“Thine Own Self”
Written by Christopher Hatton and Ronald D. Moore
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Season 7, Episode 16
Production episode 40276-268
Original air date: February 14, 1994
Stardate: 47611.2
Captain’s Log: Troi returns from a class reunion. Given the late hour, she expects to report in to Data, who’s usually in charge of the night shift, but he’s on a mission. Crusher, who’s in command of gamma shift in his absence, explains that a probe crashed on Barkon IV, and Data’s been sent to retrieve it before the radioactive material in the casing contaminates that world’s biosphere. It crashed in an uninhabited part of the planet, so he should be okay. Meanwhile, the Enterprise is rendezvousing with the Lexington to pick up medical supplies they need to deliver.
Crusher is keeping Data updated via subspace, though there’s no response—which is expected, given the radiation, but Crusher figured she’d give it a shot.
However, Data’s lack of response is more fundamental than that, as we cut to Barkon where a bedraggled Data with a ripped uniform—and no combadge—stumbles into town, encountering the town magistrate, Garvin, and his daughter Gia. Data cannot speak properly at first, but the more Garvin talks, the more Data is able to speak as well—though he cannot recall what his name is. His only memory is walking to the town from the mountains, which are very far away. He remembers nothing prior to that.
He’s holding a case labeled “radioactive.” Garvin looks at it. Data can read the markings on the side, but doesn’t know what the word “radioactive” means—he thinks it might be his name. Garvin opens the case and removes a piece of debris.
On the Enterprise, Troi is seriously considering taking the bridge officer’s exam, which would promote her to full commander and enable her to be in command of the bridge—as Crusher was earlier in the episode, and as Troi herself was due to exigent circumstances in “Disaster.” She’s been thinking about it on and off since that episode, and the class reunion crystallized it. She goes to Riker to discuss it, and he gives his full support.
On Barkon, Garvin takes Data to a physician named Talur, who theorizes that he’s an “iceman,” a person from the snowy regions of the mountains (where no one has ever been, but there are stories). She diagnoses him with malnutrition and tells him to eat some meat, butter, and cheese and she’ll check back tomorrow.
Gia gives him the name Jayden until he gets his memory back, and Garvin gives him new clothes. They take the metal fragments from the container to the blacksmith, Skoran, who is impressed with the quality of them. He offers to buy them, and Data agrees to sell half the lot (he keeps the others in case they can provide a clue to his identity). When an anvil falls on another smith’s foot, Data hefts it easily, stunning everyone, except Talur, who assumes that icemen all have great strength to help them fight off the creatures that roam the mountains. Garvin, however, is feeling ill.
Troi is taking one of the tests for bridge officer: an emergency in engineering on the holodeck. She fails it, as the Enterprise blows up. Riker can’t tell her what she did wrong, and the next time she takes that part of the test (she’s passed all the other parts with flying colors) it’ll be harder.
Data sits in on one of Talur’s classes, where she’s teaching the children that everything in the world has four elements: rock, fire, sky, and water. Data tries to explain how this is not good science, but Talur brushes him off. Data and Gia then meet with Garvin, who is arguing with Skoran over the price of the fragments—but they’re cut short by Garvin collapsing. To the viewer, it’s obviously radiation poisoning—lesions, hair falling out, fatigue, fever—but Talur has never seen anything like it. After Talur leaves, Data decides to perform his own investigation into Garvin’s illness—but as he and Gia go out to purchase supplies, they learn that others are sick like Garvin. Skoran blames “Jayden,” since nobody was sick until he arrived.
He creates a microscope using a series of magnifying glasses, and is able to examine skin samples from both Garvin and Gia—who is also showing signs of illness. Data is trying to find a cause for those two, as well as Skoran, to be ill. One thing that they’ve all experienced is meeting “Jayden,” but Talur has spent plenty of time in his presence and shown no signs of illness. Data also notices that Gia is wearing a pendant that Skoran made from one of the metal fragments Data sold to him.
Troi is poring over the engineering specs of the Enterprise when Riker tells her he’s canceling the rest of the test. She’s taken the engineering part of the test three times and failed. Riker says his first duty is to the ship, and he can’t let an unqualified person run the bridge.
However, after Riker leaves, Troi has an epiphany, and goes to the holodeck. She orders La Forge to repair the ODN conduit that’s the source of the problem—but it’s a suicide mission. And that’s what she has to do to pass the test: order someone to their death.
Data is able to determine, using lamp oil spread over a canvas, that the metal fragments he brought with him are emanating invisible particles. Talur is skeptical, but agrees to gather all the metal fragments in the village. The container he brought them in seems to block the particles.
Skoran and someone else arrive, pissed as hell. They think it’s all Data’s fault, and he agrees that it sort of is, but when they attack, he deflects Skoran with ease—but his friend hits Data with a pickaxe, ripping the flesh covering off the left side of his face and exposing the circuitry underneath.
Confused, Data leaves the village, and Skoran leads a posse to go after him. But Data comes back to Garvin’s house, and presents himself to Gia, now wearing a hood to cover the left side of his face. He lets her see his exposed circuitry, and he rushes to continue his search for a cure before Skoran and his posse come back.
Data knows that no one will trust a cure that comes from him, so after he administers the medicine he concocts to Garvin and Gia personally, he dumps the rest of it into the well water, just as Skoran and the others arrive. Skoran impales Data with a huge metal rod, which deactivates him (and electrocutes Skoran, though he survives it).
Days later, everyone is cured, “Jayden” has been buried in the town square, and the fragments buried in the forest. In Barkonian disguise, Riker and Crusher arrive in town and question Gia about their friend with gold eyes and odd skin who may have wandered into town. Gia tells them what happened, and says that he was her friend, too. Crusher scans, and finds his body. Riker has him and the fragments beamed to the Enterprise.
When Crusher activates Data in sickbay, his last memory is of a power surge when downloading the probe computer’s telemetry. He remembers nothing of the events of the episode, and is also surprised to see that Troi’s been promoted. She goes off to command the bridge for this watch, but not before getting Data to call her “sir.”
Can’t We Just Reverse the Polarity?: Among the many things Troi learns in her studies is that the secondary plasma vent has a triple-redundant bypass, which means the primary access junction is routed through the port transducer matrix. Cha cha cha.
