…Joe drifts dramatically back to the ship, hand outstretched, by the power of the Force…
Oh wait, I’m supposed to be making fun of a different series. Sorry, my bad. Don’t worry, I won’t spend the rest of the rewatch in a coma.
Anyway, the episode.
We open with a fairly straightforward mission. The Enterprise is headed to the planet Ligon-2 to acquire a desperately-needed vaccine, which for unclear reasons is only available on Ligon-2. Once again, we have a sort of frame narrative that lends gravitas and import to the real plotline, which is negotiations with the Ligonians and the ensuing clash of cultures. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The show makes a point of telling us how the Ligonians are a proud people. To illustrate this point, they have brought their own red carpet to the Enterprise.
The guy in blue kicks out the red carpet before his boss arrives. It’s an impressively badass introduction.
The guy in blue is Hagon, and the boss wearing two-thirds of a robe is Lutan. When introduced to the Enterprise officers, Lutan expresses shock that a woman – a woman! – is chief of security. Lieutenant Yar, the woman in question, is faintly amused.
There’s a brief misunderstanding when Hagon approaches to hand over a vaccine sample. Yar intercepts him, saying she has to inspect it before handing it to Captain Picard. He tries to brush past her, and she flips him onto his back.
Gee, I wonder if Yar does this every time a foreign delegation hands Picard a box? I’ll have to keep an eye out.
TROI: “If I may suggest, sir…no apology. In their view, it would weaken us.”
Counselor Troi fulfils her role as – cultural consultant, I suppose? – quite admirably, advising Picard during the interaction. This falls a little flat because they’re standing, like, fifteen feet away and can totally hear her. But you know, they’re not on-screen at the time, so they must not exist while she’s talking.
In keeping with the “out of sight, out of earshot” assumption, Lutan and Hagon plot quietly without even waiting for their escorts to leave the room. Ominous.
The Ligonians attend a cordial reception on the Enterprise, during which the episode draws parallels between them and China’s Song Dynasty. We also learn that on Ligon-2, women own the land, and the men “protect and rule” it.
LUTAN: “If you respect our customs, and we see that respect, we will be friends. And we will make the antidote available to all who need it.”
Foreshadowing. Note that rather pregnant “if…”
Yar uses the holodeck to demonstrate some akido for Hagon and Lutan. A training dummy appears, and by “training dummy” I mean a very solid-looking human guy wearing an akido gi.
LUTAN: “You can create people? Without a soul?”
For once, I agree with Lutan’s priorities. If I’d never seen a holodeck before or didn’t know how they worked, I’d be pretty freaked out too if someone just casually conjured a person to spar with. Kind of like Q and his cadre of jeering kangaroo court guests. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic…”
Hagon doubts that a mere projection can be solid. He gets his ass kicked for the second time today, and shuts up.
YAR: “As you fight with it, it learns. And before long it knows exactly how to defeat you.”
LUTAN: “Even the extraordinary Lieutenant Yar.”
YAR: “It forces us to keep improving.”
Okay, now I want one. Tsuyoku Naritai!
You know, I was originally going to skip the akido demonstration. But they keep finding ways to work in plot elements and cool stuff and I just have to write about it all. Star Trek, folks.
Then, just before Hagon and Lutan beam back to their planet, Lutan seizes Yar and all three disappear!
Just Say Please
The instant this happens, Picard orders a Red Alert and heads to the bridge. The whole Enterprise girds itself for war. But the Ligonians are silent. The officers consult; with input from Troi and Data, they advise waiting, suspecting Yar will not be harmed.
The next day, Dr. Crusher entreats Picard to do whatever is necessary to get the vaccine from the Ligonians – the death toll from the Anchilles fever is tremendous, and they can’t replicate the vaccine from just the sample.
CRUSHER: “You’ve never had to watch a patient die from this disease.”
PICARD: “That’s true. But I have seen my share of death.”
CRUSHER, sighing: “Damn. Where are the calluses we doctors are supposed to grow over our feelings?”
