[8.5/10] We like Odo. (Or at least, I like Odo.) He is grumpy. He can be unduly doctrinaire. But he has a heart of gold. And he’s suffered -- in ways past, present, and future -- that make him sympathetic. There is something noble about him, a devotion to justice that sometimes makes him inflexible, but also makes him an admirable man of principle.
So even though he worked for the oppressive Cardassians back when DS9 was still Terok Nor, we have an excuse for his collaboration from season 2’s “Necessary Evil.” Odo worked for Dukat to deliver his brand of justice because he knew the Cardassians’ version of it would be even worse. It was a devotion to his values that led him to step in between a fascist government and its repressed victims, so as to cushion the blow. That's the story, and the admiration, he receives at a Bajoran conference.
But this is Deep Space Nine -- the back half of Deep Space Nine, no less -- so things cannot possibly be that simple, clear, or pure. And no one, not even Odo, can work for the oppressors and manage to stay clean. Surrounded by praise for his integrity, that fact haunts Odo, and it’s all he can bear not just tear himself asunder for the sins he cannot forget.
So yeah, this isn’t one of Deep Space Nine’s brighter, happier episodes, literally or figuratively. This is (I think) our first return engagement on Terok Nor since season 2, and with the visit comes the same dark lighting, the same gray color grading, the same grim work camp atmosphere that helps drive home what a miserable, soul-crushing experience it was for the Bajorans to live under Cardassian subjugation for so long.
This is, however, one of the show’s most powerful hours: for the impressionistic way in which it conveys one man’s guilt, for its exploration of how a single-minded fixation on law and order can lead you astray, and for its potent message on how even being the next best choice to evil will inevitable leave even the most upstanding among us stained.
Of course, to appreciate all that, you have to tolerate some questionable science and setup. When Odo, Sisko, Dax, and Garak find themselves on the Cardassian-run refinery seven years ago, in Bajoran bodies, they write off time travel, holodecks, and other semi-plausible explanations. Instead, the whole thing is some accidental miniature version of the Great Link spurred by the latest dose of weird cosmic energy that connected the other runabout passengers to the theater of Odo’s mind. Uh, yeah, sure.
I don’t really mind the unconvincing scientific excuses, though. Star Trek’s done worse, and most importantly, this works as a story apart from its personal examination and broader message. At base, our heroes are trapped under the thumb of a station run by Gul Dukat, caught up in an assassination plot where they’ll be sentenced to death, and must find a way to escape and survive while piecing together how all this happened. The explanations before, after, and during get a little tedious in places, but the “If you die in The Matrix, you die in real life” conceit helps give the encounter stakes.
So it’s exciting to see them inadvertently masquerading as Bajoran workers, trying to use what they know about the future to get by without giving themselves away. The experience gives us new glimpses of familiar characters. Quark’s pre-Federation callousness rears its ugly head, as he’s not above using what is effectively Bajoran slave labor to support his bar. Small interactions with the Bajoran resistance show the furtive yet effective methods they had to keep things going.
Most of all, we once again see Dukat at the height of his power. Our second (sort of third if you count “Civil Defense”) look at him in charge of Terok Nor retroactively lays the groundwork for what the audience has witnessed later in the timeline: from his sense of being apart from the ones he aims to protect, to his interest in Bajoran women, to his faux-magnanimous and paternalistic view of the Bajorans writ large.
But the present character we get the deepest view of is, of course, our dear Odo. In all candor, I sniffed out the twist relatively early in the episode. The show isn’t terribly subtle about the fact that Odo is hallucinating victims, that the timeline doesn’t work out for Odo’s predecessor being in charge of security, or that Odo himself is acting squirrely about the whole thing. But again, I don’t really mind. The episode works just as well knowing (or at least heavily suspecting) the twist as it does when it’s trying to blow your mind.
Because the twist is that Thrax (played by Star Trek royalty, Kurtwood Smith) the Cardassian enforcer wasn’t there when three supposed Bajoran terrorists were executed. It was Odo, who missed key information and convinced himself that subjecting them to the vicissitudes was the right thing to do, that he was simply doing his job. Seeing the truth come to fruition, with Thrax using Odo’s real name, and seeing the man himself decked in a Cardassian uniform still has force as a vivid representation of what the audience already knows to be true.
