S6.E14

Face of the Enemy

Episode aired Feb 6, 1993
TV-PG
46m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Marina Sirtis in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)

Deanna awakes to find herself altered to look like a Romulan, immediately unaware she's involved in a cat-and-mouse game as a member of their intelligence agency.Deanna awakes to find herself altered to look like a Romulan, immediately unaware she's involved in a cat-and-mouse game as a member of their intelligence agency.Deanna awakes to find herself altered to look like a Romulan, immediately unaware she's involved in a cat-and-mouse game as a member of their intelligence agency.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.9/10

3.4K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
Worf's ponytail makes its debut here. He would keep it for the remainder of this series and keep when he moved on to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993). Michael Dorn wanted the change because he was tired of "looking like a Klingon who's just been to the beauty salon!"

Goofs
Troi goes undercover as a Romulan, presumably relying on the Universal Translator to make her language sound like theirs. It has been established that the Translator takes the voice of whoever is speaking and translates the words to the listener's language. Therefore, to the Romulans, Troi would look like a character in a poorly dubbed foreign movie, with the spoken words not matching the mouth movements, which would make the disguise impossible to keep up, but no one seems to notice. However, it is never specifically stated that Troi is using the Translator, so it could be the case that Troi speaks Romulan and is able to pass herself off as one. The Commander's suspicions about Troi's background could be based on her accent, which a non-native speaker would surely possess.

This, of course, would ignore all of the other instances across all of Star Trek in which the crew communicate readily with species never before encountered, but at least this occurrence has a plausible explanation.

Quotes
Counselor Deanna Troi: We're not playing it your way anymore, N'Vek. I've been kidnapped, surgically altered, put in danger. I've gone along with all your plans; now *you* are going to listen to me! You find a way to let the Enterprise track us, or I will go to Toreth and tell her I've discovered you're a traitor! I'll have you ejected into space, is that clear, Subcommander?

Connections
Referenced in Star Trek: The Next Generation: Timescape (1993)

Soundtracks
Star Trek: The Next Generation Main Title
Composed by Jerry Goldsmith and Alexander Courage

User reviews19

Review

Featured review

9/10

Don't you just hate it when you wake up and find you've been transformed into a Romulan?!

When the episode begins, Counselor Troi awakens and looks into the mirror--only to discover that she's become, inexplicably, a Romulan! Why?! What's going on here? She has no idea but one of the Romulans comes to her and tells her that she MUST go along with his plan and pretend to be a member of the Romulan Intelligence, the Tal Shiar. Fortunately, since the Tal Shiar is much like the KGB, the commander of the Romulan ship is forced to acquiesce to whatever demands Troi makes--as the commander is scared not to!

I loved this episode because it allowed Marina Sirtis (Troi) to step WAY outside her usual roles on the show. Normally, she's an incredibly passive and dull character but here she is AMAZING. As a member of the Tal Shiar, Troi becomes a very scary woman! She is tough, demanding and even a bit ruthless!! These are all things I loved seeing her character do! Additionally, the show is very exciting and very different from the norm for the show. One not to be missed.