PICARD: “Perhaps the good ones never get them.”
I love both of these characters.
Of note, they never really describe the Anchilles fever in more depth than this. The rest is left up to the viewer’s imagination. I think that’s the right call. After all, the exact details don’t really matter to the plot. And the imagination can often be worse than anything one puts on TV.
Dr. Crusher changes the subject to Wesley, and Picard visibly shrinks, looking down at the table and grumbling to himself. (Such acting!) To his credit, it doesn’t take much prompting for Picard to step up and let Wesley on the bridge. He clearly doesn’t like it, but he knows Wesley earned a chance; so he swallows his pride and makes it so.
PICARD: “Is the whole ship deaf?”
Well, maybe he doesn’t swallow all his pride.
Then we learn Picard is very touchy about French. We also hear a truly insightful analysis of “counting coup” (a real practice) and an enlightening description of Lutan’s actions and motivations. One thing Star Trek does well is bringing in real-world concepts and examples (whether or not they belong…) to keep the plot both transparent and relatable to the viewer.
Right on cue, Lutan contacts the Enterprise. Based on their study of Lutan’s culture, Picard’s officers urge him to politely ask for Yar’s return. Reluctantly, he once again swallows his pride.
Diplomacy is hard.
Not Your Average Damsel in Distress
LUTAN: “Honor is everything.”
To briefly step out of universe, Jessie Lawrence Ferguson plays Lutan with an impressive amount of gravitas. Lutan’s slow, deliberate speech contains just the right mix of pride, clarity, and subtle warning. He has the Enterprise crew in a tight double bind from the start, and every conversation he has with them adds another turn of the rope. It’s exquisite.
To be fair, we witness excellent acting from most of the antagonists in Star Trek. But Lutan really stands out. Okay, back to the show.
On the planet surface, we meet Lutan’s “first one”, Yareena. Then, after rebuking Picard for impoliteness, Lutan presents Yar. Her guard is sporting a puffy black eye.
PICARD: “Have you been treated well, Lieutenant?”
YAR: “Fine, Captain. But they’re showing some signs of wear.”
Heh. Don’t mess with Tasha Yar, folks.
Unfortunately for the Enterprise, Lutan does an about-face and refuses to give up Yar. He wants to marry her instead. Incensed, Yareena challenges Yar to a fight to the death.
Yareena seems like kind of an idiot to me for blaming Yar instead of Lutan. She’s a prisoner, for crying out loud. She’s not helpless, but she didn’t have anything to do with this.
Or did she? There’s a strange conversation between Yar, Picard, and Troi just afterward. Yar says she didn’t know about it. Troi comments that it must still be flattering. Yar agrees and then gets mad at Troi for tricking her.
Tricking her how? And why? If it’s just about being flattered, then it’s not remotely relevant. Yar is still against the whole thing. And if Picard and Troi are genuinely questioning her motives, then why the heck do they stop talking about it the very moment Yar admits she felt flattered? This is another one of those moments where I feel like the writers were trying to communicate something, but darned if I know what it was.
They clarify this a little bit, later in the episode. Apparently Troi’s goal was just to point out that Yar is attracted to Lutan, and get her thinking clearly on the subject (which, in the writers’ defense, Troi actually explains to Yar in this scene). This is an important call on Troi’s part and a show of maturity by Yar, so kudos to both of them for wisdom and honesty. But I still don’t understand what part of this whole thing offended Yar.
At any rate, Yar wants to fight, confident in her victory. Picard is reluctant to risk it, but listens to Troi when she says they ought to take that risk.
Perhaps it’s because I’m used to cartoonishly one-dimensional characters, but I was pleasantly surprised that Troi, who is often the emotional barometer of the Enterprise, was arguing for the logical and correct course while Picard wavered. Troi wisely points out that they risk their lives all the time, and Picard shouldn’t balk at doing what’s necessary for the mission.