But more than that gut-wrenching scene is Odo’s efforts to basically plead with his past self, all but begging him to right this wrong, to see the important facts he missed. And what he gets back is a blind eye and a closed ear, from someone so enamored with the idea of law and order that he blames to Bajorans for their fate, for bucking up against the infrastructure of their occupation rather than accepting it as simply the way things are, as he did.
It is as strong an indictment of Odo’s past beliefs and actions as we’ve ever had on Deep Space Nine, and it’s effectively coming from inside the house.
The pretzel logic of the scenario it takes for Odo to reach that bit of self-reckoning and epiphany remains cool. Seeing Sisko work the Bajoran resistance, Garak try to bribe guards, Dax knock out Dukat and spring the group from prison, only to end up back where they started makes for some dizzying but effective storytelling. The same goes for the images that haunt Odo, of innocent people with blaster holes through their chests, or their blood on his hands. The “it was all a dream” ending can feel cheap, but instead, “Things Past” uses the concept to do things that serve its narrative, rather than undercut it.
At the end of the day, though, what allows Odo to awake from the dream, and free his friends from its shackles, is accepting his own fallibility, that in his commitment to order and his view of the world, he let injustice creep in under his watch, by his hand. This entire time, he is arguing with himself, forcing himself to relive his worst mistake, and to accept responsibility for how his supposedly noble impulses led him awry.
It is a heartrending, if frank view of our favorite constable, one that acknowledges him as a part of the oppressors’ machine, not a bastion of goodness within it. In that, it becomes the inverse of the ending to “Necessary Evil”. Where once Odo reflected on his time on Terok Nor and learned that Kira was a grayer player than he thought, now the tables have turned. Kira learns that the person she’s trusted since he saved her life aboard the station all those years ago, was not a pure hero who protected the Bajorans under his auspices, but a more complicated figure who can’t be sure whether he sent innocent men and women to their death.
That is hard, because like Kira, we admire and care about Odo. But that is also real. The concept of justice is a universal one, but a fixation on it can lead to unexpected compromise and bad ends. No one, not even the most devoted and righteous of us, can stay uncorrupted when advancing the cause of an oppressive regime. The beauty of Deep Space Nine is that it acknowledges those hard truths, those haunting contradictions, even for the characters we like best.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2023-08-20T19:40:46Z
[8.5/10] We like Odo. (Or at least, I like Odo.) He is grumpy. He can be unduly doctrinaire. But he has a heart of gold. And he’s suffered -- in ways past, present, and future -- that make him sympathetic. There is something noble about him, a devotion to justice that sometimes makes him inflexible, but also makes him an admirable man of principle.
So even though he worked for the oppressive Cardassians back when DS9 was still Terok Nor, we have an excuse for his collaboration from season 2’s “Necessary Evil.” Odo worked for Dukat to deliver his brand of justice because he knew the Cardassians’ version of it would be even worse. It was a devotion to his values that led him to step in between a fascist government and its repressed victims, so as to cushion the blow. That's the story, and the admiration, he receives at a Bajoran conference.
But this is Deep Space Nine -- the back half of Deep Space Nine, no less -- so things cannot possibly be that simple, clear, or pure. And no one, not even Odo, can work for the oppressors and manage to stay clean. Surrounded by praise for his integrity, that fact haunts Odo, and it’s all he can bear not just tear himself asunder for the sins he cannot forget.
So yeah, this isn’t one of Deep Space Nine’s brighter, happier episodes, literally or figuratively. This is (I think) our first return engagement on Terok Nor since season 2, and with the visit comes the same dark lighting, the same gray color grading, the same grim work camp atmosphere that helps drive home what a miserable, soul-crushing experience it was for the Bajorans to live under Cardassian subjugation for so long.
This is, however, one of the show’s most powerful hours: for the impressionistic way in which it conveys one man’s guilt, for its exploration of how a single-minded fixation on law and order can lead you astray, and for its potent message on how even being the next best choice to evil will inevitable leave even the most upstanding among us stained.
Of course, to appreciate all that, you have to tolerate some questionable science and setup. When Odo, Sisko, Dax, and Garak find themselves on the Cardassian-run refinery seven years ago, in Bajoran bodies, they write off time travel, holodecks, and other semi-plausible explanations. Instead, the whole thing is some accidental miniature version of the Great Link spurred by the latest dose of weird cosmic energy that connected the other runabout passengers to the theater of Odo’s mind. Uh, yeah, sure.
