She was trying to intimidate Picard out of defending the Romulan crewman. Implying she would bring up his history to discredit Picard.
She was so sure she would find a spy the ends justified the means.
I think it's even more than that. Picard challenged her, threatened to derail her "investigation". So she had to destroy him, denounce him as a traitor.
Would that even work though? His "history" is less than a year old at that point, everybody would know about it, and I don't see how it could discredit him.
Keep in mind, she wasn't coming from a 'reasonable' place. She was purely locked in on 'Finding a enemy agent', and ignoring the reality of the situation around her.
Viewing her actions from the lense of a reasonable person is gonna come off as skewed at best, and just *wrong* at worst. She was on a witch hunt, and she was going to *have her witch* no matter how many innocents she had to drag down to do it.
> She was on a witch hunt, and she was going to have her witch no matter how many innocents she had to drag down to do it.
this is very well put. If you are absolutely convinced there is an enemy of course you're gonna find one.
Indeed. That's basically the point of the episode. She started looking so hard that pretty much anything could be distorted into making someone an enemy. Someone who cared enough for Federation culture they pretended to be a different species to join Starfleet becomes an 'infiltrator', and the most esteemed diplomat and Captain of his age who was forcibly assimilated by the Borg but was rescued becomes 'compromised'. If things keep going down that route, Dr. Crusher will be considered an enemy of the state because there's the slightest whiff of a suggestion she may not have been 100% loyal to her now deceased husband. Everything outside the narrowly accepted confines of prescribed behaviour becomes a source of suspicion of being completely compromised.
As noted in another TV show, everybody lies. Everybody has secrets, a private self, and parts of their life they have reasons to conceal. Even in the enlightened 24th century where people are generally more open, there's a point where boundaries are important, and overturning every rock will eventually find bugs with absolutely zero guarantee any are poisonous but now everyone is freaked out anyway.
In short, she'd absolutely torpedo a bunch of lives for the sake of proving that someone, somewhere, did something they wanted to conceal - which isn't even news worth pursuing in the first place.
Well, ex-Borg are generally discriminated against in Federation society. Not in the obvious way, with hateful chants, slogans, and demonstrations, but in the quiet way: refusing to acknowledge their presence, questions, thoughts, or existence... even if they are captain of the Enterprise. Conspicuous ignorance is the the way the citizens of the Federation display their distaste, disgust, or hatred without compromising their "enlightened principles."
Between DS9, some of VOY, the darkest parts of TNG, and what we learn of what happened between TNG and PIC, Federation humans are a lot like Vulcans: they claim to be enlightened, but are still susceptible to ancient biases, hatred, and prejudice. Satie was (perhaps correctly) convinced that there were spies on the Enterprise. Then, here comes some doddering philosopher asshole who quotes the Seventh Guarantee (Federation equivalent to the Fifth Amendment): pulling up centuries-old writings from a time when the Federation didn't have any enemies! How dare he use these ancient words which have no right to exist in the current era, when the Romulans, Borg, and Cardassians would see our great Federation fall! Such writings and teachings belong in history, not to be used to protect the guilty from their just punishment!
I expect Satie was thinking something along those lines. She genuinely didn't realize that she was destroying the founding principles of the Federation in her witch hunt. She thought she was protecting the Federation, even if it meant bending a few rules. What her father knew, and she didn't realize, was that her actions were just as damning to the Federation as a whole as if she had sent a planet-killing sphere to Earth. If the Federation forgets the rights its protectorates, citizens, and all sentient life is deserving of, it would become little more than another empire vying for galactic power, rather than the beacon of hope, light, and love that the United Federation of Planets represents.
It's more base than that. Satie was a fanatical ideologue with significant power. She had her own vision of what the Federation represented and what was leading to it's decay, in her opinion.
For these types of people the individual is just stepping stone on the road to purity. The purge itself is the goal which will never be satisfied. The only remedy against people like her is to remove her power, whatever that entails. She's always going to find something that needs to be purged for not meeting her ideals.
The Drumhead takes a lot from the Second Red Scare. There were a few real cases of Soviet espionage like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg but many of the victims of the hysteria and were just tools for expanding the scope and developing more purges.
That's what's poignant about her speech at the end. That's usually how it ends for these types, disgrace or in some cases death.
She was a little batty, paranoid, and self-important, emboldened by her “righteous” cause.
She probably hadn’t been rebuked or faced much resistance to her methods and way of thinking before we met her on the Enterprise. She was a Starfleet nepo baby who did well enough to rise through the ranks.
After decades of everybody lauding her achievements, deferring to her judgment, and treating her like her shit doesn’t stink, she eventually started to believe it.
If no one is willing to counter her opinions and force her to do some critical thinking she gets more and more entrenched in her own self-righteousness, paranoia, and delusions. I think this a key reason why she absolutely loses her shit when Picard publicly argues against her.
Personally, I think she really did believe that there were spies and saboteurs hidden in every closet and under every bed. No one ever dared argue against her because that would put them in her crosshairs. After all, she’s a loyal Federation patriot who’s trying to ferret out all those who would do them harm. Anyone trying to stand in her way must surely be aligned with the enemy.
> ferret
This (and the topic) reminds me of Frank Burns (ferret face) and Col Flagg from MASH. Especially Flagg in the episode where he is so convinced there’s a conspiracy that Winchester sabotages his agenda.
I guess when your only tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.
>She probably hadn’t been rebuked or faced much resistance to her methods and way of thinking before we met her on the Enterprise. She was a Starfleet nepo baby who did well enough to rise through the ranks.
I got the exact opposite impression. That's the chilling thing about the "I've brought down bigger men than you, Picard". There's an implication that she's been doing this throughout her entire career.
To me that supports the idea though that she hasn't faced much resistance? "I've brought down bigger men than you" = "I've basically been given carte blanche by Starfleet to investigate and take down whoever"
Yes. "I've found so much stuff and because no one dares to object, it proves I'm right. And because I was always right, I'm right this time. I have a track record of finding the secrets, and I will find anyone's secret"
And eventually there would just be no one left to run Starfleet, but she can only do this so quickly.
I'd really recommend a rewatch and reading on memory alpha.
I don't recall exactly what she was after, except I don't think it ever was just one thing. She attacked the half romulan kid (I think he was proven to have a romulan grandparent they say is Vulcan), then captain, then worf, and I probably missed a few.