Thank You, Counselor Obvious: Prompted by the events of “Disaster,” catalyzed by seeing people at her class reunion who were more successful than her, and no doubt figuring that if Crusher can do it, why not her, Troi decides to take the bridge officer’s exam that will allow her to be in command of the bridge. (Crusher having taken this test was assumed after she was put in charge of the ship in “Descent.”)
If I Only Had a Brain…: The power surge initially wipes Data’s memories and voice, though the latter comes back as he hears Garvin speak. (And presumably he has some manner of translation matrix that enables him to understand what Garvin’s saying, since we know it’s not English based on the Barkonians not recognizing the word “radioactive.”) At first, he is tentative and unsure of himself, but as time goes on, he becomes more and more like the Data we’ve come to know and love, first when he corrects Talur’s science in the classroom, and then when he dives into full research mode to try to cure the radiation sickness.
No Sex, Please, We’re Starfleet: When Troi first comes to Riker’s quarters, he’s playing his trombone, and continues to “talk” to her using the instrument, leading her to poke fun at him by saying he communicates better this way. He refers to her as imzadi during the conversation, and several times in the episode remarks on how much he cares about her, despite having to be a hardass when administering the test.
I Believe I Said That: “Did you come here for something in particular, or just general Riker-bashing?”
Riker accusing Troi of channeling Tor.com’s Ryan Britt, after she made fun of his rather adorable attempt to communicate via trombone.
Welcome Aboard: Michael G. Hagerty returns as Skoran, having played Captain Larg in “Redemption II”; he’ll also play a bartender in the Star Trek Klingon game. Michael Rothaar is kind of blah as Garvin, while Ronnie Claire Edwards—probably best known as Corabeth on The Waltons—does quite well as Talur. Kimberley Cullum was nominated for Young Artist Award for her role as Gia, one of eight nominations she received (she won twice, once for a three-episode arc of Quantum Leap, the other for a role on Home Improvement).
Trivial Matters: Christopher Hatton—whose spec script was the basis of the “Gambit” two-parter—pitched this story as “Data as Frankenstein.” You even get him befriending a little girl and being chased by the angry villagers.
Ronald D. Moore was inspired to do the B-plot of Troi taking the bridge officer test by Jeri Taylor’s novelization of Unification, which has a sequence in Troi’s POV where she’s musing on the events of “Disaster,” and how, having tasted blood, she wants to do it again. Moore gives a similar line to Troi when she’s talking to Riker about it.
The episode title comes from a line in Hamlet that Data actually quoted to Riker in “Hide and Q”: “This above all: to thine own self be true.”
Sir Patrick Stewart only appears in the final scene, and only has one line of dialogue—this was to accommodate his one-person show of A Christmas Carol, which he performed in London in December 1993 while this episode was being filmed.
Troi asks Riker if the engineering test is a no-win scenario, a reference to the Kobayashi Maru test first seen in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Make it So: “It appears I had an interesting time.” I had absolutely no recollection of this episode when I sat down to rewatch it beyond a vague memory of Troi getting promoted without any details sticking. And ultimately, having just watched it again, it’s because it just isn’t that memorable.
The high concept of Data doing the 1931 Frankenstein (I emphasize this because all the resemblances are to the movie, not at all to the Mary Shelley novel) is a strong one, but the episode never seems to get past it. We’ve been down this road before with Data in “Time’s Arrow,” but that episode had some humor value (the poker game, e.g.) plus Data was investigating something that the viewer was also learning about as the episode progressed. Here, we know it’s the probe fragments that are causing the illnesses, and we don’t have anything else to hang our interest on beyond Brent Spiner’s usual fine performance. His relationship with Garvin and Gia doesn’t really have any life to it (he had more of a rapport with Sarjenka in “Pen Pals” with considerably less shared screentime), and Skoran is too much of a straw villain to be taken seriously as a threat. The only thing I really liked about the sequences on Barkon were the scenes with Talur, beautifully played by Ronnie Claire Edwards, who provides a perfect balance of post-Enlightenment progressiveness with pre-Industrial Revolution ignorance. I certainly did not like that Data has no memory of the events of the episode, which seems horribly unfair to Gia and Talur and Garvin.
Troi’s promotion has the same problem: it’s a good notion, and a logical progression from the events of “Disaster,” but the execution falls somewhat flat, especially since Troi’s big catharsis is to send a hologram to his nonexistent death. It’s a much easier decision to make when you know it has no consequences. (This is a case where something like Wes’s psych test in “Coming of Age,” where he thinks he’s really leaving someone to die, would be far more effective.) Also it just seems weird that Troi now outranks La Forge and Data—though, of course, I’m sure that Picard would put either of them in charge of the ship ahead of Troi or Crusher….
Still, I can’t really call this a bad episode, especially one that showcases Spiner’s considerable talents, but I can’t call it good, either. Hence the mid-range rating.
Warp factor rating: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido has two new books out, neither of which are actually SF/F: the novel Leverage: The Zoo Job, based on the TV series about criminals who help people, and the baseball book In the Dugout: Yankees 2013, which he co-edited with Cecilia M. Tan, all about New York’s American League baseball team.
My strongest memory this episode is Ronnie Clare Edwards because Data and Talur have the strongest interaction. Also I looked at it an went hey that’s Corabeth from the Waltons. I also enjoyed the science discussions and Data creating a microscope for research very Holmesian. I disliked the part where Data’s memory is erased at the end because it makes what happened more meaningless. Troi taking the test was interesting mostly because I didn’t know that’s how it was done.
“Troi’s big catharsis is to send a hologram to his nonexistent death.”
Yes, but the same could be said of the Kobayashi Maru. The point of that test is for the cadets to “face death,” but it’s pretty clearly done on a holodeck equivalent, and the cadets know that none of it is real. However, it does force them to think about the fact that at some point in their careers they might be in a no-win situation and have to face death for real. Similarly, Troi’s test reminded her that part of the duty of being in command was to order people to their deaths, and she had to ask herself whether or not she could do that in a real situation before she could accept the promotion.
True – Troi was reminded of “part of the duty of being in command was to order people to their deaths” – but I find it hard to believe that a Ship’s Counselor wasn’t already well aware of this. That is, after all, the kind of thing that people go to counselling for…
You nailed it, Keith. This episode is damned not for being bad, but for being forgettable. I think I enjoyed the Troi subplot a lot more than you did, though. It’s a highlight of the season for me… which makes it a shame that its various scenes are lost in a sea of mediocrity here.
