S4E14, “Return to Grace” (story: Tom Benko)

Another Kira and Dukat Odd Couple episode. She’s a fiesty revolutionary torn between her duty and her people! He’s a brutal but mellowed former military prefect! Let’s have them do adventures. Awkward adventures. It further adds on to both the growing Klingon menace issue and “Indiscretion” when we found out Dukat had a spare kid, who was half-Bajoran. Here they are sent to an intelligence meeting about the Klingons but they get hung up fighting actual Klingons. It’s a strong episode for viewers who prefer action to meetings, but we can only imagine what might’ve been.

Here’s what I remember about it:

• When did Dukat start being creepy? I mean, beyond murderous creepy, like stalker-ish creepy. He is really laying the charm on Kira, but it mostly comes off as gross and weird. And she is in no way interested in it even a little. I don’t like this direction at all. Can’t he just develop a respect for her and slowly redeem himself like he’s done with Sisko?
• Dukat’s daughter Tora is surprisingly well-adjusted. She also wants to be an awesome warrior but is really more the sensitive type. Luckily Kira recognizes that she has no business hiding on a stolen Bird of Prey training to fire plasma rifles, and should be in school and hanging on DS9 with Jake listening to The Smiths.
• Dukat’s fate to roam around on his pirated Bird of Prey as some sort of rogue outlaw unit seems just about right. I’m interested to see where this goes.
• Should Kira join Dukat’s merry band of outlaws? Oh goodness no. She should definitely not give up her vital DS9 life to go rogue and spend additional years eking out a meager living, while also fending off Dukat’s clumsy innuendos.

Overall: Sets up some interesting future stuff, and not bad as a self-contained space laser story. But also a little weird and Dukat’s behavior is a decidedly mixed bag. 3 out of 5.

S4E15, “Sons of Mogh” (story: Ronald D. Moore)

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career in Starfleet. Choose a family of Russian foster parents. Choose a fucking big space station, choose phaser rifles, the Defiant, bat’leths and mek’leths. Choose good sparring partner, soft beds, and getting patched up in the infirmary. Choose your quarters. Choose your friends. Choose your uniform and matching collar pips. Choose a war sash in a range of metallic fabrics. Choose to go against Gowron, against the Klingon council. Choose life… But why would Worf want to do a thing like that? Kurn chose not to choose life. Kurn chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got honor?

I’m not really sure all the Klingon logic that brought on Kurn’s suicidal tendencies made sense. It might have seemed more right to me if Kurn wanted to kill Worf for (at least in his mind) dishonoring their family and abandoning the Klingon way of life. But it still made for an interesting, thoughtful episode to add to the Klingon canon. A pivotal one for Worf, for sure. He’s come to a point in his life where he needs to get back to being Klingon or fully accept being part of human society. Kurn, like most Klingons, thinks he’s lost his mind, so Worf has to endure yet another challenge to his human-dominated lifestyle, complete with soft beds and bureaucracy.

As long-term viewers of Worf stories we know Worf hates these things, but like a lot of things with Worf, it’s complicated. They come with the territory. There are no absolute rights or wrongs, just what is better in aggregate, which means: life in the Federation rather than back home, even if the beds are softer, problems are solved with laws rather than duels, and you can’t kill your brother just because he wants you to. Because in the end it remains the most honorable choice. Also it’s probably better to work for Sisko than for that bug-eyed clown Gowron.

Well well well what’s going on here: Now we know a bat’leth dual can be flirtatious. At least when it involves Dax and Worf, apparently. Don’t tell me we are developing a Dax love interest…?

Overall: Will go to Sto-vo-kor with other glorious Klingon episodes of the past. 5 out of 5.

S4E16, “Bar Association” (story: Barbara J. Lee & Jennifer A. Lee)

As as rule Trek isn’t that interested in the blue collar crowd. We hardly ever see even minor duty officers, much less the folks cleaning the promenade, installing Odo’s sound-proof flooring, or delivering case after case of bottom-shelf liquor to Quark’s. Trek has always portrayed the future as some sort of economic utopia where everyone is gainfully employed in just the right capacity. All domestic problems have been solved, so politics need only concern itself with foreign affairs. So I’ve always liked the rare episode where we dig down a bit into the class structure. “Bar Association” picks up some threads from “Family Business,” is a peek into employment under a Ferengi (unsurprisingly the galaxy’s worst employers), with a strong message about worker solidarity and fair treatment that warmed my strongly pro-union blood.

