Deep Space Nine 1x13 "Battle Lines"

**

This is another episode where if fate had pushed the series in a few different directions, it would be more significant today.  If you must now, this is the final appearance of the one Bajoran everyone could love.

Introduced in the pilot, Kai Opaka was Sisko's window into the mystic world of his new assignment.  She was an instantly soothing personality, and would no doubt have been a welcome presence for the rest of the series.  Instead, SPOILER ALERT, she dies in this episode and is reborn, but stuck on a peculiar planet for the rest of her life.  

In a way, "Battle Lines" is a startlingly mature effort that betrays the innocence that pervades much of the rest of the season, and a clear indication that life truly will be difficult for Sisko and the rest of the residents of the station and surrounding region.  It is also, in a less generous estimation, an incredibly immature move by a young series, in an episode that barely does the character justice.  In that sense, and in many ways, this is a fairly generic Star Trek episode, the judgment of war, but it's a curious crossroads where I want to give "Battle Lines" due credit, but also temper your expectations.  It could have been better, could have been more profound, as the character of Kai Opaka demanded.  Another way to express my disappointment is that one of the show's best recurring characters is killed off thirteen episodes into the series, and to put that into a specific context, this is a series that was almost as much defined by its recurring as by its main characters, specifically how well we got to know them.  We didn't really get to know Opaka.

Oh, and her successor is Kai Winn, an unintentional (at least to her own thinking) villain, basically her mirror opposite.  Some fans grew tired of Bajoran episodes, too much meditation of politics and religion.  I think that Opaka could have struck a better balance than, say, Vedek Bareil, Kira's doomed love for the first three seasons.  She was Deep Space Nine's Guinan (the bartender from Next Generation), an absolutely moral figure in an ambiguous universe.

Well, perhaps all that makes her fate in "Battle Lines" all the more paradoxically appropriate.  Go ahead and decide for yourself.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Camille Saviola

Memory Alpha summary.

Deep Space Nine 1x12 "Vortex"

**

"Vortex" is an episode that would have far greater importance if the series had not last so many seasons.  It's one of the few entries where Odo, theoretically on a quest during the first two seasons to discover his origins, thinks he makes some progress.  Of course, at the start of the third season, he finds out who his people are, and his journey is forever altered toward a more direct conflict with them, one of the few instances in Star Trek history where a central character rejects and is rejected by their own kind (even Worf had a love-hate relationship with his fellow Klingons, and Seven continued to be fascinated by the Borg even after acknowledging that they nearly wrecked her life).

Much of the plotting in "Vortex" is hopelessly convoluted, but a stranger who possibly has the answers Odo seeks leads him to interesting conclusions, and in a very roundabout way might even be said to be vindicated once the truth about his origins is revealed.

It's a fine episode to watch in its own right, and continues the trend of the odd shapeshifting constable Odo making for compelling television.

franchise * series * essential * character

Memory Alpha summary.

Deep Space Nine 1x11 "The Nagus"

***

Deep Space Nine is a cult TV show within a cult TV show phenomenon.  I'm told not all Star Trek fans love it, but the difference between the ones who do and the others who liked Voyager or Enterprise is that fans who love Deep Space Nine love it passionately.  We're an entire subculture of the fanbase.

"The Nagus" is the real initiation of the show's breakout status as a mini-cult.  You don't have to love Star Trek to love it.  As the title implies, it's the introduction of Grand Nagus Zek, the Ferengi ruler who would make subsequent appearances in nearly every season, and thus a key component of the rich mythology that fans grew to appreciate.  Although not as significant as Garak or Dukat (or ubiquitous as Morn), he's someone you love to see every times he stops by.

"The Nagus" is the second episode in a row to put the spotlight on Quark, predictably in a story about manipulation, a famous drama involving Zek's son, who never appears again.  It's also a little disorienting to see Rom, Quark's brother, in this and other early appearances, since he hasn't yet maturated into his finished form (much like the rest of the series).

The other good news of the episode is that it's an early test of the friendship between Jake, Sisko's boy, and Nog, Rom's son, one of the defining relationships of the series.  Maybe no one will ever mistake Deep Space Nine as the Jake & Nog show (or perhaps, consortium), but you'll be hard-pressed to find better examples of what the show was all about.

This is the first Ferengi episode, too.  Even die hard fans of the series were hard-pressed to like these perennial efforts, but the true connoisseur knows them to be an essential ingredient.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Wallace Shawn
Tiny Ron

Memory Alpha summary.

Deep Space Nine 1x10 "Move Along Home"

**

For some fans, this was one of those infamous, typical season one efforts.  At first blush, it's basically an embarrassment to the rest of the series.  I'd say give it another try.

Although the visitors from the other side of the wormhole are once again totally unrelated to the Dominion and toss most of the characters basically into a Holodeck Malfunction Episode, Quark is thrust into the spotlight, and does a fare job of discovering his own ambiguities.  Initially introduced as a toad (what anyone would've called the Ferengi before him), Quark starts to blossom quickly, without needing to lean on the love-hate relationship with Odo, with the help of "Move Along Home," where he alone is in a position to determine the fate of his more legitimate colleagues.  Sure, it's a silly situation, but it ends up making emotional sense thanks to Quark.

