Kevin: Hello and welcome back to Star Trek.
Rob: It's it's another week.
It's another Star Trek.
Kevin: I feel maybe I've, I'm overstepping my bounds here by
welcoming people to Star Trek.
This is of course Subspace Radio, but it feels like this is where
you and I talk about Star Trek.
This is where Star Trek happens in my week.
Rob: Look Star Trek is everybody, and that's Starfleet.
Oh God, I can't believe I just quoted Discovery.
Kevin: We are here to talk about Star Trek Picard, season three, episode
five, Imposters, and especially to focus on the return of one Ro Laren.
Rob: Look, as I've said many times, in many weeks, my my time
in front of the screen watching Next Generation is minimal.
And I am aware of the character of Ro within the Star Trek lore.
I had no idea what happened to them.
So this was a good introduction, and also conclusion for this character.
But I am hugely familiar with the work of Michelle Forbes.
I adore her work as an actor.
She's one of those quintessential jobbing actors who has never had any type of
lead type role or developed enough of a following to be the figurehead of
their own show, but have just popped up in shows and movies for decades.
Just working here and there and creating solid work, and I'm always
a pleasure seeing her on screen.
Kevin: Yeah.
In the second half of this episode, I will be educating Rob about Ro Laren.
And Rob will be educating me about the further works of Michelle
Rob: I'm very excited to hear more about Ro Laren's work and
I'm very excited to share my favorites of Michelle Forbes's work.
Kevin: But first, something is very wrong with Jack Crusher, Rob.
Rob: There is.
He uh, we open with a very violent scene, very much akin
to earlier seasons of Picard or,
Kevin: Yeah, this whole thing of someone imagines killing everyone
on the bridge with a phaser.
It's been done once or twice before, and I think they need to come
up with another violent fantasy.
Rob: They used it a couple of times just in this episode.
Again, let's show violence and horrifying things of, oh, but guess what?
It's just an illusion.
Kevin: It Is until it isn't.
Rob: until, yeah, again but he was killing nothing but bad
Changelings, so that's okay.
But he didn't know at the time!
Kevin: I'm reminded of there's, there is this trope, I don't know what the
name for it is, but this like seemingly civilized person who wrestles with, just
below the surface, with a, an ability to do violence that threatens to come out
at every moment, and then when it does come out, it saves the day and everyone
is congratulating them, but they are horrified of what has been let out.
Rob: And it is a beautiful, horrifying ending where she goes, how did you know?
And he goes, I didn't.
It's a really great moment of going, oh, okay.
So it, it was just pure luck.
And
Kevin: They looked at me wrong.
Rob: And serves them right too.
So yeah, it was a um, a ploy used a few too many times.
That's been used way too much recently.
But definitely in this episode it was the shock value was used and going.
All right.
Okay, let's just let's move on.
Let's find something else.
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: Finally returned back to what Worf and Raffi are up to.
Kevin: Yeah, that is the, that feels like the, it's probably split half
and half again, but the fact that they were completely absent previous episode
makes me like, lean into that story this
Rob: Yeah, me
Kevin: and follow their pursuit of a way onto Daystrom Station.
It does like this plot of, of Raffi and Worf, like trying to get to the
bottom of things, it is starting to feel a little strung out.
It could have been the first underworld contact they approached, the first
person in Worf's little black book of names of people to go and shake down.
Could have been Sneed who had all the answers.
But no, it wasn't Sneed, it wasn't the next guy who
turned out to be a Changeling.
It's kind of the next guy, this mean Vulcan.
Rob: Yeah.
Played, I, I've seen that actor around.
He's very, very good.
What's
Kevin: He is good.
And the idea of a, a Vulcan who has determined that organized
crime is logical, because a utopia cannot exist without it is
Rob: It was a really interesting, yeah, it was fully, Bronx gangster Vulcan,
which was weird to see, but worked.
Kevin: Mmm, Krinn is the name of the
Rob: Krinn.
Played by
Kevin: Kirk Acevedo.
Rob: Acevedo.
Very good.
I've seen him around in stuff.
I think I've seen him in some Law & Orders and stuff like that.
Kevin: I don't know if it was just the pointed ears, but he looked to me
like a mean elf in Lord of the Rings.
