“The Emissary”
Written by Thomas H. Calder and Richard Manning & Hans Beimler
Directed by Cliff Bole
Season 2, Episode 20
Production episode 40272-146
Original air date: June 29, 1989
Stardate: 42901.3
Captain’s Log: Riker’s poker game is interrupted by a Class-11 emergency signal, which is parsimonious with specifics, only that the ship is to divert to a set of coordinates, with further instructions forthcoming. With a due sense of anticipation and dread, Picard orders the ship to those coordinates, which is outside the Boradis system, which was colonized within the past three decades. Admiral Gromek tells Picard that they must meet up with a special emissary who is traveling at warp speed inside a probe. Not exactly a comfortable way to travel.
The emissary is a half-human, half-Klingon woman named K’Ehleyr, and it turns out that she and Worf have a history, and it didn’t end well.
Starbase 336 received an automated transmission from a Klingon ship, the T’Ong, which was sent out seventy-five years ago. They are about to awaken from a cryogenic sleep, and they think the Federation and the Klingon Empire are still at war. The concern, and the reason for rushing, is that there are a mess of minimally defended human colonies that are ripe targets for the T’Ong. There is a Klingon ship, the Prang, en route, but they’re two days behind, and that may be too late for the Boradis colonies.
K’Ehleyr’s recommendation is that they will have to destroy the ship, as they won’t be able to reason with them. Picard refuses to accept this, and orders K’Ehleyr to come up with options, assigning Worf to assist. Worf objects to this assignment; Picard asks if there are personal reasons for this, and he answers in the affirmative. Picard then asks, “Any professional reasons?” and Worf has to admit that that answer is no. Picard just looks at him with that Picard look of his, and Worf withdraws his objection.
Unfortunately, K’Ehleyr and Worf’s unresolved feelings for each other, which are obviously very strong, get in the way of their carrying out the assignment, especially since K’Ehleyr thinks it’s a waste of time.
She goes to take out her frustrations on the holodeck, running Worf’s calisthenics program. Worf goes to the bridge and is obviously out of sorts, with Picard ordering him to relax. His snappish response of “I am relaxed!” makes it all the more clear that Picard is right, and Worf goes to the holodeck—only to find that K’Ehleyr’s already there. They join forces against the nasties, which quickly leads to more intimate activities.
K’Ehleyr thinks they should have had sex six years ago, but Worf feels they were too young and not ready. Worf, following ancient Klingon traditions, as is his wont, believes that they should solemnize their union by taking the oath of marriage. K’Ehleyr refuses to go through with it. Worf insists only that it’s a point of honor, and K’Ehleyr insists that it was wonderful, but it didn’t mean anything long-term.
The next day, they go back to their assignment, Worf bringing Data along as a chaperone, but the only palatable option they have is to hope that they arrive before the T’Ong crew awakens. In that case, they can override the cryogenic controls easily.
However, that doesn’t work out, as the T’Ong crew has awakened and fires on the Enterprise before cloaking. Since the cloak is seventy-five years old, La Forge is able to fine-tune the sensors so they can be picked up.
Worf then comes up with another option: they confront the T’Ong, but when they open hailing frequencies, what the Klingons see is Worf—along with K’Ehleyr, in full Klingon armor, and Worf wearing a floor-length cassock of command—who upbraids the T’Ong captain, telling him that the war’s over now. The captain reluctantly believes Worf, and lowers shields. Worf gives Picard command back after they end the communication. (When asked how he liked command by Riker, Worf’s response is, “Comfortable chair.”)
As K’Ehleyr is about to beam off, the two of them finally admit that they actually have feelings for each other: Worf admits that taking the oath was more a point of honor for him, and K’Ehleyr admits that she almost took the oath and it did mean something. As she beams off, she says that next time she won’t be as easy to get rid of, and Worf says he won’t be complete without her. It’s all very sweet.
