S5E24, “Empok Nor” (Bryan Fuller/Hans Beimler)

Once in a while Trek gets it in its head to try making a full-on action show, ignoring its usual strengths of characterization, plotting, and worldbuilding for 45 minutes of everyone chasing each other around with phaser rifles. This never goes well. Sadly nothing different here, I don’t think this one really brings much of anything to the table. Some of its main problems:

1. First and foremost, it’s boring. K and I both missed bits and pieces in favor of dozing. Poor pacing, too much meandering around in the dark, too much technobabble.
2. They introduce a tantalizing backstory about O’Brien’s long ago days as an infantry man. Apparently he killed so many Cardassians in some battle that Garak considers him something of a legend. But it’s never fleshed out. I’m not sure it made sense for Garak anyway, he’s usually awfully reticent to discuss anything about the past. Although I did like how O’Brien kept insisting he’s not a soldier anymore, he’s an engineer, and that’s ultimately how he defeats Drug-crazed Garak.
3. The “someone accidentally touches a foreign goop that makes them insane” trope is the TOS-est thing we’ve seen in forever.
4. The plot setup is ridiculous. They can only use *one* kind of material to fix the issue on DS9? *One* type of material in the whole universe? And it only exists on a fortunately-existing duplicate station? And it’s unfathomably dangerous so let’s send two guards plus Nog as the full security complement.

Also: the teaser’s humor is a total whiff, the soundtrack is the blandest action movie derivative, both the highly-trained bodyguard types make ludicrous tactical mistakes and immediately die (taking their just-backstoried-enough-to-make-it-sad engineer protectorates with them).

Maybe the only interesting thing here is that reading up on the episode finally prompted me to see what else Andrew Robinson had done, and I learned that he was the psychotic bad guy from the original Dirty Harry. After that he constantly had to work against being typecast as crazy, so he didn’t like having to do that for this episode. I don’t blame him.

Overall: Discard into the same bin as TNG’s “Starship Mine” and below-30th-percentile TOS. 1 out of 5.

S5E25, “In the Cards” (Truly Barr Clark & Scott Neal/Ronald D. Moore)

You know you’ve got a good farce rolling when the protagonists—in this case, Jake and Nog—are confronted by an authority figure (Sisko) who has started to sniff out their scheming and threatens to derail everything, and when they try to calmly, rationally explain things to him, not one shred of it makes them sound like they haven’t lost their minds. There’s an art to delicately accumulating absurdity such that the audience keeps buying in until it gets to a point where they can simply review what’s happened so far for laughs.

“In the Cards” is as good a ridiculous Jake & Nog farce as we’ve had in the series, and definitive proof DS9 can do some good comedy. Some of this is from its brilliant script. Their primary quest to obtain a baseball card to cheer up Sisko snowballs into a series of hijinks and tedious chores as they negotiate with O’Brien, Worf, Kira, and Bashir to help them scrape together all the junk Giger needs for his cellular entertainment device. It’s spawned from a miserable dinner where everyone’s depressed because we’re nearing the end of the season and things are bound to get serious soon, and by the end they’ve not only snagged the card but boosted everyone’s spirits.

But the episode also succeeds in its little touches. I loved this exchange:

Giger: “Let me ask you both a simple question. Do you want to die?”

Nog: “No.”

Jake: “Not really.”

The words don’t exactly capture it. At this point we don’t know Giger any more than Jake and Nog. He’s just the mysterious figure who outbid them for the lot with their baseball card at the antiques auction. They find him squirreled away in his quarters surrounded by bizarre lab equipment. He’s intense and inscrutable and gets in their faces to ask his question, apparently in earnest. Nog’s “no” comes out sorta like he’s saying “Are you seriously asking me this?” but Jake’s is pure skeptical “I’m not telling this nut anything he might want to hear.” But Giger doesn’t really listen to their answers anyway, he runs right over Jake’s tepid “not really” with an “Of course you don’t!” and the further explanation he can’t wait to tell them. It’s early-Seinfeld level perfect comic timing. Maybe this comes from guest director Michael Dorn, who I always think has such good natural timing he even makes Worf funny.

