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| Ro Laren is assigned to infiltrate the Maquis. |
The demilitarized zone along the Cardassian border has been destabilized by the Maquis, the resistance group formed by Federation colonists whose worlds were repatriated to Cardassia. With many in the Federation sympathizing with the Maquis, the group has grown in numbers and in access to Starfleet weaponry. This has in turn renewed tensions with the Cardassians.
Picard turns to Ro Laren (Michelle Forbes) to infiltrate the Maquis. Her background, both as a Bajoran and as a Starfleet outsider, will make her apparent defection convincing. Ro has little difficulty ingratiating herself with the Maquis cell run by the kindly Macias (John Franklyn-Robbins). She volunteers to use her knowledge of the Enterprise's security systems to steal medical supplies, and the success of that mission gains the confidence of the entire group.
Which is when Picard proposes the next step. A convoy will be planted as a target, with intelligence spread to indicate that the ships are transporting components of biogenic weapons. The potential threat will be too great for the Maquis to send anything less than its full force to combat - allowing the Enterprise to cripple the resistance group in a single devastating blow!
It's a good plan, and with Ro's help its success is all but assured. But Ro is uncertain about betraying a group whose motives strike so close to home...
CHARACTERS
Capt. Picard: When he sees Ro overwhelmed by the effusive welcome of the full command staff, he sends an official call for her to report to the bridge to allow her an escape. He understands that while she wants to catch up with everyone, she prefers to do so "one at a time." He is very proud of her achievements, and acts as something a father figure for her in the episode - an authority figure who has nurtured her, and whom she desperately doesn't want to disappoint. He remains fiercely dedicated to duty, however. When he sees Ro beginning to question her assignment, he does not hesitate to outline the damage to her career if she sabotages the mission.
Lt. Ro: This is very much Ro's episode, as she agrees to infiltrate the Maquis. It's easy enough to predict the story trajectory, as she bonds with the members of the Maquis cell and starts to question her assignment. It is a combination of Michelle Forbes' very good performance with writer Rene Echevarria's understanding of the character that makes the drama work as well as it does. Her final choice is extremely easy to anticipate, but her progression to that point is so convincingly played that the journey remains absorbing.
Cardassians/Maquis: As was the case in DS9's two-parter, The Maquis, we see that the Cardassians are deliberately and repeatedly violating their agreement to respect the rights of the Federation colonists. Gul Evek (Richard Poe) insists to Picard that the Cardassian government is doing all it can to stop these abuses, but his assurances ring hollow - though, to the episode's credit, so do Picard's return assurances about Starfleet's efforts to curtail the Maquis. The episode does stack the deck, in that the Maquis we meet are all clearly decent people - It would be more interesting, and ring truer, if there were a few criminals or fanatics in the mix. Still, the script makes clear that both Cardassia and Starfleet have elements who are sympathetic to the supposedly unauthorized actions of individuals, which lends some enjoyable moral complexity to the situation.
THOUGHTS
Season Seven's otherwise mediocre Journey's End concluded with Picard negotiating a settlement that allowed Federation colonists to remain in territory that a peace treaty had ceded to the Cardassians - a far from ideal solution, but the best of the bad options available. The direct fallout was saved for Deep Space 9. That series' very good 2-parter, The Maquis, showed the escalation of tensions on those colony worlds, leading to the formation of the Maquis.
Preemptive Strike bounces the Maquis thread back to TNG, as Picard attempts to deal with a Maquis that is on the rise, gaining strength and growing ever more aggressive in its fight against the Cardassians. As if conscious of picking up where Deep Space 9 left off, writer Rene Echevarria creates an episode that feels closer in tone to DS9 than to TNG - and in so doing, he manages to deliver something that I haven't seen since Lower Decks and didn't expect to see again until All Good Things: A genuinely good episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
As a writer, Echevarria has always been particularly good at character material, and he plays to that strength here. He opens the episode by focusing on Ro's return to the Enterprise, signaling that this story will center on her. He allows a couple of scenes to lay out the "big picture" issues of the Maquis conflict: The Cardassian abuses of Federation citizens, the tensions flaring up between Cardassia and Starfleet over the rise of the Maquis, and the fear that it might spark a new war between the two powers. This shows us why Picard is so focused on stopping characters we will soon see as sympathetic, while at the same time acknowledging the Cardassians' bad behavior and the legitimacy of many of the colonists' grievances.
Then the episode returns to Ro and stays almost exclusively with her until the (very effective) tag with Picard and Riker. Ro is a character particularly well-suited to the Maquis arc. Her background as a one-time prisoner of the Cardassians, someone who watched as they murdered her father, makes it a given that she sympathizes with the Maquis. Her rising Starfleet career and her respect and gratitude for Picard leave her torn. But Ro has always been led mainly by her emotions. She sees people who have genuinely been oppressed, much as her own people once were, and quickly finds herself balking at the thought of stopping them from fighting back. Through this filter, the focus becomes the decision she must make - a decision that's all but a foregone conclusion, but that still feels earned by the end.
It's not quite as sharp as the very best Trek stories: There isn't much negative shown about the Maquis; the viewer doesn't directly see that their actions might harm innocents. Sure, Admiral Nechayev (Natalija Nogulich) talks in vague terms about their increased aggression and worries about a new war - but nothing is demonstrated to show a dark side to what is, in effect, a terrorist group. This keeps the story from being as morally complex as it should be, though it is still far above-average for the series in this respect.
Mostly, I'm just relieved to be able to give a good review to TNG's final single-part episode. After the creative death march that has been the last third of the season, it's good to remember the kind of storytelling the series is capable of.
Overall Rating: 8/10.
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