S5E20, “Ferengi Love Songs” (story: Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler)

AND ALSO

S5E21, “Soldiers of the Empire” (story: Ronald D. Moore)

This episode’s protagonist is a series regular who has to reconcile instincts honed in his native culture with life among doughy humans. He doesn’t always view humans positively (and who could disagree with the general idea that humanity is garbage), and living among them costs him some sense of his identity, but his own society has largely dismissed him and this one hasn’t. Also he has bad teeth and likes disgusting food.

Here he finds himself temporarily back among his people, being mentored by a great leader, known for his prowess with respect to what his culture values the most. But it turns out that the leader guy has aged out of his prime effectiveness, and other people depending on him are starting to get squirmy about it. Our protagonist uses his usual brand of trademark tactics to give the boss the push he needs, and things are set right. As a reward, his honor is restored.

The old gag is that The Ramones only had one song, but it was a hell of a song. Similarly, even though this episode followed a pretty standard template for stories about this character, I can’t say as I’ve lost interest in this character’s stories, so I liked it, and it had an important resolution for him.

Overall: 4 out of 5.

S5E22, “Children of Time” (story: Gary Holland & Ethan H. Calk)

It took Kristen and I about an hour to watch this 45-ish minute show because we kept pausing to sort out the time travel mechanics. Most time travel stories happen on a single thread, because that’s the most straight-ahead fiction. Back to the Future etc. all work off the idea that you go back and change something, the ramifications extend to the present, e.g., prevent your parents from hooking up at their high school dance and you don’t exist anymore. But there are other ways it could work. Connie Willis’ universe won’t let you materially change anything because it would violate causality. In order for you to ever exist and subsequently go back in time, you logically couldn’t have ever done anything in the past to prevent it. So if you try to go back and, just spitballing here, try to push your great grandmother into the Grand Canyon, you’ll find that you can’t; you’ll just never get an opportunity. You might see her walking on the edge but a tour bus suddenly empties in front of you and you can’t get to her.

So on Dax’s bad advice to do some science when they’re all tired from gamma quadrant missioning, they get snarled in a weird planetary energy field. They’re OK, though Kira takes a plasma bolt to the chest and is briefly doubled, but she says she’s fine so, shrug, for now. They also find that there’s a small colony on the surface, noteworthy because they are humans in the gamma quadrant. The real surprise comes when the colonists are all named O’Brien or Sisko or Dax etc., because they are descendants of our heroes. As it turns out, when the Defiant tries to leave orbit, the energy field will cause them to crash for good, hurtling them back in time 200 years and stranding them. They’ll settle and 200 years later, their great great great grandchildren will meet them in Season 5, Episode 22, “Children of Time.” Now they’re faced with a dilemma: if they know what caused the crash they have the liberty of avoiding it, which means this civilization will never exist.

K and I eventually concluded that “Children of Time” doesn’t entirely make sense as a pure linear time travel story if you think about it too much. (Which we did.) It has to be multi-threaded to get stuck in these kinds of time cycles. TNG had an episode or two like this. Rather than look it up I’m going to fumble to remember details, but wasn’t there one where the ship kept exploding and they got the idea to generate some kind of energy signature that would appear in the past? Eventually one of the Enterprises was able to pick up the clues and break the cycle. In either case it gets weird there must have been a first instance. The first time the Defiant crashed it must have been a surprise. But then, unless by improbable coincidence this is precisely the second time through the loop, their descendants should have related not only crash details but stories about their ancestors meeting them. We know this because they shared literally every detail. Like how they know Sisko is trying to cut down on raktajino. “Oh how your great great grandfather used to talk about cutting down on raktajino,” mom used to say. (Great caverns, this planet must be boring as hell. I’m not sure most people even know their great grandparents’ names.)

Anyway you probably just have to accept the time travel situation to appreciate the story. And I did! I thought it set up a fascinating philosophical problem. They can ostensibly return to their lives on DS9, but it’ll break the time cycle and implies their descendants on this planet never existed. Or they accept their fate and crash and set things up as they are now. I especially liked how each of the characters worked through the ramifications of it on their own. Kira and O’Brien, in particular. Kira’s plasma zap is definitely killing her and she needs to get back to DS9, but she’s not willing to wipe out the planet to do it. O’Brien, as the only one who’s married with young children, definitely doesn’t want to abandon them for any number of strangers, but even he comes around to thinking that it’s not right to actively choose who lives and who dies. (Trolley problem alert.)

So they’re all in on keeping the loop rolling, but Old Odo secretly plots the ship to safety and destroys his own civilization so that Kira can live. The other relevant thread here being that Odo is still around and still in love with Kira and, evidently, no one else for the last two centuries. I think they did an admirable job reining this in on Kira’s end (unlike, say, “Meridian“), and Old Odo makes sense as a wiser, more mature version of himself, even if he comes across like a mid-50s parrothead who abandons the rat race to run a beach bar. Memory Alpha relates some of the fair criticisms of his actions here, but I think it’s an interesting debate, and credit the show for making it one. We really only see Old Odo as the lovelorn guy who’s been waiting for Kira for 200 years. Maybe he’d never end 8,000 people for her, but that’s a long time to sit around pining, too. Maybe the real question is whether he’s a bad guy for doing it. I mean, probably? If we’re accepting the rest of the crew’s decision that no one should get to choose, then yes.