Somewhere along the way Jake and Nog even manage to intersect with the much more serious B story about a probable Dominion invasion and the fate of poor Bajor. There’s actually not much accomplished there other than some establishment of Bajor’s tenuous position and the likelihood of war. Jake and Nog aren’t about to deal with that, but I loved the reversal of the usual DS9 structure of an important A story paired with a silly B story. Today we are all in on the farce. Emphasizing this, Memory Alpha tells me that an early version of the script had Giger motivated to cheat death (or even reverse it) after his wife had died. But they threw it out because it made him sympathetic. Exactly the right choice.

Morn watch: Morn buys a velvet painting.

Overall: Trek farce done perfectly. 5 out of 5.

S5E26, “Call to Arms” (Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe)

The war panic that pushed Morn into a frenzy has gripped the entire station, minus the nudity and bar stool assaults, so far as we are aware. Understandable, as DS9ers observe wave after wave of Jem’Hadar fleets pour through the wormhole, like unto a Zapp Brannigan strategy to defeat killbots. Much of this episode is something of a checklist of war prep to-dos. People are rushing to get engaged and flee, get married and flee, or sending their spouses and families fleeing. Quark has stashed crates and crates of Yamok sauce for the expecting Cardassian re-occupation. Tactics-wise I’m surprised no one brought up collapsing the wormhole, which has surfaced here and there as an option when it seems like there’s nothing else to be done. But they settle on developing an elaborate minefield that is somehow self-replicating (with what matter exactly, in the vacuum of space, my 21st century brain can only speculate about). It’s effective enough to prevent more troops or re-supplies and antagonize Dukat, which can always be considered at least a partial victory.

Most relevant is the Bajorans reaching a non-aggression pact with the Dominion, which will keep them out of the war entirely. Weyoun tells us repeatedly that the Dominion will never break it, which further antagonizes Dukat, who totally would’ve broken it. The pact enables much of the DS9 population to bail for the Bajor rather than stick around for the station’s re-occupation. But it also further compromises what Dukat really wants here, which is to use his newly-built alliance to wipe out all his enemies. Instead he must rely on a shaky coalition of previously starving and weak Cardassia and the Dominion, who are transparently running things, no matter how much Dukat gets to be the boasting face of victory.

I liked how a lot of this went down without feeling forced or contrived. We were bound to have a Dominion face-off at some point, and it naturally spurs movement from all the characters. Even Jake, who’s been playing the trust fund kid, milling around the station occasionally writing but mostly doing nothing, has to make a choice. Though maybe he makes the least sense to me, considering his blind panic last time he got anywhere near battle. For him to stay aboard DS9 as some sort of front line war reporter (and without telling his dad) doesn’t necessarily jive with what we’ve seen from him. But I guess if he goes back to Earth I’m not sure how he stays involved with the story, so: reckless obstinacy it is!

Others staying on DS9 are more or less mystifying, case by case. Quark, I dunno. Clearly he doesn’t care who his clientele is, provided he has one. He obviously doesn’t like the Cardassians, but it’s not like he’s got time to cash out when there’s a war brewing, either. Morn, I mean, who knows what his job is, or where he’d even go back to. I guess he goes where Quark’s goes. The question really is: how much is this like a war refugee situation? I think there’s some effort to give it that feel, but I didn’t buy it as totally analogous. People live on DS9, but it’s not like their home country with everything and everyone they’ve ever known. They aren’t trapped, and it seems they didn’t feel forced to leave in the face of genuine, immediate danger, even though Terek Nor used to literally be a slave ship run by the exact same guy. The general attitude is more like they’re going to have a new city council or something.

Very intriguing closing here, with the Defiant on the run and DS9 back under new management. Trek doesn’t really ever mess with outright premise changes. At least, not for more than a potential few minutes while someone important might be dead or leaving, until they resolve that and the credits roll. But we could be facing a very different season six, where the show called Deep Space Nine does not actually materially take place aboard the Deep Space Nine space station.

Overall: 4 out of 5. Not airtight but a fascinating way to close a season.

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.

