Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season Five

Not the best header photo I've ever created. I wanted to put "Season Five" in the bottom right corner but could not make it work. If I were an eccentric gazillionaire, two full-time positions on my staff would be (1) Header Photo Creator, and (2) Linens Czar. That second one better have knuckles and shins of steel because I can't seem to change a single bedspread around these parts without bruising or scraping both. 

They don't have these problems in the future; let's go there. Here's my least to most for DS9 season five let's jump right in.

26.

 

Odo falls in love with a woman, Arissa, involved in the Orion Syndicate.

Holy moley. This one's a thousand times grosser than “Sub Rosa.” There's probably a pretty cool storyline they could have done with the Orions, but no series ever got there. Hell the best one was probably the one with Lou Ferrigno from Star Trek Continues. 

I’m not sure if the wrap-up really works. Arissa acts more like someone who’s joined a cult than who has regained her memories. (I wonder if there’s something tongue in cheek about that fate re: hooking up with Odo.)

25.

Someone is killing former members of Kira's resistance cell and she might be next.

Not bad but I struggled to care. Honestly when you don't care about Bajor and "the occupation" it's hard to stay engaged with this stuff. I just don't think Trek is built for this sort of thing, or rather, it can accommodate it, but it's not exploiting the full potential of the machine. 

Moreover, how many times do we have to hear this crap? I swear we have heard these same exact lines in so many different things. Does it excite anyone? Educate? Provoke? Illumine? 

24.

Michael Eddington returns and Sisko becomes obsessed with catching him.

Sisko has some good episodes where his duty is questioned. I don’t think this is one of him. He doesn't sell the vengeful Starfleet Captain very well, and Eddington is just cliched as hell. Not for me. Aron Isenberg does some good stuff with Nog, though. 

23.

 

Worf and Dax vacation on the pleasure planet, Risa, 
and encounter unexpected dangers.

Don’t really like Worf here, he's petty. Not Worf. Nor the Curzon Dax with Vanessa Williams thing, which just rang false to me. Too soon after “Rejoined” to go to that well again, for me.

No one comes off particularly well in this episode, and that's my main beef: it didn't have to ruin my vacation to tell a story about how vacations can go awry. Nice scenery and a few good moments here and there. 

22.

 

Tekeny Ghemor arrives on Deep Space Nine and reveals that he is dying.

Borrrrrring. 

I kid. Good Nerys episode, and apparently a callback to a character who's appeared before. I've no real problem with this episode, it just kind of bounced off me. 

21.

 

Sisko, Odo, Dax and Garak are found unconscious. While Bashir attempts to revive their bodies, the four wake up during the Cardassian occupation of Bajor several years earlier.

Trek has a spotty track record with this sort of episode. I don’t think it’s terrible (see VOY “Memorial”) but it’s not terrific. I want to like it more than I do. 

Were I a close personal friend of the show I’d start worrying it was exhibiting signs of depression. 

20.

 

When Quark discovers an infant Changeling, it has a profound effect on Odo. Meanwhile, Kira goes into labor

I like James Sloyan. I don’t much care for Changelings-stuff nor sudden-brief-parentage tropes. But there's stuff to like here. Good performance from Rene Auberjonois, and  that scene with Quark once Quark turns the corner. “Fill me up.” It's a healing-story, and those are always of value on some level, felt or unfelt. 

19.

 

An act of desperation by the Maquis could plunge the Federation into war. The Maquis have thirty cloaked missiles headed to Cardassia which will cause an outbreak of war in the alpha quadrant.

Make it stop.

Actually, this one wasn’t too bad. Eddington’s blather is still annoying. His wife (played by someone with the impressive name of Gretchen German) is okay. Sisko does a better job here than he does in “For the Uniform.” 

Jon Bon Jovi's song from Young Guns 2 was only a couple of years in the rearview when this aired, but still they named it “Blaze of Glory”? Was that a gauntlet thrown? A few years back I watched just enough of Young Guns 2 to realize I probably wouldn't like it very much if I kept going so I stopped; I still like thinking of it as that awesome Young Guns sequel that came out my senior year.

