Vortex (DS9)

So we took a week off, unannounced. Sorry about that. But we are back now, with a Deep Space Nine recap: Vortex.

Throughout its early seasons, Deep Space Nine drops hints about two things: Odo's origins and the Dominion, the sinister force that intimidates the peoples of the Gamma Quadrant. Those two long plays, along with Bajoran politics, are the first hints of the unprecedentedly serial nature of this show.

Vortex is the first episode to delve into Odo's origins, and although it turns out to be an elaborate bait and switch it still manages to lay an impressive groundwork. On the one hand, we learn about shapeshifters as a children's story, as part of the mythology of the Gamma Quadrant. On the other hand, we see how deeply the mere possibility of learning about his past can effect Odo; how drastically it can shake his normally steadfast moral compass.

This tension will really define Odo to some: some of his best episodes will put his devotion to his adoptive family against his curiosity about (and eventually loyalty to) his birth parents, as it were. This episode lays the groundwork.

A desperate criminal who happens to have a shape shifting key chain and a knack for running cons realizes Odo's weakness. And he plays him like a drum.

That's an interesting angle on and of itself, and a strong thing for a show in its early stages to do: take the strengths we've just learned to love about our characters and twist them into weaknesses. But vortex had another trick up its sleeve, twisting Crodan back to hero again in the eleventh hour, and showing us that there might just be the odd thing Odo values over law and order.

"Vortex" doesn't really have a B-plot, opting instead to pad the plot with a Quark-centric first half featuring some generic extralegality and a new race doggedly dedicated to their twins, which I obviously found somewhat touching.

And there's a place to pad the episode with sandbox stuff -- cat and mouse Quark and Odo stuff that gives us the "business as usual" of their relationship. But this episode's strongest stuff is Cronan and Odo and testing the limits of our favorite incorruptible lawman -- first with temptation, and then with compassion. And we end the episode with a much stronger, more complex Odo than we ever knew we had.

No observations this week, I've said my piece above. Pictures hopefully to come.

The Passenger (DS9)

Some of the most watchable, and yet most forgettable, early Deep Space Nine episodes feel like solid Next Generation episodes. I love DS9 primarily because of the ways it differentiates itself from its predecessors (and even from its successors). I'm not as impressed by an episode that rides on guest stars, that doesn't enrich or develop the characters of any of the regulars, even if it's well done, even if it's entertaining and it works.

"The Passenger" is one of those episodes. Possession is very, very well-trodden Star Trek territory, for one thing. Off the top of my head, there's TOS's "Turnabout Intruder", TNG's "The Schizoid Man" and "Power Play", DS9's "The Assignment", Voyager's "Warlord" and "Cathexis" (the former of which is really very close to this premise). I'm certain there are quite a few more. So if you're going to return to that well, you'd sure better be bringing something new and innovative.

This episode at least doesn't follow the typical possession formula, where the possessor jumps from body to body. But the possession does serve as a twist ending in the story, and it's a little too predictable to be a good one.

Ok, he doesn't completely lack his own face.

Everything sort of leaves "The Passenger" as another Deep Space Nine episode that executes well, but there's no there there. The cop who's chased the fugitive for her whole life has the potential for a sort of Les Mis story about obsession, but Vantica, the criminal, is such an obvious, non-gray baddy that that doesn't take. Besides that, he's barely seen throughout the episode, and lacks his own face, which makes it hard to build a character.

Most of the plot is the crew working together to catch the bad guy, with the help of guest-star cop lady. And, of course, since a conceit is needed to keep the action on the station, the bad guy is not just trying to get away but to pull off a heist. A heist of ... a mysterious technobabble material, I guess? The word forgettable keeps coming back.

But the idea of attacking whole systems to get at protected files, and the battle-of-wits aspect to the chase are nice touches, with a little more thought in them than the typical shield modulation shenanigans these chase scenes usually entail. The pacing is good, the tension builds nicely. I have no complaints, per se, but nor was I blown away by anything.

One thing that works here is the subplot with Lt. Primmin, the Starfleet security officer who butts heads with Odo. It works because Primmin is surprisingly deep (and upon his introduction seems like he's going to be VERY one-note) and because neither of them is entirely right or entirely wrong. Odo's fear of being replaced is understandable, but it's his pride that keeps him from working with Primmin. And Primmin can't work with Odo until he gets over his own prejudices and stops thinking of him as a country bumpkin. This idea of Bajor as the boonies, the bible belt to Earth's east coast, is one that hits some good notes and isn't always explored enough. It's too bad Primmin never comes back, but the tension does - we'll see the same struggle play out with Michael Eddington and, to a lesser extent, Worf.

