In "Loud as a Whisper" the Enterprise must transport a famous negotiator named Riva to a neutral site where he's agreed to try to get a peace treaty in place between a pair of warring factions at odds for centuries. The one oddity about Riva is that he is deaf and uses a trio of mindreaders who give emotion to his thoughts. Riva feels a connection to Troi since she is an empath and understands him on some level.
The away team plus Riva and his crew beam down to the negotiation site. One of the factions has an usurper in its midst not ready for peace who shoots and kills Riva's interpreters with his phaser. The rest beam back up to regroup. Data learns Riva's language so he can interpret. Riva wants to give up but Troi is able to motivate him to try again. Riva decides to beam down to the surface and face the two factions by himself. He will teach them how to sign in his language and then teach them all his wisdom that he has on peace and prosperity. It may take a while but then again, creating a peace pact for a centuries old war is not something that can occur overnight.
This episode is a bit strange in my opinion. It really focuses on this Deaf Jesus fellow they call Riva. He comes in a bit too cocky and is quickly shown his place when his team is cut down. If it were up to Worf there would have been a security team there protecting them. My favorite part of this though is that the man who played Riva actually is a deaf actor. It's super cool that they were able to include him in this episode, a nice little touch by the casting director.
But the actualy storyline to this is fairly middle of the road. We've already had multiple "transporting negotiator" episodes and we're barely into Season 2 here! There's no real B plot here unless you count the half-baked one they drum up about Geordi's eyesite and possibly giving him real eyes. This is ground we've already tread a bit in a previous episode with Q but I guess we're giving it another shot here? It never really gets off the ground though and has no real conclusion to speak of.
This isn't a good episode but after the last one we had to sit through, I'd have really taken almost anything.
The away team plus Riva and his crew beam down to the negotiation site. One of the factions has an usurper in its midst not ready for peace who shoots and kills Riva's interpreters with his phaser. The rest beam back up to regroup. Data learns Riva's language so he can interpret. Riva wants to give up but Troi is able to motivate him to try again. Riva decides to beam down to the surface and face the two factions by himself. He will teach them how to sign in his language and then teach them all his wisdom that he has on peace and prosperity. It may take a while but then again, creating a peace pact for a centuries old war is not something that can occur overnight.
This episode is a bit strange in my opinion. It really focuses on this Deaf Jesus fellow they call Riva. He comes in a bit too cocky and is quickly shown his place when his team is cut down. If it were up to Worf there would have been a security team there protecting them. My favorite part of this though is that the man who played Riva actually is a deaf actor. It's super cool that they were able to include him in this episode, a nice little touch by the casting director.
But the actualy storyline to this is fairly middle of the road. We've already had multiple "transporting negotiator" episodes and we're barely into Season 2 here! There's no real B plot here unless you count the half-baked one they drum up about Geordi's eyesite and possibly giving him real eyes. This is ground we've already tread a bit in a previous episode with Q but I guess we're giving it another shot here? It never really gets off the ground though and has no real conclusion to speak of.
This isn't a good episode but after the last one we had to sit through, I'd have really taken almost anything.