Rob: Yeah.
Something like from the early noughties Dungeon and Dragons.
Kevin: He had that I'm so much better than you.
And even if I wasn't, I'm immortal.
So I got all the time in the world.
Like he had that air about him.
He was wearing an IDIC pendant, which uh, you know, is the Infinite Diversity
in Infinite Combinations pendant, which infamously Spock wears in a season three
episode of Star Trek The Original Series.
And Shatner and Nimoy refused to do the scene because they saw it
as a cheap merchandising ploy.
And they're like, I'm not gonna wear this stupid thing.
I'm certainly not gonna spend five minutes talking about what it means and why the
fans should buy one for $19.95 right away.
And uh, Roddenberry, who was pretty checked out from the series by that
point, was called down to set to talk them into doing the scene and had to
rewrite it on the spot to make it less
Rob: Less product placement?
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: That's amazing.
That's a great little nugget of a story.
I hadn't heard that.
Yeah, I am getting that sense of, I did get that sense in
this episode that, yeah, okay.
I'm, I think it's the, it's poor Raffi as a character.
Raffi is just, not engaging for me at all.
It's always been a struggle to make her feel relevant within this show.
They've tried so hard to show how important she is and how much
she means to Picard and how much I should be engaged in all this.
It was a relief that, I knew it was gonna happen, that finally the subplots of
Worf and Picard finally merged, but I'm there going, yeah, this is episode five.
You could have got to this two episodes ago.
Kevin: Yeah.
And I feel the same about Raffi.
I wanted to get somewhere for her character.
And what I wrote down in my notes was some of the stuff of when she's sparring
with Worf and she's like twirling the sticks and is starting to, she's
starting to inhabit the persona of the, to jump franchises, the young Padawan.
The impatient cadet who's like, let's just go and kick their butts.
And then the seasoned Jedi that is Worf goes Patience young Padawan.
There is a bit of that dynamic starting to happen, and I think Raffi could do
worse than become a Luke Skywalker in the Star Trek universe, but she has
had so many character shifts to this point that it's gonna take a while
before I believe anything from her.
If she sticks with this, I think I could get there and enjoy her
in that, but I need to feel like Worf needs her for something.
Rob: Yeah, it does feel like she's just there because she's been
kept over, and it, there's been so much character, backstory and
plot thrown in there, but nothing really substantially worked through.
So I'm there going who, who are you?
I've seen you for two and a bit seasons, and I still don't know who you are.
Kevin: It was telling to me that at one point in this episode we were not watching
Raffi, it turns out we were watching a holographic simulation of Raffi.
But no one could tell the difference.
Rob: Yeeeeeeeah.
Kevin: Uh, But I was pretty proud of myself.
I did spot the mobile emitter on her arm before before she was
shot, and I was like, are they both wearing mobile emitters?
Ah, they're probably like hiding away, and this is like the decoys.
Uh, So I was.
yes, I saw it.
Awesome.
Rob: And of course, yeah, the shocking twist of, Oh, she's killed Worf!
No, she hasn't killed Worf.
They're not Worf right now, no one believed that.
And of course, we get the beautiful lines of I am bleeding quite profusely.
I have lost quite a lot of blood.
Camile tea will not be able to heal.
Kevin: This was a good day to die.
This was a worthy death.
And I was sitting there going, you deserve better than this Worf.
This better not be real.
And Jess and I looked at each other and went, nah, he's not dead.
Rob: No, they're gonna, they're, yeah.
We've had, the biggest disappointment of deaths of, Oh really?
So Kirk just fell off a cliff and that's his.
Right.
That's what his great death is.
Okay.
Kevin: I noted something that will delight you.
When they were looking up that Vulcan underworld boss's name in Worf's little
black book, right above him was listed.
Morn of Luria.
Rob: Probably still at the bar.
Kevin: Yeah, exactly.
Rob: So, but yeah, the biggest reveal of this one, a massive shock, is
the return of Ro into the canon.
Now, I knew who she was because I knew that she appeared later on in the Star
Trek series, so this was a big reveal and this caused a lot of turmoil for Picard.
And there seems, are they turning Picard into Kirk?
