#2 Chain of Command, season 6
I think this is my favorite two part episode after Best Of Both Worlds. It still boggles my mind that it was in the placed in the middle of a season instead of at the end because it would've been even better as a season finale/opener. But DS9 was getting ready to air and this episode was made to set up the Cardassians as the primary antagonists. What a fabulous job it does too. Drawing on things it had written for the episodes Ensign Ro and The Wounded, a lot of effort was put into making DS9 its own show and the main writer of this script would go on to become a senior writer on DS9.
The Enterprise is handed over to another captain while Picard is sent on an espionage mission with Worf and Beverly. Not only is this another outstanding Picard episode but, I confess, a lot of what I like about this episode is Captain Jellico. His presence offsets the other side of the story in which Picard is captured and tortured. The "trouble" with Jellico soon starts. I put it in parenthesis because I saw no trouble in what was going on. I think they wanted all of the audience to think of Jellico as an arsehole, but all I saw was a competent, battle hardened commander whose experiences lay more in military affairs than exploration. He isn’t interested in bonding with the crew but preparing for a serious situation with the Cardassians and everyone (except Data, hilariously) just goes into a bunch of whiney meltdown fits when he starts demanding extra work. Seriously? How many times have they all gone out of their way to jerry-rig the ship for causes that weren't as dangerous because Picard wished it? No, I had a hard time feeling any sympathy for the crew. Maybe if they'd have picked a different actor than Ronny Cox to play Jellico, he would've come off as more of a jerk, but he played it as a real type of person that one would have a natural respect for. Their reactions to him are believable considering the history of the characters and their relationships to each other, but then the crew even goes as far to suggest with sincerity that the Cardassians may be there on a mission of scientific study. Really? This is almost too much. They were so determined to make Jellico look like a "war monger" that they only made the rest of the cast look naïve and stupid. How is any thinking person supposed to take their backlash at Jellico seriously after that? Without getting specific about politics, Jellico, in the end has to submit to Riker’s condescension and the ideology that the franchise espouses, but what makes this episode so special is that they allowed a different viewpoint to be represented in him. It's legitimate because - and this is vitally important - although Jellico is portrayed as a cruel jerk, he is not actually in the wrong about anything. And he gets Picard back without compromising his strategy. You have to understand it’s important to someone like me who doesn’t follow the franchise’s base ideology either to have a bone thrown to her. Wrath of Khan transitioned Star Trek into adulthood. This episode made it three dimensional with different viewpoints like Jellico and Madred's daughter. Episodes like this made episodes like In The Pale Moonlight from DS9 possible.
I don’t mean to diminish Picard’s sufferings in this episode though. Or the brilliant team work between him, Crusher, and Worf. Their training and mission was as captivating all the rest. Picard’s capture is related to the Enterprise’s mission on the planet in dispute. At least at first, until you see that his captor is just a sadistic sociopath. Torturing him very nearly to his breaking point before he’s returned is so intense and emotional. They almost didn’t need the scene at the end where he’s confessing to Troi that he was nearly ready to give up… you could see it in Stewart’s amazing acting skills. This is just such a great episode.
I also have 10 honorable mentions to match my top ten favorites, so I'll throw one in every day that I post a top ten episode. These aren't ranked.
The Perfect Mate, season 5
Oh, did you forget that I’m a girl? That’s okay, sometimes I do too. I admit this plays to my romantic sensibilities and whether you’re a woman or a man, we all have preferences when it comes to love stories as they unfold within the stories we like to read and watch. This one checks off several of my boxes, “Unrequited Love” and “May-December romances” being a couple. And even though Beverly is the best choice for Picard, this episode still my favorite Picard romance, even more than The Inner Light because he got more than just a woman in that episode… the falling in love portion was glossed over.
In this episode, Picard finds himself as an advocate for a woman in an arranged marriage and falling in love with her in the process. It goes a long way towards fixing the old formulas they stubbornly clung to in the early seasons. And it's a formula they've tried many times beginning in TOS with Elaan of Troyius, which this episode most closely resembles. A similar story takes place in The Dauphin from the second season of TNG. Not to mention Riker's brooding over Troi's arranged marriage in Haven from season one. No, a crewman being in love with a woman in an arranged marriage is not new, but in this one the conflict is gentler and more affectionate as opposed to melodramatic. To my mind, it's like they finally got it right. Since the story was given to Picard, it was more special and believable than the many times that Kirk or Riker had been "in love." She's beautiful and they managed to work in a deep connection between these characters in one episode. The kind that it’d taken several seasons to build with Beverly. Kamala is exactly the kind of strong, intelligent, and mature woman that is perfect for Picard. Not a flake like Vash or the girlfriend of his youth like Jenice Manheim. Her special “metamorph” abilities are actually the abilities of any woman, or man, who is sufficiently aware of their capabilities. But Kamala isn’t manipulative with malice like a regular person would be which makes her good and even wholesome. And by falling in love with Picard, she becomes her own woman, independent of her future husband which truly makes her the perfect mate. The perfect woman that is able to please her man in every way while at the same time remaining her own person. And this plot device of absorbing Picard's personality as part of being bonded to him is not science fiction. I've often thought that if, God forbid, I ever lost my husband and someone tried to date me that they wouldn't only be dating me but him as well and all of the influence his personality has had on my own. The story is kind of hard to pull off soundly... like playing soft notes clearly and audibly on an instrument. Of course, it’s all in the great acting. The ending is so touching, beautiful, and bittersweet. Stewart and Janssen would later work together again in X Men.
As an aside, the makeup for Kamala is what the revamped Trill makeup for DS9 was modeled after, and Janssen was originally wanted for the part of Jadzia. Also in this episode the Ferengi are in the final form that they would be for TNG and ready to be further developed in DS9. Always conniving and scheming, but no longer a terrorist type of threat that they'd been classically portrayed as. It’s important to point that out because the Ferengi are a great writing comeback story and Quark is one of my favorite Trek characters which I’ll always marvel at since I absolutely despised the concept of the Ferengi in the beginning. It’s one of my personal favorites, but like I said, everyone has different tastes so it can’t be considered a top ten episode.
No comments:
Post a Comment