"I'm Not a Little Lady!" (DS9 1-14 "The Storyteller")

This is what happens when you let the Ozymandias Gambit run too long.

May 2, 1993

(Synopsis on Memory Alpha)

Here's the thing.  This is an episode I shouldn't like, and indeed it isn't one of my favorites by any means.  Nevertheless, "The Storyteller" is a very reasonable example of what you an do with the one and done structure but still have some impact on future episodes.

Allow me to explain.  "The Storyteller" has completely divided A- and B-Plots.  O'Brien and Bashir leave the station in the first scene and come back in the last, never having spent any of the interim time anywhere near the rest of the cast.  Indeed, we never even see the two of them mention the events to anyone else, and while it is reasonable to assume that they wrote reports or something, the actual events of the story are never mentioned again on the show.

Funnily enough, the events here do become a key element in the post-DS9 novels where everyone Bashir and O'Brien met in this episode gets massacred and the little orb bit gets stolen to become the MacGuffin for a trilogy of novels.  But Trek novels, unlike their B5 counterparts, are of dubious canonical value.  We'll get to the odd thing that is the Star Trek novel later between Seasons One and Two.

It's a Buddy Cop piece with actual cops!

The A-Plot does have some long term consequences, however, in the teaming up of O'Brien and Bashir for the first time.  These two will eventually become a recognizable team, with the two of them getting their own plot arc, the Section 31 episodes, and appearing together at Quark's and other places as off-duty friends.  Ira Stephen Behr is the one who suggested the pairing, and it was his rewrites of "The Storyteller" that established the basis for their relationship.

It's a cannily chosen pairing, really.  Bashir brings the upper class academic approach to the way things should be done, while O'Brien has the get your hands dirty working ethos.  O'Brien's practicality serves to tone down Bashir's excesses, while Bashir's enthusiasm helps O'Brien recognize new possibilities.  Over time they'll have some very good episodes together, and that trend starts here where their dynamic has its birth. Season Two's "Armageddon Game" is an example of this dynamic at work, so we'll discuss it more then.

Busted!

The other half of the episode, with Jake and Nog hanging out with a teenage Bajoran who turns out to be more than she seems, is less successful.  Partly it's because, as we've discussed before, Lofton and Eisenberg are still adaptingto playing Jake and Nog, plus the writing for Nog in particular is pretty one note.  There is a thematic link with the A-Plot, about a young leader growing into his or her responsibilities in a crisis, but you really have to look to see it.  Mostly it's just Jake, Nog, and hi-jinks.

Still, there are some effective moments, particularly when Odo gets involved.  It's nice to see a show willing to show its cop character do more than just homicide investigations.  Odo gets some local cop duties mixed in with the usual crime drama, including in this case riding herd on a couple of rambunctious teenagers.

That's something that you don't see Garibaldi do much over on Babylon 5, because his job is on a completely different scale than Odo's.  Odo gets called "constable" by Sisko a lot, and the title is apt because there are only a couple thousand civilians aboard Deep Space Nine.  The rest are around two hundred or so Starfleet officers and crew who all report to Sisko instead.  That means that Odo's in charge of security for the equivalent of a very small village or maybe a precinct of a mid-sized town, which in turn means that while he's responsible for dealing with any serious crime that comes up, he also has to handle minor stuff like vandalism, public drunkenness, and yes, teenage pranks.  By comparison, Michael Garibaldi is the head of a security force that's trying to impose order on "a quarter million humans and aliens, all alone in the night."  That's being the police chief of Madison, Wisconsin or Nottingham in England, or Hiroshima in Japan.  It's not on the scale of being in charge of all the cops in Chicago, London, or Tokyo, say, but it's still a much bigger deal than overseeing a couple thousand people, 10% of whom are military personnel not under your jurisdiction anyway.

