(Apologies for the lack of rewatch on Tuesday. Someone I’ve known since high school died of a heart attack at the depressingly young age of 41 this past week, and I’ve been a bit of a mess this week. But we’re back on track—look for “Reunion” on Tuesday…)
“Legacy”
Written by Joe Menosky
Directed by Robert Scheerer
Season 4, Episode 6
Production episode 40274-180
Original air date: October 29, 1990
Stardate: 44215.2
Captain’s log: The poker game—including Riker trying and failing to pull a card trick on Data that I knew the trick of when I was a teenager, so Riker thinking he could fool the hyperobservant android with it is pretty damn hilarious—is interrupted by a distress call from the freighter Arcos, which has been damaged while in orbit of Turkana IV. By the time they arrive, the freighter has exploded, but the two crew members managed to get into escape pods.
Unfortunately, Turkana IV is not a nice place. It’s the cesspool of a colony that Tasha Yar was born on, and there hasn’t been any contact with them for six years, which was after their government collapsed. All the surface settlements are long-since destroyed; everyone lives underground.
Given the chaos of the colony that Yar described, the away team of Riker, Data, Worf, and Crusher beams down in a defensive posture, back to back with phasers out. However, the colony seems calm—at first. An alarm rings and an armed gang shows up. They represent the Coalition, who control half the city—the Alliance controls the other half. Hayne, the Coalition leader, says that the Arcos crew are with the Alliance, and they offer assistance for a price. The group the away team encountered had just stolen some synthale from the Alliance. They all wear proximity detectors so they know when someone from the other side is near—it makes it hard to do anything substantive to their enemies, and has resulted in a stalemate. Hayne is hoping the Enterprise will give them weapons, claiming unconvincingly that he just wants to keep the peace.
Riker commits to nothing, but beams back—Hayne gives him a bottle of the stolen synthale as a gift for Picard. The captain rightly pegs them as urban street thugs. Hayne then contacts the ship and introduces them to a woman claiming she’s Ishara Yar—Tasha’s sister. He also says he’ll help them free of charge, on the theory that Starfleet paying the Alliance ransom is bad for him, and it’s better for him to help the Enterprise get their people back.
Picard discusses it with the crew. Riker and Worf don’t trust Hayne. They did mention that they had a deceased crewmate from Turkana IV, and Crusher says they could’ve just checked the Starfleet database. (Because a failed demi-anarchistic colony that has had no contact with the Federation in six years would of course have access to a database that lists personnel of a military organization. Right.)
Ishara is beamed aboard as the Coalition liaison. She doesn’t think very highly of her late sister, calling her cowardly for leaving Turkana IV and claiming that, fifteen years later, she doesn’t even remember what Tasha looked like.
Data escorts Ishara to an observation lounge full of skeptics. Ishara offers a DNA sample to prove she’s Tasha’s sister, and then gives the skinny on Turkana IV: there were dozens of factions vying for power, and the government gave police power to the two strongest factions—the Alliance and the Coalition—to try to maintain order. They put in the proximity detectors, as a way of keeping them in line. At that, it failed rather spectacularly. The Coalition and the Alliance overthrew the government, leaving them to go at it as the last factions standing.
In mid-meeting, the Alliance sends a ransom demand: the Enterprise has 20 hours to “make reparations” or the two Arcos crew will be tortured and killed. La Forge says that he can track them from the escape pod, but they don’t know where it is—at which point, Ishara reveals the pod’s exact location, which proves to be a nice little good-faith gesture.
However, the pod is in Alliance territory. Ishara proposes she be a diversion—her implant will draw the Alliance toward her while La Forge inspects the pod and installs a relay so they can use the pod’s tracking on the Enterprise. Ishara also is scanned by Crusher for DNA verification (which happens slower on the U.S.S. Enterprise in the 24th century than it does on CSI in the 21st—and the latter is the one that’s less realistic…) and Data tells her how her sister died.
Riker, Data, Worf, and La Forge set up near the pod. O’Brien beams Ishara down a few levels away, which draws all but two of the pod’s guards away. Worf and Riker take those two down and get to work. La Forge needs an extra ten minutes, and Ishara’s moved under a reactor so O’Brien can’t get a lock on her for beam-out. Riker goes after her, and saves her from an ambush. It was a stupid personal risk for him to take, but he didn’t want to lose another Yar on an away team of his.
The results of Ishara’s DNA tests are conclusive; she is Tasha’s sister. When Picard thanks Ishara for her help, she takes another shot at Tasha for running away in a cowardly manner, at which point Picard tells her the story of how he met Yar. She was rescuing colonists from a minefield, one of many times she put her own safety on the line for others.
Now that they know where the Arcos crew are being held, Ishara (now wearing a skintight blue outfit, in which she stands in sexy provocative positions) helps Data map out the location. Ishara knows the tunnels, including blind alleys that don’t show up on the sensor map. But she can’t beam down without her implant setting off alarms. However, Crusher can remove her implant.
Ishara talks to Data in Ten-Forward about how maybe she misjudged her sister, that there’s something to be said for living in the Federation and not watching your back all the time, and she talks to Data about leaving Turkana IV and enlisting in Starfleet the way Tasha did. She goes to talk to Hayne, ostensibly about her decision to leave, but instead reports to Hayne that “It’s working.” Given that she’s been saying all the appropriate things right out of the grifters’ handbook in how to get people to trust you, it’s not even remotely a surprise that she’s pulling a fast one.
Crusher removes the implant, which she gives to Data as a memento in case something goes wrong. They beam down in the heart of Alliance territory, which isn’t all that well guarded since the proximity implants keep folks from getting this far in, usually.
While the Enterprise team rescues the Arcos crew, Ishara goes to sabotage the fusion reactor that keeps Alliance defenses up. Data confronts her, realizing that this was all an elaborate (well, okay, not really that elaborate) con to get someone in. Ishara holds a phaser on Data, set to kill, but between him and Riker, they take her down and stop the sabotage.
