“The Defector”
Written by Ronald D. Moore
Directed by Robert Sheerer
Season 3, Episode 10
Original air date: January 1, 1990
Star date: 43462.5
Mission summary
Picard is giving Data lessons in humanity by way of Henry V on the holodeck, but their epiphanies are interrupted by a Romulan scout ship asking for help. Suddenly a warbird decloaks, fires some shots at the scout ship, and turns away as the Enterprise extends its deflector shields around the scout ship to protect it. As life support there fails, Picard has the ship’s only occupant beamed over: Romulan Sublieutenant Setal, bearing warnings that the Romulans are planning to start a war, beginning at Nelvana III.
Setal claims he’s not a traitor, and set his ship to self-destruct so that the Federation can’t get ahold of Romulan technology to prove it. Rather, he fears that the Romulans would never survive another war, and has risked everything to prevent the annihilation of his people and his way of life. But his allegations–that the Romulans have built a base within the Neutral Zone and the reactor will be online in just two days–can’t be corroborated by any sensor readings or objective evidence. Hours of interrogation with Riker and Troi yield little information of value, and La Forge discovers something curious about the man’s arrival: the warbird never meant to destroy him. It matched speed and ensured non-lethal hits, as if they wanted him to reach the Enterprise unscathed. Starfleet headquarters is similarly confused, telling Picard to sort out the truth of whether he’s a traitor or a spy, and if war is truly imminent.
Setal, for his part, is not adjusting well to his time among enemies. The computer can’t seem to understand his specifications, and any mention or reminder of the home or family that he’ll never see again sends him into a tailspin of depression. When Data takes him to a holographic re-creation of the Valley of Chula, he finally breaks, and tells Data to let Picard know that it is not Sublieutenant Setal, but Admiral Jarok, that wishes to speak with him.
Picard gets confirmation from Starfleet that this man is indeed Admiral Jarok, the devious mind behind some massacres here or there, but Picard still (or perhaps especially now) doesn’t believe this story about war. He asks to be persuaded.
JAROK: There comes a time in a man’s life that you cannot know. When he looks down at the first smile of his baby girl and realizes he must change the world for her. For all children. It is for her that I am here. Not to destroy the Romulan Empire, but to save it. For months, I tried desperately to persuade the High Command that another war would destroy the Empire. They got tired of my arguments. Finally I was censured, sent off to command some distant sector. This was my only recourse. I will never see my child smile again. She will grow up believing that her father is a traitor. But she will grow up. If you act, Picard. If we stop the war before it begins.
But Picard is still skeptical, until Jarok finally decides to provide strategic, tactical, and technological information about the Romulan fleet. In agreement, Picard sets course for Nelvana III to discover the alleged base meant to start a war.
But when they get there without resistance, they discover nothing.
PICARD: Nelvana Three, Admiral. No base, no weapons, no sign of any life at all.
JAROK: But I saw the tactical communiqués. The records. Timetables for completion. An entire legion was assigned to the section.
PICARD: Is it possible they could have been feeding you disinformation? You said that you had been censured. Reassigned, four months ago. They knew of your dissatisfaction. Could all this have been to test your loyalty?
JAROK: No. No. It’s impossible.
PICARD: They let you escape with an arsenal of worthless secrets. What other explanation is there?
At that moment, a Romulan warbird commanded by Tomalak appears. He’s pleased to see Picard again and delights in his little scheme. By feeding misinformation to Jarok, he has enticed the Federation to cross into the Neutral Zone and violate the treaty themselves. He prepares to destroy the Enterprise and display its broken hull on Romulus, but Picard reveals that with him are three cloaked Klingon ships.
PICARD: What shall it be, Tomalak?
TOMALAK: You will still not survive our assault.
PICARD: You will not survive ours. Shall we die together?
TOMALAK: I look forward to our next meeting, Captain.
With a war averted, all should be celebrating. All but Jarok, who, devastated by his unnecessary betrayal for an invisible threat, has committed suicide. He leaves in his quarters a letter to his wife and daughter, which cannot be delivered, of course. Picard hopes it may be delivered one day when there is peace thanks to other men like Jarok.
Analysis
“The Defector” put the 1990s era of Trek off to a great start. This has always been one of my favorites, but some of the shine has rubbed off since I last saw it.
James Sloyan gives fantastic depth and nuance to the tortured Jarok. Even in the silly shoulderpads, face ridges, and jewelry, I absolutely buy this man’s anguish. Jarok’s ambivalence about his actions give meaning to the little faraway looks and painful reminders of his exile and his contempt for the Federation’s delays. He makes this Romulan feel both very different–aggressive, irritable, arrogant–and so much the same, with his love for his family and country. I love his interaction with Worf (followed by his cop to Riker that he’s just trying to light a fire under the Klingon), as well as his menacing implication to Data about being taken apart. He’s complex and contradictory: a man of war who seeks peace, a warrior who puts his family first, a traitor and also a patriot. I wish that the story weren’t so overwhelmed with Shakespeare references because Jarok is a perfect Shakespearean hero. He’s one of my favorite characters in all of Star Trek.
