Dax (DS9)

This creatively named episode is about Dax. It was about time this show did an episode about Dax, actually. I said before that the Dax-Bashir thing (which they try to make work again in the cold open here) doesn't work because the writers started doing it before they developed either of them as characters. So far Dax has been plodding along through these scripts, rattling off some technobabble here, talking about past lives there, but generally being one-dimensional compared to the rest of the cast, with the exception being Bashir himself.

So it is really good to see Dax in the spotlight, as much as she is here. But actually its an episode about the other characters grappling with Dax, more than anything else. And that's kind of hard to care about, because, once again, the legwork isn't done. Eventually, Kira and Dax are going to be friends. But the show just started, there's no evidence they're friends yet, and yet, Kira is working her butt off trying to save Dax who doesn't want to be saved. Bashir wants to save Dax, but it feels like it's more because he wants to sleep with her than because he cares about her, and Odo wouldn't be Odo if he didn't care more about justice than people.

So, in the end, it feels like Sisko is getting out and pushing every other character, including Dax herself, to care about this damn Dax plot. It's a lot of work for him! It feels like a lot of work for the audience. Meanwhile, the intellectual core of the plot is muddled. The characters have to keep reminding us that it's an extradition treaty not a trial, but Odo saves the day by overturning the evidence of the trial, rendering the extradition trial which took up the whole episode wholly irrelevant.

Sisko and company are arguing about the question of whether Jadzia Dax can be held accountable for Curzon Dax's crimes, and that's a legitimately interesting question, but there's two problems. One, there really ought to be sufficient precedent here that it doesn't merit a hearing. The idea that its under Bajoran jurisdiction who believably might never have encountered the Trill before sort of skirts this, but it's just hard to believe its not open and shut at this point. But the second problem is that the episode never resolves this question, either legally or morally, a real problem for the question that's supposed to be at the heart of the episode.

What is at the heart of the episode, in the end, is what Dax herself thinks about this question: that no matter what her legal responsibilities, her honor binds her to keep Curzon's promises, to save Curzon's lover's reputation. I wish this worked better than it, in fact, does. But it stands to reason that, for a Trill, self-preservation is not purely self-interested. Jadzia Dax shouldn't want to die, because she shouldn't want to cut Dax's life short. And later in the show she (or possibly Ezri) expresses that sentiment. But the fact that here she's willing to put an old lover's reputation over her symbiote's life strains credibility.

So the episode is plagued with high-level problems, even though all the pieces are still fun to watch. Unfortunately, I'm afraid the high-level problems are not going away. Dax is never quite integrated into the cast. Because her backstory is so alien and so not tied into the rich history and politics of the station and the wormhole, all the episodes that focus on her for the rest of the series feel out of place, like TNG episodes cut out and put into Deep Space Nine. I don't count a single Dax episode among my favorites, even though I like the character. I think she won't really feel like part of the show fully until Worf shows up.

Random observations: 

- O'Brien is away on Earth celebrating Keiko's mom's 100th birthday, so he's not in the episode. No one cares why Jake's not in the episode, apparently.

- Speaking of people who are 100 years old, I love the old Bajoran judge lady in this episode. It's great when a bit part has a real character, and the writing shines with her. DC Fontana's last Star Trek teleplay, apparently.

- I kind of like that Odo has no problem going away to a random planet to play cold case detective. Odo is passionate about his work, and Rene Auberjonois lets just a little bit of glee shine through Odo's curmudgeonly veneer to let us know that he loves his job. It's nicely done.

Justice (TNG)

Every once in a while, an episode comes along that just makes you wonder how exactly it even got made. In this week’s adventure, for example, Wesley Crusher is sentenced to death for walking on the grass.

Wesley Crusher is sentenced to death for walking on the grass.

Would you buy that pitch? I’m not certain I would buy that pitch.

The thing is, the premise itself is richer than it sounds. “Justice” could have been a solid, if unremarkable hour of television, if the writers had taken the time to figure out exactly where the compelling conflict was and cut out all the fluff. The episode that got made, unfortunately, has too much going on to give any of it the scrutiny it deserves, resulting in an ending that feels incredibly unsatisfying and a little like cheating.

The most obvious conflict is one Kirk dealt with a few times, and Picard will deal with again in much better episodes – what right do we have to dictate the lives of others? How far will Picard go to preserve the Prime Directive? Will he sacrifice the life of a crewman? Of a child? Of the son of one of his closest friends?

The god of the Edo is a jealous god.

