Deep Space Nine 4x9 "The Sword of Kahless"

rating: ***

the story: Worf joins Dax and Kor on an epic quest.

what it's all about: "Sword of Kahless" was always an easy episode to underestimate.  On the surface it might seem gimmicky and unnecessary, Deep Space Nine struggling to find relevant stories for a character (Worf) who had already experienced an incredible and in some ways franchise-defining arc in Next Generation (storytelling that helped form the basis of Deep Space Nine itself).

But it lays down two very important foundations for Worf in his new series: first, it introduces the idea of his relationship with Dax, and it finally gives him another Klingon to work off of who's happy to be a Klingon and isn't actively seeking a way to sabotage Worf's standing in the Empire.  Kor, an original series Klingon who returned in the landmark "Blood Oath" earlier in the series, was more a lead-in to Martok, who would emerge as one of the most important recurring characters of the series and one of Worf's defining relationships, but that hardly matters.  When he returns in the final season ("Once More Unto the Breach"), his appearance in this episode takes on greater resonance.  Watching as Kor, Worf, and Dax struggle to figure out each other is the real pleasure of the episode.

"Sword" also helps demonstrate all over again how important Kahless is to Klingon culture, as well as put a definitive spotlight on the Klingon weapon, the bat'leth, that was already an iconic element of Star Trek lore at this point, but had never really been the focus of an episode before.  We'd seen Worf and other Klingons use these fancy curved blades, and heard of how Kahless created the first one, but it somehow seems so much more important when it becomes the object of an active obsession.

A treasure hunt was the subject of popular fiction dating at least back to Treasure Island, but more contemporary storytelling had Indiana Jones become an icon in this kind of adventure.  "Sword" came before a glut of more recent stories, most famously Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, began to flood the market, even before Lara Croft made it cool again in video games.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - A fine addition to the Klingon tradition.
• series - A fine next step in Deep Space Nine's Klingons.
• character - Works quite well for Worf, Dax, and Kor.
• essential - It's not groundbreaking, but it'll do.

notable guest-stars:
John Colicos (Kor)

Deep Space Nine 4x8 "Little Green Men"

rating: ****

the story: Quark, Rom, and Nog end up in Roswell, NM, and become the source of the persistent rumors of...

what it's all about: In the spirit of classic franchise romps like "The Trouble with Tribbles" (fans tend to overlook that it's the "grim" Deep Space Nine that brought back this tradition, other than Next Generation's aberrant "Fistful of Datas"), "Little Green Men" is the best of the "Ferengi episodes," pulling the series' trio of that species into the past and generally lampooning the mid-20th century, making the aliens the most relatable characters in the story. 

Is there really much more that needs to be said?  By now you've seen what I thought about the fourth season's attempt to reboot the appeal of Deep Space Nine, and the various ways already attempted to appeal to a broader selection of viewers.  "Green Men" brings outright comedy into the equation, and like "The Visitor" before it as a standout experience it ranks among the best selling points the series was ever going to achieve.  You don't particularly need to worry about knowing anything else to enjoy it, and this is a good thing where other times it was a drag on an overall experience that generally benefited from commitment to the mythos.  Fans will appreciate the significance of Nog's journey to Earth for formal admittance to Starfleet Academy, as well as the various levels of support he receives from Quark (his uncle) and Rom (his father).  Casual viewers will probably get a kick out of a late-episode addition to the familiar faces running around a story that otherwise avoids the station and most of the regulars, one of the better uses of an element of Deep Space Nine from the very start.  (I'd really like to spoil it here, but it's such a great surprise!)

Bottom line, a goofy and hugely endearing experience.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - A welcome return to the idea of the Star Trek farce.
• series - It somehow remains grounded in Deep Space Nine lore at the same time.
• character - A remarkable spotlight for the Ferengi trio of Quark, Rom, and Nog.
• essential - It's a classic, easily.

notable guest-stars:
Aron Eisenberg (Nog)
Max Grodenchik (Rom)
Charles Napier
Megan Gallagher

Deep Space Nine 4x7 "Starship Down"

rating: ***

the story: Aboard the Defiant, the crew suddenly finds itself in a crisis with the Jem'Hadar.

what it's all about: The thing about the Dominion, before the Dominion War officially broke out, is that it just kind of randomly appeared for about four seasons from time to time, and you never really knew what kind of episode it was going to be.  The war itself was hardly inevitable.  For four seasons, then, the Dominion for all intents and purposes was Deep Space Nine's answer to classic foes like the Romulans or Klingons.  They didn't rise to the level of the Borg, as a threat of total annihilation, until the war.  So these four seasons, rather than merely watch things develop, it's actually a chance to see what the Dominion was like when it was providing the occasional problems, like any other hostile force in the franchise.

