Chain of Command: Part I (⭑⭑⭑⭑)

Reversing the usual trend for TNG two-parters, “Chain of Command” gives us a part one that, whatever its merits, is definitively overshadowed by an absolute standout of a part two. This first part is significant and worthwhile in its own right, but it’s also a bit of an odd egg. It is important to the expanding Trek universe by virtue of a brief early line establishing that the Cardassians have withdrawn from Bajor, which sets up the premise of Deep Space Nine (whose pilot episode debuted just a few weeks after this episode’s original air date). Within TNG, aside from setting up its own second part, this episode is perhaps best remembered for Captain Jellico ordering Troi to wear a standard uniform (more on that later). It’s also only the third episode ever to feature Cardassians, and it marks the first appearance of the minor recurring character of Admiral Nechayev. But with all of that said…how good is “Chain of Command Part I” as an episode in its own right? I actually find that a tricky question to answer. It’s definitely a memorable episode that I enjoy watching, but I also have bones to pick with it—and in the end, I’m not sure that it particularly “adds up” to much, apart from its function of setting up the next episode. Indeed, I’m conscious of perhaps being a bit generous with my rating on this one. Three stars would feel miserly, given how significant and enjoyable this episode genuinely is; still, I’m not sure that I can entirely justify my four-star rating, either.

Let’s start with the easy stuff. “I’m here to relieve you of command of the Enterprise” is a pretty great line to end a teaser on, and even though you never really doubt that Picard’s “reassignment” will be reversed by the time part two ends, having our beloved captain abruptly replaced, and getting to see what the Enterprise would be like under someone else’s command for two episodes, was a solid story idea. Despite, like I said, it being a foregone conclusion for the audience that Captain Jellico isn’t going to be sticking around for long, the episode does a good job of selling the fact that this is not how the other characters experience things, and it succeeds in making moments like the transfer of command ceremony (not to mention the removal of Livingston, the fish, from the ready room!) feel momentous and a bit dismaying. As for the doings of Picard, Worf, and Crusher, they are very clearly the “B” story (more on this later, too); the Jellico story is the meat. Thus, how one evaluates this episode mostly comes down to one’s take on the merits of what the writers chose to do with the premise of Picard being (temporarily) replaced by a different captain. So—let’s talk about Captain Edward Jellico!

Jellico is difficult to write about, because whereas I see him as a nuanced and effective character but a very flawed and unlikable person, a large contingent of fans seems to see him as flat-out awesome, and to side with him, rather than with Riker, Geordi, and the other regulars, as the latter butt heads with him throughout this episode. This is absurd, and it leaves me torn between wanting to praise the writers for crafting an interesting character (on one hand), and (on the other) wanting to dispute what seems to be the prevailing narrative about him amongst fans by pointing out how messed up he is. Jellico does come across as a real, believable person; we’re not talking about the kind of relentlessly one-dimensional asshole that the show too often served up back in the bad old days of season one, on occasions when outside officers paid visits to the Enterprise (a Kosinski, say, or a Remmick). But he’s deeply insecure, a piss-poor leader, and kind of a jerk. Here is a captain who barely even pauses to say “hello” upon beaming aboard before starting to reel off a list of immediate, arbitrary, and in some cases wildly unrealistic (at least according to Geordi) changes that he wants made to how the Enterprise is run; a captain whose “leadership” style is so diametrically opposite to Picard’s collaborative approach that he can’t be bothered to give a damn what anyone under his command might think or feel, including (especially?) his executive officer; a captain who expects his officers to be able to read his mind, and grows impatient with them when they fail to do so; a captain who approaches a diplomatic mission with the assumption that it will inevitably fail, deliberately insults and provokes the other party to the negotiations, and acts totally unhinged in their presence. Yet, to many, this guy is allegedly some kind of breath of fresh air, and his more formal, “military” style is what is needed to prepare the Enterprise for its encounter with the Cardassians (?). To my mind, this reading of him merely parrots the character’s own bogus self-justification. It also ignores the fact that he’s actually there to conduct a diplomatic mission, and is specifically not supposed to be starting a war! (Admiral Nechayev’s justification for putting the Enterprise in this guy’s hands is that he supposedly played a key role in securing the Federation-Cardassian armistice and is therefore uniquely qualified to negotiate with the Cardassians—and yet, the man turns out not to have a diplomatic bone in his body (!), and (again) he comes at the assignment assuming that it is going to fail.) And besides, since when are our regulars—the illustrious, best-and-brightest officers and crew of the Federation’s flagship—not up to the task of engaging with a potentially dangerous enemy, and in need of a shaping-up to prepare them for such an encounter? (Riker—the guy who saved Earth from the Borg—is not adequate to guide the Enterprise through the “dangerous situation” with the Cardassians that it is about to face!? Okay, sure, he doesn’t specifically have experience negotiating with Cardassians, but as events quickly prove, Jellico’s alleged experience in this area isn’t good for much. And then…Geordi’s engines are operating at a merely passable level of proficiency!? Come on!) Again, though, many fans seem weirdly willing to accept Jellico’s bullshit—to view the resentment and the struggles of Riker and the others in this episode as signifying simply that they are spoiled whiners who have been “coddled” up to now, and to admire Jellico for trying to instill some discipline into them. This view involves a massive retcon (every other episode portrays the Enterprise folks as the best of the best), is a slap in the face to the show’s primary protagonist (Picard), mistakes “are accustomed to being treated with respect and having their input valued” for “whiny and insubordinate,” and fails to acknowledge what a profoundly flawed person Captain Jellico actually is.