In the ensuing conversation with Lutan, Picard’s calculated flattery reveals that Lutan has ulterior motives. He seems to be plotting this whole thing so he can end up rich. Remember that in this culture, women own the land.
Shaving Is a Human Art Form!
This next bit of silliness is irrelevant to the plot, but it’s so very Star Trek that I just have to poke it.
We cut to La Forge shaving, and Data walks in.
DATA: “Why that razor, my friend? Why not the one I adjusted to perfect efficiency?”
LA FORGE: “Shaving is a human art form, Data. Technological perfection can shave too close.”
I don’t know what La Forge is blathering about, here. I shave because I want less hair on my chin. It’s not an art form, it’s a chore. If Data gave me a better razor, I’d use it. Maybe it’s an art form if you have a beard, but La Forge is clean-shaven. Is there an art form to leaving just the right amount of annoying scritchy fuzz?
For that matter, “technological perfection” is exactly what every razor commercial has been peddling for the last 50 years. Every single commercial I have ever seen claims that they offer “a closer shave” than every other razor on the market. This is even true of commercials for women’s razors.
“But Joe,” says the one, “it’s a metaphor, they’re not really talking about shaving.”
Of course it’s a metaphor. It can’t be anything else, since if you take it literally it’s utterly false. So let’s talk about the metaphor.
DATA: “Puzzling. How can anything be too efficient?”
LA FORGE: “Thousands of things are too efficient, Data. Least for humans.”
Really, La Forge? Name three.
If I were to steelman this argument, it would sound something like this: “Human organizations, bolstered by centralizing technologies, often sacrifice important values for the sake of optimizing one single metric, like profit or legibility. When this happens, we lose a bit of who we are.”
And that has a great deal of truth to it. But I don’t think the real problem is efficiency.
How often have you heard someone complain about too much efficiency at the DMV? Can your Internet be too fast or cost too little? If you could buy food that tastes wonderful and is easy to prepare and is cheap, would you wish you had access to something worse quality at a higher price?
All other things being equal, an efficient way of achieving a goal is better than an inefficient one. There are exceptions, of course. Inefficiency can make games more fun, you can set yourself challenges to make a simple task interesting, and it’s better for us if agents with evil goals are inefficient at accomplishing them. But efficiency itself is not a demon we need fear.
No, the real problem is what you sacrifice for efficiency.
If faster service at the DMV comes at the price of sixteen-hour days for DMV workers, we have a problem. If faster Internet means Google is recording your Skype call with your partner, we have a problem. If better, cheaper food means underpaying farmers and food industry workers, we have a problem.
We might not want to allow sacrifices that, on balance, make people worse off. But we shouldn’t demonize mere efficiency.
This is the Visor Fallacy all over again: “it’s good just because it’s default for humans.” I think it’s a mistake to put things like crappy eyesight and insufficiently-close shaves on the same level as humor, privacy, and happiness. A human might choose to do something inefficiently for fun, but they also might not. You aren’t “losing your humanity” unless you forget how to laugh in the process.
Why does this matter? Well, if we expand the category of “crucial human values” to include things like inefficient shaving, then we cheapen the category itself. So it matters, what we consider important and what we don’t. And I seriously doubt that the strongest argument we can make for “let’s not all become monsters in pursuit of efficiency” is a half-assed shaving metaphor.
Anyway…
Data references “the human equation”, which seems to be Star Trek’s term for Data trying to figure out how humans tick. Data tries to practice his joke-telling on La Forge, who can’t escape fast enough. They have an interesting philosophical conversation about the nature of humor, which I’ll analyze further in a later post. For now, it’s just a bit of comic relief after the tension in the previous scene.
Data and La Forge beam down to Ligon-2 so they can help prepare for the fight. Picard points out that they could totally just take what they want, and Data reminds us that Prime Directive disallows that.
