Deep Space Nine, at last
Nov. 25th, 2003 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakBack to the Federation. Which is like root beer, you know. Not that I have the slightest idea about what root beer tastes like, but Quark says so, and Garak says so, and what do you mean these are not the most trustworthy individuals on the station?
Anyway. Business As Usual must be the most serious Quark-centric episode. (Even House of Quark is a mixture of comedy and drama, ditto Rules of Acquisition.) And it was time that the question of what consequences the pursuit of profit could have got a dark twist. Though it’s somewhat retconning to make it ofter the sales of weapons, given that Quark had been shown selling weapons before (for example in season 2’s The Maquis), without the other regulars being shocked about it. But those had presumably been sales on a different scale, not for entire armies. What Cousin Gaila does business with are, dare one say it, weapons of mass destruction. And I like how the episode progresses from Quark kidding himself over the implications to the realisation of just what his sales mean via a speech pinched directly from The Third Man. (Though I have to say Gaila is no Harry Lime, or Orson Welles for that matter.) The episode also reminds me of a strange phenomenon: I resent it when Kira dresses down Quark. Dax, yes, because she’s Quark’s friend (plus she functions as his unforgiving conscience in this episode). Odo, of course. (They’re equals.) Even Sisko, because Sisko takes Quark seriously. But Kira always comes across as a bully to me in her interactions with Quark, and I can’t quite figure out why, given that she doesn’t do anything the others don’t do as well, plus I do like Kira.
The solution Quark comes up with is a very DS9 one, meaning it’s practical but not exactly completely ethical, because lest we forget, it includes Quark setting up not just the two competing mass-murdering despots but also the crazy weapons dealer plus cousin Gaila up to get killed by each other. No wonder Benjamin “I can live with it” Sisko approves. (Me too, by the way, but I’m a member of the audience, not a Starfleet Captain. You shouldn’t be shocked by what you’re capable off later, Benji.)
Sisko gets to vent his capacity for ruthlessness and his increasing obsessive streak in For the Uniform, a firm favourite of mine. As opposed to Sisko getting obsessive in a mystic way in Rapture, this has nothing to do with faith, and only secondarily with the Maquis situation making an unstable region even more unstable. As Sisko himself admits to Dax when punching the sack, it’s about Eddington, and Eddington getting the better of him despite the fact Michael Eddington is just an ordinary human being, not an alien, not someone with superpowers.
He’s also a great character. I think I mentioned in regards to The Maquis when rewatching season 2 that Sisko’s old pal What’s-his-name just doesn’t work as a character (and is effortlessly outshone by Dukat as the guest star of that two-parter). The actor is dull, and the character, despite a promising premise – Starfleet officer gone Maquis with personal connection to show’s leading man – is dull, dull, dull as well. However, thankfully the writers came up with a similar premise years later. Keeping Eddington around for a season or so as a nonedescript irregular guest star before he deserts worked well as a basis; we knew him already that way. But he really starts to come into his own only after the desertion, with his eviscarating “The Federation is worse than the Borg” speech in For the Cause. For the Uniform completes the process. Giving Sisko a human opponent, someone acting out of ideals, but at the same time being clever and ruthless, was inspired. Again, as with Kira’s background, I doubt a character like Eddington would make it to the screen these days. Michael Eddington: terrorist or freedom fighter? Discuss. And if he’s a terrorist, what does that make Sisko when the later hits upon the device which will make Eddington turn himself in, i.e. using biological weapons on the Maquis planets?
Next, we get the Purgatory/Inferno two-parter, which from a Cardassian pov could be subtitled “Fathers and sons and daughters”. The revalation about Garak and Enabran Tain, as I recall, destroyed many a speculation that the two of them had been lovers but makes complete sense, given that Garak doesn’t act that suicidally heroic for anyone else, including Bashir. In retrospect, in also fits what information we have about the Cardassian attitude about illegitimate and abandoned children from episodes like Cardassians and Indiscretion. It occurs to me that there are several parallels there to be explored between Garak’s relationship with Tain, and Ziyal’s with Dukat. At the time I think there were quite a lot of Garak/Bashir ‘shippers disgruntled with Ziyal because she was perceived as a intruder. While the Garak/Ziyal relationship wouldn’t have worked for me as a genuine romance, either, I can believe that he cared for her deeply, not just because of mutual loneliness and species loyalty but because of that shared outsider status and never-quite-completely-fulfilled quest for parental approval and love. (Also, it annoyed Dukat which must have been fun for Garak.) (Oh, and Ziyal had a crush on Garak – really, who can blame her?)
Dukat allying himself with the Dominion placed him firmly on the antagonist side again but as opposed to the Pagh Wraith insanity later made perfect sense to me, character-wise. (Hate, hate, hate the Pagh Wraiths. The only justification for them is that they contributed to a really good character exploration of Kai Winn – yay Winn! – but certainly not red-eyed Dukat and that ridiculous punch-out with Sisko at the end which is only slightly less embarassing than the Kirk-Picard-Soran punch-out as far as bad story decisions in Trek are concerned.) The Cardassians had been on the losing side in the Klingon war for more than a season and given both Dukat’s ego and his ambitions, I had no trouble believing he’d fancy himself a leader/dictator/saviour of Cardassia via and overlook that the Dominion would never allow him to be more than their puppet.