@3,
True, but there’s a difference between knowing that somehting happens and accepting that it could happen to you. And based on Troi’s reaction when she realized what the test was really about, I don’t think she HAD considered the fact that being in command would mean she might have to order a friend to his death until that moment.
I’m surprised so many people find this episode so unmemorable. This is one of my favorites. I’ve always loved the way that Talur is clearly trying to do science properly, in the only way she knows how, but she’s hampered by a simple lack of, well, data about the world. Maybe it’s because I worked as a science teacher for many years, but I always enjoyed seeing Talur try to hypothesize and teach her class.
And I liked Hagerty as well, and Troi’s realization of what it means to be in command, and the poignancy of Data forgetting the events that happened on the planet. I guess I just have better taste than the rest of you. :-)
— Michael A. Burstein
Troi did say: “I knew that [ordering someone to their death] was part of being in command, and I thought I’d prepared for it – but when the moment came, I hesitated…
I think this is a nice little episode — not great, but harmless and mildly enjoyable. In the wake of “Homeward,” it’s kind of refreshing to get a story about contact with a pre-warp culture in which the Prime Directive is pretty much a non-issue and you can just show a lead character interacting openly with and affecting the culture rather than desperately trying to keep secrets from it. Sometimes I get so sick of Prime Directive stories and like seeing first-contact stories where the PD isn’t a factor.
Michael, I agree totally. Whatever its flaws, I think those are made up by other, less tangible things. Like the music. I love the background score, which does an amazing job of helping set the feeling of the place (music is so underrated in its importance in TV and movies). And Ronnie Claire Edwards’s performance, not to mention Spiner’s, and Talur’s interactions with the others, particularly Data. (And there’s some good humor in there between Talur and Data.)
I remember this episode only because it was mentioned in an earlier review. My main problem isn’t that the episode is forgetable, it’s that I can’t buy the character of Troi getting this promotion. I think the idea of the test and preparing is handled much better in DS9 when Nog is attempting to prep for academy entrance exams and doesn’t encounter the scenario he prepped for. Also, I know the evolution for the counselor had been referenced previously, there’s nothing about her, most due to the writers handling of her for seven years, that indicated she was even mildly compitent to hold that position.
@10 – I disagree. I think that, from the moment that Troi challenged K’Ehleyr, she quit being a simple emotional disco ball. She’s progressed in a gradual manner, almost under the radar, but her reasoning and, more importantly, management skills have become more and more evident through the years. On the other hand La Forge is a fine engineer, but his interpersonal skills have been shown to be somewhat less-than, and they could well get in the way of his ability to command an entire ship on a long term basis.
My big problem with this episode is in the idea that Data is able to develop a single-dose cure for radiation sickness (something that does not exist in our current time) using primative instrumentation and only compounds available in a pre-industrial civilisation. And yet in the same episode, the “sending LaForge to his death” test reminds us that large doses of radiation are still lethal and uncurable, even in the 24th century.
Having said this, and here I disagree with your assessment of Garvin, I thought the scene where Data arrives in the village was beautifully played by all concerned and, if for nothing else, that scene makes the episode memorable. I also agree that “Corabeth” did a stirling job of portraying the conflict between deep seated ideas and new discoveries, and created a character that was both believable and likeable.
Oh, and my take on Troi’s simulation is this: Sure, she knew that she was talking to holograms. As an empath, she was more innately aware of the false nature of the simulation than anyone. But she’d known each of the people in the simulation for so long, and she’d served them in such a different capacity, that she simply took it for granted that she wouldn’t send them to their death. She hadn’t rejected the possibility because she hadn’t even thought to consider it. And so the test was effective and instructive.
My reaction to the B-plot of this episode is that if the test is something Troi had so much trouble grasping (at first), how might it have been for Dr. Crusher, who has presumably passed the test sometime before the episode began? She has sworn an oath to do no harm, yet in order to earn the promotion she has to pass the test by ordering someone to their death. Yes, it could probably be rationalized by saying: (1) She’s not actually ordering a real person to their death; she’s ordering a hologram to their “death”. (2) By doing so she may be theoretically doing harm, but it’s the price to pay to avoid doing far greater harm. Still, it nags me that a doctor can reasonably be shown to take this test, pass it, and mean it. I suppose that would be necessary if a doctor is to command a medical ship as she does (the Pasteur) in the possible future laid out in All Good Things.
Actually, what this episode reminds me of most is The Ensigns of Command, what with Data trying to save a village while out of contact with the Enterprise, and the person in charge discounting what he says. But The Ensigns of Command worked better than this because the obstructionist mayor wasn’t unsympathetic, he just didn’t understand the degree of danger, whereas here it’s just Ignorant Superstitious Peasant Guy being ignorant and superstitious for the sake of the plot.
I always really liked this one.
@14: Doctors often have to make decisions that involve choosing to let someone die — triage in an emergency situation, choosing whether to save a pregnant mother or her baby, choosing to honor a do-not-resuscitate order, deciding which terminal patient will get an organ transplant and which won’t, etc. “Do no harm” is a nice ideal, but in reality it sometimes comes down to minimizing harm rather than averting it altogether. Choosing to sacrifice one crewmember to save a thousand is the same kind of decision, and it’s something that a surgeon’s experience would definitely prepare her for.
I have no issues with the Data on the planet with the pre-warp civilization. I agree with CLB that there its nice to see the most advanced “person” of the Enterprise interact with the untechnogically without any sort of pretense.
I do have issues with the “Command Test.” Command is something that you can’t learn from a book, it’s something that needs to be learned by experience. It’s the reason that in service academies and Officer Training Schools the cadets are given authority over smaller groups of cadets- to practice authority. As they are comissioned and rise through the ranks, they are given command over increasingly large groups (a damage control team, a shift, a division). Worf goes from Assistant Security Division Commander to Security Division Commander to Tactical Operations Officer/Commander of the Defiant (with it’s 40 person crew) back to Enterprise as Security/Tactical again to (in the novels) First Officer of the Enterprise. Troi never had that sort of background- she’s a counselor who becomes a staff officer to Picard to Chief Counselor. How big can the counseling staff of the Enterprise be- 3 or 4? I understand that she has the rank of Lt. Commander, but how does this qualify her to actually be in a command situation? Also, the test is referred to as t he “Bridge Officers Test”, which suggests to me that she is capable of manning a station on the bridge, not that she can command it.