Back on the Enterprise, Ishara’s brought to the bridge, back in her old clothes (only people who want to live in the Federation get to wear sexy skintight outfits, apparently). Picard inexplicably beams Ishara back down, saying that it was their own fault for trusting her overmuch due to her kinship to their dead crewmate. Ishara does apologize to Data for hurting him; he insists he can’t be injured in that fashion, though he later looks at Ishara’s chip with a sufficiently sad expression to put the lie to that insistence.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity?: The implants go off whenever someone else wearing an “opposite” implant is nearby, and there are also alarms that go off if someone goes into “forbidden” territory. It’s been over a decade, and nobody in either the Alliance or the Coalition has been able to figure out a workaround?
Thank you, Counselor Obvious: Troi senses Ishara’s ambiguity, that she’s conflicted between Turkana IV and the possibility of Starfleet. Ishara herself shows no evidence of this ambiguity in her betrayal, since she holds a phaser set to kill on Data that same day.
There is no honor in being pummeled: Worf expresses concern about Crusher beaming down to Turkana IV, mindful of Yar’s stories of rape gangs, and he drinks Ishara’s Kool Aid as much as everyone, saying it’ll be a good day when she joins Starfleet. (Hardy har har.)
If I only had a brain…: Data explains how friendship works with him despite his not having feelings. “As I experience certain sensory input patterns, my mental pathways become accustomed to them. The input is eventually anticipated and even missed when absent.” Ishara, meanwhile, totally sees him as an easy mark, as she plays him like a two-dollar banjo.
I believe I said that: “Estimate five minutes to warp drive containment breach.” (Sound of an explosion.) “Make that three minutes.”
Tan Tsu, one of the Arco crew, in his message to the Enterprise.
Welcome aboard: Beth Toussaint is very well cast as Ishara Yar, as she looks like she could very easily be Denise Crosby’s sister; she also bears a striking resemblance to Linda Hamilton. (Director Robert Scheerer suggested Toussaint, having worked with her on an episode of Matlock.) Don Mirault is two-dimensionally sleazy as Hayne, and Vladimir Velasco is appropriately frantic as the Arcos shipmaster.
Trivial matters: This episode was most notable for being the 80th episode of TNG, which meant that it had surpassed its predecessor—the original Star Trek only had 79 episodes. Except, of course, it isn’t: it’s only the 80th because “Encounter at Farpoint” is inexplicably counted as two episodes (yes, it was shown that way in reruns, but it aired as a single episode in the fall of 1987). Strictly speaking, “Legacy” was the 79th episode. Still a landmark, but not the one they said it was. (Back in 1990, this really bugged the crap out of me, because I didn’t know anything about production codes and stuff, and I counted the episodes I had on my VHS tapes, and there were only 79 of them, dammit!)
As an in-joke, Picard makes reference to their cutting off an archaeological exploration of Camus II—the same planet where “Turnabout Intruder,” the 79th and final episode of the original series, took place. (The former English major in me wants to correct the pronunciation of the planet from “KAY-mus” to “ca-MOO.” And I didn’t even like The Stranger!)
This episode finally names the chaotic planet that Yar came from, first referenced in “Encounter at Farpoint,” mentioned in “Symbiosis,” and seen briefly in “Where No One Has Gone Before.”
An alternate backstory for Yar was established in the novel Survivors by Jean Lorrah, which was written long before this episode was aired.
Picard’s first meeting with Yar that he describes to Ishara is dramatized in The Buried Age by Christopher L. Bennett.
This is the first script by executive story editor Joe Menosky, who would go on to be a prolific contributor to TNG, as well as both Deep Space Nine and Voyager.
Make it so: “You don’t believe I’m Tasha’s sister.” I’m not sure it was such a hot idea to showcase the success of a spinoff over its predecessor by making the main characters in it all be dumb as posts, but that’s the route they chose for #80. That’s only one of this episode’s numerous problems, however.
Data being fooled by Ishara actually makes sense. He’s the most literal-minded person imaginable, and he’s never been conned before, so I have no trouble believing that Ishara would be able to play him. But Riker? Picard? Worf? It’s ridiculous that all of them would go from skeptical to accepting just on the basis of a DNA test, and trust Ishara so completely. It wouldn’t be so bad if the cynicism about the Turkanans wasn’t so blatant in the early part of the episode. Picard, Riker, and Worf all agree to play along with Hayne, but to pursue other options. Those other options are never even mentioned again, as they throw all their distrust out the window because one of them happens to be a blood relative of Yar. It’s too extreme—some degree of that would make sense, but that they do a complete 180 in trusting her just makes the main characters look like dumbasses.
The entire episode hinges on a notion that cuts off the air supply to my disbelief. This mess of a planet, one that’s been unable to figure out a workaround to a proximity detector system that’s well over fifteen years old, somehow has access to a Starfleet database that includes listings of crew members who died two-and-a-half years earlier? They must have someone who can hack Starfleet’s computers—yet they’re still stuck with the proximity detectors? Cah-mon!
And then we have the cherry on top of this absurdity: Picard just lets Ishara beam back down to Turkana IV as if nothing happened. First of all, as Riker rightly points out, there should be consequences for her attempted murder of two Starfleet officers (she fired on both Data and Riker with a phaser set to kill, though she apparently has Greedo’s marksmanship…). Secondly, and much more fundamental, though, is that they took Ishara’s implant out. By sending her back to the surface, they have just irrevocably changed the balance of power in favor of the Coalition, who now has the only operative on Turkana IV who can move freely about the colony. This same crew that has twisted itself into a pretzel to stay within the boundaries of the Prime Directive for much less compelling reasons (viz. “Pen Pals” and “Who Watches the Watchers?“) just blithely lets this happen? This is a clear and obvious Prime Directive violation, and Picard’s willing to do it just because he’s embarrassed at the way Ishara ran rings around their emotions?
This is a rare case of an episode that I haven’t watched hardly at all since it first aired since a) I never thought very highly of it and b) I’ve never needed to watch it for research for any of my Trek tie-in fiction. (By contrast, I’ve watched the next episode up, “Reunion,” many many many many many many many times…) I was curious if I’d hate the episode as much now as I did then, and I actually find I hate it more. Maybe it’s because I’ve become a fan of both Hustle and Leverage, so seeing the Enterprise crew as marks who fall for a confidence game (and not even a very skilled one) just makes me embarrassed for characters I normally like.