S5E16, “Dr. Bashir, I Presume” (story: Jimmy Diggs/Ronald D. Moore)

Julian: he is good at everything, handsome, thin, and young. Everyone naturally hated him for a while. (Exuding arrogance and lightly harassing all the women didn’t help.) Through the course of the series he’s had lots of chances to build up a repository of respect and goodwill. Because he’s so perfect, Starfleet wants to use him as a model for a medical hologram program. Doctor Lewis Zimmerman, the developer of the program, shows up to work on scanning Julian and building up his personality in the program. He wants to talk to everyone in Julian’s life, which Bashir is fine with, save for his parents FOR MYSTERIOUS REASONS.

As a jerk, Dr. Z ignores Julian’s request to omit his parents from the process, and soon enough they’ve arrived on the station. Julian is like, so embarrassed over them, oh my god. There’s some lingering resentment to tease out but the bigger issue is that their presence means there are more chances to spill HIS MYSTERIOUS SECRET.

That secret being: Julian was genetically modified as a child. Of course his genetic modifications become known all over the ship within about one day, since they insist on having loud conversations about them in public places. It’s not only a taboo, it’s illegal. They throw in a nice callback to Khan here to remind us why. So it ought to spell the end of Julian’s Starfleet career. But after some effective and efficient scenes between the family, Julian’s father assumes responsibility for the decision to employ genetic modification and takes the punishment. This neatly resolves the family tension and the need to toss someone in jail. And I guess Sisko agrees Julian’s not about to engineer a mutiny on account of his genetic superiority, and calls it good.

I liked this one. I’d like to see more discussion about what genetic modifications mean in this universe, so it’s not just the binary awesome doctor/or/violent sociopath options presented by Julian or Khan. But maybe that’s coming. I also liked Julian’s family and this manages to efficiently cover a lot of ground with them. Most everyone my age will recognize Julian’s dad as Babu from Seinfeld and it’s nice to see him in a role with some depth. Dr. Z is an interesting character too, and a useful contrast to Bashir. Zimmerman is pompous, Bashir has gotten over himself. Zimmerman is highly intelligent and would like to tell you all about it, Julian is smart enough to know it’s not worth demeaning anyone. Zimmerman is short and bald, Julian is tall and has glorious hair. Our lesson here is that there are a lot of ways to succeed in life. But Starfleet would rather the holoDoc is Bashir, not Zimmerman, and that tells us something.

Tossed in is painfully drawn out B-story about Rom working up the courage to admit to Leeta that he likes her. This was fine, if a bit juvenile and clichéd, and steered by an arbitrary deadline when Leeta thinks she might take a gig back on Dr. Z’s station. The thread is mostly for laffs and even though Rom has an extensively heroic track record at this point, he still kind of acts like an idiot. But in the end they get together and we can be happy even if it’s mostly gross.

Favorite gag: O’Brien gushes about Julian when interviewed by Dr. Z, then requests that none of it actually gets back to Bashir. Also enjoyed Morn’s vacant shrug as his interview response.

Morn watch: The ever-debonair one kisses Leeta when he wins at dabo. Good thing Rom made his move in this episode. Even though Dr. Z spends his off-duty time on DS9 trying to woo Leeta, Morn is the real charmer.

Overall: 4 out of 5.

S5E17, “A Simple Investigation” (story: René Echevarria)

With this episode I think the “O’Brien must suffer” trope may have lost its cruelty title to “Odo must have his heart broken.” Just a few episodes ago Odo got attached to a baby blob, then it died. (Even if it did make him a changeling.) He’s had hologram friends taken from him, Kira friendzoning him, whatever the Lwaxana thing was all about. Now: a real, actual girlfriend. Of course it’s Odo so we know something’s gonna go sideways. The situation is weird enough, since he’s actively investigating a crime surrounding her and isn’t especially sure who she is or how she’s involved. So we’re all pretty sure getting involved with her is going to end with Odo by himself, staring forlornly out a window somewhere.

The story itself feels like a familiar police procedural or mystery about people caught up in various intrigues, but it’s not clear who is on whose side, and with some SF elements (brain wipes and secret identities unknown even to the people involved) to give it some flair. It’s well-crafted, Odo manages to unravel it all with enough twists and turns to keep it interesting. Memory Alpha tells me it’s inspired by an old crime movie, and that sounds about right, to the point of the dame involved being real big trouble.

