3x02 The Ensigns of Command

[7.4/10] I am a sucker for an episode with a good structure and counterpoint, and the strangely-named “Ensigns of Command” has that in spade. There’s a nice A-story/B-story split, with Data down on the planet trying to convince a group of Federation colonists to evacuate on the one hand, and Picard on the Enterprise trying to convince some incoming alien colonists to hold off on eradicating the planet’s human residents. The episode does a nice job of gradually bringing both conflicts to a boil at just the right time.

But there’s also a thematic contrast to Data and Picard’s predicaments. Data is almost rotely logical, and yet has to discover more creative and, dare I say, human modes of persuasion in order to get his point across to the colonists. Meanwhile, Picard is adept at persuasive oratory, but finds himself dealing with a rigid species that’s barely crossed the language barrier and views humans as an inferior life form to begin with. It means that, ironically, to succeed Picard has to be less human in his efforts to convince his negotiating partners, more focused on the sort of nitpicky logic and rule-bound persnicketiness that Data might be better suited for. The different situations call for different approaches, and take both leaders out of their comfort zones.

Beyond that, it's just a good setup. Data having to convince a group of colonists who’ve forged their community over the course of nearly a century that they have to leave in a matter of weeks or even days has the right sense of urgency and challenge for the android. You feel for the colonists, despite how unyielding their leader is. It’s hard to have built something over the course of generations and be told that you must abandon it or be killed due to some treaty you never signed or even heard of until moments earlier.

It reminds me of a passage from Middlemarch where an upper middle class gentleman tries to convince a group of workmen that the arrival of the train to their humble village is a blessing and beyond that, an inevitability. He’s not exactly received warmly, and there’s some great prose from George Eliot about the lack of force from grandiose words about a social benefit they’ll never feel. It’s of a piece with the colonists here, much more able to feel the years of labor and community instilled in this place, over the high-minded discussions of treaties and practical realities.

It also makes for another endearing chapter in the “Data becomes more human” story that Star Trek: The Next Generation will continue to tell over the course of its run. Between this episode, “Measure of a Man,” and “Pen Pals”, it’s only right to consider Melinda M. Snodgrass one of the chief and most essential authors of that story in Star Trek. “The Ensigns of Command” continues it by forcing Data to confront a situation in which pure rational argument finds no purchase, and he has to resort to reverse psychology and even a literally explosive demonstration to get his point across. It’s a step toward understanding the human psyche that represents a deeper comprehension of the human mind, and even command decisions, for the aspiring android.

At the same time, Picard has to shed those instincts. I like his confrontations with the Sheliak, because these alien foes render Picard’s usual methods obsolete. He is the king of the big speech, the appeal to reason or mercy or common ground that talks enemies down from violence and spurs allies into action.

But he’s stymied here for a variety of reasons. For one thing, the Sheliak don’t care for flowery human prose. (I’ll confess to getting a kick out of the Sheliak tweaking Picard for his “gibbering.”) For another, the language barrier requires a precision from Picard that obviates the effectiveness for his usual rhetorical flourishes. Last but not least, the Sheliak just don’t think much of humanity, meaning his high-minded protestations come off to them like a toddler crying with all its might that something is “unfair.”

The production design helps here. The Sheliak have one of the most unique visual presentations we’ve seen on TNG so far, with a hauntingly lighted ship and a bulky form that’s often hidden in shadow. It gives them a more foreign, unfamiliar quality that illustrates the cultural differences in a visual fashion outside of the script. For Discovery fans, it presages the look of the Ba’ul there, with similarly unnerving and alien results.

Eventually, though, Picard beats them at their own game. There’s something roundly satisfying about the way he uses the byzantine, bureaucratic requirements of the Sheliak’s five-hundred thousand page treaty against them. It’s some nice rules-lawyering by Picard to get the time he needs to rescue the colonists. And the moment when he turns the tables on them, holding them over a barrel with the treaty and wandering over to inspect the ship’s plaque and taking his sweet time to respond to their hail is absolutely delicious. It’s a human, almost gloating side of Picard that we don’t see, a sign of the nerve the Sheliak struck here, and the cleverness of his result.

It’s hard to call Data’s solution to persuading the colonists as clever (though his phaser modification warrants some credit), but it’s certainly as extreme. There’s a nice progression to Data’s methods here. He starts out simply trying to explain the logic of the situation to the colonists’ leader, who dismisses him in favor of the emotional connection to the land. From there, Data tries to appeal to the colonists’ emotions himself, seemingly praising their valor in dying for a lost cause while not-so-subtly endeavoring to persuade the other colonists to take a different path. You can see Data, despite claiming to have no feelings himself, learning how to appeal to those in others.

But the peak comes when the colonists’ leader attacks him after a meeting with other local potentates seems to show Data making some progress. The android decides that more drastic measures are necessary and that humans respond to actions more than words. So he uses a phaser to blast the aqueduct that the colonists’ leader waxed rhapsodic about as a symbol of all they’ve accomplished, and punctuates it with a speech about how the Sheliak can do all this and worse. It serves the purpose, and even though he has to scare these people, Data gets to the right result, learning a little about the art of persuasion and leadership in the process.

The only fly in this ointment is a strange quasi-romance Data has with one of the locals, who’s possessed of what Bender “Bending” Rodriguez would call “metal fever.” It feels tacked on to the episode and undeveloped. The best you can say is that it’s another way to suggest Data’s understanding of human nature and feeling is evolving, with him knowing it’s right to give a kiss when his would-be paramour needs one, even if he protests that it’s not the cause of emotion.

It dovetails with a lovely closing scene where Picard compliments Data on his violin performance, bookending the episode. They speak, in a roundabout way, about whether Data has that spark of creation and “soul.” The android protests that he merely imitates, but Picard sees more. He sees a being who makes choices, who combines seemingly contradictory styles into something new and beautiful. The challenges of “Ensign of Command” force Picard to be a little more doctrinaire and technical, like his android second officer, but they also show Data taking another step toward humanity, if only by necessity and finding himself in the spaces between those supposed imitations, of music and of command.