LeftHandedGuitarist

[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.

[7.0/10] “Ties of Blood and Water” breaks all my rules for the types of Star Trek episodes, and television in general, that I really enjoy. I tend to prefer the more engrossing and emotional character stories over the world-shaking plot machinations. I tend to ask to get to see the big moments that move the characters and change their hearts rather than being told about them. And this episode turns all of that on its ear.

The core of this story focuses on Kira’s reaction to the death of two fathers: one, her biological dad, Taban, and the other, her surrogate father, Ghemor, the Cardassian who believed her to be his daughter back in season 3’s “Second Skin”, only to still show her a father’s kindness when he realized the whole thing was an Obsidian Order ruse. Ghemor dying from a terminal illness and wanting to share his secrets with Kira before he goes, a paternal Cardassian ritual, brings back memories of Kira’s Bajoran dad dying after a confrontation with the Cardassians.

Normally, it’s the kind of thing I’d love. Nerys having to reconcile her newly more complex views of the Cardassians with her lingering bitterness over how they treated her countrymen during the occupation? That’s catnip to me. Throw in the inevitable wounded humanity of processing the loss of one father and reprocessing the loss of another, and you have an episode, on paper, that is right up the alley of fans like me.

The problem is that I don’t really buy either key relationship. As with “The Darkness and the Light”, just a few episodes back, the writers do their best to make the character connections in the present more meaningful by using someone the audience already knows. Pulling Ghemor back from two seasons ago is a good call, because it means this episode doesn’t have to start from scratch.

The other side of the coin is that we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of him since then, nor even heard Kira mention him in the interim. So despite her warm reception for him when he arrives on the station, and the sound attempts to reestablish their bond by having him hold Kirayoshi and speak with a father’s love, it all comes off very sudden and unconvincing. The actors do good enough work together, but don’t quite have that shorthand or easy warmth that could sell the meaning in the relationship to both parties on an emotional level, despite the fact that we’ve barely seen them interact.

The same goes for the flashbacks to the death of Kira’s biological father, Taban. We haven't heard Kira mention him more than twice on the show, if I recall correctly, so it’s not like this is the long-awaited appearance of someone referenced lovingly but never seen until now. Thomas Kopache gives a vulnerable performance as Taban, and deserves credit for that, but both the writing and acting of he and Kira’s scenes together is overwrought, which diminishes the emotional impact of the grim farewell between father and daughter.

And while it’s far more superficial, putting Kira in a cheap wig and an outfit that looks like a leftover from Riker’s Irish main squeeze in “Up the Long Ladder” from TNG doesn’t help the audience buy the gravity of the moment. Everything about the presentation here, from the scripting, to the production work, to the emotional exposition, feel too blunt and signposted for the audience, to the point of losing the naturalism and ability to draw the viewer into the feeling of these crucial moments.

Despite that, the political tet-a-tet between Captain Sisko and Gul Dukat over whether to return Ghemor to Cardassia is the most engrossing thing “Ties of Blood and Water”. Dukat is such a compelling villain, especially when he thinks he’s cock of the walk again. Seeing he and Benjamin lob bombs both diplomatic and practical back and forth at one another is one of DS9’s consistent boons. And having Jeffrey Combs back as Weyoun (with the Vorta’s being revealed as clones for continuity), looking on the squabbles between them with detached bemusement is the icing on the cake.

It’s a reminder that the personal is also political in DS9. Kira is worried about her friend and digesting her emotions from her father’s killing. But in the midst of helping protect her, Sisko is trying to avoid greasing the Cardassian propaganda machine, fending off murder plots and other intimidation. And for his part, however untrustworthy he may be, Dukat knows how to give his political aims juice with the personal, enticing Ghemor with the prospect of reuniting him with his daughter, and trying to drive a wedge between him and Kira over Ghemor’s actions during the occupation. Seeing he and Sisko work their magic in opposition to one another, while Weyoung basically sits on the sidelines as a bon vivant Greek chorus, is the most consistently good part of the episode.

Despite Sisko’s efforts and Kira’s fury, Dukat’s methods work, after a fashion, or so it seems. There’s power in the idea that Kira would turn her back on Ghemor because he participated in a grim chapter of the occupation, even if their connection isn’t as well-forged or convincing as I might like. And I like that it’s Odo who recognizes there’s something else bothering Kira, that she’s using this as an excuse, subtly revealing the perceptiveness between them.

But that’s about all that’s subtle about this. Again, so much here is overblown and overdone: Kira’s coldness despite cajoling from Dr. Bashir in the present, her bolting to fight the Cardassians and urge for vengeance for her father’s death in the past, they all come with on-the-nose dialogue and performances that feel like too much. Hell, I think we even get some friggin’ Chakotay-style pan flute in the score, which is omnipresent to the point of being oppressive through most of this.

And yet, in the episode’s final act, the score drops off. The up-to-eleven flashbacks drop off. The overwritten exchanges drop off. Instead, there’s just Nana Visitor, a monologue, and a shattered human soul, trying to make sense of inevitable but unbearable loss.

Kira’s speech in the infirmary is one of those things I tend to hate -- a writerly monologue that lays out the emotional takeaways for the audience rather than letting us reach it on our own. But whether it’s the sparseness of it, or Visitor’s superlative performance, or the universal nature of our pull to both experience and protect ourselves from the end of our loved ones lives, the results are moving and, not for nothing, the most superlative thing in the episode.

Kira laments not being there to see her father die. She laments the hardship of being there with Ghemor while he slipped away. One doesn’t fix the other. Both come with mixed emotions. In an episode full of relationships that lack the force they should, one monologue about what both losses meant to Kira, and the mark they’ve left on her, are somehow enough to bring all the intended poignancy into focus. The simple images, of Kira draped across Ghemor’s death bed, and her burying him next to her flesh and blood father, do more to deliver the meaning of that moment than all the melodrama that precedes them.

Maybe I’m a sucker or a sap. Maybe the monologue is no better than anything else here. Two years ago, almost to the day, I sat at the bedside of a father figure of my own, and I held his hand while he left this world. Kira’s words eerily mirror my own experience. Maybe it has a special resonance for me that it wouldn’t for others that helps lift this one up.

But it’s still a nice reminder that DS9 can surprise me. It can pull my heartstrings by telling, rather than showing. It can make up for a disappointing emotional story with a crackling political story. And it can try my patience for forty minutes, and then blow me away in the last five.

[7.1/10] A funny thing about me and Voyager -- I remembered liking Tom and B’Elanna from when I watched the series originally, but I didn’t quite remember why. In the early going, neither’s an especially great character. Tom is a discount Han-Solo-in-Starfleet who’s more annoying than dashing, and the depiction of B’Elanna’s struggle with her Klingon heritage has the depth of a petri dish in the show’s first couple of seasons. Revisiting the show, it’s not clear why pairing them together would work.

And yet, there’s an undeniable chemistry between them that helps account for a lot of it. You can never quite tell which actors will spark on screen (see: Voyager basically discarding early flirtations between B’Elanna and Chakotay as well as {gulp} Paris and Janeway). But the Beatrice-Benedick dynamic between the characters really works for Roxann Dawson and Robert Duncan McNeil.

Through their performances, matched with the writing, you get the sense of Tom as someone who likes to dish it out, and in B’Elanna, there is someone who can not only take it, but give it right back. They feel equally matched, and weirdly in tune despite their differences, which makes for an unexpectedly rewarding on-screen pairing.

But some of it is simply the ineffable sparks that fly when you put two actors next to one another. “Blood Fever”, a pon farr story where both Lt. Torres and the Vulcan Ensign Vorik are biologically hot to trot, is the steamiest Star Trek has been since Worf and K’Ehleyr had their interlude in The Next Generation, and maybe ever. The episode leans into the sexual tension between Tom and B’Elanna, rather than shying away from it, and the result is one of the most passionate and charged series of scenes in franchise history.

As I write this, there’s a big debate among film and T.V. watchers over whether sex scenes are ever necessary. And I don’t have a big stance in the debate beyond to say that sex -- sexual attraction, sexual exploration, and yes, even sexual intercourse -- are core parts of the human experience for most of us. I think good art reflects and comments on the human experience, so to leave that out of movies and television would be to ignore and even hide an essential part of what it is to be a person.

In a sense, I think that’s one of the main themes of “Blood Fever”. Vorik is struggling mightily with his biological urge to mate, and one of the big hindrances to helping him is Vulcan culture’s prudishness about discussing anything related to sex, even with a doctor. When he assaults B’Elanna (something the episode doesn’t full engage with, to be honest) and she contracts the same “blood fever”, she’s reluctant to admit what’s happening to her, and it makes it a challenge to get her the help she needs either.

It’s not hard to read the pon farr as an allegory for puberty, and more generally the time when most of us suddenly felt a rush of hormones surging through our bodies that we didn’t know quite what to do with. As always, abstracting that through alien physiology helps us look at it from the outside. With that lens, Voyager seems to be suggesting that while it’s important to stress consent and healthy outlets, those feelings cannot simply be ignored or compartmentalized, and sweeping them under the rug only leads to problems.

And then the rock people show up. Sigh. Look, I want to give Voyager credit for the premise here. How to deal with Vulcan pon farr (something famously established with Spock in “Amok Time” from TOS) on a ship seventy-thousand lightyears from Vulcan is, if you’ll forgive the expression, a fascinating story idea. Stranding B’Elanna and Tom in a cave together where the chief engineer is struggling between powerful physical urges and an effort to hold onto her mental faculties, and the helmsman has to restrain his desire in deference to his care for her as a person, is just as fruitful a story thread.

But for some reason, all of this has to involve some locals who are undetectable by scanners but hoarding the latest useful resource and holding our heroes’ hostage. It’s a needless distraction from the more potent elements of the episode, and one that clutters up the real stories here.

Even in the main, though, the stories take strange turns. Tom dutifully holds back B’Elanna (and himself) because he doesn’t want to take advantage of her compromised state, which is a good look. Only then, once they escape the cave, Tuvok basically says, “Schtup her or she’ll die”, without even putting it as a choice to Tom, which is weird.

Likewise, I liked The Doctor’s clever solution to Vorik’s problem: giving him a holographic mate and telling him to think of it as part of a mental self-healing technique. I love that idea of teaching young folks to find safe outlets for those feelings. Instead, he fakes it (or it’s temporary? the show’s slightly ambiguous) and then turns back into a rage monster who wants to claim B’Elanna. And for unpersuasive reasons, Tuvok and Chakotay are just like, “Yeah, I guess they’d better do the Vulcan combat ritual or they’ll die anyway,” in a strange resolution to the issue.

I guess the chance to recreate some version of the famous fight sequence in “Amok Time” was just too tempting. (As was the Borg tease we get at the end here -- which may as well have been Voyager’s “break glass in case of emergency” sign.) It’s cool, frankly, to see the series being frank and personal in its examination of sexual needs, even as it gets over-the-top in places, but it’s disappointing to see that examination end with a “screw it, there’s no soothing it and we just have to let them fight it out” ending.

Despite the strangeness of the resolution, “Blood Fever” is the reminder I needed for why I like Tom and B'Elanna together. Because when B’Elanna is poised to ravage Tom, about to give him everything he’s desired, telling him all the things he wants to hear, Tom still turns her down. It’s not that he doesn’t want it, but he wants it to be given willingly, by a person with the mental wherewithal to offer it, not taken from someone when they’re in a compromised state and generally not in control of themselves. No matter how badly he may want to give in, Tom forebears, because he wouldn’t want it this way.

It may be the most I’ve ever liked the character. Not taking advantage of someone when they’re in a compromised state may not be the highest bar to clear, but lord knows Kirk didn’t manage that sort of commitment to consent on a consistent basis. It aligns Tom with Will Riker, who similarly turned down the advances of someone he was attracted to in “The Vengeance Factor” once he realized they were not being freely given.

But basic decency aside, what I like about it is not just that Tom doesn’t give into his own physical desires because he knows it wouldn’t be right; but that he also rejects B’Elanna protestations of love for similar reasons. It’s easy to hear those things, and there’s hints at hidden desires between both of them, but more than the physical part, he wants the emotional part to be coming from the real B’Elanna, not an unbalanced version of her who might regret it. It reveals a depth of feeling and care that’s been missing from Tom to date.

And when it’s all resolved, and they try to set things back to some kind of normal, Tom says something striking -- that he’s seen B’Elanna in the mode she’s most insecure about, and still admires her. The scariest thing of romance isn’t sex -- it’s showing the most vulnerable part of yourself, the part you’re afraid to show the rest of the world, and hoping that your partner will accept it.

The pon farr thing is a little ridiculous, but it led B’Elanna to reveal the “scary” Klingon side of herself that she’s tried so hard to restrain to someone, and still have their acceptance and maybe love, as something that’s a part of her. To have someone love you for the parts of yourself you’re scared of, not despite them, is an incredible thing, and the foundation for one of Star Trek’s best relationships.

[7.0/10] Here’s the weird thing about Neelix as a character. He’s played by an actor who was forty when the show started, but he’s kind of a giant kid. He has a childlike exuberance. He has a very paternal relationship with Captain Janeway. And for much of the crew, he’s a lot like a pesky kid brother. Ethan Phillips is a talented enough performer to fill in the loose ends there, but you have to almost consciously remind yourself that, however old Philips is or Neelix is supposed to be, we’re basically dealing with a young teenager here.

That perspective makes me a little more tolerant of an episode like “Fair Trade”, which tackles some big and interesting ideas, but approaches them at a level just above After School Special. What could be a morally complicated exploration of conflicting loyalties and the interplay of a checkered past and a hopeful future, is delivered more as a heavy-handed aesop about the importance of honesty that would feel like a better fit for, say, Wesley Crusher, than for a theoretical grown-up like Neelix.

And yet, taken in its own terms, as a story about someone taking their first, tenuous steps into a more complicated world, with different values than the one he’s used to, “Fair Play” succeeds at what it sets out to do, and deserves credit for that.

The setup sees Voyager about to enter an ominous region of space known as the Necrid Expanse. They stop at a trading post nearby to negotiate for gear and supplies before braving the dangerous terrain. Only, once there, Neelix gets tangled up with an old Talaxian friend who gets him mixed up in some unsavory business.

There’s not much to the premise. It’s nice to see the Voyager crew have to worry about practical things like getting needed material before embarking on an isolated stretch of their journey. The curt operator of the station where they start is a little generic, but has a presence as an overworked functionary focused on his mission that makes him interesting. And the station itself is one of the more memorable locales from the show to date, with elaborate aliens, a creepy bazar, and miscreants offering narcotic crystals that help give the whole thing a sense of place. But on the whole, there’s not much in the way of major stakes here.

Instead, the stakes here are purely personal. The big reveal is that we’re reaching the edge of Neelix’s knowledge of the Delta Quadrant. He’s needling Tuvok, pestering B’Elanna, and desperate to find a reliable starmap for further along the way so that he can maintain his usefulness. The poor guy worries that if he doesn’t, Janeway will have no more use for him and kick him off the ship.

I like that! Let’s be real, Voyager has more or less jettisoned much of its original premise by this point. They’re pretty much done looking for help from another Caretaker-type. We haven't heard from the Kazon in some time. You don’t get much in the way of Maquis vs. Federation grousing anymore.

But part of the story that’s still here is that Neelix is on board as a guide to this unknown region of space. It’s fair to suggest that despite his worldliness, he probably doesn’t know the ins and outs of the whole damn quadrant. So asking what role Neelix plays, what value he brings to the crew, when he’s no longer a reliable guide, is one worth asking.

His insecurity about that lends itself to my favorite aspect of “Fair Trade”, how exceptionally well-motivated Neelix is here, and how complicated those motivations are. On the one hand, he’s desperate to avoid being shunted off the ship because he loves being aboard Voyager. But on the other, he’s internalized the values of honest and decency in his time with the crew that make it hard for him to step outside the lines to get maps or resources that might shore up his credentials on board.

On the one hand, he’s leery of his old friend, Wix, who knows his past as a smuggler of contraband and is still in that game. On the other hand, he feels guilty because Wix took the fall for him in a prior deal gone bad, and still seems to be paying the price for it. Neelix has been successful, finding a place in a top-of-the-line starship, while his old friend is still having to scrape by doing odd and not-strictly-legal jobs to get by. The blend of his guilt over the inequality of their landing spots, and Neelix’s desperation to hold onto his, makes for a meaningfully conflicted Talaxian who’s not sure what to do.

“Fair Trade” comes up with a solid scenario to test that conflict. Wix promises Neelix that he can get him a map if Neelix can help him sell some medical supplies. Of course, nothing is so simple, and it turns out that Wix has tangled Neelix up in a drug deal gone wrong, to where now he’s forced to choose whether to be loyal to Voyager, and tell the truth about what happened, or loyal to his friend, and help skirting the rules to try to keep Wix out of trouble.

The problem is that Voyager gets extraordinarily hamfisted and cheesy about most of this. As someone who lived through the 1990s, the depiction of drugs is hilariously alarmist in a way that makes you think the production may have gotten some extra funding from D.A.R.E. The unnecessary complication of Chakotay and Tom being arrested for the murder of one of the drug-dealers on basically zero evidence is a silly thumb on the scale for Neelix’s dilemma.

Worse yet, we get some painfully corny scenes of Neelix talking to Tom and to Taurik, a young Vulcan officer in Engineering. Paris gives an on-the-nose speech about how his criminal history could have been avoided if he’d just told the truth. And the scene with Taurik involves a saccharine (by Vulcan standards, at least) exchange about how lucky Neelix is to be there. They’re plainly meant to dramatize the competing impulses within Neelix, but they come off like silly aesops. It’s part and parcel with the over-the-top approach the episode takes to what’s otherwise a strong psychological story.

That said, I like where this one lands. In the moment of truth, Neelix comes clean, but concocts a plan to make everyone whole by catching the drug cartel members who’ve been operating on the station. His stand-off with them is pretty damn cool. As I’ve said before, there’s always something heartening when bumbling, affable Neelix shows himself to have nerves of steel. When he confronts them, his leverage is a leaking plasma container that ensures neither side can use weapons lest they ensure some mutually assured destruction.

Most notably, when the cartoonish villain tells him he may take Neelix down with him, Neelix tells him to go ahead, because he has nothing to lose. In Neelix’s mind, he’s already forfeited his place on Voyager with his sins. You believe that he means it. Being on the ship has given him purpose and acceptance, and without that, you can buy that he’d rather die than go on. It speaks to how much this experience and home has meant to him. (Though...uh...query how he never bothers to talk or even seem to think about Kes in all of this.)

Naturally, things work out, and despite the big green explosion (which matches the one from the last episode) he survives long enough to get a dressing down from Janeway for his actions.

And as blunt as that scene is, I kind of love it. Because Neelix thinks that between his lack of knowledge beyond the Necrid Expanse, and his errors in judgment, he’s about to be excommunicated. It speaks to his experience as a smuggler where your value and ability to hang around lies only in what you can do for the powers that be.

But Voyager is not that. It is, as Janeway tells him, a family. That means people aren't simply jettisoned when they’re not as useful as they once were. Instead, they’re held accountable, but still very much a part of the community. It is a stern talking-to, but also a reassurance, that even when you mess up, you still have a place here.

I’ll take that sort of thing every time. I may roll my eyes a little at the bluntness of an episode like “Fair Trade” now, but I was a kid when I watched Voyager. I needed my hand held through some of those lessons. And having a stand-in who teaches you that your place among your friends and family is not dependent on the transactional value you provide, that you still have a home and place of support, even when you screw up royal, is the sort of thing more kids should get to hear. It’s a little strange to get that lesson from the adventures of a forty-year-old alien furball, but then, that’s the beauty of Star Trek.

[9.5/10] The struggle for Captain Sisko with Bajor is that he is a loyal officer trying to do a job, and they want him to be their messiah. The balance there is an uneasy one. Friendship with Kira, benedictions from religious figures, visits with the Prophets, all tend to conflict with Sisko’s personal views and professional responsibility, in ways that often make him uncomfortable. Benjamin Sisko is a friend to Bajor, but he is a Starfleet Captain, who never asked to be an Emissary for a faith he doesn’t share.

The brilliant move of “Rapture”, then, is to flip that dynamic on his head. Suddenly, Sisko is consumed with religious compulsion, mystical visions, a spiritual need to walk the path the Prophets have laid out for him. And it’s his Federation responsibilities, and his personal responsibilities, that fall by the wayside as awkward intrusions into his true calling. The script messes with our expectations, in ways that put Sisko’s relationship with the role he’s had since the beginning of the series into new relief.

That’s scary though! “Rapture” pulls a great deal from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Steven Spielberg classic where a normal man has an extraterrestrial experience and finds himself compelled to reach those who contacted him. There, as here, it’s low-key unsettling to see someone who’s otherwise been a regular person cast off their everyday life in the name of pursuing a single-minded goal with the fervor of a convert. This is not the duty-focused family man we’ve seen for four and a half seasons.

And Captain Sisko is ignoring some pretty big things! This is an episode full of momentous events. Bajor is joining the Federation! Kassidy Yates is returning to the station! They...uh...got the new Starfleet uniforms that will eventually be used in Star Trek: First Contact. The arrival of various Federation and Bajoran bigwigs to mark the occasion only make Sisko’s unwillingness to countenance his usual responsibilities seem all the more concerning.

Yet, there’s something just as compelling for the audience as there is for the man himself. Maybe it’s the chance to unravel an ancient mystery. The Captain becomes fixated on using an old Bajoran artifact to try to locate the lost city of Bahala. The chance to uncover such a remarkable find, while a divine frenzy seems to give him the preternatural ability to locate what archeologists have missed for millenia, adds stakes to his quest and makes you root for Sisko, even when he’s blowing off his normal duties.