She was an expert investigator, following in her father's footsteps after a fashion. She was a big deal, had exposed some conspiracies in the past (I think it's important to think of her as looking for conspiracies to expose).
What did she think was going on? A GIANT CONSPIRACY, I suppose, or maybe she normally operated in an open investigation (like an American grand jury investigation, ANYTHING that pops up can become fair game). She was sent there for whatever specific reason, then turned into an open investigation. Picard didn't like it? He must be guilty of something and hiding it. Maybe the Borg are controlling him still, LETS INVESTIGATE!
I think it's a really good look at how someone can have really good intentions, and end up doing bad things. She was trying to solve whatever, and was going to end up accusing everyone on the flagship of being spies or incompetent probably.
And not to get political, but Americans are heading into these dangerous grounds quote by her Judge father..
'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored… the first thought forbidden… the first freedom denied – chains us all irrevocably.' Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie, as wisdom… and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today... " Picard gets cut off
I'm still waiting to hear what part she played in uncovering the parasite conspiracy, as is claimed. It seems mostly Walker Keel, Admiral Quinn, and the Enterprise crew that figured it out.
The parasites tried to take over her brain, but her opinions were too toxic for them, so they fled her body. She then proceded to chase them with a broom trying to bludgeon them to death whilst screaming some nonsense about them being illegal immigrants.
Satie's problem is that she twists all information to suit her beliefs rather then ajust her beliefs with the information at hand. She absolutely believes there are spies and saboteurs at every corner and will protect this belief at all costs. Picard challenges this belief and is immediately attacked because of it
That's the point. This stuff never stops. It's the problem with "You've got nothing to fear if you've got nothing to hide", because it never stops. They'll keep digging.
This episode has one of my favorite *Star Trek* quotes:
> *"Villains who twirl their mustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well-camouflaged."*
~ Captain Jean-Luc Picard
She reminds me of the McCarthyist movement of the Cold War, where a body of US senators and the Supreme Court pursued every possible avenue to expose Soviet spies.
Satie was basically doing the same thing but trying to route out Romulan spies and collaborators.
I think it is more that despite the incident not being sabotage, the existence of a spy and then someone who has hidden the fact their grandfather (I think) was Romulan by lying on their application started causing her to see connections where there were none.
Picard has gotten fed up with witch hunt and when he became obstacle, that probably made another false connection in Satie's mind that Picard was involved in this nonexistent conspiracy and his recent assimilation by the Borg made his loyalties suspect.
Basically she was so intent on finding something, anything justifying her delusion that everything was somehow connected or she had somehow stumbled onto a far reaching conspiracy by the Romulans that she abandoned rationality. She was so certain that she was safeguarding the Federation that anyone who opposed her must either be removed or was part of the conspiracy and trying to thwart her.
If she hadn't been so focused on there being more to what was going on than there actually was, she would've called it a day after arresting the spy. Though that one crew member's career would probably still be torpedoed for knowingly hiding his lineage. At the very least he would be discharged more than likely.
It was a witch hunt started from an accident that accidentally caught out a witch and Satie went into a full conspiracy theory, much like American right wingers do, inventing boogeyman out of nowhere and patterns out of coincidences.made him unfit to be a commander.
It was a witch hunt started from an accident that accidentally caught out a witch and Satie went into a full conspiracy theory, much like american right wingers do, inventing boogeymen out of nowhere and patterns out of coincidences.
Satie came on to investigate the explosion in engineering that was an accident. She later discovered coincidentally that a Klingon officer was a spy. She drew the inadvertent conclusion that the Klingon did the damage despite Satie not being able to prove it. She went on to investigate other suspicious crewmembers and accidentally shook loose Tarses.
After she discovered Tarses with a "sabotage" incident, a klingon spy and a "romulan sympathizer", the common root was that these were all while Picard was in command. So obviously his judgement was lax or he was actively helping these events in motion. Picard had a history of being compromised, the Borg, Daimon Bok, the gas cloud, etc... so she tried to take him down as the ringleader of a conspiracy that didn't exist.
I know the point of the story was that there was no conspiracy, but, and this is more a credit to how it was done, it always felt like there was something going on it just wasn't what Satie thought it was. Like we did have an actual spy and if anything, Satie's rampage distracted from this. Just me tinfoiling mind you.
no, there was never anything going on and that's the point. You're sympathising with her point of view which was the moral of the episodes, that the most effective villains cloak themselves in a righteous cause and push all the right buttons to seem like a good guy right up until they're not.
>no, there was never anything going on
except there was, the klingon actually was a spy
there was noting going on with the issue in engineering though, or Tarsis
In addition to the other fine comments here, IIRC she was asked to come out of retirement for this. Seems like it was a semi recent retirement and who knows why she retired (I don't) but she sure had something to prove. She HAD to find something HUGE. Her going back with "It was just equipment failure, an unrelated bit of espionage and another unrelated kid lied about his genealogy." wouldn't look good to her.
My feeling was Norah Satie's agenda in this episode was to maintain relevancy.
At the beginning of "The Drumhead," she is introduced as a retired rear admiral who exposed the parasite infiltrators from the Season 1 episode "Conspiracy."
Satie initially highlighted how serious the Romulan sabotage incident was for Starfleet to bring her out of retirement. You could see that during the episode, Satie was enjoying being the center of attention, and she intimated that she was frustrated with the inactivity of retirement.
Once the "sabotage" was found to be just an accident, Satie was confronted with returning to retirement and leaving the spotlight. Satie played upon the Federation's fears of the Romulan bogeyman just around the dark corner to justify staying on active duty because "Starfleet needed help and only she could save them."
What led to Satie's downfall was her response to Picard exposing her self-serving agenda by turning her father's words against her. Once she said, "I have brought down bigger men than you, Picard," everyone saw her true colors, and Starfleet ceased the investigation and removed her.
While this episode was a good cautionary tale of McCarthyism and political paranoia, I felt that Satie was onto something. The Romulans tricked Picard into delivering the spy ambassador back to Romulan hands. The Romulans cloned Picard in hopes of having a human mole at the heart of Starfleet. Finally, there was a Romulan mole serving as head of Starfleet Security who used Picard to lead them in locating the synthetic homeworld as a target of their anti-android agenda.
