S4E1/2, “The Way of the Warrior” (story: Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe)

Many things have changed for season 4:

• Worf! He shows up, ostensibly for a consulting gig, but like, his name is in the credits so we all know he’s not going anywhere.
  • I have always liked Worf’s character and have been eagerly awaiting his arrival on DS9. It’s probably good that he hasn’t been there from the beginning since I’d have just glommed onto him and perhaps not appreciated all the new people as much.
  • However, as DS9 has progressed I’ve been wondering exactly what his role would be. I’ve talked about how the show has been portraying postmodern Klingonism. Other than one visit to their homeworld (and glances at the disgusting yet thriving boutique restaurant on the station) we haven’t really seen much of the Klingons in the series except as depressed and drunk, or old and depressed and drunk. Worf is definitely aware of it. He feels like he’s gone as far as he can go in his Starfleet career and he ought to get back home while it’s worth getting back to.
• Speaking of credits, they’ve been jazzed up, albeit in a typically understated DS9 way. The music is a smidge more uptempo, some ships are jetting around to make it seem like DS9 isn’t an abandoned husk floating dead in space, Rene Auberjonois’ name has finally been properly centered, and “Siddig El Fadil” is now “Alexander Siddig.”
• Sisko has retained his classy goatee but shaved the dome. Looking good, sir.
• Odo expresses a new face-replication skill in the form of some new forehead ridges. They are uncanny and distracting and appear deep enough to collect lint.

“The Way of the Warrior” is a double episode about the next inevitable, but sorry, step in postmodern Klingonism, which is a desperate attempt to do some conquering. It was not a good idea, and I didn’t really like the premise, frankly. It was never going to work, and it doesn’t. It was also just going to make them hated, and it does. I don’t think it makes a lot of sense. Though I guess when the only tool you have is a bat’leth, every problem seems like a bat’leth tournament.

I does provide us the rich Gowron line and facial expression, which killed me: “You have sided against us in battle! And this…we do not forgive. Or forget!”

We laughed at this when watching, and later I wondered if it was really that silly. I was very pleased to discover it was. Though I had mis-remembered it slightly, thinking he did a big inhale between “…we do not forgive” and “Or forget” just because of the abrupt facial expression change. He doesn’t, but I can’t help imagining it with a wet SNOOORRK in there. ALSO I like how when watching this cold—as opposed to within the flow of the show—one can really appreciate how jarring and trollish his voice is. AND ALSO I like his angry face-twitch sign-off.

Odo’s biology corner: Odo has been practicing forming a simulated coffee mug as an extension of his hand so that he can appear to hold and drink from it to put the solids at ease.

Morn watch: Several appearances!

1. Morn gets harassed by Klingon security: “What do you do on this station?” He hesitates to answer but Odo steps in to find out what’s going on. Dammit, Odo. Go “drink” your “coffee.” We were almost through the looking glass. (Although given that Morn is overwhelmingly likely to perform some unglamorous drudgery aboard the station, maybe it’s better if we never know.)
2. Garak outfits him with some new clothes.
3. After the Klingons give up the assault on DS9 and Quark’s re-opens, a delighted Morn is the first one back in.

Overall: There are a lot of nice moments for all the regulars in here, and Worf is a welcome addition. But I’d have like a story that made more sense. The internet apparently loves this episode, but I’m not sure. I don’t think the Klingons had any good reason to lose their minds. 3 out of 5.

S4E3, “The Visitor” (story: Michael Taylor)

SO YOU ARE WATCHING A STAR TREK EPISODE ABOUT SOMEONE LIVING OUT A FULL ALTERNATE LIFE

It was very touching, wasn’t it? Made you think about your life choices. Maybe reminded you of one of those deeply emotional dreams that leaves you disoriented and confused, not quite sure what’s real. It can be fanciful to think about where you will be in five, ten, fifty years. Will you be a different person? What if you live somewhere different? It will certainly affect who you are.

In particular, I think the symbol of the flute plays and important anchoring role—

What’s that? No flute in the episode you watched? Wait, you didn’t just watch “The Inner Light”?

Oh. You watched the other one. You watched “The Visitor.” Sorry about that. I mean, yeah, sorry I ran with that assumption, but more sorry you were watching “The Visitor” when you could’ve been watching “The Inner Light.” Or really just about any other Trek episode.

