Season 3 Might be a Very Underrated Season

One of the nice things about revisiting a series you haven't seen in a few years is some of it feels a little new again. Case in point Deep Space Nine. I've really been getting into season 3 the last few nights and tonight I watched House of Quark, Equilibrium, Second Skin, and The Abandoned. I know it's only 6 episodes into the season but I'm finding myself reevaluating my feelings about this season, almost to the point of not being fair to it in the past. I haven't disliked an episode this season yet and even Search II, me feelings actually changed for the better about the ending, which might not have been a cop out.

In fact one thing I've noticed about season 3 so far is really exploring the Jem Hadar. We learned about them in Jem'Hadar, The Search, and The Abandoned where we find out so much about them and what makes them tick. I'm actually a little surprised we are still waiting to find out about the Vorta.

So far the best episode of the season is second skin and most of that has to do with Garak. He has some of the best lines of the show like the "it was something I over heard hemming women's Trousers" or "I rather liked him" after killing Entek. I'm looking forward to more episodes, especially Past Tense which is one of the most realistic trek commentary shows of the franchise.

 

DS9 was a series that kept getting better with each passing season. Season 3 was no exception. I enjoy all of the episodes from this season but I've never liked "Past Tense". I thought 2 episodes devoted to this storyline was too much. I didn't really like the story even though it was a good social commentary. It just sort of bored me.

Best episodes of the season had to be the Odo/Garak 2 parter. Amazing.

 

Season 3 did better work with standalone episodes than the first two seasons. Civil Defense is one of my favorite Trek bottle eps.

 

Civil Defense is next but the only thing I remember about that episode was it gave some great fodder for Garak and Dukat.

I was thinking about this again this morning and my reaction to The Search. Before now, I've always thought The Search had a cop out ending, but if you think about it, the crew gets captured by the Jem'Hadar and instead of an interrogation or killing them, they put the crew in a simulation of how the Dominion would gain a foothold in the alpha quadrant. The entire episode is about bringing order to a chaotic universe and the Dominion isn't interested in only a few individuals. They are interested in only one thing at this point, to conquer and Part two really illustrates that. Now when I see the Search, I don't think of it as a cop out ending. I think of it as it led to bigger things down the line.

 

While there are many good episodes in the third season, such as "Civil Defense" and "Defiant," the episodes "Improbable Cause" and "The Die is Cast" may well be the first episodes of the series that clued me in that this could be a great series.

Every performance, every snappy line, every plot twist, the SFX, every single thing was first rate and compares favorably with the very best of TOS and TNG.

 

I like episodes like Civil Defense. DS9's main strength was it's serial stories, but sometimes in a show that has 26 episodes of season it's good to have some episodes with pure scifi premises that forces the characters to do clever things to survive.

And I love the scenes where the Dukat recording is addressing the Bajoran workers. Dukat's attitude toward his atrocities of "They're really doing it to themselves" brought out some of the show's best writing.

There's some other of those pure scifi standalones in season three. Visionary, even though the episode made no logical sense it was fun. Past Tense, maybe the most Roddenberrian episode of DS9 and the only Trek episode that takes us into a year of the future the audience will actually live to. Ten years before that year and we're starting to see similar attitudes toward the poor emerge.

And of course Improbable Cause and Die Is Cast is one of those episodes that truly took the show to another level.

I'm in the middle of TNG season 3 right now. I'm kind of tempted to make this a semi-chronological view of the Berman era Treks. Not strictly chronological where I try to watch every episode by date. But after season 5, watch DS9 season 1, then TNG season 6, DS9 2, TNG 7, DS9 3, Voyager 1, etc. Though I might stick Gem'Hadar after All Good Things because of the symbolic way it ended.

 

I think I found another episode I've been hard on in the past but kinda enjoyed now, Fascination. It was dumb but it was a fun kind of dumb.

I also forgot how great Defiant was. We get Tom Riker back, references to past (Tribunal) and future episodes (Improbable Cause and Die is Cast) and we get to see more of the brand new ship.

The only episode this season I haven't liked is Meridian. I'm a fan of Brigadoon, as that was one of he first plays I remember watching, but this episode was boring and out of character for Jadzia.

 

Agreed on all points. Fascination is a stupid comedy episode...and one that I enjoy. Defiant is great. And Meridian is crap. The B-story is the only good part of it. It and Distant Voices are the only episodes from season 3 that I really heavily dislike.

