4x21 The Drumhead

[7.7/10] I don’t think it’s a big spoiler to tell you that Star Trek: Enterprise, which debuted a few weeks after the September 11th Attacks, commented on the War on Terror. That is as it should be. While opinions are mixed on how well the show pulled it off, I’m of the belief that Star Trek ought to be relevant to the times, using the distance of science fiction and an imagined future to interrogate the present.

But I also don’t mind telling you that, even though it came out a decade prior, “The Drumhead” plays like a better reflection of the War on Terror than anything ENT ever did. The episode is a commentary on McCarthyism, on the sort of prejudice that consigned George Takei’s family to an internment camp during World War II. And still it’s sadly prescient, to the way legitimate threats are often allowed to metastasize into paranoia and bigotry, in the name of protecting the homeland. TNG’s commentary is an object lesson in the pitfalls that await any society that resorts to such things, unfortunately presaging where our country would go to root out terror.

The episode features the arrival of Admiral Satie, a decorated investigator, pulled out of retirement to assist the Enterprise. A Klingon exobiologist has seemingly tampered with the ship’s computers, stealing information and sabotaging the warp core. The visiting admiral, along with her Betazoid assistant and years of authority and clout behind her, is there to get to the bottom of the threat, and uncover any ill-deeds or conspirators in their midst.

Star Trek usually works well when there’s a mystery afoot, and “The Drumhead” is no exception. The presence of a destroyed warp core, a cagey visitor from a contentious ally, and a guest star there to figure it all out gins up excitement and invites the viewer to solve the case themselves. As Admiral Satie herself points out, the Enterprise is no stranger to spies or saboteurs, so unraveling this one is par for the course.

But what’s unique about this episode is that it’s ultimately about the absence of a mystery, the need to concoct a conspiracy to justify bias and frustration, rather than about solving the puzzle. Early in the episode, Worf discovers that the exobiologist used a specially-modified injector to steal Federation data and express it as amino acids. (A cool concept that’s introduced and never followed up on.) A short time later, Geordi and Data discover that the warp core hatch issue was a simple mechanical failure. The timing is just a coincidence.

These are deft choices. Worf uncovering the truth about the exobiologist proves that this inquest isn’t crazy. There is, legitimately, sabotage and subterfuge afoot for Admiral Satie to pursue. More to the point, the fact that this amino acid method would require a partner to smuggle the data out gives her reason to question the exobiologist’s acquaintances and associates. It provides an opportunity for Worf, someone we know and like, to receive praise from the visiting investigators and become a part of their mission, endearing us to their cause and seemingly demonstrating that they see him as a trustworthy Starfleet officer, not as a suspicious Klingon.

Most of all, the exobiolgist’s confession raises the specter of collusion between the Klingons and the Romulans. He speaks of disdain from many powerful Klingons for the “weakness” of the Federation and admiration for the strength and combativeness of the Romulans, something that tracks with past hesitance from our forehead-ridged friends. And the prospect of a Klingon-Romulan alliance is so threatening to the stability of the Federation that it makes sense to fully run the traps and discover anyone else anyone aiding or abetting this scheme.

In short, it justifies the inquest, at least at first. It puts us on Admiral Satie’s side, on Worf’s side, on Captain Picard’s side, as they hunt for any signs of a conspiracy. The concerns seem reasonable. The threat is real. Admiral Satie is respected and professional about it, giving us implicit faith in the process.

But things take a turn when Data and Geordi share their findings about the hatch malfunction, and Satie still refuses to let it go. She turns her ire on Crewman Tarses, a medical assistant who treated the exobiologist. The admiral reserves special scrutiny for the anxious young man on the basis that he’s hiding a “terrible” secret: that his paternal grandfather was a Romulan, not a Vulcan, as he professed on his Starfleet application. All of a sudden, she wants his movements restricted, his actions monitored, his hearings made public.

There’s plausible justifications for these things. Picard is uncomfortable with using a Betazoid assistant as part of an interrogator, only for Satie to point out his hypocrisy in enlisting Troi for similar ends. She notes her trust in her staff and their instincts to rationalize keeping a leash on Tarses, especially given what’s at stake. She argues that Tarses has been demonstrated to be dishonest, and should be considered accordingly. She rationalizes public scrutiny as a response to the way closed-door sessions can invite rumor and speculation. Through a certain lens, there’s good, or at least defensible, reasons behind everything Admiral Satie does, even if they nag the conscience.