In an interesting scene between Jellico and Counsellor Troi, the former compares Cardassians to wolves, saying that they exhibit “an instinctive need to establish a dominant position.” Be that as it may, the captain’s remark is a clear case of projection, revealing more about himself than it actually elucidates about (all?) Cardassians. This is obvious both in how he behaves toward Riker and the other officers and in how he approaches the actual negotiations with the Cardassians, and in both cases, it’s way overdone (but again, I mean that mostly as a criticism of Jellico as a person—not of the writing). There may be some merit in the idea of a new captain asserting himself a bit just for the sake of establishing “I’m in charge, and I’m going to have my own preferences and ways of doing things,” but Jellico takes this way too far; any good leader would make some effort to build relationships with his subordinates and get their buy-in to the procedural changes that he wanted to make, and his “I don’t have time for that” attitude is just a lame excuse, not a valid argument. Similarly, when negotiating with an adversarial party, sure, there’s something to be said for establishing a position of strength and sending the message that you won’t be pushed around. But you also want to build trust, and (you know) actually be diplomatic! Jellico way overplays his hand with the Cardassians, and it comes back to bite him in the end. The exchange between RIker and Troi in which the former, though bemused by the captain’s bizarre negotiating tactics, nevertheless declares “I’ll say this for him—he’s sure of himself,” and Troi replies “No, he’s not,” is pretty spot-on, though I would add that Jellico himself probably would agree with RIker; his facade of ultra-confidence exists first and foremost to deceive himself. But having said all of this, I want to emphasize again that I do enjoy Captain Jellico as a character. I’m mostly arguing here with fans who buy into the character’s own bullshit, not with the actual writing or acting. In particular, I have always thought that Jellico’s signature catch phrase, “Get it done,” was a clever bit of characterization, obviously meant to parallel Picard’s “make it so” while underlining their differences in style. Also, despite all his flaws, it’s clear that he is actually well-intentioned; he does actually want to avoid a war, and he also genuinely hopes for the safe return of Picard and his team. He’s a flawed guy, but not a bad guy, and watching him be his flawed self—and watching the regulars react to and struggle to work with him—is entertaining and thought-provoking (and throws the absent Captain Picard’s strengths into sharper relief).

