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Retro Review: Dark Page
Lwaxana Troi collapses from repressing a secret that Deanna must use telepathy to uncover.
Plot Summary: The Enterprise hosts a diplomatic mission with the Cairn, a telepathic species being educated in the use of spoken language by Ambassador Lwaxana Troi – who is also trying to arrange a marriage between her daughter and Cairn leader Maques. Deanna is initially outraged, but her quarrels with her mother seem to trigger headaches and emotional distress for Lwaxana. Maques warns Deanna that her mother seems to have a hidden, dark area in her psyche, which Deanna dismisses at first as a normal need for privacy. Crusher advises Lwaxana to avoid using telepathy, since she has depleted her neurotransmitters, but Lwaxana makes psychic contact with Maques during a tour of the arboretum, then collapses while everyone is distracted by Maques’ young daughter Hedril, who has stumbled into the pond. Maques believes that Lwaxana’s meta-conscious mind has collapsed inward and believes that only telepathy can reach her, but he doesn’t know her well enough to interpret the images he can access in her mind. Deanna volunteers to try to reach her mother, entering her mother’s thoughts and finding herself on a duplicate of the Enterprise where first Picard orders her to leave, then a wolf chases her down a corridor, trapping her in an unknown house where she sees her dead father. Turning her back on him, Deanna is surprised to see Hedril in the vision, particularly when a furious Lwaxana appears and orders Deanna to leave the girl alone. Waking, Deanna talks to Hedril, who has had no traumatic contact with Lwaxana but says that she knows she makes Lwaxana sad. Deanna searches her mother’s journals for clues and is interrupted by Picard, who notices that seven years’ worth of entries were deleted from before Deanna’s birth until many months afterward. Entering her mother’s mind again, Deanna finds herself in the arboretum which now seems to border the house where she saw her father. Hedril is there, but she has the black eyes of a Betazoid child, and her mother calls her Kestra. As Deanna watches, she discovers that Kestra was her older sister, who drowned while their parents were distracted by the infant Deanna…an accident for which Lwaxana has always blamed herself. Deanna encourages her mother to say goodbye to Kestra, which enables Lwaxana to awaken and finally to talk about the child she lost.
Analysis: I haven’t seen “Dark Page” since it first aired in the 1990s, and had remembered it as somewhat overblown and manipulative – I thought the acting was good, but I hate insipid sentiment, so movies like Terms of Endearment and Beaches generally make me roll my eyes rather than work on me as tear-jerkers. Imagine my surprise when I story I remembered quite well, which had no surprises to offer me in terms of its drama, proved to be gut-wrenching upon rewatching. I’m sure that part of the feeling is because Majel Barrett Roddenberry died so recently; she didn’t just play Troi’s mother, she played the mother of all of Star Trek, a loss for every one of us who’s a fan. I was also a very new mother when I first saw the episode and now I have teenagers, so my sense of what’s emotionally authentic versus what’s socially constructed in terms of parental feeling has changed. I still dislike the idea that someone who’s always seemed as true to herself as Lwaxana Troi could have lived a lie for so long – on top of the question of how she got away with it, considering that she’s an empath and ambassador whose servant knew from the beginning, it’s hard to believe that someone who’s so expressive about living life to the fullest could have shut away such a big part of herself yet kept that spirit. We never had a clue that she carried such a loss when she mentored Alexander or tried to convince Timicin to keep living; if anything, despite what must have been the enormous grief of losing Deanna’s father while Deanna was still a child incapable of sharing Lwaxana’s grief because she didn’t really understand it, Lwaxana always seemed capable of carrying on, keeping the past where it belonged without having to wish it away. The woman who accompanied Timicin to his ritual suicide had no need to deceive herself about how much it would hurt her to lose him, nor that remembering their time together would make it worthwhile.
On the other hand, learning now about such a traumatic loss helps make sense of some of Lwaxana’s more erratic behavior, the sort that makes one wonder how she managed to become and stay an ambassador despite a unique penchant for embarrassing people, particularly her nearest and dearest. She’s been on Deanna’s case to find a husband since we first saw her, so her initial attempts to fix Deanna up with Maques don’t seem excessive or at all out of character. Her relentless insistence on living in the moment sometimes makes her seem reckless and childlike; it’s no wonder she gets along with Worf’s troubled son, and it’s possible to imagine that Lwaxana wants her daughter paired with Hedril’s father to keep the young Cairn girl in her life. Yet always, before “Dark Page,” we’ve been led to believe that Lwaxana’s eccentricities are calculated, that her success as a diplomat lies in her ability to catch people off their guard and spark an emotional reaction that as a telepath she can sense and cultivate. It’s not a happy thought that maybe the quirks that have served her so well – the pushy front, the loud laughter, the bawdy sense of humor – developed as a defense mechanism in the face of an unimaginable tragedy. Lwaxana’s relationship with Deanna has always had quite a bit of tension, though they clearly care deeply about one another; are we now to believe that Lwaxana deliberately held her empathic daughter at a distance to keep the sensitive Deanna from uncovering her secret?
