“Chain of Command” (6×10 & 6×11)

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I don’t think I’ve ever actually watched this two-parter before, though I’ve encountered plenty of fans shitting on Jellico over the years. It’s the kind of story that would be more effective in today’s television landscape, where major cast changes happen a lot more frequently. I doubt anyone believed Picard was gone as captain for good, whereas now that sort of thing would be a real possibility.

What I liked about this one is that it’s the rare story where the bad guys outsmart and outmaneuver the good guys. The nature of “Deep Space Nine” being set in a stationary location is that there is a great deal more time and effort invested in worldbuilding when it comes to the local neighborhood. Accordingly, the Cardassians are much more nuanced and complex antagonists that anything TNG came up with. One of the fun things about this overlap period between TNG and DS9 is that TNG got to play with some of DS9’s toys from time to time.

As for Jellico, I don’t think he’s a bad captain so much as he is the wrong captain on the wrong ship at the wrong time. The most telling moment in the first episode for me was when Jellico storms out of the initial meeting with the Cardassian representative in a ploy to intimidate him. Riker, who has gotten off to a rocky start with his new captain, remarks, “Well, I’ll say this for him – he’s sure of himself.” But Troi, who can read his emotions, looks worried: “No, he’s not.”

And that’s the crucial problem; the top brass picked him for this assignment because they thought his experience with the Cardassians would give Starfleet an advantage in negotiations. But in fact, the opposite is true: His actions don’t make sense unless he goes into the negotiations expecting to fail. Everything he does — the rigidity of his command style, all of the exhaustive (and exhausting) battle preparations — presuppose that war with the Cardassians is inevitable.

The larger issue with both Jellico’s planning and the admiral’s planning is that they assume that they’re the ones shaping the narrative, and maneuvering their opponent into a corner. When of course the opposite is true; the entire thing was a ploy to compromise one of Starfleet’s most celebrated captains and leave the flagship of the fleet in less capable hands.

If you asked the crew of the the USS Cairo about Jellico in the lead up to the events of this episode about their captain, they would have probably said that Jellico is a bit of a hard ass, not much of a people person, and not the best at collaborating. But the fact that he had such a strong record going into this episode, and the fact that he becomes an admiral by the “Prodigy” era, indicates that he’s not an inept leader. But the circumstances under which he takes command of the Enterprise serve to bring to the fore all of his worst qualities.

I really enjoyed the deviousness of the Cardassian plot, which is essentially: “Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly. And having the late great David Warner as the spider at the center of the web was just a terrific payoff to take us into the cliffhanger. There’s a wonderful matter of factness about the way that he begins to grind Picard down.

By the end of the first part, everything had gone according to plan for the Cardassians, and hardly anything had gone according to plan for the Federation.

The structure of this two-parter has an admirable symmetry; it wasn’t one of those two parters where the cliffhanger at the end of part one presents a seemingly unstoppable disaster that then gets solved in the first five minutes at the beginning of part two. Instead, just as Starfleet’s plans steadily unraveled in part one, leading to total victory for the Cardassians, in part two the Cardassians’ plans steadily unravel, leading to total victory for Starfleet.

The second episode shows why Starfleet headquarters holds Jellico in such high esteem; while he and Riker don’t make a good pairing, and he isn’t a good fit for the culture cultivated by Picard aboard the Enterprise, he is a competent captain who gets the job done. Without an emotional attachment to Picard, he is able to focus on the problem at hand, correctly extrapolate the Cardassians’ plans from the data that LaForge has collected, and devise an effective counter-strategy.

The revealing moment for his character is when he accepts LaForge’s conclusion that Riker is the pilot best qualified to deploy the mines in the nebula. Even though he hates Riker’s guts, and even though it’s mortifying to go and plead for his help so soon after dismissing him from his duties, he does it because it’s in the best interests of Starfleet and the Enterprise. And when he does, Riker doesn’t make it easy on him. They exchange some harsh words with a lot of truths in them, and then they set their personal feelings aside and concentrate on the task at hand.

Another revealing moment is what he does when his strategy succeeds in defanging the Cardassians without starting a shooting war. It’s a big win for him, and would go a long way toward securing permanent command of the Enterprise. But he stays true to his uniform and the ethos its represents, successfully negotiating for Picard’s safe return. On some level, consciously or unconsciously, he probably realizes he isn’t a good fit for the Enterprise. But setting that aside, he doesn’t let personal ambition get in the way of duty. He wouldn’t want command of the Enterprise if the price he had to pay for it was compromising the high standards he holds himself to.

One thing I found telling is the Jellico/Data relationship. The pairing works because Data is efficient and compliant. For a demanding micromanager, that’s the dream combination for a second in command. And while Data isn’t motivated by ambition, nor does he resist the promotion out of personal loyalty to Riker; he isn’t outraged because outrage is an emotion that is, at this juncture, beyond his capabilities.

Elsewhere, the torture scenes between Picard and David Warner’s Gul Madred were about as harrowing as this show gets. But they weren’t torture porn, because there’s a real back and forth. Even though Gul Madred holds all of the cards, Picard succeeds at getting under his skin. He takes the time to understand his torturer, and then targets his vulnerabilities with precision.

The scene where the Gul’s daughter briefly interrupts the torture session, and is completely unfazed by the sight of an exhausted and tormented half-naked man chained up in the middle of the room, speaks to the societal consequences of life under a fascist police state. One thing that this episode explores, that fades into the background of DS9, is how much the Cardassian backstory mirrors the Bajorans: They were a peaceful society with a vibrant culture plunged into a war they were not prepared for, with starvation and widespread and extreme poverty resulting. But unlike the Bajorans, who transitioned from the resistance back into some form of a civilian life, the Cardassians embraced a military dictatorship to achieve victory and prosperity at any cost. So now, as Picard says, their bellies are full but their spirits are empty.

The most impactful scene in the entire episode is the very last one, when Picard’s first act after resuming command is to have a therapy session with Counselor Troi. He reveals that he was on the verge of breaking at the very moment he was rescued, and indeed had already emotionally broken. His parting declaration that there were four lights was an exercise in intellectual fortitude, because he had already been forced to believe that there were five lights, as his mind played tricks on him in order to end his torment.

I love Kirk and I love Picard, but one of the differences between William Shatner and Patrick Stewart is that Shatner would never have allowed Kirk to make such a vulnerable admission, whereas Stewart clearly relished bringing Picard to such an exposed place.