Some of it’s the direction and cinematography. Star Trek vet Jonathan West shakes things up a bit in his visuals. A sweeping shot that follows the length of Sisko’s holographic recreation of the grand Bajoran obelisk, until it reaches the man himself and follows him in his thoughts and calculations, helps sell both the grandeur of what Ben’s pursuing and his wild streak in pursuing it. The crowded corridors of the Promenade, and busy boardroom at the signing ceremony convey the attention this is getting from outside the usual corners. And the shot of Sisko making his way through a crowd of Bajorans, dispensing wisdom like a prophet himself, gives the normally stately captain the patina of a true agent of the divine.

But much of it rests squarely on Avery Brooks’ more-than-capable shoulders. The script demands he do more than play the steady yet personable commander of the station. He needs to become an obsessive, a romantic, a pious believer, an afflicted crusader, with all the emotion and openness Starfleet Captains don’t often have the luxury to show.

As with trips to the Mirror Universe and symbiont possessions, Brooks seizes on the chance to show off his incredible range. This may be his finest hour, able to reflect a presence that seems disquietingly different from the Sisko that we know -- with an openness and affectedness that isn’t always as present -- while still feeling connected to the man who’s strolled the bulkhead for the last five years or so.

That balance is at the core of the episode. It is a question of which side should take precedence: the Captain or the Emissary. And with it comes a broader question of whether to err on the side of faith or on the side of the temporal. Considering this whole frenzy begins with Sisko enduring a literal shock to the system, and his visions seem to come at the cost of his health, it’s reasonable to ask whether he’s having a genuine religious experience or just dealing with the aftereffects of a plain physical impact.

True to the complexity at the heart of Deep of Nine, the script and the cast, have that debate with aplomb. (And if I’m being pointed, “Rapture” handles the idea infinitely better than Voyager’s “Sacred Ground, which tackled similar themes just a couple months earlier.) Worf venerates the notion of faith and implicitly judges his Starfleet colleagues for not valuing or understanding it. Dax and O’Brien understandably question whether Sisko’s obsession is healthy or if they should intervene to keep him safe.

And most notably, Kira is in a good place with all of this, finding herself pleased to see Bajor join the Federation in a way she wouldn’t have been five years earlier, while also joyful to see her dear friend embrace this side of his identity that she always believed in.

Somehow, though, the person who has the most interesting impact from Sisko’s revelation is none other than Kai Winn. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that “Rapture” softens Winn exactly, but it makes her more comprehensible, more sympathetic. In the past, she’s seemed mercenary in her beliefs, suspiciously determining that the path of the Prophets is the one that happens to suit her needs.

But here she’s revealed as a true believer, one who seems to genuinely want forgiveness from Benjamin for not accepting him as the Emissary until now. She works to help him on his spiritual journey. She accepts his wisdom. And in the most striking exchange in the episode, she explains to Kira that the Cardassians persecuted her for her religious beliefs, and that all she had to protect her in five years of captivity was her faith. All of this puts Kai Winn in a different light, someone who can be rigid, unyielding, and self-serving, but also someone who came to her position through struggle much as Kira did, and who is willing to listen and change direction when she believes she hears the Prophets speak.

No one thinks he can hear the word of the divine more than Sisko. The show plays a little coy with the idea. He knows things he shouldn't know. He offers people counsel from a position of ecclesiastical authority that the Sisko we know never would. We know that the Prophets exist outside of linear time, so it’s not so wild that, from the right vantage point, the right connection, be it spiritual or scientific, Benjamin really could perceive the patterns of the universe, past and present. The ambiguity there, the fact that Benjamin believes it, the fact that the pursuit of this knowledge seems to be killing him, all makes the climax of “Rapture” compelling as all get out.

Because Ben is acting erratic. He’s pushing his mind and body to the limits. He’s scuttling Bajor’s admission to the Federation based on visions of locusts. He’s telling the woman he loves and his only child that he has to risk leaving them behind to pursue this. And the crazy thing is, with his story about holding the universe in his arms and seeing its future spelled out in delirious rapture much like he once held his little boy, you buy it. You buy the emotions of it, even if you’re skeptical of the mystic trance he seemed to be stuck in.

Like so much of Star Trek, it comes down to a gut-wrenching decision. Do you let someone pursue their spiritual quest even if you think it’s hurting them? Do you trust someone in religious fervor to make their own choices or do you write off their actions as a result of an accident causing different neurons to fire in the brain? Do you respect someone’s wishes to try to see the infinites regressions of the universe, or do you hold onto the father you love because you cannot bear to lose him?

I know what I’d choose. I’d do what Jake does, for my own father, or for anyone I cared about. But the choice isn’t an easy one. The uncertainty of what Sisko is going through, whether he’s truly filled with the beatitude of the Prophets or infected with a delusion that’s destroying him, makes it hard to know what to do. And vaguest of vague spoilers, but it’s not going to get any easier from here.

So Sisko survives. With Jake’s blessing, and the insistence of an admiral, Dr. Bashir cures Benjamin of the random energy of the week that’s been pulsing through his brain. When he comes to, he is devastated, in another incredible moment of performance from Brooks. He sells you on the crestfallen sense of someone who came within a hair’s breadth of eternity and fell short.

And yet, for all the ambiguity of Sisko’s journey, I love the resolution. Sisko may not be inhabited by that Prophetic spirit anymore, but he stands by what he saw and what he said. His experience was not a phase that he can simply write off as a hallucination or something purely physical. And when the admiral asks him if his assurances about Bajor’s future with the Federation are as a Starfleet Captain or as an Emissary, Sisko offers the only answer he can -- both.

It represents a harmonizing of these dual roles that have been haunting Benjamin since the series began. No more must he choose whether to be a spiritual leader for the people of Bajor or a commanding officer for the people of Deep Space Nine. Having been through the wringer of “Rapture”, he now knows that he can, and indeed must, be both. The experience was valid, and like so many of his brushes with the wormhole aliens, it helps give him peace.

More than that, Captain Sisko has lost something precious when his visions leave him, but he regains something no less valuable in return. This is not Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In the ending of that film (spoilers for a fifty year old movie) a father leaves his family behind to vindicate his preternatural compulsion.

“Rapture” goes in the opposite direction. While Sisko is still sorrowful at the loss of his mystical sight, he is more than comforted by his reunion with Jake and with Cassidy. One of the lasting images of “For the Cause”, the episode from last season where Sisko exposes Yates’ crime, is Benjamin holding his son's hand, and telling him “This is important. You and I. Things change, but not this.”

Things do change. Deep Space Nine may have shied away from its religious elements over these seasons, but Captain Sisko is finding a way to reckon with his place in the Bajoran spiritual firmament. And yet, he is not the father from Close Encounters. He is someone who takes solace in the temporal, who loves Kassidy, and who loves his son.

The closing image of “Rapture” is a reflection of the one from “For the Cause”. Once again, Benjamin holds his son’s hand, his tether to this world of dross and of wonder. And he brings in Kassidy’s on top, a sign that the mistrust that drove them apart before has been healed, and that she too is a part of this family. Real or not, vision or delusion, Emissary or Captain, our dear Benjamin Sisko catches a glimpse of eternity, and ultimately decides that there is no less value, no less meaning, no less purpose, in the people he loves.

[7.1/10] I think the corollary to “O’Brien must suffer” is “Kira must reckon with her life as a resistance fighter.” The show’s returned to the idea again and again over the years. And I get why -- it’s a rich vein in the character that’s been there from the jump. Kira struggling with the rough-edges of her past and how they fit with the smooth angles of her present again and again is realistic, since it’s not the type of thing that simply goes away.

But at the same time, there’s only so much juice in that orange. You can only have Kira run into her old Shakar resistance cell buddies and weigh her loyalty to the cause against her duties on the station so many times before it starts to lose impact. Five seasons in, we pretty well know what Kira is about. She’s “borrowed” enough runabouts to demonstrate that. So even her rebellions feel a little predictable, even with the thumb on the scale of her carrying the O’Briens’ baby.

And yet, “The Darkness and the Light” flips the usual dynamic. Because it isn’t about Kira deciding to accept her role as a liaison even if it means giving up some of her rougher methods and street cred from her days as a fighter. It’s not even about her harmonizing her devotion to her old friends with her commitments to her new ones. It is, instead, about how no matter how much Kira has acclimated to and even embraced the structure and the values of the Federation, within her remains the dark heart of a killer that kept her alive for so long, able to be subdued, but never really gone.

That is a cool idea! The problem is that the episode is fine but not terribly compelling until its last seven minutes or so. The plot sees some serial killer steadily picking off members of Kira’s old resistance cell and taunting her with coded messages for each slaying they accomplish. As the bodies start to pile up, and the answers aren’t forthcoming, Kira has to weigh taking matters into her own hands, despite the innocent child in her womb and her own now-somewhat-softer disposition.

The problem is twofold. For one, the mystery itself doesn’t have much in the way of build. And for another, it’s hard to care too much about Kira’s old resistance buddies.

This feels a little like Deep Space Nine doing its best Silence of the Lambs, with a serial killer on the loose. But the slayings aren’t that interesting. One gets killed by a “hunter probe”. The second one’s transporter accident is compellingly gnarly thanks to the production team. (Shades of Sonak from The Motion Picture). More people get killed in remote explosions. Lather, rinse, repeat.

There’s just not much to it. There’s no pattern, no escalation, no sense of us getting closer to uncovering who it is. No cause and effect. No sense that we’re gradually seeing the picture more clearly. We know from the jump the killer is targeting Kira’s old crew, so it’s no surprise when more of them turn up dead. It seems unlikely the show will kill off Kira herself, so there’s not much suspense there either. And finding out details like that the killer used Kira’s own voice on his taunting messages doesn’t add anything to the proceedings. Most of the murders play like the show treading water until the inevitable confrontation.

Likewise, I struggled to care about the members of Kira’s old resistance cell we barely know. I don’t want to blame the writers’ too much for this, because they try. Kira gives us exposition on who the first two victims are, and why their roles were important and meaningful to her. They even bring back Lupaza and Furel, Kira’s old allies whom we met in “Shakaar” a couple seasons ago.

The problem is that there’s an essential disconnect. Yes, these people are meaningful to Kira, and Nana Visitor does her best to sell that. But even for Furel and Lupaza, we’ve hardly seen her interact with them for more than a scene, so it’s tough to convey a visceral sense of dear friends lost in a way that can move the audience. Visitor does her damnedest, with a tear-jerking monologue about her first mission with the two of them, but even the best writerly monologue is no substitute for actually having seen those adventures and caring about the relationships firsthand, because we’re witnessing them rather than hearing about them.

The only thing that gives it any life is the personal tug of war going on inside Kira (and I'm not talking about the baby). I love the idea that she’s pulled in two directions. One is from the old resistance fighter who is loyal to her friends and is drawn to avenge them and stp any more from being killed. The other is the devoted STarfleet officer who has been shown a different way to do things and, not for nothing, is protecting her good friends’ future child. Savvy viewers can guess that eventually Kira will decide to jump into action despite of and because of the circumstances. But still, the inner tension is compelling,, and about the only thing that boosts the otherwise dull mystery. (Save perhaps for Odo, still clearly going above and beyond for Kira, despite his intention from last season to put up an emotional wall between them.)

So she nigh-miraculously picks out the killer from a list of twenty-five names, and he turns out to be a purple-prose speaking ninny spinning painful metaphors about “darkness” and “light” that are too overstylized to pass muster. As a character, Silaran is too silly, with an over-the-top presence and an cartoonish affect that makes it hard to take his dramatically-lit kill room set piece seriously.

Yet, I kind of love what follows. He accuses Kira of being an agent of “darkness”, not because of what side of the war she was on, but because she killed indiscriminately, taking out non-combatants and families to get to her cell’s targets. And in Silaran’s defense, he points out that he goes to great lengths to only kill the guilty, finding elaborate ways to strike only at those who participated in the attack that scarred him and took innocent lives.

And by god, he has a point! The Cardassians have been almost cartoonishly evil antagonists in Star Trek since they appeared in the series. Still, there’s something to be said for a simple cleaner, not a military man, loathing those who attacked him and his fellow civilians to get to a military target, with no regard for who was caught in the crossfire. The framing is nuts, but his perspective is valid.

At the same time, Kira offers a comprehensible rebuke -- that the Cardassians were occupiers and to her, merely stepping onto Bajor was an act of war for people who shouldn’t be there. To her mind, she was fending off invaders, and no Cardassian on her home planet was fully innocent, especially considering the millions of her countrymen who died in the occupation. That doesn’t fully comfort me about the blood on her hands, but it’s plausible as the perspective a former resistance fighter like Kira would have.

The mechanics of what follows are well-set up. The setup and payoff of the killer administering a sedative at Kira’s request, with it established that she’s taking Bajoran herbs that counteract them, is sharp writing. And Kira using Silaran’s own morality against him to set it up is clever on her part.

But it’s also part and parcel with what I take to be the point of the episode -- because it’s also kind of horrifying. After five seasons, we’ve come to see a softer gentler Kira. She’s welcomed Bajor’s admittance to the Federation. She’s become dear friends with the Starfleet officers whom she once viewed as interlopers. She’s fallen in love, more than once. She’s even become a mother, of sorts.

Nevertheless, when the time comes, she still takes out a man with legitimate grievances in cold blood and views herself as fully justified. It’s easy to forget after all that time that Kira was a terrorist, or a freedom fighter, or whatever word you want to use for people who use extreme methods for a cause they believe in. For all she has changed in all that time, the darkness still lurks in Kira. It can be crowded out by the light within her, and by the light she surrounds herself with, but when thrust into those fraught circumstances again, she knows, and we know, it doesn’t go away.

[7.6/10] Ahsoka is doing a slow burn, and I can’t say that I mind. There are more teases and piece-moving than there are important plot developments, but that gives us time to get into the world and the story. The machinations of something as grandiose as the return of Grand Admiral Thrawn shouldn’t happen in a day. And something as emotionally potent as Ahsoka and Sabine reuniting as master and apprentice shouldn’t happen in a single episode. Taking the time to let these things simmer before they boil is a feature, not a bug.

Not that the cheekily-titled “Toil and Trouble” is lacking in narrative stakes or high-flying action. The latest clue as to Morgan Elsbet’s intentions leads Ahsoka and Hera to the shipyards of Corellia, where they uncover a host of ex-Imperials, still devoted to the cause, helping out their enemies with hyperdrives and other tech for the “Eye of Scion”.

The visit to Corellia serves a broader theme throughout the Mando-verse side of Star Wars -- that the transition from an Empire to a Republic is an awkward and irregular one. The “happy ever after” of Return of the Jedi gives way to lost causers, reactionary schemers, and in this case, people who profited off the old system who are just as ready to profit off the new one.

Peter Jacobson (of House M.D. fame) does a good job as the local shipyard functionary, trying to put our heroes off the scent and dissembling to keep his operation rolling. But he never comes off like a former Imp trying to raise the last vestiges of the Empire anew. Instead, he seems like someone willing to sell his wares to the highest bidder, whomever that may be. In the franchise’s continuing exploration of what it means to stamp out the embers of the last regime and build up the structure of the New Republic, it’s nice to acknowledge the problems caused by those simply out to make a buck, in line with The Last Jedi.

And it makes time for some action to keep the casual ans happy once more. We get another lightsaber fight, as Ahsoka makes quick work of the mooks in the control tower, bursts through a window with badass glory, and takes on a darksider and their assassin droid with sizzling aplomb. The sword fighting is crisp and clear, without too many cuts, and the choreography is exciting enough to hold your interest.

But this is really Hera’s coming out party. It’s a blast to see her flying with grace and dexterity in live action, as he chases down the ship headed to Morgan’s stronghold. The fancy darting through opposing fire throws her nimbleness at the controls. And what a debut for Chopper, her trust droid, who is as cantankerous, amusing, and potentially murderous as ever. The pair remain great, with a clear goal to place a tracker on the ship, some fun banter and gesticulating between them, and a nice display of their talents. Despite the deliberately placed plot movement, there's plenty of high octane moments here to keep the tempo up.

There's also some genuine intrigue on the villain side of the equation. Our mystery girl refers to Baylan as master, and seems to be genuinely ignorant of what this is all building towards. The episode reveals a new ally, a formidable foe who uses an Inquisitor’s lightsaber and can stand their ground against Ahsoka. And Morgan reveals the power of the map, lighting it up with her Nightsister magic and pointing the way to retrieving Thrawn. It’s all just breadcrumbs for now, but they’re compelling enough to whet your appetite for more.

More than that, Baylan gets a little shading in ways that make him a more interesting player. He derides Morgan’s theories about Thrawn’s location as fairy tales. He laments the possibility of killing Ahsoka, thinking it a shame to lose another Jedi with so few left. He seems steady, dignified, appropriately imbued with Jedi calm. And yet, he seems to desire unimaginable power, a sign of the fall of the dark side. While I’m impatient and, frankly, annoyed with Star Wars mystery boxes, I’m curious enough and satisfied enough with the early hints, to be on board waiting to find out what precisely Baylan’s deal is.

Despite all of this -- the latest rendition of the New Republic’s challenges, the action and excitement, the teases for our villains -- the main event here is the rekindling of the partnership between Ahsoka and Sabine.

I like the structure of how it plays out. You have Sabine’s closest ally, Hera, encouraging Ahsoka to take her on as an apprentice once more. You have Ahsoka’s closest ally, Huyang, encouraging Sabine to seek the path of a padawan once more. And you have both the former master and the former apprentice bucking at the idea, but eventually acquiescing when each realizes they’re ready.

You understand the distance that exists between them and why. The show does well to dramatize the ways in which Ahsoka is steady, thoughtful, and measured, as a Jedi Master might be, and also the ways in which Sabine is still recalcitrant, brash, and a little reckless, in the way a certain young togruta once was when she was a padawan.

Ahsoka is perceptive and deft, as her recovery of the attack droid in Sabine’s home reveals. Sabine is talented and capable, as her ability to retrieve the data from the droid’s head shows. But the near-explosion she causes when pushing the limits to retrieve it, and Ahsoka’s quiet but judgmental air, ably demonstrates why things fell apart.

But Hera and Huyang make the case that they need one another, for structure, for support, for purpose. They’re each too proud, and a little too burned from the last experience, to admit it, but their friends are right. Sabine gradually accepts it. A meaningful haircut is a trope, but also a good signifier that Sabine is done running away from her past, and ready to embrace the path she was on when the Ghost crew road high.

And Ahsoka speaks of both master and apprentice simply knowing they’re ready, the reason behind her reluctance to start anew. But when Sabine shows up, ready to take up her vocation once more, feeling more “her”, each of them lives up to that standard. It’s time to start again.

That start doesn’t happen overnight. I imagine they won’t magically be on the same page the whole time in episode three. It’s a process. A journey. A transition for both of them. But with a measured, even soulful rendition of their intertwining path, I’m willing to wait.

[7.5/10] Ahsoka feels right. The vistas of Lothal feel of a piece with their animated rendition. The characters seem like themselves despite shifts in the performer and the medium. Their relationships feel genuine even though much has changed in the five years since we’ve seen them together.

Maybe that shouldn’t be a big surprise with Dave Filoni, impresario of the animated corner of Star Wars, both writing and directing “Master and Apprentice”, the series premiere. He is the title character’s co-creator and caretaker. He is the creator of Star Wars: Rebels, the show that Ahsoka is most clearly indebted to. And he is, for many, the keeper of the flame when it comes to the Galaxy Far Far Away.

But it was my biggest fear for this show. More than the plot, more than the lore, more than the latest chapter in the life of my favorite character in all of Star Wars, my concern was that translating all these characters, and their little corner of the universe, to live action and a different cast and a different era of the franchise would make everything feel wrong. Instead, we’re right at home. The rest is gravy.

And the gravy is good. Because these are not the colorful, if intense, adventures of the Ghost crew fans saw before. This is, or should be, a period of triumph for the onetime Rebels. They won! The Empire is torn asunder! Lothal is led with grace and a touch of wry sarcasm by Governor Azadi, with none other than Clancy Brown reprising the role! Huyang the lightsaber-crafting droid is still around and has most of his original parts!

Nonetheless, our heroes are hung up on old battles and older wounds. Ahsoka Tano is on a quest to track down Grand Admiral Thrawn, who hunted the Spectres in Rebels. Sabine Wren can’t bask in the afterglow of victory as a hero when she’s still mourning Ezra Bridger. And the two warriors have some lingering bad blood with one another after an attempt to become master and apprentice, true to the title, went wrong somewhere along the way.

With that, the first installment of Ahsoka is a surprisingly moody and meditative affair, one that works well for Star Wars. Sure, there's still a couple of crackerjack lightsaber fights to keep the casual fans engaged. But much of this one is focused on familiar characters reflecting on what’s been lost, what’s been broken, and what’s hard to fix. The end of Rebels was triumphant, but came with costs. To linger on those costs, and the new damage that's accumulated in their wake, is a bold choice from Filoni and company.

So is the decision to focus on Sabine here. Don’t get me wrong, Ahsoka has the chance to shine in the first installment of the show that bears her name. Her steady reclamation of a map to Thrawn, badass hack-and-slash on some interfering bounty droids, and freighted reunions with Hera and her former protege all vindicate why fans have latched onto the character. For her part, Rosario Dawson has settled into the role, bringing a certain solemnity that befits a more wizened and confident master, but also that subtle twinkle that Ashley Eckstei brings to the role.

And yet, the first outing for Ahsoka spends more time with Sabine’s perspective. It establishes her as a badass who’d rather rock her speeder with anti-authoritarian style than be honored for her heroics. It shows her grieving a lost comrade whose sacrifice still haunts her. It teases out an emotional distance and rebelliousness between her and her former mentor. And it closes with her using her artist’s eye to solve the puzzle du jour, and defend herself against a fearsome new enemy.

