“Dark Page” (7×07)
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This is a really strong episode, but I do have a couple minor quibbles:
- It was a mistake to try and misdirect the audience into thinking Maques was up to something nefarious. The story had enough real drama and stakes without introducing artificial ones.
- It shouldn’t have been so difficult for Deanna to learn about Kestra’s existence. Federation records are vast and easily accessible. Hell, Kestra would have been listed in Ian Troi’s obituary, assuming such things still exist in the 24th century.
But the core of the episode is really strong. Majel Barrett looms large when it comes to Trek; she’s the wife of boss, played two important characters on the original series, and was the voice of the vast majority of Starfleet computers. But until this episode, TNG had been content to relegate Lwaxana Troi to being a comedic foil for Deanna. Colorful, broad, obsessed with men and marriage.
Her first appearance on DS9, in “The Foresaken”, began to deepen the character somewhat with her careful and tender storyline with Odo. But this is the episode where the character gets some real depth: She has had to endure the worst thing a parent can possibly experience, the loss of a child, and she has yet to come to terms with it in any meaningful way.
Fortunately, it just so happens that her surviving daughter’s professional skillset makes her the most equipped person on board to help her navigate this personal crisis. The difficult emotional terrain allows mother and daughter to move beyond the sitcom dynamic of their previous episodes and get to a place that is vulnerable and painful and real.
I thought this episode’s aliens of the week were interesting and well-executed, too. The Cairn being are a species with pretty objectively superior intelligence. The prosthetics support that, with the additional cranial capacity bulging out of the sides of their heads. The creature makeup feels right for a species that has some of the strongest telepathic abilities known to the Federation. And it makes sense that telepathy would negate the need for oral and written communication.
When compared to telepathy, any other form of communication would feel clumsy and imprecise. Despite that, in a matter of days, they have mastered the fundamentals of speech. I enjoyed how the episode presented speaking as a sort of amusing novelty to the Cairn, as alien to them as telepathy would be to us. Because they have evolved without privacy, they are not duplicitous or mistrustful. They are, in many ways, the best case scenario of what you might encounter with a first contact situation.
I also appreciated the thought that went into the handling of Lwaxana’s mental state. Everything Deanna sees when she enters her mother’s mind has meaning and weight. When we first see Kestra inside Lwaxana’s mind, she looks just like Hedril without the cranial prosthetics. We see the connection that Lwaxana’s subconscious has made between the two girls, and we don’t see the “real” Kestra until Lwaxana has faced her grief and guilt and loss. It was fun seeing a very young Kirsten Dunst as Hedril and the early mental apparitions of Kestra.
Impacts on Star Trek Continuity:
Revisiting this episode made me appreciate parts of “Picard” S1 more:
I love that Deanna named her daughter after the sister she never got to know. And there is a real tragic resonance to the fact that Deanna, like her mother, would have to bury her first-born child far too young. But there is also great power in how Deanna and Will chose to deal with that loss; they took the opposite approach from Lwaxana; even though Thad is gone, his memory and his impact are everywhere. She was able to follow the advice she gave her mother when her own loss had to be endured.
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