Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 3 discs 6 and 7
So, we come to the final six episodes of the season, and they’re nearly all strong ones, ‘Explorers’ didn’t grab me as much.
Disc 6
‘The Die is Cast’ picks up where ‘Improbable Cause’ left us hanging, with Garak himself not knowing where his loyalties lie - he can’t commit himself as fully as he’d once have done to Tain’s plan, which is a foolhardy one, and as we learn, something the Founders egged him on to - while nobody trusts him.
I was less moved by lingering shots of the Defiant and expensive space battles than by Garak and Odo finding common ground. Garak has no taste for torturing Odo, and learns about his longing to join the Great Link in the most disturbing scene of the season.
Sisko and his crew arrive in the nick of time and aren’t court-marshalled for defying orders, natch. Garak definitely has a new friend as Odo is all, ‘I see your archness, and I raise it a notch.’
After all that, ‘Explorers’ is low key in one sense, though in it we get a sense of a scale of the station. In it, they prep for Sisko’s new (and lasting) love interst, and he’s grown his piratical beard.
The episode is about finding your place in the world, mainly Benjamin, Jake and Julian. I was a bit sceptical of Sisko building a replica of an 800-year-old Bajoran spaceship in his spare time (i.e. by montage). The point was to prove it flew as far into Cardassian space as the Bajorans said it did, a claim the Cardassians dismissed. I know the Bajorans were too busy of late to prove it themselves, but this isn’t an Emissary thing.
The ship was beautiful, if the CGI wasn’t flawless to the modern eye. It deliberately has echoes of a sailing ship, allowing him and Jake to have to physically work it on a trip, where Sisko has to face up to how much his boy is growing up.
The B-plot BIZZARELY involves O’Brien singing ‘Jerusalem’ with Bashir. The future, man.
‘Family Business’ is a lighter hearted episode. The B-plot involves Matchmaker!Jake getting his way, as Benjamin meets Kassidy and them hitting it off over baseball (the whole station knows about all this, amusingly).
The A-plot involves superguest star Jeffrey Coombs, (though he’s not the most convincing Ferengi, as he’s too tall) coming to arrest Quark because his mother’s been a bad female Feremgi i.e. making a profit. There’s lots of retrograde Ferengi sexism and family psychodrama as Rom comes along, but Nog never appears and is never mentioned after the first scene. Quark and Rom revert to childhood patterns around their rebel mother. It takes Quark ages to realise/admit that he takes after her, and he makes you feel sympathy for him, even though he’s being awful. Through Rom, the family rifts are somewhat healed.
Kai Winn being a soft-spoken, ruthless, terrible leader is the best thing about ‘Shakaar’. There’s a negligible B-plot about darts, but mainly it’s about Kira, still grieving for Bareil (until the end of the episode) and Bajor’s future. There are political shenanigans and Winn asks Kira to do something (a touch contrived), that pits her against her former comrades. It doesn’t work.
Winn overeacts (as good leader Sisko notes), and Kira sides with her old cell, becoming an outlaw again, only she can’t quite bring herself to shoot other Bajorans. Fortunately, unlike Winn, they’re willing to negotiate.
There’s a hint that Shankaar (the future First Minister after al this, checking Winn’s ambitions) is another one who’s in love with Kira. Meanwhile, I wondered if she had a problem with women in authority?
Disc 7
For an episode that I thought was stepping away from the main season’s arc to allow the actors a chance to play something different (like they hadn’t already had ‘Distant Voices’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’), I liked ‘Facets’ a lot.
The subplot is about Nog trying to get accepted into the Academy, and features Papa Bear Rom when Quark tries to scupper his chances. Unexpected love for Rom, ahoy!
The main cast plus a convenient Leeta get to play Dax’s previous hosts so that Jadzia can meet them and get a better sense of herself. This means among other things, we see Sisko go all Hannibal Lecter as the creepy killer who was briefly a host, but it shows Jadzia’s toughness.
But the masterstroke is Odo getting Curzon’s memories and the two merging into Curzon!Odo, who fends off Jadzia’s questions about Curzon’s role in kicking her off the Trill Initiate programme. Inevitably, it turns out that Curzon’s excuse for treating her appallingliy was that he was in love with her… I eye-rolled, because this follows Jadzia using erotic wiles to get Quark to participate in this ritual, where he has to take on a female past host. It’s a bit icky all round.
But it ties into the Trill ep at the start of the season and has more emotional depth than the Bashir ep.
There’s some well-judged escalation in ‘The Adversary’. I was wrong-footed at the start, thinking Sisko was off the station, when he’s just promoted to captain. The crew and the Defiant is given a mission that seems to offer a chance for Captain Sisko to settle down, but maybe there’s a stowaway on board and why has the returning security officer got an expanded role?
BOOM! The stowaway is a Changeling who has sabotaged the ship. Suddenly it’s all paranoia. The tension rises, as Sisko must use his command nous and help avert war. Interesting that the non-regular lower ranks have a bigger role.
The moment where Odo has to kill his fellow Changeling is horrifying, and his last words are chilling, proof that the writers had grasped the potential they’d been playing about with in this episode and in others.
I kind of watched this without realising it was the season finale.
The features assume you’ve seen all the show, which I kind of haven’t. I never saw all the episodes, and as I’ve learned in rewatching the DVDs, I’d forgotten loads. This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/426046.html.