This is her hour, and while Sabine is older, more introverted, all the more wounded than the Mandalorian tagger fans met almost a decade ago, this opening salvo for the series is better for it.

My only qualms are with the threat du jour. Yet another Jedi not only survived the initial Jedi Purge, but has made it to the post-Return of the Jedi era without arousing the suspicions of Palpatine, Vader, Yoda, or Obi-Wan. Ray Stevenson brings a steady and quietly menacing air to Baylan Skoll, the former Jedi turned apparent mercenary, but there's enough rogue force-wielders running around already, thank you very much.

His apprentice holds her own against New Republic forces and Ahsoka’s own former apprentice, but is shrouded in mystery. She goes unidentified, which, in Star Wars land, means she’s secretly someone important (a version of Mara Jade from the “Legends” continuity?) or related to someone important (the child of, oh, let’s say Ventress). And I’m tired of such mystery boxes.

Throw in the fact that Morgan Elsbet, Ahsoka’s source and prisoner, turns out to be a Nightsister, and you have worrying signs that the series’ antagonists will be rehashing old material rather than moving the ball forward. The obvious “We just killed a major character! No for real you guys!” fakeout cliffhanger ending doesn’t inspire much confidence on that front either.

Nonetheless, what kept me invested in Rebels, and frankly all of Star Wars, despite plenty of questionable narrative choices, is the characters. The prospect of Ahsoka trying to train a non force-sensitive Mandalorian in the ways of the Jedi, or at least her brand of them, is a bold and fascinating choice.

But even more fascinating is two people who once believed in one another, having fallen apart, drifting back together over the chance to save someone they both care about. “Master and Apprentice” embraces, rather than shying away from, the sort of lived-in relationships that made the prior series so impactful in the past, and the broken bonds that make these reunions feel fragile, painful, and more than a little bitter in the present.

I am here for Hera the general trying to patch things up between old friends. I am here for Sabine holding onto her rebellious streak but carrying scars from what went wrong, in the Battle of Lothal and in her attempts to learn the ways of the Jedi. And I am here for Ahsoka, once the apprentice without a master, now the master without an apprentice, here to snuff out the embers of the last war and reclaim what was lost within it.

They all feel right. The rest can figure itself out.

[8.3/10] Hey! This is a landmark episode of Star Trek! Not only is it the first appearance of the holodeck (here termed merely “The Rec Room”), but it’s the first instance of the inevitable holodeck malfunction! I’ll admit, I’m a soft touch when it comes to comedy episodes and “we have to fix the ship” episodes in Star Trek, so this fit the bill for me.

For one thing, I loved how silly the practical jokes were. I laughed at loud at the Dennis the Menace-level “Kirk Is A Jerk” phrase emblazoned on the captain’s uniform.There was a lot of comedy in this one, and having Majel Barrett cackling as the ship’s computer and messing with the crew was a recipe for success.

But the episode didn’t skimp on action or excitement either. Watching the crew struggle to figure out what was wrong and try to fix it when the ship was actively working against them made for some interesting puzzles. And, however contrived, using a giant balloon to distract the Romulans and then tricking the ship into steering through the same energy field that started The Enterprise’s “nervous breakdown” was clever and fun. At the same time, McCoy, Uhura, and Sulu surviving the ship trying to freeze them to death had some good drama to it as well.

All-in-all, this is one of the more fun and inventive episode of The Animated Series so far, with the holodeck and ship-gone-mad conceits creating great opportunities for the show to flex its comedic and creative muscles.

[6.1/10] So, you think the folks behind the scenes at Star Trek wish they could rename this one now? Regardless of the semi-unfortunate title, this episode, like a handful in The Animated Series so far, feels a bit off-brand. Maybe that’s just a product of the animated show being able to pull off the kinds of stories that would be impossible in the live action incarnation of the series that set the tone for the franchise as a whole, but this felt closer to Fellowship of the Ring territory than anything Star Trek had done prior.

There’s some minor thrills in the all-star team from different species being sent to retrieve the bird people’s holy macguffin on a “mad planet,” but for the most part, it feels like going through the motions. I did like Lara (whose voice I mistook for that of legendary voice actress Tress MacNeille) as someone who was the aggressor for Kirk’s affections in contrast to Trek’s usual babes of the week. I also appreciated that there was a traitor in their midst, though the fact that it was the guy from the former war-like planet who wanted them to be warriors again felt like too much of a cliché for my tastes.

On the whole, there’s some decent action and a bit of suspense here and there (amid some obviously recycled footage), but like a few other TAS episodes, it feels like a rehash of the standard Saturday Morning blueprint rather than something uniquely Trek.

[8.2/10] One of the strongest parts of Star Trek is the way the franchise uses alien races to highlight what we value. There’s an awkwardness to the dinner between Captain Kirk’s crew and Chancellor Gorkon’s coterie in Star Trek VI, which helped highlight common ground and cultural differences. Geordi being put into a survival situation with a Romulan in The Next Generation underscored the ways in which their approaches were different, but there was a common enough interest to form the beginnings of a friendship. And lord knows Deep Space Nine has drawn out the differences between the Federation at the Bajorans, Cardassians, and Ferengi, while all these groups strive to work together.

“To the Death” does the same for the Federation and the Jem’Hadar, and it deepens both the Dominion and their bred-for-war soldiers. Sisko and company need to team with a detachment of Jem’hadar warriors, led by a conniving operator of a Vorta named Weyoun, to stop a rogue unit of Jem’Hadar from unlocking a tool that would allow them to impose their will across the whole galaxy.

“To the Death” has to do some dancing around the obvious options (“Why can't we just nuke the tool from space?” “Because it’s made of super duper material!”), but it’s a plausible setup for why representatives from the Federation and the Dominion have to team up to stop a threat that would pose problems for both of them. The fact that the superweapon du jour is Iconian gateway technology, introduced back in TNG, helps give the plot a connection to the broader storytelling universe and a whiff of plausibility.

Mostly, though, it’s a shaky but welcome excuse to have our heroes from DS9 and a pack of erstwhile villains from the Gamma Quadrant team-up for a mission and play contrast and compare. “To the Death” makes hay throughout the episode from the immediate tension between the two groups forced to share space on the Defiant. Different ways of doing things, mutual scoffing at the opposing group's style, and unease that one side could turn around and betray the other at a moment’s notice makes for a laudably tense energy throughout but also those subtle opportunities for two disparate peoples to bond that are the lifeblood of Star Trek.

Granted, this episode serves the purpose of simultaneously nerfing and deepening the Dominion, the former of which is a necessary concession and the latter of which is a worthy tradeoff. Suddenly, the Founders’ ability to command the Jem’Hadar on instinct alone is overstated. The Vorta can seemingly no longer do that weird psychic blast thing,and are functionaries and middlemen. The Jem’Hadar themselves are not unstoppable warriors, but rather standard issue brutes who our feeble human characters can withstand with minimal casualties in hand-to-hand combat.

I’ll admit, it’s a little cheap. Part of what makes The Dominion so intimidating in their early episodes is that Starfleet seems completely overmatched against them. Leveling the playing field a little makes for a more interesting conflict, but follows the trope of unstoppable badasses being brought low to the ground so they can plausibly become the villains of the week.

And yet, I’m on board, if only because the dynamics of The Dominion are so much more interesting once they’re fleshed out like this.

That starts with the Jem’Hadar. Building on the development they received in “Hippocratic Oath”, we see more signs of their devotion to their duty, and rebellions and resentments both subtle and not so subtle. The sense that the warriors are still loyal to the Founders, but low-key revile the Vorta who control them via their addiction makes for a rich dynamic.

But hey, you’d revile Weyoun too. Jeffrey Combs has famously played a score of characters across Star Trek, but for my money, this is his best role. He is at once manipulative, oily, annoyed at his duty to manage the warrior class, jockeying for position, and undeniably compelling. The way he’s ready for slick diplomacy with Sisko, stoops to petty means to mislead and control the Jem’Hadar first Omet’iklan, and reverent (if still hustling) with Odo gives The Dominion a layered and formidable representative who pays off bigtime.

The point of illuminating details about the dynamic within the Dominion isn’t just for worldbuilding, though. It’s to put into relief the distinctions between the Starfleet officers and the Jem’Hadar soldiers. And as the title portends, the main difference is in whether, and how, the two groups value life.

For the Starfleet contingent, fighting is a necessary evil that allows the other joys of living to continue. The Jem’Hadar don’t eat, don’t sleep, don’t celebrate their victories. Instead, they have tunnel vision, devoting everything to a cause that they are as committed to as they are joyless in. They sneer at the humans for eating and sleeping rather than training, something they dismiss as weakness, and even Worf scoffs at them for being so stolid as not to bask in their glory and sing songs of their victories. The purpose of life between the two groups is different, and it makes it harder, on top of everything else, for them to work together.

More to the point, the way they value their lives is different. The Jem’Hadar are disposable soldiers, who are considered honored elders if they reach twenty. (Something that, in an underbaked B-story, gives Dax a bit of admiration from one for her long-lived status.) The Jem’Hadar don’t hesitate to turn any mission into a suicide mission, whereas our heroes want to make it out alive to see their families again. The Jem’Hadar slay those close to them as a means of “discipline,” whereas Sisko and company risk their own lives to save their comrades. The biggest cultural difference comes in what the two groups think their own lives, and the lives of their allies, are worth.

This all comes to a head in a confrontation with the rogue Jem’Hadar, which, candidly, is a bit of a letdown. You can only build up a tense battle between unstoppable badasses so much until the inevitable scuffle on the studio backlot can't live up to the hype. But the day is saved, of course, and two important choices are made.

For one, Sisko risks his life to save Omet’iklan. He demonstrates that for however weak the humans may seem to the Jem’Hadar, their compassion and appreciation for life shows the Jem’Hadar a grace and respect they don’t seem to get from their Dominion masters, who see them as disposable soldiers. Perhaps inspired by the example, the Omet’iklan kills Weyoun before he can lord the ketracel-white over them a moment longer, suggesting that even if the Jem’Hadar are not ready to adopt the Federation lifestyle, they’ve taken a few key things to heart.

That's the crux of these cultural exchange episodes. It’s unrealistic for everyone to be singing kumbaya together by the end of the hour. Cultural tolerance and meshing doesn’t happen that quickly. But seeing how someone else lives their lives, the values they bring to bear, can change you just a little. It’s the idea that Star Trek is built on, with these larger than life fables helping us to see a better, more humane, more understanding way in the real world.

And here, it’s founded on one of those core Star Trek principles -- a respect for life that extends even to your enemy. Deep Space Nine has tested that principle in the past, and will do so again plenty in the future. But for one week at least, it’s heartening to see tensions flare and cultures clash, only for that trademark respect to build bridges between enemies, rather than burn them.

[8.0/10] Love and duty can tear you in opposite directions. Benjamin loves Kassidy. He basks in the scent on her pillow, entrusts her with his son, and exults in their time together. But Captain Sisko is wary of Captain Yates, as she tries to find ways out of inspections and faces suspicions of smuggling supplies to the Maquis in contravention of Federation law.

That is the heart of “For the Cause”. It took a lot for Benjamin to let someone into his life like this. Kassidy has been around for a long time now, becoming a presence on the show that changes the dynamic for Sisko in more ways than one. The episode thrives on the emotional turmoil of coming to care for someone so deeply over a long stretch, only to find that whatever personal feelings you may have, their choices may challenge you just as deeply in your role as a professional. The sense of betrayal, the wariness around someone you used to feel a profound trust and intimacy with, wouldn't have the same impact if Deep Space Nine had just introduced Kassidy in the same episode.

That said, you do have to set aside the fact that Sisko is strangely unprofessional here. You’d think that the first time Odo and Eddington told Sisko that they suspected Yates of malfeasance, he’d say, “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I’m delegating this matter to Major Kira, since I clearly can't be objective in managing the investigation given my personal connection to Kassidy.” But if he did that, then there would be no episode, so I suppose the good material for Avery Brooks, and Captain Sisko, is worth a strange aberration in protocol.

Because it creates all sorts of tense decision points for Benjamin. Does he let Kassidy’s ship go without an inspection when she makes a personal appeal to him (something that also violates good practices), or does he make her submit to the look-see in the name of security? He lets her go, and decides to have her followed, but would he do the same if she weren’t his girlfriend? Would she get the same leeway or surveillance?

And what about at home? There he’s more distant, playing the part of the doting partner, but surreptitiously pumping her for information, subtly questioning where she’s been and what she’s been up to. If much of this episode centers on Sisko seemingly violating his objectivity as an officer because of his affections for Yates, much of it also centers on him violating the trust and intimacy of his personal relationship in the name of doing his job. The intersection of his personal feelings and his professional obligations is fraught territory, and there’s both narrative and emotional power in Benjamin trying to navigate the two.

In a strange way, the same applies to the B-story here, which sees an apparent courtship, or at least friendship, emerge between Garak and Dukat’s daughter, Ziyal. The tone is very different, but the concordance between them plays out in similar terms. The pair seem drawn to one another, but longstanding enmity between Garak and Dukat (did we know that Garak tortured Dukat’s father?), and a threat from Kira not to mess with Ziyal put even the normally unflappable Garak on edge. Should he act on this, or should he give into his justified paranoia that this could all be some kind of 4D chess to make an attempt on his life?

In a weird way, it’s the same business vs. personal conflict Sisko is going through. Should Garak let his personal feelings about Ziyal win out, or should he give into the more pragmatic concerns that have directed his life to date? On the one hand, I like where “For the Cause” lands. Garak needs to reassure himself about his paranoia, but Ziyal makes a good point. They’re both outcasts. They’re both all but forbidden from returning home. They have much in common, and can provide each other with some camaraderie and comfort as the only two Cardassians aboard. Resolving things on a note of connection is a canny choice in an episode otherwise full of the bittersweet.

On the other hand, this also feels like an effort to give Garak a case of the not-gays. I’m not qualified to wade into the complicated morass of queer-coding characters amid network standards and practices in the 1990s. But suffice it to say, I’ve always read Garak as being primarily attracted to Dr. Bashir, and my understanding is that Andrew Robinson played him that way. It’s unreasonable to expect television writers to follow your headcanon, but something feels off and out-of-step with prior portrayals about the romantic undertones to Garak’s budding connection with Ziyal, and it tempers an otherwise solid subplot in “For the Cause”.

The resolution of the main story is even better. The show has its cake and eats it too. Turns out, Captain Yates is conspiring with the Maquis behind Sisko’s back, but only to give them badly needed food and medical supplies, not weapons or anything harmful. Meanwhile, the real betrayer is Lt. Eddington, who used Kassidy as bait to get Sisko off the station and give him the wiggle room to take over the station and thwart a shipment of industrial replicators meant to fortify the Cardassians.

I love that choice. Eddington has been around even longer than Yates. He’s been a consistent presence, but also a fairly milquetoast one, blending into the background with his “I just do my job” approach, which makes him the perfect spy. He’s had a few suspicious moments (which is why many fans suspected he was a Changeling), but for the most part, he’s been the consummate, unremarkable professional. Making him the true bad guy, playing the part to perfection, while Kassidy has unclean hands but is more of a red herring for the true malfeasance, adds to the gut punch of Eddington getting the better of our heroes.

His monologue to Sisko after the fact doesn’t have much to do with the themes of the episode, but may nonetheless be one of the most powerful critiques of the Federation in a show not short on them. Call him on his crap or not, but the idea that the Maquis just want to be left alone, that their truest “crime” is rejecting paradise, that the Federation is no less insidious at assimilation than the Borg, are recriminations that ring with a certain amount of truth and sting. Frankly, it’s a perspective that deserves its own piece. But in brief, it’s a necessary tonic to the aspirational but sometimes myopic perspective that the Federation represents within Star Trek, and one that lands with extra force given the geopolitical landscape of the 1990s.

But the greater focus here is on the push-and-pull between Kassidy and Benjamin as lovers in private and as adversaries in public. Sisko and the Defiant catch Yates in the act, confirming Benjamin’s worst fears. There it is. He’s been blind. He’s been hoodwinked. The woman he thought he loved is a traitor.

Only, she isn’t exactly. She was following her duty, her principles, the same way he was. She comes back to face the music, not out of some abstract ideal, but because she cares about Benjamin enough to owe him an accounting. Despite it all, these two people love one another. The stellar performances bear that out. But they come with the bittersweet acknowledgement that however they may feel about one another behind closed doors, their crimes and obligations as captains take precedence, at least for the moment.

So Benjamin embraces Kassidy, and then calls in his security to take her to stand trial for her actions. And Kassidy embraces Benjamin, knowing that coming back to be honest with him is the only chance of salvaging the authentic love behind the necessary subterfuge.

That is a hard thing. To care about someone and be forced to let them go because it’s your job. To love someone but be forced to lie to them because it’s your duty. The conflict between who Benjamin and Kassidy want to be, and who they have to be, gives this one incredible force. I don’t think it’s any great spoiler to tell you that you’ll see Kassidy Yates again. But when you do, it comes with the more complicated relationship that emerges in the wake of she and Sisko’s personal lives crashing headlong into their professional lives, as they both try to stay afloat amid the wreckage that ensues.

[9.3/10] The single-serving nature of most Star Trek episodes pre-DS9 means that you rarely got to see the aftermath and scars of all these grand adventures. Geordi gets the Manchurian Candidate treatment from a bunch of Romulans? He’s fine the next episode. Troi gets genetically altered without her consent and thrown into a tense espionage situation? No worries, she’s okay by the following week. Riker gets kidnapped by aliens and made to question his own sense of reality not once but three separate occasions? Don’t worry about it! Never mentioned again.

There are practical reasons for these things that make them excusable as a product of their time, but it’s frustrating because it elides one of the richest veins of storytelling. High water marks for The Next Generation like “Family” and “I, Borg” and even Star Trek: First Contact partly owe their power to the fact that they explored Picard’s scars from his encounter with the Borg in “The Best of Both Worlds”, a rarity for this era of the franchise.

That's what’s so cool, and also so harrowing about “Hard Time” from Deep Space Nine. It starts the story where so many episodes from Star Trek end it. When we meet Chief O’Brien, he’s effectively already escaped the danger. The peril is over. Now, for once, Star Trek can focus on the aftermath, the trauma, the picking up the pieces after dealing with something unimaginable, that the franchise has otherwise glided over for so many years. And it is masterful.

In a strange way, the episode asks, “What if we did ‘The Inner Light’ from TNG, except instead of being brought into a welcoming community, you were sent to a POW camp?” O’Brien must suffer, after all. So the aliens of the week accuse him of espionage, and punish him with a technology that gives him memories as though he’s spent twenty years in a brutal prison. He comes back psychologically ravaged, if physically fine.

“Hard Time” is about the lingering psychological challenges of having experienced such a trauma. On a broader level, it’s about PTSD, and the people who come back from horrible experiences that test the limits of the human soul and struggle to make it back to what used to be their normal. There’s no external threat here. No ticking clock. No galaxy-altering stakes. Instead, it’s just one man’s struggle to live with the torture he was unjustly subjected to.

In truth, at times it’s hard to watch. Colm Meaney often gives the kind of unshowy but impeccable performances that are easy to overlook but also easy to take for granted. He commendably underplays most of his scenes, bringing a sense of grounded realism to everyday interactions that helps the wild stuff that goes down in Star Trek feel like something genuine happening to real people.

But “Hard Time” gives Meaney a lot to do, and a lot of challenges as an actor, and he responds with what can only be called his most vulnerable, most honest, and most outstanding performance yet, which is saying something. O’Brien, and by extension Meaney, shows such layers here. It’s not easy portraying someone who is reacclimating to a life without horror, who is straining to present himself like everything is fine and normal, but who is breaking down on the inside. But Meaney is more than up to the challenge, with moments of reluctance, anger, and abject pain that cannot help but move the viewer (or, at least, certainly moved me).

There’s also so many little lived-in details that add to the sense of verisimilitude of what Miles has been through. The way he reflexively ferrets away his food, the way he reverts to sleeping on the floor because it’s what he’s used to, the way he struggles to remember that his wife is pregnant are all quietly heartbreaking. It would be a long time between “Hard Time” and Homeland, but these scenes call to mind an American soldier’s painful, uncomfortable return home after so long away on that show. Deep Space Nine doesn’t skimp on the realness of all of this, which makes Miles’ struggle that much more visceral and full of pathos.

Candidly, it’s hard to watch sometimes. If you’ve ever had friends or family members who’ve dealt with similar experiences, there’s something uncomfortably familiar about his reactions. The initial hesitance and uncertainty, the attempts to pretend that everything’s fine, the slow burning but quickly-erupting anger that shows a side of Miles even he doesn’t recognize. This episode is a very internal story, about someone recovering from an unimaginable trauma. The plausibility of the slow grind to coping with this hardship, mixed with scenes of his imprisonment and torture, are piercing and painful in how much truth rests within them.

The good and uplifting thing is that everyone around Miles is understanding and supportive. Deep Space Nine is rarely an aspirational show in the way that The Next Generation tended to be. But the way that everyone aboard models an encouraging response to O’Brien’s recovery is one of the most laudable things here. Keiko is endlessly understanding and supportive, and her covering him with a blanket on the floor is one of the most understatedly sweet moments on the show. Tough-as-nails Kira taking a soft tone with him, Worf wanting to play darts with Miles even though he doesn’t like the game, even Sisko insisting that Miles get help and get right before he can return to duty shows an understanding of the difficulty of what Chief O’Brien is experiencing, and the need to give him long runway and ample to support to help him start to get better.