@17: Too bad nobody told Dr. Zimmerman about triage; would’ve saved us from at least one excruciating episode of Voyager.
@19: You say “excruciating,” I say “brilliant.” I love “Latent Image.”
@14,
Funny you should mention Dr. Crusher here, because I too was wondering whether she could have passed this test. My issue isn’t the fact that she’s a doctor but the fact that this is precisely what she COULDN’T do when she was in command in “Descent”: she put the thousands of lives on the Enterprise at risk because she couldn’t bear the thought of abandoning the relatively small number of people still on the planet. Given that, I wonder how she managed here, when she had to actually order someone to die rather than merely not rescuing him. Was it because she had learned from her previous experience? Because of the fact that it was only one life rather than several dozen? Because it was just a hologram? I don’t know.
@18 Exactly. I really quite like the Data plot of the episode, but Troi’s is about fourteen different flavours of prepostorous. She’s a shrink, it makes no sense for her to be an Officer of the Line; for her to ever be in the bridge chain of command at all is ridiculous, never mind that with this episode she supposedly outranks Data (who is third in command of the ship, we recall) and given that there’s no apparent difference between service officers and the actual military types…
She shouldn’t have been in command in Disaster, either. Someone who is in any position to know what the hell they’re deciding and how to command would outrank the freaking ship’s counselor. They shouldn’t be the same chain of command.
I found this one “mildly” entertaining. I loved the stuff on the planet, but the Troi plot is ABSURD to the extreme. Keith, I am surprised you didn’t mention the absolute non-sense that a counselor would in any way be allowed to take a command test. I can’t think of a single military now or anywhere in human history, where a doctor or counselor was legally able to earn command stripes over officers that have presumable been training for this for years. Sorry guys, but this is just Sirtis and McFadden trying to get more screentime (rightly) in a completely stupid way.
As for the A-plot I agree with C.Bennet, I also enjoy a primitive civ episode where the PD isn’t a plot point. That being said, Data almost accidentally exterminating an entire city might be a good reason FOR the prime directive!
I don’t understand the hostility to the idea of a counselor also happening to be a qualified Starfleet officer. After all, Starfleet isn’t the same kind of military we have today. It’s primarily a scientific and diplomatic body. So science specialists such as doctors or psychologists wouldn’t be some peripheral group marginalized from the main line of fighters; if anything, it would be the other way around, with the scientists, explorers, and diplomats being the core of the service and the fighters being more marginalized, called on only when needed.
It’s worth noting, also, that Troi is not simply a psychologist. From the start of the series, she has also been a key diplomatic advisor. Her job is to assess the behavior of aliens in contact situations, to advise the captain on how to manage contact and diplomacy, to provide expertise on alien customs and practices (such as coaching Picard in the Jaradan greeting back in “The Big Goodbye” in the first season, or helping Data work out Tamarian language and culture in “Darmok”), and so forth. She’s as much a diplomat, a xenologist, and a cultural anthropologist as she is a therapist. In my Trek novels for Pocket Books, I’ve codified that side of her responsibilities with the title “contact specialist,” which I treat as a specialty she holds alongside her counseling specialty (much as Spock was both first officer and science officer, Worf and Tuvok were both security chief and tactical officer, etc.).
And given that Starfleet is primarily a scientific and diplomatic service, not a combat service, it shouldn’t really be that unbelievable that a scientific and diplomatic specialist like Troi would be eligible for a command position. It’s a mistake to judge Starfleet by the same standards as a modern military, because the two have different priorities and purposes.
@24
Thanks Christopher, good comments.
While not an exact parallel to your post, i can think of one real life example which echoes your points. Personnel on Canadian naval warships (and I would assume, other modern navies as well) whose primary function may not be combat oriented (e.g. Cook, Dentist, etc) do have a battle station assignment or function during General Quarters (the equivalent of Trek’s Red Alert). If anything, I always thought it odd that a staff officer like Troi didn’t have a more functional role during battle conditions.
@25: Theoretically, Troi’s role in combat would’ve been to advise the captain on anything she sensed about the other side’s motives and goals. I’m reminded of Jules on the TV series Flashpoint — her main role on the team is as a profiler, responsible for assessing the psychology of a dangerous felon, figuring out what they want and how to reason with them if possible, or talking them down herself. And that show did a very good job of showing how getting into the bad guys’ heads like that could be invaluable to stopping them and saving lives. Unfortunately, TNG didn’t generally do nearly as good a job at showing the value of Deanna’s specialties.
As I see it, Deanna had to be an incredibly capable, versatile, gifted officer in order to fulfill the wide range of responsibilities she was asserted to hold on the crew. But the show rarely explored that in a way that did it justice. Which is why I’ve tried to do so in the books and stories I’ve written involving her.
I don’t have a lot to say about this episode. However, I would like to say that while I am Christopher Hatton I am not that Christopher Hatton.
Not much to say either, but I do enjoy a Data episode, and I also enjoyed the interactions between him and Talur, with Talur basically being as good a scientist as she can be given the information she has, and willing to consider other things, as opposed to the stereotypical medeival stupid close minded peasant.
@22,
Regarding Troi outranking Data, it really is absurd. Data is put in command of the bridge all the time. So he must have taken this test and passed it, years ago. Yet he is still a Lt. Commander. Troi takes the test and all of a sudden she becomes a full Commander. Huh? Was that automatic? Did Picard make a judgement call to promote her?
@c. Bennet,
No one is saying Troi is not capable of Command. What we are saying is the way showed on screen is absurd to the highest degree. There is absolutely no reason she should be promoted above data, worf, or Geordi as seen. I will make my point again, that on a ship of over 1000 people there are likely people that have been on the command course for years, and it is offensive that troi gets such a slammin job because she took 1 test.
And whether it is a military or “peaceful armada”, I still find it highly unlikely that anyone in the medical, phsychological, or engineering fields would really end up in command all that often. Just like today, and likely more-so, these are fields that take years of specialized study to attain, and to just take a command test on a whim…. I am not buyin.
