Tag: episode post

1.16: “If Wishes Were Horses”

The main thing I always remember about this episode is that apparently instead of Rumpelstiltskin it was originally going to be a leprechaun, and Colm Meaney was like “uh can u not”. Which…child-stealing is not really a leprechaun thing, is it? Like, Rumpelstiltskin is a much better fit for that to begin with, IMO.

And whenever I rewatch, the main thing I take away is “well, that was slightly more interesting than I remembered”. Which…yes. IDK, for all the flak that “Move Along Home” gets, “If Wishes Were Horses” is usually the first one that jumps to my mind when I’m thinking of why I don’t really like Deep Space Nine‘s first season as much as the rest of the show (though admittedly, it’s usually followed by “Move Along Home” and/or “The Storyteller”). It’s one of Trek’s obligatory “Weird Space Thing/Godlike Alien brings characters/desires/fears to life” episodes, which can be fun but can also be pretty dull, and while there are some fun character moments, it’s hard for me to find anything especially noteworthy. Or, noteworthy in a good way, more specifically.

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1.15: “Progress”

OK, so my initial thought, actually, is that it feels a lot like Mullibok is meant to be younger? Like, the reluctant respect and affection that develops between him and Kira feels a bit like he was meant to be a bit younger, and for some attraction to develop as well? Apparently the initial vision of the character was as someone significantly “more manipulative and less likable”, so maybe that’s why it feels a bit odd to me.

But more to the point, I FRIGGIN’ LOVE BAJORAN INTERNAL POLITICS. I love, love, love that the rebuilding of Bajor is not a neat, simple, smooth process. I love that people have different ideas about what it will mean to move forward, to build a new Bajor and to live in it, that there are costs to everything, and that there aren’t always clear answers about who’s right. In “The Storyteller”, Kira and Sisko discussed a Bajoran saying, that “the land and the people are one”, but that was really more appropriate, thematically, for this episode.

(This also makes it a bit annoying that every place we see on Bajor seems to have a sunny Mediterranean climate. I mean, I get the Doylist reasons, and Star Trek has frequently just sort of ignored the whole thing where a habitable planet is unlikely to have one single climate all over anyway, let alone a single culture. But it still kinda bugs me.)

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1.14: “The Storyteller”

This is another one where the central plot — Weird Space Thing of the Week — is something I can take or leave, but as a vehicle for some great character moments, it’s a delight.

I do have some questions about this particular Weird Space Thing. Primarily: no one ever noticed this before? The Cardassians came down so hard on Bajoran religion and culture in their efforts to “civilize” them, no one ever noticed that this idyllic little village had this weird superstition completely unlike anyplace else on Bajor? No one else on Bajor knows about this or has ever tried to help/investigate? (Come on, you can’t tell me ghost/cryptid hunters wouldn’t know about this and be investigating. Also, good lord where is my spinoff about ghost/cryptid hunters in the Star Trek universe?)

It also seems a bit odd that the chief medical officer on the station is being called for a two-hour trip to Bajor for a medical emergency — I get that Bajor’s still recovering and the infrastructure is shaky, but the Sirah’s condition doesn’t really seem to be anything particularly unusual; there must be someone closer than two hours away who can take care of him. For that matter, aren’t there other medical staff on the station? What if someone has a heart attack back on DS9 in the few days Bashir’s gone? Hell, what if someone just falls and breaks an arm while he’s asleep? This is a recipe for burnout, Starfleet! Teach your officers how to delegate!!!

(I know the village’s magistrate was pretty vague and just told them that they were in danger of extinction, so Bashir assumes it’s some kind of disease, but also…no one asked more follow-up questions? Or, like, thinks to alert the Bajoran government, who are dealing with trying to rebuild their society, that they have what sounds initially like a potential outbreak of some devastating disease on their hands? MY QUESTIONS STAND.)

But back to the topic of character development

Like “Battle Lines”, this feels like another good use of Bashir. Which is to say: they’re embracing the fact that he can be annoying as hell. I’ve mentioned before that it can feel, early on, like we’re meant to find Bashir’s inability to take a hint sort of cute and charming, which just tends to make it all the more irritating (and, when it involves his crush on Jadzia, flat-out gross and creepy). They lean into it here, however, with him being at least as annoying as he is helpful (the way they call attention to the rank difference feels like a very deliberate acknowledgement of the way Bashir’s coming on so strongly makes things really uncomfortable and awkward, for instance). Somewhat paradoxically, the fact that the text is admitting that yes, he’s being moderately obnoxious makes Bashir a lot more tolerable.

Bashir and O’Brien’s relationship will evolve a lot over the course of the series, and it’s a lot of fun, knowing that they end up as BFFs, seeing O’Brien struggling valiantly to hide his low-key hostility. WHOMST AMONG US HAS NEVER BEEN THERE, O’BRIEN? I believe that is what the kids today call a “big mood”.