A minor B-story floats around in the background about the crew’s holodeck roleplaying is starting to get stale for some of the participants. O’Brien, in particular, is tired of being the bad guy Falcon. As a longtime holodeck story hater, this gives me hope they aren’t going to try to wring out any more of them.

Odo’s biology corner: Odo doesn’t have a heart. But he can have sex! And somehow, he’s a natural. This is a big breakthrough for him, even if his time with Arissa ends up being short and sweet when we learn that she’s had a memory wipe and won’t be the same person, or even remember him, once it’s restored. I’m sure we’ve all had relationships we’d like to erase from the other person’s memory, if not our own. But this isn’t one of them, and Odo is again crushed. There’s a quote from Ira Steven Behr in MA: “I think we do crappy romances. But in terms of romantic shows, this wasn’t a bad one.” That’s probably true, there have been some unearned weird ones (“Meridian” comes immediately to mind) but I thought this one never felt weird, even if it does still happen pretty dang fast.

Overall: Without getting into the intricacies of the plot–which is enjoyable enough as a standalone–the main takeaway here is that Odo managed to lose his virginity, and is probably emotionally ready to have an adult relationship, but it’s not happening for him just yet. Let the forlorn window staring-out commence. 4 out of 5.

S5E18, “Business as Usual” (story: Bradley Thompson & David Weddle)

We’ve had a few episodes so far that tried to answer the question: “What won’t Quark do for money?” The answer always ends up being: Nothing. That is, until he gets into some trouble, or his irritating conscience gets the better of him, then he usually ends up doing the right thing. (Or sorta just gets away with it.) “Business as Usual” is more of the same. This time Quark has an opportunity to become an arms dealer. The stark math of X million people will die but you’ll make Y bars of latinum doesn’t really affect Quark, because he’s a Ferengi, and a thorough scoundrel when it suits him. But Dax hates him for it, and when it comes down to it cowardice is is main motivation, so that eventually turns him in the right direction.

The idea here is a good one, but in execution, I found it a little dull. Hagath the weapons kingpin is an uninspired gangster trope, wavering wildly between generosity and threatening Quark to make him more money or he’d end him. I’m writing this a week or so later and all the scenes of Hagath menacing Quark have blended together. There’s also a convenient amount of padding to keep the obviously illegal arms dealing going. Fear keeps pushing Quark into upping the stakes until guilt overrides profit motive and he schemes a way out of it. Maybe I was just sleepy but I barely made it to the end.

The B story is cute but never really earns more than a sensible chuckle. O’Brien finds that he can’t put his new baby son down or he’ll start crying, so he ends up toting him all over the station: to work, to the bar. I feel like I remember a Bugs Bunny episode with this exact plot. There’s a nice Worf-O’Brien fatherhood bonding moment at the end, at least.

Overall: Not a bad episode, but not really anything new here either. In the end, it really was business as ssual. I might have given them another point if it ended it with someone saying that as they all chuckled, but since they didn’t, 3 out of 5.

S5E19, “Ties of Blood and Water” (story: Edmund Newton & Robbin L. Slocum)

I always wonder why they don’t mine the decades of published SF stories out in the world. Maybe they already have plenty of originals to choose from. Or it’s just a practical/legal problem getting rights. Or it just gets too gnarly to adapt them into DS9, even with its large extended cast and larger setting (that would be, uh, the universe). Sometimes I do think they get a story that’s interesting on its own but isn’t a great fit into the series, but they shoehorn it in there anyway. This might be one.

I bring it up because I thought the premise was a good one: an enemy agent has a terminal condition and before he is called to the great gig in the sky he wants to spill the beans on the boss of the new government that he hates. Intriguing premise. Does this happen in real life? Why not? Maybe if the agent had any family at all and he feared retribution. But otherwise, I dunno. As is made clear by the numerous times Ghemor says so, he has no family. The closest thing he has is Kira, whom he pretended was his daughter once back in “Second Skin” and apparently took it awfully literally. As I say, I like the concept here, but is supergluing it onto the Kira-Ghemor relationship earned at all? I feel like Kira left things to the effect of: “Boy I’m glad I’m not a Cardassian. No offense, nice old man who pretended to be my father. Have a good one.” But Ghemor was pretty serious about that bracelet he gave her, it seems. And they are now trying to tell us that these two have really bonded at some point, which is a necessary condition for him to care enough about her to do this.

