TV Episode Review: 'Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Defector'
Pros: Solid script. Great performance by James Sloyan. Gripping Cold War-style tale Cons: A few plot holes and other minor errors Although Gene Roddenberry did not conceive Star Trek as a "space war" action-adventure series when he pitched it to the Big Three networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) in the mid-1960s, he realized that if he wanted his show to be an outlet for socio-cultural commentary on American and world society he would need to create interstellar adversaries to his United Federation of Planets. Because in storytelling terms the Federation is a 23rd Century "America-in-futuristic-avatar," Roddenberry and the Star Trek writers created two different stand-ins for the now-vanished Soviet Union: the Romulan Star Empire and the Klingon Empire. a In Star Trek: The Original Series and its six feature film spin-offs , the Klingon Empire was the predominant "Soviet" stand-in, appearing in seven episodes of the 19...