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.

Mini-Trek hiatus between seasons while we watched the new season of Humans. Resuming transmission…

S5E1, “Apocalypse Rising” (story: Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe)

Conceptually a way to resolve Odo’s revelation from the end of season 4 that Gowron is a secret changeling agent, but in practice, an excuse to get some of the regulars into Klingon makeup. I am good with that.

We get a pretty fun setup: For a few brave souls temporarily Bashir’d into having a Klingon appearance, there will be an opportunity to get close to Gowron. They must deploy some polaron emitters or some space crap that will cause a changeling to spontaneously lose its form and go blobby. He’ll be protected by his personal guard, on a Klingon planet, and they can only fire the emitters a single time or risk dowsing everyone with radiation poisoning. Sounds like a plan.

How it is a really good episode: About a million funny Klingon gags. O’Brien and Odo are awful at being Klingons and it’s quite delightful. Sisko is loving it and it’s even better. Our kind, thoughtful Ben utterly enjoys randomly whaling on his temporary fellow Klingons to build camaraderie. I think my appreciation for Michael Dorn also leveled up. Seeing three actors unaccustomed to being Klingons, and one really comfortable with it, actually accomplishes the mental trick of making me think: “Everyone act like Worf! He’s a real Klingon and just follow his lead.” But of course, he isn’t, he is also an actor playing a Klingon, instead of an actor playing a human playing a Klingon.

How it isn’t so good: The whole polaron emitter thing is painfully contrived, and then on top of it just becomes a stupid red herring. It’s staged poorly on top of that. They have a brilliant chance to fire the bloody things and they don’t, because, I guess Gowron’s speech is so rousing or something. But really they don’t just to pad out things long enough to where they’ll get caught and seemingly blow the whole mission.

But: I did like the mini-twist ending where we learn there is indeed a changeling infiltrating the ranks of Klingon leadership. But it ain’t Gowron, it’s Martok (I forgot exactly where we’d seen him but it was back in “The Way of the Warrior“). Odo was misled by the changelings into thinking it was Gowron, because they hoped the Federation would get rid of him, and clear the way for Martok to take over. But Odo’s an experienced security chief who deals with Quark on a daily basis, so he knows lies when he hears them, and sniffs it out.

Overall: Quite a good one, a lot of fun and moves things forward by resolving the Klingon issue so we can concentrate on the Dominion. I mean, the universe is complicated enough. 4 out of 5.

S5E2, “The Ship” (story: Pam Wigginton & Rick Cason)

Really more of a TOS filler episode than a DS9:

1. Straightforward plot, with the captain alternating between tedious bartering with the alien antagonist and nagging at his crew to solve all the problems.
2. Very harsh conditions reminiscent of a war movie.
3. Chummy guest star whose imminent death is hopelessly telegraphed.

I’ve talked plenty about TOS episodes so I think I’ll keep this one short. It has its moments, but a lot of it isn’t super effective, and we don’t want Kiké to die, but we know the poor guy is going to, only after hanging on just long enough to fill out the 45 minutes. They do capture a Jem’Hadar ship, and actually make a point to honor their dead crewmembers for a change. And I liked the bit at the end where Worf sits with O’Brien as part of the Klingon ceremony to sit with the dead to protect them from predators during the journey to Sto-vo-kor.

Overall: 3 out of 5.

S5E3, “Looking for par’Mach in All the Wrong Places” (story: Ronald D. Moore)

Now this is some good Trek. A little Klingon/Ferengi relations, a little Cyrano de Bergerac. Great story, lots of excellent character and dialogue touches, and really funny. Actually it’s two layers deep on the Cyrano stuff. Worf is lovestruck by Grilka (Quark’s wife–briefly–from “House of Quark“), but when he’s told that she is not interested in him because of his family’s current reputation, he finds himself helping Quark, so he can at least woo her by proxy. But Dax, in turn, is helping Worf, because, as becomes obvious to everyone but Worf, she’s become similarly interested in him.

