Face of the Enemy
- Episode aired Feb 6, 1993
- TV-PG
- 46m
Deanna awakes to find herself altered to look like a Romulan, immediately unaware she's involved in a cat-and-mouse game as a member of their intelligence agency.Deanna awakes to find herself altered to look like a Romulan, immediately unaware she's involved in a cat-and-mouse game as a member of their intelligence agency.Deanna awakes to find herself altered to look like a Romulan, immediately unaware she's involved in a cat-and-mouse game as a member of their intelligence agency.
- Ensign McKnight
- (as Pamela Winslow)
- Computer
- (voice)
- Crewman Garvey
- (uncredited)
- Ensign Kellogg
- (uncredited)
- Romulan Aide
- (uncredited)
- Khazara Romulan Officer
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaWorf's ponytail makes its debut here. He would keep it for the remainder of this series and keep when he moved on to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993). Michael Dorn wanted the change because he was tired of "looking like a Klingon who's just been to the beauty salon!"
- GoofsTroi goes undercover as a Romulan, presumably relying on the Universal Translator to make her language sound like theirs. It has been established that the Translator takes the voice of whoever is speaking and translates the words to the listener's language. Therefore, to the Romulans, Troi would look like a character in a poorly dubbed foreign movie, with the spoken words not matching the mouth movements, which would make the disguise impossible to keep up, but no one seems to notice. However, it is never specifically stated that Troi is using the Translator, so it could be the case that Troi speaks Romulan and is able to pass herself off as one. The Commander's suspicions about Troi's background could be based on her accent, which a non-native speaker would surely possess.
This, of course, would ignore all of the other instances across all of Star Trek in which the crew communicate readily with species never before encountered, but at least this occurrence has a plausible explanation.
- Quotes
Counselor Deanna Troi: We're not playing it your way anymore, N'Vek. I've been kidnapped, surgically altered, put in danger. I've gone along with all your plans; now *you* are going to listen to me! You find a way to let the Enterprise track us, or I will go to Toreth and tell her I've discovered you're a traitor! I'll have you ejected into space, is that clear, Subcommander?
- ConnectionsReferenced in Star Trek: The Next Generation: Timescape (1993)
- SoundtracksStar Trek: The Next Generation Main Title
Composed by Jerry Goldsmith and Alexander Courage
This is an entertaining episode that gives Troi a decent storyline and contains a some quite compelling scenes.
I am a 'Hunt for Red October' fan so quite like the defection story and involvement of the Romulan cloaking device. Although the suspense associated with certain plot stakes does not really work when you know Troi will be back to normal next episode and the Enterprise will not be destroyed.
Marina Sirtis did not have the best material associated with her character for much of TNG, but this one is good. There is a reasonably good logic connected to her empathic powers that supports the plot. Above all she gets the opportunity to be a strong lead as opposed to a victim, love interest, or a sympathetic ear. For most of her performance she delivers superbly well. There are a few moments when she shouts at people that feels a bit over the top, but it somehow works due to the fact we know her character is acting the part of someone else.
The guest stars Carolyn Seymour and Scott McDonald are great as the Romulan characters and Sirtis has a number of solid exchanges with them. I particularly like the quite tense scene when Toreth tests Troi on her backstory over the dinner table.
It gives a decent level of continuity and follow up to the TNG 'Unification' episodes and is worth watching prior to the 2009 Star Trek movie and the Discovery episode 'Unification III'.
For me it's a 7.5/10 but I round upwards.
- snoozejonc
- Dec 1, 2021
Details
- Runtime46 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1