I really liked the planet interaction with Data even down to the straw villian character. Not only just because of Data but mainly because by this time I was really really tired of the PD arguments which were lousy logic and ethics arguments at best. I really never liked any of the academy or officer testing structure within this show. Almost none of it passed the smell test. BTW, I have known naval medical officers and in order for them to reach commander status they not only have to be able to do their own specialist duties extremely well they have to spend years in charge of smaller groups before they are allowed to be technically in charge in a combat situation. It isn’t that Deanna wouldn’t be qualified its that all the other bridge officers have been shown in some way in direct command of their subordinates I can’t ever recall a junior counselor or diplomat or empath that she ever interacts with. That’s why this B plotline bores me even more than the Wesley Academy episodes.
@30: With Troi and Crusher being full Commanders, while they outrank Data in terms of actual rank, I don’t think that necessarily means they always have authoritative command over them in every area of operation. Maybe they do if not otherwise specified. For example, Data is still 3rd in line to command the ship, no matter the ranks of the other officers on board. Remember the episode where Wesley, as acting ensign, was put in command of a team of officers that outranked him? It seems to me that the structure on the Enterprise is that appointed mission commanders have precedence over rank.
I am still a little confused about the nature of the bridge officers test though…but here is a suggestion. Data is clearly a bridge officer because he is on that track. Perhaps then, he can get bridge officer duties without obtaining a rank of commander, and becoming a commander for him takes something more. For someone in the sciences like Troi, perhaps becoming a full commander and/or a bridge officer requires the test, which for someone on her track is maybe meant to be hard (even though someone like Riker or Saavik did all that stuff at the academy).
I always took it to be that Troi, over the course of her career, had earned all the qualifications one needed to command the bridge except for passing the final, formal test. Like someone who’s earned enough college credits to earn a degree but hasn’t yet done her final dissertation.
Although the point that’s been made about needing to have authority over others to earn command status is a good one, and hard to refute.
I loved this episode and it highlighted why Deanna is my favourite character. I was frequently bullied and picked on while growing up I could relate to Deanna a lot when I was little. She was constantly victimized by aliens, belittled by villains, seemed very unsure of her abilities, and had an overbearing family member (and I could certainly relate to all of these qualities).
But I think “Face of the Enemy” was a pivotal moment for her. She had to act totally unlike herself to solve a literal life-or-death problem and I think it made her realise that she was a lot more resourceful and mentally tougher than she had ever known.
And I think the fact that she is an empathic psychotherapist would be a huge benefit as a commanding officer. She would have the ability to sense the feelings of the people under her command and know very well when they would need reprimand or extra encouragement or persuasion to do their duties, and she would also know when they were not able to do what they were told.
@20
This isn’t the thread to get into it obviously but who knows how long it will be before we get to Season 5 of the “Voyager” rewatch? I have to respectfully disagree with Sean O’hara and wholeheartedly concur with you that “Latent Image” is brilliant. Robert Picardo was usually able to elevate the most mediocre writing on that show (of which there was an abundance) but in this case they gave a gifted actor some excellent material. My pulse still quickens whenever I watch the Doc have his first breakdown in the mess hall.
As for “Thine Own Self” I’m with most of the posters here. Reasonably enjoyed the A-story but found the best part of the B-story to be Riker talking through his trombone. In fact, I think I enjoyed Troi’s appearances on “Voyager” more than most of her storylines on “TNG”.
@32 & 33: these are the most applicable comments, both in the fictional world of Trek and from what I’ve seen in real life military service.
It may seem a little silly to apply RL navy practices to what we’re seeing in a fictional piece of pop entertainment, but I think it’s a legitimate application. The rules of Trek were set by two of its primary creators who both had strong military backgrounds in RL. Rodenberry in the Army Air Corps/Air Force. And an even bigger influence, I would argue, on this part of Trek’s creation, would be Matt Jeffries, with his US Navy background (the Wrath of Khan DVD has a great documentary from the early 2000’s interviewing Jeffries and Lee Cole about this).
As 30 pointed out, an officer’s actual rank doesn’t mean they have are higher in the ship’s heirarchy. From earlier comments in this thread, this seems to be a constant point of confusion. Yes, it’s possible to have a higher rank, but not be higher in the chain of authority.
I think part of the fault here lies with the TNG writers, as it wasn’t made clear that Troi’s rank doesn’t mean she goes above Data in the ship’s authority. Even after Troi obtained full Commander status, Data was still the ship’s 2nd Officer, or third in command. As pointed out earlier, Troi’s line of authority is still primarily in the Medical branch of the service, even though she now had the Bridge Command qualification.
Crusher had been a full Commander from day one of the series and she was bridge qualified, yet her position in line to command the ship remains quite low (most of the crew had to leave the ship before she was got the center seat in “Descent”). Other than taking watch duties of the third shift, neither Crusher nor Troi would take command of the Enterprise again, even with the rank of Commander being higher than Data’s Lt. Commander rank.
In many ways, the extreme situation where Troi takes command of the Enterprise back in “Disaster” was an example of this lack of understanding on the part of the writers between rank and position of authority. While Troi was indeed the highest ranking person on the bridge, if the Lt who died in the opening was still alive, that Lt would remain in command, despite the lower rank. When Ro appeared on the bridge, Ro should’ve taken command. She was a Command officer and was Bridge Qualified, unlike Troi at the time. (Note that Chief O’Brien would not take command as he’s not a commissioned officer. That’s despite the fact that he was probably the most qualified person at that moment to take command of the Enterprise).
In real life, I’ve seen Medical personnel who have even higher ranks than Troi, and are still not in command of a ship.
On the HMCS Provider, a very large, armed, military re-supply ship in the Canadian Navy, the dentist held the rank of Captain. But because she wasn’t a MARS officer (the Canadian Navy’s maritime command line), she didn’t have her surface warfare qualifications and never stood watch on the bridge or CIC, and was certainly never in command.
A couple of interesting notes to the example of the dentist who held the rank of Captain. During General Quarters (“Red Alert” in Trek speak), she had a battle station assignment, which was to serve in the infirmary. Also, contrary to popular belief, it’s possible to have two people serve on a naval vessel who hold the rank of Captain. There’s certainly no confusing the dentist for the commanding officer of the ship. Everyone in the crew knows that rank doesn’t indicate command position.
@37: At one point during the movie era, both Scotty and Spock held the rank of Captain, but even though Kirk had been demoted back to Captain, he still had command of the vessel and authority over them.
@37,
Good writeup. It’s pretty clear at this point that “Disaster” was the abberration. Of course, the plot dictacted that Troi’s decision resulted in the desired outcome.