Dukat is mad about this happening of course but whatever. He shows up with a Jem’Hadar battle cruiser to threaten DS9 but I guess no one really buys it because after a suspenseful commercial break he has no leverage and ends up mostly just pestering Sisko about it. He even has a dirty scheme to expose Ghemor’s shady past but it doesn’t really stick. I don’t know that ineffective scheming makes for especially effective viewing.

Probably what saves this one from being entirely ill-fitting schmaltz is the tie-in to Kira’s past, which neatly illustrates how she experienced her father’s death, and what drives her in dealing with Ghemor. I’m still not sure I buy that she should feel this close to him, but at least I can understand how she might.

Overall: I did like the episode, and it’s an important one for Kira, but I felt like I spent too much time wondering if it made sense. Let’s land on 3 out of 5.

S5E12, “The Begotten” (story: René Echevarria)

Odo gets two new experiences. One, in the continuing story of him learning that being a solid sorta sucks, he gets to experience back pain. But this is a minor incident which leads to the more significant one for him, raising a baby changeling. “Raising” in the changeling sense isn’t about teaching them not to stick their fingers in outlets or micromanaging screen time, it is about teaching the young blob how to become other stuff. We are repeatedly informed that without constant love and electrical prodding, they will just sit there inertly for an indefinite period. We are not told how changelings ever managed to evolve with this strategy. My guess is that they generally do not find themselves outside of their homeworld and the great blob ocean, where they’d pick up these lessons naturally.

“The Begotten” also serves as a platform to fill in Odo’s background with Dr. Mora. Odo has a lot of lingering anger about how his foster dad nurtured him into maturity. He thought he was treated as a science experiment and wants a better life for his adopted progeny. But no amount of supportive cooing or differently-shaped glass containers is going to motivate it. In the end I think both Odo and Dr. Mora win. They each compromise a bit to find the right balance that will get the changeling moving. Their relationship evolves into something decidedly less hostile as Odo learns that Dr. Mora cared about him just as much as he cares about the new changeling.

There are really two endings here to parallel the two beginnings. One is the gut punch of the young changeling’s mortal illness, discovered just as Odo and Mora were really getting on solid footing (er, liquid, uh, still footing?) with it, and with each other. This was just brutal. I think I wanted Odo to make this emotional connection so badly. The show keeps almost letting the poor guy finally find one, then yanking it away. This is probably the more realistic ending. But then what ends up happening is that the dying changeling merges with Odo, restoring his transmogrifying powers and curing him of a bad back forever. Honestly, I don’t know about it. Pretty damn convenient. He’s still sad about losing the changeling of course, but he’s back to normal and has established a connection with Dr. Mora, so it’s at least hopefully a net zero for him.

Odo’s story is counterbalanced by Kira having the O’Briens’ baby. We get to watch a very long and rigidly ritualistic Bajoran birth ritual where I surmise the objective is to bore the baby into attempting an escape from its mother. This thread is played for laffs mostly. O’Brien, as dad, and Shakaar, as boyfriend, squabble over their roles in the ritual, and disrupt Kira enough that she has to make a few attempts at it. This part is fine, pretty funny, puts an end to the continually weird solution to Nana Visitor’s pregnancy, and does its job in giving us occasional breaks from the Odo story. It also dovetails well with the Odo story by giving Kira a chance to openly admit sadness about having to give up the baby. Hopefully she and Odo could go make each other some raktajinos and watch some movies or go through crime reports together for a while.

Overall: Very emotional. The deep dramas don’t always totally work in DS9 but this one did. Sniffle. 4 out of 5.

S5E13, “For the Uniform” (story: Peter Allan Fields)

Our traitorous Eddington is back. Last time we saw him he turned Maquis and betrayed his crew. Now we find him evolved into some sort of super villain and tactical mastermind, playing chess while the Federation locks their keys in the car on the way to the checkers tournament.

