Trek Tuesday-ish, October 7th, 2010
11 PM Eastern - 8 PM Pacific
“You’re a fool, Picard. History will look at you and say: ‘This man was a fool.’”
You can watch the episode on YouTube
This episode marks the debut of the Cardassians. This species would go on to have a prominent role in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Director Chip Chalmers enjoyed dealing with the new race. “We introduced a new enemy that’s finally able to speak on the level of Picard. They’re not grunting, they’re not giggling, they’re not mutes or all-knowing entities. Here are the Cardassians who also graduated first in their class and they’re able to carry on highly intelligent conversations with Picard, but they’re sinister as hell.”
“What? What is it?”
Sooo, they’ve never dined together before?
Engage! 
And you can rest your spoons on their corpses.
Cardassian energy weapons are pink here, but amber in all subsequent appearances.
I’m gonna frak this with the sound off, see how it goes.
For breakfast? Are you suggesting that they lived in sin before wedlock? :eek:
The facial hair and headgear worn by Cardassians are unique to this episode and never shown again.
Thank Crom! That’s tragic.
Marc Alaimo, who plays Gul Macet in this episode, went on to play the prominent character Dukat in Deep Space Nine. This is also Alaimo’s third appearance in TNG, each time as a different alien species.
Pre marital eating together? You slut.
Michael Westmore based the Cardassian look on an abstract painting he had seen two years earlier of a wide-shouldered woman with what appeared to be a spoon in the center of her forehead.
“She handled real meat? She touched it and cut it?”
That was all IYKWIM right up until the last bit there. :eek:
I’ve always thought the TNG bridge chairs look a little to comfy.
Kirk’s chair required him to sit erect and not slouch.
A deaf frak? That might be unprecedented. :eek:
Unless O’brien was Jewish. Well, even then I guess.
Having all the female crewmembers walking around in miniskirts probably helped with sitting erect too.
We never see the weird stupid looking cardassian head gear again, do we?
Jeri Taylor noted, “It was sort of Heart of Darkness with the rogue captain out of control. It started with the idea that if you had been at war with a country and now you are not at war with them anymore, you can’t just immediately become friends. If you’re trained to look at people as the enemy, it’s hard to now be their friends. While in the 24th century people have a much more expansive view of the galaxy and are able to do it a little better, we planted the idea that some people had just a little more residual problem with that sort of thing, and harbored some resentment. [It’s] a very provocative kind of area to get into. The material was somewhat epic in nature, which is always fun to do, and yet at its core was this very personal story between him and Picard, where two strong and able people tee off against each other.”
I always thot of it as a rehashing of the TOS theme of crazy Starfleet Captains.
My wife is asleep in front of the TV in the other room.
She flew accross country last night, so I don’t want to wake her.