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When Troi rises sleepily and clicks on the cabin lights, she's as surprised as the viewer to learn she's on a Romulan warbird, and has been dressed and surgically altered to match. Her confusion is quickly dispelled by the ship's subcommander N'Vek, who explains that, in the interests of a mission too delicate to risk, it was regrettably essential that a Starfleet officer be kidnapped and thus masqueraded. So far as everyone else on the ship is concerned, including N'Vek's superior officer Commander Toreth, Troi is now a major in the highly feared Tal Shiar, the Romulan intelligence division, and has secured the warbird to transport a secret cargo. At the same time, the
Enterprise has been charged with transporting a unique prisoner, Ensign DeSeve, a defector to Romulus who has returned to the Federation after 20 years. Once on board, DeSeve demands to speak with Picard, to whom he relays a message from Spock: a set of coordinates and a request to go there to pick up a delivery.
It was a sly move of the writers to place an espionage mission requiring stealth, imperiousness, and a ruthless willingness to succeed at any cost on the warm-and-fuzzy shoulders of Troi, and much of the show's pleasure comes from seeing how readily she (and Marina Sirtis) rises to the challenge. There's only one brief burst of the counselor's whiny emotionalism; once Troi has realized what's at stake, she barks out her commands with glorious disdain, and her icy parries with Carolyn Seymour's proud, honorable Toreth are easily the show's highlights. After sustaining a good deal of tension throughout the episode, the ending comes off as a bit anticlimactic. But then, you wouldn't really expect the counselor to ever blast her way out of trouble, would you? --Bruce Reid
From the Back Cover
Troi (Marina Sirtis) awakens on board a Romulan Warbird and discovers she has been transformed into a Romulan offier. N'Vek (Scott MacDonald), the vessel's subcommander, explains that if she wants to survive she must pretend to be Major Rakal of the Tal Shiar and order the ship's commander (Carolyn Seymour) to proceed to the Kaleb sector to deliver an unknown cargo.
Meanwhile, the Enterprise receives an urgent request to rendezvous with a freighter in the same sector and transport its cargo back to Federation territory. It seems that high-ranking members of the Romulan Imperial Senate are attempting to defect and Troi is integral to the mission. But it could cost her her life...
