TheGodBen Revisits Deep Space Nine

[flemm]

I've been saying for the last few seasons that DS9's biggest problem is that it's stuck between being a serialised show and an episodic one, and season 6 strains this problem to the point of incredulity.

I have mixed feelings on this issue. On the one hand, yes: DS9 is stuck between being episodic and being serialized, and the mixture is not always very convincing or compelling.

On the other hand: it's also one of the things that makes DS9 unique. It's a show that's in a kind of creative flux a lot of the time, which makes it all the more interesting in certain respects, even if it makes the show "flawed" in certain obvious ways.

To twist one of the show's own speeches: "People are dying out there, every day! Entire worlds are struggling for their freedom! And here I am playing dress-up in 1960's Vegas." That version of the speech doesn't quite have the same impact, does it?

No, but life is actually like that. People are dying out there everyday, and some of the time, we are playing dress-up, or the equivalent.


W.H. Auden wrote a really perceptive poem about this:

Musée des Beaux Arts


About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.


Even on that particular subject, I'm not sure it really detracts from DS9 as a whole that there is sometimes this jarring mix of triviality alongside the darker stories.

 

[TheGodBen]

No, but life is actually like that. People are dying out there everyday, and some of the time, we are playing dress-up, or the equivalent.

The concept is sound, it's the execution that's off. Modern soldiers watch TV and play video games in their down-time, and if we had holodeck technology today then I'm sure soldiers in Afghanistan would use them for similar purposes. The problem is that DS9 shifts between extremes. One week you'll get an entirely grim, weighty episode, and the next week you get pure fluff with nary a mention that there's a war on. In the Pale Moonlight being followed by His Way is the perfect example of that. DS9 is a good show, but the semi-serialsed format makes the show seem unbalanced during the later seasons.


Image in the Sand (***½)

This is a quiet, somewhat sombre follow-up to the events of Tears of the Prophets, and it has an interesting discordant style. There's three plots in play, each one following up on the events of the previous episode but with almost no crossover with one another. It effectively presents a crew which has been torn apart by recent events and sets up how the show is going to bring them all back together.

The most important of these plots is also, sadly, the weakest. Sisko's decision to return to Earth in TOTP was such a rushed development that it was difficult to digest, now we learn that he has spent 3 months since them doing nothing but play the piano. After watching The Captains, this isn't hard to imagine, but it still doesn't feel quite right. Then Sisko has a vision has a vision of a woman's face and finds out that she's his real mother, which doesn't mean much right now because we never met Sisko's supposed mother so it all feels kinda pointless, at least until the next episode. Then Sisko gets stabbed by a member of the cult of the Pah-wraiths, which seems to serve no real purpose to the plot at all. Then Ezri Dax shows up, but the episode ends before we learn anything about her.

On the station, Kira gets promoted to Colonel and celebrates by getting a stupid new hairstyle. It's not all good news for her though, because Starfleet seemingly owns the station now and have imposed a Romulan presence on the station against her objections. This leads to a brief, quasi-racist friendship between Kira and a Romulan senator, which blows up with Kira learns that the Romulans have placed weapons on a Bajoran moon. Some tension between the allied races is welcome, just because they're all fighting the Dominion doesn't mean they like each other or work well together, and it's nice that that's being addressed here.

The best plot of the episode is about Worf and how he's struggling to get over Jadzia's death, and how his friends are trying to understand him. Not much happens in this story, but there's some good banter between the characters, and it's nice to know that these characters still care about one another even though the family has fallen apart in recent months. It's also nice to see Worf and O'Brien reminisce about life on the Enterprise, it has been a long time since those two talked about such things.

Meanwhile, Weyoun and Damar act as the episode's Statler and Waldorf, gleefully finding joy in the main cast's misfortune.

 

[flemm]

The problem is that DS9 shifts between extremes.

It's a show-defining quality at any rate. And no doubt, to a great extent, the mix of styles is not so much an "idea" that the creators implemented as it is a by-product of Trek having a very firmly established way of producing shows that DS9 stretched and experimented with, but often reverted to as a default for practical reasons.

But I think that, ultimately, the "problem" probably adds to the quality of the show as much as it detracts from it.

 

[Sykonee]

Meanwhile, Weyoun and Damar act as the episode's Statler and Waldorf, gleefully finding joy in the main cast's misfortune.