(It’s also kind of fun, knowing that the primary reason their friendship was pushed heavily later was because the showrunners found out about Garak/Bashir shippers, panicked, and started avoiding putting them in scenes together, given that a large part of the fandom then proceeded to start shipping Bashir/O’Brien. I was never really into that pairing myself, but I *am* into doing things out of spite, so I wholeheartedly support the effort.)

The B plot

JAKE AND NOG ARE SUCH KIDS, BLESS THEM BOTH!!!! That’s most of what I’ve got. I was, however, weirdly delighted by Odo’s little smirk after he chases the kids from their hangout spot above the Promenade. You like the kids, Odo, don’t deny it.

Just. In a world where a twelve-year-old Black child with a toy was gunned down, and the shooting was ruled justified, with many, many voices rising up to defend his murderer because hey, he looked much older and was clearly a scary thug — in a world where the President of the United fucking States stands by his call for the state to murder a group of Black teenagers for a crime they did not commit — it feels really, really important to have this portrayal of a fourteen-year-old Black boy who’s treated by the narrative as just that: a fourteen-year-old boy. Jake Sisko is an awkward teenager who wants to play games, look at cute girls, and hang out with his best friend. He occasionally grieves for his dead mother, fights with said best friend, and needs advice from his father. He’s a kid. And it’s incredibly depressing and infuriating that, nearly twenty-five years after this episode aired, it’s still unusual for a Black teenager to be allowed to act his age.

I also appreciate how, for all that the plot with Varis isn’t treated as anything particularly out of the ordinary, it’s also, when I spend more than a few seconds thinking about it, completely brutal: Varis doesn’t have parents to turn to for help, like Nog and Jake do, because her parents were murdered. She’s a child, and she’s negotiating land rights on behalf of her people because anyone else who could do so was murdered. It’s a really lovely example of what makes Deep Space Nine so memorable: it would be so, so easy to let Varis’s storyline just be straight melodrama, but it’s not. She’s a sympathetic figure, but she’s also flawed; she makes missteps and struggles and, like many other Bajorans, she’s learning how to live in this new world they’re trying to build.

I have one more question

Why does Odo need a bucket, anyway? Can’t he just…be goo on the floor? Maybe he gets crud in him, like when you have to pick lint and cat hair off your clothes. Or…does he not have quarters? I guess if he’s living in the office, it’s pretty rude to other people working there to just be sleeping on the floor.

Horniness rankings

  1. Nog’s entirely age-appropriate crush on Varis is pretty friggin’ adorable.
  2. Bashir is channeling his horniness into enjoying the drama that plays out before him, and it’s also pretty hilarious.

1.13: “Battle Lines”

OK, first things first: WHY THE HELL DOESN’T THE RUNABOUT HAVE SEATBELTS? Like, OK, theoretically there shouldn’t be any need for them, but things happen! This is a troubling oversight, Starfleet.

With that out of the way: this is a really solid episode. The plot itself is straight out of the original series, but there’s also a lot that makes it uniquely DS9, too. There are some truly fun moments between characters, and I’d probably identify this episode as the one where Kira’s character arc really begins. On which note…

Area woman can’t deal with Kira Nerys

KIRAAAAA, ugh, my emotions. She talks in “Emissary” about Bajor as a whole, but this is the first time we’ve really gotten any in-depth look at the personal toll the Occupation took on her. We’ve seen previously that she’s impulsive and pragmatic, that her first instinct when faced with a locked door is to get out her phaser. But only now does the show call our attention to where that instinct came from: “I’ve known nothing but violence since I was a child.”

Throughout the rest of the show, Kira will struggle with this — yes, she was forced to grow up much too fast, but the other side of the coin is that, not having been able to grow up normally, she’s now stuck in the patterns of her youth. This episode is really the beginning of the arc of her trying to grow up in a way she wasn’t allowed to do, to find ways to make peace with her past and channel her passion into building up herself and her world rather than tearing down the Occupation.

I also love that even though it hasn’t really gotten any significant attention thus far, we’re still seeing Kira and Sisko’s relationship evolve, and Kira grow more comfortable with Sisko in particular and the Federation crew in general. Sisko gently needling her with “when you’re through feeling underappreciated” in the opening, after letting her see Dukat’s file on her, was perhaps disproportionately delightful to me, and Bashir attempting to comfort her in her grief over the Kai’s death was genuinely sweet.

Speaking of Bashir, this episode was a really fantastic use of him. The absolute inability to take a hint when he invites himself along on the trip! His complete failure to read the situation when he and Sisko are working on an escape plan, so his light “isn’t that a bit like assisting a jailbreak?” is met with Sisko stonily shutting him down!

On the flip side, though, his snapping “oh, for God’s sake” and snatching his kit back from the Ennis guard so that he can see to Kira’s injuries is a moment of uncharacteristic anger from him. We’ve seen something like it only once before, in “Emissary“, when he snaps at Odo to help him or get out of his way. As I said then, the character’s saving grace early on is that he A) is actually really fucking good at his job, and B) takes it really fucking seriously. He’s another character whose arc I love, but this episode is maybe the first time I really like him.

