#DS91sttime: Season 4, Episode 24, “The Quickening”

February 28, 2017 in #DS91sttime, General Topics

Accidental allusions to sword-wielding immortals aside, “The Quickening” is a welcome episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In a series that has seemed at times too content to flesh out its key adversarial faction, the Dominion, from a distance, here one of our protagonists is thrust headlong into a civilization living with the consequences of defying the Founders’ overtures.

Kira and Dax are on a survey mission in the Gamma Quadrant along with forever-friendzoned Dr. Bashir. After following up on a distress signal (I guess distress signals are universal across species? Who knew?) they find a devastated planet and its people, who live within spitting distance of the Dominion itself. Seems these folks once told the Dominion they’d remain independent and free. In response, the Dominion attacked their world and infected the entire population with a 100%-communicable disease that strikes from birth and eventually claims its sufferer’s life, though on a completely random timetable.

The “Blight”, as it is called, is bad news, clearly, and Bashir volunteers to stay behind and do what he can. Kira is going to go hang out in a conveniently-located Nebula for a while. This is one of those aspects of Star Trek that annoys me: Why would anyone send a bunch of senior officers just dripping with valuable information into the backyard of a known threat, and arm them only with a Runabout? Egads.

Things are so bad on the planet that the “hospital” is actually more like a hotel for last hurrahs, but Bashir is optimistic about his chances of solving the Blight, and his determination is something I found very sympathetic. But I was worried that the Typical Trek Formula would thus follow, in which Bashir encounters skeptical locals and races against time, but ultimately succeeds, even saving the life of the pregnant Ekoria (Ellen Wheeler, in an excellent guest role) in the process.

Luckily, that’s not quite the case. And though I don’t want to spoil the ending here, let me just say it’s much less triumphant than expected. It gives us one of those that moments where DS9 is at its absolute best, when it allows its characters to stumble. Bashir, who’s always been keen to see the bright side in every situation, gets taken down a peg, and has to deal with the fact that he’s not going to be a miracle worker. How he will have to settle for less than perfect results, and carry on in the face of near-crippling disappointment makes this episode a pleasant surprise. This is deep, deep stuff. “The Quickening” is a credit to the series.

Damaged goods are good, I always say.

———-

I should point out that, by this episode, my darling wife had announced her disinterest in continuing the show, so they’ll be no more of her take from this point onward.

Rating: 4/5

See the rest of the review series here.


"Beacon" Part IA young couple’s miracle at the last star left in the Universe will lead to a specter from the past returning to confront mankind…and the end will become the beginning. Try Part I of the Beacon Saga Serial, for your choice of ebook platforms.

#DS91sttime: Season 4, Episode 23, “To the Death”

February 19, 2016 in #DS91sttime, General Topics

DS9, Season 4, Ep. 23, "To The Death"

Very bad things. DS9, Season 4, Ep. 23, “To The Death”

Here’s an episode that’s very consequential, not just in Deep Space Nine‘s canon, but also for the career of one of its lead actors.

It’s easy to see why. “To the Death” gives us a solid (if somewhat unbelievable) hook and then drops into it a mixed bag of characters completely uncomfortable together. That’s a setup common to many of Trek’s finer episodes. Ultimately this is less about a throwaway gimic (rogue Jem’Hadar have access to an interstellar gateway) and more about the Dominion’s many barely-subdued power struggles. A happy polygamous marriage between multiple species, this is not. Read the rest of this entry →

#DS91sttime: Season 4, Episode 22, “For the Cause”

September 26, 2015 in #DS91sttime, General Topics

Yes, I know. It’s been forever.

Still, one couldn’t blame me. I’ve grown a little frustrated with Deep Space Nine. It seems like–at this point in its run–that it kept veering toward greatness, but was afraid attaining that would somehow compromise itself.

If there’s one thing the show needed by now, it was someone to kick the writers in the butt and tell them they needed to get on with it. The Kasidy Yates subplot is a good idea, and keeping up with Gul Dukat’s illegitimate child is important, and Garak lingering around the station will be consequential and the Marquis are bad hombres and that the Bajorans are still upset and…and…
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#DS91sttime: Season 4, Episode 21, “The Muse”

February 16, 2015 in #DS91sttime, General Topics

DS9: "The Muse"

That look, whatever it is–I like it. DS9, Season 4, ep 21, “The Muse”

Writers–the ones that believe in their bones that they were made to write–are very driven people, given to not only burning the midnight oil, but the morning and afternoon oil as well. Like all artists, there’s the potential for obsession, sometimes foisted upon us by outside influences. George Orwell, one of my favorite authors, was basically killed by the demands of his publisher; as a consequence Nineteen Eighty Four became his last work.

“The Muse” asks a question: is an artist’s legacy worth the cost of losing everything else? Of risking their very life? One of the characters present in this episode seems to think so, but their nefarious deeds wind up having less impact on us than the other half of this tale.

We’re presented with two plots in “The Muse”, as is the wont of Trek since the earliest days of the Berman-helmed shows, at least by my recollection. The first finds Jake Sisko abandoning a vacation with his father in the name of working on a story. What’s really happened is that Jake has been captivated by the offer of a female alien to help him with his novel. There’s clear sexual interest on Jake’s part toward the woman, named Onaya, and the episode dances carefully around the subdued eroticism of Onaya’s candlelit quarters. This is a coming of age tale, of sorts, both for Jake as a writer and as a young man, and like any good coming of age story, Jake finds himself in over his head. It’s a little uncomfortable for us, as it is for him. Read the rest of this entry →

#DS91sttime: Season 4, Episode 20, “Shattered Mirror”

January 28, 2015 in #DS91sttime, General Topics

Once again we descend into the mirror universe in “Shattered Mirror”, a place where–as my wife puts it–“everyone becomes a worse actor”.

I don’t know if I completely agree with that, though this might be because I always focus my ire on the logical issues inherent in mirror universe episodes. Lest you think I’m being unfair, let me tell you that I believe in an old adage about fiction: “Everybody gets one pass”. The problem with “Shattered Mirror”, and other mirror universe episodes, is that they’ve by definition already been given a pass. Namely, you have to believe there exists a place where nearly every prime universe character has a counterpart, despite the mirror universe’s millennia of radically different factions, wars, and historical events. You have to imagine that, somehow, most people had the same parents, and their parents had the same parents, all the way back to prehistory.

“Shattered Mirror” starts off with a premise so ridiculous I have a hard time writing about it without reverting back to the expletive-throwing days of my youth. Mirror Jennifer Sisko has apparently booked a tourist visa to the prime universe and comes across for a casual visit. Nervous smiles from both Sisko men follow.

This all makes perfect sense! See, you can cross over whenever you want, clearly. Sisko must have hopped over to grab Jennifer, or she beamed over onto the promenade for a visit, and everyone’s completely cool with this, because an organization like Starfleet, which has a freakin’ temporal protocol clearly has nothing to say about interfering with the affairs of another dimension. And hey, since that mirror universe is so great, clearly the prime universe wouldn’t see an influx of refugees, or anything like that, because it’s not like crossing over is so simple that mirror universe characters can do it in the name of having dinner. Read the rest of this entry →