5x21 Soldiers of the Empire

[8.2/10] Ronald D. Moore is one of my favorite Star Trek writers. He has a unique ability to write complex political dynamics that remain accessible without sacrificing their complexity. And he’s also outstanding when it comes to writing interpersonal dynamics, the web of shifting motivations and loyalty that make personal decisions difficult for the characters and interesting for the audience.

Both make him a perfect fit for Deep Space Nine, which trafficks in both approaches. And they both also account for why Moore is the franchise’s unofficial master of the Klingon episode, given the distinctive political bent of the Klingons both on and off their ships, and the conflicted loyalties of Worf in particular, who’s so often at the center of such outings.

“Soldiers of the Empire” is no exception. The High Council grants General Martok his first command since his imprisonment, and he invites Worf along on the mission as his first officer. The orders for the Rotarran are to retrieve a damaged Klingon vessel, but the crew is starved for victories, recalcitrant, and at times even mutinous. Throw in our favorite Klingon-loving Trill, when Dax insists on coming along as well, and you have a recipe for a complicated web of trust and concern and friendship and loathing that permeate the Klingon vessel for forty minutes and change.

There’s an ambiguity, a sense of contrasting pulls toward one side or another, that keeps things lively, even in an episode that is, to the point, surprisingly light on action for a Klingon-focused installment.

That starts at the top. Multiple times in the episode, Martok has the opportunity to engage in battle, to take chances that might give him and his crew worthy victories, and yet he rigorously sticks to his mission, ignoring all dissent, given the possible threat of the Jem’Hadar. Moore and the writers play things laudably coy. For most of the episode, it’s not clear whether Martok is someone with a unique understanding of the Jem’Hadar threat given his time with them, duly quelling a crew who’s ravenous beyond reason for an easy win, or if, instead, he’s become rattled from his captivity, too afraid and paranoid at what his torturers might do to him on the field of battle to the point of timidity.

Then you have Worf, who is torn between his personal loyalty to Martok, his internal questioning of the General’s judgment, and his official duties to support the crew as First Officer of the Rotarran. He spends much of the episode covering for Martok, trying to explain away his decisions and stamp out dissent even as he personally disagrees with them. The way that role leads to him catching flak from Martok for questioning his orders in private, and also from the crew for not questioning them in public makes for a compelling challenge. That dilemma, combined with Worf’s clear joy and sense of honor at serving on a Klingon ship once more make his circumstances that much more engaging.

Then there’s Dax. In a way, she’s a better fit for the Klingon ship than her Par'Mach'kai
Is. She’s uniquely suited to be the science officer on the Rotarran, possessing that Klingon joie de vivre that Worf generally lacks. She gets on with much of the crew as a rank-and-file officer, sharing blood wine and trading stories, to where she’s got a finger on their pulse in the way Worf just doesn’t. So she represents their voice to him, as someone who loves him on the one hand, but thinks he’s making a mistake by not recognizing the threat of the dynamic on the ship, and the crew’s doubts and disdain for Martok, as the growing problem that it is.

Then, of course, there’s the crew itself. They’re kind of the Bad News Bears, a motley crew of demoralized punks who point fingers for their failures but have generally internalized the idea that they suck, even as they remain desperate to prove the branding wrong. Some are young and hungry. Some are old and bitter. They have their own romances and loyalties that divide the ship. But despite their many losses and apparent lack of cohesion, what they can all seem to agree on is that Martok isn’t up to this task, and shouldn’t be trusted given his likely PTSD from his time in the Dominion internment camp.

I don’t want to brand the crew with learned helplessness, but even apart from that terrific back-and-forth hierarchy of trust and doubt among the players on the Rotarran, one of the best renditions of the idea comes in a drunken monologue from Leskit, the older mutineer who makes no secret of his scorn for Martok.

He says the scary thing we’re all thinking a little bit. The Jem’Hadar have no honor. They fight because they’re programmed to. They are single-minded killing machines, backed by tremendous power. They’ve managed to soundly best Starfleet, Cardassian, and Romulan forces without much trouble. For all that the Klingons are Star Trek’s warriors of record, for their honor, for their prowess. But what if they are an unstoppable foe because they lack what we value in the Klingons? And what if Martok is the exact wrong man to face them because he’s seen their heedless cruelty up close for so long that he flinches even before they attack?

The swirl of all thee different impulses and resentments and sentiments froths to a perfect boil. Martok gives orders. Worf disagrees but tries to enforce them. Dax tries to encourage Worf to recognize the dissension the situation is creating and address the crew dynamics herself. And the crew roils a little more with each new opportunity for glory ignored.

I love what turns the tide, to where the dynamic can’t remain stable. It’s not a mere chance for glorious battle, but instead thirty Klingon warriors stranded on a disabled ship, that Martok refuses to try to rescue because they’re in Cardassian space and it might be a Jem’Hadar trap.

Worf can abide sticking to orders. He can abide not fighting unnecessary battles. But he cannot brook leaving noble warriors to die in enemy territory out of the cowardice of a captain who’s still chasing ghosts. Neither can the crew, who are on the brink of mutiny when this comes to a head, and ready to take Worf down with it.

I love the solution though. Worf challenges Martok, but not to kill or disable the man, or even to take his command. He does to recharge the warrior spirit of a man whom he deeply respects, and has been through something unimaginable. The two fight in one of the most thrilling bits of bladed combat in Star Trek history, and Worf throws it, or at least doesn’t take every advantage, because he wants to pay back the man who restored his own warrior’s spirit when he was flagging amid the Dominion interment camp’s gladiatorial battles. He fights Martok not to beat him, but to restore him in the same way.

And it works! Martok returns to battle with the Jem’Hadar and achieves that glorious victory. The crew who were divided and ready to betray him are united in their renewed faith in his abilities as a brave leader fit to sit in the captain’s chair. And while they once listlessly and bitterly droned along with Worf’s warriro’s chant, now they sing proudly, a singular collection of warriors under the same leader and banner.

It’s a beautiful thing, how Moore and company find a way to harmonize that dissonance of voices and loyalties and doubts that make the episode so interesting to that point. They root in character, in the personal connection between Worf and Martok. And they also earn that catharsis, with a ploy to restore the crew’s faith that fits with what we know this crew and Klingons in general.

So when, at the end of the episode, the success isn’t just one of military triumph in battle, but personal triumph among brothers, you feel it just as much. One of the most touching moments in Deep Space Nine comes when Martok is appreciative, not resentful, of what Worf did for him. His welcoming Worf into the House of Martok as a brother is meaningful: for Worf, who has effectively lost a brother less than a year ago, and for us, who have seen both Worf and Martok bring out the best in one another under the most difficult of circumstances.

That’s the beauty of Moore’s writing at its best, that midpoint between grand political concerns and intimate personal ones, caught in a confluence of different ideas and connections, but finding the right path through them to the end. The Klingons, and we, are lucky to have him.