As funny as that line is, I just can't imagine either of them laughing, "Oh hohoho!"

 

[flemm]

Very good summation of the season anyway. When I was younger, I used to think season six was my favourite of all, purely because of the Occupation Arc, and In the Pale Moonlight. Of course, being older, a bit more jaded, and of having seen the episodes a thousand times, you realise that it's not all rosy.

It's true. At one point, I tended to think of seasons 4-7 as one long stretch of roughly equal awesomeness.

I guess that's partly a question of re-watch value. A lot of the mediocre season 6 episodes just don't hold up or contain much of anything that's worth going back to.

 

[TheRoyalFamily]

Meanwhile, Weyoun and Damar act as the episode's Statler and Waldorf, gleefully finding joy in the main cast's misfortune.

As funny as that line is, I just can't imagine either of them laughing, "Oh hohoho!"

I can see Weyoun doing it. It's hilarious.

 

[TheGodBen]

Very good summation of the season anyway. When I was younger, I used to think season six was my favourite of all, purely because of the Occupation Arc, and In the Pale Moonlight. Of course, being older, a bit more jaded, and of having seen the episodes a thousand times, you realise that it's not all rosy.

It's true. At one point, I tended to think of seasons 4-7 as one long stretch of roughly equal awesomeness.

I guess that's partly a question of re-watch value. A lot of the mediocre season 6 episodes just don't hold up or contain much of anything that's worth going back to.

I used to think the same way, and I think selective memory was at work. At the time, I thought that the occupation arc had lasted half the season, or at least ten episodes. But nope, it was 6 episodes, barely a fifth of the season. It still surprises me sometimes how little there is to that arc, yet it colours our judgement of the whole show.


Shadows and Symbols (***)

Picking up from where the previous episode left off, Ezri Dax shows up. She doesn't do much. She follows the three Sisko's to some desert world where the Prophets left an orb buried slightly under the surface for some unexplained reason. In all honesty, this plot is kinda stupid. I don't have a huge problem with the Space Jesus Sisko stuff as some people do, but I don't understand why the Prophets sent their most important orb to some random desert world nobody has ever heard of, or why they needed Sisko to open a box. They're magical beings that transcend time and space, and you're telling me that one of them got trapped inside a box? Also, this Sarah Prophet is a bloody good fighter, the Prophets were deadlocked by a single Pah-wraith until she showed and she kicked him out in an instant. In all honesty, the Prophet's plan wasn't very good, they trapped their most powerful Prophet in a magical box on a deserted world, which they planned to be opened by a guy suffering from serious psychological issues.

Ah hell, there's no point in trying to analyse any of this, it's just a collection of magical happenings that did whatever the writers needed to happen. Sisko's divine destiny could have been to kick Bishop Brennan up the arse to release the Prophet trapped in his colon and it would have had the same end results.

Meanwhile, Kira has the brilliant plan to take on one of the most powerful military forces in the galaxy with a flotilla of tug boats. Don't worry, it's just a game of brinkmanship, a point which is emphasised again and again by the episode, and then a few more times so that even the mentally impaired know what's going on. It's not a bad story, it's just a little repetitive, but it has a decent ending in that Admiral Ross is the one that folds and not the Romulans. As a side note, Derna orbits absurdly close to Bajor, but it's only Bajor's fourth moon, so presumably there's three other moons that orbit even closer! Good lord, imagine the tides when those moons align.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Worf and co head out on a dangerous mission to blow up a sun with a tractor-beam, or something. Bloody useful devices, those tractor-beams. Worf's not happy about this because Worf is never happy, and he snaps at his friends because he's still in mourning over Jadzia. In the end, he realises that he's being a dick and apologises, and everyone works as a team (except Quark, who is just sort of there) to achieve a great victory and ensure Jadzia's place in Klingon heaven. Now Worf is through with mourning and can finally move on with his life, Jadzia firmly behind him. Oh, except for the fact that his dead wife has returned in a new body and nobody thought to warn him before she showed up. Ouch.

 

[Worf'sParmach]

I've been saying for the last few seasons that DS9's biggest problem is that it's stuck between being a serialised show and an episodic one, and season 6 strains this problem to the point of incredulity.

Totally agree. Though it makes me wonder how flipping awesome DS9 would be if it were airing now when serial is all the rage vs. 15ish years ago.

