Best of Starshit: THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS

For reasons Starfleet reassigns Picard to a super-secret-squirrel mission behind Cardassian lines and gives command of the Enterprise over to Commander Jelico, played by Ronny 'Peepee Jones From Robocop' Cox. There's a whole B-plot about how Jelico and Riker clash and Jelico eventually confines Riker to quarters and (rightfully) gives the Number 1 slot to Data. La Forge also gets along fine with the new order and, when Jelico forces her to wear a proper uniform and act like a fricking officer, Troi is finally given the opportunity to behave like a professional. Riker comes over as completely petty and infantile in this story- Achillies sulking in his tent- until Jelico takes Troi's advice and butters him up to perform a fancy bit of flying that I cannot believe Data couldn't have done better. Jelico is the third best Enterprise captain btw: loads of people think he was great and I bet there are crappy Star Trek novels about him somewhere.

Anyway Picard finds himself captured and, while Jelico is trying to find a way to release him, he gets tortured by Gul Macet- played by veteran Bong actor David Warner. Warner was in two Pekinpah movies- the Balad of Cable Hogue and Cross of Iron- and played three two other roles in Star Trek (some ambassador guy in Star Trek 5: The One Everybody Tries to Forget About and the ruler of the Klingon Empire in Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country). The two actors were old friends and worked really well together creating one of the great thespian masterclasses of 90s TV. In the end Picard seems to win but there is a sting in the tail...

Thanks to @Battleloser for inspiring this post with his comment on my previous installment of Best of Starshit:

https://rdrama.net/h/kino/post/226890/the-best-of-starshit-garak-talks

Is there a !starshit ping group? There should be- there should be a Starshit hole actually as so many people around here love to sneed at it.