5x14 In Purgatory's Shadow (1)

[7.7/10] Elim Garak doesn’t give up. He doesn’t stop lying, no matter how long he’s been out of the game. He doesn’t stop searching for his allies in Dominion custody, no matter how thin the chances of retrieving them or surviving the attempt might be. And he doesn’t stop striving to earn his father’s love, no matter how much of a fool’s errand the effort may be.

That’s an interesting throughline for “In Purgatory’ Shadow”, an episode that’s bigger on plot than character. Like many two-parters, there’s as much setup here as there is any sort of payoff. But what holds it together are two simple themes: Garak having a damnable determination in all things, and parents having complicated relationships with their children, in ways that may or may never be able to find resolution.

The other side of that equation is a follow-up between Gul Dukat and Ziyal. It is, candidly, one of the weaker elements of the episode. Ziyal has been sidling up to Garak and once Dukat finds out, he’s naturally perturbed beyond reason about his daughter consorting with this arch enemy.

The subplot doesn’t work for me for a few reasons, chief among them being that I simply don’t buy the relationship between Garak and Ziyal. You can practically hear the studio execs yelling, “Make that lizard man seem less gay!” and the results aren’t terribly convincing. The entire story is founded on the idea that there’s some connection between Ziyal and Garak, and while you can write it off as Ziyal nursing some unrequited puppy love and a homesick Garak just being glad to have another Cardassian to talk to, the approach to the whole thing doesn’t quite fit.

The part I find interesting is DUkat’s reaction to it all. His threatening Garak, being forced to back off by those assembled at Quark’s, chastising Kira for letting it come to this, all show a father who got a little more than he bargained for here with Ziyal ending up on the station. The catch being that much of this plays like standard teenage rebellion in the dramatization of it all, which takes away from the force of the idea of Dukat needing to take a lighter touch to the situation. But that’s not necessarily in Dukat’s wheelhouse, so it’ll be interesting to see where things go from here.

The same is true for the major plot elements and shocking reveals that populate “In Purgatory’s Shadow” Enabran Tain is alive! The Dominion is holding him and scads of other survivors in an internment camp! They’ve been holding the real General Martok there for two years! They’ve had Bashir there for a month, and there’s a Changeling saboteur aboard DS9 ready to undermine our heroes! Sisko and company are ready to seal the wormhole lest a Dominion invasion fleet come through it! And despite their efforts, the sabotage stops them, and the Jem’Hadar ships come pouring out of the wormhole.

That is a lot! Shit’s about to go down, and it’s hard not to feel excited about that, even if Deep Space Nine has teetered on the brink of conflicts with The Dominion turning to all out war or major threats before, with things always reverting back to the status quo before anything truly monumental disrupts their day-to-day. Suffice it to say, fans can probably see that there’s two and a half more seasons and guess that the J’em Hadar probably don’t wipe out the good guys in part two, but it’s still a thrill seeing something teased for so long seemingly coming to fruition.

(As an aside, the Bashir reveal blew my mind a little bit. Julian says he’s been kidnapped for about a month, but the timeline’s a little fuzzy in terms of when specific episodes take place. I’ll have to see if Bashir was in his First Contact-style uniform by “The Begotten” or not (since uniform seems to be how DS9 is distinguishing the real Julian from the imitator), because if so, his involvement in the fate of Odo’s adoptive child suddenly becomes much more questionable.)

That leaves this two-partner with a number of balls in the air. Will the station’s faithful be able to defend against a Dominion onslaught? Will Worf, Garak, Dr. Bashir, Martok, and the others trapped at a Dominion internment camp be able to escape? Will Ziyal join a punk band to show Dukat that “You don’t own me, Dad!”

But the most interesting part of it all to me is the relationship between Garak and Tain, particularly the reveal that (dun dun duuuuuun) Tain is Garak’s father.

I don’t know how I feel about that. Frankly, I think that movies and T.V. shows have been chasing the high of the parentage reveal from The Empire Strikes Back for decades, and mostly misunderstand how and why that twist mattered so much. So I’m leery of “I am your father”-style reveals without more to them.

I think “In Purgatory’s Shadow” wants to use the reveal to answer the question: “Why does Garak go to such lengths to protect Tain despite the number of times and ways in which the old man betrayed him?” It is, in theory at least, because he’s out there seeking his father’s approval, willing to let blood be thicker than water, and unable to let go of the man who helped create him in more ways than one.

I can see the appeal of that idea. Garak is, beyond the occasional attachment to the likes of Julian or Odo, not a particularly sentimental man. Seeing him act not out of craven self-interest, but because he wants the love and acceptance of a father he’s been denied for so long, helps humanize him, elucidating the wounded soul even in DS9’s most slippery operator.

And yet, I don’t know that we need the flesh and blood connection between the two to make that work. If anything, I like the idea that independent of Garak’s parentage, Tain was like a father to him, and that’s why this is so meaningful and so treacherous for both of them. The bloodline tie between them seems like an unnecessary shortcut, when the show had already done the work to explain why these two men are so important to one another in more emotional terms.

But then we’d lose that thematic tie, between a half-Bajoran daughter who disobeys her domineering Cardassian father, of the son of a spy promising vengeance upon his father’s enemies but only at the cost of his acknowledgment as a son. Perhaps the idea is that the distance between the two is what drives Garak, what spurred his otherworldly determination -- to ride a wild beast in his childhood, to become a master spy in the first place, to go to dangerous lengths to find the man who exiled him -- a neverending quest to prove that he’s worthy of his father’s love. It’s one he’s fated never to fulfill, a fire he can never quench, but which leaves him burning to continue on through hell nonetheless.