Well, at last I've got time to dance...
"In the Pale Moonlight"
After this episode ended, I turned to my wife and said, "This is DS9's 'Counterpoint.'" That's our favorite VOY episode, and (I think) a great example of smart, serious, suspenseful Trek (well, except for Kashyk's tendency to stand with his hands on his hips, but you can't win 'em all).
This was such a good episode that not only do I want to watch it again tonight; I actually don't want to watch any more episodes because I don't want the memory of this one to recede.
If you've been reading this, you know that my tastes run to two extremes: comic farce and intense psychological studies. I can appreciate episodes with other elements, but those are the ones that I really, really enjoy watching, either because they're entertaining or because they're absorbing.
It's difficult to figure out how to start talking about ITPM. I'll just throw out a few thoughts. First, this is by far the strongest Avery Brooks episode I've seen yet. He really nails Sisko here and does the kind of physical acting whose absence earlier in the series I lamented. You get the sense that this is a real man, sitting in a real room, talking to himself.
Which is another reason why it works: like "Waltz," this is really a two-actor drama that is nearly a stage play. It plays to all of Brooks's dramatic strengths perfectly. At first, when he looked into the camera, my "breaking the fourth wall" alarm went off, but I insist that he didn't break the fourth wall because he never really talked
to the audience. He was talking to the computer, or himself, and we just were eavesdropping. Now, if he had said, "And a Happy Christmas to
all of you at home," that would have been another story.
Instead, him looking directly into the camera made him seem more vulnerable and more accessible, as did having him slowly take his clothes off throughout the episode. (And that's one sentence I never thought I'd type.) You feel like you're really looking into his soul.
Andrew Robinson is also brilliant, playing perfectly off of Brooks. The other characters are great, too, but this is really about those two.
Like all great "moral" episodes, the "right answer" isn't so clear-but here. I'm not sure that there even is a right answer. Whatever Sisko does, he's doing something wrong. Even if he keeps his conscience clean by not dirtying his hands with Garak's scheme, he'll have to think, every Friday, that he could have saved lives if he'd have done something. Sisko is no Hamlet; he decides on a course of action and follows it through.
There are a lot of great little touches here. For example, when he quotes his dad, he really captures that actor's cadences. It's kind of eerie. And then little throwaway lines like bad news coming in the middle of the night.
We both LOLed at "it's a faaaake." I'd heard that soundbyte long ago, so it was funny to finally hear it in context. But it didn't ruin the episode at all.
The final cut to black just after Sisko says "erase that entire personal log" is the cherry on top of a brilliant episode. I've got a new favorite DS9 episode, and this one just bumped something out of my Top 5 All-Trek list.
But what do you think about it?