 

[Worf'sParmach]

Count me as one of the people who did not like "Space Jesus Sisko" (). It was, and still is, very WTF to me. I think it's more profound that Siskos chooses to be "of Bajor" vs. it all being some diving destiney BS. Definitely my least favorite storyline/arc of the season.

And the Worf storyline made sense, they had to address how utterly pissed he must be about Jadzia's f'ed up death. I was even cool with Julian and Miles tagging along for the ride. But Quark being there seemed almost... disrepectful. The guy just lost his wife, but he's supposed to be okay with listening to all Quark's wise cracks?

I remember being very underwhelmed by this season's opening. I also remember having a new boyfriend at the time so a lot of my time normally spent analyzing DS9 was diverted

 

[TheGodBen]

Count me as one of the people who did not like "Space Jesus Sisko" (). It was, and still is, very WTF to me. I think it's more profound that Siskos chooses to be "of Bajor" vs. it all being some diving destiney BS.

Ah, but it is only because Sisko chose to be "of Bajor" that the Prophets created him to be so. That's the thing about the Prophets, they're not linear.

The Prophets orchestrating Sisko's birth just doesn't bother me too much. I don't think it adds anything to the show, but I also don't think it takes anything away, it's just another element of the weirdness that is a non-linear species. I can see where you're coming from, but I just don't feel it.


Afterimage (***½)

So I guess this is where we discuss Ezri Dax. I liked Jadzia, I like Ezri, they bring different qualities to the show. In a way, Ezri completes Jadzia. In all honesty, the Trill are a boring species, they're pretty much just humans with one unique trait, the ability to sort of live on after death. When the show started, Jadzia was already joined so we didn't really get to see that transition, and there just wasn't enough to the concept to sustain the character so they had to find a way to define Jadzia outside of being a joined Trill. That was fine, but it meant that this interesting concept was relegated to a small handful of episodes. But by dying and being reborn in Ezri, we not only get to see the promise of the Trill being fulfilled, we get a new angle to look at Jadzia. It's a pity that this happens in the final season and thus takes away screen-time from the other characters, but I'm still glad that the show had a chance to address these issues before it ended.

Afterimage is the necessary step on the road the show chose to go down, they needed to address Ezri's identity issues and her decision to remain on the station. The result is a predictable hour, but not an unwelcome one. Ezri is confused, Jadzia's friends are confused, Worf is confused and angry, and Sisko is possessive and overbearing. The plot is fine, although Ezri's decision to leave Starfleet and subsequent decision to remain was an unnecessary complication that cheapened the really complicated stuff she was going though. The key scenes in this episode are really about Worf and the pain he is going through just from Ezri's presence. In the end, he chose to let Ezri stay, ostensibly because he thinks that's what Jadzia would want, but really it's because he knows he's got a shot at hitting that on a deserted planet if he plays his cards right.

The real star of the show is Garak, which is true of most episodes he's in. It's good that the show isn't just glossing over Garak's plight, just because he's doing the right thing doesn't mean that it's easy for him. His work is killing thousands of Cardassians, his own kind that think they are serving Cardassia, and that can't be easy for a member of such a patriotic species. The scene where he chews out Ezri is masterful because he's not wrong, he said exactly what many in the audience were thinking, he just saw no reason to be diplomatic about it. Once again, the ending is a tad too tidy, but I guess it frees up to show to return to import stories such as... a baseball game.

 

[Seven of Five]

Count me as one of the people who did not like "Space Jesus Sisko" ().

I must be the only one that liked that arc then.

I quite liked the opening two-parter. I definitely liked it more than Afterimage, which I thought was average.

I absolutely hated Ezri with such irrational rage back in the day. It seemed like she was taking up too many episodes, and she came across as too whiney. It was just that I missed Jadzia so much. Sure, she was probably the weakest character in the main cast, but I enjoyed her presence.

Back to today, and Ezri isn't whiney, she's just confused and conflicted. It was a good move to develop the Trill that way, (whom I find interesting, so to you TGB!) While I admit now that she was all right really, I still miss Jadzia, and I still think Ezri takes up too much time away from the other characters. Conflicting feelings all round.

So in Afterimage, Garak is good. Obviously. Ezri finding her way on DS9, and as the new Dax was also good. All of the counseling I could take or leave, and the end was a bit too neatly tied up.

 

[R. Star]

Count me as one of the people who did not like "Space Jesus Sisko" ().

