Trivia / Star Trek: The Next Generation S6E13 "Face of the Enemy"

• Ability over Appearance: The role of the Romulan Commander Toreth was originally written as a male, since screenwriter Naren Shankar was inspired by Sean Connery's portrayal of Capt. Marko Ramius in The Hunt for Red October. The role was given to Carolyn Seymour, who previously appeared as another Romulan officer, Sub-Commander Taris in "Contagion" (interestingly, the producers forgot that Taris had survived "Contagion"). Toreth's dialogue stayed the same after Seymour's casting while making the conflict between Troi (masquerading as a Tal Shiar officer) and Toreth a female/female battle of nerves.
• Creator's Favorite Episode:
  • Marina Sirtis named this as her favourite episode.
  • Ronald D. Moore said that this was "probably the best Romulan episode we ever did".
• Deleted Scene: DeSeve in his quarters, trying to use a replicator to get some coffee. However, he has spent so many years living among Romulans that he has forgotten much of his native language and has difficulty remembering how to actually pronounce the word.
• Prop Recycling: The Corvallen freighter is a reuse of the Straleb security vessel model from "The Outrageous Okona".
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to the reference book Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, one of the show's writers suggested having the Romulan Commander from the TOS episode "The Enterprise Incident" reprise her role; however, the actress (Joanne Linville) was unavailable, so they created the character of Toreth instead.
  • An early draft of the script had Dr. Crusher playing the part of Major Rakal, given that she could monitor the state of the dissidents in stasis. This was changed to Troi when they realized that her empathic abilies would be more suitable for a mission of espionage.
• You Look Familiar:
  • Carolyn Seymour previously played another Romulan commander, Sub-Commander Taris in Season 2's "Contagion", the first 24th century female Romulan, incidentally. Interestingly, while developing Toreth, the writers forgot that Taris had survived the earlier episode.
  • Scott MacDonald makes his second appearance in the franchise, after Tosk in DS9's "Captive Pursuit".

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