In the time since finishing DS9 and taking the notes below, I watched four seasons of Enterprise and a whole bunch of other stuff. Should've struck while the iron was a little hotter - my memory was unable to fill in some of the gaps. I probably should've just watched the whole season again but who has that kind of time? My apologies if your favorite episode gets the short shrift below; all of this is to say, I did my usual half-ass job.
The seventh season was the first one I ever saw. I was dating a girl who loved it (and TNG) but I only had eyes for TOS. This was in Dayton, OH, and those days a re-run of DS9 aired from ten to eleven on some station and a rerun of TNG on another from eleven to midnight. This was our routine while we were dating, and then the new episode of DS9 that Sunday. The new season during this stretch was (you guessed it) the last one. So I saw the whole ending story arc of DS9 before I saw anything other than the pilot (which I watched the night it aired.)
Did you get all that? The above is part of the Trek-adjacent info in my head that seems to come burbling out of my blog-hole as activated by certain Trekwords.
26.
Quark and Rom cross into the alternate universe to rescue Grand Nagus Zek.
Mirror episode. See last time. I could praise or pick at any number of aspects, but let’s move it along.
25.
Changelings.
“One of the hundred.” Between him and Odo, that's ninety-eight spinoff chances too many.
Laas turns to fog. What? Can changelings to ice and gas? Did we know this? I guess it makes no more or less sense as anything else about these guys.
This Klingon death howl is pretty weak. I bet there's a hierarchy of death howls. When killed by wankers, the Klingons probably hold it back some. A full-on Klingon/ Changeling war would be a chorus of mumbles every time a Bird of Prey was destroyed. The ironic part of this whole show was we're supposed to meditate on the consequences of bigotry re: solids distrust and "persecution" of liquids. Notwithstanding the absurdity of the idea (how the f**k would solids mass-persecute liquids-from-outer-space FFS when they can just change into gas or make swords out of their arms among a million other things?) I am definitely leaving this show with the idea that the Changelings should be nuked from existence and destroyed wherever you find them. Simply for their sustained offensive against verisimilitude.
24.
Ezri summons Joran, a homicidal Dax incarnation from her past, for help in understanding the mind of a serial killer loose on the station.
Sheesh. I know I had notes for this, too. What happened? I have the score sheet, though, and here is where it lands.
I don't know if there needs to be so many "understand the mind of a serial killer" stories. It's a one-note genre. But so are zombies, I guess, and try to get them to stop making zombie stories.
23.
Sisko and crew relieve Starfleet troops under siege by Jem'Hadar at a key communications outpost, AR-558, the largest Dominion communications array in the sector.
I like what they were trying to do here, but it didn’t really land with me. Apparently Ira yelled out something about killing Wil Robinson on set when Bill Mumy's character died. When I heard that I had a flash: I bet Ira likes Lost in Space more than Star Trek. That explains a hell of a lot.
Poor Nog. The sound he makes when he's wounded is something. Otherworldy. Kudos to Aron Eisenberg for conveying some of the alien trauma of it all: the Starfleet façade falls away and he makes a sound purely from that alien part of himself. I suppose it's possible someone overdubbed it, in which case kudos to the sound design people.
But - I'll make this one my Judas Goat of the Dominion War/ Starfleet medical technology - the whole thing is quite labored, isn't it? No harm done, but the type of warfare/ medicine they practice here is just silly. The writers are reading twentieth and nineteenth century war books and swapping them into Trek. I will never understand this crap on DS9.
22.
Everyone who knew Jadzia Dax reacts strongly to Ezri Dax's presence, particularly Worf. Meanwhile Garak suffers from bad attacks of claustrophobia.
I don't know why I ranked this one so low. I have no memory of it whatsoever.
21.
The crew attempt to help Vic Fontaine when Vic's hotel is bought by mobsters.
This one is like the Bond holosuite episode but without the malfunction subplot.
Frankie Eyes’ bodyguard-goon has been around a lot. Oh that’s Michael Scott’s fake-mob guy. Grotti.
Stretches the concept a bit too thin, but that's no big thing. Worse is that there’s nothing of real consequence here. Couldn’t Odo have shapeshifted the resolution to this in like four seconds? It seems like they take a real world solution (sort of) to Vic's (imaginary but real) problem rather than just fix it because, you know, Vic's world is programmed. They pay lip service to why they "can't" but it never really makes sense.
 |
| I know, I know, who cares. |
20.
