I think a nice aspect to this is that she has the ability to sense emotions. So she KNEW the bridge crew were bricking it. It was not a bluff she KNEW that at least one bridge member was afraid enough to follow her commands. She would have been the perfect secret agent.
What you are saying is partially true but the one that pulled the disruptor was the one that kidnaped her and turned her into a Romulan. That being said she would make a great spy for the reasons you stated.
A rare example of a Troi episode that was actually good. REALLY good, in fact. Not trying to diss on Marina Sirtis, she just tended to get the short end of the stick when it came to decent scripts.
I liked the beginning of the episode where she woke up in the dark, stumbled about and turned on the light at the mirror , then instantly jumped back and damn near screamed at seeing a Romulan in the mirror with her face. I also liked the scene where she shouts at the Subcommander that if he doesn't do what she says then she'll have him ejected into space. She showed some real anger there.
Great performance by Marina, and a reminder of how devastating Troi's empathic abilities (and counselor training) can be if used to manipulate and intimidate. It makes me wonder what Mirror!Troi was like.
There was a tng novel that depicted mirror troi. She was a terrifying dominatrix like figure that ran the ship from behind the scenes, spying on Starfleet’s behalf, essentially using Picard as her puppet, used her sex appeal to manipulate everyone (especially the men) and killed for sport (poor Barclay as just one example). This depiction of Troi was probably the inspiration for what ended up being Intendant Kira on DS9. As you pointed out, based on this scene we were robbed of what could have been an incredible on screen character in Mirror Troi.
Troi did indeed kick a lot of ass in this scene. She relieved the commander of her duties AND got the bridge crew to cooperate out of fear, if she'd been born a Romulan, Troi would've kicked a lot of ass as a member of the Tal Shiar.
Maybe not, one of her main advantages here is how she can read others' emotions. If you go back to the episode she loses her powers, she loses much of her omph.
@@jonathansoko1085 Not relevant to this episode, but one of my favourites is "Dark Page" where she finds out she had a sister she never knew (that died before she was 1 year old)
Sirtis's best Troi performances are when she's pretending to be someone else, or possessed by aliens or being influenced by something. She plays tough way better than she plays soft. She was gonna be security chief had Crosby not got the Yar part.
"In order to defeat your enemy, you must first understand them. The Federation wishes to avoid war at all costs. So, I will offer them a diplomatic solution, get them to lower their shields, and then.....DESTROY THEM." Shoulda made sure to add that part.
Even good actors struggle when not given good material, here the writers gave her something besides “My powers sense this screaming alien is angry” or sounding like a fortune teller, and it worked out great.
@@jmcenanly1 Sorry I know your response was 9 mths ago but I would like to ask if your referring to the Gargoyle cartoon or has there been another movie with that title the only one I know is the 1970s movie, I think the lead actress was Jennifer Salt.
@@lonknight3197 Pretty sure James means Demona from Gargoyles. If that isnt good enough, you can also pen Matriarch Benezia from Mass Effect 1 as well.
I watch this clip whenever I need some courage. I've always wanted to be level-headed and confident like that. And what's so great about this scene is she's not really confident--she's terrified and confused in this ridiculous situation, but she has to get the job done to the best of her ability. Makes you think "if she can do it, maybe I can too."
This was and is what makes these trek shows better than this new dystopian and shallow garbage. These episodes made us think and did not tell us what to think.
that face at 0:44 is the biggest "OH SHIT" eyes i have ever seen, and the fact that it's being made by a romulan actually made me laugh out loud. /dayum/, deanna!!
Yeah! This was a great Deanna episode. Poor Deanna, she didn't get many of them either. : ( -And Marina Sirtis had a lot to offer. Yes she was lovely but she also seemed to have a great sense of humor and - as shown here - some great acting chops. Go get 'em Deanna! (But it was fun to see her making cameos in Voyager.)
It's because of her outfits... they show too much cleavage, and a woman with cleavage can't have brains in TV-land... once she puts on something more modest, though, suddenly, she's very smart indeed...
She was mainly used by the TNG producers as T&A, Just like Jeri Ryan, in Voyager, and Jolene Blalock in enterprise, they all were under utilized, and all were great actors
@@aryanson I wouldnt say Ryan and Blalock were underutilized. Just over sexualised. Sirtis on the other hand, she's actually a really good actor, I always loved her episodes as crappy as most were, simply because we didnt get enough of them.
This episode allows Marina Sirtis to deliver the best work she did during the seven years she was on TNG. Strong, assertive, yet vulnerable, Troi puts herself on the line and shows that she can handle herself when the chips are down. This was a great showcase for both the actress and character and highlights how long it took the creative team to figure out that when put to good use, Troi could shine......
"Listen to me carefully. You are no longer Deanna Troi. You are Major Rakal of the Tal Shiar - the Imperial intelligence." - N'Vek, explaining to Troi why she was surgically altered to appear Romulan "Your only chance to get off this ship alive is to do as I say." - N'Vek, to Troi
Troi's character certainly came a long way. She went from being an airhead in a miniskirt in season 1, to becoming a valued commander who faced down Romulans and saved the ship more than once.