@38: True, it’s possible for a ship to have more than one person of captain’s rank. But it’s hard to believe that Starfleet would allow three captains and four commanders to stay as the Enterprise‘s command crew, instead of distributing them to other ships where their talents could be useful, and meanwhile allowing junior officers on the Enterprise to rise through the ranks rather than being trapped in career dead ends because the command crew is so unchanging.
Then again, these guys did violate roughly all the regulations, hijacked and lost a starship, and sabotaged another starship. Gratitude for saving the world may have spared them from being drummed out of the service, but that may have been basically PR; after they’d proven themselves such mavericks, Starfleet might not have trusted them to follow the proper chain of command. Maybe they were clumped back together on the E-A because no other ship would have them. Although that attitude couldn’t have lasted indefinitely, because Sulu finally managed to get his own ship a few years later.
@@@@@ 39 Thanks.
And yes, I agree with you that for plot purposes, tension and conflict, the writers put Troi in command because they wanted the inexperienced (in ship operations) Troi to go up against the hard-nosed, qualified Ro.
Ro probably knew she was supposed to be in charge, and just wanted to buck the authority. Troi was panicking too much to sense the deception.
I liked Talur’s cracked explanations of natural phenomena, and I especially liked the fact that her character didn’t immediately get all uppity with Data when he poked holes in her conclusions. She straddled the line between skeptical but inquisitive, and that made her seem more real than the typical cardboard character we might otherwise have gotten from less talented scriptwriters. As a father of young daughters, the only thing that seemed “off” to me was how quickly Garvin became completely at ease at unsupervised contact between Gia and this strange man with the weird colored skin and freaky eyeballs….. Lastly, I really wanted Data to respond to his new Iceman moniker by saying “Very well. In return, I shall call you “Maverick”.”
Just to quickly point out, a language could theoretically be spoken identically to English and have a completely different alphabet. After all, an alphabet is simply a respresentaion of the sounds of the language, not truly the language itself.
Anyway, I thought this was a pretty decent episode, if a bit too straightforward and based on amnesia. I’d give it a solid 7.
I’m surprised at the number of people who feel Troi/Crusher aren’t qualified to be bridge officers because of their doctor/medical backgrounds. Crusher isn’t commanding as a DOCTOR, she’s commanding as a Starfleet officer. The Hippocratic Oath doesn’t apply to her when she’s running the ship as far as I’m concerned.
The thing that threw me about Troi was how QUICKLY she became a bridge officer. How long was Data on the planet? How long of a time period could this episode taken place over? I get the impression that she mastered everything in a week or less. I would expect the test to take place over a few weeks or months, not days.
@45
I will readily admit to having very little knowledge about radioactive materials and their affect on human/humanoid physiology. However, Data had been on the planet long enough to have the accident, lose his memory, travel to the town, develop a rapport with (at least some members of) the community, discover that some people were getting sick from the radioactive materials, conduct research with the local scientist, develop a cure, dispense it to the population/water supply, get attacked and “killed,” and have been buried for, according to Keith’s review, a few days. I could very easily see the planet-side events of this episode taking place over at least a month.
The thing that I didn’t understand about this particular episode was why Talur (Corabeth) didn’t get sick. Was there an explanation for this? She was around the radioactive materials too — and everyone else was sickened by it. Why was she any different?
The Prince, Talur didn’t buy a necklace from Skoran. She was never in any direct contact with the metal until towards the end of the episode when she started collecting the fragments.
I agree, that Talur and Data’s interaction is one of the highlights of this episode, but so is the “killing” of Data. I remember being freaked out about it when the episode aired. I thought it was very dramatic and well done. I would rate this higher, more like a 7 or 8, I really enjoy this episode more than most on here.
Don’t forget that Data was put in command of the USS Sutherland so he must have passed the Bridge Officer’s Test. It seems unlikely that Deanna would be given that chance at that stage in her career.
All,
The biggest absurdity of Troi being promoted to commander is that her primary role is as a subordinate to Dr Crusher. She is ship’s counsellor a medical role, and implied to be the only psychologist/psychiatrist on the ship (doubtful for a ship of a thousand which has a significant combat role and is independent of port, she’d need a staff). While Dr. Crusher would probably need to be a commander, simply in order to be able to pull rank as CMO, one of her department heads doesn’t have that responsibility and shouldn’t be the same rank as her boss.
And her diplomatic specialist role needs no rank, as she is an advisor to Capt. Picard, not a diplomat herself.
Frankly her promotion in this episode should have been from Lt. JG to Lt. SG. At no stage was it ever shown that she was other than a callow officer in a position because of her, informed, empathic abilities and psychological expertise. In fact in the first two seasons it’s easy to believe this was her first posting outside the academy (except for her having a seat on the bridge).
So that part, for me was always a whiskey tango foxtrot moment.
@50: I don’t think the show has every described or demonstrated Troi as a subordinate to Crusher (even though until now she has been subordinate in rank). Counselor/psychologist might be considered a medical role, but she’s always been shown to be running her own show with her own big office. “Ship’s counselor” and “chief medical officer” seem to be two distinct positions not directly related.
I’ve always really enjoyed this episode. Brent Spiner does an excellent job as the amnesiac Data. After “Conundrum”, this was the second time that he lost his memory. To lose it once was unfortunate, to lose it twice was careless.
Ronnie Claire Edwards is superb as Talur. I loved that she was basically the best scientist that the Barkonian level of cultural and scientific development allowed her to be, though the speed with which she jumped to her wild theories was very enjoyable. She and “Jayden” made for a great team. His relationship with Gia is incredibly sweet, considerably more so than Data’s interaction with Timothy in the pretty bland “Hero Worship”.
Really, the only thing that I don’t like about this episode is that Data does not retain any memory of his experiences on Barkon IV.
@52/GusF: So you’re saying that Talur was Barkon up the wrong tree? :D
ChristopherLBennett: Indeed.
I would have replied earlier but I was trying to think of another Barkon-related pun. Sadly, I was unsuccessful in that endeavour!
Quoth Christopher: “So you’re saying that Talur was Barkon up the wrong tree? :D”
GUARDS! SEIZE HIM!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
“Cause, you know, SCIENCE!” : Talur, rolling her eyes, telling her family about her day and this silly new Iceman student and his ludicrous conclusions…
I would have replied earlier but I was trying to think of another Barkon-related pun. Sadly, I was unsuccessful in that endeavour!