Bashir falls for a genetically enhanced patient, Sarina Douglas, that he brought out of a catatonic state using an experimental medical procedure.
Oh great, a sequel to ‘Statistical Probabilities.’ (And the pictures are side by side again.)
I like this one a little more than "Statistical Probabilities", mainly for the nice part in the middle with the singing, but that's not saying much.
That one "That is a stew-pid question" guy is unfortunately costumed.
19.
A new Dax appears on the scene. Sisko's quest leads him to the truth about his existence. The discovery that the Romulan hospital is heavily armed leads Colonel Kira to set up a blockade of Derna. Bashir, O'Brien, and, surprisingly, Quark join Worf and Martok on a dangerous mission to destroy the Dominion shipyard.
Meh. Worf and Martok are usually always fun. This one kind of bounced off me.
18.
Ezri searches for a missing Worf. Sisko makes plans to marry Kasidy Yates.
Usually I rank two-parters as one episode. Here’s a rare example where I split them as boldly as Kirk splits his infinitives and rate them separately.
The Ezri/Worf stuff isn’t so interesting to me, but it’s a nice enough arc for Worf, all told. But this chemistry isn’t quite there. Of all the TNG characters, Dorn gets the best arc; one wishes it had continued in some kind of Star Trek Worf show. But hey, it's awesome to see Picard "correcting" our perceptions of the TNG-verse. Maybe he'll show up on that and apologize for something.
Some cool space stuff. The gross-Founder stuff is just gross.
17.
When Kira says she doesn’t believe in the Prophets, what is it exactly that she doesn’t believe in? What does she think Sisko et al. see and experiences? Hallucinations? This touches the religion/ science problem of the show. Bajor is not some ungrounded theocracy; their gods live in the freaking wormhole in the sky and talk to their emissaries, FFS. Kira's attitude is a little like, what, believing electricity is the work of the devil? Despite living in a world powered by it? I mean the whole idea is that some are cynical about the Prophets, i.e. what good are these things/ how sincere is their love for Bajorans if the Occupation was allowed. Anyone can understand that. But disbelieving, as Kira goes out of her way to say? I mean what does she think is going on?
Poor Louise Fletcher. (Kai Winn, I mean.) Opposite for Nicole de Boer, here, re: Ezri. It’s part of her character, to distinguish her from Jadzia, but Ezri can’t quite sell the eternal maturity of the Dax symbiote the way Terry Farrell did, so when the script calls for her to, it’s a bit distracting. Had she more time to grow into the role, perhaps, or if we saw her more gradually coming to terms with it, who knows.
Directed by Odo. I have a note here "Those quotes at the end." But what does it mean? I looked at the transcript; which did I mean? A mystery.
16.
I give them a lot of credit for this epic-finish run of episodes. It hadn’t been done in Trek before, and I remember it as an exciting month, watching it all in 1999.
Bashir/ O’Brien, Sec. 31, Kira et al. advising Cardassian resistance. I think the biggest problem with war in Trek, like I've said a few times here, is how they try to tell WW2 (or even earlier conflict) stories with Trek tech. It doesn't make sense to "parachute" these folks behind enemy lines to help organize resistance cells, etc. Technically there's nothing inherently unbelievable about it, but something tugs at my sleeve about the concept.
Is there a BSG analog with the Founder disease? I think there is, right, with the Cylons in the later seasons? Not to mention the “dampening weapons” of the Breen are like the Cylons weapon - but that's hardly unique to either series. I haven't watched the last season in awhile; so many of the things explored in Voyager and DS9 received clearer and cooler attention in BSG but BSG would never have been what it was without their proving grounds.
15.
Ezri goes to New Sydney to find O'Brien and uncovers some disturbing family secrets. Miles goes in search of the widow of Liam Bilby, Morica Bilby, whom he befriended in an undercover operation.
This one's got a few things going against it: (1) Oh great, a follow-up to “Honor Among Thieves...” (2) O’Brien’s gone rogue! (3) The "Okay, let's give Ezri Dax her episode" deal. None of these things are awful in and of themselves - or awful to begin with, really; it's just three ideas that fail to excite me.
I think Ezri does the best she can, but she's up against a tide she can't crest. There's just no way to fit a new person in the cast in season seven of any non-Law and Order/ Doctor Who show. Or Cheers. Okay maybe it can happen, but it didn't happen here.
14.
Captured by the Breen, Ezri and Worf undergo mental torture.
