7x12 The Pegasus

[8.2/10] I don’t think you could boil all of Star Trek down to one overarching theme. We’re presently at ten shows and thirteen shows across nearly five decades and counting. The different creative voices and eras of the franchise rightly produce more of a tapestry (hi Jean-Luc!) than a clear unified perspective.

But one of the guiding principles that cuts across series and different time periods is a simple one -- sometimes moral duties have to take precedence over protocol and the chain of command. Before and after “The Pegasus”, we’ve seen characters from Kirk to Burnham disobeying orders and bucking command because they believed they had to do what was right. There’s a sense of hubris to that, to be sure, but also a conviction that your ethics should never be set aside merely because some authority figure demands it.

“The Pegasus” dives into that head first. Enter Admiral Pressman, Riker’s first commanding officer, who arrives with a top secret mission to recover the ship he and Will lost twelve years ago. There were experiments performed on the vessel, some vague unpleasantness with the crew, and a ship mysteriously destroyed. For most of the episode, the audience only gets cryptic hints as to what happened, but Will knows, and Pressman orders him to keep it a secret, even from Captain Picard, even as the mission to salvage the unexpectedly intact U.S.S. Pegasus may put the Enterprise at risk.

It’s the kind of episode TNG superscribe Ronald D. Moore constructs so well. You have the stakes, in a mysterious ship that must be recovered before the Romulans can get to it first, while Picard and the Romulan captain have to perform the kabuki theater of pretending they don’t know what the other’s up to. You have the personal side of things, with Riker reflecting on his past failures, how much he’s changed since that first assignment, and which commander to honor. And you have that central ethical decision, over whether to conform to the usual hierarchies and orders he’s subject to, or to break ranks and speak up to hold fast to his ideals and community. All of the ingredients for a great episode of Star Trek are here.

That includes the central dilemma, which is suffused with tensions both moral and personal. Riker has to decide whether to accede to the will of his former commanding officer, one who has benefits or rank and the backing of Starfleet Command, or to stay true to his current captain, one who’s seen him through tougher times than this, earned his loyalty rather demanded it, and shown considerable trust in his first officer.

When I put it like that, it doesn’t seem that hard of a decision, does it? But that’s one of the great things about “The Pegasus”. We, the audience, know what the right thing to do is, even without knowing all the details Will does. Maybe it’s just the fact that almost every Starfleet admiral thus far has fallen somewhere on the spectrum between “callous”, “compromised”, and “downright evil,” whereas, like the accoutrement of “Captain Picard Day” demonstrate, we see Jean-Luc as a veritable paragon of virtue.

That doesn’t make violating your orders, going against the chain of command, and risking your career in the process any easier. It just makes Riker, and by extension the audience, feel like he’s all the more between a rock and a hard place, forced to disappoint his mentor or break the rules and dictates of the organization he’s devoted his life to.

And yet, what Picard most admires about his first officer is his willingness to challenge those above him when it’s time to take a stand. That explanation doesn’t perfectly line up with the testy relationship we saw between Will and Jean-Luc in the show’s first season, but it speaks to Riker’s value as a commander. It’s difficult yet vital to speak up when those in charge are making a mistake, and having the steel to do it isn’t always common.

Now we understand why Riker does. The most striking thing about his backstory on the Pegasus is learning that Riker started out as a Boimler! It’s hard to imagine self-possessed Will as an obsequious ensign, but I buy it, both given how someone fresh from the academy would be endlessly deferential to command, and how this experience would have changed him. A treaty-violating experiment, a senior staff who mutinied rather than continue to put the ship and its crew at risk, and a tenuous escape would shift anyone’s point of view. More than that, Riker’s haunted by the survivor’s guilt of taking a phaser and siding with the captain over the staff, for something he ultimately decided was wrong, especially when the rest of his fellow crewmen died in the aftermath.

Now we understand more of why Riker in particular was so resistant to Captain Jelico. He’s seen what it looks like when commanding officers rule by fiat rather than by principle and trust. He won’t ever let that happen again.

The psychological depth of his impulse and his internal conflict both land. Riker is being asked to repeat the mistake he most regrets from his Starfleet career, and now he has even more to lose by disobeying orders. He’s weighed down by the urge to do right by Captain Picard, who understands the yoke of orders from above, but half-trusts/half-threatens him not to jeopardize the safety of the Enterprise or its crew.

So when push comes to shove, he refuses to keep the Federation cloaking device the Pegasus crew was working on a secret from his captain. And Picard refuses to keep this breach of a treaty a secret from the Romulans either. Their adherence to the principles of Starfleet’s commitments over the chance for raw power, and their loyalty to one another, wins out over one misguided admiral and the powerful leaders who backed him. It’s heartening to see.

Granted, like many superb episode of TNG, things wrap up a little too tidily. Picard’s opposed to this technology given how it broke the treaty with the Romulans, but isn’t above using it to evade the Romulans? Once the Romulans find out the Federation has this technology, they seem pretty chill about just letting the Enterprise mozy along, despite the tense reception they received moments earlier. And Pressman seemed to have the backing of some powerful friends. Are we really supposed to believe that one complaint, albeit from the captain of Starfleet’s flagship, would be enough to earn an institutional punishment? The denouement comes a bit too easily.

Still, the psychological and ethical parts of the episodes succeed, and that’s what really matters here. Riker did what was hard but right rather than what he was ordered to do. He proved that the trust and loyalty his captain showed in him was warranted. He demonstrated that he’d grown as a person, not just as an officer, in the twelve years since the incident aboard the Pegasus. And worked in tandem with the man who recognized those qualities in them, and fosters them in the whole crew.

“The Pegasus” opens with a silly, amusing riff of “Captain Picard Day”, and Jean-Luc sheepishly tells an onlooking admiral, “I’m a role model.” It’s a joke, one made all the funnier by Picard’s distaste for such lionizing displays. But it’s also the truth. Jean-Luc Picard is a role model, someone who demonstrates principle in the face of hardship. He’s a captain who invites discussion and honest feedback rather than ruling by decree. And his style of leadership, of showing care for the people who work with him, of sticking to the ideals of the Federation even when they go against orders, has earned him the type of loyalty men like Pressman could never gain through command structure alone.

Riker’s internalized that, seen both models in action, and chosen which path he wants to follow for himself. He’s found the north star that guides so many across the franchise. Beyond the rules, beyond the power structure, beyond what you’re told, there are certain moral truths and first duties that abide. The consequences for adhering to those morals may be easier on television than they are in real life, but the stories that vindicate them, stories like this one, are still worth celebrating.