The Defector by: Ronald D. Moore and directed by: Robert Scheerer

 

“The Defector” is written by: Ronald D. Moore and is directed by: Robert Scheerer.  It was produced under production code 158, was the 10^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 58^th episode overall, and was broadcast on January 1, 1990.

 

“The Enemy” was a proper reintroduction to the Romulans for Star Trek: The Next Generation, positioning them far closer to the relationship the Klingons were to the original series.  “The Defector” comes exactly three episodes later for a second appearance that is nearly as interesting by once again presenting the crew of the Enterprise with a single Romulan to face.  As the title implies, the idea is that reflecting instances of the Cold War, the Romulan Admiral Jarok, played by James Sloyan, is defecting under a different name after the discovery of the Romulans installing a base in the Neutral Zone.  The conflict of the episode then comes with the Enterprise crew not quite knowing if they can trust Jarok or being put into a trap.  What’s fascinating about the episode is that it opens with a sequence that foreshadows essentially the entire episode in a way, a scene from Henry V (a play I have not read) of Henry coming among the common people.  It's a great scene, but it is a little odd that it’s included here in what specifically reads as the production team realizing they have Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart leading the show and haven’t really taken advantage of that.  It is not Picard in the role though, it’s a holodeck program, but again we needed to take advantage of Patrick Stewart.  Data is also present, the scene ending with discussions on the nature of performance and acting as a lead in to the episode proper.  Jarok introduces himself as Setal, a lowly logistics clerk that has come across information that he shouldn’t have spurring on the defection.  The entire episode is draped in deceit exactly like this, the question being if it is a question of deceit for the greater good, deceit for selfish reasons, or deceit for the inevitable betrayal.

 

Sloyan’s performance as Jarok is fascinating, the makeup team on this episode in particular has added some extra detail to the makeup job.  The features on Jarok seem just a bit more exaggerated in a way, making him look a little less human despite Romulans falling into the camp of humans with bits stuck on aliens that are easy to do on Star Trek.  It’s subtle differences and not a full scale redesign like the Klingons between the original series and the films/The Next Generation, but the subtle differences go a way to otherize Jarok.  Sloyan is also not acting through incredibly heavy makeup, he still has use of his face throughout the episode.  Jarok is defecting for the sake of his family, he has a daughter, he knows that war is very likely coming as the Romulans are encroaching the Neutral Zone.  And yet, he opens with nothing but deceit and is interrogated by the crew.  The interrogation scenes are particularly intense, Ronald D. Moore’s script for this sequence of events in particular doesn’t actually paint the crew of the Enterprise in a positive light.  Picard, Riker, and Troi are all fulfilling the duties of military officers, being inherently distrustful of Jarok and almost pushing into the realms of torture.  The interrogation is incredibly pressing, Robert Scheerer shoots it in a lot of close up, often keeping Riker and Troi shot from the back to make them faceless.  The episode is right to make you sympathize with Jarok, the final scene of the episode does have Picard opine about how one day there will be peace and they can deliver a letter from Jarok to his family.  For her part Marina Sirtis is actually given interesting material as Troi, using her empathic abilities to read the confusion in Jarok’s mind and to conform his statements to the crew’s own biases against him and the Romulans as a whole.  It reads like a defining moment to who Troi is as a character, someone who is willing to compromise ethics for the crew, she is allowed to be a fully complex character which has been an issue with her character throughout the series thus far.  The episode is building to the point where Jarok is not actually being deceitful on the whole, he is lying about who he is but he is the victim of Romulan deceit.

 

The Romulan incursions are false.  Jarok was given false information to lure a Federation ship into the Neutral Zone and start a war.  The only reason that this fails is because Picard is a strategic genius and has brought three Klingon ships along with him because he knew something was up.  This aspect of the conclusion is the weakest aspect of the episode, it reads almost as if Moore realized he was getting close to the end of the episode and needed a conclusion to resolve the twist and neglected to have anything setup.  Though using the Klingons as resolution is an interesting parallel to show how far they have come in terms of relationship with the Federation and how far it is for the Romulans to actually go.  Jarok’s ending is far stronger: as he has been lied to and has nowhere in the universe to go as the Romulans would execute him for defecting (which they caused) and the Federation clearly wouldn’t accept him after how they’ve treated him, he commits suicide.  That’s what prompts Picard to hope for peace with the Romulans and realize subtly that he and the crew have been wrong, his suicide note is what needs to eventually be delivered to his family.  It’s an incredibly powerful ending and almost makes up for the shorthand tricks used in the third act to get to that finale.