 

Completely agree with you about Meridian. Dax was totally out of character in that episode. The B-Plot with Quark and Jeffrey Combs was hilarious, however. It saved the episode.

CrazyMatt, I think DS9 truly arrived with Improbable Cause/The Die Is Cast. It went from strength to strength from here on in.

Oh, and Fascination I've always loved. It's dumb fun but it's really funny. Quark chasing after Keiko is my favourite part of the episode.

 

I'm glad Combs did come back but as better characters. To think this was the first episode of many episodes Combs would do for Trek, that just feels so unfathomable. Nothing really saved that episode for me, unfortunately.

 

In doing this rewatch I'm doing it with the ds9 relaunch books in mind (Avatar thru Rising Son) and Heart of Stone is a severely underrated episode. I'll grant the Kira storyline was a little dull (even though we now know Odo loves Kira) but I'm looking the B Story. Not in Starfleet was one of the best transformative character arcs in the series and it started right here. This was the episode that made me like Nog, and Aron Eisenberg as an actor. Thinking about where he is in the books as an Engineer (again being like his father) and being one of the most well respected Starfleet officers on the Defiant, it's hard to believe Heart of Stone was where it all started. The scene where he confesses to Sisko is one of the best scenes of the season so far.

 

Another season 3 underrated gem was Destiny. I just love how this episode comes together and it reminded me of Rising Son and how the Avatar prophecy was mis-interpreted. Also love how the series finally is starting to address Siskos role of Emissary and how he is uncomfortable with his status of a religious icon.

 

I'm not a fan of Destiny. I feel it overplayed the prophecy angle and also it kind of plays into that Trek narrative that all scientists, everywhere are automatically the only open minded, tolerant and virtuous people on the planet.

 

I've always thought of Season 3 as the one where DS9 really took hold. It found consistency and everything started to come into focus.

Second Skin is one of Star Trek's best episodes ever. Past Tense is important, if not one I rewatch very often. As already noted, the Improbable Cause/Die is Cast two parter is outstanding in so many ways. Personally, I adore Explorers. Just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, and I love the rapport between Ben and Jake in this. And of course Adversary sets the stage for everything that is to come.

Whenever I rewatch DS9, I tend to skip through the first two seasons, only rewatching the episodes I know I love. But I always watch every episode starting in Season 3.

 

But the prophecy angle was kind of the point of the episode, wasn't it? Can't really overplay that.

 

Yeah, but they could have balanced the narrative a bit more, in my opinion. It seemed like the takeaway from the episode there was "Yeah, all the prophecies are 100% obviously going to happen, just they are worded confusingly" and I think prophecy episodes work better when they give you an out that it may not be the case.

 

That's the whole deal with actual so-called prophecies. They are always so vague that you can make them fit whatever scenario you want.

 

Season 3 has 100% more Dick Miller in it than other seasons. This alone makes it worthy of attention.

 

Just started watching Distant Voices and I'm glad I didn't see this episode when I turned 30. I also wonder with humans living longer in the 24th century, wouldn't 30 be the new 10, or something? It's not middle age

 

Is Improbable Cause DS9's most perfect script? I'm not asking story, but just script. Some would argue that In the Pale Moonlight is DS9's best episode, but I just watched Improbable Cause and Die is Cast and marveled at just how well written, in terms of dialog, IC was. I mean line after line was full of zingers and just some of Trek's most quotable moments. You've got Garak criticizing Shakespeare, learning about the Boy who Cried Wolf, the Truth is just a lazy excuse for lack of imagination line, and of course Andrew Robinson's absolutely brilliant look when Odo says "You Blew Up Your Own Shop, Garak". It was really one of the most well written episodes in the series.

As for Die is Cast, I've always had one problem with this episode and that was more budgetary than anything else. We never really saw much of the battle between the Romulans/Cardassians and the Jem'Hadar. We never really saw much of the Defiant in action and it could have been more epic if we had. At least we got many other great action scenes featuring the Defiant that were so memorable to the series. Also, the other day I was asked about Babylon 5's Intersections of Real Time (The episode Sharidan gets tortured) and I think DIC, Intersections of Real Time, and TNG's Chain of Command II are the only episodes that really show the horrors of the torturer and person being tortured.