S5E5, “The Assignment” (story: Robert Lederman & David R. Long)

The nice thing about running a sci-fi show is that it is a totally plausible thing that someone could get possessed by a mysterious alien (or have any sort of space madness really) and you’ve got yourself a plot. On the cheap! See: about 75% of TOS. In the hands of Fred Freiberger I think “The Assignment” could’ve gone off the rails but it works on DS9 terms. On the whole, I thought it was interesting, genuinely suspenseful, and more than a little creepy. I sometimes talk about the episodic TV problem of “We all know none of the regulars are going to die.” But Keiko…could she die? Seems unlikely, but tell that to Bareil fans.

So Keiko returns from a trip, only she’s not Keiko. It purports to be some alien in possession of Keiko, holding her hostage to get O’Brien to make a bunch of secret modifications to the station. It claims that it can kill Keiko instantly if O’Brien tries any funny business, like telling anyone anything, or not pretending to have a sufficiently good time at his birthday party.

I liked how this one was put together. I felt the pressure just in watching it. Not-Keiko torments poor O’Brien by putting him through all sorts of brilliantly trivial tortures. She makes him give her a kiss in the infirmary, and sleep in the bed next to her, and it’s not like he’d rather go back to his 20-year mental prison or anything, but in this context are pretty rotten things to do. Mostly the show is a bunch of close-ups of sweaty O’Brien trying and failing to find a way out of his mess, being constantly tempted to tell everyone but too scared of the vague but unknowable threat to his family, and ultimately finding himself utterly alone. Except for the formerly hapless Rom, who has gotten super into his new engineering gig. He still retains his intern-like enthusiasm for the work, and is interested in trying everything from the latest hyperspanner to the “O’Brien special” extra-greasy breakfast plate, specially designed to fuel the hungry engineer for a long day toiling in the Jeffries Tube. Rom’s eagerness dovetails nicely with O’Brien’s increasing desperation, and he’s more than willing to work overtime and take the fall once the rest of the crew gets wise to the weird stuff going on around the station.

I found the ending a smidge dissatisfying, maybe a little too cleanly unexplained considering O’Brien really had no idea what it was going to take to zap Keiko in such a way to kill the weird phantom possessor without harming his wife. But I liked how Rom got to be the hero, and that all he gets in return is a promotion, which is really all he even wanted. I’m not sure any character has had quite the triumphant arc that Rom has so far in the series. I mean, maybe Nog?

Random note: Memory Alpha reminds me there was a TNG episode where O’Brien was possessed by something or other, and was a threat to Keiko and Molly. I guess we can get ready for the episode where Molly gets possessed somewhere down the road.

Also: good thing Kira is on Bajor right now instead of milling around Chez O’Brien or this would’ve been some kind of mess.

Morn watch: Morn also enjoys his supremely disgusting breakfast at Quark’s.

Overall: Creepy and effective. And as always, O’Brien must suffer. 4 out of 5.

S5E6, “Trials and Tribble-ations” (story: the whole dang crew)

Some highly enjoyable fan-service for Trekkies, particularly for those especially familiar with the famous TOS episode, which all people watching season five of DS9 are probably a subset. I won’t go through all the details of this one’s production, which the reader can easily find elsewhere on the internet. It’s enough to say they did a terrific and thorough job, and totally pulled off the Back to the Future part 2-esque combining of the old and and new into a cohesive whole.

For now I’m more interested in chatting about watching this show in the context of a full DS9 viewing, versus when I watched it randomly some years ago whilst watching TOS, when I found out they had made a “Tribbles” sequel. Here’s what I wrote then:

[T]his gave me a taste of DS9 while being an homage to the recently watched Trouble With Tribbles.  Bottom line, mixed feelings. It’s a fairly fun episode and certainly well-done. Really seamless effects and integration into the old series. It’s clearly a labor of love here. But I couldn’t help but think the DS9 crew is a bunch of stiffs. Especially compared to the rollicking stories and characters in TOS. A lot of the humor was awkwardly done and didn’t really work. But then, I gather DS9 isn’t really that kind of show and this is well off-formula for them. Anyway, I’m glad they made the episode and it was worth the watch. It might be interesting to see if it’s more or less enjoyable once I get back to it during a full DS9 watch, around, I dunno, 2014 or something. Overall: 4 out of 5.

The “rollicking” comment is fair, given the relative infrequency of pub brawls in DS9 relative to its ancestor. But I can now say that DS9 is at least as funny, and way, way better paced. So I also take back the “bunch of stiffs” thing. I found it plenty funny this time through. I think you have to get into the groove of DS9 humor, for a start, but it really helps to know the characters and carry all the subtext with you into this episode. Knowing Sisko as an accomplished leader, seeing him sheepishly lurking up to Kirk for some yeoman’s work is pretty fun. Seeing these familiar characters in velvety ’60s space clothes and arguing about the uniform colors is also a lot more satisfying.

I only briefly commented on the look of the episode, but it really deserves a lot of praise. Being in the middle of TOS, it just looked like another TOS, I don’t think it stood out to me as much. But watching this time we were immediately impressed at the care they took in filming to capture the lighting, lower-resolution film, and general look. Generally when I summarize TOS for people wondering if they should watch it, I give them some variation on: “It’s a lot of fun, and has an amazing look, and you will absolutely enjoy the first few episodes you watch, and the 10-20 classic episodes any time. But—there are a lot of duds, too. After you get over the look and feel of the show and start thinking more about plot, you’ll find there’s a lot of cruft.” So “Trials and Tribble-ations” gets to take advantage of those TOS strengths just by dipping into the look and style of that series, while leveraging the single most entertaining story in the bunch. Memory Alpha tells me that they were also considering revisiting “A Piece of the Action” and wow, would that have been a terrible choice. I know I especially don’t like that one compared to the wider Trek fan crowd, I realize, but it always had to be “Tribbles,” didn’t it?

