Why'd they have to kill off Sito like that?
Couldn't they have made her a secret member of the Maquis and she could have ended up on Chuckle's ship..then we could have seen her on VOYAGER instead of that annoying Vulcan Vorik..
Which reminds me..am I the only one who thinks that Geordi may have had an inside track to the fate of VOYAGER when he assigned Vorik to VOYAGER..hmmm?
Maybe Q visited Geordi when we weren't looking, or he had one of those orb experiences or something..or maybe he just wanted to get Vorik out of his skin!

IIRC, Vorik is not the same Vulcan from Lower decks. That was Taurik.

However, to quote Dennis Miller, "I could be wrong".

Why didn't they keep the same name since Vorik is played by the same actor? That would hane been a lovely chance to use continuity.

I finally caught a re-run of this episode. It was interesting to watch it in light of the later developments on DS9. I also liked Picard's speech on lying and cover-ups. Since he is a history buff, I wonder what he thinks about President Clinton in this regard?

An interesting note: the game Star Trek:Starship Creator lists Taurik and Vorik as twins.

Ben

You would think there would be at least a memorial service for Sito, not just Picard's announcement. As Troi has pointed out before, the grieving process is important and a service would bring that sense of completion.

Many instances, if I'm correct, where the same actors plays a similar character (i.e. here with Vaurik and Taurik), the character changes because otherwise they have to pay royalties to the writer every time this comes up. While the actor may be readily available, the character's name must change in order to save money. Am I correct here?

Also, another instance would have been Gul Macet played by Marc Alaimo to reprise his role in DS9.

Also, I think Carolyn Seymour also played two Romulan commanders with different names but almost exact same personality.

But, how much would they possibly have to pay royalties for just one episode?

I must say that humans and Vulcans clearly keep time differently. Geordi asks for a 4-second phaser blast on the shuttle, so what does Vaurik do? A one second blast. Then again, the Vulcan number 4 might look alot like number 1.

I first saw this episode before ever becoming a DS-9 fan and was very moved by it. Caught it again the other night. Still very moving, but: Why does the Cardassian have to be sneaked back over the border in this manner? Can't the Enterprise dock at DS-9 for repairs? Mr. Gul could surely find some plausible excuse to turn up in Quark's and then zip on home without endangering Sito.

Will S: on Vulcan do the Star Trek fans point out the regularity of the number "17" in each episode? ;)

"Me? Fire a phaser? What, do I look like a barbarian?! Get one of those little ensigns we're spotlighting."

I'm just wondering why exactly Taurik is the one who has to fire on the shuttlecraft. This is supposed to be a super-secret mission, that as few of the crew are supposed to know about as possible. So, why can't Picard fire the phaser, or Riker, or Worf? Just shoot where LaForge points, simple enough. Why have an ensign do this when a senior officer who already knows everything would suffice? Especially a *Vulcan* ensign, who's a bit sharper intellectually.

Will, that Vulcan is Taurik. Vorik is on Voyager.

Why send Sito on the mission? Given Starfleet's advanced surgical techniques - turning Cardassians into Bajorans and back again (or making them like look them, anyway) - surely it wouldn't have been too hard to make a more experienced Starfleet officer look like a Bajoran to go on such a critical mission?

Chris Thomes: ***Given Starfleet's advanced surgical techniques - turning Cardassians into Bajorans and back again ***

Teral: Actually it's the Cardassians who'd done that or more acurately the Obsidian Order.

But Starfleet have done other surgical alterations: "Who Watches the Watchers" and "Apocalypse Rising" readily comes to mind. My guess as to why they use Sito is to have an absolutely watertight story to the Cardassians patrols. A single scan with a tricorder would have revealed the true race of the captive, as McCoy did with Darvin in "The Trouble with Tribbles"

Also, I think Carolyn Seymour also played two Romulan commanders with different names but almost exact same personality.

Slightly different personality I think, in that Toreth (the second Romulan) had issues with the Tal Shiar, who killed her father or something (I can't remember the exact details). But, you know, we knew little about Taris (the first Romulan) other than that she was a little stuffy.

I read somewhere that Sito was originally going to come back from the "dead" (i.e. escape) in a DS9 episode, which would later become "Hard Time".

Ben mistakenly identifies Riker as a Canadian, but would the term Canadian still he used in the 24th century? Supposedly Earth is a United World and Riker says he is from Alaska, not the United States. By the 24th century, wouldn't 'Canadians' use the names of the provinces they come from, such as a British Columbian, a Quebecer, an Albertan? (Sounds like the start of a bad joke.)

Wouldn't a ship's phasers be more powerful than a phaser rifle? For that matter, wouldn't a ship's phasers cause more damage to a shuttle than a phaser rifle?