The idea of Changeling Bashir seems to have been something thrown in to the mix in the last minute and really had no set-up, or consequences, but given that it enabled Real Bashir to be present when Garak had his last talk with Tain, I’m not about to complain. Also, the good Doctor had a great episode coming up. Dr. Bashir, I presume could hav easily been just a guest-starring vehicle for Robert Picardo, but while he’s fun as Lewis Zimmerman, he’s really only the trigger for what must be the most inspired retcon (or should we call it just revelation) ever on DS9. (And yes, I rate it higher than the Sisko&Prophets backstory revealed in season 7, though I did like that one.) Having Julian revealed as someone genetically engineered not only fitted with what we had seen before, including the fascination with secrets and double lives as evidenced in his friendship with Garak, but also worked as a set-up for the section 31 goodness to come. And despite parent/child issues being a stock trade in Star Trek (with the exception of Sisko and Jake, proud representatives of the sole supremely functional family in Trekdom), Bashir’s resentment of his father (and to a lesser extent mother) worked since it was about more than just the usual “you don’t understand me” stuff. How a child deals with realising it has been engineered into what the parents saw as perfection is a question which imo won’t be Sci-Fi for us much longer, btw.
(And the moment when O’Brien realises that Bashir must have let him win all those matches deliberately is entirely too adorable.)
Rom and Leeta coming together I can take or leave. I mean, I like Rom (and incidentally this is where we finally get some backstory about Nog’s mother), and while I do see how DS9 tried to play him and Leeta as the comic relief couple as opposed to the serious pairings like Sisko/Kassidy, Worf/Dax or later Odo/Kira, I don’t think it worked as well as, say, BTVS doing something similar with Xander/Cordy in season 2. Partly because though the idea of Leeta having dumped Bashir in favour of Rom amuses me, she never became a real character to me. This being said, Rom’s long “Waiiiiiiiit” makes me smile every time.
Anyway. Business As Usual must be the most serious Quark-centric episode. (Even House of Quark is a mixture of comedy and drama, ditto Rules of Acquisition.) And it was time that the question of what consequences the pursuit of profit could have got a dark twist. Though it’s somewhat retconning to make it ofter the sales of weapons, given that Quark had been shown selling weapons before (for example in season 2’s The Maquis), without the other regulars being shocked about it. But those had presumably been sales on a different scale, not for entire armies. What Cousin Gaila does business with are, dare one say it, weapons of mass destruction. And I like how the episode progresses from Quark kidding himself over the implications to the realisation of just what his sales mean via a speech pinched directly from The Third Man. (Though I have to say Gaila is no Harry Lime, or Orson Welles for that matter.) The episode also reminds me of a strange phenomenon: I resent it when Kira dresses down Quark. Dax, yes, because she’s Quark’s friend (plus she functions as his unforgiving conscience in this episode). Odo, of course. (They’re equals.) Even Sisko, because Sisko takes Quark seriously. But Kira always comes across as a bully to me in her interactions with Quark, and I can’t quite figure out why, given that she doesn’t do anything the others don’t do as well, plus I do like Kira.
The solution Quark comes up with is a very DS9 one, meaning it’s practical but not exactly completely ethical, because lest we forget, it includes Quark setting up not just the two competing mass-murdering despots but also the crazy weapons dealer plus cousin Gaila up to get killed by each other. No wonder Benjamin “I can live with it” Sisko approves. (Me too, by the way, but I’m a member of the audience, not a Starfleet Captain. You shouldn’t be shocked by what you’re capable off later, Benji.)
Sisko gets to vent his capacity for ruthlessness and his increasing obsessive streak in For the Uniform, a firm favourite of mine. As opposed to Sisko getting obsessive in a mystic way in Rapture, this has nothing to do with faith, and only secondarily with the Maquis situation making an unstable region even more unstable. As Sisko himself admits to Dax when punching the sack, it’s about Eddington, and Eddington getting the better of him despite the fact Michael Eddington is just an ordinary human being, not an alien, not someone with superpowers.
He’s also a great character. I think I mentioned in regards to The Maquis when rewatching season 2 that Sisko’s old pal What’s-his-name just doesn’t work as a character (and is effortlessly outshone by Dukat as the guest star of that two-parter). The actor is dull, and the character, despite a promising premise – Starfleet officer gone Maquis with personal connection to show’s leading man – is dull, dull, dull as well. However, thankfully the writers came up with a similar premise years later. Keeping Eddington around for a season or so as a nonedescript irregular guest star before he deserts worked well as a basis; we knew him already that way. But he really starts to come into his own only after the desertion, with his eviscarating “The Federation is worse than the Borg” speech in For the Cause. For the Uniform completes the process. Giving Sisko a human opponent, someone acting out of ideals, but at the same time being clever and ruthless, was inspired. Again, as with Kira’s background, I doubt a character like Eddington would make it to the screen these days. Michael Eddington: terrorist or freedom fighter? Discuss. And if he’s a terrorist, what does that make Sisko when the later hits upon the device which will make Eddington turn himself in, i.e. using biological weapons on the Maquis planets?
