UNCUT REACTION - Star Trek TNG S2E20 - The Emissary

The Worf episodes are few and far between in S1 and 2, but they make them count, and The Emissary is no exception. Suzie Plakson does a brilliant job as K'Ehleyr, and despite the character being half human, she's something of a prototype for Klingon women in the TNG era. Minus her disregard for klingon tradition, but the personality is there. She's a commanding presence in every scene she's in. It's funny though that she says she was ready 6 years ago, and yet Worf is fully ready for commitment now and she gets cold feet. At this point Michael Dorn is 37, but Worf is only 25. Therefore it's entirely possible Worf may have been a virgin before this. Worf's claims that human women are too "fragile" for klingon sex is clearly BS given K'Ehleyr's mom was human and clearly survived. It certainly points to Worf never having hooked up with a human woman, otherwise he wouldn't think it was impossible. More to the point, this episode drives home something hinted at a few times before, such as during the tea ceremony with Pulaski. Worf is a hopeless romantic. Sex isn't "just sex" to him. It's a deeply meaningful act to him. Worf is a warrior poet through and through. The klingon ship would have been launched between Star Trek V and VI, so it seems odd to say they were at war given the klingon participation in "the planet of galactic peace". Excellent episode with a great romantic plotline.

The prosthetic used on the "Skeletor guy" In this episode and in last season is an actual Skeletor mask from "Masters of the Universe" movie.

Suzie Plakson is by far one of my favorite guest characters especially as K'heylar she owns the screen when she's acting.

One of the top s2 eps and a good indicator of what’s to come

Loved this reaction. This episode is great. 🥰

“IT’S A BANGER! IT’S A BANGER!” This has to be one of my favorite reaction episodes yet. Us old timers feel “great joy and gratitude” when experiencing these 5 star episodes with you guys. Great joy. And gratitude. *Old timer: I watched this episode when it originally aired and loved it so much. I was 15.

47:50 The "Klingons never bluff" line I was afraid you were going to miss because you were yappin' over it, but you did catch it. These are the details that make me warn about talking too long during it. Glad you gents loved this episode as much as I thought you would!

44:50 Alex a bit misty-eyed, even before Worf's line...

21:28 The spittake almost made me!! LOL!

4:26 Star Trek does do that. Errr, will do that. Semi-spoiler not-spoiler.

K'ehleyr is played by the actress who plays Marshal's mother in How I met your mother. This episode had the helmsmen was from Mad About you and the security guy is from Drew Carry show and from the movie Office space.

K'ehleyr's got to be the hottest Klingon(half) ever in all of Star Trek...

I just realized about K'Ehleyr's wardrobe changes. She didn't have room for any luggage with her in the probe. Either the ship has a store or she used a replicator.

Love the full circle from "Klingons never bluff" to a Klingon bluffing other Klingons.

Such an underrated episode. 🖖

I love K'ehleyr so much!!!

I think the implication is that Worf and K'heylar had sex the first time they met 6 years ago.

It will be fun to see if you can identify other roles that Suzie Plakson plays across Star Trek. I won't spoil them, but it will be interesting to see if you spot them when watching. There are a lot of actors who play multiple roles/races across the various Star Trek series, so I always like to see if people can identify them or not. Let the search begin! lol. :-)

When I first saw this episode, I thought there was no record of the Klingon's mission was because they were actually a peace envoy to the Federation and were therefore kept secret. That might have been a nice twist.

I like how Josh noticed all alien species never seem to bluff. That phrase reminded me of Spock to Commodore Decker in Doomsday Machine.

During the K'Ehleyr and Troi scene, I realized something for the first time ... this episode passes the Bechdel test. It's a scene with two female characters who are talking about something other than a man. As Alex might joke: "WOKE GARBAGE!" 🤣

Love your reaction. This is one of my favorite episodes.

Who would have guessed that Worf is such a romantic?

I always loved the holodeck scene. "Not much of a program...." "........Computer....Level 2..." Great episode that goes into the Klingon culture when it comes to relationships. Especially when one is half human and (similar to Spock) has to deal with the extreme differences in emotional/mental control. Sadly now I have to wait 10 hours to watch it, but Woohoo!!