Area woman only slightly better-equipped to deal with Bajorans in general

LORRRRRRRD the Bajorans give me so many feelings, in no small part because the things the show does with Bajoran religion are extremely friggin’ Jewish.

Kira: I’m afraid the Prophets won’t forgive me.
Opaka: That is why you need to forgive yourself.

W H E W. That is JEWISH AS HECK, y’all.

I have, uh, cut several paragraphs and several hundred words from this post about the Jewish holiday of Tisha b’Av, and another few hundred about the High Holy Days and Jewish ideas of atonement. (I am, however, going to be talking about religion in Star Trek on Antimatter Pod this weekend, so y’all may not be spared some version of those thoughts.) Suffice it to say that Kira’s journey over the course of the series, her struggle to make peace with her past and to find her identity outside of the context of the Occupation, hits me hard, in places that are inextricably bound up with my Jewish faith.

BUT I DIDN’T CUT EVERYTHING, SORRY, PREPARE FOR SOME JEWISHNESS!!!

The concept of Teshuvah — repentence and atonement, in a larger sense, but also, literally, “turning” — is a big one for the High Holy Days, but there’s a lot in it about repetition, the patterns that we fall into. The holidays come every year, after all — every year, we’ve got more to atone for. Every year, we have to face the ways we’ve disappointed ourselves and others, and every year, we have to start again, even knowing that we’re going to be back here next year. Which is…resonant as hell with this episode, thematically: every day, the Ennis and the Nol-Ennis are given a clean slate, and within a matter of hours, they’re back where they began.

In the words of Rabbi Alan Lew:

Transformation is not something that happens once and for all time. […] Transformation does not have a beginning, a middle, or an end. We never reach the end of Teshuvah. It is always going on. We are awake for a moment, and then we are asleep again. Teshuvah seems to proceed in a circular motion. Every step away is also a step toward home.

And it may never be clear to us that the work of transformation has borne fruit. This is usually the case in the realm of spiritual practice. Real spiritual transformation invariably takes a long time to manifest itself in our lives. Spectacular, immediate results — sudden changes in aspect or in the way we see the world — are always suspect, and usually suggest a superficial rather than a profound transformation.

Sisko and Bashir, the Federation officers, are disappointed at their failure to create any sudden transformation — they seem to be on the verge of a breakthrough, and then negotiations fall apart and the Ennis and Nol-Ennis go back to killing each other.

On the one hand, it’s a sad ending. (My mom, who loves the character of Kai Opaka, is still mad at DS9 for getting rid of her so soon.) But on the other hand — what a profound, and, in its own way, profoundly hopeful ending.

It’s not going to happen overnight. A single cease-fire doesn’t mean the war is over. It’s going to take work, a lot of it. And yet these people are not given up as a lost cause, abandoned to their hatreds — Opaka is determined to start doing the work, determined to stay even before she learns that she’s physically incapable of leaving. Deep Space Nine is often called darker than other series in the franchise, and yeah, it’s that, but I disagree when I see it called pessimistic. It’s not, really, not at all — the hope that characterizes Star Trek is 100% still there, DS9 just…comes at it from a different angle.

On a less intense note

A few things I enjoyed:

  • The bisexual pride flag color scheme of Opaka’s robes
  • Bashir looks much better with his hair messy, IMO
  • Jonathan Banks and the fun moment of recognition I always have when I remember he’s in this episode

Horniness rankings

Me, for this show, apparently??? I mean, I think we all knew that at some level, but I surprised even myself with this post. Also: me for Judaism, but as someone on Twitter (I want to say it was Talia Lavin, but I’m not finding it in her history) once said, it’s an extremely horny religion, so that’s kinda to be expected.

I also feel like it’s worth mentioning that Kira is mad about Dukat’s file on her because he’s completely dismissive of her. The attention of the Galaxy’s Horniest Lizard has been primarily focused on Sisko thus far, and mostly remains so, but as time goes on it expands to the people around Sisko as well, so, uh, sorry about that, girl.

1.12: “Vortex”

This was a surprisingly engaging episode, actually? LOL that sounds harsh, but a lot of the first season just kinda leaves me cold. We’re already reaching a point where both writers and cast are starting to get more of a handle on the characters, though, which helps to liven things up a lot. Additionally, this is an interesting episode in terms of the groundwork it lays for later developments.

The fact that Croden considers the shapeshifters a legend is interesting, as is the fact that there’s some truth to what he says about their having been persecuted by the solids. He’s also bang on in his comments about the shapeshifters’ general personalities: the Founders are later established as having a strong sense of justice that can very easily become too rigid, even turn into fascism; they have very little trust in other species, which can also turn, as Quark points out, into paranoia.