Of course, the most significant player on that front is Julian. It’s a bit of an awkward position, because he’s both Miles’ doctor and his friend. But it’s also a unique position, because he cares about the Chief’s health and recovery from a medical perspective, but is also gentle, patient, and yielding but firm with him from a personal perspective. As “Accession” signified, the two have formed a close bond in Keiko’s time away from the station, and seeing that bond tested, yet affirmed, by how Julian helps Miles face this crisis even when Miles is pushing him away, is one of the more wholesome things in a tough episode.

But the pushing away is the point. Because Miles isn’t just struggling with adjusting to normal life again after a horrendous experience. He is alienating himself from others, isolating himself from the people he trusts and loves, because he’s scared of what he might do to them, because he feels guilt for what he already did -- murder his cellmate over a scrap of food.

I love the way “Hard Time” spoon feeds us that reveal and O’Brien’s growing discomfort with the memory, as represented by hallucinations of his quasi-departed friend, Ee’char. The “flashbacks” to O’Brien’s implanted memories illustrate the connection they formed over the course of years, the slow degradation of Miles’ ability to hold it together, and the fateful day when he was starving and beleaguered and could handle no more, so took it out on the only person around to bear his wrath.

It is sad, not just because it’s a tidy little story about what torture does to people, or because Ee’char was a bolt of light in a pit of darkness, but because it disturbs Miles into thinking he’s a monster not fit to be around people. We see him snap at Odo, at Sisko, at Dax, and at Julian. We see him physically assault Quark when he can't get his synth-ale on time. And most harrowing of all, we see him yell at young Molly, and eventually admit he might have struck her.

I’ll confess that the last part made me tear up, a sign of how this kind man had been brought low by this cruel punishment he’d done nothing to deserve. I hate that the show turned it into an act break tease, but it’s tragic and disquieting to watch him charge up a phaser and hold it to his own throat. It’s sad because you know he needs help, because what happened to him is entirely unfair, and because however wrong he is, you can understand why he feels that way. Seeing a part of yourself you hate, that puts the people you love at risk, is incredibly difficult.

Miles can't write the murder off as a simulation because, real or not, it was real to him, and he made those choices. He knows what he would do when pushed to that terrible limit, and he hates himself for it. And to the same end, this story is obviously fiction, but it mirrors the experience of too many who’ve been through hell, come back in need of healing, and worry that they’re too broken to stay around anymore. Rarely has Star Trek, in any form, cut to the quick of something so true and so sad in such an unflinching way.

But I love Julian’s response to his friend wrestling with his lowest point. Miles is worried his captivity stamped out the humanity in him. Julian reassures him that his pain and guilt is a sign that it’s still there, that it only left in for a moment, under the most dire and extreme of circumstances. And he tells him that the greatest tragedy would be to lose a good man, who does feel the empathy and care that make this hard for him. It’s the very sensitivity and fear about all this that show Miles’ captors didn’t eradicate his humanity. They forced him to slip for a single moment of weakness under impossible circumstances, until the true and noble part took back over again.

Accepting that, accepting the help he needs, accepting that it’s okay to let the people who love you get close to you without worrying that you’ll hurt them, allows Miles to make some peace with his demons and send the vision of Ee’char on his way. More importantly, it allows him to step back into his home and hold his daughter, gratified in the knowledge that the gentle, loving man is still there, and worthy of love. Were that all those who suffered like Miles did could believe and receive the same.

Despite the amateur, armchair analysis I deliver in these write-ups, I am not a psychologist or a counselor. I can't speak to the accepted practices for helping others recover from trauma, cope with PTSD, grapple with guilt and depression. I can suspect that even with a whole episode devoted to the aftermath and recovery for once, it takes more than one story-friendly “breakthrough”, and more time and healing than even a full forty-five minute episode can reasonably convey.

But I also believe it involves kindness and empathy from those who care about the person suffering. I believe it means letting people in, letting those who love you show it and help you on that path.I believe it requires recognizing, as Julian cautions at the end of the episode, that there are treatments, not cure, and any road to healing is a winding and open-ended one.

Too often, Star Trek skips over that part. There’s good justifications for that. People watch these shows to escape and to be able to enjoy the adventure and excitement of these complex but talented characters. Watching good people struggle with their slow-burning misery on an extended basis isn’t fun television.

But I think it’s necessary to show this sort of thing, at least once in a while, to recognize that these whiz-bang or intellectual adventures are not weightless or costless, and to acknowledge that even when the credits roll, real people take time to readjust, to forgive themselves, and hopefully, one day, to heal.

[8.0/10] Religion is an awkward recurring motif for a Star Trek show. One writer described the denizens of Starfleet vessels as largely secular humanists, and they regularly encounter godlike beings, so personal belief doesn’t pop up much. It’s not as though the topic’s never come up. (Woe be to the 1960s episode where the twist is that the aliens love Jesus.) But it’s not always a natural fit for the ethos of the franchise.

And yet, it works for Deep Space Nine for a few reasons. For one, that means it’s largely unexplored territory for the show to charge into, something to help differentiate this spin-off from its predecessors. For another, the ethos of this particular series is to check how Federation values fare when forced to deal with the realities and friction of outsiders’ views, and religion is a good fault line for that. But most of all, it works because DS9’s protagonist is as uncomfortable about this spiritual wave crashing into his life as many inveterate Trekkies were.

He’s never liked being the Emissary. He’s always felt discomfort about being treated as a religious icon when he considers himself a friend to the Bajorans, but a mortal man simply doing his job. Deep Space Nine has engaged with that tension surprisingly rarely through the first half of its run, using Sisko’s reluctance to compartmentalize the role that was prophesied for him in the first episode. But “Accession” delves into his complicated feelings about being the Emissary with conviction, in a way that makes you glad to see the series examining what it means to him now.

And who better to write that sort of episode than Jane Espenson, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame? I believe this is her only dalliance with Star Trek, which is a shame. But if there’s anyone qualified to pen a story about a humane approach to someone both blessed and burdened by prophecy, it’s her.

In “Accession” Sisko has a chance to become unburdened! A Bajoran man named Akorem bursts out of the wormhole in an ancient ship. When he comes to, he announces himself as the Emissary. And why not? He met the prophets in the celestial temple! They healed his wounds! They “gave him his life back”! They sent him two-hundred years into the future to help his people after the Cardassian occupation! Benjamin’s read the texts, and they tell him one important thing -- he’s finally off the hook!

Only, of course, it’s not so simple. This is, in writing terms, an instance of Sisko refusing the call. He never wanted to be Emissary, which made life more difficult for him personally and with the Starfleet brass, so he’s more than happy to step aside when someone comes in to take the job. But as in all good writing, getting what he’s wanted doesn’t give Benjamin what he wants. (Or as one Buffy character more eloquently put it, “there’s always consequences.”)

That's what I like best about this episode. Sisko’s glad to be free of this burden, but then the consequences hit. He clearly despises the fact that Akorem’s big move as Emissary is to return Bajor to “the old ways,” which means reviving an abominable caste system. The de jure prejudice all but dooms Bajor’s chances of joining the Federation, and since Benjamin’s task was to bring the planet into the fold, Starfleet views this shift as his failure. (It’s appropriately and bitterly ironic since they never liked him being the Emissary in the first place.)

Sisko was pleased with this because he thought it could let him return his focus to getting things back to normal -- the guy has enough problems in his secular life without being a spiritual bigwig to a whole planet -- but instead stepping down upends everything he’s tried to achieve in the last several years.

He’s not the only one who finds that getting what he wanted means getting more than you bargained for. Chief O’Brien’s period of temporary bachelorhood is ending. Keiko is back! Molly is back! Surprise, there’s another baby on the way! Miles puts up a good front, and never complains about a thing, but in the transition back to domestic bliss, he clearly misses the drinks and dogfights with Julian that became his daily routine over the past year.

On the one hand, this storyline puts me off a bit. Yes, this is 1996, and allowances have to be made, but a sitcom-esque, “Dad dislikes being a family man” storyline is still hacky and a little distasteful. But I’d like to give Deep Space Nine and Espenson a little more credit than that. Everyone here is likable. Miles is understandably a bit wistful and worried, but he loves his wife and wants to spend time with his daughter, even as he misses the guy time with his best friend. For all the crap Keiko gets in the fanbase, she’s understanding and even connives to get her husband some of that fun time out with Dr. Bashir so that he doesn’t have to feel bad about taking some time for himself.

This subplot is mostly for comic relief, with a particularly funny callback to Worf delivering Molly back in “Disaster” from The Next Generation. But for all the broadness of the subject, it’s a pleasantly nuanced and gentle take on a parent wanting to hold onto a piece of the life they enjoyed apart from parenthood. There’s no bad guy. Everyone’s reasonable and adult about it. It’s hard to complain.

It’s much easier to gripe about what Akorem is doing as the Emissary. With his proclamation of the return of the caste system, things are becoming ugly aboard the station. Bajorans expect deference to those higher in the social hierarchy. The Vedek who seems to be orchestrating much of this kills a man for refusing to give up his life and submit to the expectations of his caste. (And we know how much Benjamin just loves culturally-justified murder after the last episode.) This is all escalating and worsening quickly.

The great thing, though, is that none of this is what puts Sisko over the edge. He doesn’t like any of it, but he’s willing to tolerate it all, even the personal setbacks, in the name of good ol’ Federation non-interference. But what he won’t tolerate, won’t sit idly by and let happen, is losing Kira.

I love Kira in this. She is arguably the most untraditional Star Trek character in the whole lot. She was a freedom fighter, who engaged in tactics and personal actions that most Starfleet officers would find unbecoming. And she is also a person of supreme faith, who may not buy the word of every charlatan in a Vedek’s robes, but who believes deeply in the Bajoran religion and its precepts.

So when Akorem becomes Emissary and declares that everyone’s going back to their castes, she’s put out but acquiesces, because she thinks it's what the prophets demand of her. She stays up all night making ugly clay birds because she thinks she’s supposed to be an artist. And when she tries to tell the local Vedek that something must be wrong because she’s no good at it, Kira takes his advice, gets ready to resign her commission, and apprentice with an artist back home to truly throw herself into this and commit.

It is, in some way, the greatest fear of people like Odo, who don’t necessarily understand the tenets of belief. It’s hard to watch Kira throw away all she’s accomplished because the man she thinks was chosen by the gods tells her too. I imagine it’s many Trekkies’ fears about blind faith realized, one that tracks with real life instances of would-be prophets and self-proclaimed messengers leading good people into darkness because they think it’s what their religion demands of them.

As tolerant as Sisko is, he won’t tolerate this. His solution is brilliant. Rather than challenging Akorem, he implores him to go see the prophets together. And there, the prophets disclaim Akorem’s interpretation of his role, discarding him as the Emissary and rejecting his need to return to the caste system.

But they do so only indirectly, and that's part of what makes them so interesting. There are limits to how far you can go in a show where the audience still needs to understand what’s happening. (Sorry, my fellow Twin Peaks fans!) But I like the sense that the prophets here are still somewhat unknowable. They don’t so much say, “returning to the caste system of the past is wrong” as they say, “We have no concept of past, so we don’t even understand why someone would think like this.” They have no concept of the Emissary exactly, just that Benjamin is “the Sisko” and that Akorem wasn’t sent to the present to lead the Bajorans in a spiritual awakening; he was sent there for Ben.

That's the rub. The Prophets send Akorem back to his time period (with implications for temporal mechanics that are as confusing and nonsensical as Star Trek always is). But this episode is the clearest affirmation yet that, like it or not, Benjamin, you are the Emissary. An “orb shadow” visit from none other than Kai Opaka in his dreams is a fitting affirmation of the idea that Akorem was sent to help Ben, to show him that however reluctant he may be, this is his part to play, and more than that, that it helps him do good for the Bajoran people, keep them from harm and help lead them on a path toward, if not salvation, then certainly greater peace and prosperity. And it helps him keep the people he loves, people like Kira, safe and happy too.

In the beginning of the episode, he is gracious but hesitant when asked to bless a young couple as the Emissary. In the end, he smiles with ease and peace when asked to bless a young woman who’s coming of age. The Prophets work in mysterious ways, but the result of their intervention is a man who was once unsure, and is now comfortable with what he is, knowing that it means something to him having temporarily lost it. Whether they’re deities or mere wormhole aliens, they have a way of helping him reach breakthroughs.

And that's the glory of the exploration of religion on Deep Space Nine. It evinces skepticism about how religion is practiced and manipulated, but it embraces the comfort and catharsis a connection to something greater can provide. The show’s most prominent religious character is also its most dastardly villain, but one of its strongest players is a woman of deep faith. Religion will always be an awkward fit for Star Trek and its fans. But with great episodes like this one, both we, and Captain Sisko, can grow more comfortable with the place it holds.

[7.7/10] It’s funny what lingers with you and what doesn’t. I watched much of Deep Space Nine when it first aired, so I remember the big things that happened. I remember the growing tensions with The Dominion. I remember the budding romance between Dax and Worf. I remember the moral gray areas that Captain Sisko had to navigate his way through on the station.

And yet, for whatever reason, I still remembered Rom as little more than Quark’s, well, idiot brother.

But he isn’t! And my biggest pleasant surprise in return to the series all these years later is seeing Rom slowly but surely grow from a bumbling, deferential younger sibling into a self-possessed independent person. One of the most striking and sad moments on the show comes when Sisko challenges Nog to account for why he wants to join Starfleet, and the young Ferengi’s reason amount to, “I don’t want to be mistreated and marginalized by my people, and even my family, the way my dad is.”

“Bar Association” is, famously, the union episode. Not surprisingly, Star Trek attracts a good number of fans whose politics align nicely with Chief O’Brien’s. Because of that, this one has become a cult favorite in certain corners. I can't deny the charm of Rom pouring over theory and declaring “All you have to lose is your chains!”, or the fun of Miles declaring that his Allegheny ancestor was more than a hero, “He was a union man” with a wink, or the inspiration of Quark’s mistreated workers banding together to demand better from their boss.

But what I love most about this episode is that it is, at its core, an episode about Rom coming into his own, and about his relationship with a brother who often clipped his wings in the name of making sure he never fell too far. The strike adds flavor to the episode, and makes for a good means to draw out longstanding conflicts between Quark and Rom, and the show’s long-running thread of each bucking against Ferengi traditions in certain ways. But at the end of the day, I’m more invested in Quark taking a stand, any stand, and standing up to his older sibling, beyond what he’s taking a stand for.

Rom’s not the only one finding his place on the station though. “Bar Association” returns to what already feels like an old chestnut for DS9 at this point -- Worf adjusting to life on the station. I’ll admit, it seems like the show isn’t quite sure what to do with Worf just yet. His role in the season premiere was great and meaningful. But since then, either it’s telling the same types of stories about his relationship to Kingon culture you could have told on The Next Generation, or its the same kind of “Things are different aboard DS9, and I’m not comfortable with that!” B-stories.

It’s not bad though, just a little mild. Worf gets frustrated with Odo when a miscreant burgles his quarters, only for Odo to cheekily point out that they had nogoodniks get one over on Worf aboard the Enterprise too. There’s a solid conversation between him and O’Brien, freighted with meaning, about how the mix of technologies on the station means there’s always a problem for the engineer to solve, but a lack of order that irritates Worf. And there’s even an off-screen scuffle between the two over crossing the picket line.

The upshot of all of this is that Worf decides to live aboard the Defiant as a middle ground which, hey, fine. It’s a half-solution to a pretty nebulous problem of Worf feeling less than settled on the station. But mostly, it serves to show Dax understanding how he feels and trying to ease his transition. Their dynamic is one of the few parts of Worf’s launch into another series that the writers seemed to understand from the jump, and it’s bolstered here.

But the more compelling and fully-formed part of this one is Rom’s crusade. It’s a hoot how Rom takes a simple “theoretical” suggestion from Dr. Bashir to form a union, and uses it to not only organize his fellow employees into a collective force, but run an effective strike that brings his brother to the bargaining table through courage and persistence.

There’s all sots of fun, albeit cartoonish aspects of that. The union meetings are entertaining from the fellow Ferengi’s over-the-top concerns and Rom’s exuberance and devotion to the cause. The return of Liquidator Brunt and Jeffrey Combs is a treat as always, as he brings his Nausikan Pinkertons in an effort to break the strike. And Sisko exerting some leverage as a Quark’s landlord to make him listen to his brother’s demands is an amusing but cool scene as well.

What I like most about it, though, is the way Rom uses his brother’s admonitions against him. When Quark tries to use their sibling relationship to end the strike, Rom spits Quark’s own words back that in matters of business they’re just employer and employee. When Quark begs his brother to end the work stoppage to avoid the Nausikans from doing something drastic to Rom, Rom stands firm and says it would make Quark an only child like he’s always wanted. Rom even quotes the Rules of Acquisition Quark’s so fond of quoting to undermine his brother’s position.

“Bar Association” is about a political awakening, and has lots of fun on that measure. But it’s also about a personal awakening from Rom, about how his brother has been holding him back, penning him in, treating him as less capable and less talented than he is. In truth, I think Quark is at least partly well-intentioned in his belief that Rom needs a lot of handholding, but he’s also at his worst here, and not above blaming or outright exploiting Rom to suit his own needs. Rom figuring that out, and fighting back against a lifetime of marginalization from his sibling as much as he’s fighting for his fellow owkrer’s rights, makes this one engaging on multiple levels.

That's why I love the finish here. Rom wins! He gets Quark to cave, while finding a way to make it seem like he hasn’t, so that Brunt doesn’t sic the Nausikans on Quark again. He insists on Quark making the changes straight away, not letting his brother hoodwink him or stall yet again. And he even gets some affection and admiration from Leeta for his efforts, and while she’s mostly a trophy at this point, their connection here is an auspicious one. All this determination, all this bravery, all this guile leads Rom to success in achieving his goals.

At the end of the day, though, he quits the bar and starts working as a technician on the station. He fought for those improvements to working conditions in the bar because it was the right thing to do, and he wants them for his fellow workers. But the fight also made him realize what he can achieve apart from Quark, and how it might even improve their relationship to sever that employer/employee business in the way, so they can focus on just being brothers.

Suffice it to say, there’s other high points for Rom to come, but this may be the high water mark. When you’re a kid, it’s easy to chuckle at a bumbling character who cowers in the face of threats and gets the short end of the stick every time. But as an adult, you come to recognize how much intelligence, talent, and grace there is in corners of our communities where people refuse to look, or even actively suppress. Seeing someone rise above that, for that community, and find himself in the process, is an arc equal to or greater than all the moral choices and geopolitical snarls Deep Space Nine would cook up over the course of its seven years on the air.

[7.5/10] You can be away from something for so long that it no longer belongs to you. Despite brief detours commanding Klingon ships or visiting Klingon colonies, Worf has been among humans for long enough that, even though he’ll always be a child of two worlds, Klingon values will never fully be his values. As much as he respects his people’s rituals, as much as he cares for their traditions, as much as he seeks to preserve his honor, he is from the Klingon Empire, not of it. A lifetime away has left him apart from other Klingons in his heart, long before Gowron re-excommunicated him.

But the same isn’t true for Kurn. He grew up among his people. He disdains the comforts aboard a Bajoran space station. He defers to the Empire even when he disagrees. He deals death and desires it all the more as the only honorable thing left to him. He defers to his older brother even when he’s disgusted with his choices.

That is the poetry of “Songs of Mogh”. Worf and Kurn are both alienated from their fellow Klingons. But for Worf, it comes with the realization that he doesn’t feel as they do, want what they want, believe what they believe anymore. For Kurn, it is a separation from what he still desires, the unyielding sense of honor and propriety working against his own fulfillment. They’re in the same place, but for very different reasons, and with very different emotional reactions to the same estrangement from their people.

I like that as a throughline for the episode. These are brothers. However long they’ve been apart, they love each other, want what’s best for one another, are frustrated at the state each other are in. There is care but not understanding, which is a source of a lot of great filial writing on television. (Hello Better Call Saul fans!)

I appreciate how the choice to reunite them adds meaning to Worf’s choice in “The War of the Warrior”. It was already impactful for Worf to turn his back on Gowron because he believed the chancellor he helped install on the throne was acting without honor, because it meant cutting off the connection to the Klingon people that meant so much to Worf. But he wasn’t just making a choice for him. He made a choice that robbed Kurn of all they’d achieved together, without so much as discussing it with his brother. Worf having to tend to a humbled, suicidal Kurn, confront how his principled stand has personal consequences, is Deep Space Nine playing fair, rather than glossing over a significant ripple from one of its main characters’ decisions.

Their reunion also creates a dynamic you don’t see much of on television -- a family member tending to someone they love who is unbalanced and unwell. (Hello again, Better Call Saul fans!) Without getting too personal, I can sympathize with Worf. I know what it’s like to love someone who’s in a bad place, and want to do everything in your power to help them and keep them from harm, while they struggle with the everyday demands of living in a world with sharp edges. Dramatizing the challenges of that, the mix of boundless love, frustration, and worry that come with caring for a loved one dealing with mental and emotional challenges, is rare on television, and Deep Space Nine handles it with compassion and grace, as usual.

It also gives another trademark Ronald D. Moore exploration of the duality of Worf’s position. You understand both Sisko and Kurn’s positions here, given where they stand. But there’s a tragic irony to Benjamin dressing down one of his lieutenants for intentionally killing someone aboard his station, at the same time Worf’s own brother is excoriating him for not trying hard enough to kill him. Worf can't make anyone happy, and there is pathos in that, even if you can understand why the Captain’s cultural tolerance doesn’t extend as far as ritual killings.

The one person who does understand is Dax. I’ll admit, I find her and Worf’s slap-slap-kiss routine a little tiresome (if appropriate for a Klingon romance). But I like this episode as the true seed of their mutual affections. As a friend to the Klingons, and someone who knows what it’s like to be away from your people surrounded by those who don’t necessarily understand your practices, she’s sympathetic to and understanding of Worf, giving him someone in his corner who gets his pain in a way no one else does. That's a strong foundation for a close relationship, regardless of whether the show decided to make it romantic, and it adds something to the proceedings.

