Character Insight No. 302: Best of Dr. Katherine Pulaski

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we continue our series on the best of TNG with a look at the best moments of Darrell's favorite main character, Dr. Katherine Pulaski.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp302 

Dr. Pulaski comes in to season 2 as a result of the show writers being unhappy with how Dr. Crusher's character had failed to develop enough in season 1.  Pulaski was initially written to be a bit of an homage to Doctor McCoy from TOS, although her brash style and crankiness did not really fit well with the completely revised cast in TNG.

Over the course of season 2, we see Pulaski go from completely bigoted views about artificial life forms like Data to someone who learns to care for her crewmate Data.  One of the shining examples of her misunderstanding of Commander Data comes in her first episode where she can't understand his interaction with other crew members.

QUOTE (from The Child, S2):

"Counsellor Troi is going to need the comfort of a Human touch, not the cold hand of technology."

When not being a royal pain for all non-human life forms on board in her first few episodes, the new Doctor espouses her view for old world medicine sometimes being the best option.  Again, this fits in with her overall molding after the prior character of Dr. McCoy. 

QUOTE (from Contagion, S2):

"It's a time-honored way to practice medicine, with your head and your heart and your hands."

One of the turning points with Data comes in the episode Unnatural Selection, in which Data stays with Pulaski for a long period of time when she is infected during the crisis at the Darwin Station.  Her respect for him grows in this and other episodes and she ends up being one of Data's biggest backers when she and Picard guide Data through challenging world champion Kolrami to a couple of games of stratagema in the episode Peak Performance.

QUOTE (from Peak Performance, S2):

"Pulaski - Alright Data, enough of this.  How long are you going to sit sulking like Achilles in his tent?

Data - I am running diagnostics. 

Pulaski - You may be able to sell Troi that story, but not me.  And you may be able to sell Troi that story, but not me. 

Data - I am concerned about giving the Captain faulty advice.

Pulaski - I wish I had never convinced you to play that game."

Thus, while the show writers and actress Diana Muldaur mutually decided to part ways following season 2, her biggest contribution was helping in the fast tracking of Data's character development, which hit several key notes in season 2 including Measure of a Man and the aforementioned Peak Performance.  She is also memorable in her fascination with Worf and Klingon culture, and her challenging of Captain Picard on multiple occasions.  So while Darrell and many others may rightfully dislike this copycat character, she served some purposes and held us over until the writers bought back Dr. Crusher and successfully developed her character in seasons 3-7.

Diana Muldaur was the only regular cast member of a post-TOS Trek to have appeared on TOS, as she guested on a couple of episodes Return to Tomorrow and Is There in Truth No Beauty.  She retired from acting in 1993 but was best known for her role on L.A. Law following her short stint on TNG.

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Character Insight No. 301: Ghosts in Star Trek

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, to celebrate Halloween being upon us, we review the role ghosts have had in the history of Star Trek.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp301  

Ghosts and spirits are often referred to in Star Trek as a way to describe new life forms encountered that do not conform to normal, understandable ways.  This is similar to the episode Oasis covered on last week's main show, where it turns out there are no ghosts haunting a stranded ship once the Enterprise crew learns the real story behind the Kantare colonists on board.  Another example is the TNG episode The Loss, where Will Riker refers to two-dimensional life forms as ghosts before later discovering their true nature.

It makes sense that ghosts and ghost stories are shared more to help understand cultures in the context of Star Trek.  Indeed, we find out about many of our main races and cultures by the spirit stories they tell from homeworld religions and the like, including Klingons with the jat'yln, Bajorans with pagh, and Ocampa with comra.  But these ghosts and spritis rarely actually invade the space of our favorite starships and crews.

There are some notable exceptions.  In Enterprise, a disembodied transporter signal from a man named Quinn Erickson is found to haunt ships that entered The Barrens in the episode Daedalus.  This is the episode where we learn all about transporter inventor Emory Erickson and his quest to recapture Quinn, his son lost in the reduction to practice of the working transporter.  Although not technically a dead person's spirit, the long-lost transporter signal of a person does share many of the same qualities we would associate with a ghost, so perhaps this is how we can make ghosts become real in the future.

In Voyager's Barge of the Dead, B'Elanna Torres dies in a shuttle accident and ends up on a Klingon barge of the dead, which is kind of like a ghost ship serving as purgatory on the way to hell for dishonored Klingons.  B'Elanna interacts with other dead folks in this episode, making this as close to a Klingon ghost story as we would get.  Thankfully, Kahless did not appear as a force projection in this episode.

And then there's Sub Rosa, the episode that trumps all other bad episodes in TNG.  While anaphasic lifeforms are not technically a ghost, the females in Doctor Crusher's family were host to such a lifeform that decided to pose as the ghost of a 17th Century Scotsman named Ronin, based on the similarities in how that lifeform appears non-corporeal at most times.  If you want to be truly horrified in more ways than one this Halloween, I can think of nothing more scary to put on your television than Sub Rosa.