This is also the first time we see Odo’s weird smile and okay, I admit I’m not the biggest Odo fan, but I love his awkward smile so much.

Shout-out to the props team

I really like both the shiny purple mug Quark is drinking out of in the opening, and the bottle Rom brings on the tray. And the glimpse we get of the Vulcan ship, too, actually.

On the subject of Quark, I feel like it’s a very interesting little characterization thing that he’s got a drawer full of security clearance widgets? It struck me as a subtle way of telling us that, like Garak, he actually has the means to do some serious damage to the station. You can argue that he wouldn’t just out of self-interest, since that’s where he lives, but he could also sell them to someone who does want to fuck things up on the station and disappear into the Gamma Quadrant or something.

The climactic scenes though

First, I have some questions: why would Odo be knocked unconscious by rocks? He doesn’t have bones. Or a brain, for that matter. And doesn’t he revert to his liquid state when he’s unconscious, anyway? I watched this episode with my mother, who initially thought that he was faking it as a test for Croden, and frankly, that might have made more sense.

That aside, apparently the writers and producers were concerned about the reveal of Croden’s daughter being too sappy. Instead, I’ll let my mother, with whom I watched the episode, explain why it resonated pretty hard:

Odo, preparing to transport them both to the Vulcan ship: Don’t thank me, I already regret it.
Mom: …but of course he’s helping them anyway, BECAUSE WHAT KIND OF MONSTER WOULD SEPARATE A PARENT AND CHILD TO SEND THE PARENT BACK TO CERTAIN DEATH?

So, yeah, ouch.

Horniness rankings

There is very little horniness in this episode, although Quark and Odo are basically Kate Beaton’s Nemesis comics. Like several other duos on this show, actually (Sisko and Eddington, Dukat and Sisko, Dukat and Kira, some hints at it with Dukat and Garak…let’s be real, pretty much Dukat and anyone he interacts with more than once), which might be why it has such a special place in my heart.

1.11: “The Nagus”

Okay, this feels more like the show that Deep Space Nine is going to become, I think. As with “Q-Less”, the focus is entirely on the characters, with the external plot serving their storylines, rather than the other way around.

My last rewatch was with my then-roommate Mindi, who loves Nog and Rom, and when I yelled “THEY’RE SUCH GOOD BOYS!!!!” over Jake and Nog I got all nostalgic for sitting on her couch, trying to avoid being attacked by one of her cats, and was sad that she was not here to watch it and yell with me.

For real, though, I feel like Nog has one of the more underrated arcs on the show. He starts as a pretty one-note character, a plot device for Sisko’s parenting arc, and by the end he’s the first Ferengi in Starfleet and dealing with PTSD.

(Also: I get that the Ferengi were concerned about Federation ~indoctrination~, and the fact that a woman was the authority figure in the classroom. But they’re not illiterate! WHY CAN’T NOG READ, this is concerning!!!!! What the hell, Rom? Was it supposed to be his mother’s job to teach him, and since she’s [footage not found], Rom just figured “oh well”? I HAVE QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS.)

Speaking of characters being fleshed out more

This was the first episode where I really felt like Jadzia was recognizable as the character she’ll become over the course of the show. Initially, they’re trying convey Dax’s centures of life experience by trying to make Farrell play Space Galadriel, which is frankly a misuse of Farrell’s strengths. As they move away from that, letting Jadzia have more of her own personality, Dax shows up instead as a confidence and self-assurance beyond Jadzia’s years, and she’s playful and adventurous instead.

That transition starts for real in the second season, but Farrell’s performance here hints at it. Which is to say, I love the following things in her scene with Sisko:

  • The way she turns her chair backwards like the Cool Teacher
  • The fact that she admits her parenting advice might not actually be all that helpful
  • The fact that she just…stays there, eating Jake’s dinner, when Sisko leaves??? EVERYONE ON THIS STATION IS SUCH A MESS AND I LOVE IT

Also, O’Brien’s “what, what? oh no” face at Sisko’s “Your daughter’s three, wait until she’s fourteen” is glorious.

OK but yikes though

WHEW, the whole bit about the Ferengi being jazzed about doing business in the Gamma Quadrant because no one there will know yet that they can’t be trusted, and they can break their word with impunity. Like. W H E W. Got it, Star Trek, they’re untrustworthy and suspicious, and are naturally greedy businessmen, and they’re also short with comically oversized head appendages! I get it. I get it, Star Trek, and it’s not great! IT’S NOT GREAT, STAR TREK.

(Hell, it makes Nog’s illiteracy even weirder and more unbelievable. How are we supposed to trick the goyim with all our learning and fancy contracts full of loopholes only we know how to exploit if we can’t read or write those contracts? At least keep your offensive stereotypes consistent, Trek!)