Thank You, Counselor Obvious: Troi and K’Ehleyr get along well from jump, bonding initially over their mutual halfbreed status. This is especially amusing given that both of them wind up dating Worf at different points.
There is No Honor in Being Pummeled: Worf gets plenty of moments in the sun, starting with kicking ass at poker, continuing with a reunion with a lost love, including knocking boots on the holodeck, and ending with a successful first command. He does a great job as a Klingon commander, intimidating the T’Ong crew into submission.
If I Only Had a Brain : Data announces that the wisest course of action for him in the poker game is “to bend.”
No Sex, Please, We’re Starfleet: Worf and K’Ehleyr had a relationship six years earlier that ended badly. Based on the contentious nature of their interactions, it was pretty tempestuous, and they pick right up where they left off.
What Happens on the Holodeck Stays on the Holodeck: Worf and K’Ehleyr use the holodeck the way you know that most of the crew probably really does use it: as a sex aid. The calisthenics program gets to be foreplay.
I’m a Doctor, Not an Escalator: Pulaski snarks Riker at the poker game (“What’s the matter, your feet are getting cold?” to which Riker replies, “My cards are getting cold”), only to lose badly to Worf.
Welcome Aboard: Suzie Plakson, having wowed the producers as Selar in “The Schizoid Man,” returns as K’Ehleyr, the first of two appearances in the role. Lance LeGault has sufficient bluster as the Klingon captain, while Georgann Johnson is perfectly ordinary as Admiral Gromek.
Best of all, though, we get two Robert Knepper moments for the price of one! Anne Ramsay returns as Clancy, this time as a conn officer rather than assistant chief engineer as she was in “Elementary, Dear Data,” and we also get comedian Deitrich Bader (best known as Oswald on The Drew Carey Show) as a tactical officer.
I Believe I Said That: “You’re upset.”
“Your finely honed Betazoid sense tell you that?”
“Well, that, and the table.”
Troi and K’Ehleyr, following K’Ehleyr smashing a table in frustration.
Trivial Matters: The poker game makes a triumphant return, firmly establishing itself as a regular thing.
Worf’s calisthenics program returns for a second time, after previously being seen in the teaser of “Where Silence Has Lease,” but this time it actually relates to the plot of the rest of the episode.
K’Ehleyr will return in “Reunion” in the fourth season. Her first meeting with Worf was chronicled in the young-adult novels Line of Fire and Survival by Peter David.
The T’Ong was a reuse of one of the Klingon battle cruisers from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Make it So: “The iceman wins again!” An episode like this lives or dies entirely upon the actors. If the wrong person is cast as the guest love interest, or if that person doesn’t have any kind of chemistry with the person in the main guest they’re paired up with, it all falls apart.
Luckily, that’s not remotely an issue here. Suzie Plakson is superb as K’Ehleyr, creating one of the best guest stars in TNG‘s entire run. Plakson imbues her with tremendous verve and personality, as she charms pretty much everyone on board—except, of course, for Worf. And Michael Dorn plays beautifully off her, his impersonation of a “Klingon glacier” contrasting beautifully with her freewheeling nature.
The plot itself is fairly straightforward, but it’s mostly there as an excuse for Worf and K’Ehleyr to snark at each other, and for Worf to get his first shot at command—after a fashion. His solution is clever and effective. It’s easily Worf’s best showcase to date, and Dorn makes tremendous use of it, showing the character’s range of emotion without sacrificing the character’s trademark stoicism. It’s a remarkably subtle performance, made all the more effective by its contrast with Plakson’s near over-the-top turn.
An excellent piece by one of TNG‘s most reliable writing teams in Manning and Beimler.