That’s a compelling piece of drama. It could easily have consumed most of the hour. The problem is, it’s a question the writers have never had a great answer for. The Prime Directive question was skirted earlier this season in “Code of Honor”, but on that occasion, they didn’t do much more than play lip-service to it. Here Picard, Dr. Crusher, and the Edo leaders all make their speeches, but ultimately there’s no real conflict. Picard was never really going to let them execute Wesley. He’s never really even tempted to.

The Edo are relatively primitive, but they’re protected by a god-like being residing on a ship in orbit that sort of phases in and out of our reality. This is plot point number two which could have been its own episode, with the aliens briefly possessing Data to communicate with the crew. They are upset that the Federation has been colonizing star systems in the sector, a conflict which isn’t really picked up on or resolved.

The whole “God-like being protecting a lesser society” is not a new idea, but the idea that the being is in fact not a single individual, but a ship with a crew is interesting. Unfortunately, we don’t learn much else about them, and it all feels like a wasted opportunity.

Oh right, its the eighties.

Finally there’s an undercurrent of political commentary, that is to say, of the Edo’s bizarre justice system as a satire of our own, but this element, too, is not explored in enough detail to make it interesting.

Those are my thoughts about the episode from a structural perspective. Before we go, I’d like to point out the kind of blasé attitude the crew takes towards the idea of taking advantage of the Edo’s rather free attitudes about sexuality. It kind of makes the whole crew seem like Captain Kirks, including the women (or at least Tasha.) It’s weird because later hookin’ up with alien chicks is definitely at the very least frowned upon, but I guess those regulations aren’t in effect yet?

Random Observations:

Troi gets noticibly jealous when the Edo woman is all up on Riker. She definitely still has aa thing for him.

For someone who comes from a planet with “rape gangs”, Tasha sure seems comfortable being fondled by strangers.

Given the climate and their total lack of shame, it seems odd that the Edo wear clothing at all.

It's against his programming to impersonate a deity.

Worf won’t indulge in the Edo women because they seem too fragile – some interesting foreshadowing to his relationship with Jadzia.

This is the first time an alien calls Captain Picard a god. It will not be the last.

I actually found Wesley’s “I’m with Starfleet. We don’t lie.” to be one of his more endearing moments.

The whole “Garden of Eden” metaphor goes just a little too far.

The Enemy Within (TOS)

This episode really wants to be dealt with in three parts: The good, the bad, and the silly.

The good:
This is a big episode of firsts for Star Trek. The first transporter malfunction episode. First utterance of "He's Dead, Jim." First exploration of the duality of man.

Basically, a transporter malfunction splits Kirk into good Kirk and evil Kirk. Evil Kirk wants to drink medicinal brandy, rape Yeoman Rand, and basically make trouble. He doesn't want to command the ship, until the very end of the episode. He doesn't have ulterior motives, just animal instincts. Good Kirk wants to command the ship and do Kirk-y things, but he's lost the ability to make decisions and he seems kind of confused.

The audience might be a little confused too, but this strikes me as an impressively sophisticated way to handle such an inherently silly plot. Kirk's "evil" side is superior in some ways to his good side. It's the source of his ability to command. This is actually a very dark suggestion when paired with our normal view of Starfleet Captains as paragons of good.

Of course, the most sophisticated way to show a Captain wrestling with his dark side is a little less... literally. But, taking the sci-fi format for what it is, this is a pretty nice exploration of an age-old literary theme.

The bad
When Yeoman Rand complains to Spock that the captain just tried to rape her (not in those words, of course), no one is aware of the double. Starfleet apparently doesn't have any procedure in place for this kind of situation. No guard is placed on Rand's quarters, no guard is placed on Kirk, Kirk is told about the accusation and allowed to come see Rand in sickbay and interrogate her about the attack. To her credit, Grace Lee Whitney plays that interview jut about as traumatized as she should.

To make matters worse, the story seems to play up the insult on Kirk's character as more grievous than the really traumatic breach of trust and attack on the poor Yeoman. No wonder her character disappears from the show; I'd request a transfer too! Ship needs a counselor, yo.

The silly
Meanwhile, while Kirk is playing cat and mouse with Evil Kirk up on the ship, the rest of the away party (read: Sulu and some other guys) is stranded on the planet surface, because until they fix the transporter they can't beam them up. The planet's surface is getting colder and colder in order to build tension that the up-on-the-ship story doesn't have. So far, so good. Of course, the actual scenes of Sulu standing in the cold, getting progressively colder, and inexplicably cracking jokes at the Captain and anyone who will listen send a somewhat mixed message in the tension-building department.