18.

 

Dr. Bashir has been away at a conference and Jake Sisko has accompanied him to research a profile he is writing about the doctor. Returning in a runabout, they get a distress call from a Federation colony under Klingon attack.

Good stuff from both Jake and Bashir in this episode, which helps with some of the cheesier parts. 

I don't quite understand why the Klingons would be considered a bad-ass fighting force based on tactics we see in this episode. It's a shame the Nitpickers Guides never got to season five and beyond for DS9.

17.

 

Keiko returns from a journey and informs O'Brien that she is really an entity that has taken possession of his wife's body.

It’s a good Keiko and O’Brien episode, I guess. But therein lies the meh-ness. Still, must have been a fun one for Rosalind Chao. It's a good script - it ties Rom's opening remarks in to the resolution and all the Pah-wraith stuff is very interesting.

Do they mention O’Brien’s own body-snatching, though? I missed it if so. Wouldn't that have come up? 

16.

 

Starfleet assigns Sisko to expose the Changeling infiltrator in the Klingon Empire.

I love how easy it is to surgically pose as another species in the Trek future. 

This one’s more or less enjoyable. I like the Klingons, I like Martok, I like Gowron. Sisko, Odo, and O’Brien make reasonably entertaining faux-Klingons. (Flingons?) 

15.

 

An accident causes Sisko to have prophetic visions. When he finds an ancient Bajoran city, lost for 20,000 years, Kai Winn reconsiders her attitude towards him.

Like last season’s “Accession,” this puts an interesting spin on the Prophet side of things. 
Although I remain hopefully there was or is some kind of scientific explanation for the visions and prophecies of the Bajoran Prophets I wonder if it’s all a bit too mystical to sit comfortably in Trek. I felt that way with some of the Vulcan stuff in TOS and the movies. There’s a fine line between mysterious and prophecy-globbledygook. BSG walked it about as well as it could be walked. 

I don't need there to be a scientific explanation for the Prophets, mind you - not at all. In fact, that might even be ridiculous/ midichlorians. 

14.

 

Julian Bashir is selected to become the model for a Long-term Medical Hologram, until a family secret is revealed. Rom has great difficulty in telling Leeta something.

I kind of like Dr. Bashir’s parents, but his father's accent was really overdone. It’s difficult to believe the same sort of lower-class accent in British society would persist through to the Trek future. A mild gripe, if gripe I even call it, for an effective episode. I'm not sure why the Federation would really care about this, but then at episode's end, almost as if to answer viewers like me, they make their argument for why in about as conspicuous (three-hundred-sixty-degree camera pan and an Aaron Sorkin-esque monologue delivered under a cone of overhead illumination) manner as possible.

I don't mind Leeta, but sometimes it's all a bit overdone.

I mean really.

Kind of ridiculous nerd-fulfillment fantasy with this Rom/Leeta romance, but hey.

13. 

 

Knowing Quark is desperate for funds, Quark's cousin Gaila takes him on as a junior partner in his highly lucrative arms dealing business. With his mother Keiko away dealing with a plague on Bajor, Yoshi O'Brien will only stop crying when Miles holds him, making things difficult.

Octopussy-Guy is a little over the top, so no wonder he has such smooth business relations with the Ferengi. Fits right in. This guy playing Quark’s cousin is not as effective as some of the other Ferengi we’ve seen. Which is surprising given the quality of Ferengi-acting we see on DS9. I'm not saying he's bad, only that he's not excellent. The other Ferengi actors set a high mark.

I like the Chief and sleeping-baby stuff. 

12. and 11.

 

Worf and Garak journey to the Gamma Quadrant to investigate a coded Cardassian message. Gul Dukat aligns the Cardassians with the Dominion. The station must deal with a Changeling infiltrator.