Warp factor rating: 8
Keith R.A. DeCandido has written a lot of Star Trek fiction that focused heavily on Worf, including the novels Diplomatic Implausibility, The Brave and the Bold, Q & A, and A Time for War, a Time for Peace, the short stories “Revelations” in New Frontier: No Limits and “Family Matters” in Mirror Universe: Shards and Shadows, the eBook Enterprises of Great Pitch and Moment, and the comic book Perchance to Dream. His most recent novels are Guilt in Innocence, part of “Tales from the Scattered Earth,” a shared-world science fiction concept, and the fantastical police procedurals SCPD: The Case of the Claw and Unicorn Precinct. Find out more about Keith at his web site, which is a portal to (among many other things) his Facebook page, his Twitter feed, his blog, and his podcasts, Dead Kitchen Radio, The Chronic Rift, and the Parsec Award-winning HG World.
The second we started snarking about the holodeck scenes, this episode was always the one that came to mind. Calistenics indeed. XD
Deitrich Bader though a comedian got to do one of the most dead pan roles in existence as he was the voice of Batman on The Batman series which featured a Bruce Wayne new to being Batman. He’s also done a lot of other voice work as well.
@Cat. Actually, while Deitrich Bader, was on The Batman, he didn’t play Batman. He does play Batman on the current Brave & The Bold series, which is a far more irreverant version of the character.
@@@@@ Keith
Remember the action figure? I do.
K’Ehleyr! I absolutely adore this character, and Suzi Plakson plays her with such verve and depth.
@2&3: Rino Romano played the lead in The Batman, making him the only actor who’s ever played both Batman and Spider-Man. As for Bader, I didn’t remember he’d ever done a TNG episode. That means both the actors playing Batman in current animated shows — Bader in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Bruce Greenwood in Young Justice — have played Starfleet officers as well.
As for “The Emissary,” it was cool to see the K’tinga-class Klingon battlecruiser again, even if it was just recycled footage from TMP. Subsequent Klingon ship designs have just gotten uglier and uglier, so it’s a shame we didn’t see more of this one.
I always wondered about those dominating wall-of-face viewscreen conversations. Is it set up that way to keep the Starfleet captains from feeling too full of themselves?
“I Believe I Said That: “You’re upset.”
“Your finely honed Betazoid sense tell you that?”
“Well, that, and the table.”
Troi and K’Ehleyr, following K’Ehleyr smashing a table in frustration.”
That’s one of those sort of small lines that actually matter in the long run. Troi is pretty annoying through the first season and much of the first half of the second for being just what you call her – Counselor Obvious. She reaches deep into her psyche and relies on her finely honed empathic abilities to figure out what most people could with two seconds of simple observation. She appears, at fiurst, to be all heart and no brain. Over time little exchanges like this helped to fine tune her, and by season three she’s less a charicature and more of a character. By the time the series ends she actually is indespenseable.
An 8 for “The Emissary!” I think I love you, Krad! (Scratch that, I’ve read all your Klingon novels and I know I do.)
I watched the first few seaons of TNG after they originally aired so I’d forgotten that this is really only the second “Worf episode” of the series. I think you’re spot on, an episode like this is all about the characters. I wish there had been more K’Ehleyr throughout TNG, she was a great character that Plakson played perfectly.
I also wish there had been a little more back story. Why was Worf so pissed when he first saw her? I wonder if there had been plans to flesh this out that never came to fruition.
Great episod. K’Ehleyr is magnificent!
I was taken aback when I realized that the woman who plays Marshall’s Minnesotan mother on “How I Met Your Mother” was Suzie Plakson
What a fun, delightful character K’Ehleyr is! I loved this episode when I first saw it and this time around I enjoyed it even more, if that’s possible. :)
I also wish we had seen far more of her throughout the rest of the show, what a shame!
Worf’s “I AM relaxed” line is priceless!
Btw, I propose a “Commander Obvious” Subcategory to Troi’s :p …. really, the best thing that Riker can say when the Klingon ship cloaks itself is: “They’ve cloaked themselves”???
DUH!!!
Oh, K’Ehleyr, how much I adored you! This episode was one of my absolute favorites. Nice re-watch, Krad.
