5x02 The Ship

[8.0/10] When this one started up, I thought it might be a lighter, simpler episode after the theatrics of the season premiere. O’Brien’s joshing around with a junior crewman for color. They find a downed Jem’Hadar ship with huge intelligence value, but no good way to get it home. This will be a simple problem-solving episode with some tense emotional moments but mostly a basic adventure story, a la “The Galileo Seven” right?

Wrong. Sooner or later, I’m going to have to realize that I’ve reached the stretch in Deep Space Nine where any stray episode might be one where you could knock me over with a feather by the time the credits roll. (See also: Me making the mistake of watching “The Visitor” before work.) As the episode goes on, it starts to be less about a straightforward problem of how to get a valuable ship out of enemy territory with logistical and tactical concerns, and more about whether enemies can trust one another, the way nerves fray in the heat of challenging situations, and the metal and ethical costs of command.

Damn you, DS9! How dare you make me think and feel things when I’m just looking for a good time!

Suffice it to say, even when “The Ship” is in problem-solving mode, it’s good. Sisko, Worf, Dax, and O’Brien having to spelunk around an alien ship and try to make heads or tails of both what happened on it and if it can be fixed enough to move make for good challenges for our heroes. When another crop of Jem’Hadar arrive to try to reclaim it, there’s mortal danger that threatens to overtake them before the Defiant can arrive for a rescue.

That's the thing -- the setup for the episode is sound even before you get to the thematic meat. There’s a practical problem -- whether and how to get the Jem'Hadar warship back to Federation space for examination. There’s a mystery, what exactly is aboard the vessel that has the local Vorta willing to negotiate and not just slaughter the lot of them? Time is a factor, since it’ll take the Defiant days to reach them, so there’s some need for our heroes to just stall. But there’s also a more critical ticking clock, as Crewman Muniz is shot by the enemy and will die if they can’t get him good medical attention. The stakes are clear and so is the urgency.

It’s that last part -- the impending demise of Muniz, that drives the emotion of the episode. For Venture Bros. fans, I’ll admit I already detected a certain, “Oh no, Scott!” quality when that mostly anonymous crewman started getting some genuine shading as a character. But I liked the playful banter we saw between him and O’Brien, which sells the bond between them and the difficulty the Chief has to lose a protege and a friend like this.

Tht sort of loss will be at the heart of Deep Space Nine’s back half. What does it mean to lse people? WHat side of you comes out under the duress of existential threats? What moral costs have to be weighed in order to achieve the greater good? And how do we feel those losses when they come? In some ways, “The Ship” is a test case for those themes, conveniently condensed into a single episode, while the series prepares to expand on them.

My favorite scene in the episode comes when Muniz is clearly in dire straits, and everyone’s on their last nerve. O’Brien and Worf come to blows over whether to give Muniz false hope or be frank with him so that he may prepare for death. Dax is making caustic remarks about the situation. Nobody’s at their best. The way Sisko snaps everyone to attention, gives them tasks to focus their energies, and even dresses down his best friend, shows why he’s the commander built for this moment.

That said, I have some questions about how he, and the show, deal with the Vorta who comes by to say hello. I like the scenes between Sisko and Kilana, the neighborhood Dominion representative. Like Weyoun, she is a flatterer and comes with a certain genteel quality that it’s a little disarming, but also feels like an entree to manipulation. She makes promises of letting the Starfleet officers go free or even to take the ship, but curt responses and mutual mistrust lead to deaths on both sides and regrets of how things went down.

I like that idea in principle. There’s a charged energy to seeing the pair negotiate with one another, since we know when Sisko’s hiding the ball, but don’t know whether Kilana’s promises of leniency are all just a feint. But for one, Sisko’s claim of salvage rights, even if it’s just a ploy to buy time, feels a little rich, even if it’s fair to read it as a mere sop not to give up the one bit of leverage he has.

The bigger problem I have, though, is that the episode seems to want to present an “If only we’d trusted one another” message here, and I don’t know how valid that is. They have reason to mistrust one another. Sisko is flinging legal bullshit. Kilana isn’t forthright about what’s on the Jem’Hadar warship. The Changelings have infiltrated Starfleet and other places and used deception and manipulation to reach their own ends. The “solids” have used their own forms of subterfuge. Neither is crazy for questioning the other’s motives.

But maybe, in keeping with the broader themes of the episode, the point is not that either Kilana or Sikso was wrong to mistrust one another, but that this is still a tragedy, one that feels worse given that in hindsight, it could have been averted if each could believe in the other. Muniz dies. The crew of a runabout dies. The secret item of such importance to the Dominion aboard the warship turns out to be another Founder (a good reveal for the mystery), who dies. The Jem’hadar kill themselves for having failed to protect their god. All of those deaths could have been avoided, and that makes them extra painful in their senselessness, even if it's only apparent in hindsight.

I love Sisko and Dax ruminating on that very idea. In the end, Sisko wins the day. He retrieves the Jem’Hadar ship and even earns a medal for it. But he’s haunted by the five lives he lost in the process, and can’t reconcile the utilitarian ethics it took to achieve that good. It’s nice that Dax tries to comfort him,despite their shared snippiness earlier. She’s a voice of the greater good achieved. And where the show seems to land is one of my favorite moral perspectives -- that the choice to give up five lives to save five thousand or five million remains valid, but that it doesn’t make it any easier to make that decision,and that despite academic principles of detached command, it’s a noble soul who still feels those losses even if, by all accounts, he made the right call.

And I love the coda just as much. It is sweet and sad to see O’Brien talking to Muniz’s coffin, a quiet tribute to their bond and the friend he lost. More touching still is Worf, who got downright combative with Miles over a human perspective on death, recognizing O’Brien’s act as honoring hsi friend, and sitting with him to “protect the dead from predators”, while actually being there to comfort his friend.

It’s a trite conclusion, but one that still rings true. Everyone in starfleet faces terrible difficulties, the DS9 crew more than most. They make choices they wish they could do differently. They feel the harshness of loss that comes from those choices. But they also have one another, as a sounding board, means of support, people who understand and reassure and lift one another up when it’s needed most.

To wring all that from one downed ship, and one downed crewman, is a lot. But we’ve now entered the phase where it’s a regular occurrence for Deep Space Nine, where the simplest setups turn into committed explorations of leadership, politics, and the human soul. Next time, I guess, I’ll have to come better prepared for it.