The Dominion remind me a bit of the Draconians from the old Buck Rogers show. They just don't strike me as very believable, just a collection of space-empire tropes. Even by differentiating them with the whole Founder/Jem-Hadar/Vorta thing; it just all feels too labored. I don’t know if they have enough of a real-world analog for it to remain interesting. I hate fake royal-house intrigue in sci-fi, for example.

The Klingon/ Gladiator fight is kind of cheesy. It's kind of Worfspolitation at this point. And yet - always kinda fun, too.

10.

Forced to crash-land on a desolate planet, Odo and Quark must climb a mountain to transmit a distress signal. Jake and Nog (temporarily back at DS9) find sharing quarters isn't as enjoyable as they thought it would be.

While the two plots (Jake and Nog as roomies, Quark and Odo as co-adventurers) don’t mesh perfectly, there’s a thematic symmetry of odd-coupling/ working-together that I like. The Odo/ Quark stuff is fun; the actors do better than the material, perhaps. 

Between this episode and last season’s Worf-needs-a-new-place episode, it feels like someone in the writer’s room was working out some cohabitation issues. 

9.

 

While exploring in the Gamma Quadrant, Sisko, Dax, Worf, and O'Brien see a Jem'Hadar warship crash on a planet's surface. Odo arrests Dr. Bashir and Quark.

You know… I don’t remember this one too well. I must have enjoyed it, though, as I put “B+” and “Yes” in my notes. The only other note is “Get the cast outside more.”

(Watches it again)

Yeah this one's pretty good. I wish that was Erin Gray as Kilana, though.

8.

 

At the end of his rope, Quark returns home and discovers Moogie has a secret lover.

Why does Ferengar look like every other damn place? The Berman-era missed a chance to really visually distinguish the most popular homeworlds. They did okay with Kronos, I guess, but I would have allotted more time and money to this were I showrunning.

To be honest, this episode is a bit of a misfire. Cecily Adams should be Julia Sweeney. I was not as blown away by Wallace Shawn as I wanted to be. But I kind of love it. Learning to not only appreciate but actually get a big damn kick out of Ferengi is amazing to me. This is holy-crap-I-kinda-like-Neelix-now territory, right here. Three cheers for discovering a forty-six-year-old mind can be disabused of a notion it once considered unbreakable. 

7.

 

O'Brien, Garak, Nog and an engineering team go to Deep Space Nine's abandoned sister space station, Empok Nor, to salvage components. The away team soon discover that all is not as it seems.

Another irresistible set-up. It feels more like a horror movie script than a Trek one, but that works to its advantage. For the most part – I don’t really like all the “Kill a Cardie” stuff. It takes a lot of suspension of disbelief to pretend that there’s this soul-scarred generation of Starfleet who learned and forgot Cardassian slurs for combat/ all this PTSD.

I enjoy Garak’s arc just the same. His invitation to O’Brien to play Korta or whatever it is is so awesome.

6.

 

Worf finds himself attracted to Grilka, Quark's ex wife when she visits the station.

And so the saga of Worf and Jedzie injuring each other while copulating becomes grossly a thing. 

Armin Shimerman’s Quark continues to be so casually awesome. Definitely up there in the Shatner-to-Kirk, Nimoy-to-Spock, Picardo-to-the-Doctor franchise marriages of actor-to-role.

5.

 

Martok, Worf, and Dax go on a mission aboard a Klingon ship to search for a missing Klingon vessel. However, Martok's uneasiness about battle, a result of his captivity, affects his crew's morale.

There are some minor things here and there, but everything from Worf’s challenge to the end of the episode is awesome. Who wrote the Klingon song? It’s the best fake-Klingon song of all. Kudos to LeVar Burton's directorial hand on this one.

And Worf's joining Martok's family is pretty cool, too.

4.

 

Darvin, a disgraced Klingon spy, travels back in time. The DS9 crew must prevent him from altering the timeline.