Sisko agonizes over his broken engagement.
That summary amuses me. With regard to the former, I love the Weyoun neck snap. A lot of the other stuff is overwrought, though.
13.
Kor, an aging Klingon hero, asks Worf to find him a battle assignment. Martok plans a "cavalry raid" of five birds of prey, hitting several key targets behind enemy lines to throw them off balance.
Old Man Klingon. See? The old still have some value. No one should boil them down into nutrient-rich jello. At least not as a national policy.
Again with the Klingon song! Excellent.
Cool to see Kor again even if we've seen this sort of thing in Trek before. Still that's hardly a disqualifier. Part of me is torn on seeing figures from TOS (Sarek, Kor) return only to be used as examples of pitiable deterioration. But it's also part of life, and that's what drama is for, etc. I mentioned in my TNG reviews for the "Unification" episode that I had a friend who couldn't handle that kind of thing and thought it was the new shows humiliating the old, etc. I think that's a silly attitude. But there is something dramatically repetitive about it or perhaps counter-message (i.e. "the old have value! Let's demonstrate that by showing how they are defined by their diminished capacity!") that I can understand. I think anytime you can boil a story down to someone's "handicap" being an attribute you run the risk of someone's eyes rolling, but ultimately who cares.
12.
There is no frakking reason why the Klingons would spell it Sto'Vo'Kor. There needs to be a penalty for weird punctuation for aliens in Trek or elsewhere. Sometimes this stuff builds up inside of me. Anyway, Kahless Himself would have ripped those stupid apostrophes right out and cast them into the pit of eternal dishonor.
This is the sort of Sisko-emissary episode I've been lukewarm-to-negative on in the past and yet here, it's not so bad. A good season-opener.
11.
The war reaches a crucial turning point when the Dominion retakes the Chin'Toka system, the only Allied foothold in enemy space. Meanwhile, Winn learns that Dukat plans to release the Pah-Wraiths, and Damar leads a revolt against the Dominion.
Let's get back to the Breen. Who are they? Where do they come from? What do they do? Why not the Shelliak or some other race? I think we heard about the Breen in TNG, so there’s at least as much precedent, but big deal: we heard about the Xindi in TNG, too. Doesn't just make something awesome, though, because they were mentioned in TNG. I’m just curious why they introduce this generic space-baddie race into the mix at this late hour. Nothing wrong with having a heretofore unknown alien species; it’s a big ol’ galaxy and all that. But where’s the drama? It’s cool when the Romulans join the fight against the Dominion, because there’s history, there; there’s little feeling to the Breen joining or not joining.
Is this the fourth or fifth time San Fran’s been attacked on account of that's where Starfleet Headquarters is? Move that shit to the moon, FFS.
Louise Fletcher and Mark Alimo don’t have the best chemistry. The character drama is good, though. The Pah Wraiths/ fire caves angle is a good one. (Reminds me a bit, too, again, of BSG!)
The deterioration of the Founder makes no sense. Why would the splotches be on the fake tunic she wears? Just drape a sash over it. Wear a container to keep shape. Do they not have girdles? I hate the goddamn Founders.
“Attack Pattern Delta!” followed by “Abandon ship!” It's like they read my notes from last time and went back in time to live down to my grumblings. When will they listen?
10.
A Vorta defector, Weyoun-6, gives Odo valuable information in exchange for asylum.
This series of barters thing seems like they’ve done it before. I forget for what, though. Or even if it was DS9. Was it the baseball card one? I think it was something else.
Have I mentioned that I like Damar? Hey, then: I like Damar.
“Founder” does a good job with her character and arc, but the emboobened-Odo factor (and then to bring it back even in ENT, although I think this was all intentional re: the Berman Era cosmology of founders seeding the Alpha Quadrant ) never stops being weird. (I wrote these notes independently of one another; I don't keep harping on the same point, I promise.)
9.
Nog struggles with PTSD from the traumatic battle of AR-558 where he lost his leg.
Nog’s rehabilitation in the holosuite is a nice sort of thing, but one wonders if they actually are doing Vic a favor. Too much self-consciousness for a hologram can't be good, right?
Some nice interplay between James Darren and Aron Eisenberg, as actors, as people, and as Trek-people. All three. A good Trek will hit all three dynamics in important scenes.
That's all the notes I took. Too bad - I did like it, though, even if you know where all this stuff is going.
8. and 7.