Definitely one of the few gems of the second season. And since other commenters have already said how wonderful Suzie Plakson is, I’m just going to observe that Michael Dorn really rocks it in this episode!
I think Troi’s original line about the table was, “Uh-oh! Looks like somebody has a case of The Mondays.”
Is this the first example of a glass-topped table coming to a shattered end at the hands of a Klingon? Worf’s broken a number of them in his time; one wonders why he keeps replacing them.
Worf looked totally BA in that Klingon command garb.
“An episode like this lives or dies entirely upon the actors. If the wrong person is cast as the guest love interest, or if that person doesn’t have any kind of chemistry with the person in the main guest they’re paired up with, it all falls apart….Luckily, that’s not remotely an issue here. Suzie Plakson is superb as K’Ehleyr, creating one of the best guest stars in TNG‘s entire run.”
Interesting. I thought she was absolutely dreadful. I was happy to see her killed off in “Reunion”. I suppose it’s difficult being a Klingon female, raised in a warrior society but seen as a drastically weaker sex in almost every way. Still, other actors have given far more believable interpretations of that than Plakson did. I thought her performance was more appropriate for a human raised by Vulcans than for a Klingon. Her performance ruined virtually every scene she was in (at least, for me). The rest, though, was superb.
They made a huge mistake getting rid of K’Ehleyr. She was easily one of the most likeable characters in the entire series. Suzie Plakson was clearly enjoying the hell out of it.
Does anyone else remember that Suzie Plakson and Anne Ramsay were both regulars on Mad About You?
Trivial Matters, pt. 2: Lance LeGault got his start as Elvis Presley’s stunt double (“Girls! Girls! Girls!,” “Kissin’ Cousins,” “Viva Las Vegas”). Good to know that there was Life After Elvis (at least for some people) . . .
Fun episode for the introduction of the character of K’Ehleyr and Suzi Plakson’s interplay with Michael Dorn. This was early enough in the series’ run that any episode that dealt with the Klingons and their empire was still exciting and they seemed threatening (especially a sleeper ship where the crew still thinks they’re at war with the Federation).
I also enjoyed it because at this point in the series it was one of those rare episodes to focus mainly on Worf: for the first three seasons the character only got one focus episode (not counting B-stories) which seems hard to believe. K’Ehleyr also gets to wear some excellent costumes here: 4 in total where as in her return in “Reunion” she only has one costume and it’s relatively subdued. This episode is also where Alexander Rhozenko is conceived.
My nits:
It’s a big plot point but I really don’t get the point of a sleeper ship as some kind of grand strategy of attack. Say hypothetically the Federation had decided to destroy the Klingon ship while they were in stasis (not to mention any of the Klingons’ other enemies or some one-off malevolent alien encounter) and then their grand scheme is effectively neutralized. And of course it wasn’t very forward thinking on the Klingon’s part because as we all saw here, relations between the Empire and the Federation had changed drastically in the interceding years.
I found it completely ridiculous that the modified probe or photon torpedo tube or whatever is what transported K’Ehleyr at warp speed! What is the method of propulsion or where is the engine on that little thing? When the whole tube is beamed onto the transporter pad you can clearly see that that’s all it is: a tube for holding a person and no mechanics for anything else aside from stasis. If this is to be believed, lots of people should be zipping around space at warp speed in their little tubes.
And then there’s Worf’s greeting to the Klingon crew: “Welcome to the 24th century.” This just occurred to me the other day and isn’t a complaint specific to this one episode, but why is the Federation, much less alien cultures like the Klingons, beholden to Earth’s Judeo-Christian calendar? Also, obviously a year for Earth is not the same for any other planet in the universe. So it seems every other alien species in the galaxy just accepts Earth’s calendar as the galactic standard. Hmm.
The TNG Technical Manual describes the Class 8 probe as having a “matter/antimatter warp field sustainer engine.” It’s described elsewhere as a fuel cell 20cm in diameter and 50cm long. It can’t reach warp speeds on its own, but can continue at whatever warp it’s launched at.