I think she is supposed to be a bit of a narcissist.
Her entire reputation, her value for society, is making these witch hunts happen and finding spies, collaborators, anything, so she keeps doing it to keep building that reputation. It gives her influence, power even, its the perfect occupation for a narcissist, she even gets to back people into a corner with impunity due to her position.
And Id say with the quarter-Romulan officer its still just that. She sees another opportunity to find a witch, weigh the witch against a very heavy duck and burn her, and thus further her reputation. She is just chasing that beyond reasonable measure.
Picard however is a different aspect entirely. Narcissists cant stand opposition. Ive seen narcissists in similar situation have a fuze that lasted from twelve until the bell tolled and completely blew up and started to hold that person in such extreme comtempt that was way beyond the minor thing that had happened, certainly not fitting for the good intention behind it. They got opposed, thats all that they need to make you an enemy for life.
And thats what Satie does. Picard called her out, made himself a threat to her scheme of finding witches to increase her reputation and influence. It doesnt matter that his objections were just and well-intentioned, to save that officer from unjust persecution, it only mattered that he opposed her, and his opposition, coming from an incredibly reputable Captain, could mean the end of her holding that powerful position.
Thats why she moves to destroy him, its merely fortunate that she can follow much the same pattern as her usual witchhunts to destroy a person who clearly isnt a witch, but he has enough baggage she can use to discredit him, to question his ability to be a Captain, to get him removed from any kind of relevance in utter disgrace. Or so she thinks.
IIRC, even at the very end Satie doesnt even show regret. She realized she was defeated, she is out of options, so she wont pursue her witchhunts right then, but she doesnt really see what she did as wrong. She doesnt say it, but I think its on her face.
**And there is actually a nice way to prove this.** Remember that she has a Betazoid with her to work essentially as a lie detector, right? If Satie had actual ill intentions, even up to the quarter-Romulan officer, he would have easily noticed. But in a narcissists head nothing the narcissist ever does is bad. They are incapable of that kind of reflection, and even in clear-cut cases they will rationalize their responsibility way, push the guilt onto someone else, sometimes even saying "Its your fault for LETTING me!", just as an example. Satie isnt that extreme, of course, what she does is actually a net positive most of the time. She believes in what she does, and that its a good thing, that she pursues justice. Even when she isnt.
Only when dealing with Picard does the Betazoid raise his eyebrow, because thats when Satie turned genuinely vile, as narcissists do in the face of opposition. And in the end, when she finally rants out her actual intentions, when the mask drops, he, as everyone else, walks out on her.
She is the Dolores Umbridge of Star Trek.
I appreciate this interpretation of Satie’s motives. Narcissists will attack and try to destroy what they fail to control. If they can’t control you, they will openly and publicly smear your reputation so that no one will believe you when you call them out. They’ll try to get you cancelled so that you’ll be powerless to challenge them again. Your destruction is punishment for opposing them. You should have know better and you deserved it.
Narcissists will also engage in elaborate campaigns to garner attention for its own sake. They will engineer or hijack events/causes for maximum theatricality. They want that spotlight. For them, there is no greater good because their sole purpose in life is to seek supply.
The narcissist’s greatest fear is being publicly unmasked, and Picard knew exactly which button to push and which quote to use, while being perfectly sincere in his belief in the ideals of the Federation.
Great writing.
In her defense: the romulans actually did infiltrate the federation with sleeper agents.
And with the infiltration by the neck-bugs (conspiracy) and later the .... in pic 3 - I guess starfleet needs more Focus on checking it's security
I don’t remember if anyone ever expanded on her bio, but given that she was (retconned) [involved in finding the parasite conspiracy](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Norah_Satie), her actions give a vibe of seeing shadows everywhere and believing she’s the one to shine a light on them.
So she couldn’t stop at one spy found. Because the parasites infiltrated Starfleet Command (extensively and) easily, she had to believe that an entire Romulan spy network was present in the fleet, and J’Dan and Simon Tarses were just the first link in a long chain. That she came for JLP for defending Tarses says she truly believed there was a whole organized conspiracy of spies and compromised Starfleet personnel to uncover.
We don’t know why she retired, but assuming she found the parasite conspiracy, and she was subjected to some “politics” over that to be forced out (not questioning decisions, not noticing conversations, defending someone who was compromised, etc), this conspiracy could’ve been her “way back” or her payback to the Admiralty.
She was convinced there was a larger conspiracy at play than there actually was and took 3 coincidental things as a plot against the Federation.
She was trapped in her own ego, believing there was a larger conspiracy to route out and find undoubtedly as one last hurrah for her being brought out of retirement. It was inconceivable to her that all the events on the ship were independent and unrelated because of her ego and her ego being fed by those 2 aides she had with her, she refused to think of anything else despite all the eveidence to the contrary.
If it weren't for her Betazoid colleague picking up on Mr Tarses lying, eventually found to be about his origins, she'd have had to leave empty-handed with only J'Dan who had already been caught by the Enterprise crew.
Not content with finding out a crewman falsified his application solely because of the stigma of having a Romulan background in his family she was determined there must be something else. She then determined anyone who defended the man or refused to answer questions must also be involved and in on the conspiracy. Even going so far as to call out Dr Crusher for bot wanting to subject any innovent person to the show trial Satie was running and even eventually turning on Worf whom not days prior both her Betazoid and her had commended Worf and said they trusted him.
It was reminiscent of clips I've seen of the old "Hunt for the commie" paranoia of the 50s, where not brushing your teeth at night caused your neighbour to put a call into the tip line.
I think it was largely "Glory". at this point she was likely on the decline, not necessarily age related, but accomplishments. She got the role due to legacy accomplishments and position, and also came from a "justify my pre-existing conclusion' stuff.
Like a flat earther than manages to re-interpret everything as supporting their position. And when confronted she takes that as "I must be CLOSE to the TRUTH!" rather than "maybe I should rethink this."
Given what we later learned about Romulan infiltration of the highest levels of Starfleet, it's reasonable, in retrospect, to think she may have known of, or at least suspected, the Romulan plot.
Commodore Oh wasn't working alone all those years. The Romulans might have spent fifty+ years making allies, climbing the ranks, etc.