That said:

  • Wallace Shawn as Zek is just chef’s kiss
  • Quark going full Don Corleone is delightful. Armin Shimerman is ALL IN on this show and the fact that Quark is given more to do than just be a Jewish Ferengi stereotype is one of the things that makes the other Ferengi appearances bearable.
  • I also like that where Nog is concerned, Sisko is occasionally inclined to…something almost like NIMBY-ism? The tension he’s struggling with feels very real: yes, he absolutely believes in the Federation’s ideals about diplomacy and reaching out to different people, but in practice, dealing with Ferengi in his daily life, it’s hard for him. I also like that this tension isn’t something that’s quickly resolved — a couple of seasons down the line, he’s reluctant to recommend Nog for Starfleet Academy, immediately assuming that it’s some sort of prank or scam.

One last thing

“You don’t GRAB power, you accumulate it quietly, without anyone noticing!” SERIOUSLY STAR TREK WHAT THE FUCK. Like, granted, actual fucking Nazis weren’t being called “very fine people” by the President of the United States when this was airing, so while it’s aged poorly, it might be slightly more bearable in an environment where white nationalism isn’t increasingly mainstream. But still, good lord.

Horniness rankings

  1. The Nagus, which, you know what, good for him. I also really love how pretty much from the beginning, Deep Space Nine’s holosuites are for porn. Jake and Sisko were in a fishing program in the pilot, but since that was on a starship instead of the station, it’s the exception that proves the rule.
  2. Quark, particularly for the special pleasure he takes in trolling Odo about his new status as Nagus, good lord, I love it.
  3. Dax, for Sisko’s aubergine stew, apparently? I mean, it sounds great, but come on, Dax, boundaries!!! Although Sisko doesn’t seem to mind, so who am I to judge?

1.10: “Move Along Home”

I’m gonna try a new thing this month, schedule-wise: two episodes a week! One post will be on Tuesday, one on Thursday. I’m hoping that will make it a bit easier for me to find a good rhythm for myself, and stay engaged. Or maybe I immediately get overwhelmed and we’re back to once a week! It’ll be a fun adventure for all of us.

Apparently this is generally considered the worst episode of the series, which seems a little harsh? I’ll grant that it’s not one of the best, but nothing jumps out at me as egregiously bad, either. Like last week, it’s just kind of…aggressively okay.

It’s a pretty standard Weird Alien Thing Of The Week outing, which, granted, isn’t really where Deep Space Nine‘s strengths lie. It’s also still in the front half of the first season, before there’s been much in the way of character development, so we don’t get any of the subplots and interpersonal stuff that makes later episodes more fun. Again, though, I don’t see any of that as much different from some of the other episodes in the first season, when they’re still getting established and not straying far from previous series’ paths.

To be honest, since neither Quark nor Bashir gets horniness all over Dax or any other woman nearby, I’d rank it above some of the recent episodes, personally.

Can’t believe I waited this long to drop this link

Having rewatched a lot of the show over the past couple of years as friends have gotten into Star Trek and I’ve enabled them, one of my overwhelming feelings in the first season is “OH MY GOSH JAKE IS SUCH A BABY!!!!” He’s so young, oof. And he and Ben have such a great relationship — I wish we’d had a bit more payoff from their interaction in the opening later in the episode. This is also a good time for me to link this lovely essay by one of my favorite critics, Angelica Jade Bastién, “Deep Space Nine Is TV’s Most Revolutionary Depiction of Black Fatherhood“. She says it better than me:

In its first season, it was uneven, still getting a hold on the characterization and ideas it would continue to explore. But one aspect of its story immediately felt lived-in and real: the tender relationship between Commander (and later Captain) Benjamin Sisko (a magnetic, theatrical Avery Brooks) and his young son, Jake (Cirroc Lofton). […] No series before or since has a portrayed a black father with such complexity, crafting him as a widow, a powerful authority figure, a religious icon, a man whose morals are formed in shades of gray and whose love of his son remained his guiding principle.

Also, on a far less profound note, Jake’s reaction the moment Sisko has his brilliant idea of doing his “First Contact as first date” comparison is absolute teen perfection.

Where did the pajamas go?

I realize looking for much sense in the Weird Space Stuff Of The Week is a fool’s errand, but this is bugging me nonetheless: why is everyone in their regular uniforms when they end up in the game? It was the middle of the night and they were all asleep when they were pulled into it, right? They were in their pajamas. And before that, the Wadi had only seen Sisko and Dax in their dress uniforms, which they’re not wearing in the game. The Wadi appear to have some pretty wild transporter tech, but they…actually changed people’s clothes in the process of transporting them? And gave them tricorders? They’re still in their uniforms when the game ends and they appear back in Quark’s, so it’s presumably not just a function of the game. I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS.

Speaking of the Wadi, let me just say that a whole planet of gamers sounds terrible. Leave them where you found them, IMO. I do appreciate how shiny everything they wear is, though.

