^ With Bajor being so critical to the Federation, you'd think they'd put a few scientists and doctors on the problem. It's another example of "if we can't solve the problem in 40 minutes, it'll never get solved."
But on to the next episode. After this one I'd really consider sitting the writers down for a...
"Tribunal"
From the title, I knew that I was in for CourtTrek, which as I've said before is one of my least favorite variants of Trek. So we had some fun trying to guess who was going to be on trial, and for what, and who was defending and prosecuting them.
My favorite was: Bashir is on trial for being creepy towards women. Dax is speaking for the prosecution, Garak for the defense.
But it ends up being a "torture Miles" episode. And a long, long, slog through a courtroom procedure that, by its very nature, is anticlimactic. With lots of speeches, too.
According to MA, the whole episode stems from Dukat's line that on Cardassia, the outcome of trials is known before they start. That's a great little world-building detail that sheds some light on the Cardassian psyche, but having to actually watch it happen is brutal, particularly since we know that O'Brien isn't going to be executed.
It doesn't help that his conservator is well-cast as an old, dour, windbag guy who is then given lots of speechifying to do. Or that they put Keiko into a role that requires a lot of emotion. Ugh.
BTW, watching Keiko and O'Brien kiss reminds me that watching Trek characters make out is like watching your parents make out--it's just weird and uncomfortable.
One of the problems with CourtTrek is that it is just so different from all of the courtroom dramas that define the genre. It's usually just the main cast and 2 or 3 guest actors--no jury, no courtroom crowd, no outside investigators. This one was no exception. You had the Archon, the Conservator, the three kids, and Miles, Odo, and Keiko. I didn't even see a photog, even though the trial is being broadcast to the whole planet.
It's also funny to see the station's viewscreen, which reminds me of the American Idol logo, is on Cardassia too. And I think they recycled Odo's holding cell here, with the rational that, well, the station was built like Cardassians, and all Cardassian cells look alike, so if we just turn the lights down, it'll work just fine. I'm sure the producers loved the writers for that. Very smart, actually.
I totally didn't understand why the government takes molars from everyone when they're ten, either. You can't use a missing tooth to ID someone, can you? Particularly when everyone's missing the same tooth? And where would they keep them? Wouldn't it be easier to just keep their fingerprints and DNA profiles online somewhere? And I like that they cut his hair for a drug test, too.
The final scene, where they pulled a Frankie Pentangeli's brother by having Sisko show up with the fake Maqius guy, also made no sense. How did he get there, if three starships (including the E) were stuck at the border? And what would prevent them from just killing the fake Maquis guy and then claiming the Feds made it all up?
They were very heavy-handed with the Orwellian stuff, and almost completely unoriginal. O'Brien's initial processing is straight out of "Chain of Command," though it's nice to see that they've upgraded to one light that moves around. The stuff at his trial about him hating Cardassians and being against the treaty could have been lifted from TUC. We get the point: arbitrary systems of justice that aren't about a genuine search for the truth are bad. But if you're going to show us one of them, as in 1984, there really can't be a happy ending.
For me, this is Trek at its worst: completely serious, preachy about something that all civilized people already agree on, and saddled with an inane plot. Especially after what we've recently seen, it comes across as two-dimensional.
I'll finish that Babylon 5 thread eventually
