and orders what Riker is drinking and then tries to talk about Canadian family members without realizing that Riker is actually Alaskan. Will is cool towards him the whole time but when he finally leaves, he laughs to himself at the very obvious ambitious nature of the young ensign.
Then a dark cloud appears over the story as we cut back to the bridge for an intense moment as they've reached the Cardassian border. They search for and find an escape pod within the border and must scramble to find a way to beam out the person inside without crossing into Cardassian territory and before life support in the pod runs out. Taurik, being overly helpful to Geordi, takes it upon himself to identify what kind of humanoid the life form within is. Geordi stops him harshly which surprises him. In sickbay, Crusher orders Ogawa to leave after Picard makes special arrangements with her to receive the escape pod passenger. She runs into Sito just outside and and asks her if she knows what's going on. Sito only knows she was posted outside sickbay to keep everyone except the senior officers from entering. Picard arrives and gives Sito a peculiar look before entering sickbay. On the bridge Riker dismisses Lavelle's shift. He asks to stay on for more practice but Riker declines citing that it's not a good time. Lavelle is disappointed again. We then see Picard exit sick bay beckoning Sito to follow him. He takes her to his ready room and brings up the events that occurred in First Duty. He's uncharacteristically aggressive and unpleasant, calling her character into question and nearly harassing her about the part she played in the cover up and all apparently as a referendum on her recommendation to the Ops position. She tries to defend her character by pointing out that she persevered in spite of having become a pariah at the academy. But she's passive and her counter arguments aren't satisfactory to Picard so he dismisses her abruptly. It makes no sense to her or the audience. And the odd behavior of the senior staff continues as Geordi is ordering Taurik to fire on an Enterprise shuttle craft. He tells him that it's for mandatory stress testing, but Taurik knows better and mentions that the stress tests can be done without damaging the shuttle anyway. He also figures out that the fire pattern Geordi is ordering is intentionally making the shuttle look as though it's been damaged from escaping an attack. Geordi won't confirm it though and continues with the exercise. Meanwhile in sickbay Crusher recalls Ogawa and tells her that they have to prepare for emergency surgery and that she's not allowed to speak of what's going on to anyone. She looks over to see that their patient is a Cardassian.
We then spend time getting everyone's reaction to the situation in parallel poker games; one of the juniors and one of the seniors. In the lower decks, Sito is completely shaken over her interview with Picard. The others build her back up by defending her position, Lavelle most vehemently showing that even though he's obsessed with his career he's also a loyal friend. He's aware that he's only sour about Riker's attitude because he wants an excuse to fall on if he doesn't get the promotion. In the upper decks Beverly and Troi gossip about Alyssa's relationship problems while Riker expresses disgusted with the way Lavelle keeps trying to ingratiate himself with him to advance his career. He's immediately beaten back by Troi who reminds him that he was the same way in his youth and notes that he took up poker because it was the senior officers' game at the time. We see Riker winning his bluff while Lavelle gets called out by Ben and they decide to end the game after Geordi comes to ask Taruik if he'd like to work on the nacelle testing that he was eager to do at the beginning of the show. It demonstrates that Geordi was taking a lesson from their talk about ambitious ensigns as well. The guy that plays Taurik is a pretty good actor and nails being a Vulcan that appears happy without showing emotion. Ben retires to the senior officer's poker game to play with them. The next day, Worf is seen dismissing one of his martial arts classes. Sito is attending and he holds her back on the pretense of taking a test to see if she's ready for a more advanced class. He calls it the gik'tal. He blind folds her and tells her to defend herself. He repeatedly takes her down and is rougher with her each time until she finally stops the test and declares it to be unfair which seems to be the response Worf was after. She also knows that gik'tal means "to the death" and asks if such a test really exists. He tells her that there isn't, but that perhaps she won't have to suffer so much punishment before she protests being judged unfairly. It's obvious that he's talking about her conversation with Picard and in a bad cut the scene immediately switches to her talking to Picard again asserting her right to be judged fairly for who she is now not for the things that happened at the academy. I say "bad cut" because I think Picard should've initiated the conversation again and the scene splicing makes it look like she just barged in wanting an audience with the captain. The fact is, he probably did initiate the conversation again, but due to time constraints they had to compress these two scenes. Picard relents to her more confident attitude and tells her that he was assessing her ability to deal with a mission that would be more unnerving that being chewed out by her commanding officer. He also assures her that he asked for her personally on the Enterprise so that she'd have a chance to redeem herself of the incident at the academy.