Because he's becoming the dawg of the universe.
Like he's got his Romulan love, he's got his Beverly love.
Kevin: I don't want you to misread it.
There was never they never went there with Ro.
There is a scene before Ro appears in this episode where Picard tries to
convince Jack Crusher to join Starfleet in the hallway, and Jack goes Not
for me, I'm not the Starfleet type.
And Picard walks away, turns almost said something, and then decides not
Rob: Yeah.
Kevin: Not in those exact words, but that exact pattern occurred with Ro,
where Ro had convinced herself she was not Starfleet material, she had
been court martialled and thrown into prison for disobeying orders and getting
eight people killed on a away mission.
And she was pulled out of prison by, as it turned out, a bad admiral who wanted
her to go on a covert mission for him.
Rob: Those damn bad Admirals.
Kevin: And at the end of this adventure, Picard says, you should
stick around, stay on the Enterprise.
And she goes, Oh, you gotta be kidding.
I'm not Starfleet material.
And Picard gave her a pep talk of the best Starfleet officers I know
are the ones who feel like Starfleet has as much to learn from them as
they have to learn from Starfleet.
And everything you feel you're missing can be learned.
Give it a chance.
This could be the thing you've been looking for in your life as
you've been bouncing around through one misadventure to another.
And I love that that is there to discover on second viewing of this episode.
Now that we are reminded of Ro, for those of us who lived with that character in
the nineties, seeing Picard almost decide to attempt that with Jack, but decide
not to, that is an echo of how Picard feels, ultimately, he failed with Ro.
When she chose to leave Starfleet and join the Maquis, that was,
that is what broke Picard's heart.
Not that there was a romantic flirtation there, although there was a, there were
at times a little bit of chemistry and in a dark corner of a bar where they were
pretending to negotiate her price as a prostitute, as they exchanged Starfleet
intelligence, there was a little bit of spiciness in the air between them.
But uh, no, it was never anything more than that.
So this is not a lost love of Picard's.
This is a lost child of
Rob: Right.
Okay.
How long was Ro on the show for just a season?
Or was
Kevin: She appeared in eight episodes, most of them in season five, and
then she had one episode in season six and one final episode, the one
immediately before the finale, season seven, episode 24, Preemptive Strike.
Rob: I might be mistaken, but I think the intention was for Ro to be the
Bajoran officer on Deep Space Nine.
Kevin: It might have made sense.
Certainly, she is the proto Kira Nerys.
The damaged member of the Bajoran race from the Cardassian occupation,
there isn't quite as much freedom fighter or rebel in Ro's background.
She is much more just someone who grew up in the camps and whose father was tortured
to death in front of her by Cardassians.
And she is, she certainly bears the scars of the occupation, but if anything,
she is someone who feels guilty about not fighting for her people, whereas
Kira chose to take up arms for her
Rob: And fought most of her life, actually.
Yeah.
So it was, it was a good bait and switch and I think they played it quite well.
I dunno how you felt it, but I'm there going, because they did the
whole thing of, she showed, she cut herself and then that inter cut with
Beverly Crusher going, oh my gosh.
They can keep the form, even the bloodline until,
Kevin: They keep doing this to me this season where I know exactly
what is happening and then they make me believe the opposite.
Just for a second.
Yeah, it's, it was great.
Like in hindsight, I should never have believed that here in the final
season of Star Trek Picard, when the promise to the fans is we're giving
closure to all our favorite characters' stories, you bring back Ro, she's not
going to be an imposter who you shoot down in the hallway and go, Whew!
Lucky that wasn't the real Ro!
I, I guess she's still out there somewhere.
Of course it was.
You bring an actor back, you're going to bring back the real character.
We should have known that about Riker earlier in the season as well, that if, I
mean, maybe you could believe that Riker would be revealed to be a changeling,
and then real Riker takes over.
Um, But uh, when Michelle Forbes shows up, we should have done the math and
gone, okay, she has to be real because nothing else would be satisfying.
And yet they managed to make us believe it, or they, they got to me
Rob: They got to me, they got to me.
And it wasn't until she put the gun down in the bar, remember
they went back to the bar.
Again.
Kevin: Again, with the bar!
