Deep Space Nine 7x5 "Chrysalis"

rating: ***

the story: Bashir gets a chance to show the genetically-enhanced but painfully withdrawn Sarina her true potential.

what it's all about: Until the J.J. Abrams reboot movies, I'm not sure how clear it really was that Star Trek was always about characters who were extreme exceptions to society.  It was clear, to a certain extent, in Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, but seeing these characters so often, no matter the stories that made it obvious, tended to dull the impact, because at the end of the day they always had a family to turn to, the crew at the heart of that particular series.  Abrams put the alienation inherent to the lives of Kirk and Spock front and center.  But "Chrysalis" got there first.

"Chrysalis" is a follow-up to "Statistical Probabilities," one of the more innovative war stories from the sixth season, where we first meet the Jack Pack, genetically-enhanced misfits crippled by their genius, riddled with personality quirks that only compounded their problems.  This was very much a Bashir episode, in which the revelations of the still-earlier "Doctor Bashir, I Presume?" were finally made clear.  While "Chrysalis" clearly features Bashir, too, it's almost more Sarina's story.  Sarina had been the least obnoxious member of the Jack Pack (so-called because Jack was the most obnoxious member), because she was more or less in a catatonic state.  She'd had no chance to assert herself.

Bashir pulls an Awakenings (it's a great Robin Williams movie, and it's a great Robert De Niro movie; do yourself a favor and see it if you can't imagine how that can possibly be true) and allows Sarina to flourish, but in doing so she discovers something worse than her previous existence: she no longer fits in with the rest of the Jack Pack. 

The Jack Pack, basically, is Star Trek in all its ideals taken to a ridiculous extreme.  These guys are brilliant, but they overthink everything.  Imagine if all the heroics in the franchise existed only in the minds of the characters (say, Data processing possible outcomes in the span of nanoseconds, expanded into whole episodes).  Now, what happens when you find one of these guys is able to put the nonsense of the acumen aside, and just do it?  Sarina is basically Kirk.  Yeah.  She's basically Kirk, and every other roguish hero in the franchise, every other character capable of cutting through what's merely possible and making the leap of faith into the impossible. 
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Maybe I'm not explaining it well.  Suffice to say, but "Chrysalis" is a profile of an outsider realizing they're an outsider.  That better?  Anyway, I think it's one of those episodes that just really had to happen.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Speaks to the heart of what Star Trek is really all about, finding your full potential.
• series - Rounds out several previous episodes.
• character - Bashir ends up taking a backseat to Sarina.
• essential - Does for a guest character what proved to be so hard to do for main characters throughout the franchise.

notable guest-stars:
Faith Salie (Sarina)
Tim Ransom (Jack)
Michael Keenan (Patrick)
Hilary Shepard (Lauren)
Aron Eisenberg (Nog)

Deep Space Nine 6x9 "Statistical Probabilities"

rating: ****

the story: Bashir becomes guardian to a team of eccentric fellow "augments."

what it's all about: Chances are if you had a problem with revelation of Bashir's childhood genetic enhancements as revealed in last season's "Doctor Bashir, I Presume?," "Statistical Probabilities" is the episode that completely justifies it.  It's also a completely unique franchise take on the genius think tank concept usually depicted by a given series' main cast, characters capable of and interested in solving problems.  If this had been an original series episode (and actually, just about every other incarnation), the guest characters in "Probabilities" would've turned out to not only be horribly misguided but the source for a giant problem that ends up imperiling everyone (think Richard Daystrom in "The Ultimate Computer").

But the misfit geniuses in "Probabilities" are a direct commentary on Bashir himself, and the viewer's newfound awareness that he possesses an typically brilliant mind, too.  He and his new friends are applying their smarts to calculating the expected outcome of the Dominion War, and they don't come up with good results.  The episode is mostly about how even smart people can outsmart themselves, overthink something so that they end up with a distorted viewpoint, and that's pretty clever for a franchise that so often glorifies smart people (think Spock or Data or Seven).  Besides the fact that no one ends up looking like a villain, which is refreshing in and of itself, "Probabilities" also probes the nature of outcasts, another thing frequently at the heart of the franchise, and just as typically exhibited by those same geniuses.  It's actually more common for Star Trek to feature isolated individuals who really only fit in with the specific colleagues that comprise each cast, than anything.  But rarely is this actually explored.  Later, in the Abrams movies, it would become much more common, but originally it was more or less taken for granted.  This is the rare exception.