I definitely enjoyed this absurd episode but also felt like they were really, really asking a lot of the audience. It wanted to be a lot of things without entirely earning them:

• Before, Eddington was well-respected occasional employee of the month Starfleet Commander Eddington. Now he’s a Bond Villain. Or like, his anger has made him powerful. I dunno. It feels like a stretch. He outwits Sisko & crew multiple times before they force him into a trap, which they can only do when they fight dirty.
• Before, Sisko was even-tempered and honorable. Now he’s whaling on a punching bag vowing revenge. Now he’s chemical-bombing a whole planet.
• Sisko also pulls another I BELIEVE IN THIS SHIP thing and endangers everyone, which provides lots of convenient story outs when things don’t work just to provide some arbitrary plot obstacles. Though I did kind of like the Nog relaying orders thing for some reason. (I just read that it was meant to be a submarine movie homage, which is probably why it felt familiar. Too bad Riker wasn’t around for some order belaying.)
• I appreciated the Les Misérables homage (not that I can profess to know much about the story, but any classic lit shout out is probably a good thing). But maybe it’s a little on the nose to have Eddington wafting in on their new full body communications kiosk thing and insisting on calling Sisko “Jayvert.” And Sisko letting him do it! K and I were joking about how the funniest thing Sisko could have done when Eddington sent him the book was to just not care about it at all. I guess he blew it early by saying he read it, but he could have still salvaged it by saying he didn’t remember it or just didn’t respond to the “Jayvert” thing. This would have driven Eddington nuts. He wanted this encounter to be Les Misérables so much! Sisko’s all “Who is this ‘Jayvert’? Oh, yeah, that book you like…” Would’ve totally disarmed him.

I’m also not sure I really bought the ending. I think I understood that Sisko poisoned the Maquis world in a way that affects them, but not Cardassians, opposite of what Eddington does, so they just trade planets. Oh, OK, that’s not a problem….I mean of course it is, that is ridiculous. I can’t see how Starfleet would be good with this. One can only imagine the logistics of planet trading.

Random note: Memory Alpha says the holo-communicator thing was an idea the producers had to avoid too much of people talking on screens in an episode like this, but they agreed it came across as silly and weird, and gave them plenty of extra production headaches, so we’ll only see it one more time. I’ll actually maybe miss Sisko’s dramatic whirling his chair around to talk to holo-Eddington.

Overall: Despite my mostly picking at its flaws, in the end it was pretty dang enjoyable. Let’s go 4 out of 5.

S5E14/15, “In Purgatory’s Shadow/By Inferno’s Light” (story: Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe)

I feel like we’ve been on a bad streak with the double episodes? I could look back, or, nah, it seems true enough. Either a little too thin to spread over two episodes, or a pretty good setup in the first half leading to a big battle that ends up being not that interesting. But whew, a lot happened in this pair.

–Dukat has spent his recent free time not doing rogue battle with Klingons, but secretly negotiating a Cardassian alliance with the Dominion

This is the big one. I think we have to accept a bit of fiction, that Dukat, largely on the outs with Cardassia, manages to swing this. But he’s probably got it in him. Oy, what a scoundrel. So much for my long-running theory that he was going to pivot to a genuine good guy. He’s been playing nice for a while now, such that he can wander onto DS9 without anyone really caring, and for no more reason than he needs a little work done on his ship. Now this. But anyway, this is a very bad thing. It does bring the Klingons and Romulans into a Federation alliance. So in a way, this is a heartwarming episode of friendship!

–Dukat’s daughter has developed a crush on Garak

A high-probability way to attract a mate is to be the only member of your mutual race in the quadrant. But it leads to Ziyal refusing to go with Dukat when war is about to break out. So he abandons her for his big traitor announcement. I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of this. This is bound to get messy later. He’s going to end up in a situation where he can do some damage to DS9 or something, and he’ll hesitate because she’s aboard. Or maybe not, I don’t know. He’s not a good dude.

–Changeling spy Julian!

He makes sandwiches. He plays darts. He’s doing doctor stuff. Who would suspect? We were a little mystified how he could have pulled off such a perfect impersonation. Maybe the changeling observed him for several months until he had it down really well. But still, we are led to believe real Julian has been out of commission for some weeks. It’s unclear exactly how long, but Memory Alpha points out that  real Julian is still wearing the old uniform. So we’ve had at least 4 shows now with imposter Julian, including “Rapture”—where he did brain surgery on Sisko! Ben might want to go in for a follow-up. Anyway if that wasn’t enough to sell everyone on his hidden identity, after it’s clear there was a saboteur he’s the one that suggests they do blood tests and phaser sweeps to root out the intruder. Only the tests never happen. I know everyone got busy but basically he just slacks off at work and his procrastination conceals his identity.