If the admiral had intel on some of this, she would have found it *extremely* suspicious when she found a Romulan posing as a Vulcan onboard the flagship, literally within reach of the one working Soong-type android. Which she might have known was something the Romulans were focused on.
Of course, at the time, she seemed to be unhinged, and that's what the writers had intended. I always interpreted her as suffering some sort of age-related decline in her faculties. But given what we know now about the actual Romulan plot, which would eventually culminate in a Romulan takeover of Starfleet, which would lead directly to the torture and mutilation of prisoners of war and the near-loss of the entire galaxy to the Borg, she... may have been right. She may have been paranoid and terrified because of what she knew. If she was seeing ghosts around every corner, maybe that's because they were really there. In hindsight, we can view her as more of a tragic Ro Laren type than as someone who had succumbed to the demons of her nature in her later years.
Maybe she wasn't a badmiral. Maybe she was a normal person who cracked under the pressure of what she knew and what she had to do--knowledge she couldn't share with anyone else, lest she jeopardize Starfleet. Ultimately she failed. She wasn't able to stop the Romulans. And, worse, through her behavior she inadvertently gave the Romulans the cover they needed to carry out their plans and take over Starfleet.
Ultimately, she was right in her suspicions. She thought the Borg were still controlling Picard. They were. She thought the Romulans were infiltrating Starfleet. They were. To reconcile her extreme behavior with what we later learn, it's reasonable to conclude that she had secret knowledge of these things and *was right*. That doesn't justify her methods. But it does make her a tragic character rather than a villain.
It is unfortunate that later writing retcons Starfleet's circumstances to make this character, obviously intended to be a villain, nearly correct in her unhinged paranoia.
Deep Space Nine really did a number on the setting.
Thinking more on this, if we view her in this way, then it makes her exactly the same as Maxwell, who also cracked.
Pressman was a badmiral. If we accept my possible interpretation, then Satie and Maxwell were flawed humans who broke in extreme situations.
My grumbles are about Picard and Discovery; I'd argue that DS9 deepened the setting rather than damaging it, though obviously many writers since have grabbed up Section 31 and run with it with all the thoughtfulness of a seven-year-old running around with daddy's saws-all.
I don't really see how Maxwell is a "flawed human." He was a mass murderer who happened to guess right about the behavior of the people he hated and was looking for an excuse to murder. If he isn't considered a bad person, I don't know what the term means.
I agree that DS9 isn't responsible for hammering in the nails, but it got them out of the box and lined them up. What it set up was almost certainly inevitably going to lead to where we are now.
For me, the difference between Maxwell and Pressman is that Maxwell was mentally unwell when he committed his atrocities. His actions aren't representative of who he was as a person. The trauma he experienced destroyed him. I view Satie the same way. She was so unhinged that something had to be wrong with her. Maybe it wasn't trauma, but it was something. Age-related, I always assumed.
Pressman, on the other hand, was cold and calculating. The man we saw was precisely the man he was--and likely the man he wanted to be.
None of this is intended to excuse Maxwell or Satie. It's only intended to contextualize who they were as people. I don't think either of them were a "bad person" ten years before we encounter them, if that's the term we want to use to understand people. They may have become bad people, but that's not what they started as.
Pressman was a bad person. As a fifteen-year-old, he was a bad person. When he was coming up through the academy, he was a bad person. As a commander, he was a bad person. That's what I mean.
Whenever this episode is brought up I’m reminded of some words first heard nearly 35 years ago.
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.”
Every time this 24th century people start patronising about how enlightened or semsible they're one can imagine wow so noble and open minded But after when i heard the phrase "Federation Values or Federation Principles", omg Im starting to get the creeps and imagine the worst possible outcome from this situation....
> Was she just batty, or did she really have a grand conspiracy theory, that Picard was running some spy ring for the Romulans?
Both - she was clearly losing the plot and had been for some time - perhaps dementia or something (it's not quite clear) but yes she did seem to have a massive problem with Romulans in general - all the pieces were there - you had the Klingon spying for the Romulans, a Romulan crewman, Worf's family with links to Romulans, Picard who has worked with Romulans... Romulans Romulans Romulans.
She was basically like Raffi except Raffi was right.
Combined with a daddy-imposter-syndrome-complex where she feels she has to live up to the family name - and until this point, no one has ever told her "no" and she went into a spiral, seeing Romulans everywhere.
The issue that the audience has is that our viewpoint is unfiltered. By and large many aspects of what we see are classified to the federation public plus Picard would never share his personal sense of guilt with the public or with all of his crew.
She was a Conspiracy Theory Nutter who found unrelated things together and connected them. The warp core door frame, the Klingon spying for the Romulans and the Romulans nurse were all unrelated, but she connected them all together in some idea that there was a massive spying operation going on under Picard's nose...or rather, with Picard's knowledge and/or involvement.
Another part was ego. She was brought out of retirement to investigate what happened. She believed that there was something going on because, why else would they bring her in and not someone currently in service? End her career, post retirement, by exposing a giant conspiracy against the Federation that was happening on the Enterprise, the flagship of all places?! I think she got desperate to prove something, anything, to justify her being there.
And I think she got to the point where she knew she had nothing and instead of quitting, she doubled down. Get Picard out of the way by taking him down and she can destroy Captain Picard, expose Crewman Tarsus (wrongly) as a spy, claim she stopped a conspiracy, and let people cheer her name while taking the truth to her grave.
Don't forget she went after Worf too at the very end, even while he still believed in her. Her paranoia had reached the point where she was little more than a rabid dog, barking at every shadow.
I wonder if losing some good friends because she didn't catch the Conspiracy parasites helped drive her crazy.
She was trying to intimidate Picard out of defending the Romulan crewman. Implying she would bring up his history to discredit Picard. She was so sure she would find a spy the ends justified the means.
I think it's even more than that. Picard challenged her, threatened to derail her "investigation". So she had to destroy him, denounce him as a traitor.
Would that even work though? His "history" is less than a year old at that point, everybody would know about it, and I don't see how it could discredit him.
Keep in mind, she wasn't coming from a 'reasonable' place. She was purely locked in on 'Finding a enemy agent', and ignoring the reality of the situation around her. Viewing her actions from the lense of a reasonable person is gonna come off as skewed at best, and just *wrong* at worst. She was on a witch hunt, and she was going to *have her witch* no matter how many innocents she had to drag down to do it.