I’m not entirely clear on why the Prime Directive is a problem here. The Enterprise is already negotiating with Ligon-2, which shouldn’t be allowed at all if they’re a pre-warp civilization! So what, exactly, is the Prime Directive prohibiting, here? They already can’t take Yar back by force, because then they won’t get the vaccine, and millions will die. I suppose it prevents the Enterprise from shooting up the planet and stealing the vaccine, but you don’t need the Prime Directive for that. There’s a lot of space between “strict noninterference” and “conquest, looting, and subjugation.”
PICARD: “By our standards, the customs here, the…code of honor, is the same kind of pompous, strutting charades that endangered our own species a few centuries ago.”
Star Trek draws another parallel to Earth “honor cultures” and their flaws. Note that Star Trek is not criticizing integrity, here, but the concept of honor that says “you insulted me, I must punish you horribly or I lose face.”
Yar confronts Yareena about her challenge, and tries to mollify her. But Yareena isn’t having it. She seems to think that Yar wants to marry Lutan.
YAREENA: “How could you not love him? Every woman loves him.”
That is a rather strong claim, Yareena. Is this guy literally the most desirable male on the entire planet? If so, why? Fifteen minutes ago we saw him in a roomful of his peers. He’s not the only warrior-noble-whatever around. And he’s kind of a conceited jerk. It seems a stretch to me that Yareena somehow thinks Yar is lying when she met the guy yesterday and he abducted her.
Jealousy makes sense, but this is just stupid.
Anyway, Yareena promises to kill Yar. Apparently, even though no one has had a fight like this for 200 years, the women in power still train rigorously just in case. That is either some serious dedication, or someone is fibbing.
Also, at the start of the episode Lutan and Hagon expressed shock that a woman have any combat expertise at all. This makes no sense if the women routinely train for honor-death-duels.
Eh. Stranger hypocrisies have existed in human cultures. Maybe it’s just a context thing – women on Ligon-2 only fight each other, or something.
The Duel
The Enterprise crew try to figure out how to handle this duel without losing access to the all-important vaccine. Yar gets her weapon, which is an ugly gauntlet like a spiky vulture head that La Forge warns us is poisoned. Yar is not intimidated; she’s all too familiar with such things.
Whatever it is, it means business.
Meanwhile, Data beams back to the Enterprise in secret to make undisclosed preparations with Riker and Dr. Crusher.
Yar and Yareena start fighting in a small, square arena filled with metal poles and zappy laser-pillars. Yareena loses her weapon after one of the zappy pillars blasts it off her hand. It lands on some poor schmuck in the audience, who promptly keels over dead.
He wasn’t even wearing a red shirt! No one is safe!
Evidently disarming one’s opponent won’t do, so Yareena gets her spiked vulture gauntlet back and resumes trying to murder Yar.
The choreography in this fight isn’t spectacular, but I think the fight’s a lot more realistic than your typical movie “cat-fight” nowadays. There’s a lot of scrambling, dodging, and desperate back-and-forth grappling, like two competent human beings who are genuinely trying to kill each other on a stage that severely constrains their maneuverability. Movie directors, take note. You don’t need implausibly perfect backflips or scissor-leg takedowns to make a fight scene work. Though apparently skintight bodysuits are universal.
Eventually, Yar manages a hit of her own – and the poison works swiftly, taking Yareena down. But before the Ligonians can do anything else, Yar jumps on top of Yareena’s body – and they both disappear!
Dr. Crusher, waiting in the transporter room of the Enterprise, swiftly delivers an antidote to save Yareena’s life.
Back planetside, Picard lays the pressure on Lutan:
PICARD: “Just what do you find unfair, Lutan? They fought to the death, you saw the final blow. You know the effects of your poison.”
LUTAN: “But what of your Lieutenant Yar? She is to become my first one now.”
PICARD: “I certainly won’t stop her, if she cares to claim that honor.”
Heh. Right answer, Picard.
HAGON, quietly: “Remember, you have all Yareena’s wealth and lands, Lutan.”
LUTAN: “At least all has not been lost.”
What a callous jackass.
