3x08 Meridian

[6.0/10] In age of serialization, I appreciate the comforting rhythms of 90s Star Trek’s episodic approach. Single-serving stories, without the problems of season-length pacing and twists having to be saved for several episodes down the line, can be very welcoming. There’s an art to balancing individual storytelling and continuing plot and character threads, and Deep Space Nine was as good at it as any.

But one of the big drawbacks of the approach is romance. If you want to tell a slowly-unfolding relationship story among the main cast, that can absolutely work. The show’s simmered the romantic tension between Kira and Odo for a long time now. So the scene where Kira chastely pretends that they’re lovers to stave off a skeevy suitor, with Odo taken aback to realize he may genuinely want the thing they were just playacting, is wonderful. It plays on the audience’s knowledge of both characters, the evolution of their relationship over time, and the dribs and drabs of change where something small can accumulate into something life-changing.

It’s incredibly difficult to try to accomplish the same thing in forty-five minutes rather than over two and a half seasons. Star Trek has managed it before, but it usually requires some sense of a preexisting shared history, or the implication that more time has passed, or something to give a relationship more weight than, “We just met and now it’s true love forever.”

That’s the great fault of “Meridian”, an episode where our heroes find a planet that only phases into our dimension for twelve days every sixty years, and of course, a member of the crew falls madly in love with one of the locals. Dax takes a shine to Deral, a scientist and resident of the titular planet. The thrust of the story hinges on their willingness to give up their entire lives to be with one another, and there’s just one small problem -- it’s almost impossible to buy their relationship.

I don’t want to say that DS9 fails to do the work. The characters spend a ton of time together, and if anything we get too much of their mutual cooing. But given that “Meridian” has to establish its high concept thought experiment for the phasing planet, build up the romance, and complete a pretty substantial B-story all in the confines of a standard runtime, there’s just not enough time and space to develop a connection between Dax and Deral that could justify them forsaking everything they, and the audience, knows in order to continue their relationship. This is the usual dose of insta-love, and it’s no more availing or involving here than it is in a sappy teen romance.

The only thing that could save it is abundant chemistry (see: Lwaxana Troi and Timicin in TNG), and by god, Terry Farrell and Bretty Cullen simply don’t have it. The script does them no favors, with drippy dialogue and a quick-fire dalliance that plays more like an adolescent conception of true love than the lived in realization of it. But writing aside, the two don’t have the on-screen spark necessary to sell such a rapid romance.

That’s no sin. It would take tremendous performances from both actors to make something so rushed still work. And even then, you need to roll the dice and come up lucky that two stellar performers click together. Unfortunately, Farrell, Cullen, and the show’s creative team are not up to that monumental challenge.
Sadly, the episode is also saddled with an incredibly problematic B-story. A wealthy alien pays Quark to steal appropriate holographic samples of Kira. The strong implication is that, after being spurned at the bar, the alien wants to go into the holosuite and schtup the Major’s holographic facsimile.

I honestly don’t mind the concept of the B-story. Even at the time of this episode’s airing, celebrities were photoshopped into pornographic images, Star Trek actresses chief among them. (The unfortunate perils of starring in works that appeal to early adopters of new technologies.) We now live in an age of deepfakes, where the famous and laymen alike are digitally inserted into risque videos without their consent. Using science fiction to explore the nature of who demands such things, and who invades others’ privacy to provide it, could be a worthwhile exercise, especially since Quark’s already known to effectively be running a holo-brothel.

The problem is that “Meridian” plays this whole thing for laughs. It’s also a zany sitcom plot, like some high school kid mishegoss involving a nerd with a crush on a popular girl. The show never really engages with how creepy Quark’s behavior is, or how invasive it is for him to try to get holoscans or Kira or nab her personal info off the system so that some skeevy rando with a crush can his alien rocks off to her likeness. I like Quark as a character, and I love Armin Shimerman as a performer, but DS9 does these stories where he helps a stranger perv on Kira or sells out the station to terrorist for cash, and the audience has to just merrily roll along as though he should still be lovable and redeemable.

Frankly, thank god for Shimerman. He’s charming and talented enough as Quark to make this sort of thing pass muster emotionally, even if you shudder the moment you stop and think about what Quark’s done over the years. The same goes for Nana Visitor and Rene Auberjonois, whose sense of always being in control and ultimately having the upper hand make the “Why don’t we just turn the tables on this prant” energy actually work, at least better than it ought to. And not for nothing, this is (I think) the first Star Trek appearance for the inimitable Jeffrey Combs, whose presence elevates the proceedings as always, and makes the rich alien perv seem like the scum he is, even if there’s minimal comeuppance for either him or Quark.

(As an aside, it’s amusing for Shran fans to see Combs’ character start things off by ordering an Andorian ale.)

The same sort of thing oddly applies to the Dax story. Dax and Deral have no history. They have no on-screen chemistry. So when the episode wants to make a big deal out of Dax being willing to leave Starfleet for him, it doesn’t track. And yet, when she bids farewell to Sisko, the scene is moving. Those characters have two lifetimes’ worth of history together. The performers work well together. Avery Brooks in particular sells the weight of having to say goodbye to a dear friend like gangbusters, to where you’re moved by the joy and pain of Dax having found someone worth leaving this all behind for, even if the entropy of the status quo means inevitably something will thwart her from doing so.

Of course, something does. The "quantum matrix” of the planet goes wrong from Dax being there, so they have to beam her away and separate her from her beau for another sixty years. The show means for it to play as tragic, with Dax crying in a corner afterwards. But the parting seem inevitable given the demands of a continuing television series, and the relationship isn’t meaningful enough to mourn. All that’s left is a DOA romance whose “tragic end” is an emotionally inert fait accompli.

That’s why show’s like Deep Space Nine do better when they develop the romances internally. Love and connection are the sort of thing that work best when developed over time, with time for rapport and chemistry to develop. The best relationships, romantic or otherwise, on DS9 emerge from the regular characters building those bonds year after year. As comfortable as episodic television is for a crusty old Trekkie like me, there’s some departments, like love, where serialization does it best.