You don't absolutely need to watch this particular episode to see how Quark develops, but it's a good one to watch simply to enjoy the character.

And although it's distressing every time someone comes from the Gamma Quadrant during the first season and has no connection to the Dominion, the episode at least uses one of the basic elements of the series premise.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
James Lashley

Memory Alpha summary.

Deep Space Nine 1x9 "The Passenger"

*

For me, this is the low point of Deep Space Nine's first season, the one episode out of several outstanding efforts that seemed to try its hardest not to be relevant in any way.

(I should mention that relevance and quality are not synonymous; technically "The Passenger" is competent, but there's just no reason to care about it.)

It's one of those Star Trek episodes that see a main character possessed by some evil mind, and on that score I would traditionally rate at least "franchise" as a reason to watch, but my standards for Deep Space Nine are a little different, especially being from the first season, especially being a series that went out of its way to say it was going to be different.  Sure, you can watch this one if you're simply a fan of the franchise, but there's one glaring element that helps get in your way.

It features Dr. Bashir, the young Starfleet graduate hungry for some field experience.  Except the episode could have been about any of the characters, and Bashir is simply too wide-eyed at this point for something like this to have any meaning to him.  He was supposed to be the guy that reality slaps in the face.  This may be Star Trek, and a Star Trek staple, but it's about as far from reality as you can get.  Deep Space Nine, put simply, was supposed to avoid exactly this kind of episode.

So you should probably avoid it, too.

I'm doing a slight edit to this one.  It's worth noting that Odo has an intriguing B-story involving a possible Starfleet replacement and/or rival who counts as one of the show's first recurring characters.  It's not as memorable as other Odo developments from the series, but it's certainly noteworthy.  I've upgraded the episode's rating accordingly.

franchise * series * essential * character

Memory Alpha summary.

Deep Space Nine 1x8 "Dax"

*

"Dax" is pretty much the opposite of "A Man Alone."  It's the first time since the pilot that the fact of Jadzia being a Trill is significant, and the first time since Next Generation that there're some real issues about the whole host-symbiont dynamic.  It has the makings of a truly significant episode, and in many ways it is, but there are a number of things that hold it back.

One of the first is that at this point, the creators didn't really know what to do with Jadzia.  This is made painfully more obvious once the second season rolls around.  That season has the character written all over it.  This one doesn't.  "Dax" is meant to be the episode that justifies the character, and in many ways, there are almost too many parallels to "A Man Alone," in that once again, a main character finds themselves in trouble with the law, due to misunderstandings that are eventually sorted out.

It's not a bad episode to watch, but the series, and the season, end up doing this same premise better, and that's not much for praise.  Still, it's a worthwhile episode to watch if you want to see some meat from a season that otherwise seems to try its best to waltz around doing anything meaningful for a few too many episodes, especially as everyone is still trying to figure out the best way to execute on their highest levels.

"Dax" is ultimately an entry that says, "not there yet."

franchise * series * essential * character

Memory Alpha summary.

Deep Space Nine 1x7 "Q-Less"

****

Arguably the most effective Deep Space Nine episode created to try and make it attractive to fans of Next Generation, the title already says most of the reason why, because it features Q.

The funny thing is, Q almost doesn't even notice that he's on the space station, because he's too busy obsessing over the other crossover character, Vash (I would argue this as being her best appearance in the franchise, possibly because that romance with Picard never really made sense and clearly was going nowhere fast), and mostly reacting to the actual main characters of the series as distractions.

His best encounter is with Sisko, though, and "Q-Less" as a result has the essential Sisko moment of the season, outside of the pilot, in which Q foolishly engages in fisticuffs with the commander, and gets to utter the line, "You hit me!  Picard never hit me!"  While Patrick Stewart successfully converted Picard into an action star later in Next Generation and in four movies, Sisko was already more physical in his first appearance than his predecessor ever was, willing to get down and dirty (even when reluctant about it, and rarely needing Klingons to provoke him).  It wasn't even in a strictly physical sense, since few Star Trek characters (aside from Kirk, and everyone in 2009's Star Trek) are very mobile, but more in the menace in Sisko's eyes, knowing that his was a kind that was always working, not just out of necessity, but because he was always refraining from hitting someone (making his mirror universe counterpart more appropriate than most fans probably realize).  Yes, he hit Q!

A lot of fans complain that "These Are the Voyages...," the final episode of Enterprise was hijacked by Next Generation.  The same can be said for "Q-Less," except both episodes say far more about the series they're actually in than the guest characters who supposedly steal the show.  This is about as far from a typical Q episode as you can get.  As I said, he spends most of it obsessed with another guest character, which is far from unprecedented, but without going out of his way to cause mischief.  Like "All Good Things...," rather, he's not the cause of the mischief, he's actually trying to prevent it.  It's a grounded Q, even more than the time he became human, and it's very Deep Space Nine.  Most fans dismiss this appearance, probably for the very reasons I've just explained.  I argue that they make "Q-Less" essential.

As an episode of this particular series, it's one that helps put things back in perspective, perhaps for the first time since the pilot, pulling away without losing focus, but rather gaining more than it seems.

It's one that definitely deserves another look.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
John de Lancie
Jennifer Hetrick

Memory Alpha summary.