Eventually, though, it comes out that Satie’s accusations are founded on prejudice, not on evidence. Her witch hunt is based on a fixation, not a provable hypothesis. In a warm scene with Captain Picard, they both speak of their admiration for her father, a famous jurist, who wouldn’t let his children leave the table until they’d fully explored the topic at hand. The admiral has clearly taken that principle too far, chasing ghosts and tilting at windmills out of a determination that there must be something deeply wrong here because she can feel it, not because she can prove it.

It’s a conviction that leaves her more than happy to trample over the rights and liberties of the accused, and Picard won’t stand for it. “The Drumhead” puts he and Satie as two opposing forces doing battle for the heart of the Federation in all of this. Satie is the true believer who does ill in the name of good, claiming to want to protect Starfleet while undermining the values it stands for. And Picard is a protector of those values, extending its safeguards to the accused, to the right to be deemed innocent until proven guilty, to not speak without having culpability assumed, to not condemn by association or bloodline rather than examine the facts and evidence.

The episode is not subtle in that regard. If I have a major complaint about “The Drumhead”, it’s that it’s full of big speeches about high-minded ideals in lieu of more human conversations. That’s a tradition for Star Trek episodes that amble into the courtroom. But it’s hard not to be stirred by those speeches, however unnatural they may seem. Satie believes what she says when she talks about defending the Federation against hidden enemies and doing whatever it takes. Picard appeals to moral righteousness and the words of Satie’s own father when he laments the slippery slope his counterpart aims to nudge this inquiry down.

He lays down the philosophical firmament behind the rights the Federation affords to its citizens, and the protections it grants to the accused, out of a fear that simple suspicion and motivated reasoning could turn good men and women into scapegoats and imaginary enemies. The way down road should be full of speed bumps and backstops, not special dispensations to elide protocols in the name of biased self-certainty.

The necessity of those safeguards become clear when Admiral Satie trains her sights on Picard himself. It’s appropriate, albeit amusing, that “The Drumhead” credits her with resolving the insectoid scheme introduced in season 1 episodes “Coming of Age” and “Conspiracy” in a single line of dialogue. It quickly establishes Satie’s bona fides, but those installments were also the first time that Picard’s actions were spun in their worst possible light to try to make them fit into a preconceived agenda.

Satie questions Picard’s devotion to the Prime Directive (which, fair) and by extension, Starfleet’s principles. She implicitly questions him for letting a secret Romulan spy escape in “Data’s Day.” She raises the spectre of his experience with the Borg, in not only an attempt to damage him emotionally but to suggest that he may have been compromised, that any association with the enemy taints an otherwise unimpeachable officer.

It doesn’t work on Picard, of course. He turns the tables on his interlocutor, painting Satie as violating her own father’s principles and revealing the depths of the raving witch hunt she’s conducting to Starfleet command. Her investigation ends. But in one of those “sum it all up in the conference room” scenes TNG likes so much, Picard warns Worf that it isn’t over. Constant vigilance is required -- not just of snarling bad guys but of well-meaning patriots -- to ensure that we don’t lose our souls in the hunt for those who might seek to do us harm.

There’s a poetic irony to the use of that phrase from the vantage point of decades later. “Constant vigilance” became the watchword for the War on Terror, a justification for understandable fears after a psyche-shaking terror attack and legitimate measures to protect ourselves from possible enemies within our midst, but also for unjust prejudice and harassment for those who shared the heritage and religion as well as civil liberties sacrificed on the altar of maintaining security.

Writer Jeri Taylor and the creative team behind “The Drumhead” knew nothing of what would happen to the United States ten years after this episode aired. They couldn’t. But they knew history. They knew the many unfortunate times in our past when our prejudices and fears have gotten the better of us. They knew how easy it is to set aside the ideals we value most to vindicate those prejudices and settle our fears. And they closed the episode with a warning that to ignore that history is to allow it to repeat, something all too easy and quick at fraught or uncertain moments. Unfortunately, they were right.