That is to say, "Starship Down" is almost a kind of "Balance of Terror," or "Sleeping Dogs" (that one's from Enterprise), as much as it is a classic crisis episode, like Next Generation's "Disaster."  That is to say, there are a lot of ways to watch this one, but it really boils down to watching the characters, for the first time this season, as they exist, which is a hallmark of the series, regardless of the matter at hand.  We learn what they think of each other, how they fit in, what they're learning...Basically this is a character piece.  Of course Quark is in the thick of it (antagonizing poor James Cromwell, buried unrecognizable in prosthetics, in his last franchise role before he finally becomes iconic in Star Trek: First Contact about a year later).

But if you really want to consider "Starship Down" in context, it's kind of the third season premiere, "The Search," stripped down to its essential component: the crew facing a real Dominion crisis for the first time, without having to worry about greater ramifications of any kind.  I realize I've been complaining that this season has radically shifted away from the kind of serialized storytelling that was the best thing about the series, but at its best it also manages to tell an episodic story that's  not only relevant to the serialization temporarily shunted to the background, but that still works as episodic material.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - The classic trope of the crew dealing with a sudden crisis that pins them down in isolated pockets.
• series - It worked with "Civil Defense" previously, and works again this time.
• character - A nice slice of how all these characters work in conjunction with each other.
• essential - But totally necessary to understand anything else about the series.

notable guest-stars:
James Cromwell
F.J. Rio

Deep Space Nine 4x6 "Rejoined"

rating: ****

the story: Jadzia is reunited with a symbiont who was a former host's wife.

what it's all about: The benefit of the fourth season fresh start is that it gave Dax a chance to start over, with the exact episode the character had needed ever since her creation: a direct response to the debut of the Trill in Next Generation's "The Host."  In that episode, a lot of things were exposed about Star Trek.  Fans and critics at large always assumed that Gene Roddenberry had essentially created a counterculture allegory set in the future.  But if you look back at the original series, you see a lot of refutations of essential counterculture lore, such as the episodes directed against both hippies and the drugs they helped make mainstream.  And yes, his was an inclusive, idealistic vision, but it was more a melding of the mainstream and countercultures than anything, which the extreme reluctance to embrace the LGBTQ community proved somewhat repeatedly through the years, and the outright allegorical repulsion exhibited at the end of "Host," in which Dr. Crusher ends up in a relationship with a Trill symbiont (she makes it past the original host and embraces the idea with Riker when he serves as a temporary substitute) but backs out of it when the replacement host turns out to be a woman. 

"Rejoined" is an allegory (an outright gay character wouldn't actually exist in this franchise until Star Trek Beyond and the forthcoming Star Trek: Discovery), but on the surface it finally breaks the mold in definitive fashion.  I know, because it caused great controversy in my own household when it originally aired a little over two decades ago.  Up to that point the family had been staunch Star Trek fans, and had happily continued watching it when Next Generation ended and Deep Space Nine became the handiest replacement (in our market, both shows aired on Saturdays, whereas Voyager, which instantly split fans more than ever before and as such was never a common viewing with us, aired on the UPN network during the week, which was less conducive to bringing everyone together).  Between the Breen armor that debuted the previous week in "Indiscretion" that bore an uncanny resemblance to the bounty hunter armor Leia dons briefly in Return of the Jedi and this controversial decision, I was to become the lone ongoing, regular viewer of Deep Space Nine in the house.

Anyway, ostensibly the big taboo is within Trill society, in which former lovers from previous hosts aren't supposed to interact in later lifetimes, so that Jadzia is strongly discouraged from spending time with the scientist who comes to the station as part of her work.  Yet Jadzia is too compelled by the thought.  By the time "Facets" aired at the end of the third season, the series had finally gotten a good handle on how to handle the idea that Dax wasn't just a young Starfleet officer but also the latest in a long line of hosts.  "Rejoined" is the next and ultimate step forward in that line of progression, a compelling drama that forces very personal feelings to come forth from a normally confident woman, who was as sure of herself as anyone in the history of Star Trek.  Suddenly, where a lot of other characters had risked their careers for various reasons, Dax wasn't just doing that, but flirting with expulsion from her own people (also a thing that'd happened in the franchise previously).  Yet it never really strays from being an incredibly personal and intimate matter, so that all you really need to care about is how she feels about the scientist, and whether or not the scientist is willing to reciprocate.

The big moment, the second most important kiss in Star Trek history (after Kirk and Uhura's in "Plato's Stepchildren"), is when Jadzia and the scientist kiss.  Honestly I don't know why it isn't talked about more.  Arguably it's the most important one now, because in 2016 (which is when I'm writing this) it's still more rare to see this sort of thing, in the mainstream, where it's not when looking at the state of white and black actors interacting in television or the movies (despite what so-called controversies at the Oscars will have you believe).  I mean, Will Smith, during the first decade of the new millennium, became the most bankable actor in history.  Can you say the same about an openly gay man, or any other differently-sexed actor?  Not by a longshot. 

