S6E20, “His Way” (Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler)

Affliction: Monotonousness of Episodes in the Holodeck or “MEH” Syndrome.

Symptoms: Misgivings regarding upcoming Star Trek episodes revolving around the holodeck and/or holosuites. General lack of enthusiasm. Drowsiness.

Causes: Syndicated television programs attempting to tell stories in genres outside their areas of expertise. Delusions of grandeur and/or boredom amongst writing or production staffs, resulting in wasting 45 minutes capturing the look, but not the feel, of these genres.

Treatment: Scathing takedowns on pointless blogs in the farthest reaches of the internet’s long tail. Skipping to the next episode.

K and I saw this one coming in the Netflix queue, with Odo dressed in a tux and a vague description about Bashir’s “new character” and we honestly floated the idea of just skipping it. But we braced ourselves and dove in, and, well, it certainly did not go the direction I had been conditioned to expect. Rather than yet another holodeck episode, it’s The One Where Odo and Kira Finally Get Together.

Some quick reading about the episode tells me that DS9 fans are rather split on whether or not this should have ever happened. I guess I have to say I’m firmly in the camp of “I’m good either way.” I’m happy for them finally clicking though. Sexual tension gets agonizing after a while and this has been going on for, what, like three seasons? It’s not a main theme or anything but I guess they had to make something happen one way or another. I have a feeling it won’t actually last that long and will be forgotten by the end, but that’s just a vague prediction. Not unlike a couple who are friends for a very long time and then test out more serious waters, sometimes it’s like, hey wow we could have been having sex this whole time, that was dumb, and sometimes it just gets inexplicably weird. We’ll see. Memory Alpha tells me neither Rene Auberjonois nor Nana Visitor thought the two should ever get together. I wonder if that will cost them some chemistry points if neither really believes in it. Again, we’ll see.

Anyway, as to the episode itself, it had its good and bad. Like a lot of holodeck episodes, it’s riddled with clichés. This time, Trek does Vegas jazz clubs. But it does do some interesting new things. Somehow Julian’s creation of Vic Fontaine has become self-aware to the point of understanding he’s a hologram and is qualified to readily dispense love advice to our hopeless blob. He can even tap into the ship’s communication network and bust in on other holosuites when he feels like it. But luckily it’s not to cause mayhem, he’s just persistent. The Vic Fontaine character is charming, but the acting is a little mailed in, as if even James Darren realizes he’s just a pale Sinatra imitation.

Overall: Let’s go 4 out of 5. Mostly, it all comes together in the end for a fun one and I liked Vic Fontaine more than I thought I would.

S6E21, “The Reckoning” (Harry Werksman & Gabrielle G. Stanton/David Weddle & Bradley Thompson)

“The Reckoning” leans on a few Trek tropes that don’t do much for me:

• Prophetic mumbo-jumbo: I know the Bajoran prophecy ones are important to the whole arc of the series, and Sisko in particular, but they all sort of blend together. We’ll see some hokey Bajoran religious stuff and Kai Winn patronizing people and “Twin Peaks”-style visions. This one even gets a bit self-referential as Dax reminds Sisko he used to call the prophets “wormhole aliens.” We never really established they were any kind of prophets, remember. But either Sisko has come to think of them that way, or it just rolls off the tongue better than “wormhole aliens.” Either way they’re a classic case of “sufficiently advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic.”
  • Anyway whatever the prophets turn out to be, this is probably not going to go well for Sisko because of his deal with the Prophets back in “Sacrifice of Angels” wherein they agreed to delete the Dominion invaders in exchange for some future penance.
• Technical mumbo-jumbo: Well we see your made-up religious stuff and raise you some made-up science stuff. We understand that they could just flood the promenade with chroniton particles that could just flush out the alien invaders. But there’s the unpleasant matter of the bill: Sisko knows that they need to let whatever goofy prophet thing happen to pay his penance.
• An alien technology that is deciphered at precisely the pace that works for the episode: In this case, a weird stone slab. Sisko feels compelled to smash it, so he does, even though it’s a priceless artifact.
• Guest characters wandering back into everyone’s lives in order to make the ultimate sacrifice: Jake’s name is still in the credits but I had really started wondering if he was even still on the show. We see Nog, Garak, and Dukat more than him. Hell, we see Weyoun and Damar more than him. They’ve had more Morn episodes this season than Jake episodes. I guess they just ran out of stories about his leisured writer lifestyle. Well anyway he’s back today, and probably going to almost get killed to put Benjamin into some kinda compromising position…yep, there it is.

So things are set up for Jake to be the penance, which would be spectacularly cruel. But again, DS9 is a good show, and doesn’t usually do what’s expected. As it turns out it’s Kai Winn who pushes the chroniton button (sure, she knows how to do that?) to stop the battle and punt to another day. So everyone is safe, for now.

Here is where I should say why or why not this was interesting but I’m choosing (C) I’m confused. I was pretty sleepy by the end of this one but even re-reading the summary I’m not sure it entirely clicks. Something something Kira is super faithful, something something Sisko has a prophet hotline. And Winn doesn’t like any of that so her reasons for stopping the battle were pure selfishness, something to the effect that Sisko letting Jake get vaporized by a prophet means that Sisko is the most faithful, so she won’t let him have the satisfaction.