I did think it was cute that the A-Plot revolves around an Ozymandias Gambit that's been played out too long.  The gambit I'm referring to is from Watchmen, the awesome comic books and decent movie where a character named Ozymandias fakes a crisis to avert a war by giving the opposing sides a mutual enemy to fight against.  In "The Storyteller" we get a situation where the crisis was averted hundreds of years ago but the keepers of the gambit and their descendants have been forced to sustain the fake threat once a year for centuries because they fear the results if their deception were ever revealed.  Amusingly, unlike what would have almost certainly happened on Star Trek or The Next Generation, the Starfleet representatives, O'Brien and Bashir, don't do the big reveal at the end of the episode to bring the light of truth to the people.  Rather, they just shrug and go along with maintaining the ruse, figuring it's not really their problem, it's the newly installed Sirah's.  Just one more step away from the Roddenberry traditions here, and it's one I doubt most people even noticed.

I'll conclude by noting that the final tracking shot of the episode was well done.  It starts with Sisko escorting Varis to her crucial meeting then over to Odo dragging Nog and Jake off for their punishment, then to O'Brien and Bashir returning from Bajor, and back they way it came as those two walk right past the security office and conference room, never knowing or caring about the plots being resolved in them.  It was the first time that I can recall Deep Space Nine using such a complex single take, and as such, it should be noted for being nicely shot.

Next episode, we have another look at Bajor and its politics, and the consequences of "Progress."  I'll see you there.

"When you cease to fear death, the rules of war change" (DS9-13 "Battle Lines")

A legacy of pain

April 25, 1993

(Synopsis on Memory Alpha)

"Battle Lines" is a surprisingly gutsy episode.  For one thing they re-introduce then eliminate Kai Opaka, the Bajoran spiritual leader from "The Emissary".  That's an action that has consequences throughout the rest of the season as the question of who will be the new Kai comes to the fore in later episodes this season.  The episode is also willing to let the heroes fail.  Kai Opaka is not rescued.  The conflict between the Ennis and Nol-Ennis is left unresolved.  About the only thing the main characters manage to do is escape with their lives, which isn't winning, just surviving.

We should also consider the courage in the scene depicted above where Kira, taking what turns out to be her last chance to speak with Opaka alone, unburdens herself about the violence she's seen and the violence she's committed during her time in the Bajoran Resistance.  Its a powerful and uncomfortable scene, since we're already used to seeing Kira in control and yelling at people, the sudden change to racked with guilt and weeping is startling.  Indeed, it's a bit too uncomfortable for my tastes, but reasonably well done regardless.

You can't cross those lines, Ben.  They won't let you.

Kira strongly resembles G'kar from Babylon 5, in fact.  Both fought for their world's independence from a conquering power, both were scarred by the experience, and both ended up in positions of power on a human run space station with a chip on their shoulders.

Likewise the fact that even when offered a chance to escape from their hell neither faction is willing to set aside their hatred is telling.  Unlike a lot of other Trek episodes, old and new, in this case it turns out that Starfleet can't just swoop in and deliver a solution on a silver platter.  Hatred this deep requires years of work and sacrifice to resolve, and it may well take the eternity that Opaka gained from her resurrection to bring it into being.  There's another parallel to B5 here, with the hatred between the Narn and Centauri mirroring that of the Ennis and Nol-Ennis.

Of course one could also equate the Narn to the Bajorans and the Cardassians to the Centauri, but that analogy can only take you so far, because while the Cardassians to Centauri comparison works in many ways, the Narn and Bajoran situation is pretty different.  In particular, the Bajorans are never a major power in the galaxy, even with the wormhole in their system, while the Narns are.  The difference in power between them ends up working out for the Bajorans who are able to shelter behind the Federation and Starfleet in a way that the Narn are not.

Runabout down.  The first of many.

As far as the rest of the episode goes, it was pretty decent.  There's a bit too much technobabble in the rescue for my tastes, with O'Brien literally inventing a new type of sensor on the spot to track the lost runabout.  Speaking of which, this is the first runabout destroyed in the series.  It would not be the last.  DS9 would go through runabouts like they were kids eating candy, to the point that it gets downright silly after a while.  That's not really the fault of this episode, of course, but the trend toward disposable warp-capable ships starts here.

