The Ensigns of Command by: Melinda M. Snodgrass and directed by: Cliff Bole

 

“The Ensigns of Command” is written by: Melinda M. Snodgrass and is directed by: Cliff Bole.  It was produced under production code 149, was the 2^nd episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 50^th episode overall, and was broadcast on October 2, 1989.

 

Sometimes you’re watching an episode of a television show and can’t help but think “My God that man cannot act.”  That is the experience watching “The Ensigns of Command”, the second episode of the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation because the main antagonistic force in the A-plot gave a performance that the producers were not looking for and was dubbed by an unknown actor.  That means that the performance of Gosheven is stilted, the voice clearly not matching the physical acting choices in the scene, most likely due to a short turnaround time in television and a production team clearly with very little experience in dubbing.  It would be a performance that is easy to overlook if it weren’t for the rest of the cast in the A-plot being nearly as stilted without being dubbed over, so there’s a real question of why the decision to dub over Grainger Hines was made.  It also leaves the A-plot riding entirely on the back of Brent Spiner’s performance as Data, which isn’t really a problem because Spiner is clearly up to the challenge of carrying the episode.  The entire premise is that a planet is owned by the Sheliak who have a treaty with the Federation, but there is a colony of humans on the planet that need to be evacuated in three days or be exterminated.  The colonists have been on the planet for about a century and don’t want to go, plus the planet has some form of radiation that makes transporters useless and that the rest of the crew of the Enterprise stuck on the ship in the B-plot (attempting negotiations with the Sheliak).  There is a sense the script was rewritten because the setup of the episode is convoluted, likely due to being adjusted in rewrites to accommodate whatever the show could afford to show as this was an episode that director Cliff Bole noted as having a budget cut during production.

 

The script comes from Melinda M. Snodgrass and thematically is a follow-up to “The Measure of a Man”.  Despite a convoluted setup, it’s quite a strong script.  Data is kept as the focus for much of the episode, it opens with the android playing in a string quartet and musing about how he is technically proficient but there is a lack of “soul” in the performance.  While it uses the term soul, I’d argue Snodgrass means that Data doesn’t understand the nuances of human performance.  While “The Measure of a Man” is an episode that firmly establishes Data as a person with autonomy, the way he experiences emotions is different.  There’s a reason that robotic characters are coded as autistic, and Data is perhaps the prime example of this reading, something “The Ensigns of Command” really does establish.  The episode is very much Data having to convince colonists to be logical, leave their settlement for people who are arguably the original inhabitants.  Now that allegory shouldn’t be looked too deep, if it is Snodgrass is accidentally portraying the indigenous Sheliak as savages whose course of action is to exterminate a colony of people who had been living there for an extended period of time and in the B-plot obstinate about giving the Enterprise crew more time to get the colonists off of the planet because they don’t have the technology to do so with the radiation.  “The Ensigns of Command” is more interested in negotiating to a peaceful resolution to give land back to rightful owners more than anything.  That and exploring the idea that people cannot really be moved from their convictions with logic, Data has to eventually use trickery and make the threat of death seem actually real to get them on side, and to have a very odd little romantic subplot that just doesn’t work because of a weak performance.

 

The B-plot is much less consequential, it’s Picard and company going through every possibility to get either the Enterprise modified to accommodate the colonists or fix the transporters to get them off the planet quickly or appease the Sheliak.  In terms of a B-plot, it’s honestly fine if a bit generic.  It doesn’t feel like so many scenes in Season 2 where it is just there to pad out space because a script was running short and it does at the very least push the plot forward while keeping the audience reminded that time is ticking down, these colonists will die if a solution isn’t reached.  What makes it memorable is actually its conclusion: Picard finds a loophole and Patrick Stewart eats up manipulating these aliens into agreeing to giving them the three weeks they would need to get the colonists away with the arrival of a better Federation ship.  It’s not a scene I can so much describe, it’s more down to just seeing how Stewart eats up the performance and looks like he is about to burst out laughing with this particularly long pause.  It might just be one of Picard’s best moments because it is diplomacy through absolute manipulation and underhanded dealings giving the character just that little bit of edge that was missing in a lot of the first two seasons.

 

Overall, “The Ensigns of Command” should be one of the all time greats.  Melinda M. Snodgrass, despite having her script rewritten, actually has her ideas continue into the production.  Brent Spiner is on top form once again and as Data is actually the central performance because it’s about how he sees himself and not how the Federation sees him.  But there are bad performances that single handedly bring things down quite a bit and the rewrites convolute the setup just a bit too much.  7/10.