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...and the rest of DS9, season 5 reviewed
Bonn, which is where I’m at today, is a really good place to visit. I always regret they moved the capital to Berlin after reunification. Of course, I can see why in regards to the East Germans, but Bonn’s charme is precisely that it is provincial, and quaint, that you can get everywhere on foot, that it’s utterly unpretentious and wasn’t that a healthy change? Bonn is impossible to dislike, unless you’re John Le Carré, that is, who rather unkindly wrote that it is half the size of the central cemetary of Chicago and twice as dead.
According to Robert Wolfe, originally Second Skin back in season 3 was to end with Bashir telling Kira he couldn’t find out anymore whether she was originally Cardassian or Bajoran, which meant Kira would have never known whether she started out as Iliana or as Kira Nerys. She would have, however, decided, that she was Kira Nerys now, and that was what mattered. I do regret they didn’t go with that ending, much as I like Second Skin as it is. If you think about it, Kira is probably the character most connected to Cardassians, and what a twisted and fascinating connection it is. The majority of her life was spent fighting them; they formed her. With Tekeny Ghemor, as Ties of Blood and Water emphasizes, she got a Cardassian adopted father; with Ziyal, she gained a half-Cardassian daughter. Her mother, as we will find out, was Dukat’s mistress, and she will end the show in the fight to free Cardassia. Ties of Blood and Water also shows yet again why Dukat was a great villain before the Pagh Wraiths (insert usual rant here). The writers allow him to get the occasional dig in as when, in answer to Sisko’s query why he hadn’t promoted himself back to Legate yet, Dukat replies that “Gul” was so much less pretentious than the alternatives: “Dictator…First Minister…Emissary.” And then there’s the great, great chemistry between him and Kira. Those two spark off each other fabulously, the seething hatred mixed with sexual attraction, and why on earth Kira wasn’t allowed to finish off Dukat in season 7 after all those death threats is beyond me anyway.
(Clarification: again, that doesn’t mean I think Dukat, even if he hadn’t gone over to the Dominion, and Kira should have ever been written into an affair. No way. It’s just that the two of them were so infinitely more interesting together in a scene than Mad!Dukat and Sisko.)
Soldiers of the Empire was Ron Moore indulging his inner Klingon again, and I have to confess I love it when he does that. Worf and Dax demonstrate that being a couple doesn’t stop them from being a great working team, Martok becomes a more layered character, and the Klingon crew I find more interesting than a great many redshirts. (More about redshirts in a minute, when we get to Empok Nor.) Jadzia connecting with the crew not just by doing the obligatory posturing thing but by bringing blood wine along and listening to their worries is one of the many reasons I like Dax: she is the one Starfleet officer genuinenly able to do as the Romans do, when in Rome (see also her interactions with Quark and other Ferengi) in a way that doesn’t feel like play-acting or as if she isn’t genuinenly enjoying herself. (Worf can’t; he always has something to prove when he’s with other Klingons.) This is also the only episode in which I’m somewhat tempted to do the ultimate Trekker thing and learn Klingon, because I’d enjoy singing that song…
Children of Time: Or, the one where Odo commits genocide. This episode really lives from its last scene. Without said scene, the idyll with settlers would be just a tad too sweet to be endurable; with the last scene, the revelation that Odo killed 8000 people so that Kira could live, it becomes incredibly poignant. It’s intriguing how the two people not confined to a human lifespan, Dax and Odo, make exactly opposite decisions; Dax, in its incarnation as Jedren, decides to sacrifice one life for the 8000; future Odo sacrifices the 8000 for one life… and a chance for his younger self. And there’s the rub. I don’t think I noticed it at the time that way, but Older!Odo asks Kira whether if he had confessed his love to her earlier there would have been a chance for them. She says there might have been. And then he goes off to ensure it will happen, and damns those 8000 people. Now I do think he’d have done the same if she had said no, that she never would see him as a lover. Because Odo does love Kira no matter what. And love can be a terrible thing. His actions are at once selfless – the Odo who commits them will be wiped out with the rest of the 8000 – and utterly selfish – putting Kira’s life, against her expressed wishes, ahead of the life of an entire population so that she will live and she and his younger self might become lovers one day. Making sure she knows what he did in the process.
My favourite Maquis, Michael Eddington, gets another episode – alas, his last – as DS9 wraps up the ongoing Maquis storyline in Blaze of Glory. To point out the flamingly obvious, DS9 handled the Maquis so much better than Voyager did (more’s the pity, since the Maquis if handled differently could have contributed a lot to Voyager). But given what was to come, it’s no wonder the writers thought they had ended their usefulness, with the Federation/Dominion war about to start. So Eddington gets an ending worthy of a Victor Hugo hero, but not before the great combination of him and Sisko as main characters of an episode is used one more time. Once you know that Eddington is actually manipulating Sisko even when pretending to be coerced or manipulated himself, it’s even more fun to watch them argue and push emotional buttons. Moreover, kudos for the writers for not either letting Eddington confess he was wrong or making him into a villain. Lost causes are attractive indeed.