So enjoy your Halloween candy and spooky movies and shows, and don't forget to include Sub Rosa in your weekend viewing enjoyment.  Or don't, and enjoy it more.

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Character Insight No. 300: Best of Will Riker

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we celebrate our 300th installment of this segment with the best moments of my favorite first officer.  No, not Spock as we've done on many prior anniversary segments, but William T. Riker from TNG.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp300 

Will Riker often presented himself as a daring and fun character in his role as Number One on Picard's ship, but we do not get to see him fully embrace such a personality until the episode A Matter of Honor.  In this episode, Riker serves in an exchange officer program with the Klingons and has to be a daring tough guy to survive as a Klingon crew member.

QUOTE (from A Matter of Honor, S2):

""A Klingon is his work, not his family; that is the way of things!"
"He's your father!"
"Klingons do not express... ...feeling the way you do!"
"Perhaps you should."
"We would not know how!"
"Yesterday, I did not know how... to eat gagh!" "

Later in season 7's The Pegasus, we see Riker's first commanding officer come on board the Enterprise to search for the vessel they served on many years ago.  The mystery of this Pegasus ship reveals interesting character development for Riker as the mistakes of the past come out into the open when he reveals his former commander had broken a treaty with the Romulans about cloaking technology.  This is much like Riker's version of the Wesley Crusher episode The First Duty, a view of how mistakes and flaws in the past can help you develop into a better officer later.

QUOTE (from The Pegasus, S7):

"Now that doesn't sound like the same man who grabbed a phaser and defended his captain twelve years ago."
"I've had twelve years to think about it. And if I had it to do over again, I would've grabbed the phaser and pointed it at you instead of them."
"So, on reflection, you'd rather be a traitor than a hero."
"I wasn't a hero, and neither were you! What you did was wrong, and I was wrong to support you, but I was too young and too stupid to realize it! You were the captain; I was the ensign. I was just following orders.""

Like some other characters, one of Riker's best episodes was one in which he thinks he is going crazy and has to overcome the challenge.  In this episode entitled Frame of Mind, Riker is actually phase shifting between an alien hospital and the Enterprise, where he is rehearsing for a role in a play as a crazy man, ironically.

QUOTE (from Frame of Mind, S6):

""Commander, I must congratulate you on your performance this evening."
"Oh?"
"Your unexpected choice to improvise was an effective method of drawing the audience into the plight of your character. You gave a truly realistic interpretation of multi-infarct dementia." "

Finally, in what might be a surprising choice to some, my pick for best Riker episode is the two-parter Best of Both Worlds.  Sure, Picard is assimilated by the Borg and all, but the first episode focuses more on Riker being in conflict with another commander who wants his job and questioning his career choices, while the second episode features Riker taking command of the ship to overcome the Borg while personally dealing with grief over the apparent loss of his mentor and captain.  This is really the key Riker story of the series.  Nobody can forget this cliffhanger line, as well, when Riker decides to take on the Borg led by Locutus.

QUOTE (from Best of Both Worlds, S3-4):

"Mr. Worf...fire."

Other episodes of note include A Matter of Perspective from season 3, Future Imperfect from season 4, and Second Chances from season 6.  Riker was a well-developed right hand man for Captain Picard, and without him and his iconic beard after season 1, TNG would not have been as good and successful as it turned out to be.

Commander Riker was played by Jonathan Frakes, who is still active in Hollywood today with recent directing roles on The Librarians, The Orville, and of course, Star Trek Discovery.

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Character Insight No. 299: Isaac Newton

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we cover Sir Isaac Newton, the human scientist from Earth's history who surprisingly appears multiple times in Star Trek.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp299 

Isaac Newton is of course known for his series of great discoveries in the fields of science and mathematics.  In addition to inventing calculus, he set the foundation for our understanding of physics by coming up with three fundamental laws of motion and mechanics.  Of course, such an important figure of history would be referenced numerous times in a show like Star Trek, but perhaps more surprisingly, this character appears twice in live form as well.

The first appearance for Newton is a holodeck recreation in the TNG episode Descent.  In this episode, Data wishes to see how three of Earth's greatest scientists would interact with one another in the great equalizing game of poker.  Thus, we see Newton flipping cards with Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein in this fun diversion from the main plot of that episode.  At one point, Data even offends Newton.

QUOTE

That would not be the last we would see the writers of Trek mess with that story of the apple and Newton.  In the Voyager episode Death Wish, Newton again appears as part of a panel, but this time, it's the real Newton who has been dragged through time by Q to testify about another continuum member Quinn's important assistance provided to humans through history.  Newton appears alongside a famous Woodstock musician and Will Riker.