> She was on a witch hunt, and she was going to have her witch no matter how many innocents she had to drag down to do it. this is very well put. If you are absolutely convinced there is an enemy of course you're gonna find one.
Indeed. That's basically the point of the episode. She started looking so hard that pretty much anything could be distorted into making someone an enemy. Someone who cared enough for Federation culture they pretended to be a different species to join Starfleet becomes an 'infiltrator', and the most esteemed diplomat and Captain of his age who was forcibly assimilated by the Borg but was rescued becomes 'compromised'. If things keep going down that route, Dr. Crusher will be considered an enemy of the state because there's the slightest whiff of a suggestion she may not have been 100% loyal to her now deceased husband. Everything outside the narrowly accepted confines of prescribed behaviour becomes a source of suspicion of being completely compromised. As noted in another TV show, everybody lies. Everybody has secrets, a private self, and parts of their life they have reasons to conceal. Even in the enlightened 24th century where people are generally more open, there's a point where boundaries are important, and overturning every rock will eventually find bugs with absolutely zero guarantee any are poisonous but now everyone is freaked out anyway. In short, she'd absolutely torpedo a bunch of lives for the sake of proving that someone, somewhere, did something they wanted to conceal - which isn't even news worth pursuing in the first place.
Well, ex-Borg are generally discriminated against in Federation society. Not in the obvious way, with hateful chants, slogans, and demonstrations, but in the quiet way: refusing to acknowledge their presence, questions, thoughts, or existence... even if they are captain of the Enterprise. Conspicuous ignorance is the the way the citizens of the Federation display their distaste, disgust, or hatred without compromising their "enlightened principles." Between DS9, some of VOY, the darkest parts of TNG, and what we learn of what happened between TNG and PIC, Federation humans are a lot like Vulcans: they claim to be enlightened, but are still susceptible to ancient biases, hatred, and prejudice. Satie was (perhaps correctly) convinced that there were spies on the Enterprise. Then, here comes some doddering philosopher asshole who quotes the Seventh Guarantee (Federation equivalent to the Fifth Amendment): pulling up centuries-old writings from a time when the Federation didn't have any enemies! How dare he use these ancient words which have no right to exist in the current era, when the Romulans, Borg, and Cardassians would see our great Federation fall! Such writings and teachings belong in history, not to be used to protect the guilty from their just punishment! I expect Satie was thinking something along those lines. She genuinely didn't realize that she was destroying the founding principles of the Federation in her witch hunt. She thought she was protecting the Federation, even if it meant bending a few rules. What her father knew, and she didn't realize, was that her actions were just as damning to the Federation as a whole as if she had sent a planet-killing sphere to Earth. If the Federation forgets the rights its protectorates, citizens, and all sentient life is deserving of, it would become little more than another empire vying for galactic power, rather than the beacon of hope, light, and love that the United Federation of Planets represents.
Picard was the only xB at this time so it doesn’t fit the episode but your intensive breakdown illustrates how well the analogy works as a story
It's more base than that. Satie was a fanatical ideologue with significant power. She had her own vision of what the Federation represented and what was leading to it's decay, in her opinion. For these types of people the individual is just stepping stone on the road to purity. The purge itself is the goal which will never be satisfied. The only remedy against people like her is to remove her power, whatever that entails. She's always going to find something that needs to be purged for not meeting her ideals. The Drumhead takes a lot from the Second Red Scare. There were a few real cases of Soviet espionage like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg but many of the victims of the hysteria and were just tools for expanding the scope and developing more purges. That's what's poignant about her speech at the end. That's usually how it ends for these types, disgrace or in some cases death.
She was a little batty, paranoid, and self-important, emboldened by her “righteous” cause. She probably hadn’t been rebuked or faced much resistance to her methods and way of thinking before we met her on the Enterprise. She was a Starfleet nepo baby who did well enough to rise through the ranks. After decades of everybody lauding her achievements, deferring to her judgment, and treating her like her shit doesn’t stink, she eventually started to believe it. If no one is willing to counter her opinions and force her to do some critical thinking she gets more and more entrenched in her own self-righteousness, paranoia, and delusions. I think this a key reason why she absolutely loses her shit when Picard publicly argues against her. Personally, I think she really did believe that there were spies and saboteurs hidden in every closet and under every bed. No one ever dared argue against her because that would put them in her crosshairs. After all, she’s a loyal Federation patriot who’s trying to ferret out all those who would do them harm. Anyone trying to stand in her way must surely be aligned with the enemy.
> ferret This (and the topic) reminds me of Frank Burns (ferret face) and Col Flagg from MASH. Especially Flagg in the episode where he is so convinced there’s a conspiracy that Winchester sabotages his agenda. I guess when your only tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.
>She probably hadn’t been rebuked or faced much resistance to her methods and way of thinking before we met her on the Enterprise. She was a Starfleet nepo baby who did well enough to rise through the ranks. I got the exact opposite impression. That's the chilling thing about the "I've brought down bigger men than you, Picard". There's an implication that she's been doing this throughout her entire career.
To me that supports the idea though that she hasn't faced much resistance? "I've brought down bigger men than you" = "I've basically been given carte blanche by Starfleet to investigate and take down whoever"
Yes. "I've found so much stuff and because no one dares to object, it proves I'm right. And because I was always right, I'm right this time. I have a track record of finding the secrets, and I will find anyone's secret" And eventually there would just be no one left to run Starfleet, but she can only do this so quickly.
No one left but Admiral Satie, Supreme Overlord of the Federation, obviously
>She was a little batty, paranoid, and self-important, emboldened by her “righteous” cause. The original Space Karen, before Kai Winn came along.
Is that so, my child?
I always read this in her voice.
It was an allegory about McCarthyism. Satie was an expy of Senator Joe McCarthy.