Maybe the story fails because it leans too heavily on Bashir and Dax, who, at this point in the series, are still the weakest regulars, both in their own acting and in the writers not knowing how to use them. Alexander Siddig plays Vantica with all the subtlety of a large mallet, and I couldn't help but think "this is not his best work." Maybe it fails because there's just nothing in it interesting or innovative. Either way, it is what it is: a pleasant, enjoyable, bland background episode that will stand out as no one's favorite. But hey, they can't all be.

 Random Observations: 

- One small blessing of this episode is a famous Odo line. In response to Kajara's "What kind of idiot are you?" he smugly replies "My own special variety."

- Deep Space Nine, moreso than other shows, has almost The Office-like cold opens, especially early in the series. These are really fun and give a slice of life that often gets lost in the action later in the episode. Here it's Bashir being way too obliviously smug in front of Kira. It's just a shame the distress signal comes before she gets the chance to give him the earful he deserves.

- Up until now, doctors in Star Trek have played the role of sages, more or less. McCoy and Crusher's status as healers also allowed them to stand as Captains' consciences and confidantes. So, as much as Bashir's early characterization is 2-dimensional and oh-so-irritating, as a subversion of previous shows it's quite clever. He's a very good doctor, but so naive and socially oblivious and self-centered he's a very poor confidante. I don't mean to hate on Bashir. I think Siddig is wonderfully talented, and by the end of the show Bashir becomes one of my favorite characters, and frankly one that I see a lot of myself in, especially in his flaws. But boy does it take a while for him to get there.

- Feel free to list possession episodes I forgot about in the comments. Would be good to have an exhaustive list. In fact, you know what, I'm adding a tag for it.

Babel (DS9)

After a solid pilot and a few great character episode, "Babel" is an ensemble show truly in the mode of The Next Generation. The crew getting infected with a disease is a trope that show used far too many times, including in their second episode.

But "Babel" does the disease story better. And it's not TNG's fault. Really good disease stories follow the mode of classic movies like The Andromeda Strain, where the disease threatened to spread and wipe out all life on Earth. The highest stakes TNG could manage were that everyone on the ship would die.

But Deep Space Nine, this episode reminds us, is a port. There are civilians and unaffiliated ships docked, and a disease threatens everyone. And if an infected ship leaves port, the disease could threaten the whole quadrant.

"Babel" features a disease with slightly silly symptoms but deadly serious import. It affects characters we really care about, and gets dangerously close to taking them all out before a handful of immune characters manage to save the day. The stakes rise appropriately to create a drama-filled hour: not bad for episode 4.

The "day in the life of OBrien" motif that starts the episode is delightful, but also drives home some of the themes of the pilot - how, while other crews have been in harmony with their ships, the DS9 crew is constantly wrestling with Deep Space Nine - and O'Brien is their champion in that fight.

When O'Brien falls ill, the spotlight shifts to Bashir, as we get to see him do what he does best: researching under pressure, researching frantically to cure a deadly disease. When Bashir succumbs, the focus shifts again to Kira, and we get to see what she does best: playing outside the rules and circumventing Bajoran politics.

While the merry-go-round of expertise is doing it's thing, the show is showing its hand by pairing up odd-couple Odo and Quark, though not for the last time. The producers are already discovering the level of delight that can come from Armin Shimmerman and Rene Auberjonois sharing a plotline, as they first play a cat and mouse game over Quark's illicit replicator use, and then are forced to team up as Odo runs out of unaffected potential deputees. We start to see that Quark is, or can be, one of our heroes, when push comes to shove - an important, if perilous, direction for the show to move in.

This is still DS9 trying to be TNG, but it's a notable episode because it's DS9 trying to be TNG and, in many ways, doing better at it. The frontier situation, the intercast conflicts, the consequences of being parked, all come into play in positive ways to raise the stakes of this outbreak story. DS9 has proved it can leverage it's strengths to tell an old story with some oomph.

Observation

- Odo's reason for catching Quark at his replicator shenanigan's - that Rom "couldn't fix a straw if it was bent" - is totally wrong, it turns out. Odo prides himself on being observant, so I'll leave you to ponder whether he truly misread Rom, or whether he was playing a larger game with Quark.