–Enebran Tain is alive! Also he’s Garak’s dad!

OK, sure. It does fill in a lot of weird gaps in Garak’s inexplicable loyalty.

Less important to the overall plot notes:

• Like many SF writers before them, the DS9 producers did not anticipate the cloud, nor the related decline of physical media. Odo has a bunch of books…on a bunch of PADDs. Worf has a bunch of Klingon operas…on a bunch of data chains. In particular, Worf doesn’t want this misplaced by (the evidently completely irresponsible) Dax. He can’t back them up? Make copies?
• Sisko’s habit of sometimes making absurd demands on his staff hasn’t gone away (we thought maybe he got cured of that back in “Shattered Mirror” but guess not). When they are decoded the mystery message, he just barks at them that he wants it NOW. Yelling won’t help them decode it faster, Ben.
• Worf beats up a whole lotta Jem’Hadar guards. For a human, the daily beatings would be a brutal trial. For a Klingon, another day at the office.
• What’s with the alien in their prison cell wearing an Leia’s bounty hunter mask from Return of the Jedi? You’re telling me on a DS9 shoot no one noticed it was a Star Wars prop? Somewhere on the internet there’s a crossover theory about this. (Please don’t find it for me I don’t actually care.)

Overall: 5 out of 5. One of the more successful double-EPs I think. Hugely scoped, but well-paced and covering a lot of ground. And just plain good writing for the most part. Behr and Wolfe have gotten really good.

S5E9, “The Ascent” (story: Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe)

Maybe the least SF and the most DS9 episode yet. Very little plot, all talking, and pretty much just about few of the characters. And like other DS9s in this genre, really good.

By now we are just accepting the convenient fiction of Odo’s legal pursuit of Quark, understanding it will take whatever direction it requires to accommodate the plot. The series has managed to invent its own trope at this point, that Odo is attempting to build a lengthy case on Quark, but Quark is too clever to have anything pinned on him. But of course neither of those are true. Odo has cornered Quark on maybe a dozen unambiguous felonies, but never actually follows through on prosecuting him. Quark has had several chances to take Odo down or otherwise make his life extra miserable, and he always holds back. We have this thing with our cats where one of them will pick up a new habit that’s sort of annoying at first, but then becomes routine, and eventually sort of lovable. A lot of mornings Artie is waiting outside the bathroom door when I get out of the shower. Ultimately he’s there to get in some begging for his morning treats, but while he’s at it he’ll demand a bunch of petting and attention. He’ll bat at my hands, walk between my legs, wail pitifully. If I take a step toward the door he’ll rush in front of me to get down the hall first, only to realize I’m not done yet and come back for more harassment. Some days I can’t get away from him and it’s exasperating. But then other mornings he’s not at the bathroom door at all. And I’m like, “Well, where is he?”

Similarly, Odo and Quark need each other. Quark’s ongoing minor trade violations give Odo something to stake out when nothing more serious is happening, and Odo’s stiff omnipresence gives Quark someone to insult (especially since Rom got himself together). But they wouldn’t have it any other way. Sometimes Odo needs someone to do the dirty work, and Quark needs to be in a situation where he knows precisely what he can get away with.

I’m not certain this has been the case from day one, but Behr & Wolfe have become outstanding dialogue writers. This is a Quark & Odo showcase of loving hatred. There’s some sort of contrived plot here about Odo arresting Quark and very slowly transporting him to authorities, but it turns out that Odo’s just trying to bore Quark into a confession because he’s got no hard evidence. Just as that revelation surfaces, their ship goes down on the coldest warm-looking planet in the galaxy, and they get to suffer together a while because the ship is damaged in exactly such a way that necessitates a long survival trek. Huge shrug on all that, but some totally brilliant conversational writing throughout.

