“THE SEARCH, PART I”
So whaddyou do when the Gamma Quadrant inhabitants literally turn out to be dickheads?
Hello season three! I remember quite vividly when the third season began. Living in the UK, I relied upon the VHS releases to keep up to date with Star Trek, and the third season releases began around February 1995. When TNG ended I expected to miss it greatly as that was the first Trek I got to knew and love, but, surprisingly, I didn’t miss it as much as I expected. I guess the fact
Generations had just been released helped, plus the fact that I found season seven pretty disappointing on the whole. More importantly, this was around the time I really grew to love DS9. I’d already fallen for its characters and the excitement around the start of the third season really captured me and, as fate would have it, the series would only go from strength to strength and cement itself as my favourite Trek show, along with TOS.
Set three months after the game-changing second season finale, “The Search” confronts the Dominion head-on, and is a gripping and dramatic start to the season. There is, however, a distinct sense that the Paramount executives had mandated a re-tooling for the show. A large part of the audience clearly wasn’t keen on Bajoran politics, which are henceforth put on the back-burner, and there seems to be a distinct assurance that, like Trek past and future, DS9 was also capable of “boldly going”. (Although, surprisingly, Rick Berman was actually opposed to the introduction of the Defiant, and this was something that new showrunner Ira Behr pushed for). There’s also a conscious attempt to beef up Sisko’s character, making him more passionate about his mission and more comfortable in his role, finally seeing “this Cardassian monstrosity” as his home. To be fair, the character of Sisko had not been well served through most of season one and two (the only primary Sisko episode since the pilot being the dismal “Second Sight), although he did have a number of wonderful moments scattered throughout.
Sisko: The man, the myth, the interior decorator!
I loved the Defiant from the moment I saw it, as well as its eye-popping pew-pew phasers. The story takes a while to get moving, but the character vignettes lacing the episode’s first half are nicely done. We meet the Romulan T’Rul, who doesn’t really make much of an impression other than being pretty rude, and, more importantly, Starfleet security officer Michael Eddington, who only really gets a brief introduction—and from the moment I saw him smile I somehow didn’t trust him one bit. Dax gets a new hairstyle which looks pretty terrible and is a crime against Terry Farrell, one of Star Trek’s most beautiful stars. Thankfully, it would only last another episode before the hairstyling department came to their senses (or were fired!).
I do have issues with the crew’s assignment to enter the Gamma Quadrant and locate the Founders of the Dominion. Starfleet’s response to the Dominion crisis seems...lacking. (Did Sisko have to contend with with a younger Admiral Clancy—aka Admiral Foul Mouth from
Picard—at Starfleet Command?)
They lost a Galaxy Class starship, and their response? Assign ONE ship—one with noted design problems—and send the administrators of the nearest Starfleet outpost to undertake one of the most
IMPORTANT diplomatic negotiations in all the Federation’s history. Obviously, there were no trained diplomats available? Sisko and his crew are certainly not trained in diplomacy and it makes no sense that they were sent on this vital mission other than they’re the series leads and the story dictates it. It’s also never explained who exactly runs the station in their absence. This is where it would have made much more sense if we’d had a starship like the Odyssey assigned to DS9 on a regular basis, with its crew as recurring characters liaising with the DS9 crew. In fact, shouldn’t Starfleet have sent a small fleet of ships to guard the wormhole? At this point in the series, frustratingly, the establishing shots of the station almost always make it look deserted, with not a ship to be seen.
But, this is Star Trek, and there are a number of threads you simply shouldn’t start tugging at or any number of things begin unravelling. The fact is, the mission makes for exciting viewing, even though I wasn’t really convinced by Sisko’s readiness to leave behind Dax and O’Brien. There are some tense near-confrontations with the Jem’Hadar culminating in one of the most brutal and chaotic ship-under-siege sequences we’ve ever seen. Excellent directing makes for a thrilling climax, with Sisko particularly impressive as he fights to defends his ship. That alone would have made for an excellent cliff-hanger, but the episode goes one better.
Admittedly this wasn’t Odo’s best episode. I’m sure that most will sympathise with his being muscled out by Starfleet, but his behaviour is rather bratty, unprofessional and selfish—to the extent that he jumps at the chance to abandon the Defiant with evidently no concern about the fate of his fellow crew. The implication would seem to be that, upon catching sight of the Omarion nebula, some kind of influence has overpowered him, causing him to act uncharacteristically. This, of course, leads to one of my favourite Star Trek cliff-hangers of all time, one that felt appropriately fairytale-like and one that would forever change the direction of the series. Those magical final seconds alone are worth the price of admission.
Rating: 8