It all worked great. Really enjoyed how this one developed: Quark being not slimy, Worf actually being much better at impressing Klingon women than he thinks, and Dax, the lone voice of sanity, holding the whole scheme together. Fantastic ending when she declares her intentions towards Worf, and everyone compares their post-coital injuries in the infirmary.

There’s a B story here too, though I haven’t been discussing the ongoing Kira pregnancy thread much. The stories they’re trying to wring out of it have felt contrived and awkward to me. Memory Alpha tells me that Ronald D. Moore really liked the B-story here, about O’Brien and Kira becoming a little attracted to each other, but, I dunno. Not that I really understand how I would feel towards a woman who wound up carrying my offspring when my pregnant wife was injured in a spaceship accident, having not happened to have found myself in that particular situation, but I’m not sure where the lovey feelings come from. There’s been no hint of it at all. Odo kinda says it all when he wonders when Kira even started calling him “Miles.” As far as we know, he helped her out of the tub once and has given her foot massages. So we’re beyond the professional relationship at this point, anyway, but not sure if this was necessary.

Morn watch: With only a whispered “I will apologize for this at a later time,” Morn finds himself hurled out of his barstool by Worf when he tries to show off for Grilka. Worf later admits to having little idea how to court a Klingon woman, but one wonders how tossing poor Morn could be construed as impressive, other than the required physical strength necessary to dislodge him.

Overall: A perfect Trek episode, since I am ignoring the O’Brien/Kira story. 5 out of 5.

S5E4, “Nor the Battle to the Strong” (story: Bruce R. Parker)

OK, enough fun. War drama time.

I think this one works fine, but maybe not exactly how it’s envisioned. It’s supposed to be a story about Jake getting exposed to some of the Federation’s harsher realities, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since aspiring writers probably ought to experience a bit more in their lives than loitering on the promenade. We catch up with him as he’s failing to get an article written about Julian, because mostly Julian just wants to talk about exciting new lab procedures, and Jake doesn’t have the interviewing chops to steer him onto any better stories. It’s so boring that he encourages Julian to heed a medical distress call to a nearby battle front, despite Julian’s understandable concerns about dragging his commanding officer’s son into a war zone.

The violent, messy situation they arrive at ultimately makes this episode memorable. Despite the constraints of making a gripping war drama out of a 45-minute PG sci-fi show, they more or less pull it off. Like Jake, us viewers spend all our time in the climate controlled environs of the station while horrible wars are being fought in any number of distant outposts, of which we are only occasionally reminded. It’s a shocking contrast to suddenly find ourselves in a field hospital tending to war wounded. I thought the exhausting plight of the doctors at the front was well done. Maybe they should have a whole TV series about that, seems like a bountiful premise.

Unfortunately I’m not sure Cirroc Lofton really has the range for this one, so a lot of his scenes feel rather flat or forced. It’s easy to understand a kid getting scared and screwing up when bombs are dropping all around him or people are dying in front of him, so I think the context and story worked well, as does Jake’s maturation as a person (and the always well-done Ben-Jake relationship), even if the principal performance is weaker.

That Guy! note: Enjoyed the blue alien doctor being played by Mark Holton, the That Guy! who you may know as Pee-wee’s nemesis in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, “It’s Enrico Pallazzo!” guy from The Naked Gun, or Chubb the fat basketball player from Teen Wolf. Extremely solid That Guy!

Overall: 4 out of 5. Wiiiiiiiin….in the end!

S4E22, “For the Cause” (story: Mark Gehred-O’Connell)

Our cat Bea is a born TV companion. She spends 23 hours a day on or near the couch and gets excited when we watch TV so she can sit with us. Naturally we joke that she enjoys TV specifically, to the point of caring about shows, characters, plots, etc., and not just the familial companionship. Specifically we maintain some running jokes about her favorite characters. The gag here is that we have decided she will latch on to the worst possible choice. Not, like, the antagonist or an extra or something, but the most boring regular, which is the funnier choice. When we were watching The X-Files we decided her favorite character was neither Mulder nor Scully. Some contrarians probably go for Smoking Man or the Lone Gunmen. Bea went with Assistant Director Skinner. Literally no one would ever choose Skinner. Skinner is clearly the dumbest, funniest choice. So “Who is Bea’s favorite?” is really just a proxy for asking what would be the worst choice for a favorite character. Which brings us around to DS9, and my nominee: Eddington. I had recently suggested him as Bea’s favorite, and we were starting to believe the fiction. Little did we know that “For the Cause” was going to be Eddington’s traitor episode.