It’s cool in the abstract to see Yar’s homeworld and meet her sister, Brent Spiner does excellent, subtle work with Data’s relationship with Ishara, and the action scenes are well handled by Scheerer, but this episode just doesn’t work.
Warp factor rating: 3
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest work of fiction is the just-released -30-, in collaboration with Steven Savile, the first of a four-part series of thrillers under the general title of Viral. Currently, it’s a Nook Exclusive, but it will be out in other formats next month. Books 2-4 (by Steve and other authors), which tell the overarching story from other angles, are also available.You can order -30- directly from Keith’s web site, as well as his other recent books; it’s also a gateway to his blog, his Facebook, his Twitter, and the various podcasts he’s involved with: Dead Kitchen Radio, The Chronic Rift, and the Parsec Award-winning HG World.
I was at a funeral on Saturday for a 31 year old friend who lay down to take a nap an never woke up. Stuff like that messes with your head…
I vaguely recall seeing this when it first aired. Survivors is much kinder to Yar. One of the few TNG books I kept.
“Zoraide phowered” is an awesome captcha, and I expected to see it in a SF story someday. Just sayin’.
This mess of a planet
[i]somehow has access to a Starfleet database that includes listings of
crew members who died two-and-a-half years earlier?
Or they just had access to Tasha’s facebook page? Calling it a “database” does make it seem official, but it’s not like lists of who is serving on naval ships is classified information (and the Federation at this point is a pretty open society.) One can imagine news stories mentioning crew members (“today in Parade, the story of a plucky security chief who escaped a primitive hell-hole”), Publishers Clearning House mail lists, and of course an obituary.
I usually have the opposite problem – people on Star Trek often seem to have way too little access to information that should be common knowledge or readily available. So one can criticize the exact terminology, but it doesn’t seem at all impossible.
I have never been too terribly bothered by how easily the crew was scammed by Tasha’s sister. With the exception of Picard who comes across pretty worldly, the rest of the senior staff is by and large pretty boys and girls who live a pretty gilded existence. In a society where there is no money, no want, you probably don’t spend much time worrying about somebody pulling a con on you. Just like 21st century people have for the most part stopped worrying about animals popping out of the woods to eat them, 24th century people have stopped being on the lookout for people trying to screw them.
I look at it this way, these are a bunch of senior officers on the flagship of the Federation. They don’t drink real booze, they don’t play poker for money, they spend their time planning events like “Captain Picard Day” and they let 15 year olds in rainbow stripped sweaters navigate starships while commissioned officers trained at Starfleet Academy stand at rear of the bridge waiting their turn. If TNG were the Dilbert world, these would be the pointy-haired bosses.
Look how easily the crew was fooled in episodes like “11001001” (sure, we’ll sit and talk to a hologram all day while the ship is stolen), “Datalore” (look, Lore is on the ground twitching, don’t worry, no problems there), and “Samaritan Snare” (my God {wringing hands} we have no clue how to get one officer off the interstellar equivalent of the short bus without designing some Rube Goldberg device and being so obvious about it even Spot could figure out what was going on). These are not real savvy people. I’ve loved them since 1987, but sometimes they are dumber than posts. If only they had a character that could read emotions and people’s intents. Oh, wait…
1. I’m not sure the PD would apply in the same way to a failed colony as it would to a non-Federation planet.
2. I’m with @3 on the “database” issue. I would assume that “no contact” means “no official contact.” There are probably traders visiting the planet from time to time carrying news (and in fact, enterprising traders could make easy money just by landing in one territory or the other and renting time on the subspace transmitters on their ships.) Ishara could have found out about Tasha’s career and death through unofficial channels.
But otherwise, ditto.
I think what bothers me the most about the workaround, is that they have one that would require no technology. Make babies. You start the process when the implants first go in, and at this point you’d have 10yo foot soldiers for your war. And I doubt these folks would have issues with using kids.
Also, while the information about Yar might be available, what infrastructure would make that information accessible? The planet is a war-torn wreck.
The plot flaws with this one are extraordinary but I think the Spiner and Toussaint performances bring it up to a 5. YMMV.
There are a couple of posibilities for bringing forward Tasha’s sister, even without official contact from the federation a “We regret to inform you” letter may have been delivered or there just may not be that many people from the planet that left to join starfleet and they picked the right sibling to produce.
I’m with Jose Tyler #4 in his analysis… the TNG characters are so idealistic that they are practically naive. They seem to be lacking a lot of the life experience that the DS9 and Voyager crews seem to have in the real world.
My other question is why doesn’t Picard seem to negotiate with the Alliance? I don’t remember the episode well enough (and Memory Alpha wasn’t helpful) if we ever found out what the reperations were. Basically they call up and say we’ll kill the crewmen if you don’t give us something, the gang leader Picard met says “He’s not kidding” and Picard goes “Okay” and authorizes an armed rescue mission. It’s not consistent with who Picard is- he’s self-defined as an explorer and diplomat, not a soldier. So why is it in the span of 5 seconds abandons any hope of negotiating a settlement? Just because one of the gang members happens to be the long-lost sister of his dead security chief he is going to throw away decades worth of training and experience?
What the WHAT? They would have to “hack Starfleet’s computers” to find out that Tasha Yar had served on the Enterprise? Was that classified information? You don’t think that they might be able to find some public record of that? Jeez…
“This episode was most notable for being the 80th episode of TNG, which meant that it had surpassed its predecessor—the original Star Trek only had 79 episodes. Except, of course, it isn’t: it’s only the 80th because “Encounter at Farpoint” is inexplicably counted as two episodes (yes, it was shown that way in reruns, but it aired as a single episode in the fall of 1987). Strictly speaking, “Legacy” was the 79th episode. Still a landmark, but not the one they said it was.”
May I suggest that we count it as the 80th *broadcast hour* of TNG, rather than the 80th episode? Does that work? Or, wait, now there’s the problem of why The Menagerie is counted as two episodes… :-)
Regarding the Prime Directive: isn’t that only for pre-warp societies that are unaware of the Federation? If Tasha came from this planet, they’re clearly aware of the Federation. (In fact, aren’t they technically a Federation colony? Shouldn’t the Federation be moving in to fix up the place?)
