[4.9/10] In hindsight, I found it strange that Star Trek: The Next Generation did “The Naked Now” as its third episode. It makes a little bit of a sense, since it’s the rare direct sequel to an episode of The Original Series, and so could be seen as a sop to the fans still suspicious of what was, at the time, a johnny-come-lately to the franchise. But it’s odd because so much of the episode depends on the members of the Enterprise crew acting out of character, and three episodes in, we didn’t really know the characters yet.
“Dramatis Personae” doesn’t have the exact same problem. It’s more defensible to have a mysterious pathogen that causes everyone to act abnormal when you’ve been around for eighteen episodes rather than three. But the problem is that many, if not most, of the characters on Deep Space Nine were still unsettled or underdeveloped at this point.
As a result, they’re not filled-in enough to where we’re initially intrigued but wary at friction emerging between various characters. I think the angle the show wants to play here is, at first, ambiguity over whether something’s amiss or whether this is just the simmering tension between Starfleet and the Bajorans on the station starting to come to a full-blown boil. The problem is that the show was still new enough, and the personalities of the major players in the series weren’t yet sketched in enough, to the point that the question was less “Is this real friction or is something peculiar going on?” than “Is this a little extreme or is this just the writers not having fully nailed the characters’ and perspectives voices yet?”
Worse yet, the show doesn’t even play at that ambiguity for very long. Rather quickly, the suspicions and conspiratorial behavior of everyone gets so extreme that it’s readily apparent something supernatural is causing these actions, which creates two problems.
The first is “The Naked Now” problem again. We just don’t know these characters well enough for it either to be a novelty for the audience to see them acting so out of form, or for it to feel tragic to watch good friends turn on one another under the influence of some malign force like this. It’s an episode theoretically fueled by character, but which doesn’t have enough to build on in that department.
The second is that this is yet another Star Trek installment from around this time where the mystery is obvious to the viewer and the time and effort it takes for the characters in the show to reach the same realization feels perfunctory. The particulars aren’t apparent so fast. I couldn’t have told you halfway through that the cause was the Klingons seeking out a telepathic pathogen (telepathogen?). But it was very clear early on that the Klingon who’d beamed aboard had done something to provoke this paranoid behavior in everyone, so watching the crew reach the same conclusion over the next half hour was tedious.
The best you can say is that I like Odo as the last sane man who has to stop all of this from spinning out of control. The downside is that Odo and Quark are the two most rich and compelling characters at this point in the series (see also: Quark desperately seeking medical attention for Odo despite their adversarial relationship), and yet they’re unaffected by the pathogen. They’re the two characters for whom acting out of character might have a real spark, but they’re the straight men in this situation.
Still, it gives Odo a chance to be clever. As dull as the mystery is, there’s something at least a little engaging about the way he feels out the suspicious condition everyone else is in and tries to navigate around it. The way he plays both sides against the middle to serve his needs, and particularly the way he doubletalk Dr. Bashir into formulating an antidote in the guise of one-upmanship is about the only clever thing in this episode.
But the solution to the problem is as boring as the mystery itself. Julian just...makes the antidote. It is, as I’ve come to say, a mechanical solution to a mechanical problem. There’s no challenge or intrigue to it. You can make up for that a little bit with Odo having to trick all of his station-mates into assembling in the same spot so he can deploy it. But even then, the way they’re all able to just hang onto random boxes and not get blown out the airlock when Odo raises the door strains credulity.
More to the point, the rest of the characters’ actions and interactions are just as boring. Once it becomes clear that everyone’s just playacting some ancient feud, the likes of Sisko, Kira, Dax, Miles, and Julian are effectively brand new characters. Since there’s not enough time to fully introduce them all and do the other plot business necessary in the episode, they’re all basically just stale archetypes with nothing more going for them. And the actors still struggle to fully discover the roles in such a short time. We do get a faint preview of Mirror Kira, but otherwise, these stock figures from an internecine conflict have nothing going for them.
So as a result, the players here don’t work as concerning extensions of the regular characters’ real personalities; they don’t work as novel contrasts to how our heroes normally behave, and they’re not interesting on their own terms. Throw in the fact that the cause of the mystery is obvious, even if the perfunctory particulars aren’t, and you have an episode that comes off as pointless wheel-spinning.
I don’t know if “Dramatis Personae” is the worst episode of Deep Space Nine’s first season. (That “honor” probably goes to “Move Along Home” or “If Wishes Were Horses”.) But it feels like the most unfixable. Even if you have an episode with a rough plot or weak execution, you can usually envision ways in which a tweaked new draft, or even some big but fruitful changes could point the show in the right direction.
The problem with this outing is that the only real answer is “wait a few more seasons before you try this sort of thing.” There’s certainly improvements that could be made in pacing and performance, but even they wouldn’t overcome the fact that the series hadn't done right by its characters just yet. That would come in time, but unfortunately, too late for an episode like this one.
This episode is one big pointless "huh??!" Especially disappointing as it comes on the heels of the lovely episode before it.
Category: Gaga
I don't like it. I'm not even exactly sure why. I'm not entertained. It reminds a lot of TNG's The naked Now. Didn't like that either. Is that a standard approach to seasons one? Writing an episode where all actors can behave totally different than usual? So that they can test the limits of their character? Like one of the parallel universe episodes? Then rise the stakes to make it an exciting drama instead of a comedy? Is that how it's supposed to work? (I mean that's what the title Dramatis Personae is suggesting, right? [If you only spoke pig Latin I might add]). Hmm, if that was the idea they failed. But that's perhaps only my personal opinion about this episode.
Shout by LeftHandedGuitaristBlockedParent2017-07-27T16:18:28Z
People talk about the general weak nature of DS9's first season and often give episodes like 'Move Along Home' and 'If Wishes Were Horses' as examples that demonstrate this. They're wrong: this is the real low point. So much so that after getting around halfway through it I decided that my time is worth more than this, and abandoned it.
The problem isn't the plot of the episode, it all comes down to the terrible execution. It's not that the characters are acting odd, it's that they're doing overly specific things which are not just weird, they're unnatural. O'Brien seems to have become an impatient henchman, Dax is a scatty and bored schoolgirl who can't stop feeling nostalgic and Sisko might actually be an escaped mental patient. It's impossible to care about any of it.
Wait for the mirror universe episodes, that's a far better demonstration of our cast getting to act differently!