I am less impressed with the way the entire crew articulates the mystery of his appearance, asking aloud if he’s a traitor or a spy and wondering about his motives. We’re all wondering! You don’t have to tell us to wonder! And Riker and Troi don’t so much as test his trustworthiness as constantly ask him if he’s trustworthy. This… is not a good interrogation technique. Can’t Troi tell if he’s lying anyway? If she can’t, what the hell is she doing there? I was also disappointed that some of the central unknowns are solved so quickly, as La Forge discovers very early on in the episode that the warbird’s threats to Jarok weren’t serious and it was all staged. So it’s clear from the start that at least part of this is inauthentic, which deflates the balloon a little when you have such a sincere Jarok. The same is true for Picard, who says aloud at least twice that he’s anxious about going to war, which doesn’t at all convey anxiety the way the writers think it does. He says he worries about war, yet I never felt any real threat that it was a possibility.
There are also some other oddities: the computer can’t seem to convert Romulan scales to Celsius and Ten Forward can’t create Romulan ale, but the holodeck can recreate a valley from Romulus? How does Jarok know Klingon curses? And for the love of god, can someone please put down the Shakespeare mallet and stop hitting us with it? It’s one thing to open with the holodeck piece, which I hate no matter what; it’s another to then pepper the whole episode with lines and references. One or the other! And frankly, I don’t feel Henry V is even appropriate for this episode. There is no question here that the war would be just or that the troops would follow their leader. It feels tacked on and misunderstood, like the script was accidentally stapled to a 10th grade book report. The letter at the end also felt like too much to me, too hokey.
Nevertheless, it all comes together in the end with the reappearance of the delightful Andreas Katsulas as Tomalak, Picard’s ace up his sleeve, and the death of Jarok. I find it particularly interesting that Jarok ends the episode believing that it was all a waste–that his defection was for nothing, that he left his home and his family for a threat that didn’t exist–and yet the events of the episode prove that all he feared was absolutely true. There really was a Romulan plan to bring about war with the Federation; it just wasn’t the plan he thought it was. Perhaps if he hadn’t defected the Romulans would not have been able to put the plan into motion, but I suspect they would have done it anyway, one way or another, and in that scenario Picard would not have had the vital warning. And now that this plan failed, Picard and the rest of the Federation are on notice, and future Romulan attempts to start a war would be ineffective. Further, I imagine that Jarok’s actions were bold enough to persuade some on the High Council to recognize the seriousness of their weakness and delay (perhaps forever) the offensive (he wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t really believe it!). It seems clear with the introduction of the suicide tablet at the mid-way point that Jarok had no intention of settling among the Federation peoples, but it’s much more tragic that he probably never realized how right he was and how much good he did.
Torie’s Rating: Warp 5 (on a scale of 1-6)
Thread Alert: This wig is an abomination. Patrick Stewart had hair once, you don’t have to guess.
Best Line: JAROK: You’re the android. I know a host of Romulan cyberneticists that would love to be this close to you.
DATA: I do not find that concept particularly appealing.
JAROK: Nor should you.
Trivia/Other Notes: James Sloyan will return in “Firstborn” as a Klingon. He also appears in DS9’s “The Alternate” and “The Begotten” as the scientist who first studied Odo, and in Voyager‘s “Jetel” as the title character.
The entire staff worked on the script together, but I like to think the parts that irritate me most are all Ron Moore.
In case you weren’t sure Moore was a hack, he used this exact same plot on Battlestar Galactica.
The holodeck scene was going to be more Sherlock Holmes, but they had to ditch that thanks to rights issues. It was Patrick Stewart that suggested Henry V.
When Jarok is surprised that Dr. Crusher knows about Romulan anatomy and Crusher then gives a nasty look to Worf, they are of course referencing the events of “The Enemy.”
Previous episode: Season 3, Episode 9 – “The Vengeance Factor.”
Next episode: Season 3, Episode 11 – “The Hunted.”
Now this is an episode that is a pleasure to return to. You’re right, Torie, in all of the weaknesses (and man, Star Trek’s obsession with Shakespeare gets old fast) but it was so nice to have a thoughtful, generally well-written episode centered on the differences of two cultures that actually works.
This is a very good episode that gives us more than just a glimpse of what TNG could be. But I think I might knock it down to Warp 4 for its failure to live up to its true potential. Maybe that’s not quite fair. I don’t know.