I seem to recall a rumour that Ishara Yar was planned to join the crew of the Enterprise in the following season, but you might know more about whether or not that rumour was true.
— Michael A. Burstein
Not a favorite episode of mine. Visiting Tasha’s homeworld and meeting her sister would’ve had more weight if it had come sooner after Tasha’s death, or better yet, while she was still alive. And the depiction of Turkana IV was rather bland, especially to those of us who remembered the flashbacks to Tasha’s homeworld in Jean Lorrah’s Survivors (where it was called New Paris).
And Beth Toussaint never struck me as resembling Denise Crosby in any way (although her resemblance to Linda Hamilton was so great that I remember a college friend thinking it was Hamilton). It would’ve helped if they’d cast an actress who’d at least been blond.
@11: “May I suggest that we count it as the 80th *broadcast hour* of TNG, rather than the 80th episode? Does that work? Or, wait, now there’s the problem of why The Menagerie is counted as two episodes… :-)”
Well, the first pilot was never broadcast as part of TOS (except as incorporated into “The Menagerie”), only appearing as a special on TV and home video in 1986. So as a contiguous series, TOS only had 79 broadcast hours.
“Regarding the Prime Directive: isn’t that only for pre-warp societies that are unaware of the Federation? If Tasha came from this planet, they’re clearly aware of the Federation.”
The Prime Directive has two aspects. Where pre-warp societies are concerned, the rule is “Don’t reveal our existence.” Where other societies (or actually all societies) are concerned, the rule is “Don’t intervene in local politics/conflicts or try to impose cultural change.” Indeed, the former is a subset of the latter, based on the assumption that contact with starfaring aliens couldn’t help but change a pre-warp society in fundamental ways.
Case in point: in “Redemption,” Starfleet can’t intervene in the Klingon civil war because it’s apparently a matter of internal politics, and the UFP has no right to impose in such matters, any more than, say, England has the right to decide who gets to run for President of the US. It’s only when Romulan intervention is revealed that Starfleet can intervene, because then it becomes a matter of defending an ally against an outside threat rather than meddling in internal affairs.
“(In fact, aren’t they technically a Federation colony? Shouldn’t the Federation be moving in to fix up the place?)”
It declared independence in the 2350s, which is why it was able to degenerate as far as it did in the first place. Once it became a sovereign state, the Prime Directive prohibitions mentioned above applied. The UFP was free to offer aid, but they couldn’t force the Turkanans to accept.
It’s true that the crew carries the idiot ball throughout this episode, and as @@.-@ Jose Tyler points out, they do do it a lot.
Anecdotally, it seems that having your characters carry the idiot ball (aka the idiot plot trope) is the most frequent plot failure in SF (genre?, all?) TV, and I’m curious about the degree to which the writers recognize that they are falling back on that trope at the time (and live with it because of resource constraints) or instead rationalize it away in their thinking about the episode.
If you’re interested in correct pronunciation: the “d” in “Picard” should be silent. Only a handful of actors throughout TNG ever got that one right.
Re: episode numbering for TNG.
Look on the bright side. Try agreeing on how many Dr Who stories have been on TV. That’s a real nightmare.
What’s with the tight blue outfit, anyway? Clearly it was designed to…ahem…get a rise out of the audience. Camel toe and all…
Don Mirault, the actor who played Hayne, always seemed to me like he was doing a cheesy William Shatner impression with his performance in this episode. I’ve never been sure if that was a weird but deliberate choice because he happened to be on Star Trek or if the two just happen to have similar acting styles.
I actually think that Troi had it right, kind of. When Ishara is holding the phaser on Data, when the time for deception is past, she tells him that she doesn’t want to kill him, but she will. While that’s pretty cold, consider: if she didn’t give a damn about him, she wouldn’t give a damn about killing him. She also repeatedly urges him to get the hell out of there, because while she is willing to sacrifice herself she genuinely does not want Data to be blown up.
She does finally fire, but I don’t believe she felt good about it. (And when you think about it, at that point the phaser setting wouldn’t have made a difference either way, because anybody who got stunned wouldn’t be able to run away and would get blown up along with Ishara.) My take on Ishara (perhaps a generous one) is that she really was tempted to some degree by the promise of a life away from Turkana IV, and really did get attached to Data. Hence Troi sensing her feeling divided. But ultimately she stayed loyal to the people whom she felt she owed her life to, Hayne and his Coalition.
That’s tragic IMHO, because she had the chance to escape a pretty crappy life and threw that chance away out of misplaced loyalty. I also think she knew it was crappy, because what she said about wanting to be able to live somewhere she could trust people, where she didn’t always have to watch her back…who does want to live like that? I want to believe that that was some truth woven in with the lies, because I like Ishara. (And I won’t lie; her sexiness might have a little something to do with that. That was one of the tools she used to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes, and for all of the places I give her the benefit of the doubt I think that the only reason she kissed Data was to make him feel closer to her, and easier to manipulate. Why she tried that on Data of all people, though, is a mystery to me.)
If I recall correctly, she says something to Data at the end about how it wasn’t all an act, and I don’t believe it was. Again, at that point she had no reason to lie about anything. So it wasn’t so much “Haha, I can’t believe how stupid all these people are!” as it was “Well, it’s working. I’m getting them to do what I want, and I’m gonna go out in a blaze of glory and help my side win. Now if only I could get rid of this part of me that was feeling guilty about it…”
All I want to say is that as a big fan if your Klingon novels, I can’t wait for Tuesday!
@18, I too, got the impression that she really didn’t want anything to happen to Data at the end.
One thing I couldn’t help notice: immediately after Ishara transports back down for the last time, there is a musical cue uncannily similar to one we hear over and over again on DS9 (including in the opening theme). Perhaps not surprisingly, the composer for this episode, Dennis McCarthy, was also the composer of the DS9 opening theme.
You inspired me to rewatch this episode. Your assessment is cogent, that Data would be conned, and that is incredulous that Picard, Riker, and Worf would all be conned as well. It also seems odd that Turkana IV would not have destroyed itself by now or that someone would have hacked out of the proximity detectors.