Next, we get the Purgatory/Inferno two-parter, which from a Cardassian pov could be subtitled “Fathers and sons and daughters”. The revalation about Garak and Enabran Tain, as I recall, destroyed many a speculation that the two of them had been lovers but makes complete sense, given that Garak doesn’t act that suicidally heroic for anyone else, including Bashir. In retrospect, in also fits what information we have about the Cardassian attitude about illegitimate and abandoned children from episodes like Cardassians and Indiscretion. It occurs to me that there are several parallels there to be explored between Garak’s relationship with Tain, and Ziyal’s with Dukat. At the time I think there were quite a lot of Garak/Bashir ‘shippers disgruntled with Ziyal because she was perceived as a intruder. While the Garak/Ziyal relationship wouldn’t have worked for me as a genuine romance, either, I can believe that he cared for her deeply, not just because of mutual loneliness and species loyalty but because of that shared outsider status and never-quite-completely-fulfilled quest for parental approval and love. (Also, it annoyed Dukat which must have been fun for Garak.) (Oh, and Ziyal had a crush on Garak – really, who can blame her?)
Dukat allying himself with the Dominion placed him firmly on the antagonist side again but as opposed to the Pagh Wraith insanity later made perfect sense to me, character-wise. (Hate, hate, hate the Pagh Wraiths. The only justification for them is that they contributed to a really good character exploration of Kai Winn – yay Winn! – but certainly not red-eyed Dukat and that ridiculous punch-out with Sisko at the end which is only slightly less embarassing than the Kirk-Picard-Soran punch-out as far as bad story decisions in Trek are concerned.) The Cardassians had been on the losing side in the Klingon war for more than a season and given both Dukat’s ego and his ambitions, I had no trouble believing he’d fancy himself a leader/dictator/saviour of Cardassia via and overlook that the Dominion would never allow him to be more than their puppet.
The idea of Changeling Bashir seems to have been something thrown in to the mix in the last minute and really had no set-up, or consequences, but given that it enabled Real Bashir to be present when Garak had his last talk with Tain, I’m not about to complain. Also, the good Doctor had a great episode coming up. Dr. Bashir, I presume could hav easily been just a guest-starring vehicle for Robert Picardo, but while he’s fun as Lewis Zimmerman, he’s really only the trigger for what must be the most inspired retcon (or should we call it just revelation) ever on DS9. (And yes, I rate it higher than the Sisko&Prophets backstory revealed in season 7, though I did like that one.) Having Julian revealed as someone genetically engineered not only fitted with what we had seen before, including the fascination with secrets and double lives as evidenced in his friendship with Garak, but also worked as a set-up for the section 31 goodness to come. And despite parent/child issues being a stock trade in Star Trek (with the exception of Sisko and Jake, proud representatives of the sole supremely functional family in Trekdom), Bashir’s resentment of his father (and to a lesser extent mother) worked since it was about more than just the usual “you don’t understand me” stuff. How a child deals with realising it has been engineered into what the parents saw as perfection is a question which imo won’t be Sci-Fi for us much longer, btw.
(And the moment when O’Brien realises that Bashir must have let him win all those matches deliberately is entirely too adorable.)
Rom and Leeta coming together I can take or leave. I mean, I like Rom (and incidentally this is where we finally get some backstory about Nog’s mother), and while I do see how DS9 tried to play him and Leeta as the comic relief couple as opposed to the serious pairings like Sisko/Kassidy, Worf/Dax or later Odo/Kira, I don’t think it worked as well as, say, BTVS doing something similar with Xander/Cordy in season 2. Partly because though the idea of Leeta having dumped Bashir in favour of Rom amuses me, she never became a real character to me. This being said, Rom’s long “Waiiiiiiiit” makes me smile every time.
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no subject
Date: 2003-11-25 07:16 am (UTC)How scarily true. Great review as ever. DS9 is definitely the plain dark chocolate of the Trekverse, an acquired taste but once you've acquired it nothing else will do.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-25 12:11 pm (UTC)I know how root beer tastes and...
Date: 2003-11-25 02:04 pm (UTC)Sounds vile...
Date: 2003-11-26 12:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-26 06:02 pm (UTC)Do you mind if I add you to my friends list?
no subject
Date: 2003-11-27 06:03 am (UTC)Expect In the Pale Moonlight raves in a few months once the season 6 DVDs are out...
no subject
Date: 2003-11-27 06:13 am (UTC)