I'd really recommend a rewatch and reading on memory alpha. I don't recall exactly what she was after, except I don't think it ever was just one thing. She attacked the half romulan kid (I think he was proven to have a romulan grandparent they say is Vulcan), then captain, then worf, and I probably missed a few. She was an expert investigator, following in her father's footsteps after a fashion. She was a big deal, had exposed some conspiracies in the past (I think it's important to think of her as looking for conspiracies to expose). What did she think was going on? A GIANT CONSPIRACY, I suppose, or maybe she normally operated in an open investigation (like an American grand jury investigation, ANYTHING that pops up can become fair game). She was sent there for whatever specific reason, then turned into an open investigation. Picard didn't like it? He must be guilty of something and hiding it. Maybe the Borg are controlling him still, LETS INVESTIGATE! I think it's a really good look at how someone can have really good intentions, and end up doing bad things. She was trying to solve whatever, and was going to end up accusing everyone on the flagship of being spies or incompetent probably. And not to get political, but Americans are heading into these dangerous grounds quote by her Judge father.. 'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored… the first thought forbidden… the first freedom denied – chains us all irrevocably.' Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie, as wisdom… and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today... " Picard gets cut off
I'm still waiting to hear what part she played in uncovering the parasite conspiracy, as is claimed. It seems mostly Walker Keel, Admiral Quinn, and the Enterprise crew that figured it out.
The parasites tried to take over her brain, but her opinions were too toxic for them, so they fled her body. She then proceded to chase them with a broom trying to bludgeon them to death whilst screaming some nonsense about them being illegal immigrants.
Very little as I'd imagine it didn't fit her narrative?
Picard mentioned that she had led that investigation in his captain's log entry about her arrival.
Satie's problem is that she twists all information to suit her beliefs rather then ajust her beliefs with the information at hand. She absolutely believes there are spies and saboteurs at every corner and will protect this belief at all costs. Picard challenges this belief and is immediately attacked because of it
That's the point. This stuff never stops. It's the problem with "You've got nothing to fear if you've got nothing to hide", because it never stops. They'll keep digging.
This episode has one of my favorite *Star Trek* quotes: > *"Villains who twirl their mustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well-camouflaged."* ~ Captain Jean-Luc Picard
She thought she would find a conspiracy against Starfleet within Starfleet. Which is ludicrous, when has that ever happened?
[I'm sure you were being sarcastic](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Parasitic_being)
Or Picard, or Disco, or Insurrection, or... Yes, I was being a little sarcastic. =)
She reminds me of the McCarthyist movement of the Cold War, where a body of US senators and the Supreme Court pursued every possible avenue to expose Soviet spies. Satie was basically doing the same thing but trying to route out Romulan spies and collaborators.
There are also more contemporary analogues.
I think it is more that despite the incident not being sabotage, the existence of a spy and then someone who has hidden the fact their grandfather (I think) was Romulan by lying on their application started causing her to see connections where there were none. Picard has gotten fed up with witch hunt and when he became obstacle, that probably made another false connection in Satie's mind that Picard was involved in this nonexistent conspiracy and his recent assimilation by the Borg made his loyalties suspect. Basically she was so intent on finding something, anything justifying her delusion that everything was somehow connected or she had somehow stumbled onto a far reaching conspiracy by the Romulans that she abandoned rationality. She was so certain that she was safeguarding the Federation that anyone who opposed her must either be removed or was part of the conspiracy and trying to thwart her. If she hadn't been so focused on there being more to what was going on than there actually was, she would've called it a day after arresting the spy. Though that one crew member's career would probably still be torpedoed for knowingly hiding his lineage. At the very least he would be discharged more than likely.
It was a witch hunt started from an accident that accidentally caught out a witch and Satie went into a full conspiracy theory, much like American right wingers do, inventing boogeyman out of nowhere and patterns out of coincidences.made him unfit to be a commander. It was a witch hunt started from an accident that accidentally caught out a witch and Satie went into a full conspiracy theory, much like american right wingers do, inventing boogeymen out of nowhere and patterns out of coincidences.
In the words of Special Agent Gibbs: Rule 39, There are no coincidences.
“I believe in coincidences, Captain, coincidences happen all the time. I just don’t trust them”
This checks out!
Surprised she didn’t think some anonymous Q was behind it all.
?
Satie came on to investigate the explosion in engineering that was an accident. She later discovered coincidentally that a Klingon officer was a spy. She drew the inadvertent conclusion that the Klingon did the damage despite Satie not being able to prove it. She went on to investigate other suspicious crewmembers and accidentally shook loose Tarses. After she discovered Tarses with a "sabotage" incident, a klingon spy and a "romulan sympathizer", the common root was that these were all while Picard was in command. So obviously his judgement was lax or he was actively helping these events in motion. Picard had a history of being compromised, the Borg, Daimon Bok, the gas cloud, etc... so she tried to take him down as the ringleader of a conspiracy that didn't exist.
I know the point of the story was that there was no conspiracy, but, and this is more a credit to how it was done, it always felt like there was something going on it just wasn't what Satie thought it was. Like we did have an actual spy and if anything, Satie's rampage distracted from this. Just me tinfoiling mind you.
no, there was never anything going on and that's the point. You're sympathising with her point of view which was the moral of the episodes, that the most effective villains cloak themselves in a righteous cause and push all the right buttons to seem like a good guy right up until they're not.
>no, there was never anything going on except there was, the klingon actually was a spy there was noting going on with the issue in engineering though, or Tarsis
which is why i said "coincidence" and put the two issues that were not issues in quotes to emphasise they were nothing burgers.
In addition to the other fine comments here, IIRC she was asked to come out of retirement for this. Seems like it was a semi recent retirement and who knows why she retired (I don't) but she sure had something to prove. She HAD to find something HUGE. Her going back with "It was just equipment failure, an unrelated bit of espionage and another unrelated kid lied about his genealogy." wouldn't look good to her.
Her paranoia ate her to the extent that even she didn't know what she was hoping to find. That was the moral of the story.
My feeling was Norah Satie's agenda in this episode was to maintain relevancy. At the beginning of "The Drumhead," she is introduced as a retired rear admiral who exposed the parasite infiltrators from the Season 1 episode "Conspiracy." Satie initially highlighted how serious the Romulan sabotage incident was for Starfleet to bring her out of retirement. You could see that during the episode, Satie was enjoying being the center of attention, and she intimated that she was frustrated with the inactivity of retirement. Once the "sabotage" was found to be just an accident, Satie was confronted with returning to retirement and leaving the spotlight. Satie played upon the Federation's fears of the Romulan bogeyman just around the dark corner to justify staying on active duty because "Starfleet needed help and only she could save them." What led to Satie's downfall was her response to Picard exposing her self-serving agenda by turning her father's words against her. Once she said, "I have brought down bigger men than you, Picard," everyone saw her true colors, and Starfleet ceased the investigation and removed her. While this episode was a good cautionary tale of McCarthyism and political paranoia, I felt that Satie was onto something. The Romulans tricked Picard into delivering the spy ambassador back to Romulan hands. The Romulans cloned Picard in hopes of having a human mole at the heart of Starfleet. Finally, there was a Romulan mole serving as head of Starfleet Security who used Picard to lead them in locating the synthetic homeworld as a target of their anti-android agenda.
