Is ITPM the dramatically-finest hour of television ever produced?

[Navaros]

Is ITPM the dramatically-finest hour of television ever produced?

I've been trying to think of any hours (or technically, 42 minutes or whatnot, including commercial breaks and credits) of television from any show, ever that can compare to the masterpiece perfection of ITPM, and I can't think of any.

Every second of ITPM matters. There is not one wasted word, not one wasted moment.

It is uniformly compelling and mesmerizing from start to finish.

It is the culmination of years of build up of multiple, complex plot threads all perfectly woven together.

It has all the hallmarks of the great literature of history.

They chose the best possible structure to deliver the content and used that structure in that one episode only; the only episode that could have done the structure perfect justice.

The acting, of course, is brilliant across the board.

When I think of ITPM, I almost think that it is far too good to merely be a television episode.

To my mind, I must say yes, ITPM is indeed the dramatically-finest hour of television ever produced.

What do you say?

 

[TheGodBen]

It is certainly an amazing episode, but there is some stiff competition for the title. I've just glanced at my DVD collection and I can think of these three:

The Sopranos, College: I didn't think much of this episode when I first saw it but when I rewatched it for the first time last month I was entranced by it. The juxtaposition of Tony planning to kill a man (the first person we see him kill in the show) with Carmella receiving communion from a priest and confessing her sins... it is a beautiful piece of film.

Battlestar Galactica, Occupation/Precipice: Okay, this is a cheat because it is two hours. I've only seen this episode once and found it so engaging and emotional that I had trouble getting up for several minutes. It left me paralysed.

The West Wing, Two Cathedrals: A magical hour of television to complete the second season, it blended a touch of the supernatural into a normally sober series and ended with one of the best sequences in TV history.

ITPM is up there, its story and characters are a match for any one of these episodes, but I have trouble determining which one would come out on top.

 

[startrekwatcher]

No, it wasn't even the finest hour of DS9. I think it is hard to say anything is the finest because I have several contenders from several tv series not just Trek. As for Trek I still think "The Best of Both Worlds" is the finest.

 

[Thor Damar]

I'm really sorry for sounding dense but where you referencing Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges?

 

[Astraea]

In the Pale Moonlight is a really good hour (well, 42 minutes or whatever) of television, but I don't know if it's the best. There are some really good episodes of BSG ("Downloaded," "Flesh and Bone," the "Pegasus/Resurrection Ship" episodes come to mind), and there are some other episodes of DS9 that hold up ("Duet," "Improbable Cause"/"The Die is Cast.") At some point, I don't know if you can just randomly call one of these the absolute best - personal preference has to factor in somewhere. It's definitely one of the best episodes of Star Trek, definitely one of my favorite hours of TV, but the very best episode of all TV ever produced? That's something that I think is an impossible call.

Of course, ITPM is the only one of these episodes with Senator Vreenak and the immortal line, "It's a faaaake!" Maybe that pushes it over the edge.

 

[Red Ranger]

No. That honor goes to the last episode of St. Elsewhere, with the shock ending! -- RR

 

[Anwar]

Nope, it's not. Not at all.

The "Sisko is a murderer!" thing is overplayed in that he didn't plan to kill Vreenak, and the only bad things he did was just make a fake recording. That's all. Everything else is Garak who was hardly a moral character to begin with, so there's not much in the way of "darkness" for his character. Sisko's character also is unchanged by this experience which adds to the overrated sense, whereas they could have continued to make him more Machiaveillian as a result but chickened out.

And this also totally messes with "Far Beyond the Stars" wherein he wastes all that time to reach the "the dream will never die!" ending only to destroy that dream himself and not feel that bad about it for the rest of the series.

So it's kind of a waste really.

 

[waynehead]

As must as I love DS9 and ITPM, no, it isn't. Just off the top of my head there are several episodes of the Sopranos, the Wire...maybe even one or two of, ahem, Lost, that are better.

Best ever American sci-fi hour, tho? Now that's a definite possibility. It would certainly be in the conversation.

 

[Navaros]

Nope, it's not. Not at all.

The "Sisko is a murderer!" thing is overplayed in that he didn't plan to kill Vreenak, and the only bad things he did was just make a fake recording. That's all. Everything else is Garak who was hardly a moral character to begin with, so there's not much in the way of "darkness" for his character. Sisko's character also is unchanged by this experience which adds to the overrated sense, whereas they could have continued to make him more Machiaveillian as a result but chickened out.

He also covered up Garak's murders, which is indeed extremely bad. And the bribery.

I agree that he didn't change enough in subsequent episodes and they should have done more with the Sisko in that regard. No doubt that is a failing of the series. But that isn't apparent as of ITPM itself; so whilst that does diminish the episodes to come after it, the brilliance of ITPM remains untarnished by that IMO.

 

[Daneel]

The dramatically-finest hour of television ever produced? No, not even close. I think it's among the best episodes of the series, and for Trek as a whole, it is pretty daring and challenging... but there are plenty of other series that do daring and challenging episodes on a regular basis, often going much further than ITPM did.

