“VALIANT”
Welp, that couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of people...
I apologise in advance if you’re a fan of this one, but I’m not going to sugarcoat it: I hate this episode. It remains one of my least favourite episodes of the show’s run; one I’d quite happily see expunged from existence along with the Ferengi shitfest that follows it. I tried to rewatch with as open a mind as I could muster, but I struggled to sit through the full 45 minutes without feeling bored, angry and kinda depressed.
The basic premise is misconceived and full of plot holes the size of a black hole. For a start, it makes no sense to me that Starfleet can spare a Defiant-class ship to ferry cadets across the Federation, even if they are “RED SQUAD!! RED SQUAD!! RED SQUAD!” (Henceforth, I’m calling them the Hitler Youth). It’s a real stretch that all the command officers just happen to be killed and that its Captain, Ramirez, would then promote a cadet to a Captain field commission and tell him to carry on with the mission and avoid all contact with Starfleet (why non-communication with Starfleet is a stipulation is never explained). I don’t buy a word of it; not one word.
Perhaps Waters is lying and Ramirez ordered him to take the Valiant back home and to let Starfleet know what had happened to its officers. This is never implied in the actual episode, however, so I don’t think that was the writers’ intention, but the idea that these cadets could just carry on jaunting about on the Valiant without informing Starfleet is just insane. It’s kinda like a teenager test-driving their parents’ car, only to get into an accident which kills all the adults in the car, and they then carrying on driving around for the next nine months without informing anyone, all to prove how awesome they are.
I could perhaps buy the premise if the Valiant was in a Voyager-type situation; far from Federation space, isolated, out of communications range and struggling to get back. But they’re practically a
stone’s throw away from both the starbase Nog and Jake start out from and presumably Ferenginar, where the boys were headed. Why has the Valiant been behind enemy lines for nine months with the implication they were somehow fighting a lone battle? Why didn’t they encounter other starships and why the HECK doesn’t Starfleet realise the Valiant is missing and have all ships on alert for it? They need all the ships they can get—particularly, you’d think, Defiant-class ships, and they need them manned with, well...actual officers with experience in combat! If Starfleet Command knew that a bunch of cultish kids with a God complex were hopping about and deliberately not contacting HQ, there would be hell to pay. The Valiant apparently couldn’t limp above warp three and, unlike the Defiant, surely doesn’t have a cloaking device. How did they get away with this for nine months? None of it makes any sense to me.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the characterisation hadn’t been so dreadful. Ron Moore was clearly aiming for “LORD OF THE FLIES” in space, and the result is one of the most straight-up cynical and downright unpleasant episodes of Star Trek I’ve ever seen. The closest I can think of are the VOYAGER episodes where the writers created a duplicate of the Voyager crew just so they could torture and eventually kill them. I find that kind of cynicism objectionable, particularly in Star Trek. Whatever Moore was aiming for, he fails. In a way, I feel he’s already told this story before, and much more effectively, in TNG’s “The First Duty”. Although those cadets got ideas above their station and fucked up royally, at least they felt like human beings, including proto-Tom Paris. Not so here. While in Dorien we have at least one crew member who seems human and relatable, the rest are repellent—and if these are the best and brightest Starfleet has to offer...well, they deserve to lose the war. I, for one, would welcome our Dominion overlords!
What we see is a cult of personality, with the crew essentially deifying Waters, the pill-popping James Kirk-wannabe who, out of his desire for victory and fame, leads them to their own deaths. The worst part is I found them all so awful that I had very little sympathy for their fate. The episode was clearly intended as a tragedy, but the tragedy fell utterly flat for me because I just didn’t care about any of them in the slightest. Waters had superficial charisma but was clearly from the Dukat school of narcissism and egomania, and I’m still convinced that his henchwoman-cum-First Officer, Miss “Wet Pasta”, was Admiral Nechayev’s equally acid-tongued granddaughter.
Nog and Jake don’t get off the hook, either, particularly Nog, who needed a good, hard slap. While it was already established in the fourth season that Nog was a Red Squad/Hitler Youth fanboy, the moment he stepped aboard the Valiant
he outranked them as an actual officer and should have taken command and ordered the ship back to Starfleet. That’s not what happens. Nog goes weak at the knees when Waters offers him a place in the cult and he spends the rest of the episode being an obtuse idiot. Jake tries to get through to him, but unfortunately even Jake doesn’t come across as entirely likeable either—having by now descended into the “obnoxious journalist” stereotype (if he says “the public deserve to know” ONE more time...!) He offers a smugly-delivered speech about his dad that only riles up the Hitler Youth even more. At least, however, he’s the lone voice of reason in the entire episode. I get that this episode can be seen as part of Nog’s journey from over-eager cadet to broken, disillusioned Starfleet officer, but I found him so annoyingly stupid I almost wish he’d gone down with the ship.
Any points the episode scores are largely down to the impressive effects and pyrotechnics. The usually brilliant Michael Vejar is directing, but even he flounders this time around. The pace is rather limp and there’s one particularly terrible piece of directing and/or editing featuring montage of the crew getting ready for battle while Waters slowly spins in his chair trying to look commanding. I stifle a grimace each time I see that, because the lame directing and crappy score made seem like something straight out of a parody like “POLICE ACADEMY”. Alas, seeing the ship pummelled to bits had no impact on me whatsoever, I guess because I didn’t buy the basic story and I thoroughly disliked the crew. I also realised that I’m so OVER generic Star Trek battle scenes where sparks fly across the bridge (why can’t they put circuit breakers on the damned consoles?) and people are instantly killed simply by being knocked out of their seat. It’s also ridiculous that the ONLY survivors are our two regular characters and the one guest character we bonded with. It would have felt more natural had there been at least a few more Valiant survivors.
As you’ve no doubt noticed, this episode gets me riled, which not many episodes do. I just couldn’t buy the massively contrived story; the characterisation was terrible, the performances weak, and the basic cynicism of the script truly rubbed me the wrong way. DS9 has gone all out to show the darker and less than ideal side of Starfleet and human nature this season—and if the execution is good (hello “In the Pale Moonlight”), I’m all for that. This was just a step too far for me. The usually excellent Ron Moore really dropped the ball on this script, even as he seemed to be test-driving some of the ideas and themes he’d incorporate in “BATTLESTAR GALACTICA”, a series far better suited to such depressing nihilism than Star Trek—including even DS9 at its darkest. I’m afraid, for me, this barely scrapes a
Rating: 3