Disc 6
‘The Die is Cast’ picks up where ‘Improbable Cause’ left us hanging, with Garak himself not knowing where his loyalties lie - he can’t commit himself as fully as he’d once have done to Tain’s plan, which is a foolhardy one, and as we learn, something the Founders egged him on to - while nobody trusts him.
I was less moved by lingering shots of the Defiant and expensive space battles than by Garak and Odo finding common ground. Garak has no taste for torturing Odo, and learns about his longing to join the Great Link in the most disturbing scene of the season.
Sisko and his crew arrive in the nick of time and aren’t court-marshalled for defying orders, natch. Garak definitely has a new friend as Odo is all, ‘I see your archness, and I raise it a notch.’
After all that, ‘Explorers’ is low key in one sense, though in it we get a sense of a scale of the station. In it, they prep for Sisko’s new (and lasting) love interst, and he’s grown his piratical beard.
The episode is about finding your place in the world, mainly Benjamin, Jake and Julian. I was a bit sceptical of Sisko building a replica of an 800-year-old Bajoran spaceship in his spare time (i.e. by montage). The point was to prove it flew as far into Cardassian space as the Bajorans said it did, a claim the Cardassians dismissed. I know the Bajorans were too busy of late to prove it themselves, but this isn’t an Emissary thing.
The ship was beautiful, if the CGI wasn’t flawless to the modern eye. It deliberately has echoes of a sailing ship, allowing him and Jake to have to physically work it on a trip, where Sisko has to face up to how much his boy is growing up.
The B-plot BIZZARELY involves O’Brien singing ‘Jerusalem’ with Bashir. The future, man.
‘Family Business’ is a lighter hearted episode. The B-plot involves Matchmaker!Jake getting his way, as Benjamin meets Kassidy and them hitting it off over baseball (the whole station knows about all this, amusingly).
The A-plot involves superguest star Jeffrey Coombs, (though he’s not the most convincing Ferengi, as he’s too tall) coming to arrest Quark because his mother’s been a bad female Feremgi i.e. making a profit. There’s lots of retrograde Ferengi sexism and family psychodrama as Rom comes along, but Nog never appears and is never mentioned after the first scene. Quark and Rom revert to childhood patterns around their rebel mother. It takes Quark ages to realise/admit that he takes after her, and he makes you feel sympathy for him, even though he’s being awful. Through Rom, the family rifts are somewhat healed.
Kai Winn being a soft-spoken, ruthless, terrible leader is the best thing about ‘Shakaar’. There’s a negligible B-plot about darts, but mainly it’s about Kira, still grieving for Bareil (until the end of the episode) and Bajor’s future. There are political shenanigans and Winn asks Kira to do something (a touch contrived), that pits her against her former comrades. It doesn’t work.
Winn overeacts (as good leader Sisko notes), and Kira sides with her old cell, becoming an outlaw again, only she can’t quite bring herself to shoot other Bajorans. Fortunately, unlike Winn, they’re willing to negotiate.
There’s a hint that Shankaar (the future First Minister after al this, checking Winn’s ambitions) is another one who’s in love with Kira. Meanwhile, I wondered if she had a problem with women in authority?
Disc 7
For an episode that I thought was stepping away from the main season’s arc to allow the actors a chance to play something different (like they hadn’t already had ‘Distant Voices’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’), I liked ‘Facets’ a lot.
The subplot is about Nog trying to get accepted into the Academy, and features Papa Bear Rom when Quark tries to scupper his chances. Unexpected love for Rom, ahoy!
The main cast plus a convenient Leeta get to play Dax’s previous hosts so that Jadzia can meet them and get a better sense of herself. This means among other things, we see Sisko go all Hannibal Lecter as the creepy killer who was briefly a host, but it shows Jadzia’s toughness.
But the masterstroke is Odo getting Curzon’s memories and the two merging into Curzon!Odo, who fends off Jadzia’s questions about Curzon’s role in kicking her off the Trill Initiate programme. Inevitably, it turns out that Curzon’s excuse for treating her appallingliy was that he was in love with her… I eye-rolled, because this follows Jadzia using erotic wiles to get Quark to participate in this ritual, where he has to take on a female past host. It’s a bit icky all round.
But it ties into the Trill ep at the start of the season and has more emotional depth than the Bashir ep.
There’s some well-judged escalation in ‘The Adversary’. I was wrong-footed at the start, thinking Sisko was off the station, when he’s just promoted to captain. The crew and the Defiant is given a mission that seems to offer a chance for Captain Sisko to settle down, but maybe there’s a stowaway on board and why has the returning security officer got an expanded role?
BOOM! The stowaway is a Changeling who has sabotaged the ship. Suddenly it’s all paranoia. The tension rises, as Sisko must use his command nous and help avert war. Interesting that the non-regular lower ranks have a bigger role.
The moment where Odo has to kill his fellow Changeling is horrifying, and his last words are chilling, proof that the writers had grasped the potential they’d been playing about with in this episode and in others.
I kind of watched this without realising it was the season finale.
The features assume you’ve seen all the show, which I kind of haven’t. I never saw all the episodes, and as I’ve learned in rewatching the DVDs, I’d forgotten loads. This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/426046.html.