From: ph9991_manfr@rivers.acc.uwrf.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.current
Subject: Re: Saturday Night Review - "Chain of Command Part II" SPOILERS!
Date: 30 Dec 92 11:26:25 -0600
Organization: University of Wisconsin - River Falls

> 
>>Direction(both Cinematography and acting coaching): Poor.  By my standards
>>	anyway, and those standards include virtually every episode of 	
>>	"The Prisoner," and several episodes of "Blake's 7" when it comes
>>	to any story that deals specifically with torture, whether it be
>>	psychological or physical or both.  Close-ups weren't tight enough,
>>	there was no hand-held camera work at all, lighting was static,
>>	nothing was off-center, in fact nothing at all to suggest the work
>>	of a master of psychological manipulation, nothing to suggest
>>	brainwashing tactics of any sort, or at least nothing that I could
>>	see.  
> 
> Maybe if you read some actual accounts of torture, or military survival
> manuals, instead of relying on "Blake's 7" and "The Prisoner," you'd
> think differently.
> 
> Sleep deprivation, attempts to befriend the prisoner, random acts of 
> kindness and cruelty, holding out hope which is then snatched away:
> these are all classic brainwashing and interrogation techniques.  
> Notice any of those in Chain of Command?
> 

That's my problem! They were CLASSIC brainwashing techniques, not
FUTURE techniques.  I can tolerate and even expect some of the old tried
and true methods, but what I wanted to see was new techniques devised
thanks to the advancement of science.  Some have talked about the light
tricks...  They actually should have pulled the trick of putting in a
fifth light, or better yet, hooking up a hologram device (here's the
science fiction) that can change how many lights are there at a whim
from the interrogator.  That would really confuse him.
How about the infamous mind probing techniques?  I am reminded of the
"Blake's 7" episode "Terminal" where Avon is drugged and connected to a
computer and given an entire electronic dream that he has met Blake
ala "Total Recall" in order to get him to surrender the Liberator to
Servalan.  Nothing like this appeared in "Chain of Command."  As Picard
points out, simple torture isn't very reliable, and at the same time
the Cardassians have an advanced technological capability, so I would
expect them to apply that technology to interrogation techniques as well
as everything else in society.  The only hint we got of that at all was
the pain implant, and that's a pretty simple device to think of and even
then, it's effects are just the same as conventional methods, simple pain.

Think of using an entire holodeck as a torture device.  Get Picard's 
psychological profile and then conjure up at will every horror in his
psyche for him to confront.  Murder millions in front of his eyes and let
him smell the blood and burning flesh, via the holodeck.  Wake him during
a dream very slowly with drugs and present him with illusions of his
Borg experience...give him a dream that he is being reassimilated, or
possibly worse yet, that friends of his, like his brother or nephew
are being assimilated.  
Inject him with radioactive agents, let him suffer from radiation sickness
while being subjected to the conventional techniques.  


There were millions of possibilities like these, and none of them were used.
I do not dislike this episode for what it did, but rather for what it
failed to do.


Steven.K.Manfred