I believed in you, Eddington, and his betrayal was a jarring surprise. But it’s a good choice for a character to turn Maquis. He’s been hanging around for a while without really having any distinguishing characteristics whatsoever, so I think it was time for him to evolve or die. He manages to outwit the whole crew, steal some valuable cargo, accurately compare Federation imperialists to the villainous Borg, and give Sisko a revenge motive. I’ll be curious to see if he comes around again.

It was not a good day for Sisko at all, as it turns out. Kasidy Yates is discovered to be smuggling goods to the Maquis. So we’ve been obsessing over the Klingon resurgence and the Jem’Hadar and Changelings and Cardassians but also the Maquis are a big problem that we forgot about. So let’s have ’em turn two minor characters in one episode. Man. Sometimes I miss TNG’s relative utopia. The real-world DS9 universe sucks. I regularly get depressed over the shitty state of politics and the history of people being shitty to each other, and the wider universe just has MORE PEOPLE. Ugh, if you need me I’ll be in the Holosuite until October or so.

Well anyway I don’t really know what’s going to come from all this. With our spare Jennifer killed off, and now Kasidy arrested and our beloved Eddington out of the way, it feels like we’re settling all family business, clearing the decks of minor characters they’ve run out of enthusiasm for, in preparation for some season ending big story. We’ll see.

Overall: It’s kind of a bummer in the end, but this is a tight, solid episode that’s going to reverberate for a while. 5 out of 5.

S4E23, “To the Death” (story: Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe)

The early portrayal of the Jem’Hadar was that they were remorseless, unstoppable killing machines. Bred for war and fighting, it was all they ever would or could know. Welp, now we’ve got another episode (after “Hippocratic Oath“) where they are given some extra dimension. It turns out that if a group of them isn’t precisely the right sort of remorseless, unstoppable killing machines, others will hunt them down and remorselessly kill them. This stems from some rudimentary culture they’ve managed to develop while doing all the killing. It’s similar to Klingon battle-focused culture, but different, and “To the Death” is about how it’s different.

It’s worth watching to get all the specifics here, and I’m trying to cover five episodes in this post so I won’t get into everything, but I thought it was well done. Klingons come across as very formal and honorable. If they’re going to fight you, they’ll have a reason. Humans are pretty wimpy, but we already knew that (other than whenever they have to actually fight Klingons they do absurdly well). Jem’Hadar are just sharks. Kill everything. Their battle cry is, “I am First Omet’iklan, and I am dead. As of this moment, we are all dead. We go into battle to reclaim our lives. This we do gladly, for we are Jem’Hadar. Remember, victory is life.” Only a few exceptional individuals that manage to make it to 20 and seem so exhausted they pretty much seem like they wish they were dead. Many other terrifying JH rules of life are covered here too. Maybe humans ain’t so bad, by comparison.

The time not devoted to brief discussions of the incredibly violent and bleak Jem’Hadar way of life is reserved exclusively for melees. Lots of murders here, but don’t worry, only JH and some redshirts. Enjoy!