I don’t really mind the unconvincing scientific excuses, though. Star Trek’s done worse, and most importantly, this works as a story apart from its personal examination and broader message. At base, our heroes are trapped under the thumb of a station run by Gul Dukat, caught up in an assassination plot where they’ll be sentenced to death, and must find a way to escape and survive while piecing together how all this happened. The explanations before, after, and during get a little tedious in places, but the “If you die in The Matrix, you die in real life” conceit helps give the encounter stakes.
So it’s exciting to see them inadvertently masquerading as Bajoran workers, trying to use what they know about the future to get by without giving themselves away. The experience gives us new glimpses of familiar characters. Quark’s pre-Federation callousness rears its ugly head, as he’s not above using what is effectively Bajoran slave labor to support his bar. Small interactions with the Bajoran resistance show the furtive yet effective methods they had to keep things going.
Most of all, we once again see Dukat at the height of his power. Our second (sort of third if you count “Civil Defense”) look at him in charge of Terok Nor retroactively lays the groundwork for what the audience has witnessed later in the timeline: from his sense of being apart from the ones he aims to protect, to his interest in Bajoran women, to his faux-magnanimous and paternalistic view of the Bajorans writ large.
But the present character we get the deepest view of is, of course, our dear Odo. In all candor, I sniffed out the twist relatively early in the episode. The show isn’t terribly subtle about the fact that Odo is hallucinating victims, that the timeline doesn’t work out for Odo’s predecessor being in charge of security, or that Odo himself is acting squirrely about the whole thing. But again, I don’t really mind. The episode works just as well knowing (or at least heavily suspecting) the twist as it does when it’s trying to blow your mind.
Because the twist is that Thrax (played by Star Trek royalty, Kurtwood Smith) the Cardassian enforcer wasn’t there when three supposed Bajoran terrorists were executed. It was Odo, who missed key information and convinced himself that subjecting them to the vicissitudes was the right thing to do, that he was simply doing his job. Seeing the truth come to fruition, with Thrax using Odo’s real name, and seeing the man himself decked in a Cardassian uniform still has force as a vivid representation of what the audience already knows to be true.
But more than that gut-wrenching scene is Odo’s efforts to basically plead with his past self, all but begging him to right this wrong, to see the important facts he missed. And what he gets back is a blind eye and a closed ear, from someone so enamored with the idea of law and order that he blames to Bajorans for their fate, for bucking up against the infrastructure of their occupation rather than accepting it as simply the way things are, as he did.
It is as strong an indictment of Odo’s past beliefs and actions as we’ve ever had on Deep Space Nine, and it’s effectively coming from inside the house.
The pretzel logic of the scenario it takes for Odo to reach that bit of self-reckoning and epiphany remains cool. Seeing Sisko work the Bajoran resistance, Garak try to bribe guards, Dax knock out Dukat and spring the group from prison, only to end up back where they started makes for some dizzying but effective storytelling. The same goes for the images that haunt Odo, of innocent people with blaster holes through their chests, or their blood on his hands. The “it was all a dream” ending can feel cheap, but instead, “Things Past” uses the concept to do things that serve its narrative, rather than undercut it.
At the end of the day, though, what allows Odo to awake from the dream, and free his friends from its shackles, is accepting his own fallibility, that in his commitment to order and his view of the world, he let injustice creep in under his watch, by his hand. This entire time, he is arguing with himself, forcing himself to relive his worst mistake, and to accept responsibility for how his supposedly noble impulses led him awry.
It is a heartrending, if frank view of our favorite constable, one that acknowledges him as a part of the oppressors’ machine, not a bastion of goodness within it. In that, it becomes the inverse of the ending to “Necessary Evil”. Where once Odo reflected on his time on Terok Nor and learned that Kira was a grayer player than he thought, now the tables have turned. Kira learns that the person she’s trusted since he saved her life aboard the station all those years ago, was not a pure hero who protected the Bajorans under his auspices, but a more complicated figure who can’t be sure whether he sent innocent men and women to their death.
That is hard, because like Kira, we admire and care about Odo. But that is also real. The concept of justice is a universal one, but a fixation on it can lead to unexpected compromise and bad ends. No one, not even the most devoted and righteous of us, can stay uncorrupted when advancing the cause of an oppressive regime. The beauty of Deep Space Nine is that it acknowledges those hard truths, those haunting contradictions, even for the characters we like best.