That being said, I respectfully dissent in part. Picard, Riker and Worf were among the most loyal to and caring of Tasha Yar. “[We] all wanted to see something of Tasha in this woman. We saw more than was there.” Loyalty and love, especially over someone who dies (and for whose death you feel responsibility) can be blinding and overcome rationality. Picard, Riker and Worf all cared intensely for Tasha Yar and that underpinned much of this episode. That emotional element was missing from a lot of TNG, and, in the end, it is underdeveloped here. But, there is reason to that.
The ending is also unsatisfying, but, it can be explained. Picard decided that to permit Ishara to be taken back to the Federation would not be punishment. If Picard took Ishara, she would leave Turkana IV and be tried in a Federation Court for conspiracy and attempted murder. It would be a worse punishment for her to stay there-and Picard sent her back because her betrayal forfeited any connection she had to the Enterprise. In the words of Mr. Miyagi, “For person with no forgiveness in heart, living even worse punishment than death.” For a person with no sense of loyalty or honor, being returned by your betrayer to the same Hobbesian state of nature you faked desiring an escape from is a worse punishment than due process of law by the Federation.
So, I respectfully dissent-but only to point that there is an explanation for some of the ending that is consistent with the characters.
I think that Ishara is like all victims of abusive environments: she knows it’s bad, but feels she can’t leave. She feels a sort of comfort because in a way she feels she doesn’t deserve happiness or freedom. I think she really was tempted to leave, but between loyalty to those who helped her survive and the feelings of guilt/shame and self-hatred wouldn’t permit her to go after the happiness she desired. Tasha was in the same position but decided to change things. It’s very hard to escape those situations. People who have never been in that position (or who have not studied it) have a hard time believing this mentality. They find it incredulous that someone would prefer to live that way rather than escape.
Something that’s bothered me during this rewatch is the supposed relationship between Data and Tasha Yar. My memories of the show (which I’ve not seen much of in the last decade or so) are that Data and Yar were very close. But now that I’ve watched these episodes again, it seems that other than their encounter in “The Naked Now” their friendship was mostly retconned, or perhaps only really fleshed out in tie-in fiction.
Its been a while since I completely disagreed with you Keith, but I completely disagree with you. While not one of TNG‘s best episodes, I can totally see it as plausible. Ridiculous that Picard or Riker or even Worf could be fooled by Ishara? Not at all; it makes them look like flawed people who have misjudged someone because they are related to a deceased comrade. The three men you mention were all close to Tasha, so it makes sense they would be conned by her sister, a living breathing connection to someone they cared about. Picard letting her go was simply sending her back to the “life” Ishara was living on Turkana. Honestly, looking at Turkana IV, Picard didn’t do Ishara a favor by sending her back. Ishara was already in her own self-made purgatory; Picard merely sent her back to it. And the final scene where Data looks at Ishara’s implant with profound sadness (yes, I’m talking about Data) makes the episode worth watching for the painful lesson he learns about betrayal. I give the episode a 6.
This is one of those episodes that is much more watchable because of the guest star. Beth Toussaint is a hottie, plain and simple, and I could sit around for 44 minutes and just watch her without too much anguish. That doesn’t make this episode a ten or anything, but I make it at least a five. Here’s the rule of thumb: take any gal guest star’s hot-rating on a scale of one to ten and divide it by two, and that’s the minimum score you can assign to any given episode. I mean, I might be a nerd, but I’ve still got a pulse.
This episode gets a ten from me! I almost cried at the end.
So I actually really enjoyed this episode. Maybe it was mostly the strength of the guest star. What really stood out to me (and what I wish someone like Deanna had pointed out) is that Ishara didn’t really violate her own code of ethics. She held up her end of the bargin–she gave the Enterprise help and correct information, and she didn’t even leave the away team until they had found the captured crewmen. Yes, she violated Federation ethics, but why on earth would they assume she would put their moral code above her loyalty to her faction? And yes, she lied (mostly by omission) to get what she wanted, but she hardly betrayed them–she just used the situation to her advantage, quid pro quo (which the Enterprise crew might have expected her to do if they weren’t so busy passing around the idiot ball). If she had felt no compunction about ‘killing’ Data, then she would’ve shot a lot earlier. And for crying out loud, of course her phaser was set to kill–she was a soldier in the heart of enemy territory (And really, you’d think they could’ve given her a phaser without a kill setting). Altogether, I thought she made a lot of sense as a character, and I wish the episode had spent more time exploring this moral grey area instead of being so black and white about whether she was good or evil.
I always thought that the writer visited to one of the Photon franchises (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgMTyME8X1o) and used it as a blue print (or red/green print lol) for the episodes dystopian society.
@@@@@#4- great comments Jose. This episode gets a solid 9.5 from me on the strength of three successive scenes. First, when crusher is treating Yar’s sister for her injuries, the latter is wearing and almost sheer, loose-fitting shirt that clearly shows the raisins she is smuggling. In the very next scene, she has dawned the blue jumpsuit that takes cameltoe to a new level. And then, finally, the scene where she turns on the charm to woo Data and you can see him thinking “Every red-blooded androids dream is to score with sisters….” I knocked half a point off for the fact that Yar’s home planet doesn’t really seem like the violent helll she described. It looks like they have a Fantastic Sam’s somewhere giving everyone puffy 80s haircuts. I suppose that is a hell, in a way…
What makes even less sense than everything you’ve been talking about is why there are any operatives who actually fight who still have the implants. They were the failed government’s attempt at a solution, remember? That was six years ago. There are clearly 16- or 17-year-old kids around who would join either side now. Shouldn’t the people w/ implants have been retired to leadership positions long ago? Or killed because they’re useless in battle?
If there are rape gangs running around, you can bet there are child soldiers. Once again, the NG writers thought about the most important fact they’ve established for a grand total of 8 minutes before going on to construct the rest of the episode around this fact, even though it makes no sense.