Where was Ro Laren? There are only two Bajorans on the Enterprise, but when they need one to go on a dangerous mission, Ro is mysteriously absent.

That shuttle was pretty small, where would they hide an escape pod?

Ro isn't mysteriously absent. She wasn't on the Enterprise at this point. I forget exactly where she was, but "Preemptive Strike" mentions it.

Well, we've talked about the the nation state thing before, Keith. Some feel as you do. I, personally, think the nation state divisions would remain for reasons of habit, civil maintenance, comfort and/or culture.

The 2002 United States is a united body, but the citizens of inidividual states still appreciate the distinctions of their own states, whether it's a sports team, a reputation for growing a certain vegetable, a beloved landmark, etc. On a global level, people in nation states might come to feel the same way. You could walk from Canada into America and into Mexico without any hassle, but the people living in Mexico still want to maintain their culture, so they might continue to recognize where that border is, even if that border is by 2150 a figurehead border.

Yes, Duke but it would have been nice if they had had a throwaway line saying that Ro was off studying in THIS episode, rather than using a later episode to explain away the nit.

Ben mistakenly identifies Riker as a Canadian, but would the term Canadian still he used in the 24th century?

Dunno about generally (although I think I lean toward Luigi's POV) but 'Canadian' specifically? Given the amount of time this nation currently spends obsessing over just that point (national image)...whoa yeah!
By the NextGen era I can see Pierre Berton IV writing long, dense books about how Canada played an important role in early space travel - and then going on TV to complain that nobody ever reads them...

I suppose the term "Canadian" is as legitimate in the 24th Century as the terms "Sicillian" or "from the Isle of Man" is in this day and age, i.e. the political boundaries may be different, but ultimately identity remains.

TEAR JERKER MOMENT: The death of Sito. She tried so hard, worked so hard to get where she's at...and she dies in the line of duty.

I also liked Troi's test. The difficult decision...to send someone to their death. It was a neat storyline.

I'm sorry...Troi's command test is in the next episode..."Thine Own Self"

NANJAO: I really enjoyed the focus of this story--away from "the main cast" and on the cadets.

Why does Worf seem so upset at the end of the episode? Sito died in the line of duty. In Klingon culture, she died with honor.

As Ben would say, "Nah, he always looks that way."

Although obviously she's just a written character, I was very impressed with Sito's willingness to be included in this mission. It's a shame she died.

She had been manipulated by Picard!
After what he'd told her, she was forced to prove herself. Reminding her of her past like that, wasn't the most elegant thing to do, IMO.

Interestingly, a bunch of Cardassians showed up at Lavelle’s quarters that night to tell him they were going to be his bunkmates for the next 60 years
Great Line #1: “Considering the history of your planet, that doesn’t exactly validate what he’s doing.” -Taurik to Sito, after Taurik criticized Lavelle’s chanting to himself, to which Sito points out that the Bajorans perform similar chants for their benefit.

Actually, Worf has displayed a wide range of emotional states: Anger, resentment, rage, lividity, grouchiness, surliness, rudeness…
Great Line #2: “Nah, he always looks like that.” Ben to Lavelle, after Lavelle suspects Worf is chewing out Ensign Sito.

Gotta look good on those potential suicide missions!
I noticed in The Next Phase how the ridges on the bridge of Ensign Ro’s nose and forehead were de-emphasized from their previous appearances. In this episode, the same thing has occurred with Sito. The ridges on the bridge of her nose are much narrower than they were in The First Duty, and the V-shaped ridge that intersects them between her eyebrows has completely disappeared.
And if looking at Worf wasn’t unpleasant enough, now we have to focus in on his lips??
During the scene in Ten Forward when Worf tells Sito he recommended her for the Ops position, Lavelle is trying to figure out what they’re saying, and Taurik asks him if he ever considered learning how to lip read. Well, if he did, he’d first have to learn Bajoran and Klingon, since those are the language Sito and Worf are presumably speaking, which the universal translator turns into English only in audio.
Nitpicker: “That line in the script is wrong.”
Writer1: “Um, I can’t explain it.”
Nitpicker: “Didn’t you write it?”
Writer1: “Well, um, I kinda told that other writer to do it for me…”
Nitpicker: “So it was you who wrote it?”
Writer2: “No, uh, I didn’t writer it. That other writer wrote it. You know, the guy who passed away last month?”
Writer1: “Yeah, yeah, it was him! He, uh, screwed up or something…”
When Picard calls Sito into his ready room and talks to her about the stunt she participated in in The First Duty, he refers to how she and her fellow cadets tried to cover up the truth about the incident, and pass it off as an accident. Well, it was an accident. Their lie was in not revealing that they were attempting a banned maneuver when it occurred, and in trying to place the blame for the incident on Josh Albert’s inexperience.
He’s respecting the culture of the humans in Ten Forward. When he goes to his quarters he’ll dance an Irish jig.
Worf, like everyone else at the end of the episode, is despondent over Sito’s death. Obviously, the writer forgot that Klingons do not regard death in this manner; that for them, the death of a comrade in the line of duty is a time for rejoicing, as Worf told Data in the shuttlecraft in The Next Phase.