Overall: 2 out of 5. Just not enough really making sense here. And we still need someone to do some penance so more of this is probably coming.

S6E22, “Valiant” (Ronald D. Moore)

Back in the clumsy and absurd “Starship Down” the “I think the ship can handle it!” DS9 trope emerged where a vessel is pushed way beyond its design based only on the gut feeling of its commander. Of course this happened all the time in previous series, especially TOS, but in DS9 these actions tend to have consequences. Sometimes, sorta, I mean, plenty of extras died in “Starship Down” but all the named characters pulled through, so, all good. When the tactic has been employed other times it usually gets similarly mixed results: missions succeed but messily. “Valiant” shows us what probably should happen, i.e., complete failure.

I kinda liked the premise here, that the mysterious Top Guns of Red Squad are actively engaging the Dominion behind enemy lines, and doing so both successfully and in total secrecy, to the point where they’ve begun to believe their own hype. They’ve all given themselves cute little titles and pretend they count. When they rescue Jake and Nog after a Jem’Hadar cruiser wings them, Nog is immediately conscripted as Chief Engineer because he knows some stuff about warp cores. (Valiant having made it this far, one supposes, with the other cadets leaning heavily on desperate google searches like “warp core how to fix”.) But the post immediately goes to his head, leaving Jake as the lone naysayer. When Valiant has an opportunity to launch a surprise attack on a massive Jem’Hadar battleship, and the crew is exhausted and underprepared and would still get carded at Quark’s (just making an observation on their youth, of course; obviously no one gets carded at Quark’s), their greenie-popping captain weighed the odds that they’d succeed versus the odds that they were doing something incredibly stupid, and went ahead and did it anyway. Jake says, “My father would never try to pull off something like this.” Oh, sweet, naïve Jake.

So like this doomed mission, I’m not sure what this episode hoped to achieve. Maybe make some point that the DS9ers are so special they can overcome self-inflicted bad odds, because here’s an example of what happens when you don’t have Kira/O’Brien/Dax/Worf/etc. covering up your mistakes. The youthful crew can’t really pull off their reputations, the performances here just really aren’t that good, but the characters themselves don’t have a lot of depth. Everyone looks the other way at Captain Greenies, the first officer is all bluster, and everyone else is kids who are ready to go home. There’s some weak resistance about not defying one’s captain, supposedly a “great man” but even Jake doesn’t fall for that. Mostly there’s an effective meta-lesson about Fancy Title /= Actual Experience.

Overall: I think it’s a memorable one for its premise, and has some good takeaways, but gets a little silly in details and execution. Come on, Jake and Nog are literally the only survivors? 3 out of 5.

S6E23, “Profit and Lace” (Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler)

Ferengi episodes may be graphed on Silly vs Gross axes, where the optimal episodes have a measure of both. It’s still OK if they are just silly (“Little Green Men” comes to mind) but not so much if they are purely gross, unless the grossness can be effectively conveyed into humor. “Profit and Lace” walks a real fine line here, but mostly can’t get out of its own way.

Ferengenar is being dragged by the lobes into a progressive future of female equality, if only because somehow it never occurred to anyone that it would instantly double both consumers and the labor force. Zek and Rom may believe in the principle, and Quark, grudgingly, when it’s in his interest, but it’ll be the economics that drive real change. Or maybe not, as Brunt has leveraged Zek’s insistence on female equality into ousting him as Nagus. But Quark et al have a scheme to earn the political will, in the form of soda baron Nilva, who is open to the ideas if it’ll help business. Ishka ought to be able to convince him, but Quark yells and her so violently she has a heart attack, and he agrees to help out of guilt, agreeing to a temporary sex change and planning to sway Nilva. Only he unexpectedly falls lobes over [whatever disgusting Ferengi equivalent to heels] for her. So, just another day on DS9.

Some of the humor plays well: Zek is always great, the farcical elements of Quark’s scheme (think Tootsie) generally work, and I liked bits like Brunt’s rival Tiny Ron or increasingly stomach-churning descriptions of the vile Sluggo Cola. But most of it either falls flat or is genuinely uncomfortable. As much as we enjoy Quark’s comeuppance at being pursued by Nilva, it doesn’t really tip the scales. In the opening scene we are reminded of Quark’s propensity for genuine creepiness as he tells Aluura, his model employee of a dabo girl, that despite her excellent professional performance her job’s in jeopardy anyway if she doesn’t learn oo-mox. Haha, it’s not sexual harassment because it sounds like a silly Ferengi thing! I think a more fitting sentence for Quark is to get sued or something, rather than Nilva chasing him around like Pepe Le Pew.

Memory Alpha has a bunch of quotes from Armin Shimerman who raises probably the most important reason this all falls flat: Quark doesn’t learn anything. At the end, to put an extra icky stamp on it, we find out that Aluura has decided she’s into oo-mox. That actually makes it worse. Go ahead fellas, try this with your women employees. You never know!

Overall: Closer to a video you have to watch for HR compliance than a comedy. In the running for worst episode of the series. Do better, DS9. 0 out of 5.