"Nor the Battle to the Strong"
While I'm not a veteran, I have friends who are, and I've heard stories that I won't repeat here, and from my admittedly second-hand knowledge, this seems like one of the most realistic depictions of war that Star Trek has ever done. There's a break in the Klingon ceasefire. One of the planets Bashir and Jake are flying near is on the frontline, and Bashir takes Jake directly in with him.
The setup is perfect on a character level. Jake wants to get a job as a Reporter, so he wants to write an article on Bashir. Except he can't even pay attention to anything Bashir is saying. Then, he's excited when they go to the frontlines, only for that excitement to disappear once they're in a cave with cramped space, medics all over the place, with wounded and dead patients everywhere. Jake goes from excited to disoriented to scared, overwhelmed, and outraged all within the space of this one episode. He runs the gamut of emotions, getting his first real taste of war for the first time.
He's afraid when he and Bashir are temporarily out on the battlefield, gets scared, separated, and then runs into a wounded solider who's about to die and Jake can't do anything about. This soldier might as well have been in Vietnam or the Middle East. It felt real. And he taught Jake that he couldn't automatically make things right by bringing him to the Bashir. Then he died, and Jake ran off to try to make it back to base.
It seemed like Jake made a friend when he was helping out as medic earlier in the episode, but then Jake snaps at this friend when he and some others are cracking jokes about the best way to die. It was some black humor, but I completely understand it if they're surrounded by death all the time. It's their way of coping, or they'd go crazy. But Jake doesn't see it that way and explodes at them. Then Bashir has to take him aside and asks Jake what's really bothering him. Jake says he feels like a coward.
He feels like a coward again when there's an explosion, everyone has to evacuate, Jake's pinned down, and he starts blindly firing at raiding Klingons. Hiding, shooting without rhyme or reason, just shooting. Then at the end of the episode, the ceasefire is reinstated and Sisko's there to take him to the Defiant.
When Jake writes the article about his experience, Sisko is proud of him. He tells Jake that anyone who's been a battle can see themself in that article, when talking about the fine line between courage and cowardice. I have two thoughts about that. First, Jake being a writer writing about war reminds me of the author Henry David Thoreau writing about war, and maybe that might've been an inspiration for this episode. Second, Jake was "lucky" that he had something "exciting" to write about. There are going to be several times where he'll have to write about stories that he's not so excited about. So, he'll have to get used to writing those too. But at least he'll have his foot in the journalistic door, and he learned some hard lessons about life and death along the way.
Other parts of this episode? Seeing Sisko trying to find work to do to keep his mind occupied while the Defiant is rushing to jake and Bashir makes sense. Especially to avoid thinking about what might've happened to Jake, if the worst had happened. There are some other character bits as well that tie into how fragile life is: such as Odo forgetting he can't turn into a bird mid-air anymore to stop a criminal, or O'Brien being worried that Kira drinking caffeine will turn his baby into a caffeine addict.
Overall, it's starting to sound like a cliche to say this, but it's the truth: this is an episode of Star Trek that could only have been done on DS9. For the third time in a row, I give it a 10.