The no-longer hapless Rom leads an employee revolt when Quark cuts the entire staff’s salary rather than take any losses during the Bajoran Time of Cleansing. Unions are even less popular on Ferenginar than in modern American Republican platforms, and largely for the same reason: Ferengi don’t want to stop exploitation because they all dream of one day becoming the exploiters. But Rom proceeds anyway, and convinces the rest of the staff to join him. This riles up the brutal Ferengi Commerce Authority, who get wind of the strike and come to shut it down. Since Rom isn’t scared of them, they think beating up Quark will convince Rom to back down, only they are so, so wrong, because, wow what a bonus for pretty much everyone on DS9. Ironically it causes Quark to back off and give Rom’s union everything it wants.

I’m getting to like Rom quite a bit. He was nothing but bumbling the first few seasons but has matured so much that not only did I remove the “hapless” label, I’m going to further proceed to remove the “no-longer hapless” label so we can all move on. He successfully leads an employee revolt, he even manages to get Quark beat up in the process. Win-win! At some point in this episode, Kristen asked why he even worked for Quark, when we’ve now learned that he’s a skilled engineer. Our only answer was that Quark’s the older brother, so that’s just how it works, evidently. But in the end, bolstered by his success and defiance of Ferengi norms, he quits the bar and takes a job as an apprentice repair technician.

Also a winning episode for O’Brien. We learn that he is descended from Irish High King Brian Boru (a real dude, and the Battle of Clontarff, which he and Julian are pretending to fight in the holosuite, was also a real thing), and also a famous union leader who won worker rights for 19th-century Pennsylvania coal miners. And got murdered for his efforts, but it still inspires Rom. O’Brien also nets Rom as an apprentice and gets a cyst removed. Everything’s coming up O’Brien.

Picket line crosser roll call: O’Brien (obviously) and Bashir support the strike and enjoy making a game out of watching who will cross the picket line to patronize Quark’s. Worf does, perhaps unsurprisingly (and leads to a brawl between the three of them), but also, he probably doesn’t have an opinion about it so much as doesn’t care at all. Sisko supports the strike. I feel like Kira and Dax would, although we don’t find out. Odo is decidedly against it, and mutters a few things that make it sound like he would greatly enjoy some union headbusting if Sisko hadn’t explicitly told him to stay out of it.

Worf/Dax flirtation update: At the beginning of the episode, Worf is taking great delight in the strict order possible aboard the Defiant, and it seems to be pleasing to Dax, even if she’s mostly finding it amusing and playfully teasing him. Something is definitely going on between these two beyond holosuite sparring. I think there is some kind of Myers-Briggs opposite-attraction thing happening between Worf’s unrelenting J and Dax’s up-for-whatever P. Plot-wise, it generates a minor B-story about Worf getting increasingly agitated by the messy real-world disorder on board DS9 and eventually deciding just to live aboard the Defiant, which offers cramped quarters, uncomfortable beds, and peace and quiet, all highly appealing to Ron Swanson Worf.

Morn watch: Whether or not the bar is open is of significant consequence to Morn. I actually need to re-watch this one to see if he was willing to cross the picket line to get in though. Anyway, wanted to note that he did not participate in the Nausicaan’s masochistic darts game. We have seen him take a dart to the torso without reaction, but we can now infer he didn’t enjoy it, either. Or at least, the Nausicaans might be a little too intense for him.

Overall: 4 out of 5. Peeling off one for some occasional clunky scenes in an otherwise solid episode.

S4E17, “Accession” (story: Jane Espensen)

We were excited when Jane Espensen’s name popped up in the opening credits. She was a regular Buffy: The Vampire Slayer writer and I generally thought her episodes stood out as a notch funnier and more clever. I learned she’d also written a TNG (“Force of Nature”), but looking back it actually wasn’t a favorite. Oh well. Memory Alpha tells me this is the only DS9 she did, so, let’s see how it goes.