Some notes:

• Worf’s drink of choice is an extra large prune juice.
• I greatly enjoyed Worf’s threatening stare at Julian, who had taken his favorite seat.
• Shout out to Jeffrey Combs, who has now played at least three different characters on the series. He’ll be back as Brunt in just two episodes. Once in a while they go back to the well on certain performers. For example, the woman who flirts with Odo in the upcoming “Broken Link” was in a TNG episode. I would never remember this without the internet exhaustively cataloging all of this. So why shouldn’t they bring people back? Lots of episodes, lots of guest stars. With Jeffrey Combs it’s almost like a point of pride that they can have him play tons of roles in near-adjacent episodes. I guess they just have him on retainer or something.
• It’s weird to even mention the absurdity of high ranking officers going on dangerous away missions at this point, but I have to reiterate how dumb it is for O’Brien to be walking into a Jem’Hadar brawl. He is way too specialized as an engineer to be put into a position where he has to write sad “just in case I die” messages to his family before he beams out. He’s older than me and pudgy. Let the poor guy stay on the ship. That’s why we bloody have redshirts.

Overall: A bleak and violent one, though it does cover a lot of ground for the Jem’Hadar. 3 out of 5.

S4E24, “The Quickening” (story: Naren Shankar)

Other than maybe “Everything about the universal translator,” perhaps Trek’s Most Ludicrous Presupposition is “Nearly all races are humanoid and can interbreed.” A corollary might be “Human doctors have a prayer of curing alien diseases.” If every race is ultimately sort of the same, rules for medicine would apply universally. I guess that gives Bashir some reason to get all depressed that he can’t cure a wildly complex alien disease (1) in a few days, (2) with no other medical personnel, (3) using whatever he happened to pack in his away kit.

But really this episode is about hubris. It also further trashes the established Trek utopia where everything works and the Federation has the answers. This is ultimately a sad story where there’s a lot of failure before a final conciliatory victory. It pushes Bashir in an interesting direction: he’s started as a hotshot young doctor, then matured into a competent and respected crewmember. Along the way he gained some great friends and a prestigious medical award nomination. He needs to be tamped back down once in a while or he’d risk becoming a comic book character, and this does the trick.

n.b. It’s just a quick couple of gags at the beginning, but I enjoyed Quark’s tampering with the replicators for advertising. Compared with where the story actually went, it feels all the more crass.

Overall: A sad one, but effective. [Pours a bit of scotch into his Quark tumbler as consolation.] 4 out of 5.

S4E25, “Body Parts” (story: Louis P. DeSantis & Robert J. Bolivar)

We were due for a good ridiculous Ferengi story. Quark is diagnosed with a rare disease and thinks he has six days to live. Where humans would use such a crisis to tell family and friends they love them, rush to visit somewhere special, absolutely go to town on cake and liquor etc., Ferengi spend their precious remaining days settling business affairs. Basically it’s time to cash out—pay off debts, sell possessions, set up family. Quark has a ridiculous amount of debt and his only way out is to sell parcels of his desiccated corpse on the Ferengi Futures Exchange. (I seem to remember some reference to Ferengi collecting bits of famous dead people in this way. Wasn’t there a minor gag about Quark selling fraudulent chunks of someone who turned out not to be dead?)

“Body Parts” serves as a platform for Quark to wail about his sorry position in Ferengi society. Not unlike Worf, he has found a role among the Federation, and is no longer viewed as a “true” member of his native race. He may be respected (-ish) on DS9 but other Ferengi think of him as something of a joke, unable to succeed back home. He’s grouchy and arrogant as a rule but his usual braggadocio is stripped away here and we learn that he’s really pretty depressed about his position. I sorta did feel sorry for him, but for the most part it’s easier to appreciate Rom’s attitude. Rom could care less what Ferengi think of him if he’s doing what he loves.

Well anyway, Quark is relieved of his concerns when an angel investor bids a fortune for his future corpse. Then two twists: first, Quark learns he was mis-diagnosed and won’t be dying after all. But: his angel investor is the über-Ferengi Brunt, who intends to collect his goods regardless. You’d think Ferengi contracts about selling dead guys would stipulate that the guys are actually dead first, but I guess not because Quark can’t get out of it without breaking his contract—perhaps the most egregious Ferengi sin. Doing so would ostracize Quark from Ferengi culture completely. The remainder of the story concerns Quark going back and forth on whether he should fulfill the contract—a delighted Garak is more than willing to assassinate him—or live, as a pariah.

