4x13 Crossfire

[8.5/10] I don’t know if Star Trek fans want to hear this, but sometimes Odo feels like a character in a Jane Austen novel. (That’s a compliment by the way -- we should all be so lucky!) The Regency-era novels were often tales of class, station, and manners, where the strictures imposed by each prevented characters who felt strongly about one another from being able to express what they really felt, given propriety and dignity and all that foofaraw.

Deep Space Nine is a far cry from aristocratic England, but the same concept runs through an episode like “Crossfire”. Odo is a guarded, private man, one who doesn’t feel comfortable sharing his feelings even with those he’s close to. And yet, he still feels deeply, in ways he struggles to admit even to himself. His role as a security officer, a bodyguard to a politician, and most importantly a friend, prevent him from saying what he really wants to say. The longing that peeks out through those barriers, the feelings that emerge despite his self-imposed limits, are made that much more powerful by how subtle but palpable they are coming from such a guarded man.

In many ways, it’s the same trick The Original Series loved to pull with Spock. When you have a character who is typically stoic, ordered, and composed, the moments when they let their guard down come with extra impact, and the moments where their true feelings slip through the cracks in their armor are extra moving.

None of it would work, however, without a bravura performance from Renee Auberjonois. Holy hell, it’s a crime that he never received broader recognition. There is unmatched interiority to how he plays Odo in this one. You can see it in his conversation with Shakaar, where his words are simple and anodyne, but the double-meaning behind them speaks volumes. You can see it in the scenes where Odo’s trailing Shakaar and Kira, striving desperately to maintain his stoicism but offering small changes in his expression that speak volumes.

So much of what Odo goes through in this episode is internal. “Crossfire”’s subtlety is its greatest virtue. But none of that understated approach would work without a performer of Auberjonois’ caliber who can convey so much with so little.

And there’s so much to convey! So much of the episode hinges on what each of the major players sees and what they miss. Kira sees Odo in a way few others do -- as friend, but is oblivious to his crush. Odo sees the way she laughs and smiles around Shakaar, who isn't sure if Kira returns his affection, but can't bring himself to articulate what he’s observed to a romantic rival who doesn’t even realize that Odo loves the same woman. And for all their bickering, all that Odo’s onto Quark’s various ploys and schemes, it’s her erstwhile Ferengi irritant who’s the first person to recognize how Odo feels about Kira, and how it’s affecting him.

The parts of each other these people see and that they miss make their conversations fascinating! As in those Austen novels, it means they state one thing but mean another, or hear something and give a surface-level reaction, but the audience can intuit how they really feel about it. A story that works on multiple layers that, especially one founded on unspoken emotions, is tremendously tricky to pull off, but “Crossfire” does it with flying colors.
Part of that comes from rooting this all in Odo’s experience of these events. Sure, there’s a threat on Shakaar’s life thanks to his role as First Minister, and even an assassination attempt in the turbolift where Odo must use his abilities to stop a free fall. But for the most part, everything in the story runs through Odo’s hopes and fears and reactions to the simple shifts in the character dynamics weaving around him, not the crisis of the week endangering the latest DS9 diplomat.

Frankly, that's the only major weakness of “Crossfire” -- Shakaar. The guy is such a drip! Candidly, it took me a third of the episode to recall that he was the same guy from that forgettable and misguided season 3 installment that bears his name. Why they decided to bring Dr. Crusher’s candle ghost back, of all guest stars, is beyond me. But he’s even more milquetoast than Vedek Bareil, which is saying something. I get that the show doesn’t want to pull the trigger on Kira/Odo, but why they keep turning to these dull third wheels to accomplish that is beyond me.

Despite those gripes, my favorite scene in the episode may be that one where Shakaar turns to Odo for advice on whether Kira cares for him. As vanilla as Shakaar is, he’s voicing all of Odo’s own hopes and fears about Kira: that feels for her deeply, that he doesn’t want to risk losing her friendship, that he’s not sure if knowing that someone cares about her would help as she’s mourning Bareil or just make things worse. Listening to someone articulate Odo’s own personal dilemma, while he’s an oblivious rival for the same person’s affections, and all Odo can do is sit and take it while he’s quietly pierced by hearing his own internal thoughts come from someone else’s lips, makes for a masterful bit of writing and performance.