The A story concerns Sisko’s ongoing hesitance to assume the role of Emissary, even though it’s mostly a symbolic thing. People bug him for photo ops, wedding blessings, and the like. Sort of like the cute PR stuff the president does during the day in between steering U.S. policy (prior to January 20, 2017) or tweeting incoherently while golfing (subsequently). But he’s saved by a ship that comes tumbling out of the wormhole, which contains a guy who thinks he’s the Emissary. He also thinks it’s hundreds of years earlier. But like, NBD, he can be Emissary, as far as Sisko is concerned. Deus ex machina it up, baby. However, this becomes a problem because his principle policy suggestion is returning to a crushing caste system that sorta matches up with religious teachings but sucks for basically everyone. Further, its implementation prevents Bajor from joining the Federation, because they have a rule about social systems that suck. Perhaps there’s an analogous present-day story in politics about a widely-admired leader pragmatically moving things forward in a chaotic time, succeeded by an out-of-touch doofus loved by religious fundamentalists who messes everything up. I’ll have to Google that later.

The resolution, well, shrug. It’s hazy (literally and figuratively) and convenient, and the antagonist is literally hurled back to the past and won’t bother anyone again. I’m not sure what to think about the idea that in the past he finished his famous poems. Then in the present Kira can recall both finished and unfinished versions. So we’ve incidentally defined how time travel works in this universe? No wait, let’s compare to “Past Tense” where Sisko becomes the historic figure of Gabriel Bell. Actually I think it’s the same thing. He knew about Real Gabriel Bell, then he ended up in the past and did the stuff that immortalized Bell, therefore becoming Bell. He knew Bell as a different person beforehand though, so he can retain both memories. OK, I’m good.

Meanwhile, the B story is a modest little domestic bit about Keiko returning from her long away mission and O’Brien having to re-adjust back to married life. I remember when O’Brien was irritated with Bashir, now they are besties: getting smashed at Quark’s, playing darts, re-creating famous historic battles in their shared ancestry. When Keiko returns he resumes being a good husband and father but misses time with Julian, especially since Keiko is pregnant and he can feel the impending weight of another baby in his future. The always-intuitive Keiko figures out what’s going on and encourages him to still spend time with Julian, especially if it means he’ll get out of her hair when she’s working.

This part was mostly fun and entirely relatable to happily partnered humans. It also served as some solid comic relief. I loved that O’Brien’s quarters had degraded into a total bachelor sty with toys and liquor bottles everywhere. (Memory Alpha tells me that Colm Meaney objected to this, however. He was fine with it being a source of humor but thought it was clichéd to show a temporarily single man unable to keep his house clean without his wife around. As a husband whose wife occasionally leaves town, I have to agree with him, but it was still funny.) Also I have to note that Jane Espensen is so good she even gets Worf to be funny.

Bajorans are weird: They clap by smacking the back of one hand into the palm of the other. I get it, Space Clapping, but it’s an unnatural motion and I don’t buy into a different humanoid race doing it. I would accept something altogether different from clapping maybe. Let’s admit that whacking our hands together is sorta weird, although it’s a convenient way to make sound to acknowledge a speaker or performer. So other races might clap, but not the way Bajorans do. I think it’s more realistic that they would physically clap the same way but have different rhythms. I’d hypothesize our human rhythm is sort of arbitrary and cultural. Maybe I’ll Google that later too.

Morn watch: We see him hanging with some dabo girls at the bar. We have not fully established the social role of dabo girls, so it is unclear if Morn’s ladies are drawn to his natural charisma, or his willingness to solicit their companionship. Since it’s ever-debonair Morn, I think we have to assume it’s the former. Also he has been enlisted by Julian to play darts in O’Brien’s absence, but evidently would be better at being the target than an active player. Per Julian, he “couldn’t hit a Yeridian Yak at 5 paces.”

Overall: An interesting and necessary episode that works well. Didn’t love the Emissary story conclusion but there’s still a lot to like here. 4 out of 5.