1x10 Move Along Home

[4.8/10] I’m pretty sure I liked “Move Along Home” when I saw it as a kid. I’m dating myself, but that was a long time ago. Suffice it to say, my tastes have changed quite a bit since then, but I can also see why this much-hated episode appealed to me at the time.

There’s just something cool about the idea of getting sucked into a game, especially as a kid. Part of the draw of games is that they help you to imagine another world and put you into it. The notion of something that could make that transformation literal is enticing as all hell. Jumanji did it. Batman: The Animated Series did it. And DS9’ even had a network neighbor with the same basic idea called, unsurprisingly, Deadly Games, which was produced and directed by Leonard Nimoy and featured plenty of Star Trek alums.

So clearly there’s an appeal here, especially in the 1990s for some reason. It’s not a big shock, then, that a science fiction show like Deep Space Nine, with the narrative leeway to do some high concept stories, might tap into the same well. The problem is that it makes that idea...well...really boring.

Seriously, the coolest thing about the concept of being pulled into a game is that it’s your ticket to fantastical or at least unusual worlds. When Sisko, Kira, Dax, and Dr. Bashir are pulled into an alien game world it’s...a standard series of corridors? And a big cave? There’s no creativity here, no sense of our heroes unbound by the usual strictures of the real world. They may as well just be on a random alien freighter.

The same goes for the challenges they face. Games have objectives, and forcing the good guys to solve puzzles with their lives on the line adds some extra oomph to the obstacles at hand. (Think the life-sized game of wizard chess in Harry Potter in the Sorcerer Stone, or hell, even Saw.) But all we get here is “Hopscotch your way through a force field”, “Drink alien champagne to avoid poison gas,” “fend off some drones,” and “wander through a generic cave.” None of the setups feel unique and none of the solutions feel clever.

Sure, theoretically these are mortal threats, but savvy viewers, or really anyone who’s watched Star Trek before, know at a minimum that DS9 isn’t going to kill of four of its main characters all at once (give or take a Tasha Yar), so it’s false jeopardy to begin with. And that’s not so bad -- it’s a part of almost every Star Trek episode -- but it means that when the puzzle-solving is dull, there’s nothing else for the episode to fall back on.

At best, you can semi-appreciate the show’s willingness to go big and weird here. I’ve mentioned before that my working theory for Deep Space Nine is that it’s the 1990s Trek show most indebted to The Original Series, at least in its early run. “Move Along Home” bears that out. Parts of it feel like “Plato’s Stepchildren”, with strangely-powered aliens having the ability to make our heroes play ridiculous games for their amusement. But other parts feel like the much-maligned “Way to Eden”, featuring oddly-dressed space hippies with peculiar practices that can be more annoying than cute. The Wadi, with their purple road rash foreheads, unfortunately fit the same bill.

The only real saving grace here is the inevitably solid foundation of Quark and Odo’s antics together. I like Odo a lot here. There’s something compelling about him being the last major character involved in station administration who doesn’t get sucked into the game. (I guess Chief O’Brien’s still visiting Keiko’s mom?) He’s forced to take charge, even dressing down Lt. Primmin (who does come back! I’d forgotten!) for his lax attitude. Odo often has a “last sane man” quality to him, and “Move Along Home” seizes the opportunity to make that closer to literal.

Likewise, this is a good character outing for Quark. He’s a little over the top, which at least fits the tone of the episode. But I appreciate the way he trusts himself as a gamer and gambler to be able to cheat and outsmart these supposed rubes. And I like how, once he finds out what’s really going on, shows a surprising amount of decency and vulnerability.

He wants to send Sisko and company “on home” via the longer but safer route. He only changes his mind when he realizes that even playing it safe can lead to seemingly lethal risks for his colleagues, and so the best course of action is to get them home via the shortest route possible. And when forced to decide who among his “players” to sacrifice, he begs, pleads, and grovels for another way. All of it adds more dimension to Quark than the purely venal wheeler and dealer he seems, something we’ve seen hints of in past episodes.

Character moments are really all you can latch onto when the plot and vibe of an episode are this dismal. As unavailing as the events inside the game world are, I do like the moment where Sisko refused to leave an injured Dax behind, only for Jadzia to basically call him too sentimental for doing so. There’s a shorthand emerging between them, lines uttered in unison to underscore how Curzon would always instruct his mentee to throw out emotion when making a command decision. Sometimes, the history between Dax and Sisko feels artificial, but in that moment, it felt lived-in and real.

Were that the same could be said for anything else in “Move Along Home”’s larger project. Maybe the performers knew this was going to be a rough outing, because pretty much everyone’s overacting and treating this like a live action cartoon. It’s always nice to see a little bit of angry Sisko, but for the most part, the cast has trouble taking this premise seriously, and it shows.

Maybe that’s the problem. Star Trek’s always been a franchise that appealed to kids, without necessarily being made for kids. (At least until Prodigy showed up, depending on how you feel about TAS.) There’s plenty of ways you can make the concept of being sucked into a game appealing to an older audience, but it’s an inherently sort of silly premise, so if you want to play it straight, with real mortal peril and life or death decisions, there’s going to be some tonal problems if you don’t pull it off just right. And sadly, this episode doesn’t come close. For folks who were kids like me when this one aired, the idea alone was enough to connect with this story. But now that I’ve grown up, I can see how badly Deep Space Nine botches this good idea, and made me wish the episode would “move along home” much faster.