That said, the episode has some problems. One is that everyone feels a bit more harsh and mean than they do normally. Odo is uncharacteristically jerky to Worf despite their seeming rapport, emphasizing that he “collects on his debts” in a fashion that seems out of step for the Changeling. Sisko has good reason for his anger, but the way he takes it out on O’Brien seems off.

There’s also something less than smooth about Kurn’s progression here. In some ways, that is as it should be. Someone who is suicidal doesn’t always act in clear or predictable ways. But there’s not always a strong sense of cause and effect within the story, with it sometimes feeling like a mix of random vignettes and oratory essays rather than a complete narrative. Again, that suits the subject matter to a degree, but it can leave the episode feeling disjointed from moment to moment.

It also involves a somewhat perfunctory subplot about the Klingons setting cloaked mines near the station. It’s not as though this B-story is pointless. It advances the broader arc of provocations between the Klingon Empire and the Federation; it allows Worf to point out to Kurn how their people are acting recklessly and without honor, and it provides an excuse for the brothers to team up on a mission that reveals more of the differences between them. But it plays like a “We need something action-y and dramatic during what is otherwise mostly a talky character story” add-in.

But the biggest problem I have with “Sons of Mogh” is the solution to the fact that Kurn cannot live with his shame, and cannot live away from his people the way Worf can, but that Worf, with his human convictions, cannot bring himself to give his brother the honorable death he desires. Instead of forcing one of them to handle the situation in a down-to-earth but difficult fashion, which is what a situation this serious calls for, Deep Space Nine basically magics the problem away.

Wiping Kurn’s memories, changing his appearance, and carting him off to a family friend to assume a different life is too easy a solution to such a realistic family problem (albeit one rendered with suitable inventiveness through the lens of science fiction). It’s not like Star Trek hasn’t pulled this sort of thing before, with Spock using his psychic powers to help Kirk forget heartbreak, or Dr. Pulaski wiping someone’s memory to avoid violating the Prime Directive, or countless characters surgically altered for the purposes of infiltration or subterfuge.

I don’t mind the plausibility or lack thereof of the situation. I mind it as a deus ex machina solution to an intractable problem. I mind it as Worf again violating Kurn’s agency, by making this monumental decision without even discussing it with his sibling. (Something the show at least tries to paper over with Kurn’s repeated declaration that he’ll do whatever Worf tells him.) Hard, personal issues that get resolved with technobabble and futuristic wizardry are deeply unsatisfying.

There is, at least, a saving grace. However questionable the route to get there, Kurn’s salvation comes at the cost of Worf losing another brother, and with him, his deepest living connection to his Klingon heritage. Worf’s family legacy has meant a great deal to him. He’s killed to preserve his family’s honor. He’s suffered for it. To give up that connection, to declare that he has no family, to give up someone he loves because it’s for their own good, is a tremendous sacrifice. If there’s anything that redeems this ending, it’s the impact it has on Worf, and what it means for him to sever that bond and with it, his strongest tie to his people and history.

That is the ultimate thrust of this tragedy. Worf has drifted far enough from Klingon culture that it can no longer lay claim to his heart or his mind. Whatever his official status within the Empire, he’s been lost in spirit for too long. He loves his brother, but they no longer understand one another. Neither has it in themselves to give the other what they need. So they’re forced to part, for their mutual good, but also for a mutual loss.

Growing, evolving, finding the beliefs and ideals that mean something to you, not just where you came from, is a worthy step on the path to realizing your true self. But sometimes it comes at the cost of losing the things, and the people, that still matter to us, because we no longer belong to them, and they no longer belong to us.

[7.4/10] In some ways, “Paradise Lost” is the peak anti-Roddenberry episode. By the time of The Next Generation, he envisioned the Federation as a utopia, where all threats had to be external, and all the Starfleet officers had to be on the same page. It’s hard to imagine a storyline more contrary to that vision than a leading admiral conspiring to steal power from the civilian government and trying to outright kill the fellow officers who might expose him.

On the other hand, if there’s a trope that The Original Series returned to again and again, it was a rogue admiral (or commodore, or ambassador, or some other Starfleet potentate) causing trouble or otherwise putting roadblocks in the Enterprise’s way, to where Kirk had to make a principled stand in the name of protecting his crew and doing what’s right. Sub in Sisko for Kirk, and that's pretty much what you have here, so maybe Roddenberry wouldn’t be so against an outing like this one.

And yet, it’s that latter point -- the evil admiral and our valiant captain making a stand -- that leaves me a bit disappointed in this one. All the complexities of this situation set up in “Homefront” are flattened out to a binary struggle between good and evil. Gone are the thorny questions of how to balance preserving the values of your society while also striving to preserve the society itself. And in its place is a villainous leader ready to lie, cheat, and steal his way into power, and our noble protagonist who’s barely conflicted at all about bringing him down.

Frankly, it’s a problem that affects scads of Star Trek two-parters. The first half will evoke a sense of mystery, possibility, and thematic complexity. And the second half, which has to land this plot within forty-five minutes flat, will reduce the story to a straightforward enough resolution and a Manichean good guys vs. bad guys dichotomy. Deep Space Nine is no exception, but it’s especially disappointing with such a great setup from last time crumpling into a facile struggle this time.

Credit where it’s due, “Paradise Lost” at least has the presence of mind to have Admiral Layton believe that he’s in the right. He makes speeches about the chain of command, about the unique threat they’re facing, that show he doesn’t think he’s the bad guy. But the episode frames him in such an antagonistic posture, not someone who regrets that it’s come to this but believes it’s the only way. Basically, he’s not sympathetic, despite having at least some sympathetic impulses, and it makes both the thematic tug-of-war the show wants to establish, and the personal push-and-pull between Benjamin and his former commanding officer, less interesting because of that.

What’s especially frustrating is that I essentially agree with where “Paradise Lost” lands and the message it wants to send. I like Sisko’s resolution that it’s not worth tearing down the things that make a place like Star Trek’s utopian Earth a paradise in the name of protecting it. The episode just becomes so hamfisted and oversimplified about it.

It doesn't help that the twist was so predictable. Once Sisko got a whiff that something was amiss, it wasn’t hard to guess that Admiral Layton was behind it. Even if the destination is known, the journey to get there can still be interesting. But Sisko doesn’t do anything especially clever or exciting to expose Layton beyond dressing down one cadet. The rest of the plotting comes as wheel-spinning before the inevitable reveal that Layton is behind it all.

Honestly, that's part of what put me off of this one. In my review for the last episode, I talked about how this arc feels eerily prescient about the issues swirling around in post-9/11 America. Well, in an era of 9/11 “Truthers”, I’ve grown more and more tired of false flag terrorism narratives. The idea that there must be evil masterminds behind every big world event, and that the call must always be coming from inside the house, has only grown more pernicious in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s harder to be tolerant of that as a storytelling device.

Wild twists and global problems that can be reduced to one key figure and his allies may make for more exciting and more accessible stories on television. But in the real world, these sorts of problems are more the results of systemic issues and incentives that can't be reduced to a couple of Great Men:tm: on either side of the divide. It’s not fair to hold that against Deep Space Nine. These problems hadn't grown as large in 1996 as they would soon thereafter. And Star Trek’s entire M.O. is using individual characters as stand-ins for larger ideas. But it makes it harder for an episode like “Paradise Lost”, with its true conspiracies and bad guy mastermind, to resonate in a world that seems closer to the Bell Riots than to utopia.

On a more practical level, for all the momentous things that happen in “Paradise Lost”, it’s a very talky episode. Most of the meat here comes in the form of Sisko and Layton speechifying at one another and writing the episode’s moral on the screen. If you get the point the show’s trying to make, especially if you feel like it’s preaching to the converted, those on-the-nose speeches quickly grow tiresome, even if they happen at phaser-point.

“Paradise Lost” still has its moments. It’s nice to see Nog at the Academy, already finding his way in Starfleet, if only a little. Brock Peters remains a godsend as Joseph Sisko, with a joie de vivre and a relatable dynamic with his son that is both warm and recognizable. And the scene with a Changeling posing as O’Brien is chilling. He posits that there are only four shapeshifters on Earth, but that even that many is plenty to sow fear and mistrust in a civilization already primed to worry about whether the Founders might be lurking in every dark corner. The point again feels salient to what would come, when an age of terrorism sparked concerns of when and where the next attack on American soil would happen, with attendant anxieties and prejudices.

Despite all that, and a title to boot, “Paradise Lost” is ultimately an optimistic episode. In the end, even Captain Benteen, Admiral Layton’s executive officer, defies orders and stops firing on the Defiant when she realizes he’s gone too far. Benjamin’s able to rely on his usual allies to expose the bad actor among the Starfleet faithful. The armed officers formerly patrolling the streets of New Orleans beam back to their ship. Whatever the path to get there, the day is saved, and the actions of some noble people keep Earth from giving into that fear and the military coup that would come with it.

In the end, none other than Joseph Sisko admits he’s scared to death of what might come next in this cold war with the Dominion. But he’s also ready to open his doors again, welcome his community in once more, and continue to live his life, safe in the knowledge that the values his son strives to protect have been preserved, which is as important as preserving the civilization that represents them. It’s hard to imagine something more in the spirit of Gene Roddenberry’s vision than that.

[6.4/10] Pretty standard, nuts and bolts episode of Star Trek. We just did the “we’re checking out the space version of the Bermuda Triangle” situation in “The Lorelei Signal” but this one finds some new places to take the idea. It’s a neat sci-fi premise to have all these ships stranded in a pocket universe and forming their own multi-cultural and unified government. I have to admit, there’s something pretty neat about seeing members of many different Star Trek races all sitting together around a big desk Legion of Doom style.

The problem is that the episode doesn’t really do much of anything with it. The Pocket Universe Council is all about peace and has some mechanisms to enforce it, but otherwise they’re basically set dressing, only there to add detail to the sargasso of lost ships and use their psychic powers to warn Kirk about the Klingon explosive on board the Enterprise.

To that end, most of this one is about the Enterprise and a Klingon ship that also got sucked into the pocket universe having to work together to escape (thanks to a miracle Spock formula.) The mistrust between them has some juice, but it’s mostly a standard good guy/bad guy caper. Overall, not a bad episode by any stretch, but one that feels like it doesn’t make the most of either the “Intergalactic Model U.N.” or “have to work with the enemy” premises that it employs.

What an absolute perfect ending, and I say this while admitting this ending didn't go the way I expected it to. Like honestly, how many of us actually thought Picard was going to survive this episode? I didn't, but I'm damn sure glad he did, even if we never see any of these TNG characters ever again, which I honestly doubt we won't given the ending. This was an emotional final send off however for this crew that honored and respected each of them throughout the season, every single one of them got their grand moment to shine, Riker with his asteroid, Geordi with his ship, Worf with his rescue, Crusher with her contraction discovery, Data defeated Lore, Troi rescued them in the end with her love for Riker, and Picard saved his son. And how about that borg queen, holy absolute hell was she horrifying looking or what? Anyway, what a beautiful ending that they all deserved, and one last poker game for the sake of it all. Am I excited about the future with Q showing up to tease the next series with the Enterprise G? Sure, but not as happy as I am that the old timers I grew up with got their swan song and somehow, someway, all survived. And if you didn't burst into tears when Riker and Worf decided to stay back to find Picard, basically sealing their death, then damn it I don't know what will satisfy you in life. Was this show perfect? Fuck no. Was the 3rd season without flaws? Bahaha, no! But if you can't appreciate what this really was meant to be here, I don't judge you, I just feel sad you couldn't feel the raw enjoyment the rest of us felt, because this was fucking awesome.

[8.0/10] For my money, the 2003 Battlestar Galactica reboot is the definitive cinematic reflection of the War on Terror era. Series creator Ronald D. Moore got his start in Star Trek, and borrowed more than a few concepts from Deep Space Nine. The hidden enemies, the moral complexities of decisions amid war, the balance between military and civilian concerns present in an episode like “Homefront” all made their way to his later show. They had a particular resonance in an era where America was afraid of unpredictable terror attacks in the wake of 9/11, and the question of the day was how much liberty we would justify sacrificing for security.

So why is “Homefront”, an episode released six years before the September 11th attacks, so eerily prescient of all these topics? The best answer I have is that the issues Deep Space Nine raises are ones the United States has grappled with since its founding, and that humanity has contended with for much longer. What do we do in the face of threats that, for all our might, seem impossible to stop? What civil liberties do we preserve no matter what and which, if any, do we relax under dire circumstances?

If you didn’t know better, you’d mistake this episode as an allegory for the War on Terror, like much of BSG was. But like TNG’s “The Drumhead”, it is, instead, a sign that these concerns are sadly evergreen, as much a live concern in the era of world wars and red scares as in the one that followed the most shocking attack on American soil in modern history.

Here, the threat comes from Changelings who have used their shape-shifting abilities to infiltrate top-level meetings, blow up high-ranking diplomats, and impersonate senior Starfleet officers back on Earth. The President of the Federation must decide between maintaining the status quo on the earthbound paradise, or declaring a state of emergency and giving way to martial law. And given his experience with the Dominion (and with Odo), Captain Sisko is made acting head of Earth security, and implements phaser sweeps for all key sites and blood tests for all major Starfleet personnel and their families.

Just as, if not more compelling in my book is the fact that the return visit to Earth means that Benjamin reconnects with his father, Joseph, who runs a restaurant in New Orleans, played by the legendary Brock Peters (who, among other noteworthy roles, voiced Darth Vader in the Star Wars radio dramas). The performances are a little theatrical, but there’s such a lived-in sense of familiarity among Joseph, Ben, and Jake that makes this seem like a genuine family, with the joys and pains that come with any intergenerational visit.

Joseph Sisko lights up and his son and grandson’s arrival. Benjamin talks up his dad as someone who knows his cuisine. Jake reminisces about tall tales of a taxidermied gator being unleashed to guard the restaurant at night, all with the friendly affections of family. But Joseph also laments his offspring not spending enough time with him during their visit. Jake worries about being made to work in his grandfather’s kitchen. And Benjamin admonishes his father for not taking his health seriously enough. There’s enough recognizable bumps in the road in a way that makes the family dynamic feel real, not just warm.

Especially that last part. It’s sadly relatable to have to encourage and elderly family member not to second guess their doctor or push off legitimate concerns about their health with love and charm. Joseph Sisko is stubborn, which makes it tricky when he takes a stand on something with broader implications.

Frankly, my favorite choice in the episode is to have Joseph refuse to submit to a blood test to ensure he’s not a Changeling. It complicates things in a way that enhances the story. Your sympathies (or at least my sympathies) go both ways. In a single episode, Joseph has already shown himself to be a bit unreasonable. Benjamin’s concerns aren’t unfounded and his precautions aren’t unreasonable. You feel for Ben asking his dad to just go along with something for once, without putting up an unnecessary fight over it.

And yet, at the same time, Joseph raises good points. Even if Ben is trying to be reasonable by limiting these tests to the family of Starfleet personnel, people like Joseph are civilians. They didn’t sign up for this. They have civil liberties that shouldn’t automatically be outweighed by their association with folks who’ve made the admirable choice to serve. He’s not wrong that the Changelings could come up with a way to evade the blood test now that they (presumably) know from last season’s finale that the Federation is using it.

And most of all, he’s not wrong that something is lost when Ben cannot help but examine his dad’s chopping knife, to be certain that his father is not a shapeshifter in disguise. Justified or not, it’s a harrowing emotional moment. Whether the precautions are fair or not, the Founders do want to sow paranoia and mistrust within the Federation, and there’s legitimate questions, with no easy answers, about how much to give into that in the name of “protecting paradise” and how much to hold onto the principles and communal trust that made that paradise possible.

It dovetails with the subtle undercurrent of prejudice that runs through “Homefront.” Star Trek: Enterprise would explore similar ideas in its own (all but explicit) War on Terror allegory, but for all its supposed enlightened glory, Earth doesn’t seem like an especially hospitable place for aliens right now. Odo doesn’t feel comfortable going out and about given current circumstances. Though he denies it has anything to do with his Ferengi heritage, Nog is struggling to fit in at the Academy. And Admiral Layton damns Federation President Jaresh-Inyo with faint praise, calling him a fine peacetime leader, but someone who, given his status as a member of another species, doesn’t understand the need to protect humanity’s home. You can already feel the Federation losing a bit of what it made it the welcoming interstellar melting pot we all know and love.

In the end, Layton’s sentiment prevails. A power outage hobbles Earth’s defenses, and he and Captain Sisko persuade the Federation Presence to effectively hand over governance of Earth to Starfleet. For once, the appearance of Starfleet officers beaming into the streets doesn’t come with the rousing sense of “Help is on the way.” Instead, Jake’s gesture to his grandfather, the hum of the score, and the grave look on Joseph’s face give the arrival of militaristic-looking Starfleet officers a more ominous feel.

Calls have been made. The balance between the steps necessary to respond to an existential threat and a society whose liberties are worth preserving is starting to tip. The way it affects a planet, and a family, are held in equal regard. These are the types of complexities that would become Deep Space Nine’s calling card. The issues of how to hold onto your soul in the face of decision points that could prevent a war and save lives will abound over the course of the series’ run. And with that tack, the show will cut a path for others to follow, finding a strange resonance with events that had yet to come and, if past is prologue, will all happen again.

[8.1/10] If “Our Man Bashir” had just been a Trekkie-style James Bond parody, it would have been enough. As with the episode featuring Dax’s past hosts inhabiting the bodies of her best friends, there’s something intrinsically fun about getting to see the whole cast act out of character. Putting them in such wild, colorful roles is the icing on the cake.

Don’t get me wrong, some of it is ridiculous. But then again, so is the source material. In truth, there’s elements of this that rub me the wrong way: the sexism, the objectification, the seduction-as-solution methods at play. Thankfully, there’s a few saving graces. For one, these are all, for better or worse, tropes pulled straight from the adventures of 007, so there’s the veneer of plausible deniability to write this off as the over-the-top parody it’s intended to be. For another, lord knows The Original Series and James T. Kirk in particular deployed plenty of these same tropes, so high-minded Star Trek’s clearly not above them. And most importantly, Garak is there to roll his eyes and sneer at the absurdity of these conceits of the genre, which helps give the writers a bit of cover as well, and the audience a bit of relief that someone is saying it.

To that end, the ridiculousness is a feature not a bug, and the fun of the persona-swaps are self-justifying. Kira as a femme fatale with a dodgy Eastern European accent is so far from her no-nonsense persona that it’s inherently amusing to watch her purr and coo. (And given the real life romance between Alexander Siddig and Nana Visitor, there’s some metahumor to their holosuite characters’ flirtation as well.) Watching Avery Books monologue and threaten like he’s Ernest Blofield is almost as much of a treat as seeing him turn into a truly creepy murderer in the Dax episode. Sultry scientist Jadzia, high class henchman Worf, and local goon O’Brien (whose character might be an homage to Brooks’ former role as Hawk?), don’t get as much to do, but are still entertaining outside of their usual personalities.

Along the way, “Our Man Bashir” delivers plenty of good Bond spoofs out the wazoo. The improvised weapon for the eye-patched bad guy. The comely allies and enemies. The globe-trotting adventure (even if it’s basically just four well-done sets). The tense but important card game. The villain trying to destroy the world and remake it in his own image. The suits. The weapons. The lasers. The bad guy monologues. Deep Space Nine does them all with panache long before Austin Powers took the stuffing out of the genre in a major way. And the only thing that makes it all better is getting to hear Garak’s running commentary on the quaint silliness of the whole thing from the perspective of a real spy sticking his nose into such holodeck buffoonery.

To the writers’ credit though, things are pretty exciting in the real world too. Like all “crazy holodeck malfunction” episodes, you kind of have to turn your brain off in order to grant the premise. And yet, “Our Man Bashir” includes arguably the most plausible explanation for how Sisko and company could end up trapped as holodeck characters you could have. The idea of transporter malfunction that requires their patterns to be stored somewhere on the station is a good start. And the notion of their minds taking up residence in DS9’s usual systems, while their physical forms are kept in the holodeck database since it’s used to doing that sort of thing has the whiff of plausibility and even cleverness, which is about all you can ask for from a setup like this.

More to the point, the episode maintains the stakes both inside and outside of the holosuite. In the real world, this is another among Rom’s growing triumphs. Him using his technical to knowhow to not only keep Quark’s entertainment boxes running on shoestrings and bubblegum, but also jury-rig the Defiant to interface with his janked up holosuite tinkering is a big win. With so much focus on the secret agent escapades in the main story, the subplot lets Rom, Odo, and even Eddigton shine with some creativity in how they bring our heroes back from their photonic waystation.

And yet, what really elevates this one isn’t the pastiche or the semi-plausible explanations for how the DS9 crew got stuck in the holodeck and how their comrades can get them out. It’s that writer Ronald D. Moore and company use the setup to explore something deeper about Bashir, Garak, and the relationship between the two of them.

Julian has been Garak’s babe in the woods thus far, an amusing but entertaining curiosity to the savvier Cardassian who helps this little stumbling baby deer through the world of espionage. So something about watching Julian playact his way through a four-color version of the kind of life Garak actually lived bothers him, even if he tries not to let on. Garak’s lines about “entering the wrong intelligence agency” when he sees Agent Bashir’s women and wealth is amusing, but on a deeper level, you can understand the former Obsidian Order operative’s distaste for turning his profession into a cheesy game, one played by the veritable naif who revels in the pageantry while ignoring the hardship and hard decision the real game requires.