In the end this was a really fun one, with lots of solid Ferengi laffs. The scene where Garak appears to snap his neck, but it turns out to be just a test in the holosuit so Quark can decide if that’s how he wants to go, is brilliant. And in the end, a twisted It’s a Wonderful Life-style ending with his DS9 pals coming through to help him re-stock his depleted bar with ugly furnishings and terrible liquor. Aw.

Oh, also now Kira is carrying Keiko and Miles’ baby because their runabout got hit by an asteroid and Keiko was injured. Well, it’s a pretty creative way to integrate Nana Visitor’s pregnancy into the show without drastically altering Kira’s situation. In some ways SF show writers have things easy.

Morn watch: Morn’s jaw drops at Quark’s death announcement, but this amounts to it being open about an inch and a half, accompanied by his usual vacant stare.

Overall: A turning point in Quark’s life? TBD. 5 out of 5.

S4E26, “Broken Link” (story: George Brozak)

Mostly this is a full episode of Odo’s Biology Corner. Changelings don’t sneeze, barf, or get itchy like a human, they rather sort of melt. It is inconvenient, and gross. By extension, it’s somewhat embarrassing and a guy doesn’t really want his friends popping around to watch him ooze. Just let him ooze in peace. Well the oozing is so bad that it’s a threat to Odo’s life. His only choice is to locate the Founders and hope they can help him. So they spin up the Defiant and go poking around the Gamma Quadrant hoping to be noticed. Naturally they do, and the Female Changeling is right there waiting.

Let me pause to say that the Female Changeling really needs a name. In the context of the show it doesn’t matter (other than, like, showrunner dudes, name your female characters), we know who she is. But in writing about her is really awkward. I’m bequeathing her Nineve, which a random internet site just told me is a Scottish name for “lady of the lake.” She kinda is a lake, so going with that.

Anyway so Nineve says they made Odo sick (I don’t think they said how? I guess they have their ways—actually I just saw on Memory Alpha that they apparently did it through the Jem’Hadar in “To the Death”) as a ruse to get him to report home for judgement. He was the first Changeling to kill another, and it turns out they do not forgive….SNIFFFF….OR FORGET. He’s to throw himself into the great liquid Changeling orgy to get what’s coming to him. Which is: they make him fully a human. Now he can enjoy our sneezing and barfing. Also he’s hairy. He has to buy actual clothes. But they make him keep his Odo face as a reminder. IF ONLY Odo had ever figured out how to form his face.

Well, this’ll be interesting. Our blob is finally a real boy. An interesting twist, if a bit improbable/magical. Can some Changelings really nail all the organs, cellular structures, and evolutionary quirks of a human? Since when can they force it on others? Permanently? I have not forgotten that the whole thing is fiction, but I’m not sure it adds up even within this universe’s rules.

There’s another twist, too, which is that while Odo is in the lake he overhears some intel: our bug-eyed psychopath Gowron is [gasp] also a Changeling! This will also be interesting, and similarly, I felt like it came across as improbable and random. If the Changelings have gone to all this trouble to impersonate Gowron and stir up this scale of trouble, maybe they’d have done some due diligence to not let Odo overhear them? I do like that it answers the question of why Gowron suddenly lost his damn mind this season.

I also liked the bit here where Garak tries to launch a massive strike against the Changelings while everyone is distracted by all the shenanigans and goings-on. Worf sniffs it out and puts an end to it after a surprisingly spirited fistfight. But Garak had a point, wouldn’t have been the worst idea.

Overall: I like them giving us some plot twists to wrap up the season rather than the usual stretching out an episode into an unnecessary second hour just to have a cliffhanger. This changes some rules for season five and I’m looking forward to seeing where they go. But the execution and logic didn’t quite hang together for me. 4 out of 5.

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.

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.