All told, "Battle Lines" is the second episode in a row for Deep Space Nine that would have significant impact towards the rest of the series.  That's a trend I can applaud, and even if it wasn't significant in that way, the episode is well enough done as to keep the interest up.  Well done.

Can DS9 keep up the quality and significance when we see "The Storyteller" next?  Come on back to find out.

One Week Off

I hadn't planned to take a week off, but between some family stuff, the holidays, and a trip out of tow for the weekend, it's become clear that this week is a no go.  We'll be back next Monday with "Battle Lines".

Have a good weekend!

"Someday We'll Know" (DS9 1-12 "Vortex")

Odo plays "bad cop-bad cop".

April 18, 1993

(Synopsis on Memory Alpha)

I have complained in the past about the one-and-done nature of most of the early Deep Space Nine episodes.  But that's not completely fair since, as we've noted, one-and-done was how almost all Star Trek had been done before.  Indeed, most episodic television, barring soap operas, tended to be designed around leaving the status quo intact by the end of any given episode because one could never be certain that the audience would be able to watch the episodes in the order they were produced or broadcast.  Indeed, the idea of a continuing story in a TV show is significantly more popular now than it ever was back in the '90s. One need only looks as far as Game of Thrones, Battlestar Galactica, or Lost to see the more complex form of storytelling in play.  But that doesn't mean the old one-and-done style is extinct.  Most of your police drama shows like CSI have no particular storylines beyond the one in the episode you're watching.  Oh, occasionally you'll get a Miniature Killer plotline that goes the length of a season or so, but as with The Next Generation, one can watch CSI in pretty much any order and never know it except for when members of the cast change.

So on one hand, criticizing Deep Space Nine for so many one-shot episodes is rather unfair.  Following a successful path blazed by the previous Trek shows only makes sense.  And yet, as we'll see once B5 gets going in '94, ongoing stories could be done on science fiction television in the mid-90's, and done well.

The upshot of this as far as "Vortex" goes is that it does manage to leave a breadcrumb toward future storylines.  The rest of the episode is disposable, but there is that one clue that Odo's people probably hail from the Gamma Quadrant and that there are legends of the "Changelings" being hunted and persecuted by those who fear their shapeshifting abilities.  Nothing else from this episode carries forward, not the Miradorn race, not Croden and his daughter, not the Rakhari species and their tyrannical government.  In that respect "Vortex"" ends up being a lot like most Babylon 5 episodes where a tiny step forward is made.  The difference, of course, is that where-as most B5 episodes will be like "Vortex", "Vortex" itself is an outlier among the early episodes of Deep Space Nine.

Indeed, if we examine the episodes thus far, how many have any future impact on the rest of the show?  Pretty much all of "The Emissary", clearly.  Garak in "Past Prologue".  The parts of "A Man Alone" where Keiko sets up the school.  "The Nagus" introduces us to Grand Nagus Zek who will be back.  We learn that Odo's probably from the Gamma Quadrant here in "Vortex".  Only five of eleven episodes (counting both parts of "The Emissary" as one episode here) have any future impact on the rest of the show at all, and even then the impact is often in minor ways that can be easily explained without having seen the original episode.

"Who's that?"  "That's Zek, he's the leader of the Ferengi."  Job done, you don't need "The Nagus" for that.

At least we're going to re-use the key, right?  No?  Huh.

Mind you, much of Babylon 5's continuity works in exactly the same way.  Do you need to have watched "The Quality of Mercy" to know that the crew have an alien healing machine that takes life from one person and gives it to another when they use it to save Garibaldi in "Revelations"?  No more than you needed to have seen "The Nagus" to find out who Zek was.  In both cases the original episode gives more context, but they aren't truly necessary.

Here's what our old buddy J. Michael Straczynski had to say on the "Quality of Mercy" machine, and on leaving clues in advance in general:

"You will see the healing machine from "Quality" once more. Part of the reason for that story was to set up something within the B5 universe that will come in handy a long time later (but I'm *not* going to have it lying around indefinitely; it would cause lots of long-term complications).