Nonetheless, Julian proves himself possessing of more mettle than Garak might have thought. One of the clever things Moore and the writers’ room does here is add stakes to the silly adventure by introducing an “If you die in the Matrix, you die in the real world” conceit. Bashir can’t just blast his way through the bad guys, because if Sisko’s body perishes in the holodeck, the computer might lose it permanently. So when Garak urges Julian to defend himself in lethal terms, or be prepared to have to sacrifice one of his crewmates to save the rest, or himself, Dr. Bashir pushes back.

Until he doesn’t. Julian may not be willing to drop his own friends to save himself, even if their supervillain doppelgangers are coming after him. But he is willing to pull the trigger on Garak (as a warning or worse) to stop him from exiting the holosuite and potentially compromising the program. It’s a sign that for however much exaggerated flair Dr. Bashir might enjoy in this little fantasy world, when it comes to the real one, he’s ready, willing, and able to make the hard calls, even with his erstwhile compadre, to stand up for his values and his friends.

But he also shows that he understands Garak’s values too. The former spook’s speech to Julian serves as a deconstruction of the James Bond archetype. Becoming a successful spy in the real world (or at least, a different fictional world) isn’t about mere derring-do or courage. If anything, the opposite is true on Garak’s account. It’s about knowing when to quit, knowing when to accept collateral losses in the name of a greater goal or simple survival. It’s accepting when you’ve been beaten and slithering away to fight another day. Garak’s survived this long on the back of that principle, and while he’s chastened by Julian’s convictions, he’s still a walking tribute to the seedy underbelly underlying that naive exaggerations of the spy story genre.

It’s clever, then, when Julian mirrors Garak’s speech in his conversation with the big bad here. The monologue not only allows him to stall for time, but also provide a plausible explanation as to why a committed spy like him (in-universe of course) would give up and switch sides. There’s poetry in Dr. Bashir using Garak’s own words about needing to give up in the face of impossible odds to do just the opposite, while giving the patina of plausibility to his own ploy.

It works of course! I especially love the fact that “Our Man Bashir” does what a real James Bond film could never do -- let the villain succeed in their scheme of global domination. Dr. Bashir wins the day by breaking the rules of the genre, a clever solution as to how to vamp for long enough that Rom and company can extricate their friends’ bodies from the holodeck. Moore and company offer a creative solution to an unusual problem.

They didn’t have to though! That's what’s so impressive about this one. You could have had a simple holodeck malfunction romp, featuring everyone acting out of character in a heightened reality, and this one would still be a blast. Instead, Deep Space Nine goes a step further, with insights into character, a series of moral questions, and a story with real stakes despite the silliness at its core. It’s the perfect melding of Bond’s outsized adventures, with the commitment to delving one step deeper into everything that became the calling card of this seminal Star Trek series.

[7.2/10] “The Sword of Kahless” is two-thirds of a good episode. The first third is a fun adventure story, of two generations of Klingons, and a Trill comrade who unites them, venturing forth to retrieve a sacred object from their people’s past. The second third is a survival story, when they’re escaping pursuers after the same prize, but more of a character clash, between a colorful warrior whose best days are past, and a more stoic Klingon who’s disappointed when he sees the reality of his one time hero. If you continued on that trajectory, this could have been a great adventure with the sort of personal stakes and personality that are the hallmarks of the franchise.

But in the last third, “The Sword of Kahless” leans hard into the Treasure of Sierra Madre homage, as Worf and Kor turn suspicious and even combative at one another’s intentions for the titular object of legend, in ways that feel out of character and with disputes that feel all too easily resolved. There was a way to do this sort of thing, with the clashes, the challenges, the slow realization that this quest is tearing them apart, but this isn’t it.

It’s frustrating, because those clashes are the best part of the episode up until they feel too over the top and miscalibrated to pass the smell test. It’s a treat watching Worf interact with Kor. The Starfleet officer is an outsider who idolizes this man with countless songs and stories about his conquests and escapades. His aged counterpart is a warrior with enough grievances with Gowron and clout of his own to welcome rather than reject Worf’s company, despite his status as a pariah. Seeing the two find common ground, revel in the chance to uncover a sacred implement in the hallowed past and use it to help unite their people against the current unjust leadership is a treat.

But there’s also meat to what drives them apart, in ways that make their conflict compelling long before it turns into a bizarre contest over who deserves to rule. Upon spending time more time with his childhood idol, Worf comes to see Kor as a drunkard and a fabulist, more desperate to relive his glory days than he is to uphold true Klingon honor. Kor comes to see Worf as too demure, too human, too removed from his people’s values to be worthy of this crusade or to carry on their traditions.

The accusations on both sides touch nerves, because there’s a grain of truth to each of them. Seeing these two men seem like fast friends after a rousing first meeting, only to fall into disagreement and disdain as their time together continues, sets up a nice arc for both of them. Their arguments set the stage for something on the adventure to make them see how they’re more aligned than they think, or at least still able to find something to admire one another.

Instead, we just get baseless jealousy and delusions of grandeur. Once they find the fabled Sword of Kahless, Kor and Worf each decide that they, rather than the Kahless clone, should wield it and lead the Klingon Empire, and it feels out of character. The script does its best to spackle over that. For Worf, they return to his “Do something no Klingon has ever done before” vision and try to spin it as a call to the divine right of kings, couching it as a psychological tonic to Worf’s sense of alienation from his people. That gives it the whiff of plausibility, but the Worf we know is too duty-bound and honorable to be so greedy or selfish in his ambitions.
Granted, we don’t know Kor as well, given that he’s had comparatively few other appearances in canon. You do get the sense of him stuck reliving former glories and apt to have one last great adventure. But even he seems more like a big talker as more anxious to find a romp worthy of more grand bar room stories than to command the fealty of his people. The screenwriters acknowledge the problem, and try to address it in dialogue, but without some conceit like the sword being magic, neither Worf nor Kor play like the characters we’ve known to this point, which renders their whole mortal conflict something of a head-scratcher.

Which is a particular shame since John Colicos is so dang fun as Kor! His bluster and bloviating is the exact sort of thing that would come to annoy Worf, but his carefree, grandiose attitude toward everything is infectious and fun. The quest itself starts out as a blast, with a fantasy-style “We must uncover this hallowed relic of legend in a forbidden land” premise, an unlikely trio of crusaders, and an unexpected rival group going after the same prize. (Speaking of which, I appreciate some follow-up on what happened to Toral, but man, does every group of bad Klingons have to be affiliated with the House of Duras?) It’s definitely a heightened tone for a Star Trek episode, but one that the writers revel in to great effect.

The only one who suffers from beginning to end is Dax, who’s ostensibly the link between these two characters, but who’s mostly rendered dramatically inert by comparison. Once the tension between Worf and Kor froths to a boil, she gets a little more to do as a mediator, but mainly, she’s just there, which feels like a missed opportunity. She does help reach the endgame, effectively calling both her partners idiots and stunning them before getting Toral to stop his jammer, but even that feels like a quick fix rather than something that emerges from her character.

If anything, it feels like the writers of “The Sword of Kahless” had a particular ending in mind -- the whole “This is too much power for anyone person to hold” angle -- and contorted their characters and plot to get there regardless of whether they had the right personalities or enough time to make it happen. Worf and Kor choosing to let the titular bat’leth drift through space lest it divide their people as it divided them has some poetry to it. But when their conflict over it plays as off-brand and unconvincing, jettisoning such an important icon scans plainly as the writers’ choice rather than a character’s choice.

Still, if you can ignore a disappointing final frame, the episode is still plenty of fun. There is an inherent thrill to seeing an Original Series-era Klingon interact with a Next Generation-era Klingon for (I think?) the first time. Worf and Kor’s initial camaraderie, their personal and cultural differences, and an epic adventure to force them to find where their talents and personalities align remain wonderful elements that make this one worth watching despite its stumbles. It’s just a shame that, like Kor himself, it narrowly avoids falling off a cliff later in the story.

[7.8/10] I don’t think Deep Space Nine gets enough credit for being fun. The show’s remembered for its moral gray areas and willingness to confront what the Federation would look like the throes of mortal conflict. But Quark in particular was a source of great humor on the show, and in the right hands, with the right tone, the misadventures of those station scallywags could be a total blast.

“Little Green Men” is one of those episodes. Don’t think too hard about it. But Quark, Rom, and Nog end up going back in time to Earth in 1947, and happen to land in none other than Roswell, New Mexico. That's right, the infamous UFO sighting near a military facility famously declared to be a weather balloon was, in fact, the station’s resident Ferengi family on an accidental hop across the timeline.

The premise is loony as hell. Time travel has always been a bit of a goof in the franchise, with thin, inconsistent excuses for why and how it works. “Venting kemocite” or no, the improbability of the three family-members (plus Odo) not only finding their way to 1940s Earth, but figuring how to get back using the power of an atomic bomb test, is something of a larf. But the comedy, and the light but successful commentary that comes with it, is more than worth excusing any technobabble contrivances necessary to make it happen.

The comedy comes from the absurdity of modern day Ferengi meeting pre-enlightenment Humans (read: us). One of the inherent gags of our well-lobed counterparts is that they’re essentially what the American business world would produce if we became advanced technologically without maturing as a species: uber-businessmen focused on profits at all costs who wheel-and-deal for the hell of it. There’s something fun, then, about setting a group of Ferengi against comparatively uncivilized humans, who are closer to Quark’s speed than stuffy explorers and dignified diplomats like Sisko and company.

In short, this episode has the spirit of one of those early TNG episodes where Picard pontificates about the state of mankind before humanity sorted itself out, but it’s done with a tongue-in-cheek tone and through the eyes of an alien race. It’s amusing to see the three extraterrestrials mix up their human history, and decide they’re in “Australia or something.” But it’s even more amusing to hear them remark a mix of bemusement and disgust how 1940s humans casually inhale poison, ask about buying weapons to get one over on their neighbors, and in the meantime, irradiate their own planet.

Yes, there’s something a little smug and self-satisfied about the real life humans from the 1990s who write the show looking down on their counterparts from a half a century earlier. But watching Quark and company bumble their way through the military-industrial complex circa 1947 and Earth customs they know little about is a recipe for laughs.

At the same time, though, there’s a thread of sentiment and development for our main Ferengi characters here. For one, this is Nog’s big farewell as he leaves for Starfleet Academy. The traditional coming-of-age ceremony where Nog raises capital by selling his childhood treasures is cute, with plenty of chuckles of its own. Nog’s gung-ho attitude among the military men and threats of an invasion illustrate him as a more combative and take-charge sort of Ferengi. And most of all, his farewell to Jake, remembering the time they spent gazing out at the promenade and delighting in “doing nothing” together, is downright heartwarming.

But this is also something of a coming out party for Rom. After years of being derided as the idiot brother, while secretly showing some technical prowess, his ability to figure out a way to short-circuit their cousin’s sabotage of the ship “gifted” to Quark, and to concoct a means to time travel back to the future, shows how smart he really is when allowed to operate in his element. The suggestions that Rom may only have been obfuscating stupidity when convenient, and rising to the occasion with the right bit of self-confidence (give or take a pained cry for his moogie), gives the character a boost right when he needs it.

The only drag here is that the humans themselves are pretty caricatured and otherwise not much to write home about. Charles Napier is perfect in the role of the cigar-chomping general, but otherwise, the gags about the combative lieutenant, the overworked scientist, and his exaggeratedly spunky and prescient fiancee are fine but underwhelming. There’s a fair bit of sexism in the treatment of Nurse Garland, and not just in-universe. (She basically gets sexually harassed by Nog and Rom in a way that's treated as a laugh.) But in an odd way, these throwback military-adjacent characters feel of a piece with those in “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” from The Original Series, to the point that the whole thing may be a bit of an intentional homage.

Nonetheless, watching our heroes bounce off their “ancient human” counterparts is worth a lot of laughs. The small touches of the universal translator not working, to where each species assumes the other is a pack of primitive dullards, leads to some good humor. Quark deciding that these venal, but backwards Terrans are the sort of hyoo-mans he can't jibe with (not to mention exploit), brings the yuks. And seeing their different attempts to resist interrogation sputter and eventually succeed (with some help from their sympathetic human allies and a typically craft Odo) is a thrill.

In short, this is a wonderful romp. The means may strain credulity, and the tone may be a little more heightened than usual, but the writers use the looser feel and chance to mix up the time and place for good humor and an entertaining adventure. Packed into all the silly hijinks and temporal shenanigans are themes about modern humanity’s proximity to Ferengi mores and the inevitable blindspots of cultural exchange. For the most part, though, this is just Deep Space Nine -- in a season full of political intrigue, queasy choices, and high drama -- deciding to simply have a good time.

[6.9/10] This is a weird outing for Deep Space Nine. The first third of it is a submarine episode, which Star Trek does sometimes for whatever reason. “Yeah, we’re a big fancy futuristic ship with sensors and advanced weapons, but what if we were in a strange part of space and/or our vessel were disabled in a way that made us have to act like we were on a submarine?” Maybe the writers liked pulling from Gene Roddenberry’s naval days, or had just watched the Hunt for Red October or something, but it’s a pretty familiar trope in the franchise despite its “final frontier” setting.

DS9 does fine with it. Poking around in a Gamma Quadrant planet’s atmosphere, trying to rescue an ally ship, while two Jem’Hadar are skulking about trying to take you both out is a decent setup. Much of the problem-solving feels mechanical rather than personal, full of technobabble and convenient solutions. But the Defiant having to ping a signal that locates their attackers but exposes them as well is an interesting device, and the prospect of finding creative uses for torpedoes when the ship’s usual weapons systems are down shows some ingenuity.

Here’s the weird thing though -- roughly a third of the way into the runtime, “Starship Down” turns into one of those “Strand various characters in pairs and force them to come to terms with something” episodes. I don’t have an issue with the idea. The Next Generation did it well in season 5’s “Disaster” (and with Worf no less). The problems are two-fold: (a.) with four main stories to cover in a structure that already limits how much depth you can get into, only starting those pairings after fifteen minutes have already elapsed really hamstrings each mini-plot; and (b.) those mini-plots themselves are a real mixed bag, in terms of the ideas at play and the execution.

The weakest for me is Dax and Dr. Bashir trapped in a sideroom waiting to be rescued. God help me, I’d really hoped that Julian’s romantic pursuit of Jadzia would be something left in the dust pile of “things we tried out in the early seasons that didn’t really work.” Both of the characters have improved by leaps and bounds since then, so I can see wanting to revisit that element now that they’ve evolved and measure how things have changed. Except, the dialogue is awkward, and it feels like the duo revert more to their season 1 form for this subplot, which is to no one’s benefit.

We just got a fantastic Dax romance episode with “Rejoined” and, without giving anything away, there’s more interesting developments in her love life to come. So this feels like a needless cul de sac. Charitably, maybe this is meant to put a period on that old flirtation to show that the two can be friendly and even cozy without it meaning anything, but unfortunately it feels like the opposite -- the DS9 attempting to rev up that nonsense again.

The strongest for me is the ongoing negotiation between Quark and Hanok, a representative of the Karemma who realize that DS9’s resident Ferengi has been cheating him in his role as the middleman between the friendlier (or at least more commercially-minded) Gamma Quadrant species and the Federation. Part of it is that you simply have two pros playing off one another. Armin Shimerman is one of the elements of the series that clicked from the jump, and Star Trek vet James Cromwell more than holds his own as a performer, as the two have an easy on-screen rapport that pays off in spades.

But the writing rises to meet the actors as well. There’s a strong central idea that furnishes the performances: Hanok is a staid businessman from a conservative people, and Quark is a risk-taker who’s not above a little swindling, which he considers part of the game. Much of their interactions are founded on tracing the lines of their differences, to great effect. But a warhead bursting into the mess hall where they’re holed up not only adds tension to their shared experience but helps Hanok see the thrill of Quark’s methods, convincing him to give the Ferengi another chance. I particularly like the tag, where Quark seems to have convinced his new business partner in the benefits of a few “gambles”, but also quickly realizes he may have created a monster.

Somewhere in the middle is the Worf/O’Brien storyline. It’s fairly simple, but that fits the confines of this sort of vignette-heavy episode, especially one with a compressed timespan in which to unspool the stories. Worf is used to working with seasoned bridge officer, and is too demanding and dictatorial when in command of the Defiant. O’Brien helps him see the need to ease up and give his subordinates, engineers in particular, room to use their discretion and ingenuity to solve the problem du jour, because he’ll get better results and better morale.

At base, this is another “Worf needs to adjust to the fact that life is different here than on the Enterprise” story, but an effective one. O’Brien’s made that transition, so he’s a good guide, and has the rank and history with Worf to be able to raise the issue. Worf bending a little bit thanks to good advice, and seeing favorable results, demonstrates growth in him as a commander. And O’Brien pulling the old “Get it done in half your quoted time!” commander trick pulls the curtain back behind a franchise cliche, or at least helps justify it, which is a fun choice. This is a basic subplot, but one that accomplishes what it sets out to do.

The most frustrating of the four vignettes though is the one between Sisko and Kira, not because it’s bad, but because I wanted more from it. As with the Quark/Hanok story, there’s a strong core to this one -- Benjamin and Narys having a great working relationship, but not much of a personal one, due to the awkwardness of Sisko being a revered figure in Kira’s religion. It’s an idea worth exploring, particularly since we haven't had a chance to explore the Bajoran reaction to Cardassia’s change in government and the arrival of the Klingons.

What we get isn’t bad. Sisko suffering a bad concussion, forcing Kira to talk to him to keep him awake and open up a little bit is a premise with merit. Her choosing to pray over him has a certain power, and Benjamin inviting her to a baseball game after it’s all over with is heartwarming stuff. But the dialogue in their scenes comes off a bit tin-eared, and it inevitably feels like the depth of the exploration of these ideas is lacking when half of the pairing is medically unresponsive for most of the conversation.

I still admire Deep Space Nine for trying something like this. “Starship Down” may not be the most successful rendition of the form, but breaking from the A-story/B-story formula, or one big plot approach, to do bite-sized morsels is a nice monotony-breaker. I just wish they’d spent more time on the pairings than on the pseudo-submarine material, and tweaked the tales they told to tell in that more compressed space.

[7.9/10] The fashionable thing today is to complain about “filler” episodes. But you know what? I could watch Din Djarin and Bo-Katan Kryze go on planet-of-the-week adventures until the banthas come home.

Part of what sets The Mandalorian apart is that it has a real sense of place. I’d argue that it’s done the most to expand Star Wars’ iconography since the Original Trilogy. So it’s invariably cool to see a Quarren spaceship where the captain spends most of her time in a big tube of water. It is badass to watch a pair of Mandalorians have an honor duel where they jetpack and grappling hook their way into action. And it’s especially engrossing to see them two of them get pulled into the internecine problems of one very distinctive local world.

That world is Plazir-15, an independent system that, I swear to god, feels like a Star Wars riff on Disney World, particularly Epcot and Tomorrowland. The aesthetics of the people-mover, domed city, and shopping/entertainment wonderland, the musical yet insistent welcome, and the sense of colorful people having fun above while grimmer and more quotidian business goes down below, all give you the strange sense of the Mando Duo being asked to police the Happiest Place on Earth.

What better place to feature some of the show’s most eye-opening guest stars. Jack Black! Lizzo! Christopher Lloyd! It’s fun to see the former two hamming it up as a colorful royal family who takes a shine to Grogu and wants Din and Bo-Katan to help solve their droid problem. And Lloyd is always a welcome presence, with his grave functionary-turned-culprit role being well-suited to his talents. This show has introduced or revived so many personalities that make Star Wars feel like a richer and wilder place, and “Guns for Hire” is prime on that front.

Part of why I can enjoy world-expanding jaunts like this one, though, is that the intra-episode storytelling is solid. Bo-Katan and Din have a clear goal -- to meet up with Bo-Katan’s former cohort. The pair have a clear obstacle -- The Dutchess and Captain Bombardier want them to solve the droid issue as a diplomatic favor before they’ll grant our heroes access to their private Mandalorian security force. So we having a driving premise for the hour -- the two Mandalorians solving a mechanical mystery, and clear stakes for the mission -- whether or not Bo-Katan will be able to reunite with her old crew.

It doesn’t have to be complicated, but it gives this episode a momentum that not every episode, or show for that matter, manages to pull off.

The mystery itself is intriguing! A rash of droids acting up is concerning, and the footage of them going nuts is both amusing and a little scary. As with Obi-Wan hunting down Padme’s would-be assassin in Attack of the Clones, turning Star Wars characters into noir detectives is a winning play. Watching them get the lay of the land from Commissioner Helgait (should have known it was him from name alone), ask for answers from the Ugnaughts who maintain the droids, get into a chase with a rogue B2 Battle Droid, follow the clues to a droid bar, use science to detect the problem, and piece the identifying marks on the offending nano droids together to figure out whodunnit, makes for an exciting set of causes-and-effects as they work their way through the case.

The mission asks much of them. They have to be sharp enough to follow the clues where they lead. They have to be strong and crafty enough to take down a malfunctioning battle droid. But most importantly, they have to be personable and emotionally intelligent enough to get the help they want from the people who have the information they need.

That last part is my favorite part of the episode. When the duo meet the Ugnaughts, Bo-Katan is insistent and demanding. She’s used to using a warrior’s touch and a leader’s confidence to get what she wants. But Din knows from his time with Kuiil that her approach won’t work with this kind. Instead, Din is respectful, deferential, speaking in their terms, and gets the help they require to move forward. It’s a nice reflection of how his experiences have changed him, and give him the kind of ecumenical understanding that allows him to get by in a wild and wooly galaxy.