 

Overall, “The Defector” is a surprising follow-up to the reestablishing of the Romulans, further cementing them as having their own story arc that will hopefully be followed up on.  Ronald D. Moore’s second script for the series shows once again that he understands how to integrate even unrelated scenes into the larger whole of an episode.  It’s particularly nice to have the crew of the Enterprise be seen ever so subtly as villains, or at the very least not the squeaky clean outlook that much of what has come before in the series.  8/10.

The Vengeance Factor by: Sam Rolfe and directed by: Timothy Bond

 

“The Vengeance Factor” is written by: Sam Rolfe and is directed by: Timothy Bond.  It was produced under production code 157, was the 9^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 57^th episode overall, and was broadcast on November 20, 1989.

 

“The Vengeance Factor” is an episode that has me slightly puzzled.  It’s an episode that excels in terms of showing off Captain Picard as the non-violent diplomat and Riker as a pinnacle of non-toxic, respectful masculinity, but it’s also an episode that while having commentary on slavery also makes the slave character the episode’s twist villain slowly working a master plan to kill not her masters, but an outcast group of pirates who are coming to the negotiating table for reconciliation and reparations.  Yes, “The Vengeance Factor” is an episode that is politically savvy enough to acknowledge the need for reparations to those oppressed in some way, yet the slave is a villain who apparently cannot understand her position.  It’s all because the reveal of the character’s villainy is actually a third act twist for the episode which reads as if writer Sam Rolfe wrote himself into a corner and needed a way to resolve the microvirus subplot that was a danger to the negotiations.  Yes, there is an assassin that is killing members of the Gatherers with the Sovereign Marouk, played by Nancy Parsons, leading the negotiations and as red herring.  Rolfe sets the Sovereign up as equally unreasonable as the Gatherers, and she should be the villain of the episode and not her assistant/servant/slave because the dialogue is certainly not clear.  The reason to bring reconciliation are also odd, it’s because the Gatherers are interfering and stealing from Federation outposts.  The conclusion of the episode is equally odd, Riker just outright kills the villain Yuta, played by Lisa Wilcox.  All of these elements just come together as particularly odd, and really don’t mesh well with each other to make the runtime uneven.

 

Timothy Bond directs his first of two episodes of the series and while his direction isn’t necessarily bad, it is quite standard for late 1980s television and there is a sense that it’s the direction dragging down the pace of the episode.  He is shooting it almost like a mystery, the script giving Riker and Crusher as characters investigative plots, but the audience already kind of knows what is happening with this episode when the conflict begins.  Getting the Enterprise crew involved also just reads as contrived, they feel like outsiders unofficially as the negotiators; they are pushing themselves in on these people and forcing their way of life for selfish reasons which is very odd.  It doesn’t violate the Prime Directive because the Acamarians as a people are technologically advanced enough that it doesn’t actually apply.  Rolfe’s script is also odd because while it has multiple subplots, none of them actually end up going anywhere and everything reads like setup until that particularly abrupt conclusion.  The Gatherers themselves are played mostly by men who are treated often as over the top comic relief but by the time you get to the third act they are all pushed to the background for the big reveal.  The ending of any given episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and any episode of television really, is important to tie everything together and “The Vengeance Factor” suffers because the ending leaves everything to fall apart.

 

Overall, “The Vengeance Factor” has some things going for it, Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard is particularly strong in the diplomatic role the episode gives him and Jonathan Frakes as Riker has some nice romantic scenes.  The message, however, is incoherent with an ending that leaves a main character a murderer and the reveal to the murder mystery someone who is already oppressed in her own existence.  It comes across as an underdeveloped script that is juggling way too many ideas for any of them to really come to the forefront leaving the episode both difficult to talk about in terms of anything interesting and a mediocre watch.  5/10.