And I get that she betrayed Data and the crew, but so what? They rescued their crew members because of her, right? So they got something out of it as well. It’s a violation of the Prime Directive to even visit the planet, isn’t it? The death of those two freighter people would have been the risk that all Starfleet people take b/c of the Prime Directive. So once Picard chooses to do something, he’s going to break some rules.
@31 I think you miss how bad it is to leave her without her implant. She’s now completely undetectable. If the other side knows about her and can find her, she will die. If not, she will overthrow their government exactly the same way as before, meaning stopping her was totally pointless.
@24: That’s true about Yar in general; she very little screentime even considering how quickly she was killed off that I find the character leaves very little impression. I appreciate that the writers tired to make best use of having to get rid of the character by having multiple occasions where the other characters recall her death, but while she was actually on the show, Yar was kind of a flop. Isn’t this why all the things she mentioned in her funeral monologue never happened on screen?
Data does protest a lot about not having emotions. He very clearly has deeply felt emotions, he just doesn’t fully understand them at this point. Honestly I felt the ’emotion chip’ in Generations was a mistake. Why not let Data experience emotion in his own way w/o a gimmick? I thought his reaction at the end of this episode was heartfelt.
@33 – I do feel that Tasha had 2 good episodes. “Encounter at Farpoint” during the trial and “Hide and Q” when she’s in tears about being in Q’s penalty box. She really only comes into her own as a character on “Yesterdays’a Enterprise”. I think a lot of people, including myself retcon more into S1 Tasha than was there because of her brilliant appearance in the other timeline. Denis Crosby proved in S3 that given a great script she could deliver.
I hate to admit I’ve always thought that was Linda Hamilton! Guess I never paid attention to the credits.
She does look a lot like Linda Hamilton.
Toussaint was excellent, in my opinion. Maye it’s just her acting chops (or those of her character), but I do believe that Ishara was ambivalent. But, like any good soldier, in the end she couldn’t betray her comrades or her duty. And in a way, maybe we respect her more for that — no one really respects (or, ultimately trusts 100%) a turncoat, a traitor, or a “rat,” even if their duplicity benefits our own side.
Regarding the people of Turkana IV knowing the crew of the Enterprise, two things.
First they said the Federation had no contact. To me that means no contact. Maybe traders with some news, but that would be all. There wouldn’t be access to databases.
Second, several posters posited that traders would know crew members of a Starship. Would that be likely? Is it at all easy to find out the crew compliment for the Abraham Lincoln or the Nimitz? Possibly, even probably, the captains would be known, but other officers? And would traders really even care about that information that the would be telling it to either the Coalition or the Alliance?
costumer: Exactly. No contact should really have meant that.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Data’s makeup bothers me more and more. It can’t have looked very good even before HD and in this episode he gets a close up. Liked this episode, good story and relationship between Data and Yar. Did not care for the sexploitativeblue costume. I did expect Data to produce the hologram of Tasha to show her sister. I’d give it 7 or 8.
While I wouldn’t give this episode my highest ratings, it’s rather good on the whole, and I rather disagree about a number of the criticisms. As others have already noted, Ishara Yar actually was demonstrated to be rather torn between her newfound friendship with Data and her loyalty to the Coalition. To most other objections, I can also offer some fairly reasonable explanations in response. To wit:
Who says they haven’t? The impression I got from Ishara’s description of what happened to the government is that neither the Alliance nor the Coalition were trying to remove or disable their implants, since they had become the de facto governments of the colony; as Hayne tells Riker when he talks about taking the crate of synth-ale the Coalition just raided from the Alliance to the authorities, “We are the authorities.” Ishara also specifically implies on a couple of occasions that those implants (which explode if exposed to air) are treated as material proof of a foot soldier’s commitment to his or her cadre and as a means for maintaining that loyalty; at this point, both the Alliance and Coalition are probably implanting all their new recruits themselves, and I strongly respect the “recruitment” happens at birth and therefore isn’t voluntary anymore.
The question to be answered here is what other options? Note that the Alliance made abundantly clear with its ransom demand that it wasn’t open to negotiation: at no time do any of the Alliance’s leaders even appear on screen, having instead ordered one of their hostages to relay their demands to the Enterprise for them. Hayne and his subordinates in the Coalition, in contrast, were quite willing to be negotiate: in fact, when several of his foot soldiers first encountered Riker’s away team, they held their fire and asked them to identify themselves rather than shooting them on sight as the Alliance would most certainly have done. As for making an effort to rescue the hostages on their own, that’s what Picard and his crew were already doing when Hayne and Ishara offered to help expedite their efforts; and… well… for all of Ishara’s double-dealing treachery, she did help them rescue those hostages as promised, didn’t she?
While Riker has a point in that scene, so does Hayne: Ishara helped them rescue the hostages as agreed, and she’s under the Coalition’s jurisdiction, not the Federation’s. Picard was simply being diplomatic, and you can see him seething for a long moment when he concedes the point and orders Data to escort her to the transporter; a testament to Patrick Stewart’s acting skills.
Not that freely. True, the Alliance can’t automatically detect her anymore, but that doesn’t mean its perimeter guard won’t be able to spot her and shoot her on sight just as they would any of those un-implanted Federation officers they caught snooping around their base. Considering Alliance’s power sources are all near the center of their bases and she couldn’t have gotten close to any of them in the first place without the Enterprise‘s transporter to get her there, I’d say the balance of power hasn’t shifted very much in the Coalition’s favor at all. The Alliance still has more phasers (from a recently discovered weapons cache, according to Hayne) and is more on the look-out for intruders than ever since Ishara nearly took out one of its fusion reactors during her last raid; and as demonstrated during that same raid, its foot soldiers have manual alarms they can trigger upon spotting her in addition to the ones that automatically go off when the sensors detect those implants.
Again, who says they’re trying to subvert that system, since it’s also what keeps each cadre’s troops loyal to their leadership? To address the point at hand, though, at no point does the episode ever imply the Coalition (or the Alliance for that matter) had access to any recently updated Starfleet databases. Hayne simply orders his underling to find him “everything there is to know about the Star Ship Enterprise” in that scene after Data informs him that a late fellow Federation officer was born on this planet and was among the very few who escaped shortly before its government collapsed.