And yet, Din has his prejudices too. He doesn’t trust droids, given his experiences, and so he’s not much of a gentle soul when it comes time to pump them for information. But Bo-Katan is, and her approach to treat them with respect, and not paint all droids with the same brush, earns them the trust from the bartender that allows them to figure this thing out. It speaks to why the two make a good team, and how the pairing gives them complementary strengths and helps them cover for one another’s blindspots.

But apart from the plotting, I particularly like that the droids want to help. Again, this episode is a treat for longtime fans of the aliens and automatons that populate Star Wars. From the royal tables to the back alley bars of Plazir 15, there’s plenty of articulated rubber masks and distinctive robots as far as the eye can see. But “Guns for Hire” makes the point that these droids are not slaves with restraining bolts, as L3-37 from Solo might say.

They want to give something back after being created by “organics”. They view human lives as short and the requests made of them minor. They want to help, since they still want to be useful and fear being “scrapped.” It’s an interesting and original take on the droids, whose seeming sentience yet menial servitude has long been a “just don’t think too hard about it” aspect of Star Wars. Giving a pack of them agency, making them willing participants in this society, is a fascinating choice.

All that said, I find myself once again asking what The Mandalorian is trying to say this season. There is an anti-authoritarian, anti-legal, arguably anti-civilization streak that runs through the show’s third batch of episodes. Once again, we run into a society that seems paralyzed by the strictures of its government. (Is the “direct democracy” aspect a dig on California’s referendums? It would fit if Plazir-15 is a stand-in for Disneyland.) Once again, we see those involved with leadership treated like aloof or oblivious ninnies. Once again we see the attempts to rehabilitate and reconcile with those on the wrong side of history, like Commissioner Helgait, turn out to be unfixable bad guys simply waiting for their chance to regroup and strike again.

Something about all of this sits uneasy with me. Star Wars has always had an anti-authoritarian streak. That's the core of the rebels versus the Empire. And maybe this is all just to set up how the New Republic was a hollow institution to show how it was unable to see the First Order coming. But there’s something about the show’s targets, and the virtues it seems to want to champion, that feel disconcerting in ways I can't quite put my finger on.

Nonetheless, it’s neat to see them pin this kerfuffle on Helgait, who turns out to be a Separatist Lost Causer and true believer in Count Dooku. Seeing them earn the key to the city and their ticket to meeting Bo-Katan’s old friend is suitably triumphant.

So is Bo-Katan’s shaky but, in the end, satisfying return to her one-time followers. As I mentioned, her fight with Axe Woves (silly name, by the way) is well-directed by Yaddle herself, Bryce Dallas-Howard. And it’s cool to see Bo-Katan, having found both The Way and her way, reasserting her command in the hopes of bolstering the Mandalorians writ large.

My only complaint is that it feels a bit like she regains her position on a technicality. The crew is still miffed she doesn’t have the darksaber. Din’s argument that a cyborg ambushed him, and she beat the cyborg, so she rightfully owns the storied weapon feels strangely legalistic and out of step with Mandalorian norms.

Even if I don’t care for the logistics of it, I like the spirit behind this idea. Bo-Katan accepts Din. Her crew wants to reject him because he’s not of Mandalorian blood, but she affirms him as a keeper of The Creed and someone as true to their people as any by deed. And in turns, when they’re skeptical of her leadership, Din affirms her as the rightful heir to his blade. It shows not only the bond and mutual respect they’ve formed, but the kind of broader understanding they’ve developed in their travels and mind-expanding experiences.

I’d like to think that's the point of this season. These little side quests work wonderfully as single-serving adventures with neat locales, unique problems, and nice character moments. I’d take them for that reason alone. But when you add them up, they show two people whose perspective keeps broadening, who recognize that Ugnaughts, droids, Children of the Watch, and even their fellow Mandalorians are worthy of more understanding and respect than they might have thought before. That is the foundation of a pluralistic society, and perhaps, a better one for the people of Mandalore, wherever their new home lies.

[8.2/10] Gul Dukat is pretty easily the best recurring Star Trek villain in my book. Most other major contenders tend to become frenemies pretty quickly (Q, Shran) or end up snarling and flat (pretty much anyone involved in the Duras family). Dukat, though, is utterly menacing, but also complicated. He is a patriot, a survivor, a cunning strategist, and a smug snake. He knows how to throw his weight around and use whatever leverage he has to get what he wants. He is an operator, speaking in veiled threats and backhanded compliments, to where his genuine intentions are often opaque but always suspicious.

But what makes him so interesting is that he’s not all bad. Or at the very least, he is comprehensible and sometimes even sympathetic in his actions and personality. He’s done terribly evil things in the past, and he’ll do terribly evil things in the future. And yet, he is also a person, with attachments and affections and vulnerabilities who feels like a well-rounded individual, not just a one-note antagonist for our heroes, even if he so often finds himself gleefully opposed to them.

That's what’s wonderful about an episode like “Indiscretion”. At its core, it’s about the idea that maybe, just maybe, the citizens of Bajor and Cardassia have turned over a new leaf. Dukat and Kira embark on an odd couple mission to recover a Cardassian prison transport that's been missing for six years. The two of them are avatars for their respective communities. Dukat waxes rhapsodic about how, whatever “minor errors” occurred during the Occupation, it was a good thing because it made the Bajoran people stronger. And Kira rightfully scoffs at this pseudo-high-minded back-pattery, rejecting the idea that they’ll ever be friends, with only slightly less skepticism about the prospects for their people to do the same.

That possibility is, nonetheless, the thrust of this story. Whatever bitterness the head of the Cardassian Occupation and a leader of the Bajoran Resistance may have for one another, they reach a certain detente and mutual understanding here, in keeping with Kira’s growing comprehension of the enemy she fought for so long. They’re bound by each having lost someone they loved in the crash of that vessel. They must work together to rescue their countrymen who survived. And in the greatest symbol of the possibility of unity, they collectively show mercy and hope for a half-Bajoran, half-Carddasian young woman, whose very existence and survival symbolizes the possibility that there might be a life for someone who represents both of their peoples.

And yet, the deepening of the Cardassians, with a civilian government and perhaps a greater tolerance for such titular “indiscretions” comes with a deepening of Dukat. He is not merely an occupier. He is not even just a partisan and father who wants to make the world a better place for his family (by his own definition of course).

He is, instead, someone who loved a Bajoran woman and lost her and mourns her to this day. He is someone who comically sits on a sand spike and nearly dies laughing while running a dermal regenerator over his own butt. He is someone who worked to extricate her from the brewing conflict and is nonetheless willing to kill the offspring of that forbidden relationship lest it ruin the life he’s built in the interim. And he is, against all odds, someone who loves his daughter, and is willing to admit he was wrong and take a chance on growing tolerance and acceptance, for someone who deserves a home, and a father.

Oh yeah, and Benjamin Sisko is afraid of romantic commitment. I’m being a little glib there. I actually like the Ben/Kassidy story here. It’s nice to see Captain Sisko get to be a bit human here, seeming overwhelmed in a social situation rather than being the knowing team dad role that many Starfleet captains fall into. But it’s a lighter, almost sitcom-y plot that feels out of place with the more serious Kira/Dukat A-story in play.

That said, I like the core of it. Kassidy’s ready to take a job running freight for the Bajorans, which would keep her in the area and maybe even give her reason to settle down on the station. Ben is worried about taking “a big step”, and his nonplussed response to the news sends Yates off in a rightful huff. Everyone from Dax to Bashir to Jake nudges him about it and urges him to save the relationship. Again, the plot feels a little like something out of Full House, but all of the performers play it well, and there’s something a little adorable about watching Sisko stumble his way through romantic entanglements that show even the decorated commander has feet of clay in some areas.

But what I love most is the resolution. Benjamin explains his hesitation. Not only has he not been in a serious relationship since Jennifer died, but it was being close to him, in this dangerous line of work, that got her killed. Both things make him understandably nervous and reticent about getting close to someone again, and them being literally close to him. Kassidy, for her part, is self-possessed and grown-up enough to make her own choices regardless of Ben, something even Jake recognizes. (Kassidy’s “He must take after his mother” is an outstanding burn.) Her playful but pointed reactions show that she’s not just the object of Sisko’s affections; she’s his equal, and her willingness to accept the apology while standing her own ground show why someone as self-possessed as Ben would be a good fit for her. I dig it.

It does, however, make for an odd fit with the main plot of the episode. The premise of Kira and Dukat being forced together for a mission to recover lost loved ones is a serious, but satisfying one. It gives the two of them a chance to bounce off one another, with heaps of resentment, but also a certain electricity that cannot be denied. There’s a solid mystery to drive the hour, as both investigate the trail of the downed ship. And “Indiscretion” doles out surprising reveals about Dukat at a steady pace to keep things interesting: he had a Bajoran mistress whom he genuinely loved and weeps for; he had a daughter with her that he legitimately tried to save; and now he’s ready to kill her to protect what he has.

It’s that last part that becomes the emotional undercurrent of the episode. In a plot where Kira and Dukat seem closer to mutual acceptance, maybe even friendliness than ever, it drives a wedge between them. They debate it philosophically. Dukat claims he must do it so that his family doesn’t become ostracized. Kira roars back that he’s only doing it to protect his own position. Dukat retorts that protecting his position is protecting his family. Kira insists that she won’t let him do it regardless. For an episode founded on the idea of Kira and Dukat, and by extension Bajor and Cardassia, coming together, some principle are inviolable, and show the dueling values that suggest each may stay eternally apart. (Or not -- hello Discovery fans!)

And yet, when push comes to shove, it seems they’re more on the same page than they might think. The duo find a Breen labor camp where it appears the survivors of the crash have been impressed into service. (I think it’s the first time we see the Breen -- a treat for fans revisiting the series.) Sure enough, among their number is Ziyal, Dukat’s daughter, and it’s time to see whether he has the stomach to live up to his declaration of what he’d do if he found her.

And look, I knew what was going to happen here, and it’s still a harrowing scene. A father holds his own child at gunpoint. A daughter speaks of how she dreamed her father would come save her, how the Cardassian prisoners told her he’d sooner kill someone of mixed heritage like her, how the dream that they were wrong kept her alive, and now after six years of waiting and hoping, she’d rather die than than live in a world where her tormentors were right a moment longer. Kira rightly points out that Dukat doesn’t truly want this, or he never would have told her, knowing she’d try to stop her. And she’s right, when the moment swells, when he looks his child in the eyes, Dukat drops his weapon, he embraces her with unimaginable relief, and calls her his daughter. And god help me, I melted a little.

Maybe there’s hope that can emerge from all the misery of relations between Bajorans and Cardassians. Maybe there’s a home waiting for a child born of love in a society slowly learning to let go of jingoistic hate. Maybe there’s room for friendship and understanding between the master of misery for Bajor and one of the planet’s proudest and most virulent defenders. Maybe there’s something approaching a heart, something sympathetic, something worthy of love, even in the show’s vilest villain, a feature that raises him up as Star Trek’s best.

[9.8/10] There is no father-son relationship in Star Trek with the same depth and power as the one between Benjamin and Jake. Despite all the Deep Space Nine episodes where Jake is underserved or conspicuously absent, one of the throughlines of the series from the beginning has been the bond between parent and child, as the elder Sisko comes into his responsibilities on the station, and the younger one grows up and begins to find his own way. For years, the show has planted those seeds.

In “The Visitor”, they bear moving, transcendent fruit, at the prospect of father and son being separated by grief and time and loss in the way we all will one day or another. The brilliance of the episode is that it checks so many engrossing boxes. It is a strong sci-fi story, about someone blinking in and out of existence over time after a peculiar spatial phenomena, with the best scientific minds working to figure out how to bring them home. It is a beautiful father and son story, about how important that bond is, particularly for single parents and only children. It is an exhilarating “What if?” story, that uses the premise to imagine the fates of the DS9 faithful decades into the future. And it is a cautionary tale, to cherish our bonds with those who matter most to us, but to continue living our lives in their absence, since it’s what they would want.

Any one of these would have been enough to support a superb episode. All of them together create one of Deep Space Nine’s, and Star Trek’s, all time greatest.

So kudos to credited writer Michael Taylor and the creative team behind the series, for not only coming up with the idea of Jake Sisko seemingly losing his father in a mysterious warp core accident, and yet encountering him sporadically over the course of years to come, but also for having the conviction to play this as a poignant tale of a young man haunted by someone whose loss affected him in ways he might never have comprehended were it not for such a maddening and nigh-torturous tragedy.

And my god, the performances. Cirroc Lofton has been underserved by Deep Space Nine. If you check Memory Alpha for behind-the-scenes info on episodes like I do, you’ll be struck by how many of them say “Cirroc Lofton did not appear.” And yet, he more than shows his worth here. He conveys the numb sense of mourning in Jake when he believes his father is dead, listlessly drifting through the station, without the will or the energy to pick up his life where it left off before. Lofton goes beyond the tones of the sullen teenager, and finds someone rendered inert by loss, sanded down into a lost soul chasing ghosts in the last place they saw them.

But he also gives a gobsmacking performance when, out of nowhere, Benjamin reappears and disappears before his son’s eyes all over again. The near-wordless sense of relief at the realization that he wasn’t crazy in having a vision of his father before, his guilt at not believed his own senses and tried harder to rescue him, his gutting pain of losing another parent all over again, is Lofton’s signature performance through the series so far. And it’s one apt to draw blood from even the coldest of hearts to see a young man incapable of processing such grief forced to confront it anew.

The same goes for Tony Todd, who arguably has a taller task. He has to portray Jake as an adult, and an old man, without losing a sense of continuity with Lofton’s presence. He has to convey Jake’s emotional state across decades, communicating the warmth and hardship and psychological strain at different stages of the man’s life. He has to narrate these events in voiceover without it feeling like a cheat. And he has to carry the love, the guilt, the frustration, and the sacrifice, of a version of Jake Sisko who gave up half his life, and eventually all of it, to save his father.

That Todd not only meets the challenge, but arguably rises above it, is near miraculous. He is plausible (if a little muscular) as a grown up version of the younger Sisko. He sells the sense of a man who found his calling as a writer and a new family with his wife, Korena in the wake of his father’s death. He communicates the life-altering determination of someone still plagued with guilt over what more he could have done, who devoted the rest of his days to undoing the tragedy that directed the course of his days. He delivers the beleaguered frustration of someone who turned over decades of his life to righting that wrong and still came up short. He cuts the perfect image of the wistful old man willing to share his story with a willing listener. And in his final bow, he rips your heartstrings asunder as a grown son, lamenting the life he led in lieu of, and in the absence of, his father, ready to give it all up in order to set things right. Todd gives a tour de force performance through all of this, catapulting him into the pantheon of all-time great recurring Star Trek performers.

And through his, and by extension Jake’s, journey through the timeline, we get to see glimpses of a possible future for our heroes. The Federation ultimately abandons the station to the Klingons. The Dominion stays quiet despite the numerous threats. Quark gets that moon he’s long been angling for, and Morn takes over the bar, despite the new rock-ridged landlords. Dax and Bashir become charming and accomplished old coots (with the standard less-than-convincing old age makeup). Rom becomes a Starfleet captain! The nature of 1990s television is reversion to the status quo and not changing too much all at once. So there’s a particular thrill to seeing a vision of what the road ahead could hold for the main cast and the quadrant writ large, delivered en masse in forty minutes and change.

“The Visitor” never feels overstuffed though. Instead, like “The Inner Light”, the episode’s spiritual predecessor, it gives us just enough of the different phases of Jake’s life, and a sense of the developments in between, while remaining nimble as it moves through the ages.

My goodness, what a privilege it is to see Jake’s life wax and wane in sink with his father’s visits. A sad young man is given new hope, but also license to move on by one seemingly miraculous reappearance from his father aboard DS9. The trajectory of a successful writer and budding family man is upended when his dad pops out of thin air once more. An aging soul determined to undo the accident he blames himself for gives himself over to frustration and self-flagellation when his chancey attempt to retrieve his dad once more goes awry. And an elderly man gives his life as a last ditch effort to bring his father back from whence he came, and to demonstrate his love in the most profound and heart-rending terms one can imagine.

Good God. There is such poetry and tragedy in all of this. And the secret weapon that makes it all land is Ben Sisko himself. After three seasons, it’s easy to take Avery Brooks’ outstanding performances for granted. Unlike Todd and even Lofton, by comparison Brooks is a known quantity. And yet, he outdoes himself here. His earnestness at trying to grant Jake absolution and catharsis when he reappears after the accident; his joy and wonder when he sees the man his son has grown up to become; his earnest effort at imploring Jake to move on with his life and not devote to reviving him; and his shock and desperation when he realizes that his child has sacrificed his own life to save Ben’s -- Brooks sells it all like nobody’s business.

Therein lies the meddling of poetry, pathos, and science-fiction-y irony in all of this. Jake worked so hard to bring his father back through science, because of the bond he could not let go of, when what was holding his father in this loop was a more literal subspace bond between them. Severing that bond is the only way to solve the problem and it’s the end of Jake’s life that proves the only thing which can restore his father’s, and give them a second chance. Saving the day hurts, and requires doing the opposite of all Jake’s strived for spiritually, practically, and emotionally through all of this.

And strangely enough, it goes against the ostensible theme of the episode -- a noble idea that the loss of those we care about is tremendously difficult, but that they themselves would want us to be spurred by their memory to live lives of meaning and purpose, rather than running around in circles trying to chase their tails.

Few of us know what it’s like to have a loved one appear to perish in a warp core accident, only to have them conjured before us at regular but all too evanescent intervals. But most of us, sadly, know what it’s like to lose someone we care for deeply, and maybe even feel lost without. There is such power in Benjamin himself urging his son to let go of that pain and continue on in the worthwhile life of passion and new family bonds he began, until he was sidetracked by this crusade from the past. And there is such pathos and compounding tragedy in Jake’s inability to let go, letting his own life run aground on his pursuit of his father’s.

The moral seems to be not to fall into the same traps that Jake does, however understandable they may be. I lost someone dear to me last year, and I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t consider extraordinary lengths to bring them back if I thought I had half a chance to. In a more prosaic way, the pain of the loss still lingers, in ways that cast a pall over certain things that once brought me joy. “The Visitor” is a clarion call to anyone who’s grieved, both to treat the time with those we love as precious, and to spend our time honoring those we’ve lost by living lives they’d be proud of, rather than miring our days in futile efforts to conjure a past that will never return.

Ostensibly, Jake making his last act one of self-immolation to bring his father back once and for all runs against that theme. And yet, it is at once a tribute to the bond Benjamin and Jake shared, the one that Jake almost went mad trying to regain, but also an acknowledgement that the life he led up to that point had gone astray, to where a chance to reset the timeline was for both of them, a way to give not just his father, but himself, their lives back after lo these many years.

This is a high water mark, something built on years of narrative progression, an imaginative science-fiction premise, and the richly-drawn, painfully relatable love between two family members who care deeply for one another, and lose one another. In the end, Benjamin finds his way back to his boy and embraces him with a father’s love, an act to acknowledge what was lost and what was gained in the effort to bring him home. And in that, Deep Space Nine sets a standard of storytelling, meaning, and feeling that few episodes of television, Star Trek or otherwise, can hope to meet.

(One programming note -- I’m reviewing this as one big episode rather than two constituent parts. So this review contains SPOILERS for the second half of this two-parter. Please beware!)

[9.5/10] When I think of Deep Space Nine, I think of its complexity, both political and personal. I think of having to make tough choices in moral gray areas, where there are no easy or obvious answers. And I think of a willingness to earnestly examine an outsider’s view of Starfleet, something even the modern Star Trek series haven't embraced with the same conviction.

“The Way of the Warrior” has them all.

Oh yeah, and it also has Worf! Eventually, he will blend seamlessly into the cast, and it will seem as though he was always there. But for now, this feels like a melding of series more significant that Lwaxana Troi, Thomas Riker, or even Captain Picard’s meaningful but brief appearance in “Emissary”. This is the period where Star Trek felt most like a cinematic universe, with the Maquis dispute running through three distinct shows, and characters moving back and forth between different corners of the franchise.

Worf’s arrival is the peak of that -- a major character from one show joining the cast of another -- and I won’t hesitate to mention that I threw my hands in the air in celebration when the camera panned up to that familiar baldric and those distinctive ridges. a signifier that one of The Next Generation’s most vaunted heroes would be continuing his story within DS9’s multifaceted milieu.

What I love about Worf’s appearance here is that it’s much more than a cheesy crossover. This is, instead, about Starfleet’s only Klingon standing at a crossroads. After the Enterprise-D’s destruction during the events of Star Trek: Generations, Worf has been a man without a home. He’s taken a leave to study with the monks on Boreth. He’s again felt the tension between his pull toward this calling he’s given so many years to, and the Klingon community he feels an equal and opposite loyalty to. When he first meets with Captain Sisko, he offers some characteristic frankness, revealing that he’s seriously considered resigning his commission, but also some of his trademark steadfastness, evincing a commitment to do his duty until he makes a decision about his future.

This is not merely a story of Starfleet’s resident Klingon helping to settle a dispute with the Klingons. It’s a story of someone torn between two peoples and two worlds, neither of which he’s felt fully comfortable in, resolving where he belongs.

Despite the dilemma, “The Way of the Warrior” does well to integrate Worf into the cast, playing on past relationships and known parallels to make him seem like a natural fit. O’Brien is, naturally, his envoy for the station, given their shared history serving on the Enterprise, which of course gives him a good introduction to Julian as well. A bit of post-holosuite medieval madness gets Worf and Kira, two battle-ready warriors if there ever were a pair, off on an amusing foot, as the Major protests she doesn’t normally dress like this. Jadzia already feels some sparks with Worf, which makes sense given her and Curzon’s history with Klingons. And Odo knows more than anyone else in the cast what it’s like to be pulled by conflicting loyalties to your people on the one hand and Starfleet on the other. These are all natural connection points that make Worf feels like an organic addition to the show’s dynamic, rather than a fan favorite spackled in halfway through a show’s run.

