1x04 A Man Alone

[7.1/10] It’s probably inevitable that I will, on a long enough time scale, compare any show about building a community to Deadwood, the 2004 HBO cult favorite show about rough-hewn travelers scratching out an existence in the Black Hills of South Dakota.Deep Space 9 came out more than a decade before Deadwood, and so far as I know there’s no behind the scenes connections between the two shows. (Although some of the same casting directors worked on both Deadwood and Enterprise, and it shows.) But I think the two series are spiritual cousins.

You can see it in how both shows focus on disparate groups learning to work together and live with one another in the face of a valuable natural resource. It stands out in the way both shows focus on life at a frontier crossroads. It’s apparent in how both series smash together different folks with different values and ideals and watch the sparks fly.

But it’s most notable in “A Man Alone” in the interactions between Odo and Quark. The two are some of my favorite characters from DS9, and their relationship is one of the elements of the show that shines right out of the gate. There’s a love-hate vibe between them. They needle each other, but they also need each other, as worthy adversaries and even as friends. You only get the wisps of that here, but it plants the seeds for something that will blossom nicely as the show goes on.

It feels of a piece with the dynamic between suds-slinger and local operator Al Swearengen, and testy lawman Seth Bullock on Deadwood. There’s certainly some differences between the pair of mustachioed miners in South Dakota and pair of aliens on a Federation space station. But at the same time, the crafty bartender and proprietor working at the edges of the law, and the local constable more hellbent on enforcing justice than following the rules, is a foil relationship that fits both couples.

The friction-filled relationship comes to the fore when Odo is caught up in a murder mystery. Ibudan, a Bajoran dissident Odo sent to jail for murdering a Cardassian on the station back in the day, has turned up dead. Odo’s the prime suspect, since he got into an altercation with the dastard hours before his death, and there’s no DNA in the room where Ibudan was killed. Sisko and company have to keep the peace and get to the bottom of the crime while local Bajorans have whipped themselves into a frenzied mob, demanding Odo’s head.

It is, frankly, a badly told story. We don’t really know Odo’s relationship with the Bajorans he policed on the station just yet, so there’s nothing to draw from when it comes to the well of ill-feeling they seem to harbor for him. We just met Ibudan, and only for three minutes at that, so we also don’t know enough of his status within the Bajoran community to make their attempt at mob justice feel earned. Everything happens in shorthand, and isn’t grounded in relationships the audience is privy to. There’s a noble attempt at exploring cultural clashes here, but all of it’s too glancing and rushed to matter.

And yet, somehow the B-plot, with Keiko starting a school on the station, is even shorter and somehow succeeds much better. Maybe it’s just because the conflict is simpler and the stakes are more personal. Keiko feels purposeless since the O’Briens moved to Deep Space 9. After seeing Jake and Nog (together for the first time!) up to mischief, she decides what the kids of the station need is structure and education, and she’s the one to give it to them.

It’s a fairly straightforward, and yet unexpectedly complicated endeavor for Keiko. (And, not coincidentally, one another wife brought to the frontier would tackle in Deadwood.) She gets Sisko’s full support (and by extension, Jake’s attendance) with ease. But convincing Nog’s father, Rom, to put his son into a Federation school (and one run by a “human female” no less) is no small task, let alone the other parents aboard the station.

The challenge threads the needle of Keiko wanting her own role on Deep Space 9, and showing the way these disparate groups are taking the first steps toward coming together. It’s amusing when both Sisko and Rom blame each other’s kids for causing the trouble, and that much more heartening when both bring their sons to the first day of Keiko’s schools.

Sadly, the aimless bric-a-brac involving Dax is neither heartening nor clever. There’ll be more to say about Dax’s unique existence as a Trill and how she’s been adopted by the trans community. But for now, Dax is reduced to, at best, an object of romantic desire. Dr. Bashir continues to hector her for a date in a way that’s pushed past smitten and fallen into creepy. Quark practically purrs at her from afar. And the show even teases a potential relationship between her and Sisko a little, or at least broaches the subject. (Which feels especially weird in hindsight for longtime fans of the series.)

Sadly, there’ll also be more to say about the behind-the-scenes sexism of Nineties Trek too, and this motif (it’s too much to call it a subplot) in “A Man Alone” is an unfortunate reflection of it. Dax’s only communicated characteristic in this episode is that she’s hot and guys want to get with her. That’s embarrassing, if not unprecedented, for Star Trek. The episode toys with actually examining the way her past lives and identities would affect her relationship with folks she knows as Jadzia now, but they’re too surface level and submerged in the “me wantee pretty girl” nonsense to be worthwhile.

The nonsense threatens to subsume Odo’s story too. The show does its best to try to tell a story of Bajoran resentments for someone who did (and does) police them, but can’t make much out of it. The mob furor against Odo rises way too quickly and their actions are bizarre. (They basically let him go after being ready to murder him thanks to Bashir announcing, “I found some new evidence” without asking what it is or how it exonerates Odo.) It ends up being a cheap excuse for some standard Starfleet fisticuffs and an unconvincing speech from Sisko about justice.

And yet, the resolution to the mystery is pretty cool! At least in concept. It turns out Ibudan grew a clone of himself, and murdered it himself, so that he would only leave one person’s DNA at the crime scene and frame Odo. “A Man Alone” doesn’t do much to lay compelling breadcrumbs there, but it’s a neat answer to the whodunnit that could only work in science fiction.

Still, I like “A Man Alone” much better as a character story than a murder mystery or sci-fi lark. Odo bristles at the fact that rapid-fire changes in who makes the rules, the Federation or the Cardassian, doesn’t change what justice is on “his” promenade. He knows he hasn’t done anything wrong in Ibudan’s murder, but still blanches when Sisko relieves him of duty due to the conflict of interest from his being a supsect (something totally fair, by the way), and feels rudderless in the aftermath. Seeing how Odo reacts to this type of adversity is the best thing in the episode.

The best thing, except for the fact that Quark’s the one who sticks up for him and helps him out. Quark resents Odo, knowing how the constable makes his life difficult. But he also respects his erstwhile foe and, more to the point, isn’t sure what DS9 would be without him. Without seeming like he’s trying to help, he gives Odo the clues from his underworld contacts to help put Ibudan’s plan together. Maybe it’s just the devil you know, but deep down, Quark and Odo would both prefer to have the other on board the station, even if they’d never admit it publicly, especially not to each other.

It’s the same sort of relationship Swearengen and Bullock have on Deadwood. The one’s bent toward criminality and the other’s almost pathological devotion to “the law” put the two at odds. But over time they learn to bend toward one another, to set aside differences and work together for the good of their fledgling community. It’s the same path that Odo and Quark would forge, and one Deep Space 9 as a whole is already wandering down, even in its shakier first season.