S4E14, “Return to Grace” (story: Tom Benko)

Another Kira and Dukat Odd Couple episode. She’s a fiesty revolutionary torn between her duty and her people! He’s a brutal but mellowed former military prefect! Let’s have them do adventures. Awkward adventures. It further adds on to both the growing Klingon menace issue and “Indiscretion” when we found out Dukat had a spare kid, who was half-Bajoran. Here they are sent to an intelligence meeting about the Klingons but they get hung up fighting actual Klingons. It’s a strong episode for viewers who prefer action to meetings, but we can only imagine what might’ve been.

Here’s what I remember about it:

• When did Dukat start being creepy? I mean, beyond murderous creepy, like stalker-ish creepy. He is really laying the charm on Kira, but it mostly comes off as gross and weird. And she is in no way interested in it even a little. I don’t like this direction at all. Can’t he just develop a respect for her and slowly redeem himself like he’s done with Sisko?
• Dukat’s daughter Tora is surprisingly well-adjusted. She also wants to be an awesome warrior but is really more the sensitive type. Luckily Kira recognizes that she has no business hiding on a stolen Bird of Prey training to fire plasma rifles, and should be in school and hanging on DS9 with Jake listening to The Smiths.
• Dukat’s fate to roam around on his pirated Bird of Prey as some sort of rogue outlaw unit seems just about right. I’m interested to see where this goes.
• Should Kira join Dukat’s merry band of outlaws? Oh goodness no. She should definitely not give up her vital DS9 life to go rogue and spend additional years eking out a meager living, while also fending off Dukat’s clumsy innuendos.

Overall: Sets up some interesting future stuff, and not bad as a self-contained space laser story. But also a little weird and Dukat’s behavior is a decidedly mixed bag. 3 out of 5.

S4E15, “Sons of Mogh” (story: Ronald D. Moore)

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career in Starfleet. Choose a family of Russian foster parents. Choose a fucking big space station, choose phaser rifles, the Defiant, bat’leths and mek’leths. Choose good sparring partner, soft beds, and getting patched up in the infirmary. Choose your quarters. Choose your friends. Choose your uniform and matching collar pips. Choose a war sash in a range of metallic fabrics. Choose to go against Gowron, against the Klingon council. Choose life… But why would Worf want to do a thing like that? Kurn chose not to choose life. Kurn chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got honor?

I’m not really sure all the Klingon logic that brought on Kurn’s suicidal tendencies made sense. It might have seemed more right to me if Kurn wanted to kill Worf for (at least in his mind) dishonoring their family and abandoning the Klingon way of life. But it still made for an interesting, thoughtful episode to add to the Klingon canon. A pivotal one for Worf, for sure. He’s come to a point in his life where he needs to get back to being Klingon or fully accept being part of human society. Kurn, like most Klingons, thinks he’s lost his mind, so Worf has to endure yet another challenge to his human-dominated lifestyle, complete with soft beds and bureaucracy.

As long-term viewers of Worf stories we know Worf hates these things, but like a lot of things with Worf, it’s complicated. They come with the territory. There are no absolute rights or wrongs, just what is better in aggregate, which means: life in the Federation rather than back home, even if the beds are softer, problems are solved with laws rather than duels, and you can’t kill your brother just because he wants you to. Because in the end it remains the most honorable choice. Also it’s probably better to work for Sisko than for that bug-eyed clown Gowron.

Well well well what’s going on here: Now we know a bat’leth dual can be flirtatious. At least when it involves Dax and Worf, apparently. Don’t tell me we are developing a Dax love interest…?

Overall: Will go to Sto-vo-kor with other glorious Klingon episodes of the past. 5 out of 5.

S4E16, “Bar Association” (story: Barbara J. Lee & Jennifer A. Lee)

As as rule Trek isn’t that interested in the blue collar crowd. We hardly ever see even minor duty officers, much less the folks cleaning the promenade, installing Odo’s sound-proof flooring, or delivering case after case of bottom-shelf liquor to Quark’s. Trek has always portrayed the future as some sort of economic utopia where everyone is gainfully employed in just the right capacity. All domestic problems have been solved, so politics need only concern itself with foreign affairs. So I’ve always liked the rare episode where we dig down a bit into the class structure. “Bar Association” picks up some threads from “Family Business,” is a peek into employment under a Ferengi (unsurprisingly the galaxy’s worst employers), with a strong message about worker solidarity and fair treatment that warmed my strongly pro-union blood.

