A sizable portion of Star Trek fans would, if you polled them, likely state that the franchise’s biggest strength is in its ability to do so-called “social commentary” on the issues of today in a futuristic science fiction setting. When they say this, what they’re referring to is the interpretation of Star Trek that I’ve somewhat flippantly chosen to call “Roddenberry’s Fables”. This is the kind of story where our crew beams down someplace, encounters an alien civilization that either operates under a structure or is facing a situation that very closely mirrors a social debate in the real world. Back in the Original Series, this usually took the form of quite literally punching the moral of the week (typically Gene Roddenberry’s Opinion on something) into the guest cast, but with the advent of Star Trek: The Next Generation. we’ve by and large been more interested in helping our one-off characters work through their problems in a constructive way.

How interesting it is than that the one time the creative team did explicitly decide to Say Something Important about a major social issue of their time is largely considered to be a disaster.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation 365, Paula Block and Terry J. Erdmann compare “The High Ground” to “The Hunted”, by saying both involve a dangerous, violent man whom the Enterprise crew nevertheless find some manner of sympathy for, but point out that “The High Ground” was far more controversial, being banned in several countries for varying lengths of time. What they’re too polite to say is that of fucking course “The High Ground” was more controversial, because it deals with terrorists and openly, diegetically draws comparisons to several real-world terrorist campaigns. It’s a brazen move to be sure, and the show comes dangerously close to endorsing violent uprising as a valid form of material social change, even while it justifiably tries to stay ambivalent about the ethical underpinnings of it. Where things go wrong, naturally, is that the script ends up a little *too* ambivalent and, apart from making the dramatic crux of the plot hinge on yet another kidnapping of a female main character, basically just ends up reciting a bunch of vague platitudes about terrorism and violence that don’t actually *say* anything. As Michael Piller says:

“Another show that I wasn’t particularly happy with. We set out to do a show about terrorists. What was the statement we made about terrorism in the show? Was it the point where the boy puts down the gun and says, ‘Maybe the end of terrorism is when the first child puts down his gun?’ It was effective in the context of that show, but is certainly not a statement that provides any great revelation. You must be prepared to say something new about social issues.”

While Ron Moore puts it more bluntly when he calls it

“an abomination.

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“Welcome aboard. Now rewrite act three for me and have it on my desk by this evening.”

That’s how Ira Steven Behr was welcomed to Star Trek: The Next Generation by Michael Piller on his first day as producer and staff writer. That gives you an idea of what this show’s behind-the-scenes climate was like during the third season: Behr recalls how even though he was a veteran writer and producer, this was like no other show he’d ever worked on before. Everyone was frantically writing and rewriting stories, absolutely nothing was ready to go, and it stayed like that for the entire year. The insane workload eventually burned Behr out so badly that he walked away from Star Trek after only one season, and only came back to the franchise at Michael Piller’s personal request four years later when he and Rick Berman were drafting up what would become Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s sister show. We’ll talk more about Behr and his influence once we get to the fist story he actually wrote himself (as opposed to ones he did an uncredited rewrite of at the eleventh hour to get them into a marginally filmable state), but that script that Behr rewrote the third act of on his first day happens to be this one: “The Hunted”.

“The Hunted” is perishingly easy to explain. It is straightforwardly First Blood on the Starship Enterprise and, in spite of its positively ridiculous production history, it works and is a solidly watchable hour of television. There are moments in which it reveals its functionality as a work, and, frustratingly, when it does it’s at its most Original Series-esque: Even that third act Ira Behr worked on is one big chase through a bunch of pre-existing sets with a lot of flying fisticuffs and choreographed doofy fight scenes (Which isn’t altogether surprising as Behr, for a number of reasons, was never entirely comfortable with Star Trek: The Next Generation, being much more familiar with the Original Series). That’s not to say it’s entirely without merit, as the gambit our John Rambo analog, Roga Danar, pulls off is truly laudable in its cleverness and sophistication, even if he does kinda end up making the Enterprise crew (save Worf) look like a bunch of idiots in the process. Also memorable to me are the scenes where Danar is clomping around the Jeffries Tubes trying to misdirect the crew: The sets are some of the best interior designs of the year, exuding a palpable sense of being a sprawling, labyrinthine maze of corridors. Furthermore, Marvin Rush’s use of subtle red mood lighting really sets the tone for these scenes and also happens to look really cool. Actor Jeff McCarthy’s presence and swagger compliment this splendidly; he really sells the tension and walks around like he owns the place.

Which leaves examining the wisdom of doing First Blood on Star Trek: The Next Generation in the first place, which there is, even if it’s not entirely intuitive.…

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The worst parts of “The Defector” are what it inherits from “The Enemy”.

I mean that very sincerely in a number of different ways. This is another story dealing explicitly with Romulan culture and politics in an era of heightened tension with the Federation, and while it’s a more than decent one of those, it is hamstrung by its attempts to wed its continuity to “The Enemy”. What this does is reveal both how much of “The Enemy” actually really was a misfire, but also the dangers of relying too much on continuity in the first place as, you know, simply ignoring “The Enemy” wasn’t an option here (both in terms of common sense, as we’ve just done another Romulan runaround two weeks ago that I suspect most people are fonder of than I am and also because that’s never something this team, who much prefer to link new episodes back to old ones if the opportunity to do so presents itself than not, ever would have done).

So the Romulans are once again generically and programmatically shifty, manipulative backstabbers scheming to stir the pot just because they can. Even Commander Tomalak is back to puff out his chest and rattle his sabre at us, though don’t get too used to him-Dude barely shows up again after this. And yet apart from that there’s a lot of good stuff here, most notably in the character of Admiral Jarok himself, who immediately engenders our sympathy: His rank and the things we can extrapolate he did with it aside, here’s someone who’s been “on the ground”, so to speak, and understands firsthand the full consequences and repercussions of the Romulan Star Empire’s retrograde and destructive neo-imperialism. He’s the first real clue we get that Romulus isn’t a monoculture and that the cartoonishly bloodthirsty jingoism of Andreas Katsulas’ Tomalak does not speak for every Romulan. In fact, the folly of reducing an entire people down to crass generalizations is something of a theme, with Jarok needing to learn to trust the Enterprise crew and set-aside the in-built prejudices he’s internalized from living in such a xenophobic climate. And how great is it that this all comes together in one of the single most beautiful bits of lore-building in the show to date, when Jarok poetically reminisces to Data about the Valley of Chula, which is later brought to life on the holodeck through a breathtaking bit of set design from the art department?

The only concern I might raise is that Jarok becomes so sympathetic through all of this (I dare you not to get choked up when he starts talking about his daughter to Captain Picard) he actually runs the risk of upstaging the Enterprise crew at various points, which is something Michael Piller of all people should have caught. This episode does not portray the crew in the most flattering of lights, lining them up to get punched down by Jarok though having their first instinct to be to strip the scout ship (although do note how the episode pulls the genius sleight-of-hand of having Tomalak force Jarok to eat his words during the climax when he promises to do the same thing to the Enterprise: What was that about Jarok was saying about humans being inherently shortsighted, and what were we saying about the Romulan Star Empire and the Federation being the same thing?)…

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