Sisko leads the Federation/Klingon/Romulan alliance in the offensive on the Cardassian homeworld. Dukat and Winn journey to the fire caves to release the Pah'Wraiths before a final confrontation with the Emissary. A new chapter dawns.
I fully expected this to be #1 when I sat down. I tell this story a lot so I have no idea if I’m just saying the same crap I always say, but watching this with my then-girlfriend and then leaving Dayton was a big departure for me, and watching this episode (it was the Sunday night replay – look this up to get the time right; could this be right? Could my life in Dayton have ended, with me watching this with her the last night? It’s possible.) It was the end of an era of my life, and turning to look back at all that night in Salamanca, NY remains a holy shit moment of my youth. I projected all of my dumb young self on this montage. Still do, albeit with about twenty years more of non-dumb stuff, now, to even it out some.
I'll leave that there, just know a whole different review of this finale has nothing to do with Trek and everything to do with me. Tough to separate the two sometimes, but try I shall! All I can say is: the episode stops being about DS9 for me at certain points.
As I might've mentioned previously, the problem with this whole thing / war is it’s just not believable. Captains don’t plot the strategy with Admirals; there’s no “turning flank” in space, etc. (Or even in naval/ space-naval combat; that’s an army thing, isn’t it? Trek does that sometimes, like in STVI where Kirk says “Right full rudder.” Uhh, what? Are we adjusting our course in the water, sir? Did you forget you were in a spaceship?) It’s all fine, it’s just a bit cliched. Martok sounds ridiculous through most of it – less carried away with Klingon bloodlust and more author of Hallmark cards. ("They will songs of this day!" is his contribution to every strategy pow-wow.)
From a Trek sense, what exactly are the Pah-wraiths? Are they like those things from TNG “Power Play”? I don’t mind there being a mix of mystical/ alien with Bajor, but I probably would’ve handled all this differently. It's simply more interesting when you try to come up with some non-mystical explanation for it. It's Trek - there should be.
The Founder does an awful lot of bitching at Weyoun, but what exactly do the Founders DO? Besides hang around and gross everyone out? For the umpteenth time, the entire hierarchy and raison-d'etre of the Dominion simply makes no sense.
What They Get Wrong: Well not wrong precisely, but they fail to truly unify either the Bajor or Dominion storyline under a banner that interests me personally. They do a good enough job of tying up loose ends. As with VOY it feels like what they wanted to do was “Daybreak” (BSG) or “All Good Things” (TNG) but just couldn’t quite corral the elements. I respect the effort(s).
Also, Sisko and Admiral Deputy Dawg are mega-lame in the ashes of Cardassia. Good lord. Sounds like a book report. (Also, where are the Vulcans in all this?)
What They Get Right: Everything else: (1) Odo’s return to the Great Link feels emotionally correct, if intellectually stupid, (2) the Vic Fontaine farewell, (3) “Minsk,” (4) Gul Dukat and Kai Winn and the Pah Wraiths, (5) Sisko’s mysterious journey (I hate when gods/ prophets tell you you’re the chosen one or whatever and then it doesn’t pay off. Ditto for visions in dreams. It pays off here, as it paid off at the end of BSG.) In that sense, I guess I'm wrong above - they do corral successfully certain elements of the bigger storyline.
6.
Kira masterminds a plot to steal the Breen energy-dampening weapon and Worf instigates a power shift in the Klingon Empire.
Lots of war-movie cliches in this Dominion War stuff. That's cool, I guess. Garak/ Kira / Rusot. Damar is awesome. “When men as honorable as Martok and Work knowingly allow corruption at the highest levels, there is no hope for the Empire.” Amen.
This Gowron/ Worf thing is great. “There can be only one answer!” Hats off to Robert O’Reily for Gowron. As I always do, I definitely recommend the audiobook version of any of the Nitpickers stuff for his and Dwight Schultz’s (and in a distant third, Tasha Yar’s) reading of it. Those books are an acquired taste, perhaps, and the DS9 one is probably not very good at all, really, but I can’t think of Gowron or Barclay without thinking of the way they read The Star Trek Quiz or the Nitpickers Guide to whatever-season.
Cardassia/ Klingon Empire: “Change or die.” Arcs! An old enemy redeemed! “Flood all compartments with the gas.” Bad-ass.
Have I mentioned how needlessly gross the changeling disease is? FFS, put a jacket on or something, you're the leader of an Empire.
5.