Fine, so I guess it’s up to me to be bringing home the Barcon.
For whatever little this matters to the universe, (a) I wish Data had an association niggling at him with the word ‘radioactive’ – it is silly that he remembers all kinds of facts and words perfectly but doesn’t remember his library of information about radioactivity at all — And (b) I wish Troi and Riker established that Troi had been working toward this test for a while prior to the episode, like night school style. It really does feel rushed, and I don’t feel like her performance in the test scenes is strong and leaderly enough to make me feel confident about it – especially that she now outranks Data… doesn’t land with me. But anyway, it’s fine.
If you want to make Data into Frankenstein’s Monster, there are so many better ways to do that. More night scenes, so the moonlight looks like black and white. More lapses into aphasia. Recreate the scene with the girl at the lake. Have the room where Data does science resemble the secret Frankenstein lab. (In a way, this could be a callback to the lab in “Brothers”.) More pitchforks and torches. More dramatic shadows. Have data walk “this way” with a limp and a hunch. If it stayed grounded in real people like it (mostly) does, it could have been something more special. The B-plot hardly ties in anyway; might as well make two episodes out of it and go deeper into both. My kingdom for a machine of time.
rewtch thine
The scene where the support gives way and the poor guy has an anvil fall on his leg made me cringe. Good thing Data was there. I just wish he had picked up the anvil a la Time’s Arrow. That was probably one of the better parts in that problematic two-parter. I double take everytime I pass that scene, haha. I can’t resist seeing it more than once! …Data picking up the anvil, not the anvil falling on the guy’s leg*
Anyways, rambling… I just hope when they got a new stump for the anvil, they didn’t keep the Barkon. Easier to appraise it for potential rotting, that way..
I liked the way Winrich Kolbe directs the scene in Troi’s quarters after Riker cancels her testing. The camera is positioned beneath the Enterprise schematics that Troi has been poring over and at the same time she has her epiphany, the camera rises above it and focuses solely on her when she realises the solution is not a technical one. Kolbe symbolises that the answer lies with Troi, and not in some instruction manual.
I liked each of the two stories individually but they had nothing to do with each other and didn’t mesh well together. They should’ve done a 40 minute episode on each thing, rather than two 20 minute stories.
It seems like a big deal for Troi to go from lieutenant commander to commander. She suddenly gets a lot more responsibility and duties. But the way the show makes it seem, you can do it in your spare time and also have your best friend administer the test. They could’ve done a whole episode on this, make them go to a Starbase or Starfleet academy and have to deal with the other test takers, the administrator of the test, etc. Really flesh it out.
And doesn’t Data become first officer or captain in some of the comics or books that are set after Nemesis? Seems really irresponsible after him getting broken, going haywire, having memory loss, etc. every other week on the show.
@60/Tommy Tutone: “And doesn’t Data become first officer or captain in some of the comics or books that are set after Nemesis? Seems really irresponsible after him getting broken, going haywire, having memory loss, etc. every other week on the show.”
There were just as many cases where the organic characters got broken, went haywire, or had memory loss. In many of those cases, Data was the only one who wasn’t affected by some disease or mind control or something and saved the ship single-handedly.
@60/Tommy Tutone:
There is certainly precedent in real world militaries for personnel to take training courses part time for a given qualification while on active duty. Although I somehow doubt something as important as qualifications for commanding a ship would be one of those, but I could be wrong. I’m basing my answer on what I learned during an extremely brief stint in the military two decades ago, haha.
As for Riker being the one conducting Troi’s test, that’s his job as First Officer. They are both professionals and it’s stated clearly in the episode that Riker was not going to give her a free ride.
I also got a little queasy about a father allowing his young daughter to get so close to a male “stranger” (whether odd-looking or not) so quickly, and then letting her take a walk though the village with him unaccompanied.
But I still don’t know if that’s a plot hole/writers’ blind spot, or whether I’m reacting as someone living in an era where it’s almost become assumed that sexual predation IS the norm, and we must constantly be vigilant and protective to ensure it doesn’t happen. We probably need to remember that not long ago — even as recently as 1994, when this episode aired (on Valentine’s Day, no less!) — that was not the default assumption. Had people been naive, overly trusting, or downright stupid until then? Maybe, probably . . . but it has certainly made any kind of fiction, fable, or fantasy involving close, caring relationships between children and adults a lot more complicated and fraught than they used to be.
@63/Jazzmanchgo: “But I still don’t know if that’s a plot hole/writers’ blind spot, or whether I’m reacting as someone living in an era where it’s almost become assumed that sexual predation IS the norm, and we must constantly be vigilant and protective to ensure it doesn’t happen.”
We really have taken vigilance too far to the point of paranoia. Most adults would never dream of harming a child. Vigilance is important, but not to the point of stigmatizing something perfectly harmless just because a small minority of people corrupt it. Children need attention. They need human interaction, warmth, and closeness. That’s natural and healthy. Isolation is harmful and likely to breed pathological behavior. So stigmatizing all closeness as a response to abuse is counterproductive. You can’t live governed exclusively by fear. Awareness, yes, but not overriding fear.
The norm throughout human history has been for child care to be the responsibility of the entire community. The modern Western view that it’s the exclusive job of the biological parents and anyone else is an intruder is extremely abnormal. In a small village like this, it would’ve been perfectly natural for a child to interact with adults outside the family.
I might have mentioned this elsewhere . . . back in the early 1980s, there was an R&B/proto-rap song by Frankie Smith called “Double Dutch Bus” (“Double Dutch” referring both to the children’s jump-rope game and the form of African-American street slang that inserts a “-zizz” or “-izz” syllable into words and phrase). The music video for the song featured a jolly bus driver picking up kids who are playing the double-dutch rope game and driving them around town, entertaining them with his “Deezouble Deezutch” raps — basically a “Magical Mystery Tour” for the dawning hip-hop era. I’ve seen the video, I think it’s absolutely charming, and for years it was considered one of the best of its kind — in recent years, though, it’s been fiercely attacked by critics who claim that the smiling bus driver “must” be a predatory pedophile, and the video is actually glorifying pedophilia (or at least insidiously teaching children to trust potential “stranger-danger” attackers). If I’m not mistaken, there was actually an effort to get it banned from YouTube for that reason. I am 100% convinced that the makers of that video had nothing remotely like that in mind, but that’s where we are today . . .