The writers’ choice to use Captain Jellico’s “more formal style” as an opportunity to redress the longstanding idiocy of Troi’s ridiculous, cleavage-y outfits was an interesting one. On one hand, I wish to add my voice to that of just about everyone else who has ever written about this in declaring that Troi should have been wearing a regular uniform like everyone else all along, and that finally having her start to do so now was very, very welcome. Almost immediately, it becomes easier to take her seriously as a character, and even though just having her wear a regular uniform throughout the entire series would not, by itself, have fixed all of the problems with her as a character, it would at least have made the sexism underlying those problems less glaring. Also (and more than a little ironically), I further concur with just about everyone else that she actually looks better in the uniform than she ever did in her (frankly hideous) previous costumes, for whatever that’s worth. There’s a bit of a “however” brewing here, though, and it’s this: It doesn’t really work, within the reality of the show, to use Jellico’s order as the thing that prompts Troi to switch to the standard uniform, because if she herself would rather dress differently (which we have to assume is true, or why has she been doing so all this time?), then surely she would just resume doing so as soon as Jellico was gone. Plus, it just feels weird for this entirely positive and long-overdue change to only come about (in-universe) as a result of an order from a character whose other orders are almost entirely arbitrary and/or ill-advised. Honestly, I think that once it finally dawned on the writers that Troi should really be wearing the same uniform as everyone else, the best thing for them to do would have been to just quietly have her start doing so, and never explicitly call attention to the change. Still, overall, I’ll happily roll with how they did choose to do this, because it very much needed to be done!

As for the B plot involving Picard, Worf, and Crusher, it clearly exists solely to set up the events of part two, and hardly warrants extensive comment. Most of it is passably entertaining without being anything special, at least if you’re willing to overlook the plausibility issues surrounding the three of them, in particular, being sent on such a commando mission (especially given that the choice of Picard in particular turns out to have been anticipated by the Cardassians). The interlude wherein they book passage with a Ferengi is both nonsensical (Starfleet sent them on this mission, but left them to improvise a way of getting to Celtris III on their own?) and cringeworthy, though. Apparently it was originally intended that they would visit Deep Space 9 here, and the Ferengi would have been Quark, but the episode ended up airing before the DS9 pilot, so they changed it at the last minute. And maybe it would have been better as originally conceived, given that unlike any Ferengi who ever appears on TNG, Quark actually feels like a real person…but the demeaning trope of having a female officer manipulate a Ferengi into cooperating by ear-masturbating him while cooing seductively is just bad, no matter who the Ferengi is. Overall, though, the Picard/Worf/Crusher bits of “Chain of Command Part I” are fairly forgettable—as I said, present merely to set up part two.

In the end, what I am grappling with in trying to assess this episode is this: What, ultimately, is the Jellico story supposed to be? As far as I can tell, the writers’ purpose with him seems more or less to have been “let’s shake up our characters’ complacency by forcing them to deal with change and work with a captain who has different ways of running things than what they’re used to.” And while that’s a worthwhile story idea, it ideally calls for introducing a captain who is legitimately just different from (not objectively way worse than) Picard. I mean, if he were kind of an unlikable ass (which he is) but nevertheless a basically effective captain, he would present a more interesting challenge for Riker and the others to deal with, and there could be a genuine story in that. Or, alternatively, if his captaining were so bad that it forced the regulars into actual insubordination in service of preventing him from provoking all-out war with the Cardassians—that would constitute a bit of a Trek cliche, but it would at least provide a coherent narrative arc. As is, though, it’s hard to put a finger on what the story actually is here (in part one). Did the writers merely seek to foist a somewhat off-kilter and fairly hateable substitute captain on the Enterprise for an episode in order to generate audience sympathy for the regulars and make us miss Picard as much as they do? Is it just a what-if scenario intended to show us what life aboard the Enterprise might look like with a different, and much more flawed, captain? Now, admittedly, the picture does become somewhat clearer if you consider both parts of “Chain of Command” as one whole (so I’ll be revisiting this in my review of part two). But looking at part one on its own, I have to confess that, even though I find most of it pretty entertaining and fun to watch, I don’t quite see it as being animated by any particularly effective or coherent dramatic/narrative purpose. This is unfortunate, as ideally, one wants even the first half of a two-part episode to be able to stand on its own, at least to a point. Still, since it is only “part one,” I’m not judging it nearly as harshly for its lack of a clear narrative arc as I otherwise would (and am therefore standing by my four-star rating).