According to Q, Quinn had met Newton under the tree on the day of that fateful apple falling, and Quinn had jostled the tree when he got up from the conversation, which led the apple to fall on Newton's head and the first law of motion to be developed.  Furthermore, Q indicates that had Quinn not interacted with Newton that day, the famous scientist would have instead died in a debtor's prison for being a suspect in several prostitute murders.  And who knows where humanity and the Federation would be in that timeline?

When Newton is not appearing onscreen to rewrite our understanding of his history, we see references to him come up in many other episodes.  This includes a monument unveiling in the Voyager episode Future's End, a key piece of dialogue in a Dixon Hill holodeck mystery in the TNG episode The Big Goodbye, and multiple references to needing the guidance of a man like Newton by Archer's Enterprise crew in episodes Anomaly and The Forge.  So while his onscreen appearances might have been a bit silly, his contributions to the foundations of what made space travel possible are always there in the background being honored in Star Trek.

Isaac Newton was played by John Neville in TNG and by Peter Dennis in Voyager.  Neville's acting career exploded in late life, after starring in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in 1988 at the age of 63.  He can be seen in the Fifth Element and The X Files movie.  Dennis appeared in movies like Shrek and Sideways in recent years.  Both these men died about 10 years ago, so if Newton is to hit the screen again, it will be yet a third actor to do so.

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Character Insight No. 298: Best of Worf

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we return to our "Best Of" series for The Next Generation with a look at the best moments for Worf.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp298 

Worf has been the subject of a Best Of segment before, but that was about his time on Deep Space 9.  Before ever stepping into Sisko's crew, Worf built a big bit of character in his time as the sole Klingon on Picard's Enterprise crew.  These are some of his best moments and episodes.

Although Worf is often an overly serious character dedicated to his security role, that allows for some true moments of hilarity when Worf is pushed outside his normal comfort zones.  One of these moments comes in the episode Qpid, in which Q creates another elaborate world for Picard's crew in which they are placed in roles based on Robin Hood.  Worf was having none of it.

QUOTE (from Qpid, S4):

"I must protest!  I am not a merry man!"

Indeed, Worf usually is not.  Another somewhat soft side of Klingons was revealed in the episode Yesterday's Enterprise, in which a seemingly throwaway scene in Ten Forward reveals that prune juice is going to become Worf's true jam.  This is mentioned almost 10 more times in the series, becoming the most prolific reference to a character's drink of choice behind Janeway's coffee and Picard's Earl Grey tea.

QUOTE (from Yesterday's Enterprise, S3):
Guinan - "It's an Earth drink.  Prune Juice."
Worf - "A warrior's drink!"

When not dealing with codes of honor, security issues, or flavorful juice drinks, Worf likes to find himself in romantic relations.  This is of course hard given the lack of Klingon suitors on Picard's Enterprise, but we see him meet his match later when he has a strong relationship with Jadzia Dax.  To lay the groundwork for this and how Klingons make love in a very masochistic and warrior-like manner, we see Worf give some truly terrible love advice to Wesley Crusher when Crusher falls for an alien bear in the episode The Dauphin.

QUOTE (from The Dauphin, S2):
Worf - SCREAMS
Worf - "That is how a Klingon lures a mate"
Wesley - ".."
Worf - "It's not the men, but the women who do the roaring, and they hurl heavy objects and claw at you."

Sounds like a fun time.  Speaking of screams, since Klingons also do that when someone dies, one of the top character moments for Worf is when he discovers in the episode Reunion a former lover K'Ehleyr right before her death at the hands of Duras, the chief political rival family of Worf's Mogh family line.  This is where Worf must first deal with the revelation that K'Ehleyr hid the fact that they had a son Alexander, who would become vital to Worf's development moving forward, while also dealing with the latest Klingon rivalry drama and backstabbing.  Most of Worf's Klingon-centric episodes in the TNG run stem from or build towards this seminal moment, when he force his son to look upon his dead mother.

QUOTE (from Reunion, S4):
Perhaps ______ on death scene
Worf - "You have never seen death.  Now, look and always remember."

Worf goes on to kill Duras in the same episode as revenge, but this is just one bloody battle in the long war between the families.  Worf may be terrible at giving fatherly advice, but he does stand by his crew and his bloodlines, which is a handy thing to have when you've got a Klingon warrior around.  Worf's character development hit another gear in DS9, but all of these were important framework moments for that latter role.  

Worf was played by Michael Dorn, who can still be found providing voice talent to many shows today including Arrow.  Perhaps someday we will see his Captain Worf show as well!

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Character Insight No. 297: Bok

Welcome back to Character Insight!  I'm back following a business trip to Europe that caused my absence last week, and I'm sorry to report the airlines have not yet invented transporter technology.  Maybe next time!