(Some TV shows foreshadow/set-up stuff an act or two ahead of time; we do setups a full *year* ahead....)"
                                                    -J. Michael Straczynski, The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5

As it happened, we would see the machine twice more after "Quality of Mercy".

All of which is a long way to say that the thing I found most memorable about "Vortex" was the clues they distributed bout Odo's origin.  As for the rest?  It was fine, I suppose.  The curiously laid-back performance by Cliff DeYoung as Croden was pretty interesting if occasionally off putting.  Rene Auberjonois did his usual fine work as Odo, and we get to see that Odo is willing to abandon a chance to find out where he's from in order to stay on his job.  Duty over all other concerns is the way Odo plays it at this early stage.  We'll see if that can stand up to the trials to come.

Quark gets a little more to do early on, as we seem him trying to pull a heist on a couple of pirates.  No consequences seem to fall upon him for criminal activities any more than it did for his cheating in "Move Along Home".  There isn't much else to say about it.  It was an episode that neither excites nor annoys.  They can't all be great or terrible enough to have a lot to say about them, after all.

Next an episode with major consequences for the rest of the show, what JMS would later call a "wham" episode.  See us here next time for "Battle Lines".

"I Didn't Think You Had the Lobes!" (DS9 1-11 "The Nagus")

A face only Quark's mother could love

March 21, 1993

(Synopsis on Memory Alpha)

The problem with "The Nagus" isn't anything to do with the episode itself.  Indeed, despite a few moments that aren't as compelling as they should be, mostly relating to Jake and Nog, the episode is actually put together pretty well.  As you know, I prefer the A-plot and B-plot of any given episode to compliment one another, and they do so here.  The fallout of Grand Nagus Zek's visit to the station rolls downhill and impacts Jake and Nog's friendship in the B-plot.

All well and good.

For that matter, the appearance of the Grand Nagus here makes perfect sense.  Using the lure of the wormhole and his own faked death to test his son while letting a complete nobody, Quark, wear the purple and carry the shiny stick as stalking horse is a decent plan.  Subsequent appearances of Zek make progressively less sense, but this one works.

The episode is thematically coherent as well, with it boiling down to the examination of a number of relationships, father to son, brother to brother, friend to friend.  We see that the way the Siskos treat people is a strength while the way the Ferengi characters treat each other is a weakness, and thus we are informed by the comparison of one plot to the other.  That's structurally sound writing, and I approve.

Quark gets a lesson in Ferengi power politics.

Nor are the performances really a problem in "The Nagus".  Wallace Shawn. Mr. Inconceivable himself, does a great job with the manipulative Grand Nagus Zek.  The supporting Ferengi show a decent amount of difference between one another, with one scheming, another threatening, and the last almost honest.  Quark finally pushing Rom too far and nearly paying for it with his life is a well done scene, albeit one that is unfortunate to appear right after "Move Along Home" because we get back to back episodes of Quark abjectly groveling, which doesn't do his character many favors.  Admittedly, Cirric Lofton isn't a particularly good actor yet, but for a child actor in the '90s he isn't disgraceful and he gets better over the years.  Aron Eisenberg, who plays Nog, is just a short adult.  He was actually 24 years old at the time of this filming, as opposed to Lofton who was 14 in early 1993.  Eisenberg will get better too, once the writers start to give Nog angles besides "sullen" and "mischievous".

No, the problem with "The Nagus" is what comes afterwards.  "Ferengi Episodes" are an epithet among DS9 fandom, though, as with all things, it is possible to find people who enjoy them.  Some of the most painful episodes of Deep Space Nine will be "comedy" episodes focusing on how wacky those silly Ferengi are.  The trouble is, while there is some of that here in "The Nagus" it is counter-balanced by a deadly serious assassination plot and the implication that due to the Federation's disdain for money and economics, the Ferengi more or less dominate and abuse much of the Alpha Quadrant's economy.

Utopia has its price when dealing with those who don't share your Utopian ideals

Alas, the darker implications of this story are left unexamined except by inference here in "The Nagus", and are dropped entirely in subsequent Ferengi Episodes.  We'll get into that pain more in subsequent seasons, but know that the seed for it was planted here, and nurtured by writers who took the wrong lesson from an otherwise pretty good episode.