Given that Turkana IV is a former Federation colony and we’re shown that its power sources and communications systems are still operating, it stands to reason it still has some of its local databases intact. Though those databases wouldn’t have had any updates to their information about other planets in a long time, they would at least have local information concerning the names and profiles of the very few refugees known to have escaped the planet on the last shuttle out, and news from those other worlds up to the point they stopped transmitting to the colony (probably soon—but not immediately—after its official government collapsed). Hayne and his underling know from their conversation that the crewman was female, which cuts the (already rather short) list of candidates roughly in half, and that she was a Starfleet officer, which means she’d have to have been young enough to enroll in Starfleet Academy (thereby eliminating anyone older than that at the time from the list).
Depending on how long the colony continued to receive Federation transmissions after its government collapsed, the database might even have lists of everyone enrolled in Starfleet Academy at the time to cross-reference against the list of refugees; and if Tasha Yar was the only female refugee from Turkana IV to enroll there (as is likely, since only a tiny percentage of the Federation’s population in general ever chose a career in Starfleet), then—ding-ding-ding-ding-ding—they have a winner! They could then check any known relatives mentioned in her profile against their own roster of Coalition foot soldiers to figure out that her sister Ishara is working for them, and that’s how they found her, see?
My Analysis:
What I particularly like about this episode is that it’s one of the very few Next Generation episodes to imply the Federation is not the nigh-perfect utopia Gene Roddenberry insisted it was supposed to be. The Federation planted a colony and ran it according to all its glorious vaunted principles of civilization, and it failed? One imagines Joe Menosky had to do an awful lot of jawboning with the idealistic Roddenberry (who was still very much in control of his creation) to get this more cynical story’s script produced!
Speaking of Menosky, learning of his history with the franchise explains why this episode neatly foreshadows some of the innovations in Deep Space Nine and Voyager: the idea that not quite everybody in the Federation was content to live by its principles, and that some might revert to Hobbesian savagery in the face of a crisis makes an early appearance here. I also note that this episode implies the Federation wasn’t usually too concerned about breakaways as long as they were relatively small and could be written off as just a few malcontents and troublemakers; unlike the Maquis secessionists, the Federation evidently didn’t feel it had any compelling reason to send any troops to Turkana IV to subdue its rogue governments and restore its jurisdiction over the planet after its official government there collapsed. Its reaction seems more like how the USA would probably respond if Puerto Rico were to announce it was seceding: “The place is a basket case anyway. Do we really want it back?”
As others have noted elsewhere, that tight suit Ishara Yar takes to wearing while she’s considering joining Starfleet foreshadows the catsuits Seven of Nine from Voyager and T’Pol of Enterprise would take to wearing in those shows as well. (That probably wasn’t Menosky’s idea, but the writers and costumers on those shows probably figured if people responded positively to it here, they’d do so again in those shows.) The 1980s holdover hairstyles Hayne and Ishara and the other Turkana IV colonists are sporting do rather date the episode, but their street gang outfits presage some of the clothes the toughs in the sanctuary district in Deep Space Nine‘s “Past Tense” episodes would be shown wearing later on. Of course, as I’ve noticed with the Star Wars franchise as well, even the poorest and most wretched people of Star Trek (such as Turkana IV’s gangsters) are better dressed than many people today; any present-day ghetto-dweller would probably kill for one of those nice leather jackets Hayne and many of his underlings get to wear in this episode.
Something else I like about this episode is the realpolitik themes it shares with a number of the Mirror Universe episodes of the franchise and particularly some of the sixth and seventh season episodes of Deep Space Nine. Like Sisko in the controversial episode “In The Pale Moonlight” having to live with his guilty conscience after scoring “huge victory for the good guys!” by lying and cheating and covering up his compatriots’ crimes, Picard here has to swallow hard and send Ishara Yar back home to Hayne as demanded even though it galls him to do so. Like the morally inverted versions of the main characters we encounter in Mirror Universe episodes, the Alliance and Coalition also tend to use the technologies of their time to further their own selfish interests more the way real people (i.e. the people of our time) would.
More to the point, smarmy and sleazy as Hayne is, he does strike me as a somewhat admirably anti-heroic type; while it’s pretty clear that every time he talks about “keeping the peace” what he really means is maintaining his cadre’s control, it remains that his Coalition and the rival Alliance have—for their own selfish purposes—demonstrably restored a measure of law and order to the colony. The rape gangs Tasha Yar (and presumably her sister Ishara as well) spent her youth evading are now nowhere to be found, probably because the Alliance and Coalition exterminated them all while establishing their fiefdoms. Every member of either cadre we see looks to be relatively well-fed, suggesting that they have at least a few working replicators and an effective system for distributing the replicated food and drink to their troops (even if they can’t produce any more of that synth-ale for some reason).
So… on the whole, though I wouldn’t rate this the *best*episode*ever* or even the most memorable, there’s a lot to like about it. On a scale of one to ten, I’d probably give it a good solid seven or eight or so.
Typo in my previous comment: I strongly suspect the “recruitment” happens at birth and therefore isn’t voluntary anymore.
RK: First, to be clear, I appreciate your detailed analysis. Thanks for that, even though I don’t really agree with it. *laughs*
Ishara and Haynes’s entire plan hinged on the Enterprise removing Ishara’s implant, which means they didn’t even remotely have the capability of circumventing it themselves. And I don’t buy that, and I don’t buy your rationale that they like having the implants, because this is two sides of a war, who will be doing everything they can to get some kind of advantage. Yeah, it buys loyalty, up to a point, but it also enforces a detente that neither side wants (because each side wants to win).
I don’t buy that a colony that has had no official contact with the Federation would have any kind of up-to-date database of Starfleet personnel, and I don’t buy that the same Jean-Luc Picard who was willing to condemn someone to death twice to preserve the Prime Directive (“Who Watches the Watchers?” “Homeward”) would just let Ishara go back and give the Alliance that advantage of an operative without the implant — and it is an advantage.