Rob: And a justification of, oh, we can, we can speak normally here.
Yeah.
Michelle Forbes is great.
So
Kevin: Yes.
She has never given a bad performance, and all eight of
her episodes are worth watching.
They're all good
Rob: Amazing.
So because she's only in so few, she's not just becomes a regular part.
She just pops in when she needs to have be a focus.
Kevin: It's really interesting.
I would say that only her first episode and her last episode are
truly like they required Ensign Ro because they were about that character.
Yeah.
The first episode is her being pulled out of prison and going on this
covert mission, but she's actually a double agent working for this bad
Admiral, and Picard brings her around.
She decides to trust Picard and then uh, Picard decides to trust
her and she stays on board the ship.
And then she spends three seasons effectively being an ensign.
She is Ensign Ro Laren at that point.
Five seasons in, all our other characters, all our other regulars had
achieved a level of competence that it no longer felt possible for them
to fail or sometimes even have flaws.
So they started bringing in these like second tier of characters:
Reginald Barclay, Ro Laren.
They are two of a kind, where they often, appeared just sitting at a
station on the bridge and had one line in an episode and like some of her eight
episodes, that is literally all she did.
Cause and Effect the time loop one we've talked about several times,
she is at the conn for that episode.
She has a couple of lines over the intercom, but she does
not play a core part in that.
It feels somewhat luxurious to me to have an actor of Michelle Forbes's caliber,
effectively playing bit parts in a number of episodes to maintain the continuity
Rob: she is there.
Kevin: presence on the ship.
And then there are a number where she does play prominent parts, and
we'll talk about them in a minute.
Rob: Awesome, awesome stuff.
Yeah, she really knocked it outta the park and there's great scenes with her
and Patrick Stewart right near the end.
Her ultimate demise is incredibly well done.
And her her performance is just stellar, just stellar.
And beautiful stuff about how intelligent the character is and the passing on of
the Bajoran earpiece and what that means.
Kevin: That earpiece, for those who know, the very first appearance of Ro she, she
like beams in on the transporter platform and Riker is there to greet her and he is
upset that a disgraced Starfleet officer has been assigned to the Enterprise.
It is possibly the meanest we've ever seen riker be, greeting her.
And she steps off the transporter platform and his first words to
her are, You will follow Starfleet uniform code aboard this ship, Ensign.
And she takes off her earring and hands it to him.
And that is the same earring that gets handed off in this final appearance.
So beautiful bookend.
Rob: bookend, and of course that opens up.
But that's the thing, of course they use the ultimate return and ultimate sacrifice
of uh, uh, a character to open up the door so that now Worf is in communication
directly with our other heroes.
Kevin: I loved that Ro Laren was Worf's handler, and Worf knew.
He, he asked what happened to Ro Laren, and yeah.
Rob: For a second I thought it was like a recorded message.
Went, no, they can see each other.
Why aren't they, why aren't they waving at each other?
But yeah, that's where again, like with the previous episode, we're going,
well we're out now, there's still the mystery that needs to be solved.
We need to repair the ship.
But this chapter has come to an end, this one going, now we've
got all the pieces together.
Let's move on to the next chapter of bring them all together and
stop this changeling scourge.
Kevin: Yeah.
So tell me a little bit about Michelle Forbes outside of Star
Trek, and then we'll come back to to the rest of her story here.
Rob: I was, I first became a aware of Nichelle Forbes from my favorite show
when I was a kid growing up in the nineties, a show called Homicide: Life
on the Street, created by Barry Levinson and David Simon and Paul Attanasio.
It was a revolutionary show in the early nineties where it didn't
follow the cop procedural show of car chases and gun fights and um, why
they wanted to create a show, which is about day-to-day police work.
So it's about investigation and about research and about
confessions and interviews.
And it's an ensemble cast, incredible cast.
The late great Richard Belzer got his start as John Munch, who he played for
23 years, who just recently passed away.
Andre Braugher, who's gone onto great success in Brooklyn 99.
Michelle Leo, who's won an Oscar.
Um, Yaphet Kotto, Ned Beatty, the list of actors go on and on.
And around about season four they were rejigging things.
So some of the original cast were moving on.
Ned Beatty was moving on.