Empok Nor is a good old-fashioned horror story. As with The Ship, I do appreciate the writers trying to make the guest staring redshirts into individuals, but alas, as with The Ship (and as opposed to Soldiers of the Empire), I don’t become emotionally involved with them. But then again, it’s not necessary for this particular episode, centring as it does around three characters I do care about – O’Brien, Garak and Nog. What makes this a bit more than a “character we know gets infected/possessed/mutates and goes psycho” ploy is that Garak rather obviously is needling O’Brien long before they ever get to Empok Nor, and we do know O’Brien’s backstory with Cardassians. Incidentally, I appreciate the writers letting Garak be irritated by the amount of time Bashir spents with O’Brien – I had wondered about that.*g* Aside from Bashir-related jeleaousy, I think the reason why Garak is having a go at O’Brien (before he becomes infected, that is) might be that after Tain’s death and Dukat becoming ruler of Cardassia, not to mention the Dominion takeover, Garak must have realised that whatever hopes he still had of returning home were probably nixed for good and he was more stuck with his exile on DS9 than ever. And he had to vent those feelings somehow.
I also admire the way O’Brien does, ultimately, not give in. Given his issues of the past (and ever since the TNG episode The Wounded, we were made aware how deeply the fact fighting the Cardassians had affected and burdened Miles), he could have but instead he refuses to let Garak get under his skin and keeps to his priorities of getting the distress call out and saving Nog. As for Nog, a friend of mine asked whether something terrible happens to him every time he leaves the station. Well, sort of (if you exempt the year at Starfleet Academy). Now given that the writers had been willing to let Garak torture a series regular, Odo, in a previous episode I was genuinenly afraid for Nog the first time I watched (as opposed to not caring about the redshirts). I didn’t necessarily think they’d kill him off, but extreme unpleasantness definitely could have been on the menu. (Little did I know poor Nog would lose his leg in a future ep.) There must have been moments when Nog was wondering whether a career in Starfleet really had been the right decision…
Speaking of Nog, the last but one episode of the season, centred around him and Jake is in retrospect something of the last hurrah of peace-time DS9 and entirely too adorable. Well, to me, anyway. I’m not a fan of baseball but for once I loved the way the show used Sisko’s baseball obsession, or rather, Jake’s idea of cheering his father up via a aquiring an old trading card, leading our intrepid duo into all kinds of misadventures. Nog’s dig at Jake when Jake declares humans of the Federation to be “above money” – “well, if you are above money, then you certainly don’t need mine” – showcases the way DS9 uses the Ferengi to prick the occasional Federation pomposity. And Jake retaliating by guilt-tripping Nog into helping is as Nog says low, but fun. Plus you have to love the expression “soulless minions of orthodoxy”. And Bashir using the boys to get his teddy back from Leeta. And Kai Winn, in the small but important (to continuity) b-plot negotiating with Weyoun about the non-agression pact. If ever there was a match made in political heaven… Yes, In the Cards is definitely a favourite of mine.
It’s also a breath of air before things get very serious indeed. A Call To Arms did something which at the time I think was unprecedented in Trekdom - or did the Voyager season finale where they all had to abandon ship and only Suder and the Holodoc were left on board come before this? But even if it did, A Call To Arms starts a war which wasn’t about to be ended with the next season’s opening episode, a la Best of Both Worlds but would last two entire years. It paid off several of this season’s set-ups – such as Sisko telling the Bajorans not to join the Federation in Rapture, and of course the Dominion/Cardassia alliance – and created an entirely new premise for the show; by the end, we knew we would meet our characters separated next year, with some on the Defiant, and some on the station under Cardassian/Dominion rule. I still remember how excited and pleasantly shocked and delighted I was with this. Even some of the personal issues for next season, such as the tense situation between Dukat and Weyoun, or Odo’s God/Founder status under the new regime, or Jake having decided to stay (and when Sisko actually does not go back for his son but states that Jake, like it or not, was an adult now, plus he wasn’t about to risk everyone’s life for one man), were introduced. Letting Rom have the crucial idea about the mines in the middle of wedding jitters was a lovely touch as well, and Mr. Behr & Mr. Wolfe get to indulge their Casablanca fetish once again, by giving yet another Ferengi Humphrey Bogart’s lines (when Rom says goodbye to Leeta). The exchange with Quark (“I have to take care of the bar” – “well I have to take care of you”) makes me all mushy, being a sucker for sibling relationships as I am. And then we have Dukat and Kira glowering at each other, which is always fun. Ah, season 5, you were great. Quapla!