I still feel like it’s a lot to swallow about a character we thought we knew, but it makes for a gripping storyline, and it tells us quite a bit about Deanna as well. In particular, we finally get to see her father and to hear about how his death affected her, something mentioned before only in passing. I know the writers tried to keep Troi and Riker apart because they believed romantic tension served the characters better than a love affair, but it’s always been necessary to pause and ask why they weren’t together when it seemed so apparent that they never stopped loving each other…particularly in the wake of First Contact, knowing that their romance will be revived and end in a wedding, it can seem rather arbitrary when one or the other has an intimate relationship with someone else. There’s a ring of truth in Lwaxana’s entirely inappropriate declaration that Deanna would probably be married to someone else by now if Riker didn’t have a claim on her. Deanna has expressed to his transporter clone how abandoned she felt by Will after he left for Starfleet, but her unwillingness to risk love with a Starfleet officer may go deeper, back to when she was a little girl whose father never came home. It’s a shame that we only see a child’s memory of her father – what Lwaxana expects Deanna to want to see – rather than some broader hint of who Ian Troi was, his interests and his career; we know so much about how Lwaxana’s Betazoid background shaped Deanna but other than songs and stories she recalls from early childhood, we know almost nothing about what she got from her human parent. It’s also not possible to see in such a short glimpse what made the colorful Lwaxana Troi fall in love with a human when as the Daughter of the Fifth House, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed, she could surely have had her pick of Betazoid men. He appears to have been a devoted husband and father, yet entirely human; like his wife, he was distracted when his little girl ran after their dog and fell in the water.
Despite the heavy material, there are some funny moments: Lwaxana’s insistence on calling Worf “Mr. Woof” and telling him that his brain isn’t sophisticated enough for Cairn communication; Lwaxana announcing that as a half-Betazoid, Troi would be useless communicating with the Cairn; a crewmember flustered by Deanna’s verbal scolding of Lwaxana when, unable to hear her telepathic nagging, he doesn’t believe Lwaxana has said anything at all. It’s also a joy to see a young Kirsten Dunst in the role of Hedril, and there are nice continuity moments for the regular characters like Picard evading Lwaxana’s attentions and Data using his recent dream analysis experiences to try to interpret the images from Lwaxana’s mind. Visually, the telepathic sequences are excellent, combining rooms on the Enterprise with unknown places from Deanna’s early childhood in a dreamlike fashion that seems more real than the visions in Data’s nightmares in “Phantasms.” Maybe it was a mistake to air the two episodes so close together, and that’s why I didn’t fully appreciate “Dark Page” the first time I saw it. Now I’m going to recall it as one of the high points of The Next Generation’s last season.
Block And Erdmann Talk Star Trek 365 Book
A new illustrated Star Trek book, Star Trek The Original Series 365 will be appearing in bookstores between now and early September, and the authors of the book, Paula Block and Terry Erdmann tell fans to expect new photographs.
Star Trek The Original Series 365 is a “definite, authorized guide to Star Trek,” and will cover all seventy-nine episodes of the original series.
The authors were instructed to find “unprecedented details” that would be new to fans, a tough task since it has been forty-four years since Star Trek first aired. “Our assignment was to find some [unprecedented details],” said Erdmann. “Talk about pressure! We counted on Paula’s familiarity with everything Star Trek as the baseline for what was ‘unprecedented’ (or at least ‘very rare’). She’s been looking at Star Trek images for four-plus decades, initially as a fan, and later as a ‘pro.’ Most readers are aware that she worked in the consumer products department at Paramount Pictures, and later CBS, for nearly two decades as director of Star Trek publishing.”
Block was able to access the Star Trek Consumer Products photo library. “Those would be the images that the department keeps on file for companies that make Star Trek products,” she explained. “If you’ve ever wondered where a manufacturer gets a picture of Kirk to plaster on a t-shirt, or a model manufacturer gets references to sculpt a model of the Defiant, that’s where they get them.”
“So Paula is very familiar with what exists in terms of the studio’s cache of Star Trek imagery,” Erdmann added. “And yet, while we were working on this book, she found surprising images that even she hadn’t seen before, or that she felt hadn’t been seen by the public in many, many years.”
Fans and actors alike helped in donating images for inclusion in the book. “I interviewed Tanya Lemani (the belly dancer from Wolf in the Fold) for the book and she sent us a great shot of herself in costume,” said Erdmann. “Paula managed to track down Bruce Hyde, Kevin Riley from The Naked Time, who now teaches acting at a university. He provided an amazing behind-the-scenes shot from his episode. Richard Jefferies, brother to Trek’s art director Matt Jefferies, allowed us to reproduce some of Matt’s sketches and gave us a photo of Matt at work that’s never been published.”