Other thoughts

  • Sisko’s face when he realizes the Wadi were just trolling them is amazing. I am all about Sisko’s moments of barely-contained rage in general TBH. I introduced an old friend to Star Trek: Discovery a couple of years ago, and less than three episodes in, she said that Michael Burnham was definitely made from the mold of all my faves, because “she’s very repressed”, and I felt called out in that way where you’re completely blindsided by the brutal truth of something, and you look back at all your faves and realize that you never even noticed that this was a pattern, and it’s hilarious and a little bit devastating. Just thought of that for some reason.
  • “If all else fails, just yell again, Doctor. We’ll find you.” LMAO Sisko’s moments of bitchiness are so perfect. Also, judging by his sheepish smile as he watches Sisko go after that, I am not the only person who enjoys Sisko’s moments of bitchiness. All I’m saying is that, given Garak, Bashir seems to be into dudes who are sarcastic, urbane daddy types who are carefully controlling their own emotions except for occasional explosions of ruthless competence.
  • ODO YOU CAN’T JUST BUST PEOPLE’S DOORS DOWN, AT LEAST GET A DAMN WARRANT. Primmin is largely forgettable, but he’s not wrong on this.
  • Quark’s Polite Customer Service Mien when Sisko is drinking at the bar and talking about First Contact is #relatable.
  • Also #relatable: that Bashir apparently didn’t bother to look for his dress uniform and realize he’d lost it in time to get a new one.
  • I like that Quark is the one to figure out what’s going on, and that he does so immediately after being told four officers are missing. Quark isn’t stupid, he’s just a jerk, which is part of what makes him such a great foil for other characters.
  • “If you were hurt, I’d leave you behind.” LMAO sure, Dax. I like that Sisko takes this about as seriously as I do.

Horniness rankings

Almost no one? It’s mostly just vague hints, with the exception of Quark, who manages to be fairly horny without being gross at women, channeling it all into gambling, not to mention trolling Odo even in the midst of crisis by making him blow on his dice. Perhaps the lack of general horniness is the true reason why this is considered the worst episode.

1.06: “Captive Pursuit”

Probably not a super-long post today, since A) my notes were not actually all that extensive so I guess I don’t have a ton to say, and B) most of my spare time and energy has been devoted to frantic crafting in an effort to finish my costumes before San Diego Comic Con next week.

(Can’t wait for the Star Trek: Discovery panel so I can ask, in my best Nice White Lady Voice, how they plan to address a mostly-white, mostly-male group deciding that the accomplishments of a Black woman and her extremely diverse crewmates must be erased from the Federation’s historical record!)

Regarding my first point, about not having a ton to say: like last week, this is a pretty straightforward, plot-focused episode. Which is fine, but also not where DS9 really comes to shine later. Early on, as Jason noted with “Babel”, the show tends to be very cautious, staying closer to The Next Generation in its episode structures. (And it’s even clearer how much that was a “we should play it safe for a while” decision now, nearly twenty years later, having seen the anger from a lot of the fanbase about Discovery committing the sin of not being a TNG clone.) Unlike TNG, however, which was in its sixth season when DS9 was in its first, we don’t know nearly as much about the characters, so it’s hard to know why a given situation might challenge a given character.

Speaking of which…

Oh hey what’s up O’Brien

“Babel” started with a focus on O’Brien and then shifted away once he came down with the virus, which was actually a bit of a disappointment. It was cool to get some follow-through in this one, though I would have liked a bit more, again, about O’Brien as a person rather than a plot piece. That said, Colm Meaney and Scott MacDonald, who plays Tosk, have pretty solid chemistry, and I friggin’ love O’Brien’s well I get what you’re going for here and appreciate it in that spirit but uhhh face in reaction to Tosk’s “Die with honor, O’Brien” farewell.

JUSTICE 4 SARDA

They completely dropped the whole thing from the beginning with Miss Sarda the dabo girl and I am annoyed about it. Three things I enjoyed about that opening:

  1. That she had the guts to speak up about Quark’s bullshit
  2. That we didn’t have to actually witness any of Quark’s bullshit, just hear it reported, suggesting that Sisko’s default is to believe people who report harassment to him
  3. That the commander of the station makes himself available for anyone to report problems to him directly rather than hiding behind layers of bureaucracy and trying to drown people in paperwork until the problem goes away

All of this speaks well to the healthy, safe place everyone is attempting to make the station! But the lack of any follow-up on it means that it’s impossible to know whether those attempts will be effective.

Other things I appreciated

  • O’Brien pointedly talking over Bashir’s attempt to insert himself into the excitement by suggesting Tosk come in for a medical examination. I really love how everyone is just calmly trying to ignore Bashir until he chills a little.
  • “SHUT UP, QUARK.”
  • Can we all just appreciate Odo’s attempt to casually saunter away after Sisko’s “there’s no hurry”? Odo has never been chill in his life, he will never be chill in his life, he has absolutely zero chill ever, and it is hilarious. Odo makes Sisko and Kira look low-key and easygoing.
  • Quark’s hunger for gossip remains #relatable as hell

Horniness rankings

The closest thing to horniness this week: Bashir and Quark’s attempts to get closer to the action. And thank goodness, because apparently the opening was supposed to involve Miss Sarda attempting to seduce Sisko later, which, whew, could have gone way too easily into some unfortunate territory.