So what did the away team do during the mission? Well, they captured a creature that looks like a Pomeranian wearing a unicorn horn and a reptilian tail. It's as classic a cheezy TOS animal as you ever saw, but what really makes it work is just how many scenes the animal is in. It's as if the director said "We're spending good money dressing up these dogs, we're damn well going to use them." In several scenes, Kirk is talking to his crew, and one of them is just holding a dog-monster for no reason. It's awesome.

Oh, did I mention that the dog monster ALSO got evil doubled? Because it did. In fact, they use the dog monster as a guinea pig for the de-doubling procedure, and when they try it on it, it dies. (First utterance of "He's Dead Jim" on the show? Refers to a dog monster.) I think this might have been the inspiration for the "But the alien is inside out ... and it exploded" gag in Galaxy Quest.

To sum it all up:
Good, bad, and silly all together, I had a lot of fun watching the episode straight through. It's easy to find criticisms, but it's also so easy to see what people loved about this show while it was on the air. The mix of action, cerebralness, and goofiness is a complex formula made to look easy, and it all adds up to an eminently watchable show.


Random Observations:

- A lot of no Uhura going on lately. Sulu and Scotty and Rand all get to shine here, but Uhura gets I think 5 seconds of screen time.

- Shuttlecrafts, man. There is absolutely no reason not to pick up the away team with a shuttlecraft. Which sort of suggest that maybe they just don't like Sulu very much.

- Speaking of which, theory: Sulu is the Miles O'Brien of TOS. I think he's gonna get tortured a lot.

Eye of the Needle (VOY)

            Like “The Cloud”, “Eye of the Needle” seems interested in telling both an internal and an external story, and it doesn’t do the work to knit them together very well. This doesn’t exactly bother me yet, but I think these A-plot/ B-plot structures work better when there’s some thematic connection between them, and in this episode I found that lacking. Still, the A-plot of “Eye of the Needle” has a lot more substance than the storyline of “The Cloud”, and both plots lay a lot of groundwork for future episodes.

           

            The A-plot is admirably full of twists and turns, but it never really puts Voyager in any danger. There’s still plenty of tension, but it’s driven by hope, rather than fear. For the first time since “Caretaker”, our heroes see a possible way to get home. They will have their hopes raised many more times before this is over, but the first time offers unique opportunities to explore some of the relationships in the ensemble – not everyone wants this to the same extent, and some are more willing to make sacrifices than others.

           

Teeny Tiny Wormhole.

            The whole episode is a big game of good news/ bad news – “Good News - We found a wormhole to the Alpha Quadrant!” “Bad news – it’s too small to fit Voyager through.” “Good News – There’s someone on the other side we can talk to.” “Bad News – he’s a paranoid Romulan.” “Good News – we can beam through the wormhole and go home.” “Bad news – we’d end up 20 years in the past.”

           

            Ultimately, of course, the potential damage to the timeline is non-negotiable, despite Harry Kim’s protests. They do leave messages with the Romulan, but have no way of knowing if they were ever sent. For now Voyager is still alone, the isolation felt all the more acutely for being so close to home.

            The B-plot continues what I think is the most promising sub-plot, the Doctor’s self-actualization. Fittingly, it is Kes who confronts the Captain about how the crew treats him, and Janeway reacts as if someone had just told her that the toaster was feeling left out since you started making waffles all the time. This response is fascinating to me. It may be because I just watched “The Measure of a Man,” where Picard talks about humanity being judged on how it treats its technological creations, and now I feel as I’m watching his prophecy unfold. The Doctor is just as human as Data, more human in many ways, but while Data was always embraced as a member of the Enterprise crew, everyone on Voyager still views the Doc as a glorified tricorder.

This includes the Doctor himself, who has no thoughts about agitating for his rights – when Janeway asks him if there’s anything she can do for him, all he asks is for the ability to turn himself off or back on. He doesn’t see any reason to think of himself as anything other than a machine designed to perform a specific task, yet he clearly has emotional needs that could be met.

Here’s where it gets creepy. We know, from Deep Space Nine, that plenty of people use holograms for sexual fantasies, and from every show that people use holodecks to play out violent fantasies. The Doctor is not the first Hologram to achieve sentience, and he won’t be the last. Now while most likely Tom Paris’s holo-bimbos from the French pool-hall simulation don’t have complex enough programs to be considered people, where the heck do you draw that line? It’ incredibly difficult to pick a point where you can say “These holoprograms are sentient and should have rights” and “These holoprogams can be used as our playthings.”

We’re going to get into these ethical issues eventually. I hope sooner rather than later, because the way the crew treats the Doctor makes me not like the crew much at all.

Random Observations:

No Neelix this episode (or very little at least.)

Kes has an eidetic memory, which makes sense given the Ocampa lifespan. This is how they can master enough skills in such a short time and have a functioning society.