According to Robert Wolfe, originally Second Skin back in season 3 was to end with Bashir telling Kira he couldn’t find out anymore whether she was originally Cardassian or Bajoran, which meant Kira would have never known whether she started out as Iliana or as Kira Nerys. She would have, however, decided, that she was Kira Nerys now, and that was what mattered. I do regret they didn’t go with that ending, much as I like Second Skin as it is. If you think about it, Kira is probably the character most connected to Cardassians, and what a twisted and fascinating connection it is. The majority of her life was spent fighting them; they formed her. With Tekeny Ghemor, as Ties of Blood and Water emphasizes, she got a Cardassian adopted father; with Ziyal, she gained a half-Cardassian daughter. Her mother, as we will find out, was Dukat’s mistress, and she will end the show in the fight to free Cardassia. Ties of Blood and Water also shows yet again why Dukat was a great villain before the Pagh Wraiths (insert usual rant here). The writers allow him to get the occasional dig in as when, in answer to Sisko’s query why he hadn’t promoted himself back to Legate yet, Dukat replies that “Gul” was so much less pretentious than the alternatives: “Dictator…First Minister…Emissary.” And then there’s the great, great chemistry between him and Kira. Those two spark off each other fabulously, the seething hatred mixed with sexual attraction, and why on earth Kira wasn’t allowed to finish off Dukat in season 7 after all those death threats is beyond me anyway.
(Clarification: again, that doesn’t mean I think Dukat, even if he hadn’t gone over to the Dominion, and Kira should have ever been written into an affair. No way. It’s just that the two of them were so infinitely more interesting together in a scene than Mad!Dukat and Sisko.)
Soldiers of the Empire was Ron Moore indulging his inner Klingon again, and I have to confess I love it when he does that. Worf and Dax demonstrate that being a couple doesn’t stop them from being a great working team, Martok becomes a more layered character, and the Klingon crew I find more interesting than a great many redshirts. (More about redshirts in a minute, when we get to Empok Nor.) Jadzia connecting with the crew not just by doing the obligatory posturing thing but by bringing blood wine along and listening to their worries is one of the many reasons I like Dax: she is the one Starfleet officer genuinenly able to do as the Romans do, when in Rome (see also her interactions with Quark and other Ferengi) in a way that doesn’t feel like play-acting or as if she isn’t genuinenly enjoying herself. (Worf can’t; he always has something to prove when he’s with other Klingons.) This is also the only episode in which I’m somewhat tempted to do the ultimate Trekker thing and learn Klingon, because I’d enjoy singing that song…
Children of Time: Or, the one where Odo commits genocide. This episode really lives from its last scene. Without said scene, the idyll with settlers would be just a tad too sweet to be endurable; with the last scene, the revelation that Odo killed 8000 people so that Kira could live, it becomes incredibly poignant. It’s intriguing how the two people not confined to a human lifespan, Dax and Odo, make exactly opposite decisions; Dax, in its incarnation as Jedren, decides to sacrifice one life for the 8000; future Odo sacrifices the 8000 for one life… and a chance for his younger self. And there’s the rub. I don’t think I noticed it at the time that way, but Older!Odo asks Kira whether if he had confessed his love to her earlier there would have been a chance for them. She says there might have been. And then he goes off to ensure it will happen, and damns those 8000 people. Now I do think he’d have done the same if she had said no, that she never would see him as a lover. Because Odo does love Kira no matter what. And love can be a terrible thing. His actions are at once selfless – the Odo who commits them will be wiped out with the rest of the 8000 – and utterly selfish – putting Kira’s life, against her expressed wishes, ahead of the life of an entire population so that she will live and she and his younger self might become lovers one day. Making sure she knows what he did in the process.
My favourite Maquis, Michael Eddington, gets another episode – alas, his last – as DS9 wraps up the ongoing Maquis storyline in Blaze of Glory. To point out the flamingly obvious, DS9 handled the Maquis so much better than Voyager did (more’s the pity, since the Maquis if handled differently could have contributed a lot to Voyager). But given what was to come, it’s no wonder the writers thought they had ended their usefulness, with the Federation/Dominion war about to start. So Eddington gets an ending worthy of a Victor Hugo hero, but not before the great combination of him and Sisko as main characters of an episode is used one more time. Once you know that Eddington is actually manipulating Sisko even when pretending to be coerced or manipulated himself, it’s even more fun to watch them argue and push emotional buttons. Moreover, kudos for the writers for not either letting Eddington confess he was wrong or making him into a villain. Lost causes are attractive indeed.