And yet, what I like about “Crossfire” is that, for as much as the episode foregrounds Odo’s hidden attraction to Kira, and as much mileage as it gets from putting the two opposite one another to highlight how Odo both revels in Kira’s company and crumbles at each sign she might not feel for him the same way he feels for her, that's not the sole focus of the hour.

Instead, the throughline here is that Odo’s success at his job depends on order, focus, precision, and win, lose, or draw, his feelings for Kira are disrupting that, in a way that forces a choice for him. I love how the show illustrates Odo’s need for predictability and consistency through his conversation with Worf. In contrast to “Hippocratic Oath”, the pair are largely on the same page about station security, commiserating about the chaos aboard the station and sharing tips on how to get through it using precision and particularity.

Shakaar’s arrival and his flirtation with Kira rocks the stability by which Odo measures his life. It disrupts he and Kira’s Tuesday morning coffee chats to go over the crime reports. It leaves him unfocused, to where he forgets to prompt a saboteur posing as Worf to give his security codes, with near-lethal results. It leaves him distracted while the Klingon himself runs down possible leads in his office. Odo’s mind, not just his world, is used to having a certain order. When that order is disrupted, things start falling through the cracks, and he begins to realize he can either come clean about his feelings or he can cast his hopes aside, but he can't continue to nurse this secret crush and do his job at the same time. Something’s got to give.

What prompts that, though, is the kiss of death. Odo seems poised to finally express his feelings to the Major, even waiting outside her door for a whole night for the chance to speak his piece. Only, when it opens, he receives a double whammy. Kira conveys that she and Shakaar are together now, meaning that Odo missed his window, which might have been enough on its own. But then she hugs him in her excitement over the new relationship and calls him “a good friend,” a soft confirmation that it’s all she sees him as.

The soft devastation of that moment hits you like a tidal wave. Again, Auberjonois kills the scene, selling the outward image of happiness for his friend while he quietly dies inside. I dare say more than a few Star Trek fans know what it’s like to find oneself in the infamous “friend zone”, caring for someone who might never even think to consider you a romantic possibility. Even more surely know the heartache of unrequited love. Well, this may be the best rendition of it in all of Star Trek, and one of the best ever depicted on television.

But while one relationship seems to wither away, another different sort of bond strengthens. I love the fact that Quark is not only the one who recognizes Odo’s feelings for Kira, but the one who helps him reckon with them. He basically tells Odo that he either needs to tell Kira about his feelings or let this go, because the liminal space between those options is torturing him.

What makes it better is that Quark feels the need to couch his concerns as the proprietor of a betting pool on Odo’s manhunt abilities, when he means them as a friend. For his part, Odo sound proofs his quarters, which “just so happen” to be above Quark’s room, as a thank you, but issues his own plausible deniability in the form of standard reinforcement procedures. Prickly though they might be, these two foils care about one another, and even if they can't admit, they act on it. It’s a beautiful part of a bittersweet episode.

What makes it bittersweet is Odo’s ultimate decision. “Crossfire” toys with the audience's emotions a bit. The writers and director play coy with whether Odo is coming to Kira’s quarters to finally tell her how he feels. Instead, he goes the other way. He cancels their weekly standing visit. He eschews the belt he put back on after she complimented it, in the name of sticking to “just the essentials.” In effect, he closes off the closest friendship he’s had on the station because it was killing him.

The utter melancholy of that, of choosing to forgo something and someone you love because you can't handle the thought of something transcendent but hopeless being dangled in front of you constantly, is poignant and painful. This isn’t what Odo wants. But it’s what he feels he needs in order to be whole, or at least less in pain, and that is profoundly sad.

But it is in keeping with the layers upon layers of feeling and guardedness that pervade “Crossfire”. Odo seems cold, but he hides a passion that only another close friend can perceive. Quark feels the need to mask his concern for his friend behind another, more venal motive. The unfortunate role of having to protect the life of a romantic rival forces Odo to balance his professional decorum and his personal hurt.

No one can express exactly what they want to say here, whether from propriety or pride or a simple fear of hurt. The way Deep Space Nine lovingly dramatizes that idea, with nuance and depth throughout, makes it worthy of Austen’s blessing. And as with many other protagonists in the Western canon, despite the distractions and fears that keep his heart’s truest desires at arm’s length, Odo deserves to be loved.