But none of that matters if the episode itself doesn't ring true, and it does.  It's Jadzia's big chance to finally blow past all the barriers initially expected of a character who might otherwise have been pegged as the pretty girl, and she nails it.  And yes, it's somewhat ironic that by the end of the series, a different Dax host is kind of fighting the same battle, without any Trill butting their heads into her affairs (well, for that reason, anyway).  That's how you make interesting drama out of an alien species.  Usually this only happens for Klingons.  So it figures that only a few episodes later Jadzia begins the initial steps toward a relationship with one...

This was a season that forced the series to redefine its vision, and for a while that proved to be more trouble than anyone might have realized, but "Rejoined" is the moment everything crystalized.  It was an episode that seized the unexpected opportunity, and created something special because of it.  That's how "Plato's Stepchildren" happened, too, in the midst of a third and final season of the original series, when there were no more guarantees about its future.  So it went for broke, literally breaking new ground with the first interracial kiss in dramatic programming history.  Thankfully, Deep Space Nine lasted the rest of its fourth season, and for three more. 

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Truly went where no Star Trek had gone before.
• series - A definitive statement on the continued viability of the original Deep Space Nine model.
• character - The definitive Dax episode.
• essential - You saw "definitive" used twice already, right?

notable guest-stars:
Susanna Thompson
Ken Marshall (Eddington)

Deep Space Nine 4x5 "Indiscretion"

rating: *

the story: Dukat joins Kira on an unlikely rescue mission while Kasidy decides to take a job that will leave her a permanent resident of the station.

what it's all about: It never really occurred to me how radical a change the fourth season was for the season until I started writing in-depth about it.  This is the second episode, after "Hippocratic Oath," that proves how much someone wanted to change Deep Space Nine to correct perceived shortcomings and make it more approachable to fans.  But the result was a kind of neutering, in some respects, which is no big surprise, because by the time the Dominion War kicked off in the sixth season, the pendulum swung radically in the other direction, letting the series enjoy what made it special in a sometimes smothering fashion.

Case in point?  The one-two-three punch of "Duet," "Necessary Evil," and "Second Skin" from the firsts three seasons find their fourth season answer in "Indiscretion," which on paper seems like the perfect way to finally ground that tradition in the emerging continuity-heavy nature of the series.  And yet as a standalone experience, divorced from what later came of it (and several actresses portraying Dukat's heretofore hidden Cardassian/Bajoran daughter Tora Ziyal later), it seems like a wimpy start to the arc that changed the character's arc forever.  And no one really seems to have known just how big the consequences of this episode would be.  Surprisingly, this won't be the only time the producers get something like this wrong.

Long story short: Dukat's daughter alienates him from the Cardassian establishment, and his scrambling to redeem himself leads the Cardassians into the arms of the Dominion, and thus the Dominion War...and then Dukat officially becoming Sisko's opposite number, the emissary of the Pah-wraiths (their introduction is equally bloodless in "The Assignment" next season and exactly what I was alluding to earlier).

...But the biggest problem with Dukat's characterization this episode is that it ignores all the character work accomplished last season, and leaves Kira in a predicament that plays poorly against every other such example of her trying to make peace with the complicated past between Bajorans and Cardassians.  It's a Dukat story, basically, that really wants to be a Kira story, too, but can't figure out how, and doesn't really try.  So it's just setup, with little indication of how severe any of this will affect the duration of the series.  It's the opposite, too, of how well Dukat featured into last season's "Defiant," which for all intents and purposes is much the same story.

Anyway, if that weren't bad enough, Sisko and Kasidy's relationship hits a predictable hiccup when she decides that taking up permanent residence isn't such a bad thing, but he does.  In fact, all of this uncharacteristic behavior merely for the sake up trumped up drama just had me downgrade the episode to one star, when I'd originally pegged it for three and decided to settle for two given my dawning reservations...

The good news is that this early season shakiness settles down very soon.  The producers obviously had a rough time adjusting to new expectations, but they did figure it out.  Hey, there are always rough episodes, right?  At least with these last two, it's easy to see why they happened.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - This is a Deep Space Nine story.
• series - It's just kind of fails at being one.
• character - Still, some relevant groundwork is done for Dukat.
• essential - But in the grand scheme you don't have to watch it to understand what comes later.

notable guest-stars:
Marc Alaimo (Dukat)
Penny Johnson (Kasidy)

Deep Space Nine 4x4 "Hippocratic Oath"

rating: **

the story: Bashir and O'Brien become prisoners of the Jem'Hadar, but a rogue faction that wishes to be released from their Founder-engineered drug addiction.

what it's all about: "Hippocratic Oath" is the point where viewers realize that Paramount probably mandated a more episodic feel to the series than the serialization that had crept into Deep Space Nine in the third season.  This mandate would obviously be negated later on, but "Oath" betrays how much pushback had affected the producers, because while dealing with a crucial part of the show's mythology, it's never revisited despite the rest of this season and three more remaining.  Dropped elements rarely happened in Deep Space Nine without good reason or some satisfactory conclusion.  That simply isn't the case with "Oath."