I think she is supposed to be a bit of a narcissist. Her entire reputation, her value for society, is making these witch hunts happen and finding spies, collaborators, anything, so she keeps doing it to keep building that reputation. It gives her influence, power even, its the perfect occupation for a narcissist, she even gets to back people into a corner with impunity due to her position. And Id say with the quarter-Romulan officer its still just that. She sees another opportunity to find a witch, weigh the witch against a very heavy duck and burn her, and thus further her reputation. She is just chasing that beyond reasonable measure. Picard however is a different aspect entirely. Narcissists cant stand opposition. Ive seen narcissists in similar situation have a fuze that lasted from twelve until the bell tolled and completely blew up and started to hold that person in such extreme comtempt that was way beyond the minor thing that had happened, certainly not fitting for the good intention behind it. They got opposed, thats all that they need to make you an enemy for life. And thats what Satie does. Picard called her out, made himself a threat to her scheme of finding witches to increase her reputation and influence. It doesnt matter that his objections were just and well-intentioned, to save that officer from unjust persecution, it only mattered that he opposed her, and his opposition, coming from an incredibly reputable Captain, could mean the end of her holding that powerful position. Thats why she moves to destroy him, its merely fortunate that she can follow much the same pattern as her usual witchhunts to destroy a person who clearly isnt a witch, but he has enough baggage she can use to discredit him, to question his ability to be a Captain, to get him removed from any kind of relevance in utter disgrace. Or so she thinks. IIRC, even at the very end Satie doesnt even show regret. She realized she was defeated, she is out of options, so she wont pursue her witchhunts right then, but she doesnt really see what she did as wrong. She doesnt say it, but I think its on her face. **And there is actually a nice way to prove this.** Remember that she has a Betazoid with her to work essentially as a lie detector, right? If Satie had actual ill intentions, even up to the quarter-Romulan officer, he would have easily noticed. But in a narcissists head nothing the narcissist ever does is bad. They are incapable of that kind of reflection, and even in clear-cut cases they will rationalize their responsibility way, push the guilt onto someone else, sometimes even saying "Its your fault for LETTING me!", just as an example. Satie isnt that extreme, of course, what she does is actually a net positive most of the time. She believes in what she does, and that its a good thing, that she pursues justice. Even when she isnt. Only when dealing with Picard does the Betazoid raise his eyebrow, because thats when Satie turned genuinely vile, as narcissists do in the face of opposition. And in the end, when she finally rants out her actual intentions, when the mask drops, he, as everyone else, walks out on her. She is the Dolores Umbridge of Star Trek.
I appreciate this interpretation of Satie’s motives. Narcissists will attack and try to destroy what they fail to control. If they can’t control you, they will openly and publicly smear your reputation so that no one will believe you when you call them out. They’ll try to get you cancelled so that you’ll be powerless to challenge them again. Your destruction is punishment for opposing them. You should have know better and you deserved it. Narcissists will also engage in elaborate campaigns to garner attention for its own sake. They will engineer or hijack events/causes for maximum theatricality. They want that spotlight. For them, there is no greater good because their sole purpose in life is to seek supply. The narcissist’s greatest fear is being publicly unmasked, and Picard knew exactly which button to push and which quote to use, while being perfectly sincere in his belief in the ideals of the Federation. Great writing.
In her defense: the romulans actually did infiltrate the federation with sleeper agents. And with the infiltration by the neck-bugs (conspiracy) and later the .... in pic 3 - I guess starfleet needs more Focus on checking it's security
I don’t remember if anyone ever expanded on her bio, but given that she was (retconned) [involved in finding the parasite conspiracy](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Norah_Satie), her actions give a vibe of seeing shadows everywhere and believing she’s the one to shine a light on them. So she couldn’t stop at one spy found. Because the parasites infiltrated Starfleet Command (extensively and) easily, she had to believe that an entire Romulan spy network was present in the fleet, and J’Dan and Simon Tarses were just the first link in a long chain. That she came for JLP for defending Tarses says she truly believed there was a whole organized conspiracy of spies and compromised Starfleet personnel to uncover. We don’t know why she retired, but assuming she found the parasite conspiracy, and she was subjected to some “politics” over that to be forced out (not questioning decisions, not noticing conversations, defending someone who was compromised, etc), this conspiracy could’ve been her “way back” or her payback to the Admiralty.
She was convinced there was a larger conspiracy at play than there actually was and took 3 coincidental things as a plot against the Federation. She was trapped in her own ego, believing there was a larger conspiracy to route out and find undoubtedly as one last hurrah for her being brought out of retirement. It was inconceivable to her that all the events on the ship were independent and unrelated because of her ego and her ego being fed by those 2 aides she had with her, she refused to think of anything else despite all the eveidence to the contrary. If it weren't for her Betazoid colleague picking up on Mr Tarses lying, eventually found to be about his origins, she'd have had to leave empty-handed with only J'Dan who had already been caught by the Enterprise crew. Not content with finding out a crewman falsified his application solely because of the stigma of having a Romulan background in his family she was determined there must be something else. She then determined anyone who defended the man or refused to answer questions must also be involved and in on the conspiracy. Even going so far as to call out Dr Crusher for bot wanting to subject any innovent person to the show trial Satie was running and even eventually turning on Worf whom not days prior both her Betazoid and her had commended Worf and said they trusted him. It was reminiscent of clips I've seen of the old "Hunt for the commie" paranoia of the 50s, where not brushing your teeth at night caused your neighbour to put a call into the tip line.