Also I was years off in my guess about when I’d watch DS9. What ended up happening was that my wife got to watching TNG and really liked it, so we thought we’d watch DS9 together at some point, but maybe not right after TNG, so it took a couple years to get around to it. We started watching it kind of on a whim, too, and found it to be good enough to continue. At this point in my viewing, I’m prepared to say it is easily the best Trek show. All three series I’ve watched have good characters, and TOS and TNG have their strengths, but neither of those can compare to DS9’s overall writing and production.

One more note here, about, you know, the actual episode. They take a first step in trying to explain why Klingons look different in TOS. The first step is always admitting the issue, which Worf does, if only to say Klingons don’t like to talk about it with outsiders. I’m not the kind of Trek nerd that really cares about canon stuff and will definitely neither remember details nor be interested in arguing about them even if I did. Even Gene Roddenberry wasn’t, apparently, because I read that he said he wasn’t interested in this problem. Basically when they got around to making the movies and had an actual budget for makeup, they decided to make the Klingons more interesting looking. It wasn’t any kind of decision that they were a different type of Klingon from what was in TOS. People were expected to imagine that’s what they were supposed to look like in TOS. I am totally good with that, personally, but others have tried to explain it anyway, and I understand there are some Star Trek: Enterprise episodes that dig into this. The graphic novel Klingons: Blood Will Tell also does, IIRC.

Overall: I’m a DS9 guy now, so am upping my original 4 to a full 5 out of 5. Excellent Trek nerdery.

S5E7, “Let He Who Is Without Sin…” (story: Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe)

Levels of ruining your visit to the pleasure planet with your partner:

Mild – Refusing to wear the gold lamé shorts you brought. I can’t really blame him.

Medium – Refusing to wear your poor swimsuit choice and instead going around in your work clothes. Certainly they have beach shops around to pick up some less embarrassing trunks, even if you’re limited to the usual selection of bald eagles or Bud Light logos or whatever on them.

Hot – Accusing your partner of having a side fling with her masseuse.

BURNING UP – Begging off plans with her to attend local political rallies.

Dude. Worf is one of my favorite characters in any Trek but he can be a serious wet blanket. Sometimes there aren’t enough PRUNE JUICE EXTRA LARGES in the world to loosen the guy up. But he meets his sourpuss match in the Essentialists. So this episode is one big watered down piña colada. The Essentialists raise some perfectly legitimate points about taking precautions in life, but ruining everyone’s vacation isn’t going to get anyone on your side. Guys, just put out a bid for some security.

If you dig around in here there are a few good Worf & Dax relationship nuggets to save this episode from being a total disaster. Dax’s growing injury record forces Sisko to awkwardly bring up her lifestyle choice of having sex with a Klingon. (She replies: “Interspecies romance isn’t without its danger. That’s what makes it fun.” !!) And she and Worf do manage to have a productive conversation about his tendencies to negatively compare her Klingon women.

Morn watch: Morn thoughtfully brings flowers to a woman. She kisses him and they wander off. Listen Worf, just do what Morn does.

Overall: Some laffs and Dax/Worf progress, but mostly a clunker. 2 out of 5.

S5E8, “Things Past” (story: Michael Taylor)

Since I’m using today to talk about the relative strengths of these Trek series, here’s a chance to mention that TNG was awfully good at the one-off SF mysteries. DS9 is a bigger show and each episode isn’t quite as self-contained. It’s definitely better overall, but if you’re just seeing one random episode of one random series, TNG is maybe the choice. The best TNGs pulled off the thing where 30 minutes in I’m thoroughly stumped and getting a bit desperate to find out what’s going on. “Things Past” manages a similar feat.

Odo, Sisko, Garak, and Dax wake up on the wrong side of the space time continuum, finding themselves loitering about Terek Nor (and by extension, some years in the past), as captive Bajorans. There are better historical circumstances to find oneself in. Odo seems to be taking it especially hard, and is uncharacteristically fidgety, as if he is overdoing it on the raktajino he is finally getting to drink for real. It turns out that he knows what’s going on and pulling an X-Files style withholding of information from everyone and hoping he can resolve things before they get somehow worse.

Narrator: He doesn’t.

They eventually just about escape only to suddenly they find themselves back in a holding cell, as though someone just accidentally reset their game before they could save their progress. Things get increasingly jumpy from there until Odo comes fully clean about a past legal indiscretion. It’s a bit of a mix of Quantum Leap (Odo has to right a past wrong, if only morally) and TNG (good mystery sorta explained by weird space stuff).

The final discussion between him and a super disappointed Kira is an especially strong scene for both of them. But it was also when I started to feel a lot like I’d seen this episode before. Memory Alpha reminds me it’s a parallel of “Necessary Evil” when Kira was the one admitting to wartime guilt. Reminding myself of that one, I felt like this one falls a bit short of its predecessor and doesn’t break as much new ground.

Overall: Still good, but familiar territory. 4 out of 5.