We need about ten minutes more show, so meanwhile back on DS9, Nog has been assigned back to the station for field studies. Jake seriously needs to not live with his dad anymore and Nog needs quarters, so they room together, and some low-level hijinks ensue. Nog has become a highly polished Starfleet cadet with a rigid schedule of exercise and chores. Jake is a slovenly artist living off his dad. He is supposed to be writing but is mostly idling his days away playing PADD games. They soon get mad at each other and decide it won’t work, but Sisko and Rom agree the boys need each other to balance out their worst tendencies and force them to stick it out. Then they resolve to not be mad at each other. Well then.

Overall: Probably both threads needed a little more going on, but both are entertaining and do something meaningful, so largely a successful episode. 4 out of 5.

S5E10, “Rapture” (story: LJ Strom)

New uniform time! Like my own closet, they are mostly grey and black with a little splash of color. They also look like they have thick, warm layers, which, as the cursed North Carolina summer has extended itself most discourteously into October, make me sweaty just looking at them.

While wearing these new uniforms, an episode takes place. It is about Sisko getting obsessed with a statue and some symbols. They turn out to point the way to a lost Bajoran city. Sisko keeps insisting he’s not the Emissary, but honestly he walks right into this stuff. It’s a busy one for him because his girlfriend also gets out of jail. She is welcomed home by Ben and Jake both. I guess they forgave her.

Her return sets up higher stakes for Sisko’s increasingly nasty Bajoran Orb migraines. The more visions he receives, the worse they get. Eventually Jake and Kasidy both are worried, and Julian wants to do some brain surgery. Brain surgery is healthy for brains but not for visions, as it will oh-so-ironically damage the receptors he needs for visions. Here’s the dramatic crux of the episode, as Sisko tries to balance his obsession with the visions (and loads of peer pressure from the always-gently-encouraging-others-to-kill-themselves Kai Winn) and not wanting his brain to melt. He slips into unconsciousness, so the decision falls to Jake. Well, there’s no decision between his Dad and the understated snottiness of Winn.

So my main qualm with this one is that the ultimate decision is no decision at all. The Bajorans want his visions, but they are killing him. Listen, they aren’t getting the visions either way, right? What am I missing? Either he gets brain surgery, and no visions. Or he dies, which also precludes visions. So that’s that. I think maybe they are going for yet another way that the prophets are tantalizingly almost proven to be something more than a spooky religion, but now, once again, we’ll never know. I’m pretty much over that thread of the show (e.g., “Destiny” and “Accession“), but I did like the Kasidy/Jake/Ben dynamics, and that probably saves this one from getting completely hokey.

Random note: Sisko yanks a data chain right out of the computer without ejecting it first.

Overall: 3 out of 5.

S5E11, “The Darkness and the Light” (story: Bryan Fuller)

I don’t think I liked this one especially much. I can concede it has some excellent scenes, and is generally a very good, dark, murder mystery episode that is well made and will appeal to a lot of viewers, especially genre fans. But I didn’t especially like watching it. I’m not interested in serial killer stories, which this emulates, or disturbing violence, which this contains. That is, without a larger lesson or additional themes, but this is a little weak on that front I think.

Beyond just not wanting to watch a bunch of people get murdered, I don’t think this story has much meaning until the last ten minutes, when we learn it’s all been Prin’s long-planned revenge plot. Who’s Prin? Exactly. We never heard of this guy. He was the innocent bystander victim of an wartime assassination bombing by Kira et. al. of Yet Another Horrible Cardassian Viceroy type. That guy deserved what he got but Prin lost his whole family and was disfigured. We are going to have sympathy for him on this. War sucks, and makes people do terrible things, for sure. This is something to dwell on—but we are up against the end of the show here and obviously he’s gone crazy in the interim years and now we just want Kira to escape. Oh good she did. Episode over!

The prior 40 minutes kind of want to be horror, kind of want to be a police procedural. But there are flaws: the suspect list comes out of nowhere, and I’m not sure why Kira has become Prin’s focus of torment anyway when he just knocks off all the other people more casually. They were all in the same cohort. I’m not sure there’s an explanation other than “because Kira is the DS9 character.” I don’t want to get picky really, just that there are so, so many murder stories like this in the world. They all need to be clever in their own way. If the lesson here is: be respectful of innocents during wartime, I don’t think they need to go on killing sprees later to get that across.

Overall: I think it’s a 3 out of 5 for me though YMMV.