Happy New Year, and Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, while eagerly anticipating the beginning of Discovery season 2, we review Tallera, a guest character and villain from TNG.
Last week we covered the best of Picard, and one two-part episode we did not mention was Gambit. This is the episode where we meet Tallera, who infiltrates a mercenary ship at the same time as Captain Picard on his own covert mission. She ends up confiding in Picard that she is a Vulcan V'Shar agent trying to find a psionic resonator weapon called the Stone of Gol to keep it out of the hands of an isolationist group who wants to overthrow the Vulcan government.
Well, as it turns out with most spy-vs-spy scenarios, Tallera was actually double-crossing Picard and everyone else because she was actually an agent of that isolationist movement. Her real name is T'Paal, which is spelled differently than the one we know from Enterprise. She does acquire the Stone of Gol and then uses it to wipe out several of the mercenaries.
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However, she didn't count on the logic of Jean-Luc Picard to figure out the weapon's weakness. He realizes from the markings on the stone that the psionic resonator can only work as a weapon against others if it uses the aggressive energy of the victim. In this way, the weapon is kind of a mirror against aggression, which is typically very effective in the hands of a trained telepath.
But Picard does some 24th-Century yoga, clearing his mind of all violent thoughts, and it allows him to disarm Tallera of the weapon. So Tallera did not succeed and was not seen again. She presented an interesting character because it opened a door into interesting factions and politics within the Vulcan planet, while also allowing for the Captain to show off his unique set of skills in this showdown against a new villain.
Robin Curtis played Tallera, and she is of course better known in Star Trek for taking over the Saavik role in Star Trek III and IV when Kirstie Alley did not reprise the role. She retired from acting in 1999 and now is a successful real estate broker.
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