Don't get me wrong -- I do think ITPM ranks as an excellent episode of television. I think Sisko and Garak bringing the Romulans into the war through lies and deception is definitely a morally questionable act that challenges the viewers' perceptions of right and wrong... of how far is too far. For the time, it was pretty bold stuff, but these days, with all the shows on cable, TV producers are pushing the envelope much more frequently, resulting in some truly excellent drama. What is the finest hour ever produced? I wouldn't know where to begin, but even though it may not be ITPM, the episode definitely still has an important place in Trek history.

 

[Anwar]

Nope, it's not. Not at all.

The "Sisko is a murderer!" thing is overplayed in that he didn't plan to kill Vreenak, and the only bad things he did was just make a fake recording. That's all. Everything else is Garak who was hardly a moral character to begin with, so there's not much in the way of "darkness" for his character. Sisko's character also is unchanged by this experience which adds to the overrated sense, whereas they could have continued to make him more Machiaveillian as a result but chickened out.

He also covered up Garak's murders, which is indeed extremely bad. And the bribery.

I agree that he didn't change enough in subsequent episodes and they should have done more with the Sisko in that regard. No doubt that is a failing of the series. But that isn't apparent as of ITPM itself; so whilst that does diminish the episodes to come after it, the brilliance of ITPM remains untarnished by that IMO.

So all he did was cover up some minor bribes, I'm talking things he directly did himself. He wasn't the one who decided to kill Vreenak, he wasn't the one who put the bomb in there, he wasn't responsible for his death. He can just as easily blame Garak for the whole thing so he had no real reason to think himself as an accessory to murder. Yes he covered it up but at that point he was backed into a corner. It's still not the monumental turning point everyone claims it is.

That, and there are some plot holes I noticed (wouldn't the Romulans have been able to track Vreenak's engine emissions back to DS9?) but still this isn't my "ultimate episode" especially since these days I'm starting to think of this darkening of everything as a huge fad.

 

[Jono]

That, and there are some plot holes I noticed (wouldn't the Romulans have been able to track Vreenak's engine emissions back to DS9?) but still this isn't my "ultimate episode" especially since these days I'm starting to think of this darkening of everything as a huge fad.

We've seen several instances of people "masking" their engine trails. I think I remember in an episode that they stated that engine trails dissipate fairly quickly anyway.

 

[Anwar]

They've been able to use engine trails to track vessels before, and I don't see why Vreenak would hide his since he was going to tell the Quadrant about Sisko.

 

[Jono]

^ He's travelling through/very close to the front lines.

 

[Myasishchev]

It's darned close, probably.

 

[Londoner]

I really enjoyed it, I thought it was a very good, very thoughtful and thought provoking episode. Having said that; best hour of TV? I don't think it was the best hour of DS9.

 

[Too Much Fun]

I don't think it's that consistent actually. There was a bit too much hammy Sisko monologuing and I don't think the episode really attained greatness until the big Vreenak line and the reveal of Garak's scheme. I think it's one of those episodes that fans give a bit too much credit and remember as being as much better than it really is as a whole because the ending is so powerful. I was tempted to do the same because I was also floored by the end (gave me a whole new respect for Garak, it did), but looking back on it, I realize it's far from the most flawless hour of TV or even DS9.

And at the risk of losing all credibility to people here, I gotta say anyone calling a DS9 episode the finest hour of television ever produced must not have seen "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" before . Now there's a show that could hook you from the start of an episode with fascinating characters and character arcs, suspenseful stories, snappy dialogue, and shocking, but natural twists and turns building towards stunningly dramatic cliffhangers. It had its share of clunkers in the first season and a half, but their later season 2 and season 3 episodes did the serialized thing as brilliantly as DS9 and even better at times.

 

[Vykan12]

I must say that I was blown away by this episode when I saw it recently, but claiming it as finest hour of television is rather audacious. Still, I actually laughed out loud at when Sisco's monologue suddenly turned from somber to joyful, it was such a surprising and welcomed moment it had a strange comedic value to it.

 

[Basill]

It's been years since I've seen it so I just watched it again, and whoa! I forgot all those little goose bumps I got when I first enjoyed this episode!

It may not be the finest hour of television, but it is definitely one of my all time favorite Star Trek franchise episodes.

 

[Astraea]

And at the risk of losing all credibility to people here, I gotta say anyone calling a DS9 episode the finest hour of television ever produced must not have seen "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" before .

I've got my issues with the Whedonverse in general - not with the quality of the writing or whatnot, but the way in which, the more I watch, the more I get the feeling that no one's ever going to get a happy ending with any sort of closure as long as there's the possibility of milking any last bit of drama from them (because, of course, you get more drama from unhappiness than you do from happiness...but lately I've begun to get the feeling that I really can't invest in any of the characters.) I mean, I love nuBSG, and that's got a fair amount of torturing characters for drama, but at least there's the possibility of closure at the end of this (I'm still in S3), where as in the Whedonverse there's always the possibility of tie-in comics, what-have-you, so that nobody's ever going to get the resolution of a story arc. It doesn't detract from the quality of the individual writing episodes, but it does detract from my ability to enjoy the shows (or whatever you call a show that's turned into a canonical comic book extension.) Sure, it's brilliantly written, but I've gotten to the point where I can't make as much of an emotional connection to the characters.