MIA: Ferengi military power

There are, of course, a few other nitpicks we can make about "The Nagus".  Like "Dax", this episode re-writes what we know about a race introduced on The Next Generation.  Gone are the raiders and slavers equipped with fleets of ships powerful enough to challenge a Galaxy class starship.  Instead of visiting aboard a Ferengi Marauder class vessel, Grand Nagus Zek shows up in a small transport with a single servant.  Rather than a mysterious race of unknown capabilities that we saw in the first season of TNG, we get a race so well known for corrupt business practices that they want to go through the wormhole into the Gamma Quadrant mostly to outrun their own reputation!

Taken in isolation, "The Nagus" is a pretty good episode.  Had I seen this one in 1993, I might have been less turned off of DS9 as I was after "Move Along Home", but I was on spring break at the time and only saw this one later in re-runs.  Of course, I also wouldn't have realized that this was but a taste of worse things to come, but that will be for much later.

Over on Babylon 5 we find that there really isn't an equivalent counterpart to the Ferengi episode.  Rather than having a designated comic relief character, on B5 there's a tendency to make fun of everyone at some point or another.  Delenn, for instance, has her moments of glory.  She can be inspiring, intimidating, and loving.  But she also has appearances where the show makes fun of her misunderstandings of human culture, or the episode where Ivanova has to teach her hair care.  Pretty much all the characters on B5 get moments like that where they're the comic relief while someone else carries the heavy part of any given episode.  It's more challenging writing than just "this guy is the one we laugh at" but the payoff is that it gives your characters more depth.

So that's "The Nagus".  Deep Space Nine would go into re-runs until mid-April, but we'll be back here in a couple of days with "Vortex".  I'll see you then.

"This is not what I signed up for!" (DS9 1-10 "Move Along Home)

March 14, 1993

Sisko and crew are pawns in the game of life.

(Synopsis on Memory Alpha)

I've got to be honest here.  I don't particularly like this episode.  Indeed, it was on my list of the episodes I was dreading having to watch again.  "Move Along Home" managed to break my habit of watching Deep Space Nine every week back in college.  Afterwards I only watched the show sporadically, rather than every week as I had up till this point.

How does it stack up now, twenty years later?

It isn't as bad as I recalled...with a couple of exceptions.  Most of the episode is fine, if a little surreal at points.  The idea of people being used as pieces in a dangerous game is a common idea in science fiction, ranging from arena combat in the original Star Trek to various holodeck escapades on The Next Generation.   To have your characters play in a board game is a little more unusual, but not unheard of.  This episode only predates Jumanji by a couple of years, after all.

Quark, for the first time ever, gets used as something besides comic relief.  Indeed, this is one of Armin Shimerman's favorite episodes for that very reason.  Said Shimerman:

"In its own cracked way, it's an okay show. It was the first time the writers allowed Quark to get somewhat serious. As Quark, I was once again screwing up, but they had given me a wonderful, almost heroic speech. They allowed Quark to, if not be a hero, at least have aspirations of doing something heroic. It's one of my favorite episodes."

                                                        -Armin Shimerman, The Deep Space Nine Companion

What kills the episode for me, however, was the ending.  By revealing that the whole thing was a harmless game, it retroactively kills the dramatic tension.  Saying "It's just a game" is as much a cheat as "It was all a dream".  If there's no danger, why are you wasting my time?  Twenty years ago, that ending infuriated me.  Now I'm only annoyed by it, but by no means do I like it.  Nor was I the only one:

"The ending, where we learn it was just a game, undercut everything that went down for the previous four acts. It all seems pointless if there wasn't any jeopardy after all. I've heard from some fans who felt cheated that the characters were never in any kind of threat. I agree with those fans".

