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