5x05 The Assignment

[8.0/10] There's an old chestnut about Superman. How can you make threats to the Man of Steel interesting when he’s practically invincible? There's a few routes. You can introduce things that reduce his strength (Kryptonite) or villains who can match it (Darkseid). Or if you want to be more creative, you make the people he cares about, who are much more fragile and vulnerable, the ones who are in danger.

Chief O’Brien isn’t quite as strong as Superman, but he’s talented, resourceful, and full of the guile necessary to think his way out of most predicaments. But he also must suffer. So having a supernatural foe possess Keiko, and essentially hold her life hostage to get him to do his bidding, is a clever, if harrowing way, to put the station’s own heroic chief in a bind that even he has no easy way out of.

“The Assignment” is scary, maybe the scariest episode Deep Space Nine has done. There's no doomsday devices. No fearsome aliens threatening the Federation. Nary a hint of blood. But there's a true psychological terror to the episode. Having something sinister inhabit someone you love, threaten to kill them at a moment’s notice if you don’t comply, practically toy with you via threats subtle and not so subtle is downright terrifying.

Much of that owes to performer Rosalind Chao. Keiko doesn’t always get a ton of depth in the script. But as the Pah-Wraith acting through Mrs. O’Brien, the actress gets to show her range, and there's something deeply unsettling about her quiet menace. There's a cold callousness to her, made plain in her threats and the almost playful way she cajoles Miles into doing her dirty work. The performance is memorable, and Chao’s ability to make a kind-hearted woman seem like a Hannibal Lecter-esque velvet monster sells the anxiety-ridden mood of the episode.

But so does Colm Meaney. This episode reverses the dynamic of season 2’s “Whispers”, where Miles was a doppelganger, and Keiko had the discomfort of living with a stranger who looked like her spouse. The ways in which Chief O’Brien must keep up appearances to preserve the Pah-Wraith’s cover, while being both fearful and disgusted that this demon is masquerading as his wife, come through in the subtle expressions and layered reactions Meaney injects into his performance.

There's a real discomfort that comes through in his interactions with the Pah-Wraith: the barely-restrained resentment mixed with a forced delicateness given its leverage, that likewise adds to our ability to feel the tension and worry that Miles feels throughout this ordeal.

For all “The Assignment” succeeds as a soaring outing for the O’Briens, it’s also a superb episode for Rom. Despite being a tertiary character, he’s arguably received as much character development as anyone on the show, and it continues to pay dividends.

There continues to be something fascinating about how this overlooked man, thought a fool by his brother and treated with some casual disinterest by his co-workers, is quietly one of the best engineers on the station. His determination, loyalty, and enthusiasm all make him a valuable asset not to just to Deep Space Nine, but to Chief O’Brien in particular as he’s trying to make this challenging situation work.

And the fact that, unlike in his tenure at Quark’s bar, his potential and hard work are recognized and rewarded, shows that he’s not just drifting towards the hyoo-man way of doing things for the food. Rom coming into his own continues to be one of the highlights of the broad sweep of Deep Space Nine.

And yet, his loyalty and decency plays into the brilliant sense of addition and escalation at play in the main story. The initial setup is scary enough: do as I say or I’ll kill your wife. But things only get more complicated and frightening from there. The Pah-Wraith wants Miles to surreptitiously adjust the mechanics of the ship, and Miles is forced to play the double-agent when his friends start catching on that something’s amiss. Just when he thinks he can take no more of this, the Pah-Wraith intimates threats toward Molly, and Rom goes from being the Chief’s partner in crime to his unfortunate patsy. Everything from Odo tightening the net around him to Rom striving not to snitch to the Pah-Wraith issuing all the more malevolent threats on a ticking clock makes the story here feel more complex and more concerning as it goes on.

It’s a big part of why you feel for Miles. He drops the dime on poor Rom, but only to spare his daughter. He deceives his friends, but only to save his wife. He’s pulled in constantly distressing directions by his loyalty to his family, his friends, and the sword of Damocles hanging above his head thanks to this monster lurking behind the eyes of someone he loves. The interplay of all these things, in plot and in character, is superb.

That monster also expands the mythos of the Bajorans. If there are angels, why not demons? The notion of the Pah-Wraiths and their history of being cast out of the “Celestial Temple” mirrors our own Manichean Western cosmology, and the notion that there are actively vengeful gods, in contrast to the inscrutable yet benevolent (or at least benign) ones Sisko has interacted with before, makes for a richer world beyond the temporal concerns of our heroes.

It also makes for a hell of a reveal and resolution. The twist that the Keiko-possesor’s goal is to use DS9’s array to destroy the wormhole aliens takes this whole thing to another level. The possibility that these evil-doers could kill the Prophets and retake control of the wormhole raises the stakes. And Miles positioning him and Keiko in a runabout to seemingly take advantage of the god-slaying, only to use the beam the Pah-Wraith has orchestrated to kill it instead, is a clever twist and solution to the problem.

The success of it all is a victory for Rom. It’s him who listens to his erstwhile girlfriend enough to know the legend of the Pah-Wraiths. It’s him who pieces together what the purpose of the demanded station modifications must be, even before Miles does. And it’s him who sets up that the chronoton beam will destroy the wormhole aliens, but be harmless to humanoids, which sets Chief O’Brien’s plan in motion. Beyond his admirable devotion to his work and to his erstwhile mentor, Rom shows an ingenuity and understanding that lets him shine.

But it’s also, of course, a victory for Miles himself. Put in an impossible situation, he manages to avert the attempted deicide and protect his wife and daughter at the same time. In an episode that opens with him fretting over having a hand in killing his wife’s beloved plants, it closes with her seeing how far he’ll go to protect her.

That's the thrust of a good Superman story. What makes Clark Kent a hero isn’t his impenetrable skin or superspeed or his heat vision; it’s the fact that, at the end of the day, he uses his powers to defend those who need defending, especially those close to him, no matter the risks. Chief O’Brien may lack anything in the way of superpowers, but when it counts most, he shares the same painful vulnerabilities of a hero, but also the courage and devotion of one too.