TNG – The Drumhead

Plot – The Drumhead is atypical for TNG for several reasons and one of those is that it leaps straight into action (well not action, but it’s narrative) with relatively few concessions for the people who cannot keep up. There is an immediate air of suspicion and paranoia in the air and the Enterprise is suddenly a place that harbours potential terrorists and spies. The trio of the Federation, the Klingons and the Romulans are the big powers in play in TNG and they make for a brilliant counterpoint to each other. The Klingons are in league with the Federation, but fighting amongst themselves. The Romulans distrust them all and commit all manner of acts of espionage to ensure their safety. This is all happening in the background in the middle seasons of TNG and makes for a pleasing political landscape of suspicion.

The trouble with paranoia is that it eats at you like a disease until it is out of control and you are behaving irrationally. The issue is you might be right. Your mind is telling you that something is possible, and there is a good case that it is. But it isn’t tangible and so as an idea it could turn out to be true or it might not. Satie seems unreasonably vicious in her determination to point the finger at one man on very little evidence…but the interesting thing is that no matter how unreasonable her behaviour is, she might be right. That’s where the drama lies, in the uncertainty.

How the seed of paranoia spreads is enthralling to watch; suddenly everybody’s actions are being questioned and the limelight falls on Picard and his many questionable decisions in command. What’s especially clever is how the episode weaves Satie’s relationship with her father into its structure and how Picard uses what he has learnt from her to his advantage in the trial in a very plausible way. Satie’s rage feels real because it has already been given some substance.

Character – We find out more about Worf’s exile since Redemption and how his name is not spoken on the homeworld anymore. It’s easy to forget that TNG, which is known for its standalone nature, actually yielded some sophisticated elements of serialisation, especially a few of the character arcs (Wesley, Worf, Picard).

Another gentle moment of continuity is the mention that Admiral Satie was the one responsible for the exposure of the alien conspiracy in season one. There’s something very off about Satie right from the start, even when she is being entirely pleasant with everybody. A little too keen to get to work on her witch hunt. There’s a look of mania in her eye even when she is reviewing evidence of sabotage on the Enterprise, as if it is confirming her radical racist suspicions. Listening to stories of her childhood where her father posed an moral question and made his children fight it out and try and trounce one another exposes how she has been encouraged to fight and win even from childhood.

Picard stands back from all the suspicion and shows his discontent quietly for a while. Watch as he walks into a room where Worf is co-ordinating an investigation of Tarses and he sees that even his people are starting to come around to Satie’s form of paranoia. Picard is the voice of reason, the man in power who is reminding everybody that Tarses is innocent until proven guilty and the evidence provided simply is not good enough.

Performance – Spencer Garrett masters the one-episode crewman appearance with his star turn as Lieutenant Tarses, a man who is unjustly accused of being a Romulan sympathiser and a traitor to his own people. He has a natural hangdog expression that automatically makes you sympathise with him but the way he conducts himself, without confidence or charisma, really sells the impossible situation he has found himself trapped in.

Production – Standing sets, the regular cast, a few guest actors and a fantastic script. Huge kudos to Jonathan Frakes who wrings every emotion out of a story that offers a director little in the way of embellishments. He uses his cameras like a weapon and he gets every scintilla of intensity from his performers. I would have offered him the films on the strength of his direction here. If you can take an episode that is so confined and make it one of the most arresting instalments of the series, just think what you could do with a feature film budget. Satie sitting in silence whilst the court adjourns around her until she is entirely alone is a genuinely great piece of filmmaking. You’re right in the moment there with her.

Best moment – Picard admits that he would act solely on the basis of Troi’s instincts. Thank goodness for that.

Worst moment – We often see throughout the Trek franchise how people in power in the Federation are entirely corruptible and Satie might be the most powerful example because she believes that everything she is doing, even if we know what she is doing us unjust, is to protect the precious United Federation of Planets. She’s doing it for your own good. Sometimes left-wing extremists can be far more frightening than right wing ones. Because they believe that their cause is entirely just to protect something good.

I wish they hadn’t done that – Can you believe that after the horror of Shades of Grey that the studio wanted another clip show to save some money? I know studio executives don’t exactly have the reputation of being especially bright but to try something once and to fail so spectacularly at it usually means that if you need to save the pennies that the second time around you try another way, or get your creative people to think up something else. It took Michael Piller and Rick Berman to vehemently argue against a clip show and to come up with a bottle episode instead to ensure that it did not happen. I’m not saying that clip shows can’t work (Community in particular, revolutionised the idea) but as a whole it feels like you are being short changed when you come into something expecting fresh content and end up with recycled material (Shades of Grey is especially galling because it is second-hand from seasons one and two of TNG!).

A reason to watch this episode again – ‘That’s how it starts. But the road from legitimate suspicion to rampant paranoia is very much shorter than we think.’ Jean Simmons scares the hell out of me in this episode. Her performance is so beautifully judged, ugly and uncompromising and yet couched in amiability that it made me feel discomforted throughout. It’s rare for a guest performance on any Trek show to be the biggest standout element but Satie is such an insidious character that you can’t help but be drawn to her at all times. The episode convinces you that Picard and Satie are going to work together swimmingly in the first 15 minutes but it soon sticks the knife in as suspicion, finger pointing and outright witch huntery. The Drumhead rivets you to your seat because it is rooted in history. We know that witch hunts of this nature took place and people lost their lives unjustly and it would appear (despite TNG often telling us the contrary) that we have learnt nothing since then, especially when somebody in such an exalted position can cause so much undue suffering. There is a lust to Satie’s eyes as she is weeding out conspiracies. It’s terrifying. Put Patrick Stewart and Jean Simmons in a scene together and you have acting royalty coming together. The results are explosive, without ever resorting to action. If penny pinching forced the writers to be this focussed on real drama, I find myself wishing that it could have been an issue more often because The Drumhead is outstanding viewing, even all these years later.

***** out of *****

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