Dukat, now a religious leader of a Bajoran Pah-Wraith cult, holds Kira hostage. Mika, one of Dukat's followers, gives birth to a half-Cardassian child.
I gave this one a high score! No notes.
You tell me, dear reader: what was it I liked so much about it?
4.
While attending a diplomatic conference on Romulus, Bashir
becomes an unwilling pawn of Section 31.
I quite liked this one, even if (tell me if you see a pattern here) I apparently took no notes for it. Adrienne Barbeau joins the ranks of sci-fi hotties (sorry) who have played Romulan senators.
This idea ("The Federation needs men of conscience; it also needs men like Sloan") is one I've come almost one-eighty one since I originally watched it. Or rather, I can see how people like Sloan are themselves "men of conscience" as well, a view obscured at earlier points on the trail. All of which is to say: it (life, war, conscience) is a hell of a lot closer to complicated than it is to simple, and sometimes Bashir's remarks in these conversations seem a bit simplistic. Shouldn't his genetically enhanced mind engage with some of the complexities? Or perhaps the more complex the mind the less patience one has for what seem like contradictions/ trade-offs to us lesser-brained mortals.
It's an interesting topic and discussion, I don't mean to suggest it was botched.
3.
As Odo falls gravely ill to the shape-shifter disease Bashir and O'Brien must get inside the mind of Luther Sloan, who holds Odo's cure.
That Dollhouse episode where they go into the Attic came to mind a few times watching this. I keep meaning to go back and watch that show.
I’m not especially enamored with the while Section 31 angle, as I’ve said here and there, but I can see its appeal. Some good stuff from William Sadler here, and a nice coda to the whole concept. Again, this stretch of episodes is quite exciting. The last season of DS9 is like a one of those great, tumultuous years of the X-Men in the 80s. I’ve been using that as my go-to example for everything lately, but it's because, year after year in the 80s, that soap opera was so riveting and intense. A shared experience for a generation of comics readers. To a lesser extent so was the last season of DS9 and I'm happy to have been there.
2.
Sisko takes command of a new ship; Kira and Garak face a Dominion ambush on Cardassia. Grand Nagus Zek has an announcement to make, as well as the Siskos.
Hats off to Sisko/ Avery Brooks (director of this episode) and in s7 in general. Even Admiral Deputy Dog is more interesting, somehow. Michael Dorn, on the other hand, lost his acting partner, and seems a bit unmoored in s7. Ezri/ Bashir have a little more chemistry than Ezri/ Worf.
"The moral argument is dumb." I wrote this but I don’t recall what it refers to. Here's another cryptic note: "Dabo girls just Staying Alive still. Have I mentioned that yet? My brain keeps making the cross-connect. I always picture playing “Staying Alive” in the jukebox at Quark’s anyway so it makes sense."
This undoubtedly refers to both the song "Saturday Night Fever" and the movie Staying Alive, with all those crazy outfits. FWIW I watched this movie a hundred times in 1983-1984. Along with Xanadu. So two weird musicals got in my brain early on along with everything else I blog about.
Quark ("The Line Must Be Drawn Here!") gets some dynamite stuff in this episode. It's funny - we're meant to see the Ferengi as the ultimate exaggeration of capitalism, but TBH I ended up thinking he/ the Ferengi were right about a lot of things. That Rom becomes Nagus - a kinder, gentler, "more complicated" Nagus - foreshadows doom. But, a fun kind of doom. It definitely was the right note to hit in 1999.
And finally:
1.
Rom’s awkwardness is a little overdone, and I’ve some quibbles on how the Vulcans come across. Some broad strokes here and there. That's all I have for cons - what a fun and great episode otherwise.
Avery Brooks is so much noticeably more alive in this episode than others. The subject matter? Different venue? The Vulcan rivalry? Penny Johnson?
 |
| Bless you, madame. |
As for Solok, he's apparently had quite the non-canon career.
I feel like I should have more to say, this being my favorite episode of the last season. But there's not much to cover, really. It's fun stuff. Auberjonois gets some of his best moments of the series as the umpire. I wish this side of his character had been as much of a subplot of the show as any of O'Brien's and Bashir's holosuiting.
I may or may not return with DS9 s1-4, and I may or may not cover the documentary What We Left Behind. I hated it, so I don't want to watch it again, but hate-blogging it might be productive. I think, though, Trekwise, I may just move on to Enteprise for now.
Let's close this out with a special "The Way You Look"-themed Ending Screencaps.
 |
| Cheers, folks. |
