A lot of underhanded intrigue is at play in this episode, and not all is as it appears. When a militant splinter group from Bajor claims to have destroyed a Federation colony on Solarion IV, Federation Admiral Kelly (Cliff Potts) frees Bajoran Ro Laren (Michelle Forbes) from prison and assigns her to The Enterprise to the consternation of Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the rest of the officer crew. Ro's history of being uncooperative if not downright subversive, makes her less than welcome aboard the Enterprise as an ensign, though the Captain is determined to make the association work. It takes the empath Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) to mellow out Ensign Ro long enough to trust Picard to hear her out about the Bajorans and the unauthorized scheme of Admiral Kennelly to break an uneasy alliance between the Federation and the Cardassians. When Kennelly orders Picard to back off from escorting a Bajoran ship, the Cardassians quickly swoop in to destroy it. It turns out that the Cardassians were also the ones to attack the Federation colony on Solarion IV, and the wary Captain had already arranged for the destroyed Bajoran vessel to be an unmanned decoy. For her dramatic about-face, Ro Laren is advised by the Captain that it might be a good idea to stick around as a Starfleet officer, while the duplicitous Admiral who tried to call the shots faced an expected court martial for his unauthorized behavior. Kennelly wasn't around long enough even to learn his first name.
Review of Ensign Ro
