7x01 Image in the Sand

[7.1/10] “Image in the Sand” is not one of *Deep Space Nine”’s better season premieres. Which is a shame! This is the last one it’ll have! And they’re normally reliably good episodes, as the writers try to start the new season off with a bang.

“Image in the Sand” is more of a hangover. And I like that, in principle. A ton of major things (no pun intended, given Kira’s promotion) happened in “Tears of the Prophets” last season. Spending time to show us the fallout from that, rather than just racing on to the next adventure, is a worthwhile approach, one befitting Deep Space Nine’s character-focused tack and increasing serialization.

But the season 7 premiere gives us three story threads to follow from last season’s dramatics: the first is engrossing and well-done, the second is promising if a little cheesy, and the third is necessary, but frankly kind of bad in a way that surprised me for Deep Space Nine.

Let’s start with the good. Kira is a colonel now! In the three months since Sisko’s departure, she’s firmly stepped into the leadership role for the station. She has the big chair, she interfaces with Starfleet and the Romulans and, of course, her uncharacteristically effusive head of security. And in many ways, this episode is her coming out party. The story establishes her as a force to be reckoned with, not just as a one-time rebel turned officer, but as a capable leader and operator within these various spheres of influences.

I like that a lot! It never struck me when I was watching Deep Space Nine live, but over the course of the series, Kira arguably grows and changes more than any other character on the show. Seeing her go from a recalcitrant and rebellious liaison, to committed member of a mixed-nationality crew, to deserving leader of the whole shebang is one of DS9’s best character arcs.

We see that through her dealings with the always prickly and yet slippery Romulans. The Federation (via a returning Admiral Ross) tells her, rather than asking her, that there will be a Romulan military presence on the station. You can understand both why that would be a reasonable request, given that the Romulans are part of the anti-Dominion alliance now, but also why it would make Kira uneasy given the Romulans’ treacherous history, and why she’d especially bristle at being ordered to accept them by Starfleet.

Except, the Romulan representative, Cretak, seems like a reasonable person. She and Kira have a certain rapport, born of an immediate mutual respect and courteous steeliness. Cretak acknowledges her people’s reputation for arrogance, and doesn't abuse her privileges aboard DS9. She respects Kira’s authority; asks permission for key activities, and even tries a jumja stick! Maybe this will turn out to be one of those trademark Star Trek “Don’t judge a book by its cover” stories!

Sike! No, it turns out the courteous request to set up a Romulan hospital on an uninhabited Bajoran moon is, at best, a side dish, and at worst, an excuse, for Cretak’s allies to put a heap of weapons in place. Here’s Kira (with an assist from Odo), calling Cretak to account, and not taking any shit from Admiral Ross, and generally marking her territory as both the commander of this station and Bajor’s representative.

I suspect we haven't seen the end of this conflict. But between the political interplay, which has long been a highlight of the show, and the chance to see Kira coming into her own in Sisko’s absence, you just love to see it.

What’s slightly less fun is Worf mourning the death of his wife. Or at least, it should be.

That's the odd thing about the second storyline in “Image in the Sand”. I love the idea of taking time to show Worf processing his grief. I was never a huge supporter of the Worf/Fax pairing, but one of the more moving part of their relationship was their tender goodbye and Worf’s characteristic mourning howl. Leaning into that, what this loss means to him, could be fruitful.

Instead, Deep Space Nine...kind of plays it for laughs. Worf wrecks Vic Fontaine’s club after the crooner sings Jadzia’s favorite song, and it leads to jokes about the holographic band threatening to quit and Quark sheepishly handing him a lampshade. Chief O’Brien tries to cheer him up with a bottle of bloodwine with a sitcom-y effort to avoid being instantly shooed away, replete with recollections of Lt. Barclay’s misadventures. The braintrust of Quark, Miles, and Julian trade quips about the situation over a couple of ales.

In principle, I like this storyline. There’s something heartwarming about the idea that Worf’s friends, even Quark, are worried about his mental well-being. The fact that they take his religious beliefs seriously -- that he must win a glorious battle dedicated to Jadzia to get her into Klingon Heaven -- because real or not, they affect him, is touching. And their not only enlisting Martok, but agreeing to go along on a dangerous mission to help Worf and honor Dax is noble. On paper, the story is a solid, even strong one.

The only issue is that for whatever reason, Deep Space Nine plays it for laughs, or at least a sitcom-y “gee whiz” tack, that detracts from the gravity of what Worf is grappling with. The result is an odd dissonance, and I’m not sure why.

Maybe it’s because they’re going for the “committed grief” vibe in the third, Sisko-focused section of the episode, and they didn’t want to overload the audience with mourning.

Here too, I appreciate what Deep Space Nine is trying to do. Ben Sisko lost a lot in the season 6 finale. He lost his best friend. He lost his connection to the Prophets. He felt bound to step away from the station that had been his home and sanctuary for six years. Benjamin is in a state of recovery, a grief-ridden haze that's apparently consumed him for the past three months. As with Worf’s story, taking time to let that settle, to make the audience sit with how that must feel, is a good choice. And Avery Brooks sells the hell out of it in his early scenes.

But then, for some strange reason, we get a mystical fetch quest and some overblown melodrama.

I don’t mind the mystical fetch quest so much. Lord knows DS9 has resorted to magic more often of late, but that it’s been there since the beginning. And hey, while to modern eyes, the Cult of the Pah-wraiths is a little too much like the random Sith cultists from The Rise of Skywalker, the notion that a group of violent Bajoran extremists are worshiping the bad guys now that the Celestial Temple is cut off is an interesting concept.

That said, while I want to give room for the show to pay off my trust, I don’t love the idea that reopening the wormhole is more an Indiana Jones-style artifact hunt than a spiritual journey. The idea that Benjamin just has to put together the right clues and find the right trinket to right what went wrong makes this seem a bit too Zelda-esque for my tastes, even if I hope and imagine there will be more to it than that.

(This is where I admit that my memory of DS9’s final season is super fuzzy! I’m looking forward to being surprised all over again.)

The bigger problem, though, is the Sisko family melodrama. Much of it seems pointless. So Benjamin’s mom wasn’t his mom. So what? The dialogue suggests they’re trending toward an answer of “People can make mistakes but still be good and do good, so forgive yourself and keep going, Ben!”, using Joseph Sisko as an example. Again, I want to give the show time to provide answers, but it’s not clear at this juncture why any of this is significant.

Even so, some of it might be forgivable if the acting weren’t so bad. I don’t know what the deal is. Avery Brooks and Brock Peters have both done extraordinary work, including on this very show! Here though, their family revelations play like unconvincing, Twin Peaks-style over-emotiing across the board. The overwrought score doesn’t help, but the whole tone of these moments veer toward the overblown instead of the raw and intimate, and I don’t know why the veteran performers or director chose to go that direction.

Still, the saving grace of Deep Space Nine setting up its final season, and aiming for a more serialized format, is that there’s a chance for the show to provide answers to some of those big questions, and to course correct a little on where Benjamin, Worf, and to a lesser extent Kira are going for here. I can't pretend this is anything but a bit of a bumpy start, but I still trust our own powers that be on the creative team to get us to the right destination.