But the prime parallel here comes between Worf and Captain Sisko, who knows what it’s like to want to resign your commission and leave this all behind at a time of uncertainty. The catch is that, amid all that laudable personal complexity, there is a tangled, intricate diplomatic situation erupting, and Benjamin badly needs the help of someone like Worf to help resolve it.

I’ll confess, I am over the moon for how well showrunner Ira Steven Behr and co-writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe meld the politics and threat of war that have been bubbling up on Deep Space Nine since the beginning with the international tensions that have persisted from the early days of The Next Generation. The mix of complicated Federation/Cardassian relations, with the always tenuous Federation/Klingon alliance, should feel like too much. Instead, it feels like a genuine international crisis, with all the dimensions and impossible angles such clashes of civilizations with differing interests should.

The Klingons have overrun DS9, hassling civilians and inspecting neighboring ships. On the one hand, that's understandable, given the threat the Dominion poses to the whole Alpha Quadrant, and the Founders ability to infiltrate any space. On the other, this isn’t their jurisdiction, but policing that requires Sisko and his team to walk the delicate tightrope of corralling the Klingons without disrupting the delicate alliance between the Klingon Empire and the Federation. The intricacies of walking that line, balancing the need to maintain relations with the need to preserve authority and protect others in your own territory, is meaty, engrossing stuff.

Of course, things kick up a notch when it turns out the Klingons don’t just want to defend against a possible incursion through the Wormhole, but plan to invade Cardassia out of a fear that it’s been taken over by Changelings in disguise. The simple fact of the civilian government rising to power on Cardassia is fascinating. On the one hand, it could be the product of rising dissidents using the destruction of the Obsidian Order as an opportunity for people to reclaim the government from the military. On the other, the Klingons aren’t out of line to think that this could all be something orchestrated by the Founders to disrupt the balance of power in the Alpha Quadrant.

There’s an incredible amount at stake -- the Federation’s relationships with two major nations at odds with one another -- and justifiable concerns on both sides of the equation. Whether to help their prickly allies in the Klingon Empire, or warn then frenemies on Cardassia, or sit back and let the situation play out, all while the shadow of the Dominion looms large makes this a powder keg of politics and diplomacy with no easy answers, with Sisko in particular having to make some incredibly tough calls.

And he does. One of the other trademarks of DS9 is a willingness for Sisko to color outside the lines, violating some of the pure nobility that was a greater part of TNG and TOS. So while he won't violate the Federation’s alliance with the Klingons by telling Gul Dukat about the impending invasion, he will conspicuously talk about while Garak’s been invited for an impromptu fitting, knowing what will flow from there. Despite Dr. Bashir’s mild objections, he’ll violate the agreement with the Romulans not to cloak the Defiant in the Alpha Quadrant, because saving Cardassia’s civilian government is more important right now. This is a captain willing to set aside certain principles and bits of decorum given the exigencies of the moment, a thread that would continue through the series until its conclusion.

That matters when push comes to shove, and he has to decide whether to decloak and attack Klingon warships to save the Cardassian leaders, Gul Dukot included. I love how “The Way of the Warrior” pauses in that moment, not only building the tension for what’s going to happen, but selling the gravity of the decision, and Sisko wanting to make sure he takes whatever time he can to make it, even in a ticking clock situation.

Ticking clocks aside, what I don’t necessarily associate Deep Space Nine with is action. And yet, “The War of the Warrior” has some of the best action sequences in Star Trek this side of the movies. The Defiant’s evasions and dogfights with the Klingon ships are kinetic and thrilling, especially the image of the Federation ship emerging from a space-bound explosion. The script ably sets up the station’s new defenses, and the array of torpedoes and phaser fire stymying the Klingon fleet responding to Sisko’s interruption is incredible. And while it’s a little cheesy how easily our heroes come out on top, the hand-to-hand combat between the DS9 faithful and the Klingon warriors is some of the best-choreographed and most exciting fisticuffs in any Star Trek outing. The knock on DS9 is that it didn’t have enough fireworks, but the beginning of the show’s fourth season delivered it in spades.

And it also delivers on the character moments. The romance between Captain Sisko and Cassidy Yates continues to blossom, as part of his stand-off with General Martok’s subordinate is muddied by the fact that the Klingons are impounding his girlfriend’s ship. Amidst the thrilling game of laser tag on the promenade, Dr. Bashir rises to the challenge and saves Odo’s bacon, a nice counterpoint to the constable’s warning that the Klingons won’t hold back on medical personnel. Most of all, Quark and Garak have one of the series’ signature conversations, about cloying, bubbly root beer as an analogue for the vile and insidious Federation, that even these outsiders have spent enough time around to the point that, no matter how much they might laments that their fate is in Starfleet’s hand, they’ve begrudgingly come to like it.

Of course, our heroes do save the day, rescuing Cardassia’s civilian leadership (a side-switching Gul Dukot included) from the Klingons, albeit while giving them all blood tests to ensure they’re not, in fact, stealthy Changelings. Sisko’s munitions buy the station enough time for Starfleet reinforcements to be in bound, his warnings convince Chancellor Gowron that the Dominion wants the Alpha Quadrant’s forces to be weakened by fighting each other, and Worf’s words from Kahless convince the Klingon leader that a war on two fronts is not worth hobbling the Empire for. For the moment, at least, things can go back to normal, without the outbreak of war that seemed eminent.

And yet, as is also a hallmark of Deep Space Nine, there are consequences. Cardassia seems on the up and up, but there’s still a new government to deal with, one that might have a different view of relations with the Federation and Bajor than the last one did, for better or worse. The long fractured alliance between the UFP and the Klingon Empire firmly shatters, as diplomatic relations are cut off, and a sense from the Klingons that they’ve been at peace for too long without glorious victory takes hold. In that vein, they capture outlying Cardassian colonies and refuse to give them up, giving Martok and his soldiers a foothold in this corner of the galaxy that mean they’ll be a thorn in Sisko’s side for the foreseeable future, as if there weren't enough political turmoil this close to the wormhole. Things are all well for now, but there’s the clunky but tantalizing promise of more trouble and excitement to come.

And also the promise of more from Worf. “The War of the Warrior” commendably plays on his history, with Gowron, with the House of Mogh, and with Starfleet. His involvement is crucial to seeing this crisis through, from uncovering the information about Klingon plans thanks to an old connection, to helping Gowron see the dishonor in his actions, to coming up with a tractor beam tactic that buys the Defiant the time it needs to beam over the last of the Cardassian leaders. But his choices too come at a cost -- another discommendation.

(I think? Gowron’s words seem to indicate that's what’s happening, but nobody does the fancy crossed-arms/turn away thing, so who knows?)

So he can't go back to his Enterprise, which is lying in the debris on Veridian III. He can't go back to the Klingons, since his devotion to his own sense of honor over the Chancellor imploring him to join in an unjust war evaporates that possibility. He is a man without a home, ready to run away from all of this, and go to some far-flung place where life and death concerns will be someone else’s problem.

And yet, who can relate to that impulse better than Captain Sisko? The capstone to “The Way of the Warrior” sees Benjamin ready to grant Worf his resignation once the crisis has passed, but cautioning him not to make the same mistake Sisko himself nearly did. His warning is a profound one. Running away from pain is easy. You associate it with a time and a place and so you leave them behind, thinking the pain will go away with them. But that's not how pain works. It lingers with us, and choosing to face it, rather than giving up the places where we can improve the world, is an act of bravery and ultimately, of healing. The understanding between them, having been in similar places in their careers and emotional trajectories, helps justify Worf’s inclusion on the station and the show, and gives him reason to stay someplace where he’s not only welcomed, but understood.

It is heartening to see him rise into ops wearing command red. As with new looks from Sisko, Kira, and others, and a more filled-in and awkwardly jaunty intro, these are the signs that a new era of Deep Space Nine had arrived. It would include more political snarls, more hard decisions, more personal struggles, and more alien outsiders who look on the Federation with some combination of practiced disdain and begrudging appreciation. But it would also include more of our heroes, standing firm in the face of such turmoil, depending on one another to face it down, and knowing that whatever the challenges, they’d all found a home.

[7.7/10] When I saw the episode “Cathexis” from Star Trek: Voyager, I wrote it off as an unavailing attempt to meld Star Trek with The Thing. Well, the joke’s on me! First, because it turns out the writers of Voyager were aping Agatha Christie much more than the John Carpenter classic. Second, because a little more than a month later, Deep Space Nine would do an actual homage to The Thing. And third, because it turns out the series’ riff on Carpenter’s 1982 landmark in horror cinema would be pretty damn good!

In “The Adversary”, the references are far more direct. Not one but two “testing to see who the monster is” sequences follow the rhythms of an iconic scene from The Thing. The lurking menace aboard the Defiant is a shape-shifter with ill intent, much like the one who lurked within an Antarctic research station. And the paranoid air and form of interpersonal suspicion are much more in line with this episode’s cinematic precursor.

That's not what makes “The Adversary” superior effort to Voyager’s take on a similar idea, though. The fact that the characters make rational, smart choices to try to combat this threat, and still find themselves coming up short given the inscrutability of their enemy, creates a much more compelling story here. When you do everything (or almost everything right) and still find yourself losing, the heroes seem more competent, the villains seem more fearsome, and the story seems more apt to play fair with its threat and solutions.

So it’s a good thing that Sisko enacts strict protocols to minimize the villainous Founder’s attempt take over the Defiant and start a war, like confining nonessential crew to quarters and instituting a buddy system to ensure no one gets replaced. Sharp choices, like a particle test to see who’s been messing with the ship’s systems and a blood test to see who might be a changeling make the feints and surprises feel earned. Even the self-destruct sequence, a classic “Like you’d really do it” move in Star Trek, has force because it’s a genuinely smart and committed tactic for Sisko to resort to rather than let his ship be used as a tool to throw the Federation into a war it doesn’t want or need.

Therein lies the other big benefit to “The Adversary” -- it has genuine stakes. Finding out who the culprit is matters not just because he’s taking over the ship, but because if they don’t stop him, Starfleet’s ability to defend against a Dominion attack would be all but kaput given the resources another unexpected war would take. The Founder who told Odo that the Dominion had neutralized the Romulans and the Cardassians with their ploy in “The Die Is Cast” that the same would soon be true for the Federation and the Klingons would see his ominous warning come to fruition.

My only beef is that this whole thing depends on a conflict the audience has never heard of. “The Adversary” is the first mention of the Tzenkethi, the purportedly saber-rattling civilization the Federation has, apparently, previously gone to war with before and might end up having to fight again if the Dominion has its way. And they’re barely ever mentioned again. Why the writers didn’t choose the Cardassians or the Romulans or anyone else who might have more history that would instantly give the peril of war more instant credibility is beyond me. I guess it’d be less plausible for Ambassador Krajensky to baited the DS9 crew with a diplomatic incident he just made up?

Still, the conceit is easy to forgive because “The Adversary” does such a great job at steadily ratcheting up the tension and the intensity as the threat escalates. First O’Brien merely hears some unsettling noises around the Defiant. Then the ship’s commandeered from within, raising the stakes. Only then, does the changeling expose himself, and the game changes into a hunt for an enemy that could be anyone and anywhere. From there, the mutual suspicions of the crew, the ability for their foe to keep them guessing, and the possibility that this whole thing ends in flames all raise higher and higher.

Along the way, the writers pull out plenty of good tricks. I love the twin Odos each trying to convince Miles they’re real, providing details only the real constable would know, in what feels like a conscious callback to a similar scene with Kirk, Spock, and a shapeshifter in “Whom Gods Destroy” from The Original Series. I love the fact that the blood test is thwarted by the changeling posing as Dr. Bashir, able to use his abilities to frame Eddington. And I love how the show tees up Eddington as a red herring -- an outsider to the main cast who’s betrayed Sisko once before -- but who isn’t the culprit today. For all that “The Adversary” is clearly pulling from other sources, the writers put plenty of their own touches in play as well.

What truly puts this season finale over the top though isn’t the neatly-plotted mystery, or unique threat, or consistently escalating tension. It’s that there’s a character throughline here which makes the choices made personally meaningful. As Odo tells Eddington, in all his time as a humanoid, he’s never had to use a phaser or take a life. There’s a nobility, a sense of honor, to Odo, that's central to who the character is.

So when he violates his people’s sacred precept that “No changeling has ever harmed another” to save these “solids” and avert war, it means he’s giving away a piece of himself, breaking a hallowed code from a society he doesn’t understand but yearns to return to nonetheless, in order to protect the people who’ve become his family in their absence. The T.V. CGI is not sterling, but the performances from Rene Auberjonois and his counterpart sell the magnitude of his choice to kill the antagonistic changeling and side with Starfleet. His pained expression, his regret that it had to come to this, are palpable. Sisko and company may be able to avoid any casualties, let alone being led into a casus belli, but it comes at a cost -- a personal one, which, as Captain Picard might say, makes all of this mean something.

And yet, even as the villain is defeated, he leaves Odo, Sisko, and the audience with one terrifying but tantalizing warning. This changeling impersonating a Federation Ambassador is not a lone wolf. The Founders have already infiltrated the Alpha Quadrant, and there’s no way to know who they are or where they might strike next. It makes good on the sort of overarching threat The Next Generation tried to establish with a crop of parasitic creatures at the end of its first season, but never followed up on in a meaningful way. The tease allows “The Adversary” to remain a strong standalone episode, while also providing one hell of a hook for season 4.
All of these things boost “The Adversary” as the superior product over Voyager’s “Cathexis”. Despite some commonalities in the paranoid thriller and hidden identity elements, the two episodes could hardly be more different in execution. Voyager was a show in its first season still struggling to find its sea legs, and Deep Space Nine was a now confident series firmly hitting its stride.

Season 4 is the point at which many fans believe that DS9 really begins. There’s signifiers of a dividing line, like Sisko finally attaining the long-deserved rank of captain in a lovely ceremony, the heightening of the Dominion threat, and new arrivals who bring with them some major changes to the balance and focus of the series.

And yet, while the show becomes darker and bolder in some ways, I’d mark Deep Space Nine’s third season as the point where the series firmly and finally arrives. Sure, Sisko still has his hair, and the show’s approach and ambitions would continue to evolve. But the complexity, creativity, camaraderie, and other hallmarks of the series’ ability to turn in quality Star Trek, and quality television bar none, on a weekly basis came to the fore in the third year of Sisko’s mission. There is more, maybe even better, to come. But with this crop of episodes, DS9 set its ascent into a classic in its own right, as worthy of tributes and appreciation as the venerated films the show would pay homage to in episodes like this one.

[7.5/10] On paper, Dax remains one of the most interesting characters in not just Deep Space Nine, but all of Star Trek. The notion of a “joined species” is one of the franchise’s most ambitious concepts. From a sci-fi standpoint, a person who has both their own existence, but also the collective memories and personhoods of their symbiont’s prior hosts is a unique idea. From an emotional standpoint, having to intertwine and reconcile one’s own individual identity with those of generations of those who came before gives the writers plenty of room to run. And from a narrative standpoint, someone with experiences and relationships that stretch long into the past provide opportunities for conflict and ingenuity.

There’s two problems though. The first, I’m sorry to say, is Terry Farrell, who gives a perfectly fine performance in the role, but not one that can live up to that degree of layered complexity. That is no sin. It would take a tremendous performer to convey both the sense of a confident yet still newer young officer who has multiple lifetimes worth of wizened experience bubbling up within her. To put a fine point on it, Farrell is solid enough as Jadzia, but rarely conveys the interiority and legacy of Dax. One of her fellow performers described the show as her graduate program, and while you can see her improving from season to season, she’s often a little too labored, and rarely convincing, in the major emotional moments. (Which makes moving, tender exchanges like her farewell to Benjamin in “Meridian” that much more precious.)

The second, though, is entirely on the writers. Basically everyone on the station is enamored with her, which is both awkward and limiting. Thankfully, the show mostly moved away from Julian’s obsession by this point. But here we are again with her taking advantage of Quark’s affections by practically groping him to get him to cooperate with her Trill ritual. And heaven forbid she have a major story that doesn’t hinge, in some way, on people falling in love with her. Romance is a part of life and a worthwhile thing to explore for a Trill in particular, who has to balance connections past and present. But reducing her narrative possibilities to, “Everyone has the hots for Jadzia” diminishes her when there’s so many other worthy avenues to explore with the character.

Including this one! Whoever came up with the idea of “Jadzia gets to meet all her old hosts” deserves a raise. The premise is a touch hokey. And the means -- past hosts being able to psychically inhabit the bodies of Jadzia’s friends -- are a touch convenient. But it’s also a lot of fun.

Seeing the show’s cast break out of their normal personas and get to show off a character who’s a little more nurturing, or anxious, or reckless is a hoot. Some of the performers do better than others (most of the ones who only get a single scene are overdoing it a tad), but without exception, it’s entertaining to see each of them branch out. Avery Brooks in particular is downright terrifying as a Hannibal Lecter type. I wouldn’t necessarily want an entire episode of Joran-as-Sisko, and it flattens the character out a little bit after “Equilibrium”, but man, you can see how Brooks could be amazing in this sort of role.

(As an aside, I don’t know how I feel about the scene where Quark is inhabited by one of Dax’s female hosts. Charitably, you could read the humor as stemming from a character who was trying to reinforce a misogynistic system just a couple episodes ago now having to share his body with a woman. But some of it feels like the humor is, “Haha, a dude has to talk about sensitive stuff like a girl!” which sits uneasily.)

But the secret sauce of “Facets” is Rom’s story. The tale is simple. Nog is testing to get into a Starfleet Academy prep program. Quark sabotages him to keep him close to home. And Rom figures it out and calls his brother to the carpet over it. There’s nothing especially unique about the setup.

What elevates it, though, is that it’s all rooted in character. We understand Nog’s fervent desire to join Starfleet, and how this is an important first step toward reaching that goal. We understand Quark’s skepticism and disdain for the whole idea, with a readiness to do anything to thwart it. And most all, we understand Rom’s knowledge of his son, recognizing that Nog would never fail the spatial orientation portion of the test given his natural aptitude; his knowledge of his brother, sniffing out a sabotage when he smells something funny; and most of all his love for his only child, ready to show a certain backbone and intensity that we rarely see from the deferential younger brother.

So he sets things right. Nog gets his cadet uniform (tailored by Garak no less). He arrives in the bar having passed (and orders a root beer, something portentous in the show). And most of all, Rom stands up for what’s important, getting in the face and confronting a veritable bully when what’s on the line truly matters.

That connects the B-story thematically to the A-story. After meeting all of Dax’s past hosts, Jadzia starts to develop some imposter syndrome. How can she measure up to all these great folks from the past, especially when she was initially a wash-out as an initiate? It’s sympathetic and relatable, to be at the beginning of your journey and worry that you won’t be able to climb as high or go as far as those who came before. Adding Curzon, the host who rejected her from the program in the first place, only heightens the insecurity in the situation.

The greatest boon of all is to mix Curzon and Odo together as part of the ritual. For one thing, it allows us to see Renee Auberjonois cut loose, which, like Leonard Nimoy and Spock before him, has the innate thrill of a normally stoic character seeming friendly and fun. It also gives us a chance to see someone much-talked about but never really seen (outside of one brief flashback) who’s important to two major characters.

In truth, I wish we’d gotten more with Benjamin and Curzon. Imagine being able to see someone you loved deeply, who’d died, one last time? Their reunion plays like a pair of old college buddies checking in at the reunion, not what is possibly the last chance for mentor and protege to confide in one another. Still, it’s fun to see a more gregarious persona emerge through Odo, and watching the reified Curzon show his spark but also his flaws via the normally more subdued shapeshifted is a blast.
The central idea is a good one, though. Jadzia is tentative around Curzon, because she wants to know why he washed her out. She needs to persuade him to rejoin the Dax symbiont, which supposedly neither he nor Odo wants to do, but is especially reluctant when Curzon says he only let her back in the program because he felt sorry for her, and she doesn’t want that idea to be internalized in a way that would exacerbate the self-doubt she’s already struggling with.

The arc lands where it should. A pep talk from Benjamin gives her the gumption to challenge Curzon, tell him when he’s crossed a line, and show the confidence in herself and self-worth that demonstrates how she’s worthy of the symbiont. It puts her in line with Rom, telling off someone taking liberties they’re not owed in a way that reveals selfishness and myopia.

Except that when called to account for his actions Curzon explains that he rejected Jadzia from the initiate program not because she was unworthy but....because he was in love with her. Come on! Does everyone have to do that? Why is this a satisfying answer to the question? Why couldn't it simply be something poetic, like he thought she was brilliant enough that she might outshine him as a Dax host if he let her in? No, instead it’s just yet another person who has the hots for Jadzia as the sticky wicket.

Jadzia takes it in stride, because if there’s one thing that's maddeningly consistent on this show, it’s the character brushing off colleagues and acquaintances constantly hitting on her to the point of harassment like that's okay. But in the end, she does stand up to him, and there’s catharsis in her asserting herself and convincing Curzon to rejoin, in the right way. Her closing exchange with Odo is a particularly sweet one, as she better understands Odo’s joy in shapeshifting, and he better understands the simple pleasures of humanoids like eating and drinking.

It’s just a bumpy road to get there. There is so much potential in Dax as a character. So many places to take her and intriguing wrinkles to explore in someone who is both one life, and ten beings, all with different experiences and quirks that have left their mark on Jadiza. I just wish the performer could convey that on a consistent basis, and that the show didn’t reduce her to an object of romantic infatuation, rather than a full-fledged person whose existence extends beyond who’s crushing on her this week.