Star Trek The Original Series 365 can be ordered here.
Kurtzman To Direct Drama
Alex Kurtzman will soon have his first film directing job, courtesy of Steven Spielberg.
Kurtzman will direct Welcome to People, a film written by Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Jody Lambert.
According to Vulture, Welcome to People is “the story of a struggling twenty-something man who, after flying home to L.A. for the funeral of his estranged record-producer father, discovers that the will stipulates that he must deliver $150,000 in cash to a 30-year-old alcoholic sister he never knew existed, and her troubled 12-year-old son. Determined to keep the money to solve his own problems, he’s nonetheless fascinated by his unknown kin and makes contact with the two without revealing who he really is.”
The script for Welcome to People was written six years ago, but offered to Spielberg recently when Kurtzman wanted to branch out beyond action movies.
The title Welcome to People refers to a child anger-management program in which the nephew of the main character is enrolled after he blows up the pool at his middle school using sodium swiped from his chemistry class.
Ask Cryptic: Weekly Episodes
It's time for another round of Ask Cryptic! The monthly feature where we take your questions to the development team of Star Trek Online, and come back with as many answers as we can! This month, we're answering questions about the new weekly episodes, which begin this Saturday, August 28, 2010 at 11:00 a.m. PDT (18:00 GMT).
Do you have a question about the new weekly episodes for the devs? If so, post it in the forums!
Video of the Day: Playing Star Trek The Game with Gloria The Cat
Alex Kurtzman To Direct ‘Welcome To People’ – Produced By Steven Spielberg
Star Trek XII Co-Writer Alex Kurtzman to Direct His First Movie Co-Produced by Roberto Orci
Cameron: Competing With Trek
Writer-director James Cameron would like to see the Avatar world of Pandora be ranked up with the Star Trek Federation, Star Wars Empire and Tolkien worlds.
If Cameron had his way, Avatar, the highest-grossing film in history, would remain in the hearts and minds of fans for decades, with the inevitable toys, games and books to appear in due course.
A companion novel to Avatar is already in the works, which will arrive in bookstores in time for the holidays. “It gets into the nuts and bolts of the Na’vi culture, their lore and mythology, and has more about Dr. Grace [Sigourney Weaver] and her time on Pandora, but it doesn’t go beyond the end of the film other than to tease a little bit about what’s going to happen next,” said Cameron. “It will also be the bible for any future publication, a look-up guide for future writers who can come in and work within the world…. Think about all the Star Trek novels and how they contradicted each other for a few years and it made it tricky to be a Trekkie for a while.”
Cameron wants the world and story of Avatar to end up in the same place in the hearts of fans as other worlds of science fiction and fantasy. “You’ve got to compete head on with these other epic works of fantasy and fiction, the Tolkiens and the Star Wars and the Star Treks,” he said. “People want a persistent alternate reality to invest themselves in and they want the detail that makes it rich and worth their time. They want to live somewhere else. Like Pandora.”
Star Trek: The Next Generation Casting Memo Unearthed
Had things gone differently, fans might have seen Tim Russ or Wesley Snipes as Geordi La Forge.
An old casting memo dated April 13, 1987 from Paramount shows the actors and actresses who might have been chosen to play the roles of Picard, Ryker and La Forge instead of Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes and LeVar Burton.
The memo, pictured here (click on thumbnail to see it full-sized), shows that while some characters had multiple actors vying for the role, two characters had only one actor or actress in contention, and in both cases, neither got the role.
Stewart was one of five in contention for Picard, and he and Patrick Bauchau (who ironically played a Roland Picard in 2009’s 2012) were the front-runners for the role of the Captain.
For Ryker, although Jonathan Frakes was one of the four on the list and the one who got the role, Michael O’Gorman was the favorite according to the memo.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Rosalind Chao (Keiko O’Brien) was the favorite for the part of Tasha Yar. Denise Crosby, who ultimately won the role, was not even on the list for the part, she was being considered for Troi.
An actor who went on to Star Trek: Voyager, Tim Russ (Tuvok), was vying with Reggie Jackson, Wesley Snipes and others for the role of Geordi La Forge.
The only one who was a favorite and actually got the role, other than Stewart, was Gates McFadden, who was listed under her real first name of Cheryl.
Happy 30th Birthday, Chris Pine + New Unstoppable Poster + Almost Cast In MI4?
Karl Urban Says New Judge Dredd Movie Will Be a Gritty, Hardcore, Faithful Adaptation of the Comic Book
James Cameron Compares Plans For Avatar Universe To Star Trek Franchise
1987 Paramount Memo Reveals Actors Auditioning For Star Trek: TNG Cast
