The Nagus (DS9)

The Nagus is a good episode that portends great things to come. It's the first real Ferengi episode, episodes where the A-plot centers around Quark, Rom, sometimes Nog and a range of recurring Ferengi guest stars. None of them more high-profile than Wallace Shawn's Grand Nagus Zek, notable for just how much Wallace Shawn-ness shines through his layers of makeup.

The Nagus paints the Ferengi in their usual heartless, conniving light, although with a little less nuance than the show will land on. The Ferengi here are almost Klingon in their willingness to assassinate whomever's in charge, and that bloodthirstiness doesn't quite play well with the narrative mission the writers have set aside for them.

Ferengi episodes (this one included) are farces, broad comic pieces with cartoonish characters, physical comedy, and often outright zaniness. Sometimes this makes for a jarring disconnect with the rest of the station crew, who tend to infringe only tangentially on the plot. Other times the rest of the crew is relegated to an unrelated B-plot. (The exception being Odo, who has a way of finding his way into Ferengi stories via the tabs he perpetually keeps on Quark.)

I've come to think of these comic episodes (which tend to be more successful than attempts to go broadly comic with the whole crew, like "Fascination") play an important role, especially as the rest of the series finds its way to a darker tone. This isn't to denigrate the actors behind the Ferengi at all, by the way. They all have serious chops and the comedy often stems from how seriously they take inherently silly situations (one is reminded of Frasier, even.)

This time, Quark gets made ruler of the Ferengi people, with plenty of Godfather references to go around. On Ferenginar, corruption is built right into the system, so the Nagus is no public figure. He's the CEO of the Ferengi, or more accurately the Gilded Age boss of their town. He has his hands in every deal and rules with an iron fist -- but he's constantly watching his back for assassination attempts. It's a job not for the faint of heart. The initially disarmingly goofy Zek turns out to be every bit as shrewd as any other Ferengi.

The specific twists and turns of who's killing who and who's not really dead aren't really as important to note here as the general appeal of the episode. About halfway through it I had this realization "Wow, I feel like I'm watching Deep Space Nine." I think the worst of season one is behind us.

And that's even more apparent in the B-plot, which spins off of the main plot when the visiting Ferengi higher-ups pooh-pooh Nog's attendance at Keiko's school (which is being substitute-taught by O'Brien, I assume because the show hit its guest star budget with all those Ferengi). This is a minor qualm of mine, actually: Ferengi society should at least value literacy, a pretty important skill for a shrewd businessman.

Anyway, Sisko continues to be annoyed by Jake's friendship with Nog, and suspicious when Jake misses dinner repeatedly. After some advice from Dax in a very sweet scene, he goes to find him (thank you creepy Big Brother computer technology) and discovers his elicit extra-curricular has been tutoring Nog all along. It's a very simple, even predictable story, but it grows the characters well and presents a sweet counterpoint to the tale of backstabbing and betrayal (goofy though it may be) that constitutes the main plot.

Random Observations:

-- Suddenly Rom is a character. The sharp curve of his season one evolution is crazy.

-- The season continues to slyly lay the groundwork for the Dominion War and the direction the wormhole is going to take the rest of the show (more on that next week!) Here, we see a smart decision to set up the Ferengi as an interested party because of the propensity of business opportunities a new quadrant represents. This ties Quark into the larger scene of galactic politics in a way that will allow the writers to fit him into many stories to come where he otherwise wouldn't have had any reason to be around.

-- I know I promised a double post, but life is crazy right now! Hopefully the week after next I'll be able to get to it.

Move Along Home (DS9)

Usually, bad Star Trek episodes fail on execution. The episode might be really badly written, it might have huge plot holes or inconsistent characterization, but at least the heart of the story is something that makes you say "Yeah, I get why the writing staff accepted this pitch."

 Not so "Move Along Home," at least as far as I can tell. The plot bears more similarity to "Labyrinth" than to Star Trek. But it's labyrinth on a TV budget without David Bowie or Muppets. And considerably less aware of it's absurdity.