The no-longer hapless Rom leads an employee revolt when Quark cuts the entire staff’s salary rather than take any losses during the Bajoran Time of Cleansing. Unions are even less popular on Ferenginar than in modern American Republican platforms, and largely for the same reason: Ferengi don’t want to stop exploitation because they all dream of one day becoming the exploiters. But Rom proceeds anyway, and convinces the rest of the staff to join him. This riles up the brutal Ferengi Commerce Authority, who get wind of the strike and come to shut it down. Since Rom isn’t scared of them, they think beating up Quark will convince Rom to back down, only they are so, so wrong, because, wow what a bonus for pretty much everyone on DS9. Ironically it causes Quark to back off and give Rom’s union everything it wants.

I’m getting to like Rom quite a bit. He was nothing but bumbling the first few seasons but has matured so much that not only did I remove the “hapless” label, I’m going to further proceed to remove the “no-longer hapless” label so we can all move on. He successfully leads an employee revolt, he even manages to get Quark beat up in the process. Win-win! At some point in this episode, Kristen asked why he even worked for Quark, when we’ve now learned that he’s a skilled engineer. Our only answer was that Quark’s the older brother, so that’s just how it works, evidently. But in the end, bolstered by his success and defiance of Ferengi norms, he quits the bar and takes a job as an apprentice repair technician.

Also a winning episode for O’Brien. We learn that he is descended from Irish High King Brian Boru (a real dude, and the Battle of Clontarff, which he and Julian are pretending to fight in the holosuite, was also a real thing), and also a famous union leader who won worker rights for 19th-century Pennsylvania coal miners. And got murdered for his efforts, but it still inspires Rom. O’Brien also nets Rom as an apprentice and gets a cyst removed. Everything’s coming up O’Brien.

Picket line crosser roll call: O’Brien (obviously) and Bashir support the strike and enjoy making a game out of watching who will cross the picket line to patronize Quark’s. Worf does, perhaps unsurprisingly (and leads to a brawl between the three of them), but also, he probably doesn’t have an opinion about it so much as doesn’t care at all. Sisko supports the strike. I feel like Kira and Dax would, although we don’t find out. Odo is decidedly against it, and mutters a few things that make it sound like he would greatly enjoy some union headbusting if Sisko hadn’t explicitly told him to stay out of it.

Worf/Dax flirtation update: At the beginning of the episode, Worf is taking great delight in the strict order possible aboard the Defiant, and it seems to be pleasing to Dax, even if she’s mostly finding it amusing and playfully teasing him. Something is definitely going on between these two beyond holosuite sparring. I think there is some kind of Myers-Briggs opposite-attraction thing happening between Worf’s unrelenting J and Dax’s up-for-whatever P. Plot-wise, it generates a minor B-story about Worf getting increasingly agitated by the messy real-world disorder on board DS9 and eventually deciding just to live aboard the Defiant, which offers cramped quarters, uncomfortable beds, and peace and quiet, all highly appealing to Ron Swanson Worf.

Morn watch: Whether or not the bar is open is of significant consequence to Morn. I actually need to re-watch this one to see if he was willing to cross the picket line to get in though. Anyway, wanted to note that he did not participate in the Nausicaan’s masochistic darts game. We have seen him take a dart to the torso without reaction, but we can now infer he didn’t enjoy it, either. Or at least, the Nausicaans might be a little too intense for him.

Overall: 4 out of 5. Peeling off one for some occasional clunky scenes in an otherwise solid episode.

S4E17, “Accession” (story: Jane Espensen)

We were excited when Jane Espensen’s name popped up in the opening credits. She was a regular Buffy: The Vampire Slayer writer and I generally thought her episodes stood out as a notch funnier and more clever. I learned she’d also written a TNG (“Force of Nature”), but looking back it actually wasn’t a favorite. Oh well. Memory Alpha tells me this is the only DS9 she did, so, let’s see how it goes.

