S4E18, “Rules of Engagement” (story: Bradley Thompson & David Weddle)
I fell asleep almost immediately after starting this episode and saw only snippets of some Klingon lawyer haranguing Worf. Was I just tired or was it boring? Either way, I am not prepared to discuss this episode. So: please welcome special guest blogger, my wife Kristen.
Here’s the sitch: Klingon prosecutor, Ch’Pok is requesting Worf’s extradition to the Empire, so that he can be tried for killing 441 civilizations aboard a transport ship that decloaked during battle. All of this action takes place before the actual episode, so we open with Worf coming to trial, prosecuted by a Klingon named Ch’Pok. I have two major complaints about his case.
First, Ch’Pok makes a big show of saying that he accepts Worf’s factual account of the incident, in which Worf claims that he shot at the ship at the moment it decloaked, before he could really see what it was. What Ch’Pok wants to determine is whether Worf took this action because he thought it was the best military decision or because he had Klingon bloodlust in his heart. But the facts of the case have already established that Worf did not know that it was a civilian ship at the moment of decloaking, so his bloodlust couldn’t have influenced this decision in the first place. Either that or he was so overcome with bloodlust that he was just happy to shoot at anything. But if the unknown thing he shot at had turned out to be a military vessel, this would all be OK? That seems unfair.
Second, it is totally unclear what the verdict would be, even if Worf’s level of heart-bloodlusting could somehow be determined. At some points, Ch’Pok is arguing that it is Klingon nature to be driven to vanquish one’s enemies in battle, regardless of whether they are civilians, and mocking Worf for his sissy human values. Then two seconds later, he’s moaning and wailing over the fate of these poor Klingon children, mercilessly shot down by a raging Worf. If this case ever got back to the Klingon courts, I’m having a hard time determining which interpretation of events would actually be a crime.
Maybe the point is that Ch’Pok doesn’t know either. Maybe he’s a hypocrite, celebrating Klingon bloodlust, except when it’s used against other Klingons. Or maybe he’s just using lawyerly obfuscation to make a bunch of different arguments in hopes of confusing everyone and getting a favorable verdict. But either way, you’d think that the judge, a Vulcan admiral, would see through the illogic of all this. The zero hour revelation that it was all a trick and Worf never killed any civilians feels unnecessary. I would have been happier with an ending that saw Admiral T’Lara picking apart Ch’Pok’s stupid arguments and throwing him out of the courtroom. Not only would that be satisfying, it would solidify Worf’s commitment to the Federation and its values, even in the face of his natural instincts.
In the end, we do learn that Worf was somewhat driven by bloodlust against his enemies, as well as a desire to prove that he is still a real Klingon despite being stripped of his honor by the Empire. But this story would have been more effective we had learned this through events that made us feel the emotional heft of the situation — rather than a bunch of clunky and confusing exposition. Trek trials always seem like a good opportunity to delve into the values, motivations, and essential nature of a alien race, but it’s really hard to pull off a coherent story and keep it entertaining. On that note, this episode really could have used a b-story, preferably a frivolous one involving Quark.
Overall: Highly irritating or just plain boring depending on whether you ask me or Josh. (Josh says: Feeling good about sleeping through it.) 2 out of 5
S4E19, “Hard Time” (story: Daniel Keys Moran & Lynn Barker)
When I read about “O’Brien Must Suffer” episodes a few seasons back the speaker must have been thinking ahead to “Hard Time.” Sheesh, this one is rough on our poor Irish punching bag.
They go back to the “What if someone lived a whole life but no real time passed?” well they already dipped into for this season’s “The Visitor.” I compared that one (unfavorably) to the classic TNG “The Inner Light.” Both are sort of melancholy, though “The Inner Light” is actually mostly happy for Picard, other than that he’s jarred out of it. He probably still needed some therapy or something, one would think. He lived out decades in a whole new, largely pleasant, life. Then, pow, back on the Enterprise. But maybe nothing compared to poor O’Brien, who goes to pretend brain jail for twenty years of simulated suffering. He comes out of it and no time has passed, but to his thinking he was really there and he needs to re-adjust to DS9 life. So the episode serves as the exploration of that immediate recovery, with just a few flashbacks to prison time.
It’s a very strong sci-fi premise, and downright scary. I can’t even make any jokes about it. Ultimately the episode is about whether such a punishment is better or worse than regular prison. I am in no way qualified to have an opinion on this, but I guess I’d say it’s certainly better than actually throwing someone in jail for twenty years. Or is it. I don’t even know. You’ll feel (mentally) like you lived two more decades, but all you did during them is suffer. It’s not like you have any chance to grow as a person. But you get those two decades back, even if you’re scarred forever. Folks, this is a dismal one.
Anyway I wonder if we’ll see more aftereffects in the future, or we’re just going to do that TV trick of every going back to normal once the credits roll. For O’Brien’s sake I hope it’s the latter.
Overall: Really well done, but oof, let’s just get back to some Klingons sticking knives into each other. 4 out of 5.
S4E20, “Shattered Mirror” (story: Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler)
So now they just pop in from the “Mirror, Mirror” universe to say hi. Or they pretend that’s what they are doing so they can steal your children.
