By far the most Troi heavy episode the show has ever done. And despite most of the past evidence, it works (with a misstep or two along the way).
The episode is, more than anything, evidence that Marina Sirtis is a pretty good actress when she’s given something to work with. She does a pretty good job at something which is pretty difficult, playing someone who is themselves playing a part at times. There was one scene that didn’t quite work at me, where she’s meant to be shouting angrily at the Romulan conspirator, but hit more ‘shrill’ than ‘angry’. But other than that there’s a good job of playing someone who is scared, out of their depth, and forced into something they don’t like much.
This is an important episode because it’s the episode that sparked this whole project, in a way. I watched this episode while on a trip last year with nothing else to do at that time, which was the first episode of Star Trek that I’d watched in a while. My reaction to watching it was ‘hey, this is better than I remember. Maybe I should watch more of this’.
255 down, 482 to go.