                 -Frederick Rappaport, The Official Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine, Issue 8

Who's Frederick Rappoprt?  He's the guy who wrote the episode.  Or, perhaps it is fairer to say, he's the guy who submitted a script that developed into the episode.  You see things don't always run smoothly for writers on big shows like Deep Space Nine.  For most Trek based shows, the writing process usually involved a group of writers kicking around ideas until a one sentence pitch is put together.  Sometimes that sentence is all the actual screenwriter gets, sometimes there's more details, depending on the importance of the story.  Oftentimes there are additional requirements, like "Colm Meany's filming a move in Ireland, so you can't use O'Brien."  Once the basics are settled, the screenwriter does the script and hands it in, at which point the showrunner, the director, and maybe even the other staff writers and the suits upstairs all take a whack at it until the "shooting script" appears.  Then that version gets handed out to the actors and, depending on the practices of the show, maybe the actors give a few notes to the director or ad-libs something that eventually makes it on screen.

Which is how you can end up with the guy who wrote the teleplay hating the way the episode ended.

Babylon 5's process was a little different.  Since only Straczynski knew where the show was going, all the scripts written by others ended up on his desk for approval.  Often, he'd re-write some or all of the episode t make it fit the way he needed to in the larger story.  Ad-libbing was all but completely forbidden lest an errant line divulge too much or too little.  Eventually, Straczynski would take on all the writing himself, which was a nearly unparalleled feat.

Ironically this would have been better if he had been gambling with their lives.

Back on DS9, Shimerman's right, of course, that this really is the first we see of a serious Quark.  It's not all that serious, and the groveling scene is so pathetic as to be uncomfortable to watch, but his speech to Odo about trusting a gambler to know the game is indeed pretty well done.  Of course that leads into the whole thing blowing up in Quark's face, but failed or not, it was a good scene.  Television morality being what it is, Quark can't be allowed to profit from his earlier cheating, so of course he loses his bet.  Still, the problem isn't with anything that Quark, or Shimerman for that matter, does.  It's with the crappy cheat ending that ruins "Move Along Home."

This episode also marks the second time in two episodes that someone impersonates Bashir, albeit the last time in "The Passenger" was someone impersonating Bashir in his own body!  This won't be the last time this happens to the good doctor, either.

We should also wave goodbye to Lieutenant Primmin who doesn't even get to die heroically.  No, the Starfleet security man simply vanishes after one last acerbic conversation with Odo, never to be heard from again.

Finally we should note the oddness on display here.  Specifically, that there have been two cultures who have traveled through the wormhole into Alpha Quadrant, and they're both dedicated to what we would consider a relaxation or leisure activities.  For the Hunters and the Tosk it is about hunting.  For the Wadi, games.  It would be nice to consider that a precursor to the Dominion where the Jem'hadar only fight, and the Vorta only weasel, but as this predates the first mention of the Dominion by a year or so.  And since, like the Hunters and the Tosk, the Wadi are never heard from again, we can only speculate.  Or turn to some of the novels and video games where others have speculated for us.

So that's "Move Along Home".  Will things get better with a truly Quark centered episode?  Find out next time with "The Nagus."

"Sooner or later, everyone comes to Babylon 5" (B5 Pilot "The Gathering" '98)

I Love you, Carolyn.  Now, we'll never speak of you again.

January 4, 1998

(Synopsis at The Lurker's Guide)

As was pointed out in the comments of my last analysis, it is possible to watch the '93 version of "The Gathering" online.  The question is, outside of its value as a historical artifact, why would you want to?

Overall, the special edition re-release from 1998 is the superior product.  For one thing, while there are fans of Stewart Copeland out there, Christopher Franke did an excellent job doing the music for the rest of the series so replacing Copeland's score with Franke's in the re-release just makes more sense vis a vis continuity with the rest of the show.  Also, and Straczynski cops to this during the the commentary track of the re-release, there just wasn't enough music in the original version.  There's only something around 20 minutes of music to be had which isn't much for 90 minutes.  Franke's score more than doubles that to around 45 minutes.

