By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Captain Picard made many crazy decisions throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation which ranged from refusing to wipe out the Borg to letting a precocious teenager fly the Enterprise. Arguably, though, his wildest choice was standing by and doing nothing while Riker vaporized a relatively harmless assassin. Fans have spent years trying to figure out why Picard didn’t say or do anything in the climax of “The Vengeance Factor,” but it turns out the real reason he stood so still while Riker killed a woman is that Patrick Stewart couldn’t move or say anything lest he mess up the optical special effect of Riker’s lethal phaser blast.
In this episode, our intrepid crew discovers that a seemingly youthful woman named Yuta is actually an assassin…one of the last of her kind, she is completely dedicated to wiping out the entirety of the clan that killed her people. She advances towards her target while Riker alternates warning her and shooting her with ever stronger phaser blasters, eventually vaporizing her while the captain silently. Picard’s lack of reaction at the end of “The Vengeance Factor” is very strange, but episode director Timothy Bond later explained that he wanted the captain in the shot where Yuta is killed but that the optical effect required him to not move.
As recorded in Captains’ Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, Bond was determined to have Picard in the most shocking scene of “The Vengeance Factor:” the moment that Riker vaporizes the assassin. He thought the captain’s presence “would be really neat,” but pulling everything off “meant putting several layers of elements into the shot, and in order for it to work properly, Picard had to stay still.” The director belatedly admitted that there was “not a good reason” for Picard to sit by and do nothing and that “when I saw it, I actually regretted the decision.”
Interestingly, Picard actor Patrick Stewart was as confused as the fans at his character’s inaction in this climactic moment of “The Vengeance Factor.” According to Bond, the actor was very incredulous and asked “I’m just supposed to sit here and do nothing?” While the episode director belatedly realized what a bad call this was, he initially felt this was the best course of action because “we knew Riker had to kill the girl and we didn’t want to get Picard shot by the phaser.”
Now, if you’re a fan of Picard who has spent decades asking why he did nothing in “The Vengeance Factor,” this explanation is likely unsatisfying. Like, it made sense from a special effects standpoint, but it’s downright weird watching Picard sit there doing and saying nothing while Riker speaks with and ultimately kills Yuta over the course of four minutes. It turns out that Timothy Bond agrees, noting that “what I should have done is what you usually do–don’t have him in the shot” because “then the audience doesn’t think ‘Why doesn’t Picard react?’”
What makes all of this even crazier is that Riker arguably didn’t have to murder Yuta…like, while we see that she can’t be stunned by the lower setting, the first officer only fires at her twice before maxing his phaser out. Maybe there was a setting between “stun” and “vaporize” that could have knocked her out? Plus, he had a laser gun and she only had a glass, making the case that she was a clear and present threat who could not be captured very fuzzy at best.
The moral murkiness of Riker’s big moment makes Picard’s silence and inaction in “The Vengeance Factor” that much weirder. Now we know, though, that this bizarre moment was caused by the need for the captain to stand perfectly still during an optical effect. Unfortunately, this effect did more than kill Yuta…in the eyes of many fans, it also killed Picard’s character, making him seem indecisive and downright passive in the face of his first officer murdering someone right in front of him.