The show was constantly in this struggle.
It was a revolutionary show.
It was an ensemble cast.
There was no two lead actors.
Each episode would shift from one detective pairing to another.
Through the course of its season, the longer it went, the
network kept on wanting it to become more and more mainstream.
So what made it so beautifully original was slowly eaten away.
It was a death by a thousand cuts.
So it limped along to seven seasons and by the end of it, season seven
looked nothing like what Homicide was.
So in season four, they brought in a couple of new characters.
They brought in Mike Kellerman, a young detective who worked in arson and came
over to homicide and they introduced Dr.
Julianna Cox, and she was the one who worked in the coroner's office,
this young rebellious chief medical examiner who conducted all the coroner
reports and examined the bodies, and gave all that information away.
So they go, Hey Doc, tell us what, what killed them.
And her first appearance, she's riding really fast, this car's driving really
fast, convertible, powering through.
She's pulled over by a police officer on a bike.
She gets a report and she says, I'm here to work in homicide, and drives off.
And, and, And gets her ticket and drives off.
And her final episode when she leaves in season five or six, I think.
She stays for about a season or two.
She drives out the exact same way, and before she leaves Baltimore, she's
pulled over and given another ticket.
And she was great, incredible.
Brought a new energy and she matched wits with some of the most established actors
in the show's history and was amazing.
They tried to push a whole romantic relationship between her
and Mike Kellerman's character, that never really worked out.
And I liked how they two ships passing in the night type thing.
But she was a bright energy, and a strong energy, and she was brought in to be
the young, hip attractive one, but the character was so smart and intelligent
and clever and witty and strong.
That she didn't fit in with, this, popular view of how women
should be in, nineties television.
Just incredible performance.
And so
Kevin: Yeah, wow.
I thought for sure you were gonna tell me she played a cop and I
guess she played a cop of a sort.
But I imagined her, chasing people down an alleyway and, jumping them and
cuffing them and interrogating them in the room with the two-way mirror.
That's what I imagine Michelle Forbes kicking ass at.
But she's also a great deliverer of exposition.
Rob: Great exposition deliverer, and great foil for a lot of the cops
who'd just come in and go, Hey Dr.
Cox, how's it all going?
And she'd match with them and do really great stuff.
She was a welcome addition.
I was a bit hesitant at the start cause I want my original cast.
That's all I want.
Any new characters are just diluting it.
And she grew on me cuz she's such a great actor.
Such an incredible actor, so dynamic, so charismatic.
I love what they, and I, I really got upset when she left Homicide cuz she
was a wonderful addition to the show.
But she's just a jobbing actor.
She's done California.
She's done Escape from LA.
She's just been bit parts in, in every, she was in Hunger Games, the
second last movie, or the last movie as one of the um, soldiers there.
And one of her other crucial appearances was in season two of
True Blood, which I kind of got into.
I dropped off True Blood after season four.
I went, that's it, I'm done.
But in season two, she plays a character called Maryann, who's turns
out to be the big bad, the season arc villain, which has become a common
thing within genre based shows.
And she plays Maryann who turns out to be this mythology creature who's a descendant
of the Bacchi who worshiped Dionysus.
And if anyone knows Greek mythology, the Bacchi is about, women who worship
Dionysus and drink and merry and dance naked in the woods, and who go
against the conventions of society at the time, and they can be possessed
and immune with the power of Dionysus.
And so they become rabid and, they unleash all your deepest desires
and all that hedonistic behavior.
And she's this incredibly warm, receptive, friendly, opening,
supportive person who looks after people who are homeless or lost, or.
Kevin: Wow, that would be a very different color from what we get from Ro Laren.
Rob: The more, the more you see her, the more her menace comes out and her
darkness and her manipulative nature.
And it's a great powerful performance when True Blood was actually, doing
some really interesting stuff back in its early seasons before it
Kevin: I haven't watched anything, any of True Blood, but that sounds worth checking
out just because of how different it would be from Ro Laren, who is so guarded.
And even when she lets her guard down, she's guarded.
She tears up a bit and it's great,
Rob: Oh my gosh.
When she tears up in that episode and like even Patrick Stewart is as well.
You go, this is really, this is something special.