Empok Nor is a good old-fashioned horror story. As with The Ship, I do appreciate the writers trying to make the guest staring redshirts into individuals, but alas, as with The Ship (and as opposed to Soldiers of the Empire), I don’t become emotionally involved with them. But then again, it’s not necessary for this particular episode, centring as it does around three characters I do care about – O’Brien, Garak and Nog. What makes this a bit more than a “character we know gets infected/possessed/mutates and goes psycho” ploy is that Garak rather obviously is needling O’Brien long before they ever get to Empok Nor, and we do know O’Brien’s backstory with Cardassians. Incidentally, I appreciate the writers letting Garak be irritated by the amount of time Bashir spents with O’Brien – I had wondered about that.*g* Aside from Bashir-related jeleaousy, I think the reason why Garak is having a go at O’Brien (before he becomes infected, that is) might be that after Tain’s death and Dukat becoming ruler of Cardassia, not to mention the Dominion takeover, Garak must have realised that whatever hopes he still had of returning home were probably nixed for good and he was more stuck with his exile on DS9 than ever. And he had to vent those feelings somehow.
I also admire the way O’Brien does, ultimately, not give in. Given his issues of the past (and ever since the TNG episode The Wounded, we were made aware how deeply the fact fighting the Cardassians had affected and burdened Miles), he could have but instead he refuses to let Garak get under his skin and keeps to his priorities of getting the distress call out and saving Nog. As for Nog, a friend of mine asked whether something terrible happens to him every time he leaves the station. Well, sort of (if you exempt the year at Starfleet Academy). Now given that the writers had been willing to let Garak torture a series regular, Odo, in a previous episode I was genuinenly afraid for Nog the first time I watched (as opposed to not caring about the redshirts). I didn’t necessarily think they’d kill him off, but extreme unpleasantness definitely could have been on the menu. (Little did I know poor Nog would lose his leg in a future ep.) There must have been moments when Nog was wondering whether a career in Starfleet really had been the right decision…
Speaking of Nog, the last but one episode of the season, centred around him and Jake is in retrospect something of the last hurrah of peace-time DS9 and entirely too adorable. Well, to me, anyway. I’m not a fan of baseball but for once I loved the way the show used Sisko’s baseball obsession, or rather, Jake’s idea of cheering his father up via a aquiring an old trading card, leading our intrepid duo into all kinds of misadventures. Nog’s dig at Jake when Jake declares humans of the Federation to be “above money” – “well, if you are above money, then you certainly don’t need mine” – showcases the way DS9 uses the Ferengi to prick the occasional Federation pomposity. And Jake retaliating by guilt-tripping Nog into helping is as Nog says low, but fun. Plus you have to love the expression “soulless minions of orthodoxy”. And Bashir using the boys to get his teddy back from Leeta. And Kai Winn, in the small but important (to continuity) b-plot negotiating with Weyoun about the non-agression pact. If ever there was a match made in political heaven… Yes, In the Cards is definitely a favourite of mine.
It’s also a breath of air before things get very serious indeed. A Call To Arms did something which at the time I think was unprecedented in Trekdom - or did the Voyager season finale where they all had to abandon ship and only Suder and the Holodoc were left on board come before this? But even if it did, A Call To Arms starts a war which wasn’t about to be ended with the next season’s opening episode, a la Best of Both Worlds but would last two entire years. It paid off several of this season’s set-ups – such as Sisko telling the Bajorans not to join the Federation in Rapture, and of course the Dominion/Cardassia alliance – and created an entirely new premise for the show; by the end, we knew we would meet our characters separated next year, with some on the Defiant, and some on the station under Cardassian/Dominion rule. I still remember how excited and pleasantly shocked and delighted I was with this. Even some of the personal issues for next season, such as the tense situation between Dukat and Weyoun, or Odo’s God/Founder status under the new regime, or Jake having decided to stay (and when Sisko actually does not go back for his son but states that Jake, like it or not, was an adult now, plus he wasn’t about to risk everyone’s life for one man), were introduced. Letting Rom have the crucial idea about the mines in the middle of wedding jitters was a lovely touch as well, and Mr. Behr & Mr. Wolfe get to indulge their Casablanca fetish once again, by giving yet another Ferengi Humphrey Bogart’s lines (when Rom says goodbye to Leeta). The exchange with Quark (“I have to take care of the bar” – “well I have to take care of you”) makes me all mushy, being a sucker for sibling relationships as I am. And then we have Dukat and Kira glowering at each other, which is always fun. Ah, season 5, you were great. Quapla!
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It goes a bit Aliens, but there's some real tension when they're wandering about in the dark, pursued by Psycho!Garak...
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Have VHS. Am Old Skool.