This week, we cover Bok, a recurring villain character from TNG.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp297 

The character of Bok allows the TNG showrunners to play out a story of individual grudges and revenge against Captain Picard.  We first see him in the episode The Battle, in which he explains that 9 years earlier Picard commanded the USS Stargazer when it destroyed the ship Bok's son was serving on.  This causes Bok to plot revenge for nearly a decade, and this episode is where he takes his first shot at the Federation flagship Captain.

In The Battle, Bok uses a thought maker as a mind control device to try and force Picard to take command of the Stargazer again and attack the Enterprise.  However, this plot does not work and he loses his command and rank of DaiMon when his first officer relieves him from duty for pursuing a highly unprofitable venture.  Everything for the profit, after all.

QUOTE

This would not be the last we see of the Ferengi villain.  He is imprisoned on Rog Prison following the events of his first encounter with Picard, but he continues to plot another way to exact his revenge.  He buys his way out of prison a few years later and then convinces another Ferengi crew that he would lead them on a profitable ransom mission.  The plan was to resequence the DNA of a person named Jason Vigo to make him appear to scans to be Picard's biological son, and then to ransom and kill Vigo.

We see this latter plot play out in the episode Bloodlines.  Bok informs Picard of his ransom plan and lures him to the Dorias Cluster, but Picard again foils his plot including by discovering that Vigo is not actually his son before Bok can execute his plan.  The second Ferengi crew that were told this was a profitable ransom mission discovered it was definitively not, and apprehended Bok before he could cause more damage.  So revenge did not win the day against Captain Picard.

Unlike the initial takes on the Ferengi as general villains for the TNG crew, the character of Bok and the understandable revenge storyline made this race a better foil for the Federation.  Although it does not rise to the narrative levels of Khan for the original series crew, Bok follows a similar driven plot and creates a similar crisis for Picard to deal with.  Those parallels make Bok a highly memorable character despite his limited appearances.

Bok was played by Frank Corsentino in the first appearance and then by Lee Arenberg in the second.  Star Trek was Corsentino's final acting roles, as his career mostly spanned from being a native on Gilligan's Island in 1965 through TV series in the mid-80's.  Arenberg has gone on to much success in the past 3 decades, including as the pirate Pintel in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and as some of the dwarves in Once Upon a Time.

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Character Insight No. 296: Best of Deanna Troi

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we return to our "Best Of" series and begin covering the stars of The Next Generation.  We begin this series with ship's counselor Deanna Troi.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp296

If you can believe it, when Character Insight began over six years ago Deanna was the second character I ever profiled, and she hasn't been profiled in detail since then.  However, she certainly provided several memorable moments and quotes in her time on Picard's Enterprise.

Counselor Troi was a tough character to write A-stories for initially, but she eventually becomes the central character in a couple latter season episodes.  In Season 6's Face of the Enemy, she is surgically altered to go undercover as a Romulan Tal Shiar agent to help prevent some Romulan treachery, and she shows just how strong-willed she could be in a command situation.

QUOTE (from Face of the Enemy, S6):

"I am now commander of this ship.  You will take orders from me and no one else.  Remove Commander Torret from her station.  If she resists, shoot her."

In Season 4's The Loss, we see how vital Deanna's half empathic powers are to her psyche and she deals with temporarily losing those powers.  The identity crisis allowed actress Marina Sirtis to finally delve into some of the deeper character traits of the counselor.

QUOTE (from The Loss, S4):
"I look around me and all I see are surfaces without depth.  Colorless, hollow, nothing seems real.  You're a projection, with no more substance to me than a character on the holodeck.  You have no idea how frightening it is to just be here with you, without sensing you, without sharing your feelings."

While Will Riker was playing the role of commanding officer there, he and Deanna also serve as a smoldering love story over the seasons of this show thanks to their past before the Enterprise.  However, as fun as romance with Riker is, it pales in comparison to Deanna's love of chocolate, as evidenced in episodes like The Game.

QUOTE (from The Game, S5):
Riker - Chocolate ice cream, chocolate fudge, and chocolate chips.  You're' not depressed, are you?
Deanna - I'm fine commander.
Riker - I had no idea it was such a ritual.
Deanna - Chocolate is a serious thing.

We also see Deanna struggle with an overbearing parent in the form of Lwaxana Troi throughout the series, which both allowed Majel Barrett to shine as well as made Troi more relatable to the audience.  The inclusion of a partial telepath added an interesting dynamic to the TNG crew and stories, making Troi one of the most defining characters of this second iteration of Star Trek.

Deanna Troi was played by Marina Sirtis, who can be found regularly on Twitter these days as well as at conventions.  She continues with some voice acting work today in shows like Young Justice.

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