1.05: “Babel”

Honestly, I am a sucker for episodes that deal with language issues in Star Trek. It’s prime territory for worldbuilding and politics, as well as presenting some ready-made conflicts. This was also unusual for DS9 so far in every single plot tying directly into the A plot, with very little in the way of personal subplots, and while the episode itself was relatively strong, the lack of character stuff just makes it a lot less memorable for me.

The subplot with Captain Jaheel, for instance, was…kinda boring? It felt like they wanted something to add a more action-y, ticking time bomb element, because, you know, the issue of no one being able to communicate with one another or their technology and also dying wasn’t dramatic enough. There are some hints of the drama you can explore there already in Sisko and Jake’s interactions even after Jake falls ill; I would have liked to see the story allowed to stand on its own with the main characters.

Similarly, we don’t get much of O’Brien after he falls ill, which is a shame, because he makes a really interesting point of view character in the early episodes. Previous Treks have had the Federation treating its exploration mission in a way that can come uncomfortably close to manifest destiny, and one of the central conflicts of Deep Space Nine is pushing back on that. The show establishes this in the very first episode, when Kira shuts down Bashir’s waxing romantic about the frontier with a blunt reminder that millions of people already live on his “frontier”. O’Brien’s work makes that conflict into a very real, physical thing, with the Federation and the Bajorans trying to use existing Cardassian technology in ways that it wasn’t intended to be used.

That makes it interesting that the device, initially being identified as Cardassian sabotage of the Federation, turns out to be an old piece of Bajoran Resistance sabotage instead. The Bajorans have been using Cardassian technology for their own ends for decades, so at least having someone make that connection would have been interesting. And that, in turn, makes it noticeable that O’Brien doesn’t have any Bajorans on his team, or, for that matter, anyone else at all, apparently? LEARN TO DELEGATE, CHIEF. Even if he hadn’t come down with an engineered virus that put him out of commission, he’d still have to sleep sometime.

…and with that, actually, we come full circle to my criticism that seeing more of O’Brien outside of serving as a plot device would have been interesting. It’s not entirely shocking that his instinct would be to do everything himself; he’s been a transporter tech on the Enterprise for several years now, and suddenly he’s in a more supervisory role. I mentioned last week that the conflict between Miles and Keiko felt very realistic in spite of the sci-fi trappings, and I think they lost an opportunity for something similar in this episode, with Miles still trying to do everything himself.

Has Julian begun to get his life right?

Bashir is significantly less irritating in this episode than he’s been so far, in no small part because he’s entirely focused on doing actual medical work. As I noted earlier, one of the only things that makes him bearable early on is that he’s genuinely good at his job.

On the one hand, it seems like a missed opportunity that they never explicitly draw the line between Dax’s musing about how different a woman’s experience of the world is from a man’s, and Bashir’s behavior towards her in the past few episodes. On the other hand, given that it seemed like we were supposed to consider said behavior relatively harmless, perhaps even endearing, maybe that’s for the best.

So many workplace issues

FIRST OF ALL:

Sisko: No need to ask how you’re doing.
Kira: Chasing after ghosts.
Sisko: You have twelve hours to catch one.
Kira: And then?
Sisko: People start dying.

Like, obviously we, the audience, know that he’s referring to the rapid progression of the virus, but Kira wasn’t in the scene where Bashir explains that to Sisko. Without that context, it definitely sounds like he’s just gonna start straight-up killing people, right?

Further:

  • OK, if the nurse who asks the aphasic Jake “what’s wrong?”, and seems to be waiting for a verbal answer is indicative of the level of help to be expected, it makes a bit more sense that O’Brien’s not delegating.
  • This is all I can imagine when Quark and Odo are the only people in Ops.
  • I get that it was a manpower issue, but the constant shots of Sisko just…passed out over the computer in Ops in the background while Odo and Quark are working is weirdly hilarious.
  • KIRA YOU CAN’T JUST KIDNAP A DUDE AND PUT HIM TO WORK, WHY IS EVERYONE ON THIS STATION SUCH A MESS

Horniness rankings

Almost no one was horny this week and I’m frankly bewildered by it. That said, Quark’s dedication to trolling Odo borders on horniness and I find it absolutely delightful.

1.04: “A Man Alone”

NGL, I actually have very little to say about the A plot on this one. In part this is because I just…really don’t find Odo all that compelling as a character?

Reflecting on my last couple of rewatches, I feel like he arguably grows and changes the least of all the main characters over the course of the series. He has a black and white sense of justice at the beginning, and that’s never really challenged in any serious way. Given how much of the show is about having to deal with the gray areas, that gets kind of boring after a while.

