Obviously, much of the episode is focused on legal and philosophical concepts as well as the backstory concerning Curzon's affair. Farrell adds nothing to the episode with her acting: no conviction, no sense of obligation. She's simply passive.
Ah, yes, the "Early Season Dax Passivity". I've noticed what you are mentioning. What you are seeing is the difficulty Terry had with the character itself- the directions she had been given basically amounted to "You're playing a girl housing the reincarnated memories of a large group of dead people, most recently an old man. Annnnd GO!" The actress admitted in an interview (I think it was in one of the Star Trek magazines I have lying around here) that with what she had been given, she had absolutely no idea how to approach the character. This is why in her earliest scenes she has the appearance of trying to be... stoic? Yes, I think stoic is the word. Later episodes allowed her to expand her natural personality into the character itself, but before then it was kind of like trying to get a foot to fit a new shoe. Sometimes a few blisters did appear. I doubt that First Season Dax would be running around Ops giggling about "girl crush secrets" with Kira like she did in later seasons, that much is certain.
I can understand having difficulty with technobabble and establishing a new character, but there were basic acting elements that Farrell seemed to fail at. At the bottom of "Dax" was a simple Hollywood trope: taking a fall to protect someone's reputation. The same thing was true of Equilibrium: repressed memories. And of Meridian: the love of your life, whom you've just met, is going away on a long trip. At their core they aren't complex episodes. Farrell might not have grasped her x-number of lifetimes character well, but she could have give a performance that made sense for one lifetime. I also think that the writing problem more reflected the opinion of the actress: in Equilibrium, the writers decided it was better to have Jadzia sedated at the moment it was announced that there was a murderer among her personalities and that the Trill board was going to kill her to protect their secret. That reflects a lack of confidence in the actress more than a uncertainty in the writing.
I suppose I just don't see the failure you're seeing. I mean, I saw some passivity, but nothing that really reached "bad acting" level, at least from my perspective. Of course, it could be that in my recent viewing I had just watched "Code of Honor" before this one. Really, really awful, acting- awful in the "burn this DVD" kind of way.
I don't think the earlier seasons were terrible, but it's clear going back and watching the earlier years that the writers hadn't found their footing yet. That being said, the quality of the first two seasons of DS9 was way better than TNG's first two years. It was clear from the get go that DS9 was always going to be far more character based than TNG or TOS before it, but I felt a lot of the first season episodes still had a 'TNG vibe' to them. The first season in particular felt at times like TNG on a space station. I think in season 2 and season 3 they started branching out and doing stuff that for the most part could only be done on DS9 and by Season 4 they knocked it out of the park. To this day, DS9 remains the best of the franchise for me.
Code of Honor was a bad episode, almost from top to bottom. Almost every Jadzia episode has something to recommend it. Whether that thing is Terry Farrell's acting is debatable. IMO, that something is usually came from another actor: Anne Haney as the Bajoran judge; John Glover as the symbiont thief; Brooks and Auberjonois in the roles of Joran and Curzon; and Susannah Thompson as the lost love.
Season 1 has more bad episodes than good episodes. The stories in Season 1 are also generally not worthwhile SciFi ideas. I.e. Q comes to the Station and causes some mischief - who cares? Season 1 also has a lot of bad acting from Siddig and Visitor. Plus, Visitor's acting in Season 1 is as annoying as nails on a chalk board. Likewise, the Bajorans in Season 1 constantly whine about how much they hate being oppressed, which just amplifies the annoyingness/unwatchability factor tenfold. Season 1 also little character or story development in it. Season 2 has more great episodes a few worthwhile SciFi stories, but still has plenty of bad episodes and far too much Bajoran whining. DS9 doesn't get consistently good until the Season 2 finale, because that is when the Dominion comes on board, and thankfully, starts to prevent much precious screen-time & episode slots from being wasted on Bajorans. I disagree. The war was under-developed because instead of going full throttle with the war story, they kept breaking it up and inserting pointless filler episodes between the war episodes. On the other hand, nothing is more tedious than hearing Bajorans cry "Woe is me! Pity me!" for the 10 000th time. All they needed to do was to say that once in Emissary; once would have been more than enough. Instead, that cry became the defining characteristic of what a Bajoran is.
I don't understand the indifference to the early seasons either. I loved season one and two, season three wasn't quite as good for me, then season 4-5 were great. For my money (and yes, I know I'm in a minority) season 6-7 were a real disappointment, and felt almost like a 'betrayal' of the earlier series' promise. "Emissary" is still the best Trek pilot, and still one of the best DS9 episodes made. "Past Prologue" and "A Man Alone" did a great job of "setting up the stall" of what DS9 would be about, the kind of tone it was going to take. "Captive Pursuit", "Qless", "Dax", "Nagus", "Vortex", "Battlelines", Storyteller" were all solid entries. "Duet" and "In the Hands Of The Prophets" were both excellent. I didn't mind the Dominion War in later stories (though it was painfully dragged out, wished it had wrapped up in season 6), but Behr's obsession in making the show NOTHING BUT got old and I feel DS9 lost more than it gained.
For me the early seasons are easier to enjoy after you know what happens later. When you're watching them after just having seen TNG you're watching it through the eyes of expecting a specific thing which it doesn't offer. No exploration? Ferengi running around trying to scam people? Bajoran religion? That's not what TNG gave me! Then when you've seen the full arc of the show and you get what DS9 is all about and the direction it's headed, and watch the early episodes again, it all clicks. Also, a lot of the characters weren't well fleshed out at that point in the series, but then when you watch again after having seen the full series, you see their future established traits in them.
Well, I won't fault you for liking ``Move Along Home'', but I did watch it for the first time in who knows how long to see if I'd been unfairly judging it, and, ugh, no. The humor just felt klunky in that way Berman-era Trek manages. The link between what the rolls of the Space Dice and the actions of the game and the things Our Kidnapped Heroes were doing in the game came out vague and confusing. The game scenarios didn't make much sense as games, either: ``repeat what this girl is doing, the same way she's doing it, one time!'' ``Here's a room full of fumes --- can you take a drink from any of the three dozen champagne glasses people offer you?'' I admit something that's not exactly its fault is that going back aware that Our Heroes aren't ever in actual peril means the sense of drama is horribly deflated, but that means the episode has to survive on its whimsy, and that clashes with Trek's natural ponderousness. I'm glad for you that you enjoy it, and will presumably keep enjoying it, but I can't recommend it as an under appreciated gem of early Deep Space Nine.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't think it's a good episode and I wouldn't recommend it as an under appreciated gem, either, but for some reason I always get a kick out of it when I watch it. I find something entertaining in its stupid silliness, whereas other poor episodes (such as the two I cited earlier) are either dull as dirt or offensively bad, which leaves them with no redeeming qualities for me.
This is very true. In its original run, I didn't enjoy it until I had seen all the episodes. Meanwhile, Seasons 4-6 were enjoyable just as they were (I didn't really watch season 7 because of a job and no TV that was my own).
Sort of easy answer is that they basicaly tried to be TNG on a space station, which changed in season 3.
you and I reach on this. I think that early-seasons, "old school" DS9 was much better than the "Star Trek: Dominion War" it later became.
I loved season 2, and there were a lot to like in Season 1 too. Maybe it was the whole Star Trek must be bad in the first two seasons rule, but I enjoyed Season 2 more than I did Season 6.
To me it's like the "odd number movie curse" in that it becomes self-fulfilling. The "modern Trek has bad early seasons" meme took hold even when it didn't apply to DS9. To me, DS9 season two is one of the best of the entire series.