6.11 — “Chain of Command, Part II”

6.11 — “Chain of Command, Part II”

Plot: Gul Madred uses enhanced interrogation techniques (uh, torture) to question his captive, Captain Picard. Meanwhile, Captain Jellico confronts the Cardassian negotiators and continues his uncomfortable tenure as commanding officer.

Thoughts: Another effective episode. The writers and Patrick Stewart reportedly studied torture reports by Amnesty International in order to be authentic about torture methods, techniques, and responses. A number of elements are taken from Orwell’s 1984 where the question was, how many fingers am I holding up?

The underlying logic of the episode is a little bit suspect. First, Starfleet would never send a person with sensitive defense secrets on a suicide mission behind Cardassian lines. You don’t do that. Picard doesn’t know the information they want, but surely he does know things about Starfleet technology, training, and general strategy that the Cardassians would be interested in? Brushing that aside, they focus on the psychological battle and cultural differences, which is surely the superior dramatic choice.

Riker stands up for principle, but all that macho posturing, yelling, and chest puffing isn’t well calculated to persuade Jellico, is it? All that wasted energy. One delicious way Jellico is used is to puncture sacred myths of the series; such as that Riker is this great first officer, and the fact that he has twice passed up opportunities for promotion just goes to show how good he is. I also detect an implied critique of Picard’s leadership style as being everyone’s nurturing grandfather and unflagging best friend. Jellico is a prick, but he seems to understand that working for Starfleet is a job.

I’m a little vague on what happened to the Cardassian negotiators, or how they found the ship again hiding within the McAllister Nebula, probably because the script was vague about those details.

What I do like, very much, are the extraordinary performances of Patrick Stewart and David Warner, and finding out more about the structure of Cardassian civilization and its history as a spiritual society taken over by the military sector. I look forward to learning more about this in DS9.

This is the last TNG episode to air in 1992. The next Star Trek episodes to air, in January 1993, are the premiere and next three episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. We’ll watch those next.

4 out of 5 lights. Or is it 5 out of 4? Aaaaahhhhhhh!

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Chain_of_Command,_Part_II