I must be the only one that liked that arc then.

Unlike Jesus, the Sisko made good on his Second Coming.

 

[flemm]

Ah, but it is only because Sisko chose to be "of Bajor" that the Prophets created him to be so. That's the thing about the Prophets, they're not linear.

Yeah, I'm fine with it for that reason. If anything, it underlines the non-linear nature of the Prophets even moreso than what was done previously in the pilot and the Emissary trilogy.

I'm not in love with the idea or anything, but I think it's a natural extension of what had been established previously about how the Prophets operate.

 

[TheGodBen]

It was a good move to develop the Trill that way, (whom I find interesting, so to you TGB!)

I suppose if you like humans then you'll like the Trill, because we're virtually identical, except for the spots.

Unlike Jesus, the Sisko made good on his Second Coming.

In fairness, he has only been gone for 2,000 years or so, and Earth still has 5 billion years left on the clock. Have some patience.



Take Me Out to the Holosuite (**½)

Everything I know about baseball, I learned from playing Wii Sports. So what I mostly know is that tennis is more fun... and golf... and bowling, and boxing. Essentially, baseball is the most boring to play of all the Wii Sports. It's also the most boring to watch. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't like baseball. I don't really like watching any sports, but baseball would be near the bottom of the list of sports I would watch if I cared enough to make such a list. So an episode about baseball isn't something I expected nor wanted from Deep Space Nine. But a baseball episode is what I've got... and it's okay.

In many ways, this episode suffers from the same over-indulgence problems as His Way. The writers clearly wanted to do a baseball episode even though they write for a show set on a space station in the 24th century, so they concocted some outlandish reason to do a baseball episode. It's not as big a problem as His Way because the characters at least acknowledge that this whole situation is a bit stupid, and this episode is pure fluff that doesn't impose itself on any character arcs. It's also one of DS9's few ensemble episodes, particularly in the latter seasons. DS9 episodes typically break the characters off into small groups, which is a by-product of having a large extended cast. It's not often that we get to see the whole crew working together, and having fun no less, so that works in this episode's favour.

Then there's the Vulcans. I know some people don't like the way the Vulcans act in this episode, but it's yet another thing that doesn't really bother me. Vulcans have always had a rather smug, superior attitude, even Spock, so I don't have an issue with the fact that some Vulcans would take that attitude too far. Honestly, I look down on some of the "unenlightened" cultures on our world, the ones that repress women, homosexuals and others. Some Vulcans are going to feel the same way about us "unenlightened", emotional species. At the end of the day, the Vulcans are probably right, they're probably smarter than humans and superior to us in countless ways. But we take more joy from life, so aren't we the real winners in the end? No, but we'll continue to tell ourselves that to make us feel better.

Form of... an umpire: 34

 

[flemm]

It's also one of DS9's few ensemble episodes, particularly in the latter seasons.

Yeah, I think this episode and Badda Bing are mostly justifiable from that point view: a chance to get the main ensemble together for some light-hearted fun, let us see them together as an extended family for a while before the show enters the late-season war arc and the characters all eventually go their separate ways.

Was it absolutely necessary to do this? Maybe not, but I think it has its place.

One reason I really like season two is the fun group dynamic, with the main cast playing off one another, that tends to get lost a bit in the later seasons. You tend to get a sense of the station as a community at that point in the show. Maintaining that was understandably not a huge priority, but it is good to get everyone together, if nothing else to remind us of the friendships that have been built, and will soon be torn apart.

My qualms with both episodes really are the holodeck setting of both (I think at least one of these light-hearted episodes should have used the main promenade/station as the setting, and/or Quark's bar). Or maybe we only need one of these episodes, not both.

I also agree about the over-indulgent quality, though the baseball thing at least has been a well-established interest of Sisko's from the beginning.

 

[apenpaap]

Everything I know about baseball, I learned from playing Wii Sports.

Everything I know about baseball I learned from this episode. I'm not interested in baseball at all either, but like this ep a great amount anyway.