I’m being a bit harsh, it wasn’t really bad. Actually the story was pretty engaging really. It does a lot for Jake & Sisko. In fact, it pulls off a couple of tricks with them. One, neither of their principal portrayers are in most of the scenes, and two, the stuff that happens never actually does happen in our timeline. Plus it’s always fun to peer into a possible future. We get to see distinguished Captain Nog, and old Jax and Bashir. I always like at the end of movies when they give you a debriefing. This felt a lot like that. “Nog enjoyed a successful Starfleet career. Quark and Rom went on to own a moon. Odo defied the Changelings and disappeared. He was last seen roaming Siberia. Kira assassinated a Cardassian diplomat. The results of that trial, after this.”

But in the end I thought it reached for lofty territory with a very shaky ladder. I’d describe the acting by the guest roles as “punishingly wooden.” The framing story of old Jake telling his life story to a random stalker felt awkward and contrived. So, I don’t know. I liked it when I was watching but not so much in retrospect. Being so strongly like “The Inner Light” also makes it hard to judge on its own merits.

Morn watch: In the alternate future, Morn has taken over the bar when Quark and Rom buy their moon. Naturally he renames it “Morn’s.”

Overall: 3 out of 5 but maybe ought to be 4.

S4E4, “Hippocratic Oath” (story: Nicholas Corea & Lisa Klink)

Some years ago Kristen and I tried playing Cities and Knights of Catan, an expanded spin-off to the much-played and much-loved Settlers of Catan. It…did not go well.

Our experience didn’t really prepare us. We spent one entire gaming session just parsing the rules. By the time we were done with that we’d been at it so long we were too tired to actually play, and quit. This was to be the more positive of our two experiences with the game. The next time out, we managed to get beyond rule-reading and play, although “play” is not the word I would suggest to describe our series of brutal defeats, and eventual total loss, at the hands of the game’s nemeses, the pirates. As the game progresses and players try to eke out a life on Catan, the pirates move ever closer, eventually flooding your humble village for some pillaging. I don’t remember the exact mechanics of fighting them, but I am sure that it never once went well. They take a bunch of stuff then return to the sea, and the players try to put their lives back together as the clock starts ticking down to their next offensive. It is theoretically possible, with odds-defying luck, that the pirates would never come back. Futilely, we hoped, “Maybe the pirates won’t come this time.” But they did. They always came.

Similarly, if you are going to go messing about in the Gamma Quadrant, you can hope maybe the Jem’Hadar won’t come this time. But they will. They always will. And as we turn the corner of DS9 into the middle of its seven-season run, things ain’t looking too good. They are stronger, faster, meaner, and as inevitable as pirates taking all your stuff in Catan.

“Hippocratic Oath” provides a tantalizing wedge into making some traction against them. It’s also a great episode in and of itself. Fascinating conflict between the Jem’Hadar and humans, and interwoven with the conflict between Bashir and O’Brien regarding what to even do about it. It also manages to be entirely frustrating all around. The free-thinking Jem’Hadar is still trapped in his own society, promising research on removing their innate addiction is destroyed, O’Brien’s actions are frustrating but you can’t really blame him either. Most tantalizing, and I wonder if this’ll surface again, is that there may be genetic anomalies where some of the JH simply aren’t addicts and can demonstrate free will. Once in a while, one figures it out. Maybe it’ll end up being akin to the Trill secret that the pairings aren’t so special after all.

I lean on Memory Alpha a lot to remember all the details of these episodes for me, especially if I need to remember stuff like who a minor character was or what episode they appeared in. I also sometimes use it as a checksum on my reaction towards an episode by comparing my takeaway with MA’s “reception” section of each episode. Sometimes I think: “That episode was pretty good I think?” And if the reception also seems good, then, by gosh, I was right. Sometimes I think an episode is great and they have little or nothing to say about it. In that case they are wrong, or ignorant. Sometimes it’s the opposite: they love it, and I didn’t. Which might cause me to re-evaluate, but more often than not, I also dismiss them as wrong. (Yes it’s confirmation bias. Who is going to stop me.)

As it happens, I disagreed with MA/the wider world on all three/four episodes in this batch. They loved “The Way of the Warrior” and “The Visitor.” I thought they had some serious flaws. I thought we were going to sync up on “Hippocratic Oath” but I was surprised to find it had a thoroughly blah reception. MA has two facts about it. One, director Rene Auberjonois thought it was the best episode he directed (out of eight). The other is a worthless factoid about some of the props being sold at auction. (How is that even “reception”?) My conclusion is, MA, you are a helpful tool, but you don’t know what you are talking about.

Overall: 5 out of 5.