People say season 2 sucks, I submit this episode, one of the best of the entire series. They spiked deep into an artery of Klingon blood and sprayed it all over the ship from the holo -deck, transporter room to the bridge

Although I always knew it was good, “The Emissary” is an even better episode than I had remembered, and on this rewatch rises to fourth place in my ranking of TNG Season 2 episodes, ahead of “Elementary, Dear Data.” Suzie Plakson (K’Ehleyr) previously played Dr. Selar, the Vulcan Enterprise physician in “The Schizoid Man.” Tracy Tormé, the scriptwriter of “The Schizoid Man” (who was a man, by the way), had wanted Dr. Selar to become a romantic interest for Worf, although there is no indication of this in that episode. Of course, Plakson was a suitable actor to play a love interest for Worf due to her height (6’2”). (Two meters is about six feet, so K'Ehleyr must have found the probe an extremely tight squeeze.) Robin Curtis (Saavik in Search for Spock and Voyage Home) was the first choice to play K’Ehleyr but was unavailable due to a movie role. (Incidentally, I was surprised and pleased that apparently neither Alex nor Josh realized that Selar and K'Ehleyr were the same actress. Multiple people had been insistent about sharing this spoiler after Alex and Josh watched "The Schizoid Man;" some of them may have deleted their comments, but I was still concerned that Alex and Josh might have read others.) Lance LeGault (Captain K’Temoc) was the narrator of "Quantum Leap." His best-known role was on the 1980s TV series "The A-Team"; among other roles, he also appeared in the "Battlestar Galactica" episodes “The Lost Warrior,” “The Man with Nine Lives” and “Baltar’s Escape,” and in the classic 1981 Army comedy "Stripes" with Bill Murray and Harold Ramis. Georgann Johnson (Admiral Gromek) later succeeded Jane Wyman in the role of the title character’s mother on "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman." Given the chaotic production of TNG Season 2, it is a coincidence, but a pleasant one, that Worf’s calisthenics program appears both near the beginning of the season and near its end, complete with the creature that looks like Skeletor. Near the end of TOS Season 3, Alex and Josh mentioned that a significant difference between their experience of watching the show and that of its original audience was that it was not interrupted by commercial breaks. This difference is more significant in "The Emissary" than in any other Star Trek episode the Target Audience has seen thus far: having to wait through the commercials at the end of Act 3 makes it more immediately obvious that Worf and K'Ehleyr are having sexual intercourse (and that this is what K'Ehleyr means by her hilarious first line in Act 4, "Some calisthenics programs are better than others"). Alex and Josh's comments about Worf's experience on the holodeck are highly insightful: it is entirely possible that Worf was a virgin prior to this episode, and that his previous discussions of sex were merely theoretical. An alternate possibility is that Worf has never had sex *with a Klingon* before; he may have found women of other species who were physically capable of sex with him. It may be that Worf is only obligated to marry someone with whom he has sex if that person is Klingon. Alex's mental arithmetic concerning Klingon history is also quite accurate: 75 years prior to this episode brings us back into the TOS movie era, when the Klingons already had bumpy foreheads, as we see with the crew of the T'Ong. Note that, if you pay close attention to what Worf says to K'Temoc, only one word is a lie: applying the title "Commander" to K'Ehleyr, who is a Federation emissary but not a member of Starfleet and does not have a paramilitary rank. Worf never claims to have the rank of Captain or to be the permanent commander of the Enterprise, only that he is in command at that moment (which is true); he never says that the Klingons won the war with the Federation, only that the war is over (which is also true). This is, I believe, the first episode of TNG which neither begins nor ends with an exterior shot of the Enterprise. I have seen an online review of “The Emissary” that gives it the highest possible accolade: that it is like a Season 3 episode come early. “The Emissary” is not as good as “A Matter of Honor,” “The Measure of a Man,” or “Q Who,” but it is an excellent episode, and this level of excellence will become more commonplace in Season 3. If you want a preview of what TNG will be like next season, you could do worse than watch “The Emissary.”

21:35 You know one of the worst things you can say to someone who's upset? "You're upset." No shit, sherlock. This is why Troi is such a maligned character... and then you see Guinan basically doing her job almost effortlessly in previous episodes. A good therapist gives you the comfort and open-endedness to let the truth fall from you. When you state point blank that someone is in a bad mood, you can harden them and make them irritated. I love the way Suzie shits her voice around. She's got some of tha told school Lauren Bacall type seduction to her tone. Let's a little of that rasp into the way she talks and just oozes a... raw primal femininity. It's easy to see why Worf is so torn up by her. It actually physically hurts when she says things along the lines of "You don't feel anything" because its so clear that he feels DEEP.

I knew you guys would love this one.

It's Good Thursday!!

Suzie Plakson was also the Vulcan doctor in The Schizoid Man.

I would LOVE to see a TNG episode where it's just a 45 minute poker game!

Things that never happen in Star Trek #16: Troi states something other than the blindingly obvious

Something to watch on the train ride home ❤️

Just in time for my lunch break ❤️

Woohoo, it’s one of those take an early lunch break type of days. I’m watchin this