When I use the term "misfits," it's no exaggeration.  These are neurotic individuals, exemplified by the manic Jack, who actually becomes endearing throughout the course of the episode.  The whole "Jack Pack" actually returns in the seventh season's "Chrysalis," in which we see another side of Sarina, the quiet girl and the only one of them, as a result, not sabotaging herself by an abrasive personality (such as the overly sexual Lauren or sad sack Patrick).  In The X-Files, this group had a parallel in the Lone Gunmen, who were fortunate enough to gain a short-lived spin-off.  That was never going to happen with the Jack Pack, of course, but it would certainly have been unique!

The other thing that's refreshing about the episode is how it handles the Dominion War, as more of a concept than reality, which works extremely well as a standalone episode set during the arc but without needing to fight any of the battles that otherwise typified it.  This was a purely intellectual affair.  Pity poor Bashir...But at least there's newfound respect for how he tempered his own exaggerated sense of self over the course of the series, so that he could at last embrace his own potential.  Some people aren't as lucky, alas.

One last tidbit: We get a glimpse at Damar's elevation to the forefront of Dominion affairs, which is a crucial development for the character as he marches ever forward to his destiny...

criteria analysis:

• franchise - A clever look at a defining Star Trek characteristic: the smart guys.
• series - An equally clever look at the Dominion War arc.
• character - A Bashir spotlight that helps put him in context.
• essential - Much too fun to even consider dismissing.

notable guest-stars:
Tim Ransom (Jack)
Faith Salie (Sarina)
Hilary Shepard (Lauren)
Michael Keenan (Patrick)
Casey Biggs (Damar)
Jeffrey Combs (Weyoun)

Deep Space Nine 5x2 "The Ship"

rating: ****

the story: The crew hunkers down as they try to protect their claim on a crash-landed Jem'Hadar ship...against the Dominion itself.

what it's all about: It's funny, because an episode later in the series, during the Dominion War ("Rocks and Shoals"), is very much like this one.  So it's very significant that "The Ship" is the first episode that feels like part of the Dominion War arc, in hindsight.  It's also an episode that absolutely needed to happen.

Three episodes from the third and fourth seasons ("The Abandoned," "Hippocratic Oath," and "To the Death") tried to do the same thing as this one, which is to finally present the Dominion as something other than outright villains, but "Ship" is where it finally happens, the trademark of the series, finding gray areas in all the wrong places.  This was something the original series often did, but mostly in conversations between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, who would debate the ethics of what they were doing or how their missions conflicted with Starfleet's seemingly clear-cut Prime Directive.  It wouldn't be until Enterprise that such storytelling showed up in Star Trek again.  But it was woven so deeply into the fabric of Deep Space Nine it made fans uncomfortable. 

And yet, it was largely absent from the portrayal of the Dominion, except in this brilliant episode, which goes out of its way to downplay its significance right up until the end, when Sisko loses it over the meaninglessness of his having just had to treat his Vorta and Jem'Hadar counterparts as the enemy when they could just as easily have worked things out peacefully.

The one-sentence summary leaves out what might be considered a spoiler, but this was aired twenty years ago, and anyone could find out what the Dominion really wanted: not the ship, but the Founder hiding in it.  The conflict that persists throughout the episode goes on so long the Founder dies, which to the Vorta, to the Jem'Hadar, regardless of whether or not it's literally genetic engineering that breeds the devotion, is heartbreaking, because to them the Founders are gods.  This is another level of the series subverting franchise expectations where it comes to religion.  Normally Star Trek is cynical in this regard.  In Deep Space Nine no belief is mocked. 

So we spend the episode with the crew in a war-time situation, and an officer played by F.J. Rio in enough episodes where he's earned audience awareness, dies.  To the Starfleet characters, it's just as devastating, especially since O'Brien is there to guide our reaction.

It's ironic that this preview of the war comes at a time when the war seems to have taken forever to develop, even though at this point it's really just around the corner.  It's more ironic that it's an episode that asks fans to care about the enemy.  It's damn clever storytelling, and it sets a new standard for the series, one the season in its best moments justifies.  Things get darker from here...

criteria analysis:

• franchise - The finest Star Trek tradition of refusing to believe rhetoric at face value.
• series - A preview of the Dominion War.
• character - This is Sisko embracing his command responsibilities as never before.
• essential - Every bit as compelling as "Balance of Terror."

notable guest-stars:
F.J. Rio
Hilary Shepard