We learn that B’Elanna is estranged from her parents and hasn’t seen her human dad since she was five. I guess if you walk out on a Klingon coming back would be pretty scary.

This episode definitely puts Harry at the forefront, but we don’t really learn much about him except that he really wants to get home.

B’Elanna still calls Harry Starfleet, and the writers still haven’t caught on to their relative lack of chemistry.

Janeway answers Telek Remor's (audio only) communique in her pink slip with her hair down.  It's not super sexualized, but its a little off-putting.

Telek Remor might actually be a cargo ship captain, but given what we know about the Romulans circa 2151, it’s equally likely he’s a Tal Shiar operative. Either way, the Romulans were a good choice for this episode – their distrustfulness helps racket up the tension even more.

The scene where the Doctor worries about being left on after everyone has abandoned ship is actually a little heart-breaking.

Captive Pursuit and Q-Less (DS9)

Captive Pursuit

Why does it matter that there's a wormhole? That's a pretty good question to ask Deep Space Nine.

After all, there was no wormhole in TNG or TOS and they still met brand new aliens whenever the story needed them. The galaxy in Star Trek is beautifully and conveniently uncharted, even "close to home." But, since Deep Space 9 doesn't move, it can't be on the outskirts of the known space. A wormhole is a way, perhaps the only way, to bring the exploration aspect of other shows to the doorstep.

But the other thing a wormhole does is it lets us bring in the really alien aliens. I mean, we're pretty used to Klingons and Romulans and Vulcans, but what about some people who present some real ethical quandaries. Or language problems.

That's sort of the promise of "Captive Pursuit." The first brand new alien turns up from the Gamma Quadrant. He's acting shifty. He's on the run. He's not interested in cultural exchange of any kind. O'Brien befriends him, despite not getting much in the way of reciprocity.

It turns out Tosk, the alien, is the prey in a bloodsport, running from hunters that eventually find him on the station, penned up in the brig for trying to steal weapons. Sisko is the commander and therefore our resident Federation moralist, and he's impressively livid when he finds out what's happening. At the same time, he's not on secure moral ground. Tosk is really bred for the hunt. It's not fully clear whether it constitutes oppression, when that oppression is built not only into the culture but into a whole race's very DNA.

Sisko errs on the side of the prime directive, as good captains do, and lets the hunters take away Tosk. But O'Brien can't handle betraying his friend, so he busts him out, giving him the only thing he can give him, a fighting chance. And that's it. The aliens leave the station engaged in the same blood sport they began it in, DS9 has made no new allies, and Sisko lets O'Brien off with a stern warning and a slap on the wrist.

This is a good episode, I think, because it doesn't cheapen its own questions with easy answers. On one level it's a story about how we shouldn't automatically judge other cultures against our own moral standards. On the other hand, what should we do when we encounter something that looks so much like ritualized abuse?

It's also a story about how people can make big changes when systems can't. Sisko's hands are tied by the prime directive, but O'Brien's aren't. And O'Brien doesn't feel compelled to fix the system, only to help his friend. But we're left to wonder what exactly that help has bought Tosk. A few more days? Another year? Is it worth it?

We get lots of questions, but no answers, just a juicy taste of what's beyond that wormhole.

Q-Less

Some popular episodes beg for sequels. When Vash and Q disappeared for parts unknown at the end of "Qpid," it's no surprise fans wanted to see them again. And I can imagine the conversation in the writer's room that led to the idea that they would turn up not back on the Enterprise, but on Deep Space Nine.

It was a good theory. In practice, though, with no TNG regulars in the story - particularly no Jean-Luc Picard, the third man in their weird love triangle, Q and Vash are just two random people on the station. There's no particular reason for our heroes to be invested in them.

It's layers upon layers really. I've always found that when Q himself enters into a romance with a "normal," it's awkward. Q is supposed to be so much more advanced than humans that they're irrelevant bugs to him. It's pretty weird when he starts acting like a dumped high school boyfriend on one's account.

So we have Q and Vash's relationship, which is both inscrutable and irrelevant, in the spotlight of what ought to be an episode of Deep Space Nine.

It's not that Q doesn't work with the Deep Space Nine cast. It's that Q really doesn't have any reason to interact with the Deep Space Nine cast. He's just sort of there while they deal with a problem that doesn't have anything to do with him. And the problem is a big stupid MacGuffin - some artifact Vash brought back from the Gamma Quadrant is destroying the station because it's actually a giant space sting ray or something.

Q has a scene with Sisko and it's actually pretty good except for the part where its totally pointless. Neither of them actually needs anything from the other, so they're just characters interacting generically without motivation. It doesn't help that Q brings up the TNG cast, especially Picard, every chance he gets. I think that's one lesson the writers learned prior to Q's much more successful turns on Voyager.