The whole thing to remember here in this age of professional cosplay and convention and pastiche and digital remasterings is how there was little of any of that at the time this aired. The sort of self-referential Trek fandom that’s been practically institutionalized was a delightful surprise in 1996. As it was for Free Enterprise in 1999. Come to think of it, it was in 1999 that I first saw this episode, that summer after the final season. My buddy Klum was housesitting - he went through this phase where he kept housesitting for rich single old ladies; I think he was trying to set up some kind of kept-man scenario that never materialized - and I remember driving to where he was through this labyrinth of hilly oceanside bungalows in Snug Harbor, RI. I had the VHS tape. He was wary of watching any non-TOS Trek (an attitude I too considered sensible at the time). 

We both loved it. I love it now, still.

3.

 

Jake wants to give his father a present to cheer him up, a 1951 Willie Mays baseball card. He enlists Nog to help him obtain it, but they run into complications with a mysterious geneticist, Dr. Giger. Kai Winn, worried over the prospect of a Federation/Dominion war and its effects on Bajor, meets with Dominion representative Weyoun.

Here’s an episode that is pretty good throughout – the twist with Weyoun was great, but I was a bit sick of the “soulless minions of orthodoxy” bit the second time I heard it, never mind the tenth or eleventh – but its ending montage ties it together so perfectly that it instantly becomes a classic. Great ending – one of the best of the series I’ve seen so far. 

I wish more ended with a Jake wrap-up, it would have played up his writing-ness well. 

2.

 

Faced with the realization that the Dominion are taking over the Alpha Quadrant, Sisko decides to mine the entrance to the wormhole with self-replicating cloaked mines, thus beginning the Dominion War.

So, you’ve heard me talk about how playing out the war tropes in Trek isn’t very exciting to me. And it still isn’t. But damn if I wasn’t totally into this episode! I look forward to the next season absolutely. This was great. 

It has more or less the same structure as “Way of the Warrior,” but this one is better. (Better still? The abandon-New-Kobold season cliffhanger of BSG. I hope there was a fight in the writer’s room where Ron Moore was overruled for having Gul Dukat shoot Odo in the head. “Sign your name!” And then, Gordie Wilson style, he said “Just wait, Ira, one day I’m going to do this on my own show, you’ll see.” 

1.

 

An accident causes the crew to meet their own descendants - and presents them with an ethical dilemma.

What an irresistible set-up. And romance cover Odo, who KILLS EVERYONE to save Kira. I freaking love it. At first I was totally flabbergasted – they did what? Then the more it sank in, the more amazed I felt they actually went for it. A powerful story, a bold choice. Very 90s extreeeeeeeme, but effective. Sensitive, even, crazily enough. I mean, poor Odo! The guy went nuts when Kira died; this must have been the "I know what I must do; it all makes sense now..." Jonestown moment for him.

The rest of the crew adapts to the info a little too readily, maybe? Shake it off, hey – eight thousand deaths. Maybe Kira/ Odo don’t mention it to them. That’d be a hard one to re-settle into the status quo/ background. It does not for Kira and Odo, of course. 

~

And now for some leftover screencaps to play us out.

"The West! Is! Decadent!"

 

They should have added Andrew Robinson to the main cast and credits.

J.G. Hertzler as Martok.

Lt. Watley from "Trials and Tribble-ations" is Deirdre Imershein. Where have we seen her before? Why, she was this lady in "Captain's Holiday" (TNG) of course.

Before that she was Sam's Sean-Young-lookalike date in Cheers s11 "Look Before You Sleep." The Cheers connections proceed apace! Are you sick of reading that phrase? Blame Netflix and Google Image Search for lack of screencap. I'm not going to break out my DVDs for this, and I resent the OCD-tug on my brain-shirtsleeve, imploring me to do so. (Note: I caved, here you go. Happy, brain?)

"Brunt - FCA!"

Odo with his S&M equipment.

Be seeing you.