Finally, Menosky wouldn’t have had to convince Roddenberry of anything, as his declining health meant he did very little day-to-day show-running after season two or so.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@44 – “I don’t buy that a colony that has had no official contact with the Federation would have any kind of up-to-date database of Starfleet personnel”
Considering how easy it is to take over Starfleet vessels (And we’ve seen it happen WAY more times than we should have), I have no problem believing that nobody at Starfleet HQ has ever heard of a firewall on their computers. Unless something is listed as Triple X-pinky swear secure, they’re probably an open book to anyone with more computer knowledge than knowing where the on switch is located.
Correction: their plan hinged on the Enterprise removing Ishara’s implant and transporting her into the heart of Alliance territory which they couldn’t otherwise do because they don’t have working transporters (and neither, apparently, does the Alliance). Without the transporters, Ishara can’t get close to do any damage to anything vital to the Alliance (like—say—one of those fusion reactors) ever again. So again, not much real advantage there.
I didn’t say they liked having those implants, just that those are as much a necessity for enforcing their own troops’ loyalty as for detecting the enemy’s troops. From what little we see of the Alliance, it’s pretty clear the only choices it offered the surviving colonists were “join us or die!” If anything, joining the Coalition was as close to a “third option” as the vast majority of those colonists were going to get; and while Hayne and his Coalition were likely a bit more affable about it (as one can see from how they treated Riker’s away team when it suddenly appeared in their midst; the Alliance would quite certainly have shot the intruders on sight), their offer to unaffiliated colonists would not have been a whole lot better: “Well, you can join us and take our chip, or you can take your chances with the the Alliance’s good graces; we all know how kind and merciful its troops are to anyone who refuses to join, right?”
Again, I’m convinced the Alliance and Coalition are now implanting their children with those proximity detectors from birth; and if they wanted a workaround, they would simply stop doing that and let the kids run free. The reasons they don’t employ this most obvious and simple workaround are (A) they don’t trust their own children to stay loyal to them without coercion after watching their own generation’s families disintegrate due to infighting, and (B) much as they hate the enforced detente, they hate anarchy and multiple factions and rape gangs more. One other reason Ishara being free of her implant isn’t quite as advantageous to her side as you seem to believe is that while Hayne doubtless appreciates her demonstration of undying (ha ha!) loyalty to him, he won’t want the other Coalition troops to start getting the idea that they should try to shed their implants too and let him take their word for it that they’re still loyal; since he doesn’t seem quite ruthless and ungrateful enough to go assassinating Ishara to keep her from giving those other troops ideas, I’d wager he kicked her upstairs instead and made her his right-hand woman (while retaining his previous second-in-command as his left-hand man) to ensure she’d never be deployed to the perimeter again.
Again, their local databases don’t need to have been up-to-date on those things, just on the subjects of (A) who was on that last flight out of the colony, (B) who on that refugee list matches the age and sex the Enterprise‘s fallen crew member had to be to have joined Starfleet and died in the line of duty as Data said, (C) who among those eligible candidates (if there was more than one) went to Starfleet Academy and could therefore have been on the Enterprise‘s crew, and (D) any surviving relatives she had who might be serving the Coalition now. For all that Hayne specifically orders his underling to find all the information about the Enterprise he can, the underling surely understood that what his boss really wanted to know was “Who was that gal they mentioned, and do we have any connections with her we can leverage to get these Enterprise officers to do what we want?” While Picard’s adherence to the Prime Directive is as strong as you say, (A) I’m not sure exactly how the Federation’s own judiciary would say it applies in a situation such as this (and apparently neither is anyone else in or out of universe, as no one even mentions it by name in this episode), (B) the Federation apparently did grant its officers considerable leeway in how to interpret and apply the Prime Directive as one may witness in Commander (later Admiral) Mark Jameson’s extremely dubious interpretation and application of it to resolve a hostage situation on Mordan IV in the episode “Too Short A Season” back in this show’s first season, (C) again, I contend Ishara’s emancipation from her proximity detector doesn’t really grant the Coalition enough of an advantage to upset the balance of power and help it overcome its stalemate with the Alliance, and (D) a Federation defense lawyer might well be able to make a convincing case in court that removing Ishara Yar from the Coalition’s jurisdiction is itself a violation of the Prime Directive, as the Federation has not negotiated an extradition treaty with either of Turkana IV’s de facto governments and is not officially at war with them either.
Gene Roddenberry wasn’t so much in charge anymore, eh? In addition to explaining how Joe Menosky could get away with writing such a credibly cynical depiction of the Federation’s failings as he did here (and later in Deep Space Nine as mentioned), that probably explains why The Next Generation started improving so much after the first few seasons: no more enforcement of “No, everyone in my perfect little utopia has to get along swimmingly!” from him.
Would Beth Toussaint have made a better Tasha Yar than Denise Crosby (or the alternative, Mary Crosby!)? 4: Actually they have two crewmen who can read emotions and can sense someone’s intent, but sadly Guinan isn’t around to help them see that. 35: In the documentary Trekkies, Denise Crosby felt she had to get killed off before she got to be in the good episodes of TNG! 41: Yeah, I kept waiting for Data to show Ishara that hologram but he never does. 42: Sending Ishara back to Turkana IV rather than a cushy Federation prison could be construed as a punishment on Picard’s part, but Riker thinks (but never says) he’s just being a soft touch.
I like this much more than a 3 rating, for a few reasons. First of all I think Toussaint was great, although she doesn’t resemble Denise Crosby very much, she did channel that character’s determination and stubbornness. She just channeled it to a different purpose.
But my favorite thing about this episode was the performance of Brent Spiner. He somehow managed to impart a sense of Data being drawn Tasha sister, simply because she was Tasha sister, without betraying his character’s nature.
And I gotta say. Data was deadly with the passive-aggressive smackdown at the end. As data is escorting Ishara to the transporter room at the end she remarks that he hasn’t said one word to her and you can tell she is feeling the guilt. His response is “What do you wish to talk about?” As in- not only did your betrayal bear no fruit, you also mean nothing to me.
And then a minute later she’s on on the transport pad, amd she still wants absolution. It wasn’t all a lie yada yada blah blah blah. Data’s response? “Energize”. That’s cold, man.
But then, that final close up. Data’s an android, but that expression is positively poignant.
I would rate the episode a full point higher than KRAD just for Data literally tossing his cards behind his back.