Now, at this point, I believe Picard makes a tactical error. Lutan agrees to let them have the vaccine, but they do not yet have it in hand. They probably ought to wait until they have the darn thing before pulling this next stunt, but oh well, the plot must go on.
PICARD: “Five to beam up. Energize.”
To the Ligonians’ confusion, the Enterprise beams Hadon and Lutan up to the ship along with Picard and his officers. Picard and company bring the two Ligonians to the lounge, where Lutan is shocked to find Yareena still alive. He tries to backpedal on the agreement, on account of Yareena not being dead, but Dr. Crusher informs him that she did, in fact, die; they just had the technology to bring her back.
"She's Not Really Dead, Jim" Counter: 3
I have to wonder about these supposed medical records. If you have the technology to bring back someone from a still-warm corpse, why do you mark them as “dead” before exploring all possible options? I suspect Dr. Crusher may have bent the usual definitions a little bit for the sake of this confrontation.
On the other hand, it’s also possible that the Federation uses “cessation of brain activity” as the medical definition of “death,” just like we do today, and it just so happens that technology has progressed to the point where “death” isn’t necessarily permanent.
As it happens, this is the exact situation that we find ourselves today, in 2020. Those whose heart and brain stop working, but who are preserved by cryonics, are still considered “patients”, because there’s a chance they may be restored someday. This is true even though they meet the medical definition of “death.” (Unfortunately, this also runs into some rather nasty legal problems, since we don’t yet have a legal status that lies between “medically dead” and “irrevocably lost.”)
Star Trek is eerily prescient once again!
With the plot revealed, Yareena seems to have changed her mind about Lutan. Maybe it was the near-death experience, or maybe the Enterprise crew told her how Lutan planned her demise. Either way, she kicks Lutan to the curb and…offers herself to Hadon, instead.
Um. Really?
If I put on my in-universe hat again: this is probably a political move, given the utter lack of romance between Hadon and Yareena until this moment.
Yareena then offers Lutan to Yar, who actually has to think about it before she declines. Then Yareena offers to adopt Lutan as her number two.
Um.
Have both of you forgotten that sixty seconds ago, this selfish prick manipulated you into fighting to the death for his personal gain and amusement? Why are you not calling for him to depart out the nearest airlock? Or at least go home unwed and disgraced? What are you thinking?
Yar’s motivations, at least, I can sort of understand. She has the upper hand here, and she’s not remotely afraid of Lutan; from her perspective this is an opportunity to toy with him a little bit. And apparently he’s hot, or something.
But what the everloving heck is going on in Yareena’s head? This isn’t your garden-variety filial unfaithfulness, here; Lutan actively and deliberately tried to get her murdered. From a certain perspective, he even succeeded. Love or no love, putting him anywhere near Hadon or Yareena is just asking for another assassination attempt.
We can’t even explain this move by saying “Yareena still loves him,” because then she’d have never offered his apparently-attractive ass to Yar!
I suspect this move, too, is probably political. Maybe they can’t just disgrace Lutan, he probably still has some kind of influence, and his peers respect him for kidnapping a Starfleet security chief. Maybe they gain something from having him around in a number two position, maybe this elevates them somehow. Maybe they figure they can keep an eye on him in case he tries to kill them and take their stuff. Again.
Oh, and another thing: Hagon also knew about Lutan’s plot. He was standing right there when Lutan bragged about it to Picard. He flat-out reminded Lutan of it after the fight! He might have been doing damage control, but he didn’t seem to be lifting a finger to help Yar or Yareena throughout this entire episode. Did the Enterprise crew not tell Yareena this? Is she trading one conniving, murderous suitor for another?
What the actual fuck, people?
On the one hand, he plotted my death. On the other, he looks sexy in 2/3rds of a robe. Decisions, decisions.
No matter how you look at it, lady, Yareena lot of trouble.
Oh well. To end on a high note, Wesley got to man one of the bridge stations and he’s delighted about it. Character development!