 

[TheGodBen]

Chrysalis (****)

This episode was good, entertaining and had some epic moments that I'm sure will be important in season 2, but it didn't have the shocking twist that I was expecting. The assassination of President Santiago encapsulates all this this, it's an exciting situation, it's suitably epic and the consequences of this aren't going to be forgotten (I'm assuming), but it was telegraphed well ahead of time that something was going to happen, and ultimately I didn't feel anything about his death because Santiago hasn't been a real presence this season. Sure, it was mentioned that he was elected back in the first episode of the season, and we saw his ship at the station one time, but we never met him or had a firm grasp of how important he was. There were times when he felt like a figurehead and that the real power laid with the military or the PsiCorps. Watching EarthForce One exploding was awesome, but I have little reason to care about it right now.

Wait, I think I'm reviewing the wrong space-station based show.

Chrysalis (**½)

BASHIR: Tell me, do you love me?
SARINA: I don't know. I don't even understand what love is. I don't understand anything.
BASHIR: Sarina.
SARINA: What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to feel? Tell me.

I think we can all sympathise with Sarina here, for her struggle to understand love is something we all go through at some point in our lives. I think the sentiment was summed up best by Haddaway's 1992 masterpiece: "What is love? Baby, don't hurt me. Don't hurt me, no more." Now hit that funky beat.

[yt]v=2nCUwmE4EeE[/yt]

Emissary (****)

The moment I saw that blue comet, I knew I was home.

Emissary probably isn't a great introductory episode if you're a first-timer, the first half is a little chaotic and the second half gets quite weird. But when you know of all the directions the show will take, the paths these characters will go down over the next seven years, this episode acquires a whole new level of appreciation. Sisko's relationship with the Prophets, the Cardassian threat, the looming civil war on Bajor, Odo's origin... All of these seeds, and more, are planted in this episode to be expanded upon later. It has been said it before but it bears repeating, DS9's strength wasn't in that the writers planned things out in advance, but that they were very good at taking threads from previous episodes and tying them into future plots.

Chrysalis (**½)

Sarina Douglas. Forbidding. Aloof. Terrifying. The mutant with the biggest tits on the promenade... I'm not starting again.

Chrysalis is an unusual episode to review because it seems to be another romance of the week episode, but sort of ends up being the opposite of the romance of the week formula. I had a joke lined up when I saw the first scene that Bashir was lonely so he latched onto the first woman that showed him any attention, but the joke was on me because that's exactly what the episode was trying to do. Bashir wasn't really in love with Sarina, he just wanted to believe that things were changing for him so he dived head first into a relationship with one of his patients and ended up putting pressure on her that she couldn't bear. When compared to most other Trek romance episodes, this is a surprisingly mature angle on a really tired format.

But this episode is still using that really tired format for the most part. A man/woman shows up on the station/ship, has a brief fling with one of the main characters, circumstances force them to part and the main character is left heartbroken (for 20 minutes). For the first half-hour, this episode follows that format to a T, it's only in the last ten minutes or so that it becomes apparent that this episode is trying something different, but it still has the same end result. Even the Jack Pack can't do much to set this episode apart from all the other romance of the week episodes.

BASHIR: I'm going to miss you.
SARINA: You won't forget me?
BASHIR: Forget you? Never.

Ha!

 

[DonIago]

I find the episode increasingly creepy for the "Doctor falls in love with patient" vibe.

 

[Seven of Five]

I was about to bitch slap you for giving Chrysalis a better grade than Take Me Out, until I noticed it was B5. So I take my bitch slap back. For now...

I really like the baseball episode, as it's a lot of fun seeing the hopeless Niners trying to help Sisko settle his old score. I think it suffers from being yet another fluff episode, yet I'd rank it higher than some of the iffy season six offerings. I'd rank it higher than Chrysalis too.

I'm not a fan of baseball either, but since the rest of the crew can't play, it doesn't seem to matter much. They're going to help their friend, and they all going have fun doing it. Odo as the umpire was an inspired choice, and I loved O'Brien making scotch-infused gum.

Romance of the week part 79423 is a strange one. It tries not to be a romance of the week, and yet has all the same trappings. I agree that it's a more mature take on the subject, yet the Bashir/Sarina pairing is a bit too dull to make me care. The episode is worth rewatching purely for more zany Zack Pack energy, and also for the cute Do Re Mi scene.

 

[JRS]

I find the episode increasingly creepy for the "Doctor falls in love with patient" vibe.

True..and Bashir saying to her something about "Lets just leave and go to Risa" does not make any sense, considering there is a war going on I doubt Sisko would give him leave anyways. The episode would have been much better without the whole romance stuff, IMHO.