(Here’s the video if anyone’s curious) — Frankie Smith – Double Dutch Bus (Official Music Video) – YouTube
@65/Jazzmanchgo: Somewhere along the line, we became a society paralyzed by fear. We’ve lost the ability to cope with fear rationally and responsibly, to keep it in perspective. And we’re usually afraid of the wrong things.
I found the A-plot quite memorable, and particularly liked the way in which Talur echoed many (e.g.) Enlightenment scientists who leapt to false conclusions (e.g. phlogiston and racialism) with all the certainty with which they (thankfully!) rejected religious superstition.
I had no problem with the B-plot: setting-up a test similar to the one Wesley Crusher endured is much harder in a familiar environment, and people seem to get very involved in stories even without immersive holograms. Additionally, some of the test has always seemed to me to be in Troi’s reaction to being told that it has been cancelled—giving-up too soon would seem to me to be contraïndicated for Command officers, and her needing to know the answer to the problem even if it didn’t count spoke well for her.
This is a pleasant episode, unlike much of the dreary 7th season. The b-plot is actually pretty useful: it progresses Troi as a character, sheds more insight into how the command structure works, is generally interesting, and I personally think it’s great to see Troi doing something other than counseling.
And the actual main plot is what accounts for my overall assessment of “pleasant.” It’s not so much about the mystery because the audience already knows what’s going on, it’s more about Data’s interactions with the girl and her father, and the teacher, and the other villagers. Spiner puts in his usual great performance. Mike Hagerty even at the time this episode first aired was like a “where have I seen this guy before?” kind of actor. Naturally with his comedic/improv background he was in a lot of sitcoms and I probably recognized him from Seinfeld (Rudy from “The Raincoats” episode). The actress playing Talur was my favorite of the guest stars though and I loved her whole interaction with Data and how they challenge each other over science/observation. That was a great scene.
It does stink that Data remembers nothing at the end of the episode from his adventures on the planet. I’d rate this one a 6.
@63/jazzmanchgo: That’s an interesting observation about feeling uncomfortable with Data as a stranger being allowed to roam around freely with Gia, without her father having any qualms about it. But that is of course transposing our modern sensibilities on this alien culture who obviously are more trusting when it comes to strangers. Even in our own culture within the last several decades has there been a shift in how adults and young children who are strangers are supposed to interact with one another. I’m reminded of an episode of ABC’s What Would You Do? from like a decade ago or so where a child actress was pretending she was lost and in distress and couldn’t find her mommy while on a busy city sidewalk. I believe some people just passed her by because they didn’t want to get involved, but one man was praised because he stopped to help her but kept an “appropriate” distance from the girl so as not to come across like a potential child molester/kidnapper. Adults nowadays have to act in such a way as not to create the wrong impression.
(68)
As Bill Burr observed: “Remember back in the old days, you could walk by and tussle a kid’s hair. Hey there little Billy. Today a kid comes around and I’m like, ‘Get that thing away from me!'”
Watching this episode again, after a long time, I now found one aspect to be particularly chilling: People in a medieval society falling to a mysterious illness, who begin to blame the outsider in their community, who is then discovered pouring something into the town well. The historical resonances here are hard to miss, with the twist being, it is something meant to cure them.
I always felt Troi being ordered to send Geordi to his death was one of the strongest most memorable moments of the series because it’s a sadistic and brutal test that Riker has concocted. It’s one thing to do a scenario where you send a bunch of nameless Redshirts to their doom, it’s another to be told, “Yes, you may have to kill one of your best friends.” Deana knew the truth of what Riker had put out for her and the sheer magnitude of what he’d designed in the holodeck to screw with her. No wonder she’s traumatized because the answer is not that she killed a hologram. It’s that in said situation, she WOULD kill her friend.
That would leave me traumatized.
And I never had an issue with Troi testing for command. Starfleet officers switch systems all the time. Maybe she would have been in charge of a Trauma Ship.
I normally try to avoid too much scrutiny on implausible things like how one could pose as a local on a planet when the universal translator has to translate everything, but here it was just a little bit too much. Data gradually regains his vocabulary and general competence as a scientist throughout the episode, eventually spouting all sorts of technobabble to Talur, but he can’t figure out what the word radioactive means at any point? Bridge too far for me…
The little girl playing Gia was amazing. When she tells Data to take off his hood so she can see, her reaction is perfect. She captures the expression of someone who’s seeing something they can’t believe, something quite frankly frightening, yet she still feels intuitively that she can trust him. You rarely see that kind of nuance from a child actor.
And I’m not trying to start anything here but I’m a bit conflicted about seeing the posts from those who suggest it was perfectly fine for Garvin to let Gia walk around with a strange guy with strange skin and gold eyes and superhuman strength just because we tend to be much more protective about our children these days. I’m not going to make any assumptions about which of those people commenting have children of their own, but I do, two daughters. And furthermore, forgive me if this is TMI but I feel very strongly about this- I myself was born to a rape victim. My mother was a minor when I was born. People looked the other way as they did not have any concern for her, despite warning signs. So yes, this issue hits me really hard, and while I agree we can’t live in fear and our children should be allowed to explore the wonders of the world and to develop interpersonal relationships with all manner of people, there are still predators out there and there always will be. Common-sense precautions should not be discouraged.
@72/fullyfunctional: Of course one should guard against predators, but the point is that an alert system that goes off every single time is just as useless as one that never goes off. Being alert for unhealthy adult interest in children doesn’t require automatically assuming the worst about every adult who interacts with an unrelated child. Most of the time, it’s going to be fine, and children need a caring community as they grow up. So be alert, yes, but not to the point that it hobbles healthy relationships between people.
The problem is that our society is too dualistic, tending to reduce everything to a binary choice between opposite extremes. And so we tend to respond to one harmful thing by overreacting harmfully in the opposite direction, when what we should do is find the healthy balance between the extremes. Going too far in either direction is harmful. That’s the point.
How could they beam up Data’s body when he didn’t have his combadge?
Because Riker and Crusher had locked onto his exact location with their tricorders. Communicators/combadges are just a convenience for getting a transporter lock, not an absolute requirement like the teleport bracelets and transceivers were in Blake’s 7. Transporters can beam up anything as long as they can locate and scan it. For instance, in “A Piece of the Action,” Kirk had Scotty trace the telephone calls to the various mob bosses to get their locations and beam them all to the same place.