HAHAHAHAHA! It was hard to miss Benezia's voice actor when I played Mass Effect for the first time since I'm a longtime star trek fan, but I never caught Chakwas. Is that really her?
Hands down the best Deanna Troi episode. No vague hints of deception or useless obversations or anything. She has to navigate a high stakes situation with little to no help on a ship where everyone hates and fears her without getting killed, without getting her cargo killed and without getting the Enterprise destroyed. And one slip-up and she is dead. Her advantage is her empathic ability to gauge what she can get away with with people around her. Her biggest disadvange is her having to be a disgusting confrontational totalitarian hardass, a role she is not comfortable playing.
Romulan Troi was the best version of Troi. When she told the Sub Commander she'd tell the Commander she had evidence of his treason and then have him shoved out an airlock I felt things. Things I had never felt before.
Trek spend a respectable amount of time showing what life was like aboard a Klingon ship. There was the exchange episode, plus DS9. It's a shame that the Romulans didn't get the same chance. They would have made an interesting contrast - as disciplined and professional as the Federation, as ruthless as the Klingons, and more secretive and paranoid than either. Especially during their alliance against the Dominion, when they had to work with both - the idea they'd assign an officer to work the cloaking device for the Defiant got dropped fairly quickly.
@@BioGoji-zm5ph Oh indeed she was. The voice is unmistakable --- as is Jonathan Frakes as David Xanatos. Quite a number of Star Trek people wound up doing voices in Gargoyles: Michael Dorn, Brent Spiner, Kate Mulgrew, LeVar Burton, Nichelle Nichols, Avery Brooks, Colm Meany.
Once they took Troi out of her pink bunny suit and put her in a proper uniform, Troi became more bad-ass and complicated! That was a crime to do it so late in the series... Marina really did shine in this epic episode of Star Trek Next Gen! Thanks for posting!! 🌟
This was Troi's best episode! This role actually had some meat on it! And this modest wig was much better than growing clouds of hair that Troi would wear later on.
This was a really good episode with Troi! It was fun to see her show to the polar opposite of her normal personality aboard Enterprise. Kind, compassionate, & understanding to commanding, threatening, & intimidating!
If you’ve ever read “Dark Mirror” it was the Next Generation’s encounter with the dark parallel universe from TOS episode 4 of Season 2, “Mirror Mirror”. In that dimension, Troi was the most evil character of all of them, sadistic, power hungry, about like Darth Sidious from Star Wars, and she ran the ship behind the scenes my manipulating everyone’s minds. I wish we could have gotten to see that episode, but this shows that she could have acted it well had she been given the opportunity.
@@TheMrPeteChannel Picard didn't really focus on the Romulans that much. Just a tiny subsect of the Tal'shiar as an excuse for the entire plot, which mostly focused on liberated Borg and the like.
@@TheMrPeteChannel Honestly they shouldn't have even made that the first season. They basically started half-way through the story and then "told" the backstory without showing much of it. No opportunity to show why the Federation went to shit or why Picard became so disillusioned with Starfleet. That last point in itself could have been made a whole season on its own, and probably SHOULD have. Instead we're just told "Starfleet did a bad, and Picard left because of it".
Carolyn Seymour demonstrated her acting chops to the full here, eclipsing Sirtis by a country mile although, for Sirtis, this was also a good performance.
There is one big flaw in this scene. "And since have no shields when we are cloaked, they will destroy us!" The Romulan captain was going to disengage the cloak before Troi went off on her meaning that if the Enterprise were to return fire, the Romulan ship would NOT be destroyed if the shield was raised quickly enough! Am I the only one who caught that??
It's long established in Trek lore that decloaking and raising shields is not an instantaneous process, and the first has to happen before the second. I think she was meant to be playing the card that the Enterprise would react faster than that process could happen.
Plus there's also the possibility that the Commander was planning on deloaking, opening fire and the recloaking hoping to catch the Enterprise off guard, pretty much doing what most rogues in RPGs do. problem is even in that interval between the cloak and shields going up and down there would be a chance the Enterprise got a hit in somewhere that could cause the Romulans to be tracked much more easily, say a fuel line or the nacelles for example, or if aimed properly a single kill shot that would cause the singularity drive to collapse in on itself crushing the entire ship and taking everyone with it. also sorry for reviving this year old comment but it's something i thought about for a while.
unbelieveable. much like other episodes like rascals, times arrow, lore and the borg, alexanders rapid growth, crusher chasing ghosts? and sela..good thing there are many more fine episodes to appreciate.
Why do I get the feeling that Troi's job would have been all the more difficult if she were on board Tomalak's vessel? Also, damn this TNG for having such good Romulan characters. It's too bad that none of them, save for MAYBE Tomalak, made any major reappearances. Toreth was an interesting character and one I think would've been interesting to follow and learn more about. Tomalak, Toreth, Taris...Any one of them could've been reoccurring antagonists.