The A story concerns Sisko’s ongoing hesitance to assume the role of Emissary, even though it’s mostly a symbolic thing. People bug him for photo ops, wedding blessings, and the like. Sort of like the cute PR stuff the president does during the day in between steering U.S. policy (prior to January 20, 2017) or tweeting incoherently while golfing (subsequently). But he’s saved by a ship that comes tumbling out of the wormhole, which contains a guy who thinks he’s the Emissary. He also thinks it’s hundreds of years earlier. But like, NBD, he can be Emissary, as far as Sisko is concerned. Deus ex machina it up, baby. However, this becomes a problem because his principle policy suggestion is returning to a crushing caste system that sorta matches up with religious teachings but sucks for basically everyone. Further, its implementation prevents Bajor from joining the Federation, because they have a rule about social systems that suck. Perhaps there’s an analogous present-day story in politics about a widely-admired leader pragmatically moving things forward in a chaotic time, succeeded by an out-of-touch doofus loved by religious fundamentalists who messes everything up. I’ll have to Google that later.

The resolution, well, shrug. It’s hazy (literally and figuratively) and convenient, and the antagonist is literally hurled back to the past and won’t bother anyone again. I’m not sure what to think about the idea that in the past he finished his famous poems. Then in the present Kira can recall both finished and unfinished versions. So we’ve incidentally defined how time travel works in this universe? No wait, let’s compare to “Past Tense” where Sisko becomes the historic figure of Gabriel Bell. Actually I think it’s the same thing. He knew about Real Gabriel Bell, then he ended up in the past and did the stuff that immortalized Bell, therefore becoming Bell. He knew Bell as a different person beforehand though, so he can retain both memories. OK, I’m good.

Meanwhile, the B story is a modest little domestic bit about Keiko returning from her long away mission and O’Brien having to re-adjust back to married life. I remember when O’Brien was irritated with Bashir, now they are besties: getting smashed at Quark’s, playing darts, re-creating famous historic battles in their shared ancestry. When Keiko returns he resumes being a good husband and father but misses time with Julian, especially since Keiko is pregnant and he can feel the impending weight of another baby in his future. The always-intuitive Keiko figures out what’s going on and encourages him to still spend time with Julian, especially if it means he’ll get out of her hair when she’s working.

This part was mostly fun and entirely relatable to happily partnered humans. It also served as some solid comic relief. I loved that O’Brien’s quarters had degraded into a total bachelor sty with toys and liquor bottles everywhere. (Memory Alpha tells me that Colm Meaney objected to this, however. He was fine with it being a source of humor but thought it was clichéd to show a temporarily single man unable to keep his house clean without his wife around. As a husband whose wife occasionally leaves town, I have to agree with him, but it was still funny.) Also I have to note that Jane Espensen is so good she even gets Worf to be funny.

Bajorans are weird: They clap by smacking the back of one hand into the palm of the other. I get it, Space Clapping, but it’s an unnatural motion and I don’t buy into a different humanoid race doing it. I would accept something altogether different from clapping maybe. Let’s admit that whacking our hands together is sorta weird, although it’s a convenient way to make sound to acknowledge a speaker or performer. So other races might clap, but not the way Bajorans do. I think it’s more realistic that they would physically clap the same way but have different rhythms. I’d hypothesize our human rhythm is sort of arbitrary and cultural. Maybe I’ll Google that later too.

Morn watch: We see him hanging with some dabo girls at the bar. We have not fully established the social role of dabo girls, so it is unclear if Morn’s ladies are drawn to his natural charisma, or his willingness to solicit their companionship. Since it’s ever-debonair Morn, I think we have to assume it’s the former. Also he has been enlisted by Julian to play darts in O’Brien’s absence, but evidently would be better at being the target than an active player. Per Julian, he “couldn’t hit a Yeridian Yak at 5 paces.”

Overall: An interesting and necessary episode that works well. Didn’t love the Emissary story conclusion but there’s still a lot to like here. 4 out of 5.