In the third season the Jem'Hadar's drug addiction was introduced in "The Abandoned," part of the early part of that season in which the producers were trying to square with the more episodic tradition of the franchise despite playing with major new serialized elements of Deep Space Nine itself.  "Oath" is a kind of follow-up to "Abandoned," but it takes the form of a new conflict between Bashir and O'Brien, who had finally become bosom buddies despite a rough start to their working relationship.  It creates great drama, but in hindsight it also seems random and a little forced, dark for the sake of being dark.

There's a Jem'Hadar soldier introduced, the leader of the rogue faction, who could've easily become a recurring character, played by the ever-dependable Scott MacDonald, in arguably his best Star Trek performance among a whole host of roles spent buried under layers of prosthetics, from Next Generation to Enterprise.  He's arguably the most sympathetic Dominion figure the series ever featured (other than the stray rogue Weyoun clone or Cardassian defector like Damar).  Maybe for that reason he couldn't return, since the Dominion arc was still in its infancy at this point, so it was good enough to demonstrate, among the least likely component of this new enemy, that there was a chance for hope within it.  (Incidentally, the whole Xindi arc from Enterprise's third season is like the Dominion arc condensed, and so "The Shipment" is a better version of "Oath," if you want to see this series in improved form.)

All of which is to say, I just don't think this one worked, both in the short- and long-term, nearly as well as it should have, and it's all down to a temporary retraction of what was to define this series: its dedication to serialized storytelling.  "Oath" is an example of how not to do it.

A subplot involves Worf's attempts to find his place aboard the station, as he clashes with Odo over one of the series' oldest narratives: namely just about anything Quark tries to do.  It's an obvious story to do, and so it makes sense not to have constructed a whole episode around it.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Medical dilemmas are a fact of life in Star Trek.
• series - Doesn't reflect well on the overall legacy of Deep Space Nine.
• character - At least pairs Bashir and O'Brien for their first story together since the second season.
• essential - It's too dark, even for a dark Trek.

notable guest-stars:
Scott MacDonald

Deep Space Nine 4x3 "The Visitor"

rating: ****

the story: Sisko becomes trapped in time, leaving his son on an obsessive quest to rescue him, which takes a whole lifetime...

what it's all about: This right here is what it's all about, the best moment of the whole series and prime contender for best episode of the franchise.  What do you get when you combine the original series' "City on the Edge of Forever" with Next Generation's "The Inner Light"?  Something that eclipses them both, which the franchise would spend the next decade trying to recapture (Voyager with "Timeless," Enterprise with "Twilight," both superb examples in and of themselves).

This is a truly transcendent experience, and extremely clever storytelling, and it once and for all justifies Jake Sisko's legacy in Deep Space Nine, even if for most of the episode he's portrayed by Tony Todd (otherwise known to franchise fans as Worf's brother Kurn) rather than the youthful Cirroc Lofton.  Todd, who is actually best known as the star of the horror film Candyman, delivers one of the most emotionally resonant performances in all of Star Trek, the anchor that holds everything together (Avery Brooks holds his own, too, but has less screen-time; this is almost entirely Todd's show).

"The Visitor" is one of the rare Star Trek episodes to begin in the middle of the story, in the future, with Old Man Jake receiving, well, a visitor.  And he decides to tell his guest a story.  In the third season Jake had expressed his desire to become a writer, and in a lot of ways, "Visitor" is the big payoff for his ambition (later, "The Muse," shows how difficult such a goal can be), as we not only learn a version of how it plays out, but that he managed to become not just a writer but a great one.  But the problem is, he lost his dad, and has spent his life trying to get him back. 

It's really that simple.  By the end of the episode, there's even a preview of how the series ends (or perhaps "What You Leave Behind" merely echoes this momentous experience). 

Old Man Jake's story skips along as he grows older and finds out what happened to his father, and that, incredibly, it's not too late to save him.  But every time he sees his father and can't, it's a gut punch all over again.  Finally we see Sisko wake Old Man Jake up, after his guest has left, and the plan to finally succeed is explained.  It's heart-wrenching. 

Even if you doubt every other time I heap praise on this series, please understand that this is one you will need little coercion to appreciate. 

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Transcendent.
• series - Transcendent.
• character - The story of Sisko and his son Jake, in a nutshell.
• essential - Transcendent.

notable guest-stars:
Tony Todd (Old Man Jake)
Aron Eisenberg (Nog)