Series: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Season 3, Episode 8
Original Air Date: November 13, 1989
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| via Memory Alpha |
The Barzans have discovered what they believe to be a stable wormhole and are selling off the rights to control it. The Federation is one of several bidders and the Enterprise is hosting the negotiations. One of the delegates, Devinoni Ral, representing the Chrysalians, is instantly drawn to Troi and she to him.
The wormhole story is interesting, but this is a Troi episode at its heart. Deanna Troi can be a challenging character. Most of the blame goes on the writers who rarely gave her quality material. I also feel that of all of the principals, Marina Sirtis was the actor who took the longest to settle into her character. Mind you, the writing could also have had a lot to do with that. Good writing will save poor acting far more often than the other way around. All of that said, I generally like the Troi stories. In the better ones, she's given lots of room to be a real person. She is a professional woman trying to find and defend her sense of self in the face of an overbearing mother and the stifling culture she represents and, as in this story, in the face of her lovers. Men fall in love with her at the drop of a hat and it's certainly not difficult to understand why. She is intelligent, compassionate and undeniably beautiful - an irresistible balance of confident and vulnerable. To her credit, she never surrenders herself completely to any of them. I have known a lot of women who live similar dilemmas every day of their lives. This is the Deanna Troi I enjoy the most.
Ral, on the other hand, borders on unwatchable: smarmy, arrogant, deceitful. I find her sexual attraction to him entirely convincing but I cheer the moment when she finally sees through his bullshit.
Acting Notes
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| via WikiSein |
Matt McCoy (Ral) was born May 20, 1958 in Austin, Texas, though he grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, my part of the world. I had good friends who graduated from his alma mater, Walter Johnson High School. He attended the University of Maryland while working at Harlequin Dinner Theater in Rockville. My buddy Game Designer worked there one summer, too. McCoy ultimately graduated from Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City.
McCoy has had a long and active career since the late '70s. He is best known for three roles: Michael Bartel in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (in which John de Lancie also appears), Sgt. Nick Lassard in the Police Academy film franchise and Lloyd Braun in Seinfeld. Writing is everything. Lloyd, one of Elaine's temporary flames, is every bit as smarmy as Ral but it plays much better within context.
Historical Note
Something very important happened between the airing of the previous episode and this one: the Berlin Wall came down. After 9/11, it was probably the most memorable historical event of my lifetime. It didn't seem possible. My family and I had visited East Berlin only five years before and the facts of the Wall, the Iron Curtain and the paranoia surrounding felt inevitable and permanent. Suddenly, it was all over. The Cold War was on its last legs.
This matters for Star Trek, largely conceived as a philosophical response to Cold War policies and attitudes. How would the show adjust to the geopolitical shifts?
Sadly, we know in hindsight that all hell would soon break loose in the Balkans. The sudden destabilization wreaked havoc in several far flung pockets. Many problems got easier. Others got a lot more complicated. There would be plenty of material for allegorical science fiction. But for an all too brief moment, there was hope.
I so agree about Troi who went from”I am feeling fear, Captain” to someone who can command attention and respect. She is one of my favourite characters later on. To be honest, I wanted her to end up with Worf. This episode was good but this smarmy used car salesman was tough not to want to punch him. I couldn’t understand how she fell for this dweeb.
ReplyDeleteFunny, my wife was just recently saying the same thing about Troi/Worf...
DeleteI've known men like Ral. I have also known women who were drawn to men like Ral.
Thinking about it right now, I think the problem with Troi, as a character, is that she is, presumably, the ship's mental health expert. On the one hand, that was very ahead thinking for Star Trek. On the other hand, unless I'm not remembering (which is very possible), they never use her as such. She should have the same kind of power as the doctor, within her realm. Telling the captain, or any of the crew, that they were not currently mentally fit to do their job would have made for an interesting story.
ReplyDeleteNone of which has anything to do with this episode.
The counselor side of Troi's character is better developed as the series goes along.
DeleteThere’s a kind of sequel to this in Voyager, “False Profits,” where we meet up with the Ferengi again. Speaking of which, “The Price” was also the start of the effort to redeem the Ferengi, which...kind of backfired as much as the original version. Even though Deep Space Nine spent seven years showing an incredibly nuanced version of them, “Ferengi episode” still became a common pejorative.
ReplyDeleteThe Troi romance episodes...to me they were always embarrassing and even insulting. This was a smart lady! With keen emotional insight! But she didn’t seem to have any for her own! Ever! Call it irony or just lazy writing. I mean, between her, Crusher, and Short-Lived Yar, and women were never the strong suit of the series. So the next four series made a concerted effort to do better, and thank goodness! It’s culminated in Michael Burnham, who has gotten to be as nuanced a character as the franchise has ever seen.
As for the Berlin Wall, I managed to experience its fall without overly remarking on it. I mean, I remember people making a fuss about it coming down, but it seemed as if the significance of it was assumed to be understood, when there was at least one generation for whom it was not. Now of course I get it. As a writer it’s even hugely compelling a subject. (Maybe one day!) But it made less of an impact than, say, the media sensation that was Desert Storm. There were trading cards! If you had given me a Berlin Wall trading card I guess it would have registered better. And been kind of relevant, too...
My upbringing had a lot to do with the impact of the Wall coming down for me. My father has strong emotional attachments to Germany, including a lifelong friend whom we visited in West Berlin. Also, he spent his entire career in foreign relations so the Wall falling was THE game changer.
DeleteTo your point, though, I will also forever remember his emotional reaction that first night the US bombed Baghdad.
That would have indeed made a huge difference.
DeleteYup.
DeleteThis was a good episode but not one of my favorites. Got to admit, didn't care for the character of Troi during the first season. In fact she was third on my wish list to disappear before the beginning of the second season. My first choice being Wesley and second being the concept of children on a starship that went deep into unknown space and could see combat.
ReplyDeleteVery happy that Troi was developed and became an important part to the show.
I was in West Germany on the Uncle Sam travel plan in 1987. My visit was during a REFORGER Exercise go to see the East/ West German border along with what was once the Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp.
I had to Google "Reforger Exercise"... another Cold War relic!
DeleteTruthfully, it was a blast! Of course that was back when the army's promise to show you the world didn't put automatically pick a soldier in the desert.
DeleteRight.
DeleteAs one who watched the entire series and forgot much of it, I was pleased to reacquaint myself with Mr. Mendoza's line to Cmdr. Riker: "Our skills are not dissimilar, Commander." Great writing throughout.
ReplyDeleteThe role of poker in the series is well worth examination on its own. As in real life, it is a game that reveals much about character.
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