Vash and Bashir actually have some potential as a plotline - what better to actually make Bashir seem like a lady's man than to get him with Jean-Luc Picard's girlfriend, right? And there's some chemistry there (not a lot, on account of Bashir's supply of impossibly cheesy lines.) But instead, Bashir is completely written out and forgotten about by a prank of Q's and returns only as a punchline. His plotline serves no purpose in the story.

Basically, the DS9 writers got two TNG guest stars and totally failed to write them into the show, instead writing them a trite and insipid solo adventure that happened to take place on Deep Space 9. It's the worst sort of crossover, satisfying no one.

Random Observations

- "Captive Pursuit" is our first O'Brien episode, and it shows Colm Meaney off nicely. His everyman charm provides a very relatable motivation to his actions in this episode.

- There's an effort to build an O'Brien-Quark relationship here with some animosity in it, but it doesn't work, I think because O'Brien comes off as too much of a jerk toward Quark. Their relationship through the rest of the show doesn't stand out to me as at all memorable, or even necessarily consistent.

- Why is it that when an object on Star Trek has mysterious properties it always ends up turning into a space jellyfish?

Lonely Among Us (TNG)

There goes our entire make-up budget for the season.

            If I could use one word to describe “Lonely Among Us”, it would be "playful". It’s not the episode doesn’t have high stakes or drama. But between Tasha and Riker’s absurd subplot and Data’s Sherlock Holmes obsession, it’s hard to take the serious threat to the ship that the saboteur imposes particularly seriously. I don’t think that makes the episode an all out failure. The show is trying to figure out exactly what its tone should be, and I think this episode just falls a little too far on the cheesy/silly side of the scale.

            Basically, there are two plots. They barely intersect. In the first, the Enterprise is transporting two delegations to a treaty negotiation – the furry, carnivorous Anticans and the Reptilian Selay. The trouble is, they absolutely loathe each other. They’re also rather obnoxious in their own right. The humor here comes from the obnoxious demands the delegates make, and the fact that no-nonsense Tasha has to deal with them. Also, the not-so-subtle implication that the Anticans would like to eat the Selay.

And next season...

            In many episodes, one sentient race eating another would be disturbing, or at the very least played up as some sort of nature vs. nurture debacle, but here its played almost entirely for laughs – as in, these are the wacky day-to-day problems you face when transporting interstellar diplomats. It works because the actors playing the aliens play them in such an animalistic way, and their make-up is uncharacteristically non-humanoid, so we don’t see them quite as much as human. It’s more like one of those Farside comics about the wolf trying to eat the sheep.

            Taking up more of the hour is another plotline. The Enterprise scans a mysterious nebula, and accidentally takes an alien life form onboard. The life form can possess both people and subsystems, and jumps from one to another, leaving gaps in people’s memories and interfering with ship’s systems. When navigation goes down (and generic chief engineer number 3 is mysteriously killed) Data, Geordi, Beverly and Tasha embark on a ship-wide investigation to find the saboteur. Data acquires a pipe and a deerstalker. But then the alien realizes it’s much easier to just possess Picard and order the ship back to the nebula.

Note to self: install circuit breakers on bridge consoles.

            Dr. Crusher and Riker try to relieve the captain of duty, but he throws it back in their faces with a “no, you’re possessed by an alien!” When they get to the nebula, the alien explains that he has in fact merged with Picard, and they are going into space together to be beings of pure energy. The crew can’t stop him, so off to the transporter room he goes.

            Shortly thereafter, Troi senses Picard out in the nebula, alone. He starts possessing ship’s systems too, and with his help their able to use the transporter to get him his body back. He remembers nothing of being possessed.

            Then Tasha rushes into the transporter room and reports that the Anticans have, in fact, eaten one of the Selay. LOLz.

Random Observations:

            There won’t be as many of these, since my notes all got deleted when my computer crashed.

            Riker has a model of the Galileo from TOS in his office.

            Doctor Crusher has a silly hat.

           

I'd like to say it gets better for you, chief...

            Worf is annoyed that he has to learn how to recalibrate the sensor arrays. Later we will see Worf take some pride in his knowledge of engineering and ship operations, even if security is his specialty.

            Gates McFadden is probably the most believable actress in terms of portraying being possessed by the alien. She really gets the whole “not quite familiar with this body” thing down. But then, she is a dancer, and they tend to be more aware of their physicality.

Minor Character Watch: Miles O’Brien appears again, as one of the security officers Tasha has assigned to see to the needs of the Selay delegates. As always, his job is thankless.