They digress for a moment to wrap up Ogawa's filler story as Beverly calls her into her office to give her more relationship advice, but she's cut short when Alyssa tells her that her boyfriend proposed to her and that it's all going to be okay. Then they get back to business as Sito has been invited to a senior staff meeting. She meets the Cardassian they've rescued and, indeed, she's very unnerved by his presence. We all learn now that he's a Federation spy who had risked his life to bring them intelligence on Cardassian strategic intentions. Their plan to get him safely back to Cardassia is to send him in one of their shuttle crafts which appears to have been stolen and damaged while fleeing an attack. The process would go smoother if he had a Bajoran prisoner with him which is why they've considered sending her along. If the plan works, he would send her back across the border in another escape pod where they'll be waiting for her. Picard makes sure she knows that he's not ordering her to go through with this. This is the part that detractors of the episode don't like - that Picard would even be involved in military espionage. But, Sito volunteers and assures them that as a Bajoran she knows better than anyone how Cardassians treat their prisoners. Even the Cardassian, Joret, isn't entirely comfortable with her going along because she's so young. They send her to sick bay to be made up as though she'd been abused by her captor. She says goodby to Worf, optimistically telling him that she'll see him soon. On the bridge they watch the shuttle leave. She and Joret have time for a brief conversation about how she should act if there are questions and the touching fact that a Cardassian and a Bajoran are working together for peace, which drives to the heart of DS9 at this time. If it hadn't been for the DS9 connection, this may have been a pointless episode, but because of the connection it's a very powerful and moving story. As they approach the border he cuffs her to complete the charade and you can see how scared she really is. In Ten Forward, her friends speculate about where she is and if she's in the shuttle craft. Lavelle can see that Alyssa knows something but she refuses to tell them which is a testament to her character as well. Later, the captain's log indicates that they've been waiting at the rendezvous point for Sito's escape pod for 30 hours with no sign of it anywhere and they continue to scan.
Eventually they intercept a Cardassian communication that tells of a Bajoran prisoner that was killed while trying to make off in her escape pod. Picard makes a ship-wide announcement, using that attention whistle that had been mostly phased out of the show at this point. He announces that Ensign Sito was killed in the line of duty and praises her record while each of her close friends react. Even Taurik is moved. Later in Ten Forward we see that Lavelle has received another pip on his collar. He feels guilty about getting the Ops position wondering if he only got it because Ensign Sito died. Ogawa and Taurik try to comfort him and reassure him that she would be happy for him. Worf is also sitting at a table mourning alone. Ben comes over to requisition his table and indicates that there's room at the table with the Junior officers. Worf understands the gesture but feels that it's not appropriate since they were her friends. Ben lets him know that she thought of him as a friend too. So Worf goes over to share stories with the other and begin to heal.
It's a great episode that's serious and instead of being black and white moves within the shades of gray where war and peace is concerned. This is Star Trek at it's fully matured state. The actor that played Taurik would go on to reoccur on Voyager as Vorik and some of the literaturized material makes these two characters twins. I feel bad for the character of Ben because, out of all of them, he seems like the most obvious throw away character that was unique to this episode... even though it was like that for all of them except Ogawa. But I have no complaints otherwise. This is a brilliant five star episode. Definitely one of my top ten favorites.
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