Kevin: Yeah.
And yet there is a sense of never quite letting herself go.
Uh, Yeah.
Rob: She has that, that strength and ability to have a hard exterior, but
there's so much more beneath that.
Kevin: So that's why I'm so intrigued by the idea of her as a, a big villain.
Rob: Yeah.
And you don't realize just how she plays it so undertoned and, and
plays the emotion as opposed to, like we talked a couple of weeks ago
about arch scene chewing villains.
She plays it the other way and it's the best way to.
Yeah I highly recommend anything that she's done.
She's, she hasn't been the lead in any type of movies or shows, but
she's always there and when she is there, she does incredible stuff.
So tell us about her connection with Star Trek and what are some of her highlights?
Kevin: The episode to go back and watch if you want to understand what
is behind the powerful scenes in Picard this week is season seven,
episode 24, Preemptive Strike.
It is the last episode before the finale of the series, and you get the sense
they wanted to give a launching point for the Maquis into the other series.
It was already something that was being tossed back and forth a bit between
the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine that we're airing at the same time.
But perhaps Voyager was already in development and the idea that that
would begin with a Maquis crew getting stranded with a Starfleet crew, I think
they needed to give one last, big push for the Maquis being a going concern.
And so this episode is very much about the politics of the Cardassian-Federation
border the fact that the Federation and Cardassians were in an uneasy
peace treaty and the Maquis were caught in the middle, especially Bajorans.
There were people whose planets had been handed over to the other side as
part of a signed piece of paper, and they were choosing not to go along
with it to fight for their homes.
Rob: this the first appearance of the Bajorans?
Kevin: No, there was, the Maquis were previously established I
think earlier in season seven of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
But this is the last the last big push for it, the last Maquis story in TNG.
And Ro, who has by this point become a respected, promoted Starfleet officer.
She's now a lieutenant, and her absence on the ship is explained by
her returning at the start of this episode from Advanced Tactical Training
at Starfleet Academy, where Picard had recommended her specifically.
She'd gone away, she was the star of her class, and she came back.
And Admiral Nechayev, who we will remember from several other, like she's the
one who showed up when the really big missions were, when Picard needed to be
sent on the really high stakes missions.
She comes on board and she says, we have a mission, and it's not
for you Picard, it's for someone on your ship, and it's for Ro Laren.
By this point, Picard and Ro, like they establish in this episode,
that their trust has grown deep enough that he's at times referring
to her on a first name basis.
He will call her Laren.
And it sounds like it sounds important and it ends up being important because
Ro is sent undercover to join the Maquis,
Rob: yes.
Kevin: and ultimately to lead the Machi into a trap where the
Federation can capture them so that they stop attacking the Cardassians.
So this is the Federation working for the Cardassians
through Ro Laren, who is Bajoran.
And from the beginning, Picard is like, If you don't feel like you
can do this, I would understand.
But she says, I wouldn't wanna let you down.
Fulfilling your trust in me is the main reason I feel like
I should take this mission.
And it's a very like, they lean real heavily on this mission is the proof
of fulfilling Picard's trust in her.
And she goes off and, as happens so many times when you're
undercover, you sympathize with the people you're undercover with.
And she, she meets a cell leader who reminds her of her father, who
tells stories of old Bajor that she had separated herself from her
Bajoran identity, but he brought her back and melted her heart.
And uh,
Rob: all in one episode.
Kevin: All in one episode, she comes back to Picard and
says, I'm not sure I can do it.
Picard says, tell me now because I can pull you out, but it's not gonna be good.
And she says, I'll go through with it, but ultimately she doesn't.
In the final moment, she pulls a phaser on Riker who's been sent
undercover with her to supervise, and Riker is surprisingly understanding.
She says, can you tell Picard one last thing for me?
And he says, Of course, anything.
She says, thank you for trusting me.
And she beams off and goes and joins the Maquis.
And that is the last we see of her before this episode.
Rob: There you go.
So that's a real big cliff hanging out of the
Kevin: Yeah, and I can you can certainly now see it as a cliffhanger,
like an unresolved thread.
But in the, at the time it felt like the end of her story that she came, she joined
Starfleet, she thought she had found her place, but ultimately what was going on
with the Maquis, the injustice for the Bajoran people was too much for her to
take and it cost her Starfleet career.