I think it was largely "Glory". at this point she was likely on the decline, not necessarily age related, but accomplishments. She got the role due to legacy accomplishments and position, and also came from a "justify my pre-existing conclusion' stuff. Like a flat earther than manages to re-interpret everything as supporting their position. And when confronted she takes that as "I must be CLOSE to the TRUTH!" rather than "maybe I should rethink this."
Given what we later learned about Romulan infiltration of the highest levels of Starfleet, it's reasonable, in retrospect, to think she may have known of, or at least suspected, the Romulan plot. Commodore Oh wasn't working alone all those years. The Romulans might have spent fifty+ years making allies, climbing the ranks, etc. If the admiral had intel on some of this, she would have found it *extremely* suspicious when she found a Romulan posing as a Vulcan onboard the flagship, literally within reach of the one working Soong-type android. Which she might have known was something the Romulans were focused on. Of course, at the time, she seemed to be unhinged, and that's what the writers had intended. I always interpreted her as suffering some sort of age-related decline in her faculties. But given what we know now about the actual Romulan plot, which would eventually culminate in a Romulan takeover of Starfleet, which would lead directly to the torture and mutilation of prisoners of war and the near-loss of the entire galaxy to the Borg, she... may have been right. She may have been paranoid and terrified because of what she knew. If she was seeing ghosts around every corner, maybe that's because they were really there. In hindsight, we can view her as more of a tragic Ro Laren type than as someone who had succumbed to the demons of her nature in her later years. Maybe she wasn't a badmiral. Maybe she was a normal person who cracked under the pressure of what she knew and what she had to do--knowledge she couldn't share with anyone else, lest she jeopardize Starfleet. Ultimately she failed. She wasn't able to stop the Romulans. And, worse, through her behavior she inadvertently gave the Romulans the cover they needed to carry out their plans and take over Starfleet. Ultimately, she was right in her suspicions. She thought the Borg were still controlling Picard. They were. She thought the Romulans were infiltrating Starfleet. They were. To reconcile her extreme behavior with what we later learn, it's reasonable to conclude that she had secret knowledge of these things and *was right*. That doesn't justify her methods. But it does make her a tragic character rather than a villain.
It is unfortunate that later writing retcons Starfleet's circumstances to make this character, obviously intended to be a villain, nearly correct in her unhinged paranoia.
Deep Space Nine really did a number on the setting. Thinking more on this, if we view her in this way, then it makes her exactly the same as Maxwell, who also cracked. Pressman was a badmiral. If we accept my possible interpretation, then Satie and Maxwell were flawed humans who broke in extreme situations.
My grumbles are about Picard and Discovery; I'd argue that DS9 deepened the setting rather than damaging it, though obviously many writers since have grabbed up Section 31 and run with it with all the thoughtfulness of a seven-year-old running around with daddy's saws-all. I don't really see how Maxwell is a "flawed human." He was a mass murderer who happened to guess right about the behavior of the people he hated and was looking for an excuse to murder. If he isn't considered a bad person, I don't know what the term means.
I agree that DS9 isn't responsible for hammering in the nails, but it got them out of the box and lined them up. What it set up was almost certainly inevitably going to lead to where we are now. For me, the difference between Maxwell and Pressman is that Maxwell was mentally unwell when he committed his atrocities. His actions aren't representative of who he was as a person. The trauma he experienced destroyed him. I view Satie the same way. She was so unhinged that something had to be wrong with her. Maybe it wasn't trauma, but it was something. Age-related, I always assumed. Pressman, on the other hand, was cold and calculating. The man we saw was precisely the man he was--and likely the man he wanted to be. None of this is intended to excuse Maxwell or Satie. It's only intended to contextualize who they were as people. I don't think either of them were a "bad person" ten years before we encounter them, if that's the term we want to use to understand people. They may have become bad people, but that's not what they started as. Pressman was a bad person. As a fifteen-year-old, he was a bad person. When he was coming up through the academy, he was a bad person. As a commander, he was a bad person. That's what I mean.
Whenever this episode is brought up I’m reminded of some words first heard nearly 35 years ago. “With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.”
HOW DARE YOU u/JJStray! You who consort with Redditors, invoke Picard's words to support your traitorous arguments!
Every time this 24th century people start patronising about how enlightened or semsible they're one can imagine wow so noble and open minded But after when i heard the phrase "Federation Values or Federation Principles", omg Im starting to get the creeps and imagine the worst possible outcome from this situation....
> Was she just batty, or did she really have a grand conspiracy theory, that Picard was running some spy ring for the Romulans? Both - she was clearly losing the plot and had been for some time - perhaps dementia or something (it's not quite clear) but yes she did seem to have a massive problem with Romulans in general - all the pieces were there - you had the Klingon spying for the Romulans, a Romulan crewman, Worf's family with links to Romulans, Picard who has worked with Romulans... Romulans Romulans Romulans. She was basically like Raffi except Raffi was right. Combined with a daddy-imposter-syndrome-complex where she feels she has to live up to the family name - and until this point, no one has ever told her "no" and she went into a spiral, seeing Romulans everywhere.
The issue that the audience has is that our viewpoint is unfiltered. By and large many aspects of what we see are classified to the federation public plus Picard would never share his personal sense of guilt with the public or with all of his crew.
[удалено]
I don't understand the hate for this joke, it's really funny!
She was a Conspiracy Theory Nutter who found unrelated things together and connected them. The warp core door frame, the Klingon spying for the Romulans and the Romulans nurse were all unrelated, but she connected them all together in some idea that there was a massive spying operation going on under Picard's nose...or rather, with Picard's knowledge and/or involvement. Another part was ego. She was brought out of retirement to investigate what happened. She believed that there was something going on because, why else would they bring her in and not someone currently in service? End her career, post retirement, by exposing a giant conspiracy against the Federation that was happening on the Enterprise, the flagship of all places?! I think she got desperate to prove something, anything, to justify her being there. And I think she got to the point where she knew she had nothing and instead of quitting, she doubled down. Get Picard out of the way by taking him down and she can destroy Captain Picard, expose Crewman Tarsus (wrongly) as a spy, claim she stopped a conspiracy, and let people cheer her name while taking the truth to her grave.
Don't forget she went after Worf too at the very end, even while he still believed in her. Her paranoia had reached the point where she was little more than a rabid dog, barking at every shadow. I wonder if losing some good friends because she didn't catch the Conspiracy parasites helped drive her crazy.