The re-release is also 14 minutes longer, and includes whole scenes that got cut from the original '93 release. One is a throwaway scene about a guy trying to pick up an alien woman who turns out to be from a species where the females eat their mates.  Given that the race in question doesn't appear again it's really only there to lighten the mood somewhat.  Another scene that's new is one where Sinclair handles a hostage situation by talking the criminal down and letting him go, albeit with a death threat if he ever returns.  While useful to see that Sinclair prefers negotiation to violence and is willing to put his life on the line for others, the scene itself, especially the final threat, comes off as weird.  After all, the criminal who was smuggling drugs and took a hostage was a human standing on an Earth Alliance space station.  That's not really the kind of mistake you should be able to walk away from.  Of course, it does suggest a more frontier justice kind of feel to Babylon 5, but given what we'll see later on the show, that isn't really the way things are.

Alas, poor Ben.  I knew him well.

The third major scene that was re-added was a conversation between Doctor Benjamin Kyle and first officer Laurel Takashima.  Given that neither character would return for the main series, one cannot see the scene of them discussing Laurel's background on Mars as anything but deeply ironic.  It took guts to put that scene back in five years later knowing that neither character was still around.

Of the two characters, the one whose loss is more painful is that of Doctor Benjamin Kyle.  Though his performance has some rough spots, the easy camaraderie he displays with the other human characters, especially Sinclair, would have made for an interesting dynamic.  Granted, we wouldn't have had Richard Biggs' performance as Stephen Franklin, which was good.  But one can't help but wonder how Ben Kyle would have done in Franklin's place.  Alas, Johnny Sekka developed health problems and couldn't continue with Babylon 5.  Indeed, "The Gathering" was Sekka's last performance before he retired from acting prior to his death from lung cancer.  Oddly enough, he would survive until 2006, and thus lived two years longer than his successor, Richard Biggs, who died in 2004.

Doctor Kyle's departure from the show triggered what Straczynski liked to call his character trap doors.  When an actor left the show the unresolved plot elements for that character would be transferred to another. Sometimes to that character's direct replacement, and sometimes not.  In Kyle's case, his eventual stim addiction is first mentioned here when Kyle stays up for 48 hours to keep Kosh alive, so the doctor uses stims to stay awake and alert.  Eventually, Kyle's replacement Doctor Franklin would find himself going down the same road, leading to his disgrace and resignation in Season Three.

I'm going with Takashima in the Guest Quarters with the PPG!

On the other hand, Laurel Takashima's plotline would get jumped from herself to the replacement telepath on the show, Talia Winters.  Laurel, you see, was meant to be the traitor with an artificial personality agent working in her subconscious.  The first clue of her eventual betrayal was here in "The Gathering" where the assassin uses her ID code to get into secured quarters.  Her direct replacement, Ivanova, would pick up the latent telepath plotline instead.

Unlike my wistfulness about the departed Doctor Kyle, I can't find myself missing Laurel Takashima very much.  Tamlyn Tomita's performance was stiff and difficult to watch.  Evan back in 1993 on the black & white TV, I could see she wasn't comfortable with the role.  The producers, the WB suits, and even Tomita herself eventually agreed with that assessment, and thus she left the show.  Which, considering that Claudia Christian's Ivanova was one of the standout characters of the show, ended up being the best solution for everyone with the possible exception of Tomita's bank account.

The only problem was that in the end, the traitor plotline ends up not working as well as it should.  Rather than Laurel shooting Garibaldi in the back, we ended up with Jack, Garibaldi's second in command.  At least they managed to get Jack into the show a few times before he was revealed to be treacherous, but the impact wasn't there the way it could have been had it been a trusted character like Laurel doing the shooting instead.  Unfortunately, by shifting the traitor card to Talia, you found yourself playing a longer game that was itself short circuited when Andrea Thompson left the show in Season Two.

So wait, if Talia's the telepath, what happened to Lyta Alexander?  And haven't I seen her in later episodes? Yes, you have.  In a weird turn of events that is the exact reason Straczynski put in his trapdoors in the first place, Patricia Tallman chose not to return to the series.  Despite the fact that she'd done pretty well with the role and, indeed, Straczynski had written it with her in mind, she didn't see enough future in Lyta to come back.  So Andrea Thompson will be getting introduced in the series proper as Lyta's replacement.  Eventually, after Thompson herself gets in a fight with the producers and quits the show (or is fired, reports differ) Lyta comes back as a telepath on the run.  Lyta was meant to have her story conclude in an episode of Crusade, but Tallman couldn't get as much money as she wanted for the appearance and passed, leaving some nameless telepath we've never heard of before or since to be the one who martyrs herself to destroy the PsiCorps.