That felt like an end of the end of a story
Rob: But she did find that connection with her culture, which
is in many ways more important.
No matter how much Picard says Starfleet is the only family I need.
Kevin: The first episode of hers back in season five, episode three
is entitled Ensign Ro, and that is the one I talked about where
she's working for the Bad Admiral.
Rob: That, yeah.
That's what I was, what I meant earlier was, is Ro the first
appearance of a Bajoran in Star Trek?
Kevin: That episode, Ensign Ro is the, is when the Bajorans are established.
They were called the Bajora back then, and it was like that turn
of phrase was quietly sunset.
I think it maybe even appeared in some early DS9s.
They talked about the world of the Bajora.
They became the Bajorans eventually.
But yeah, this is the first one.
Ensign Ro isn't the first uh, Bajorans we see there is a, terrorist attack by a
Bajoran ship, a Bajoran freedom fighter.
And then Ensign Ro is brought on to, to be the kind of cultural
advisor on the mission to go and try and stop these terrorists.
Rob: And is it true in my memory that they it wasn't just the
creases in the, between the eyes.
There was a little bit of with the Bajorans' design back at
the Bajora design, there was a little bit of enhancement to the
eyebrows or the, some lines there.
Kevin: That's interesting that you ask.
I don't remember it that way.
But certainly that those n nose ridges did evolve.
But I don't remember it being much more extensive.
I'm just trying to see if I can find an early photo of her.
Yeah, there.
I mean there were some, yeah the ridges did go like halfway across
the eyebrows early on, so yeah.
They, they were a little bigger.
Rob: they just took it all the way and just focused on the ridges on the
Kevin: Yeah.
I think that maybe they decided it made them look angry and
they wanted, they wanted major Kira not to always look angry.
Rob: Well, she, she, that was certainly her default for the first
Kevin: Yeah.
But yeah, there are a couple of other memorable episodes
for the character of Ensign Ro.
One of them has a lot of Michelle Forbes and one of them doesn't.
The one that doesn't is Rascals.
And this is the episode in which Picard, Ro, Guinan and Keiko are all
transformed into their child selves.
So, uh, Yeah, they get de-aged and so it's completely different actors playing
these four characters, going on a caper.
So the young girl who plays Ro does a great job with the character is very
believably Ro, so much so that when you asked me like, what are great moments of
Michelle Forbes as Ro, I was like, oh, I loved when she played herself as a kid.
Rob: She's that good.
She can de-age herself.
Kevin: Yeah.
But that is a good Ro episode, not necessarily a
good Michelle Forbes episode.
The last I'll touch on is season five, episode 24, The Next Phase.
And much as we were talking about Worf the other week, where I really liked
the episode Parallels because it was an episode where Worf was central, but it
was not about Worf's culture or heritage.
It was about him as a character, in his own right.
And Ensign Ro's version of that episode is The Next Phase in which she and Geordi,
returning from helping a damaged Romulan ship, they come to the rescue of a Romulan
ship whose warp core is malfunctioning.
They go aboard as part of a repair party, and when they
come back their, the transporter fails, and they apparently die.
But then Ro and Geordi both wake up on the ship, and find themselves walking
around, but no one can see them.
And when they try to touch people and things, they pass through them
and they meet up and Ro is convinced that they have died and that this
is basically Bajoran purgatory.
That in her religion before you go to Paradise, you have a time haunting
the people that you lived with, and you are supposed to use this to
make your peace with your departure.
You're supposed to tell truths to people, admit how you feel, say
goodbye, and that ultimately then you fade away when your business is done.
Geordi, as the scientist, the engineer is like, I'm not having none of it.
I can see you.
You can see me.
The ship is still here.
We're still breathing.
I'm going to engineering to figure out what's wrong with us.
And so it's a beautiful like tension of they both respond to
the same situation in opposite
Rob: And that's very much the Bajoran culture as well.
It's very much religion first and everything uh, secondary.
Kevin: And it is a beautiful opportunity for Ro to tell all these characters
what she really feels about them because she is so guarded the rest of the time.
