“FIELD OF FIRE”
“Poor melon. It was so nice, as well...”
Well, this is just what we needed. We’re barely halfway through the final season, and here’s a third Ezri episode and also the third consecutive week to feature her prominently. I was annoyed by this back when the series aired and I’m still annoyed—not because I dislike the character, but because I hate seeing our regular, far more compelling characters get horribly sidelined until the season’s final mad dash to the closing line. Aside from opening two-parter, which was one storyline among several, there’s not a single Sisko episode all season, and all too often he’s barely been featured outside of brief cameos. Unless you count “Once More Unto the Breach” (which I kind of don’t given how minimal his participation was) Worf hasn’t had an episode specifically devoted to his character, and neither have Quark, O’Brien, or Jake. Kira and Odo both had episodes in which they featured prominently, although both played second fiddle to recurring characters. Garak hasn’t even been seen outside of a fairly rubbish subplot in, you guessed it, an earlier Ezri episode. I find that unforgivable, particularly given how poor the Ezri episodes ended up being. So that’s an immediate strike before I even come to this episode.
“Field of Fire” is an episode I didn’t remember all that much about aside from its ridiculous contrivances and plot holes. The premise has potential, and the first half of the episode is actually quite strong, boosted by impressive helming by one-time director Tony Dow and a decent sense of atmosphere and suspense. It’s nice to see Robert Hewitt Wolfe’s name in the credits again, as he’s a fine writer who contributed some excellent scripts during his five seasons on the writing staff. Sadly, this is one of his worst outside of “Let He Who is Without Sin...” Star Trek rarely managed to tell an effective murder-mystery, and, frankly, if the writers had wanted to craft a decent one they ought to have called on Peter Allan Fields who wrote perhaps Trek’s greatest murder-mystery, the second season’s stunning “Necessary Evil”.
Right from the teaser, it’s clear that Ensign Ilario has a bullseye sign painted on his back, because it seems so odd seeing the senior crew fraternising with a junior officer, something that very rarely happens on DS9. It sets up an initially interesting mystery; one that sadly proves maddeningly disappointing in its resolution.
Things begin unravelling the moment Ezri makes the utterly ludicrous decision to conjure up her psychopathic past host Joran, assuming that because he committed murder he would automatically understand how every other murderer in existence thinks and behaves. How is deliberately unleashing a deeply disturbed and psychotic sub-personality in any way a good idea? What does that say about Ezri’s professional worth when she evidently has so little confidence in her skills that she has to endanger her sanity and, frankly, the lives of the people around her? I don’t even know why she’s given such a prominent role in the investigation when she’s simply a counsellor, which, as far as I know, is light years away from a forensic psychologist. Her ineptitude and severe lack of judgement makes her a liability to the crew rather than an asset.
Of course, what Wolfe is attempting to do is create “SILENCE OF THE LAMBS” DS9-style. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work. For a start, while Nicole deBoer does a decent job with the material she’s given, she is no Jodie Foster and guest star Leigh McCloskey is certainly no Anthony Hopkins. Indeed, while he’s not bad, McCloskey lacks any true sense of menace or danger as Joran, and, therefore, the scenes where he’s trying to lure Ezri to the Dark Side and fairly ineffectual—and repetitive, too. “Come on, pull the trigger, you know you want to kill him really! You’re a killer, embrace it!” “No, I’m not, shut up, leave me alone!” Ad nauseum. The fact Ezri almost stabs a crewman with cutlery from Quark’s, in an inexplicably overblown, needlessly melodramatic sequence, only underscores how stupid Ezri was to deliberately compromise her mind, her objectivity, her professionalism and sanity. I also have no idea how Joran is able to see things that Ezri isn’t even looking at, such as a photograph behind her and the Vulcan’s face in the turbolift. How does that even work?
The resolution to the mystery is staggering in its inanity. Ezri doesn’t discover the murderer through clear evidence and deduction, but by ridiculous guesswork that just, by sheer fluke, happens to be correct. She decides that the victims were killed because they have photographs of smiling people in their quarters (although don’t most people smile in photographs?!), and then makes the astounding leap that the killer must therefore hate emotion and be a Vulcan. Wha—? It turns out there are 48 Vulcans on the station, yet it just so happens that the very Vulcan they are after gets on the turbolift with them and Joran decides that this is the one because of his facial expression or something. What are the chances, huh? I didn’t buy a second of it. Ezri didn’t solve the mystery because of any skill, competence or coherent reasoning—but by making wild, crazy assumptions without a shred of logic or evidence and then finding out those happened to be correct. As murder-mystery plotting goes, this is some seriously shoddy writing.
The climax, featuring both Ezri and the Vulcan killer with TR-116 rifles is fairly well done. The TR-116 is a cool invention and a rare example of the DS9 writers giving some genuine thought to future tech. If they have the technology to manufacture weapons such as these, however, it does make you wonder why they aren’t equipping frontline troops in places like AR-558 with decent guns. How much easier and safer it would be taking out Jem’Hadar from a distance with a weapon like this? Of course, they do pose considerable privacy concerns as we see here, which is no doubt why these particular rifles were banned.
The shoot-out makes for an exciting moment, although the way Ezri marches to Chulak’s quarters, without security backup or even a weapon of her own, is another ridiculous lapse of judgement on her part, and she only narrowly avoids being taken out by the still conscious Vulcan. Alas, his explanation for his actions—“logic dictated it”—is truly unsatisfying, but, then, logic isn’t the strong point of this particular episode.
If you’re capable of suspending disbelief significantly, you might find this an enjoyable hour. I’m afraid I can’t and don’t, but it is at least an improvement from the previous episode and features some good, pacy directing, an effective score and some nice moments, such as O’Brien demonstrating the TR-116 (and Odo’s “nice melon” line), the climatic shootout and an unexpectedly sweet (or stalkerish?) moment on the Promenade between Ezri and Worf. Unfortunately, I just can’t overlook the crappy plotting. Ezri makes a number of utterly stupid decisions, not least deliberately conjuring up a psychopathic past host on the asinine assumption that all killers automatically think exactly alike. The resolution is just absurd to me, hinging upon “reasoning” that makes very little sense and monumental coincidence that the killer just happens to present himself at a certain moment. This is yet another filler episode I wish had either been substantially rewritten or discarded in favour of stronger and more relevant material.
Rating: 4
