Jammer's Review

Star Trek: The Next Generation

"Dark Page"

1/2

Air date: 11/1/1993
Written by Hilary J. Bader
Directed by Les Landau

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan

Lwaxana Troi comes aboard the Enterprise to help facilitate new diplomatic relations between the Federation and the Cairn, a race of telepaths who do not normally use verbal communication. Naturally, this being Lwaxana, she first tries to set up Deanna with the Cairn representative, Maques (Norman Large), a widower who has a daughter (played by a young Kirsten Dunst) who reminds Lwaxana of ... someone. Soon Lwaxana begins exhibiting strange emotional outbursts, before finally collapsing into a coma-like state.

Maques tells Deanna that Lwaxana had previously communicated with him telepathically and he became aware that there was a dark place in her mind — something she was hiding. Deanna, only being half Betazoid, cannot enter her mother's mind to find the truth on her own, and after much setup and jargon concerning telepaths and their abilities, it's decided that Maques will act as a telepathic bridge between Deanna and her mother.

"Dark Page" is the sort of episode that I frequently ask for in theory — an episode that uses sci-fi concepts to tell relatable human stories. But I guess be careful what you wish for, because in practice, this episode is a total dud. It provides a piece of backstory no one was clamoring for (the older sister Deanna never knew she had, who died as a child), and suffers under fairly awful execution. For starters, Maques' constant inability to find the right words in his scenes (which ostensibly stems from his lack of experience with verbal communication) simply makes the storytelling grind to a halt that's infuriating to watch. And consider the utter hokiness of the sequences where Maques creates the telepathic bridge between Deanna and her mother. First the camera tracks in on Lwaxana. Then the camera tracks in on Deanna (who stares straight into it). The technique is hackneyed enough the first time around, but then we get the same series of shots the second time. Okay, we get it. Successful telepathy apparently involves a really good Care Bear Stare. It's hard to become involved in scenes that are so cheesily staged.

When Deanna enters her mother's mind, we get a barrage of Strange Dream Images Shot Through a Fisheye Lens and Signifying Important Things, as if the producers had forgotten they had just made "Phantasms" the week before. "Phantasms" was also a mess, to be sure — but it was a fun and breezy one that didn't take itself so damned seriously. "Dark Page" feels like a bunch of melodrama cliches from the 1950s. The scene where Deanna's long-dead father appears to sing her a lullaby moved me so much that — full confession — I just about wanted to puke. (It's the epitome of false manipulation that fails.) And I love how the story doesn't even let Deanna solve the mystery on her own; it takes Picard's brilliant thinking to find the seven years of deleted entries in Lwaxana's journal. Thanks, captain!

I could maybe overlook all of these problems if the emotional payoff at the end were worth it. Alas, it is not. There's a lot of sobbing and maudlin excess, but I didn't find any of it convincing beyond the most general idea of, well, yeah, it's pretty sad when a child dies. I suppose I'm glad the story actually resolves itself with character and emotion instead of pointless sci-fi and technobabble. But none of this feels necessary or organic. I felt more embarrassed for Majel Barrett's inability to rise to the occasion and deliver a credible performance than I felt invested in this tragedy that Lwaxana has supposedly been repressing for 30 years. I guess the lesson of "Dark Page" is that some storytelling stones are better left unturned.

Previous episode: Phantasms
Next episode: Attached

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11 comments on this review

Delkazyr - Sat, Oct 27, 2012 - 6:30pm (USA Central)

I'd say they tried to save Majel Barrett's grace by giving Lwaxana a better backstory. And to me, it worked, both because it had a credible climax I didn't see coming, and because some of her earlier exaggerations made more sense to me after this (like the obsession to get Deanna married to whomever - she already lost two out of three family members, and if Deanna dies in this risky starfleet business without offspring...)

Granted, I haven't seen this ep recently, and I understand your concerns about exaggeration, wooden acting and your dislike for Lwaxana/Barrett (both?). But I remember enjoying this one more than I did with last week's what-did-they-smoke-Phantasms.

lvsxy808 - Sun, Oct 28, 2012 - 5:01am (USA Central)

Gotta say, I'm surprised at this. This was always one of my favourite TNG eps, giving Lwaxana some believable motivation for the way she's behaved over the years, and a good solid story for a character who is still one of the show's most neglected. And I thought Majel's performance was just fine.

And that you gave "Force of Nature" more points than this? I'm mind-boggled.

Paul - Mon, Oct 29, 2012 - 8:58am (USA Central)

I agree with Jammer, and I am stunned that anyone liked this episode. It's one of the worst of the series.

Ravo - Mon, Oct 29, 2012 - 10:02am (USA Central)

The worst part of this episode is where they save Lwaxana.

Ugh. I would take a Ferrangi episode anyday over any episode with Lwaxana. It's like watching my mother-in-law ruin space.

Nic - Mon, Oct 29, 2012 - 7:17pm (USA Central)

This episode certainly had good intentions, but the revelations are, for one, hard to swallow at this point in the series, and also, badly executed. Though I think Barrett's performance was okay, it was a script (and perhaps directing) problem more than anything else. What's more, it was never mentioned again!

Paul - Tue, Oct 30, 2012 - 1:33pm (USA Central)

There's really too much Troi in the seventh season. She's probably the worst character in TNG (and Sirtis is definitely one of Trek's worst actors). Why the creators decided to focus so much of the final season on her -- at least four episodes are extremely Troi heavy, where Riker and La Forge only get an episode each -- is amazing.

BTW, I think it's telling that the TNG actors (except for Stewart, Spiner and to a lesser extent Burton) had almost no major roles after the series ended -- other than Dorn, who jumped ship to DS9.

I bring that up because I can understand when TNG leaned too much on Picard and Data for stories. But leaning on Troi? WTF?

Nick P. - Sun, Nov 4, 2012 - 12:24am (USA Central)

I agree with Paul completely, way to much troi. That being said, there are so many problems with season 7, I think the troi exposure is problem 998.

Johnny - Wed, Nov 7, 2012 - 3:39pm (USA Central)

"Successful telepathy apparently involves a really good Care Bear Stare." LOL!!! That's great!!

Brendan - Mon, Nov 19, 2012 - 6:48pm (USA Central)

I haven't seen this episode in at least a decade but I remember it being decent. I always appreciate when they take an annoying "comic relief" character and give them some real development (like Quark on DS9 or Neelix on Voyager), and I feel that was accomplished here, even if it was sort of left field.

Niall - Thu, Nov 22, 2012 - 6:27pm (USA Central)

This episode really moved me and made me cry as a kid. Haven't seen it since. Will have to rewatch.

Mikael - Thu, Dec 13, 2012 - 3:35am (USA Central)

"Dark Page" has always been a favorite of mine. It is indeed frustrating that they have two somewhat experimental episodes taking place in the inner rather than the outer world back to back.

And of course next came "Attached," which had the same motif on the thematic level even if the execution was much less innovative. And it of course focused on the conscious and left dreamscape alone except for one comic moment.

I bought Barrett's performance, it was on the edge of overboard but stayed in line. And Sirtis is quite convincing here. Overall I feel that Landau's directing is pretty modern here; this reminds me of films like "Mulholland Drive" and "Black Swan" in its creation of subjectivity detached from the real world.

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