Aliens from the Gamma Quadrant, the Wadi, come to Deep Space Nine to establish first contact. Everyone gets dressed up in their finest, but the aliens are more interested in gambling at Quark's than in even meeting the Federation delegation. Despite Sisko's warnings to him about not screwing this up, Quark tries to cheat them after they have an unnaturally lucky run at the Dabo table. He gets caught, of course, and the Wadi challenge him to a new game. And that's where the plot goes from boring to wonky.

 The new game is a board game, but it also automatically captures Dax, Sisko, Bashit, and Kira and transports them to the Wadi ship, where they go through weird trials that match up with what's happening in the game as Quark plays it. Odo mounts an ineffectual rescue attempt, but eventually falls back on glaring at Quark, which more or less seems to solve the problem.

Oh yeah, none of it matters at all because, as Kira puts it "We were never in any real danger!?" The crux of this episode's failings are the impossibly low stakes. The audience knows nobody's going to die, the Wadi know no one's going to die. The characters think they might die, and that's where the episode tries to find tension, but it just doesn't land. The game is too silly to be terrifying, and it doesn't make any sense for the Wadi to come from the Gamma Quadrant and initiate first contact by killing four high ranking officers in a convoluted and random manner. A thinking viewer has no reason to fear that's what's happening, and every reason to include that, in fact, the game is just a game.

 Maybe the problem is that, in a world of holodecks and safety protocols, our first assumption should really be that an elaborate simulation is safe. In the Star Trek universe in general, usually our cue that something is deadly is when they throw a redshirt at it and he dies. It's clumsy, but it works.

And then on top of that, the challenges within the game are totally uninspired, and they don't bring out very much interesting in the characters. They just sort of wander through the game out of a vague, loosely articulated sense that it's what they are supposed to do. It's like the framework of a good adventure story, without a goal of any kind or character agency that makes it worth caring about. 

Sometimes I forget to talk holistically about shows, because I'm quite fixated on writing and plotting. So I will give the show kudos here on sets, props, and makeup. The Wadi have a very consistent aesthetic that connects the game Quark is playing to the labyrinth Sisko and company are trapped in, and even to the colored tattoos the Wadi wear. For a one-shot race with a remarkably flat characterization, the Wadi are at least interesting looking.

 The B-plot is that Jake is interested in girls. It would have been a more interesting B-plot if Jake were interested in boys. But really not that much more interesting. You can hardly call it a B-plot, actually. It's just sort of the writers desperately trying to find things for Jake to do in this show, because he's in the credits. Eventually the writers on this show decide to write for whoever and not care who's in the credits, which I find refreshing. The pattern with Jake in Deep Space Nine is that he gets a handful of his own stories/father-son stories and they're mostly good, and the kid acts them well. He gets a handful of quirky B-plots with Nog, which are hit and miss. He does not really participate in the ensemble shows, with a few exceptions. The show hits its stride when it just embraces it.

Random Observations: 

 - Bashir is not getting less annoying yet.

 - O'Brien isn't in this episode. This is another reason not to like it.

 - Kira makes a really out of character outburst about being an administrator and thus ill-suited to go on adventures, which is just totally at odds with her action hero past. Similarly, this is the second time Dax has espoused an "I've had seven lifetimes, I'm ready to die" attitude as opposed to the "I have an obligation to protect the symbiote" that seems more appropriate.

 - The climax of this episode is supposed to be the moment when Quark breaks down and begs for the other characters' lives. Armin Shimmerman tries his best, but it's a mess, actually. Possibly because of the whole "we know they're not gonna die" thing. But also because, as a character moment, there's no legwork done. He comes off as "petty criminal in over his head" moreso than "bad guy growing a conscience."

 - Lt. Primmin is back! But he doesn't really do anything except be astonishingly negligent re: the disappearance of four senior officers. Someone's got their eye on an ill-gotten promotion!

 - Speaking of which, I'm going to take this opportunity to air a grievance that I have with Star Trek all the time. The computer can tell you at any time where somebody is. It is apparently constantly monitoring everyone's movements and life signs. But when someone is abducted, they never know until they look for someone. How hard would it be to set up an automatic alert when people leave the station in some manner other than the station's transporters or the airlocks? Why don't they do this on any ship or station on the show ever?

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.