I suppose we ought to be grateful that they had those rights issues with the Doyle estate. The constant Shakespeare references were bad enough, but imagine them being replaced with Holmes references. And really, why go with Holmes in a non-Data episode?
A fine little episode. I like the fact that the Romulan plan is almost a toss-off: “We’ve got this traitor in our midst. Rather than just kill him, let’s also snare a starship.”
James Sloyan gives an effective performance, as Torie and others note. The way he needles Worf, and his grim amusement about it afterward, reveals a more dimensional Romulan than we’re used to.
But I think Picard also shines here, with his goading and—at times—contempt for Jarok’s attempt to split hairs and sit on the fence. Great delivery by Stewart. We’re not really used to seeing the non-ambassadorial, tough-as-nails Picard, impatient and snappish, but—thinking about it—nearly all my most favorite episodes include this facet of the captain.
My favorite part of Jarok is the way the characterization makes him simultaneously so menacing–as Torie notes–but also so sympathetic. You can’t help but feel with him the frustration of knowing that he’s making a huge sacrifice that he never considered would fail to be believed.
But you do have to wonder why he didn’t lead with his identity. A high-value defector is more likely to be believed, more likely to be verified, than a nobody, right? Was this just an effort to avoid having to share his knowledge of troop movements? (Not like those wouldn’t be changed as soon as the Romulans realize that he’s gone over…)
It would’ve been a side-track to the plot, but it also would’ve been interesting to see a bit more background about the “massacres” that Jarok oversaw. That word’s strongly suggestive of war crimes, and Jarok’s gesture towards cultural relativism doesn’t really seem to be enough to take care of that issue. Either he killed a bunch of non-combatants, or he didn’t, and that might change a bit how we feel about him. But you really can’t get into that without a total derail, so it’s probably best they didn’t go there–we can only wish that it’d happened in a different episode.
—a good episode–warp 4—one has to take pity on jarok–the vanguard of changes to the romulan empire—picard’s anguish carries the tension in this installment–the romulan uniforms look like quilts with spiked doggie collar straps—
@4 DeepThought
My sense of this is he thought he could be more easily repatriated if he was perceived as a low-level functionary and therefore of limited continuing use to the Feds. Arriving home, perhaps he thought he would be greeted as a liberator.
Not exactly a well thought out plan, but one imagines the Romulan feeders of disinformation were amping up the ginned up danger signals to Jarok in order to stampede him. Talk of “mushroom clouds,” and whatnot.
I would’ve sent a cloaked Klingon warbird or two to scout the alleged fortifications. The Romulans wouldn’t know the Feds knew of a plot, and Jarok might have an out. A tiny one. If he wanted to use it.
On looking back, this episode reminds me of Cardassian fiction as discussed on Deep Space Nine. Dark, depressing and seemingly pointless. Here we have a man (Romulan/Cardassian – replace as needed) who has always thought of himself as a proper member of his society. A patriot willing to do his part. His pride in his patriotism is his weakness as he begins to suspect that his government is taking a misstep then resolves to take action to lead his beloved society back along the proper path. In doing so, he is unknowingly advancing his government’s misstep. Then, as he becomes aware of his errors, he takes his life not knowing that he has achieved his original goal. Probably an easier read than The Neverending Sacrifice, but still a work of Cardassian fiction.
I’ve been having a tough time deciding on my rating for this one, because I think it succeeds so well in what is working that I’m pretty much willing to overlook many of the flaws that Torie pointed out. I have not yet overdosed on Shakespeare and rather liked that the teaser of the episode showed more of what the characters do in their free time, and reinforces the growing friendship between Picard and Data… which will be the focus of every TNG feature film. The captain’s suggestion that Data not merely imitate the actors who have played the role is a significant one, which he seems to take to heart (so to speak) in his later artistic pursuits. I agree that the choice of this play is an odd one for this episode.
I love the Jarok scenes that show him as a person with a family who’s just trying to do the right thing–mainly the holodeck scene and his final moment with Picard–but I do wish it had been more sharply contrasted with him as a military officer, particularly one responsible for atrocities. I also liked that moment where Dr. Crusher shoots Worf a nasty look, reinforcing series continuity as well as what little conflict exists between characters in this “perfect society.” I’m surprised she didn’t just say she was already familiar with Vulcan physiology, though, when Jarok asked about why she knows Romulan anatomy–they’re pretty similar, I hear.
I’m surprised but I’m not surprised that Ron Moore recycled this plot in BSG. Writers do tend to do that, and Strasczynski has certainly been lifting themes and dialogue not only from other people’s work, but his own. Not in a bad way, but in a noticeable one, which I’m not entirely sure is a conscious decision. When you write that many words over a short period of time, you can’t help but repeat yourself from time to time. But I am interested in rewatching that BSG episode to see how it compares.
In the end, I’m going to settle on Warp 5, but it’s really a 5.5 :)