I didn’t even mention the bit where some of the descendants have become Klingon cultists and worship Worf. There’s not too much to say really, it’s a fun remainder on the arithmetic of the Defiant’s crew reproducing for 200 years. But he never did give them their requested honorable death. Though given the logic of his ridiculous “you should help with the distinctly non-warrior activity of planting by pretending that time is an enemy to be defeated by helping everyone do it” he’ll probably find some excuse for them.

Odo’s biology corner: Odo lives 200+ years. It takes him that long to learn to make a face. But also by then he’s good enough at it to add wrinkles and such to appear older. When he told young Odo stuff, I guess he felt that tips about face-making weren’t appropriate. His past self has to learn to do it on his own. Also I wonder if this was just a great work week for Rene Auberjonois, getting a few days off from the makeup chair.

Overall: Despite all the time travel haggling, I thought it was a brilliant SF setup and payoff. I get the criticism of Odo’s actions but I think it can make sense for him. 5 out of 5.

S5E23, “Blaze of Glory” (story: Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe)

The Eddington arc is the Carolina Panthers of Trek stories. This requires explanation.

For better or worse my wife and I, having both lived in The NC for at least a decade now, have grown into Panthers fans during their recent era with Ron Rivera coaching and Cam Newton at quarterback. In some ways this fandom is hard to explain. Most of their games are clunkers of low scoring, unimaginative offense, inconsistent defense, brutally-timed turnovers, and drive-killing penalties. When I watch other teams they look amazing by comparison: passes not flying over receivers’ heads, professional blocking, effective tackling. And yet…and yet…the Panthers are one of the most successful franchises of the last seven years. They won their division three times, made the playoffs four times, they had a 15-1 season with Cam as league MVP and made the Super Bowl, and have had one of the best defenses year in and year out. Somehow it all looks like a mess and doesn’t make sense, but they still get there. How the hell are they doing it? Man, I wish I could tell you.

Similarly, the evolution of Eddington from dutiful lieutenant commander to supervillain mastermind of the Maquis has been an often inexplicable mess, and yet…and yet…I gotta say, it has ultimately worked. The Maquis have always been sympathetic. As refugees caught under the boots of more powerful enemies, they have unfortunately been part of the human cost of arriving at a greater good. But DS9 isn’t really about them either, it’s about the Federation, one of those more powerful enemies. So from our protagonists’ perspective, the Maquis are a real tragedy that should be addressed, only they have the nerve to keep blowing stuff up for some reason. So the boss bureaucrats just want to write them off and take an approach more akin to dealing with terrorists than refugees. Some Federation do-gooders want to help them, but, hey look at the time. As viewers it’s easy to forget about their plight, too. But I think the Eddington arc has finally put a face on them. (They tried to do this with Ensign Ro in TNG, but didn’t really develop it enough, so that thread was a dead end.)

“Blaze of Glory” ends up being a sensible wrap-up to the Sisko/Eddington arc, dampening the absurdity of “For the Uniform” into a more believable story of Eddington using his supervillain powers simply to get back to his wife. He never once tries to call Sisko “Jayvert” either. Actually I thought it was a pretty brilliant psychological battle between the two, as circumstances conspire to get them to cooperate to the point where, despite their early threats to kill each other, by the end they are so sure nothing’s going to happen they can hand each other phaser rifles without a thought.

Kristen called the ending early (confirmed once we reviewed the name of the episode), that Eddington would make some kind of self-sacrifice to ensure everyone else’s safety. And yep, he reunites with his wife just long enough to understand the Maquis movement is doomed, before the pursuing Jem’Hadar flush them out into a ragged escape. It was probably the only possible ending for him, and I agreed with the call to wrap up his thread here. Though I don’t know that he necessarily needed to die–maybe Sisko could have come to a “Leave town, never come back” style agreement instead? But with him going, this might be the end of the Maquis too. It’s tough to see it peter out into nothing, but it always felt like a tacked-on problem they couldn’t find room for in the series.

Meanwhile, back on DS9, Nog is fretting over his duty as a tiny security officer charged with keeping rowdy Klingons from being a public nuisance. I’m not sure what the lesson of this story is exactly, other than than Klingons respect anyone who respects themselves. And also Nog is short. By coincidence we recently happened to learn that the entire main cast of DS9 is notably tall. Even Kira is like 5’8″. Maybe Nog isn’t even that short, he’s just surrounded by giants.

Morn watch: We find Quark being treated for head wounds in the infirmary, which he relays are on account of Morn bashing him with a barstool in a panic after Quark overstated the imminent threat of war with the Dominion. In his further panic, Morn shed his clothes and tore through the promenade yelling “We’re all doomed!” Fortunately or not, this did not appear on screen.

Overall: 4 out of 5. Good night, sweet Eddington, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.