Luigi - Well, if he did, he’d first have to learn Bajoran and Klingon, since those are the language Sito and Worf are presumably speaking, which the universal translator turns into English only in audio.
I don't know Luigi, I think if you watched that scene with the sound off and tried to read their lips you'd find they were speaking English. ;-)

Luigi I'd think that Worf was speaking English, or perhaps russian, since he was raised on Earth by human parents.

But he was raised first by his Klingon parents. Either is possible, I'll grant you.

Wouldn't the Cardassians wonder how the spy and Sito were able to get a shuttle craft from the flagship, especially since it is hanging around the border? I also doubt the Cards aren't as technologically inclined to discover that the "battle damage" was caused by a phaser rifle.

More than three years ago John A. Lang wrote "I really enjoyed the focus of this story--away from "the main cast" and on the cadets." I agree; however, these are not cadets, they have graduated the academy and are ensigns.

About that phaser damage: ship's phasers would almost certainly be more powerful than a phaser rifle, but would be fired from a much greater distance. Perhaps the end result using a phaser rifle at close range would be similar enough to fool the Cardassians. Then again, maybe there was some Cardassian whiz kid who detected a subtle anomaly in the quantum flux signature of the phaser burns...

Alexander Enberg (Taurik) is the son of Trek writer/producer Jeri Taylor and "Oh my!" announcer Dick Enberg.

I would have loved to hear what Sito was thinking during the blindfold challenge:

"he said this was the "To the Death" Challenge, MAN these Klingons take everything so seriously....is he really going to kill me if I cant prove that I am ready for the next level of his class? can he really do that? oooof! well it certainly feels like he is trying to kill me. but he cant, this is Starfleet! he cant just kill me! someone would sa-- wait....the captain doesnt exactly love me... in fact he called me into his office just to tell me how much he hates me...oh prophets he is going to have Worf kill me and it would look like a training accident!!!"

no wonder she was so nervous doing that little sparing match, small wonder she didnt have a heart attack.

Man, was Sito a cutie! She was presumed killed in this episode, but in the Simon & Schuster CD-ROM "Starship Creator", it had a profile of Sito that said she had actually survived in a Cardassian prison camp and eventually come back to the Federation.

BTW, I merely disliked Taurik, but I thoroughly loathed his twin Vorik on VGR. According to "Delta Quadrant: The Ultimate Guide To Voyager" (extremely non-canon), he was given the nickname "Vomit" by the many viewers who absolutely despised him.

Also, I read that they were originally going to kill off Vorik, but they killed off Joseph Carey instead. This was in VGR's last season, and for some reason, the creators wanted to get rid of one of the minor recurring characters before the show ended. Poor Carey got the axe instead of Vorik, and that's a real bummer, IMO!

BTW, I did not mind Ben the civilian bartender. We were already familiar with Ogawa, I wonder why they even used her in this episode as she had been on the show since the fourth season. And Lavelle was annoying, but I did not despise him like I have other Trek characters. He and Sito should have hooked up at some point.

Also, why was Picard so darn hard on Sito? So she conspired with her fellow Nova Squadron cadats in Starfleet to cover up the death of a classmate that died during an attempt of a banned flight manuver! Wesley was part of it, and he was not expelled! Many of Picard's officers, which shall remain nameless, had done far worse things in the last seven years, and in most cases, all they got was a slap on the wrist! A good example would be the "Oops, I Changed My Mind!" syndrome that Phil mentioned in regards to Worf "requesting permission to return to duty" after the events of
"Redemption". And there are many other examples besides.

So in my way of thinking, Picard was a bit too harsh on Sito, just because she was a "little person", essentially an expendable "red-shirt"! That's really too bad, I think!

Picard wasn't being harsh on her for the sake of being harsh. He was doing it to see if she was strong enough to stand up for herself. Of course it's one of those hopelessly contrived situation that depends on the whim of the particular writer. Depending on the writer in some situations you are being treated harshly by a commander it's better to •••• it up & persevere in order to prove yourself. Of course for the purposes of this story she needs to object and engage in what some will see a whining.

Perhaps it was a good thing that Sito wasn't taken alive by the Cardassians. She might have ended up being interrogated by someone like Gul Madred (the chap who tortured Picard in Chain Of Command).