A Man Alone (DS9)

So, I failed in doing my research. "A Man Alone" was intended to be the actual second episode of the show, not "Past Prologue." And I think it works a little better as a second episode, actually. It's slower paced than the other and tries a little harder to give us a slice of life on Deep Space Nine. The second scene of the episode establishes this nicely, using the huge set of the promenade to full advantage and staging three simultaneous conversations on the various levels, which set up the different threads of the story.

More on that in a second; I want to hit the first scene of the episode first. You could make a case that the Dax-Bashir nonrelationship kind of sums up everything that's wrong with the first two seasons of Deep Space Nine. The big problem with it is that the writers haven't really figured out Dax OR Bashir yet, and they're basically the two shallowest characters on the show at the outset. Bashir's characterization is that he's booksmart and streetdumb, young, and overeager. Dax's characterization is that she has a worm inside her that makes her wise beyond her years.

And that's it. At this point, that's all there is to these characters. The "locals" - Odo, Kira, Quark - all have occupation backstories tied to the plot. O'Brien has imported backstory from TNG. Sisko's backstory takes up a good chunk of the pilot, and is also tied into the plot. Alone in the main cast, Bashir and Dax just work here. So when you have two characters sorely in need of more depth, the smart move is not to throw them into a relationship with one another. It might seem good on the surface, but what you get is a relationship between two types, not two characters. Bashir hits on Dax inexpertly, cause he's all clueless and stuff. She rejects him, cause she's all old and stuff. That's it. Never mind that later we'll find out that what Dax says about Trills avoiding relationships is a complete lie.

Ok, digression over. In Quark's, Quark and Odo are at the bar watching two conversations across the room: Miles and Keiko O'Brien fighting because, basically, Keiko hates it on Deep Space Nine and feels useless, and Sisko and Dax catching up. Like I said, it's a smart use of the sets. The promenade is more open than any set on TNG or Voyager, where a starship necessitates tight corridors. And Deep Space Nine is a place where a lot of things happen at once, not just a single mission of the week that everyone's wrapped up in.

Quark and Odo's gossip session is interrupted by the arrival Ibu Dan, a Bajoran criminal Odo is not happy to see. Odo would like to just throw him off the station, but Sisko tells him Starfleet's kind of into due process and individual rights and Odo needs to get on board with that. Still, Odo makes his dislike of Ibu Dan pretty obvious, which is a big problem when the dude turns up dead locked in his quarters. All signs point to Odo as the murderer and the restless Bajorans on the station start to go full on pitchfork mob as he (with Bashir's help) rushes to solve the case and clear his name.

That A-plot is solid stuff: It helps define Odo's somewhat ambiguous social role and professional function on Deep Space Nine. Odo's outsider status meshes pretty nicely with his job - cops often feel like outsiders, since they might find themselves arresting anyone, and all close bonds are, in some sense, potential liabilities. When Quark says that being Odo's enemy makes him the closest thing Odo has to a friend, it's not a silly line. It has some real resonance. That's the essence of Odo's character: A Man Alone.

Meanwhile, over in the B-plot, Keiko is starting a school on the station. A big challenge is convincing Rom to send Nog to the school. Rom is rather jarring here, lacking all of the markers that made him into the beloved character he would become. Here he's just another Ferengi, and nearly a villain. There's not too much to say about the school plot, as it just feels very much like a setup, a loose end that didn't fit into the pilot. We've got these kids on board and Keiko, what do we do with them?

Odo's plot ends with a convoluted and sightly troubling clone-related twist, complete with a Scooby Doo-style rubber face mask ending. (Probably the most awkward part is when Sisko reveals in a voice over that the clone Bashir was growing "Woke up and began a new life.") Cloning is a pretty lofty issue with a lot of ethical nuance and grey area, and TNG did at least one episode all about the subject, so to see it turn up here as a technological MacGuffin with no discussion or ethics or repercussions is a little jarring. And the premise is a tinge convoluted.

So the episode succeeds in being meaningful and interesting throughout, but fails to stick the landing, in my opinion. In terms of establishing the tone and style of the series to come, though, it's a solid sophomore outing.

Random Observations:

- Morn, everybody's favorite barfly, is in Odo's lynchmob. This is kind of strange, though it's possible he was just swept up in the crowd, I guess.

- For more about Bashir's prowess with women, this is a highly recommended read.

-This episode features another forgettable Bajoran dude, whose name I am not going to bother to look up.