“Hod’laii.”
This is easily my favourite episode of Season Six; and it’s certainly, far and away, the best Counselor Troi episode in all of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s such an achievement over its sixth-season running mates that I actually find it startling. I mean, last week we were on “Aquiel,” and the season so far hasn’t exactly been a string of series-defining successes. Then this happens.
Back when my Star Trek fandom kicked off, it essentially ran in two streams. One was Star Trek: The Next Generation. The other was the run of Original Series novels, and especially the ones that dealt with the rich and enigmatic stories of the Romulan Empire. Most of these were written by Diane Duane, and her The Romulan Way was my favourite – with its story of Arrhae i-Khellian t’Llhweiir living undercover on Romulus, and Leonard McCoy’s efforts to break her out; and renegade Commander Ael t’Rllaillieu, holdover from My Enemy, My Ally, spurring revolution among the Romulan stars.
Much of what Duane wrote about the Romulans has been confounded by canon in the years since, but it remains “closer to the real thing” for me anyway (in the Narnian sense); and if nothing else, Duane locked onto a core truth about the aged and dying quasi-Roman star empire that the Romulans represented: it’s a great milieu for espionage stories. (This extends naturally from the Original Series: “The Enterprise Incident,” and the Romulans’ inaugural appearance in “Balance of Terror,” were Cold War adventure stories of the highest order.)
“Face of the Enemy” plays a strong and striking counterpoint to “Balance of Terror,” mixing a lot of similar elements with a few key polar changes. It is just as equally a submarine battle adventure story, told claustrophobically from within two enemy vessels dueling one another through coversion and disguise. It presents just as enthralling a portrait of the Romulan Empire, here through the invention of the Tal Shiar, the Romulan equivalent of the KGB or the Obsidian Order. Star Trek has never let the Romulans merely be bad guys, preferring instead a portrait of a complex political system, and individuals beneath it with widely varying views on the consequences of that system. Commander Toreth, in “Face of the Enemy,” has the same weary distrust of the systems of her allegiance that the unnamed Commander played by Mark Lenard in “Balance of Terror” had; and yet the same fierce, unquestioning loyalty to the idea of the Empire itself. When the Romulans were invented, I’m sure they were meant to be Russians; in 2014, they’ve become America.
So Counselor Troi wakes up on a Romulan ship, flips on the light, and sees that she, herself, is a Romulan. It’s one of the series’ all-time best cold opens, starting unapologetically in medias res and forcing the audience to backtrack the setup for the episode’s two throughlines (aboard the Khazara, and aboard the Enterprise – which will converge perfectly in the final act) over the course of the next ten minutes. Troi has been abducted and put into play, disguised as a Romulan spymaster, by Spock’s underground movement. This will put her into conflict with Commander Toreth, played by one of my very favourite television actresses, Carolyn Seymour. Here we have another inversion of “Balance of Terror,” which was so thickly male in its portrayal of the Romulan legion that you could nearly smell the sweat on the warbird’s interior bulkheads. “Face of the Enemy” is a duel of wits between female characters, and they are two of the strongest single performances of the whole series.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say that Seymour’s Toreth reminds me enormously of Ael t’Rllaillieu, one of my heroes from my reading when I was younger; and it bothers me to this day to think that, following the adventure here, Toreth was likely executed by the Tal Shiar for her unwitting role in Troi’s escape. Toreth is a great, primal performance, like a great warbird herself as she sits draped over her command chair, bathed in blood-red light.
As for Marina Sirtis, I’d be very surprised if this wasn’t her favourite episode of all time. She gets to kick about thirty different kinds of ass in the space of 43 minutes in “Face of the Enemy,” moving from frightened, to cagey, to clever, to downright badass by the time she is hailing the Enterprise from the bridge of the Khazara. (This would mark the second time in as many years that Captain Picard has had the insanity-inducing moment of opening communications with a Romulan vessel, only to see one of the female members of his senior staff staring back at him, complete with pointy ears.)
It’s part of a wholesale revision of Troi’s character that was spurred by current showrunner Jeri Taylor in these last, waning years (and, notably, “Face of the Enemy” is directed by one of the series’ few female directors – Gabrielle Beaumont). All of a sudden, Troi has been reconnected with her officerdom in Starfleet; has been given a thrilling adventure story to headline; and, shortly, will go after her command stripes as well. And then starts dating Worf, who has a pony tail now. Well, it can’t all be wonderful. But it speaks to an inherent truth, that the writing room seems to only just now have discovered: there’s fire in Sirtis, and therefore fire in Counselor Troi; and there has been, all along.
Blogging The Next Generation runs every Tuesday as I work my way through the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. Season Six is in stores. Season Seven will conclude the blog in early 2015 – you can pre-order the final season now.