I liked that this one took up the thread from the last mirror universe story about Sisko’s duplicate wife being alive and well. They had to get back to this eventually, it’s a fascinating concept. Your spouse died? Maybe the duplicate is still single! Well, it’s definitely understandable that Sisko and Jake can’t help but be drawn to Mirror Jennifer and trust her more than is good for them. Of course it leads to Sisko being roped into yet another scheme to help out the ostensible Good Guys of the Mirror Universe, because unlike Jennifer, the other Sisko is a twerp.
This ends up being a largely fun one that moves the Mirror Universe plot along and also contains numerous delightful gags. I like Mirror Worf because we get to see his as a vengeful Klingon pirate. Garak is still a weasel. The other principles are all just a little different in various ways that makes this good occasional Trek junk food.
More consequential, Mirror Jennifer doesn’t make it, so pending the discovery of a third universe, we have run out of Jennifers. This is probably a good thing, rather than continue to string along poor Sisko and Jake. They explored the story, it’s emotional, but kinda weird, and let’s move on.
Notes:
- I must wonder if they are opening the door to sitcom-level antics w/r/t the Mirror Universe. What happens when O’Brien’s daughter’s pet hamster dies and he realizes he can get the exact same hamster on the other side…?
- Mirror Worf gives us a “Make it so.” I don’t want to be that kind of Trek nerd, but oh hell yeah.
- One of Sisko’s running bits is that he asks O’Brien how long it’ll take to fix something. O’Brien says, for example, “ten hours.” Sisko replies, e.g., “You’ve got six.” O’Brien gives him a “WTF did you ask me for then?” look and manages to meet Sisko’s arbitrary deadline anyway. (We assume O’Brien is way ahead of him and always throws out a huge number, knowing Sisko will just steamroll his professional opinion.) Here Mirror O’Brien gets in a good jab for his counterpart when he demands Sisko get the Mirror Defiant running. Sisko: “It’ll take two weeks.” O’Brien: “You have four days.” Let’s see if Sisko pulls this crap again to Regular O’Brien.
Overall: It’s a bit silly overall but still an enjoyable one. 4 out of 5.
S4E21, “The Muse” (story: René Echevarria & Majel Barrett Roddenberry)
Well well well, there’s a writing credit for us.
Two stories here. The first is naturally a Lwaxana Troi/Odo follow-up. Lwaxana returns to DS9 to cry on Odo’s simulated shoulders a bit over her surprise pregnancy. Deanna’s way, way, way younger half-brother is a boy, and her husband’s culture dictates that male children get shepherded off into seclusion with other boys. She doesn’t want him taken from her, so she’s on the lam. Odo digs into the legal terms and volunteers to undertake a sham marriage to Lwaxana, which nullifies the prior marriage and kiddo arrangements, and they’ll just annul the marriage later on, once the legal requirements are satisfied.
The real question is whether or not Odo is using the marriage as a way to convey his actual love for her. There are hints that he actually does have strong feelings, but it’s never really clear. I thought this was suitably vague—Odo doesn’t really understand his feelings any more than we do, and Lwaxana sorta loves lots of people. They make a surprisingly good pair but whether either of them would or could really take the marriage seriously is a (very) open question. Odo probably isn’t really emotionally ready for it. She brings out the best in him but also tends to steamroll him. Ultimately she’s probably a good first girlfriend for him: bridges a lot of his emotional shortcomings and pushes him a little, but really she’s giving him some space to stand up for himself more. In the end she’s the one that can tell he’s not really in love with her. Odo still needs her to tell him that, which says something. All of this is pretty relatable, I think. Jake is the resident teen who should be going through these early relationship experiences but he apparently won’t be doing that and we have our Odo instead.
I do have to question the whole Troi prior marriage though. I mean, the guy ends up being kind of a cold jerk, but she did marry him, so like, there was something there, kinda? Well not every marriage was a good choice, and I guess this is one of them, because she is more than willing to drop him, and he’s just like, “Well this Odo fellow gave a pretty emotional speech, once I prompted him, so he must love my wife a lot.” And he shrugs and leaves. One suspects Troi has at least a dozen former spouses, maybe he’s about the same and they were statistically likely to marry each other eventually.
The B story tries to inject a little suspense into the hour, but felt less developed and more awkward. Jake meets a strange woman that wants to help him with his writing. She’s really weird, and makes Jake act really weird. We soon discover that she seems to feed off of, I guess, creative juices. She does some kinda hoodoo to encourage Jake’s creativity, then when his writing starts flowing, she is able to re-direct some of that energy outward and ingest it like a drug.
I thought the idea here was interesting but the execution was a bit flat. It doesn’t really make sense in a short time frame. She says she’s encouraged all kinds of famous writers through history, but she nearly kills Jake a couple chapters into his first novel. Maybe her addiction is in its late stages where she’s down to patrolling for teen prodigies for a quick score and needs to drain them dry to feel anything. Anyway I never get when stories about writing portray writing so stupidly. Writing is not channeling some inspiration into fantastic prose and then you’re done. It’s way more work, way messier, with lots of backtracking, editing, revisions, sighing, cursing, booze, doubt, delaying by writing about TV shows, and more doubt. So I guess I can’t argue that the idea of being visited by some muse that will pump finished product out of you like a faucet is a natural fantasy.
Overall: Sure, fine. 3 out of 5.
Ah, good. More DS9. Thanks!
Some travel in June and didn’t watch any Trek. My calendar is cleared for the remainder of the summer though!