@22/garreth: “[…] why is the Federation, much less alien cultures like the Klingons, beholden to Earth’s Judeo-Christian calendar? Also, obviously a year for Earth is not the same for any other planet in the universe. So it seems every other alien species in the galaxy just accepts Earth’s calendar as the galactic standard.”
I imagine that units are translated at some point, either between Worf and the Klingons or between the characters and the audience. It’s the same with seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, kilograms, kilometres (or, for that matter, miles), degrees of temperature, etc.
It’s the Christian calendar, by the way. In the Jewish calendar the current year is 5781.
@22/garreth: “It’s a big plot point but I really don’t get the point of a sleeper ship as some kind of grand strategy of attack.”
It was never specified what the T’Ong‘s actual mission was. All we know is that it was launched during a time when a state of war existed between Federation and Empire; we don’t know if its mission was specifically about that war. Indeed, it very probably wasn’t, since there would’ve been no need to send it away for decades in that case.
Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire Core Rulebook (to which I was a minor contributor) contains a sidebar (one of many brief excerpts of in-universe documents, logs, and such) stating that the T’Ong was sent through a naturally occurring unstable wormhole to the Delta Quadrant and had come back in sleeper mode to report its observations of the “hybrid machine race” they found there.
@23 Possibly a precursor of that warp-soliton tech from the episode New Ground that was gonna push a whole starship without it needing warp engines. That would show some tech development so that the warp-soliton didn’t just come from nowhere, it was an extension of existing tech.
As to why the Klingon ship was sent away with its crew in hibernation, maybe the Klingon High Council at the time of launch were big into Douglas Adams?
@23,26: Maybe it’s just me, but I’d be pretty freaked out, not to mention the extreme claustrophobia, if I were sealed up inside a little teeny tiny tube for hours at a time and zipping along interstellar space at warp speed. Talk about your extreme sports!
The hand-sniffing Klingon foreplay was as hot a scene as any in the Trek oeuvre. The chemistry between Dorn and Plakson is off the charts.
And although the “I will not be complete without you” farewell by Worf could have come off trite and sappy, Dorn delivered it perfectly. I’m guessing it’s not that typical for a Klingon to express that kind of vulnerability out loud, but there was a gravitas to it. Just perfect. And Plakson’s character seems to understand what an effort it took for Worf to utter those words at that moment, and instead of reciprocating or taking advantage, she lets the moment be what it is. Again, just perfect.
I’d bump this up to a 9.
Very enjoyable episode. Worf and K’Ehleyr have great chemistry, and given how the episode ends, I’d be heartbroken if we didn’t see them reconnect again.
I do have a few small quibbles that pull it back from being a perfect episode. First, it was completely unnecessary for K’Ehleyr to be picked up in a tube. The writers could have easily just had the Enterprise meet up with a ship, or starbase, and have her transfer aboard the normal way. Also, there didn’t seem to be any good reason for the Admiral not to properly brief Picard on the nature of the mission. The mission doesn’t actually see be a particularly sensitive one; certainly, an unusual mission, but I can’t really come up with a reason to keep it so secret. Similar to the having K’Ehleyr arrive in a tube, this just seemed to be a writer’s choice to try and add tension and intrigue at the expense of logic.
Still, quibbles aside, a very good episode.
Suzie Plakson is delightful even if she did go a bit large with K’Ehleyr’s character. I wish there’d been more of her — and of Anne Ramsey too, for that matter.
I almost literally did a double-take when I saw and heard Diedrich Bader at tactical. You might want to correct the Deitrich spelling of his name in the post, BTW. The episode does erroneously list him as Dietrich, not Diedrich, in the end credits but it gets the ie order right.
For some reason I was highly amused that the only evidence that Worf and K’Ehleyr have gotten frisky beyond, you know, strong inference via dialogue and mood is his sash lying on the ground.