But she spends several long speeches telling Riker, telling
Picard what, confessing to them as they can't see or hear her.
She like stands in Picard's ready room while he's drinking tea
and pours her heart out to him.
And it is, it is great stuff.
A really great showcase for Michelle Forbes, both that, that tension of
disbelieving the situation and then ultimately Geordi talking around
that, that they're not actually dead, and there is a, there is
a science problem to be solved.
But before that, she uh, she pours her heart out and then is embarrassed by what
she has done even though she's not dead.
So yeah, I would say if you want, if you want one episode to really
understand what we saw this week in Picard, it would be Preemptive Strike
her swan song, and everything you need is right there in that episode.
But if you're gonna watch a second Ro Laren episode, go
and watch The Next Phase.
It's it's a pretty typical episode of the week for TNG, but it's a
lot more than that for Ensign Ro.
Rob: Excellent.
Well, Thank you for those recommendations and and I hope I've inspired you to
go and watch some of her other work.
She's done
Kevin: Yeah.
I have to decide whether to watch Homicide or uh,
Rob: True.
There's also she's still working.
Like she was being she did the Bourne Identity spinoff TV series, Trenchstone.
She was a lead character in that.
She's got a reoccurring role in New Amsterdam, the medical drama.
So yeah, she kept on powering through and doing some incredible,
and she's still working to this day.
Like she hasn't stopped.
Kevin: I'm, and I'm gonna have to watch some of this stuff if I ever wanna
see Michelle Forbes again, apparently.
Like I keep forgetting that she dies at the end of this one, and then I
remember, and it, hurts all over again.
She went out in fitting form.
She made the difference this episode.
She, she closed the doors that needed to be closed, and then she heroically flew
that ship into the engine of the Intrepid.
So well done to giving a character due before killing them off.
Nevertheless, it is heartbreaking having been given a taste of what
more Ro Laren could be, to now know that we're not going to get
Rob: Well that's, that's the thing, isn't it?
Cuz you, you'd feel cheated if it was one of the Yeah, the originals come
even if it was will Wheaton coming back and comes back sacrifices?
You'd feel cheated.
You'd go, no, that's wrong.
But with Ro Laren, you're there going, you have a focus on her
for the A story of this part.
Has that resolution, has that arc, and does the ultimate sacrifice.
But they're only in eight episodes.
So you go, you still feel upset and heartbroken, but you're there going, okay,
they came back, they went out like a boss.
And that's not something to be really feels, like short short changed on.
Kevin: But I am angry with those Changelings, now.
I, up until this point I was like, maybe they're just misunderstood, but now it's
Rob: They've taken Ro Laren out.
Yeah just send Jack over and just sort them all out.
But it is good, because he's a stubborn Chicago bastard, but
whenever Shaw finally, yeah, it's, they played us like a book with Shaw.
They set him up as the bad guy.
You learn to love him even though he is still spiky.
He doesn't change completely.
He's still a spiky prick.
Kevin: I'm gonna step outside so that the three of you can get
your bullshit story straight.
Rob: And then at the end goes, just go look, Shaw.
They're powering up, they're gonna shoot us.
He goes oh, now we better get outta here.
But, but, but.
Kevin: But they were gonna arrest you!
Rob: You're gonna
Kevin: really wanted to see that.
Rob: Yeah.
Another really good episode, a great little surprise return of a character.
And now we move forward into those pieces finally coming together.
Now we've got, Riker and Picard teaming up with Worf.
Let's get them in the same space, now.
Kevin: It feels like we're primed for storming Daystrom Station next
Rob: I think that's the main, and they're setting up like a heist.
They're going this is the, the AI system.
You've gotta break this code.
I'm expecting the Ocean's 11 music to kick in.
Do, do, do, do, Do.
Maybe they'll have their own Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang episode.
I said, why are you dressing in the tuxedos?
Why are you dressing up in a tuxedo?
Forget about it.
Let's walk in slow motion along the promenade.
Kevin: I'm going to walk in slow motion until next week's episode.
Rob: Looking forward to it.
Can't wait to see what happens in episode six.
Kevin: Yeah.
We're more than halfway now, Rob,
Rob: We
Kevin: This is traditionally where it all falls apart with Picard.