Further, while the show makes it clear with the Founders that that black and white sense of justice is something the rest of his people share, and they examine with the Founders how easily that can turn into fascism, they never really take the next step and challenge Odo himself on that front. Last week he offered to just straight-up jail the Duras sisters because of their past record rather than anything they’d done since arriving on DS9 and waxed nostalgic for the simplicity of oppressive Cardassian rule, this week he wants to throw Ibudan off the station without any apparent cause. Sisko flat-out tells him that he cannot take the law into his own hands, but even after Odo is on the other side of that equation — after an angry mob literally tries to lynch him for no other reason than that a troublemaker has convinced them he can’t be trusted — the show never has anyone explicitly address the fact that Odo’s been behaving pretty similarly. Just the opposite: Odo is instead vindicated in his suspicions and actions.

That said, the other part of why I don’t have much to say about the A plot is that I am all about space operas that are just that: literally soap operas in space. Give me hot aliens and hotter gossip and I am content. (It seems worth noting here that most of this rewatch thus far has been done while I’ve been sewing, sometimes in my Pride t-shirt, so possibly I am just Garak at heart.)

Julian can u not

Good lord, I wasn’t even ten when this episode first aired, but even then Bashir’s inability to take a hint from Dax and back the heck off wasn’t cute, it was at best embarrassing and at worst creepy. Jason commented last week that his parents must not have paid for the “picking up on subtext” upgrade when they had him genetically enhanced and TRUTH.

I feel like they drop a lot of what Dax says about the Trill view on relationships later, or rather, they amend it to be about the expectations around joined Trill, who (it’s later explained as well) make up a pretty small portion of the Trill population. I think that’s a good choice, and adds more depth to the worldbuilding, since her initial comments make them seem a bit like Vulcans-lite. As an adult woman, however, my alternate explanation is that she’s just leaving out some of those key details in order to get Bashir to back the heck off.

Spilling the Tarkalean tea

I hate myself a little for that subhead but let’s be real, it was gonna happen eventually, and now it’s done and we can all move on with our lives.

Quark’s barely-contained glee in spilling all the local gossip to Odo is #relatable, honestly. I stand by what I said when I was introducing Mindi to this show last year:

The O’Briens’ basic conflict — a couple who moved someplace dramatically different for one partner’s job and the other is currently at loose ends and feeling frustrated, stifled, and depressed — is really lovely and realistic, which is one of the reasons it’s kind of disappointing that they wrap it up so quickly. Honestly, DS9 never really knows what to do with Keiko and w h e w does it show here. She’s a botanist, so sure, she can definitely be a teacher for kids from a wide variety of cultures and age groups! Teaching is basically a hobby you can just pick up because you always kinda wanted to try it and now you’ve got some free time.

Possibly I’m being a little unfair — it’s made clear that Jake, at least, is being educated via computer at home, so “teaching” at a Federation outpost may be more about providing a structured environment and facilitating socialization opportunities. But in that case…there’s really no need for it to be a school? They could’ve gone with the arboretum idea and have her offering science classes in person to balance out the home-schooling curriculum, for instance. I just have enough teacher friends that with every rewatch this bugs me more.

Beautiful cinnamon rolls too good for this space station, too pure

THE BEGINNING OF JAKE AND NOG’S FRIENDSHIP!!!! I also like that Sisko’s dislike/mistrust of Nog as a bad influence on Jake is mirrored by Rom disliking/mistrusting Jake as an influence on Nog. I feel like they initially play it for laughs, i.e. lol what kind of dummy would be worried about the Federation being a bad influence, but as they develop the characters of Nog, Quark, and Rom (who, at this point, is basically being written as “Quark but with less charm”) it becomes a bit less of a joke. See the episode where Quark tells Sisko that he knows he doesn’t like him or Ferengi, but maybe he should keep in mind that only one of their species has chattel slavery, nukes, and concentration camps in its history, and it ain’t the Ferengi.

Let us close on the mental image of Sisko, gazing into a vat full of an unidentified biological mass recovered from a murder scene, and then calmly asking, “Care for lunch?” I LOVE HIM SO MUCH.

Horniness rankings

  1. Bashir. Apparently I need to say it again: GET YOUR LIFE RIGHT JULIAN
  2. Odo has never been horny in his life (and seems to have gotten his understanding of relationships mostly from old sitcoms and stand-up routines?) and honestly I feel like his anti-horniness is so pronounced as to merit a spot on the ranking.
  3. Honorable mention for Sisko and Dax’s awkward semi-horniness for each other, particularly because they’re dealing with it in such a refreshingly grown-up way? Like, they both straight-up acknowledge that this is awkward and uncomfortable and it’s going to take time, and she even gives him the opportunity to end the relationship, and they both opt instead to just work on it! It’s so nice!
  4. Me: horny for hot aliens and hotter gossip.
  5. Quark: see #4.