The Drumhead- best ST episode

[gakelly]

Personally, I think this is the best script of any Trek series.
The acting is fantastic, the speeches by Picard are top of the line, the plot is engaging, great guest stars, the theme will probably always be relevant...always an enjoyable viewing

At 26:27, Picard and Worf have a heated conversation that might be my favorite scene in TNG..

 

[Armus]

Great score by Ron Jones too, his very last one. It's particularly effective when Sadie has her meltdown.

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[JirinPanthosa]

It’s one of the best, certainly.

One our culture keeps circling back to.

 

[Armus]

In politics witchhunts and defamation seem par for the course. It's a sign of a dangerous time when society fails to revere due process.

 

[gakelly]

Armus, you are correct. The score by Ron Jones positively adds to the show.

 

[trekshark]

I always wished we saw Tarses again even if just in the background in sickbay in a later season just to know his career wasn't ended.

 

[Nyotarules]

I always wished we saw Tarses again even if just in the background in sickbay in a later season just to know his career wasn't ended.

Simon did well in the novelverse

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I imagine Picard fighting for Tarses the sane way he did for Sito.

 

[Vger23]

I find The Drumhead to be a boring, derivative and contrived TNG outing. Never one of my favorites, let alone best episode of the franchise.

 

[unimatrix7]

I’m still confused with how it ended. Picard quotes some milquetoast legal bromide, the scenery-chewing lady has a tantrum and storms out...and we’re done.

And gosh, how much of a chump is Worf

 

[Kor]

It's apparent by the end that Sadie is on an emotionally-charged personal tirade rather than something that makes a lick of rational sense. I've dealt with people like that before.

Kor

 

[Nyotarules]

Simon did well in the novelverse

I thought the reasons why he felt he had to hide his ancestry showed how bigoted Starfleet was, its not his fault his grandfather was a Romulan. Saavik never did.

 

[JesterFace]

Did someone else feel that Worf was maybe a little out of character in this episode, his suspicions and behaviour went a bit too far?

 

[Marsden]

That's part of the point of the other thread, none of the "characters" really has a character because they modify them from episode to episode to fit the plot.

 

[Makarov]

Completely in character for Worf to flip out about Romulan connections... he did it in other episodes & it's even part of his backstory

 

[jmidnight_99]

Personally, I think this is the best script of any Trek series.
The acting is fantastic, the speeches by Picard are top of the line, the plot is engaging, great guest stars, the theme will probably always be relevant...always an enjoyable viewing

At 26:27, Picard and Worf have a heated conversation that might be my favorite scene in TNG..

?

The horrible overacting by Jean Simmons, the ridiculous hole-ridden plot that seemed like it would have been more at home in a 60's TOS episode... 5 series with all that wonderful science fiction, I wouldn't see this even in the top 300 episodes.

 

[Nakita Akita]

It seems it's the first episode where we get to see someone on the ship that isn't an officer. And someone who didn't graduate top of their class from star fleet, and was the first to ever to something ,something And be able to listen to someone playing an instrument in a quartet and tell that they play a diminish D rather than an C sharp.
It was the only time that "crewman "( as a rank) where ever referred to as far as I can remember.
I thought the crazy woman was very good as an over the top snob, just like she was supposed to be.
Excellent episode. One of my favorites.

 

[Marsden]

I like this one, I though it was better than most TNG, but that's not saying it was very good.

I think this really could have benefited from being a two part episode, the more interesting parts are over too fast toward the beginning or middle before it all goes Scooby Doo and Picard pulls Sadie's mask off and it's over. The only thing else more Scooby could have been Sadie saying "I could have gotten away with it if it wasn't for your meddling Picard!" She almost did when she said she'd taken down bigger men than him. It was over the top, simplistic villainy that they tried to hang a lampshade on in the coda by Picard telling Worf that "villains that twirl their mustaches are easy to spot".

 

[Prax]

Not only was the admiral over the top, they made Picard completely the opposite. He was ridiculously quick, not to mention foolish, to dismiss the whole thing out of hand. He's inviting the potential spy to his quarters. They dumb down a very complicated issue into a black and white problem where Picard is good, and magically right, and the admiral is bad, mentally unstable, not competent, and on a witch Hunt.

They do the exact same thing in Silicon Avatar. The script has to tell us Picard is right without giving a good reason, which wouldn't have been hard, and the lady is shown to just be nuts at the end. If they didnt make the antagonist nuts, emotional, driven by revenge, etc, we might not side with Picard. If they showed two competent professionals(Picard and guest)acting maturely, with two opposing viewpoints, that would be both more honest, and more compelling.

Otherwise, these seem like writing shortcuts, or just cheating. I would give the drumhead 2/4 stars. A decent episode.

 

[BillJ]

Solid. But I think there are better episodes of TNG and the franchise in general.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Not only was the admiral over the top, they made Picard completely the opposite. He was ridiculously quick, not to mention foolish, to dismiss the whole thing out of hand. He's inviting the potential spy to his quarters. They dumb down a very complicated issue into a black and white problem where Picard is good, and magically right, and the admiral is bad, mentally unstable, not competent, and on a witch Hunt.

They do the exact same thing in Silicon Avatar. The script has to tell us Picard is right without giving a good reason, which wouldn't have been hard, and the lady is shown to just be nuts at the end. If they didnt make the antagonist nuts, emotional, driven by revenge, etc, we might not side with Picard. If they showed two competent professionals(Picard and guest)acting maturely, with two opposing viewpoints, that would be both more honest, and more compelling.

Otherwise, these seem like writing shortcuts, or just cheating. I would give the drumhead 2/4 stars. A decent episode.

He was not inviting a 'potential spy' to his quarters. He was inviting a man who was only under suspicion due to his heritage to his quarters.

"Isn't it true you are a quarter Romulan, that it is a ROMULAN heritage you honor!" Like those are equivalent statements. Even accusing Simon Tarses is the same as accusing some random person on the street of being a terrorist just for being Muslim.

I agree they took Admiral Satie over the top, but her point stopped having any validity the moment they caught the original spy and started randomly accusing anyone with even any slight circumstantial reason.

It's shown time and time in history, when you get hysterical about enemy spies to the point that you start accusing anyone without any concrete evidence, you objectively and inescapably start doing more harm than the enemy spies possibly could do on their own. There were Russian spies in America during the Cold War, and the McCarthy hearings caught 0 spies and destroyed hundreds of lives. Satie was doing exactly the same and Picard was unquestionably right.