Bester was right, telepaths can't get any breaks!

What do you mean this is all I get?

The final casualty among the pilot's cast was Sinclair's lover, Carolyn Sykes.  Blaire Baron kind of got a raw deal out of this one.  Straczynski wanted a racially diverse cast.  When he lost the African Benjamin Kyle, he replaced him with African-American Stephen Franklin.  However, when he lost Asian Laurel Takashima, he replaced her with Russian Susan Ivanova.  So, to keep an Asian in the main cast he replaced Baron's Carolyn Sykes with Julie Nickson-Soul's Catherine Sakai as Sinclairs new girlfriend.  Alas, when Sinclair left the show at the end of the first season there wasn't a good reason for Sakai to keep showing up, so she vanished as well.  By that time, Straczynski just threw up his hands and gave up, and there was no significant Asian character thereafter.  In all honesty, though, neither Baron nor Nickson-Soul manage to do all that much with their characters.  Maybe I slightly prefer Sakai to Sykes, but that's only because I saw more of the former than the latter.

As far as other changes from the pilot to the main show, they're mostly cosmetic.  The guns change from elongated phaser-looking ones in the pilot to the stubby PPGs of the show.  Delenn has a set of magic rings in her quarters that are decided to be too powerful and eliminated without further mention.  G'kar's makeup and Londo's hair go through revisions.  There are fewer flashing lights once the show gets going than in the pilot, but they also increase the lighting overall.  It had been such a pain in the ass to use the floating mechanism for Kosh that they went with a less elegant but much easier to use version.  And so on, and so forth.

Thus "The Gathering".  Some of the performances don't work, the plot is too exposition heavy for anyone's good, and some of the special effects fail.  On the other hand, some of the performances rock, the story is intriguing, and there's hints of better times ahead.  It was promising enough, despite the flaws, to get back on the air in a year, and that's about as much as you can ask for from a pilot.

So we set aside Babylon 5 for a while longer and return to Bajor and Deep Space Nine.  I'll meet you there.

"There is a Hole in Your Mind" (B5 Pilot - "The Gathering" '93)

The 1998 re-release title card.  (No, it wasn't cut off on the air.)

February 22, 1993

(Synopsis on The Lurker's Guide)

The problem with analyzing "The Gathering" is that there are actually two different versions of the pilot, the one that aired in 1993 and a re-cut version that aired in 1998 after Babylon 5 moved to TNT for its fifth and final season.

This presents a difficulty for the blog, since on one hand part of the conceit here is to analyze the show as it aired, but on the other hand, it is difficult to find copies of the original '93 version.  The one on my DVD set is '98, while the episodes available for viewing on the WB site don't have either version, starting instead with the first episode from the series proper, "Midnight on the Firing Line".  (Oddly enough, the WB site clearly uses a fifth season image for the series despite only having the first and second seasons available to watch as of this writing.  It makes you wonder sometimes.)

Fortunately the synopsis I've linked to above was written in 1993, so if you read that one you'll get a sense of what was on the air in February.  I'll discuss the '93 version exclusively in this entry, while the next entry covers the '98 re-release and the changes that were made and how the series changed between the pilot and the first season debut a year later.

Right away in this version in particular, a viewer is burdened by massive amounts of exposition.  The show starts with a brief tour of the station for arriving telepath Lyta Alexander, which lets Commander Sinclair ex-posit on the station's physical layout and general mission.  Then we have a meeting of the senior staff where they talk about how secretive the Vorlons are.   And so on and so forth throughout the whole episode.  Just about the only scenes that aren't weighed down by exposition are the brief cutaways to the villain of the piece going about his covert actions.

This isn't all bad, mind you.  Some of the scenes are actually quite effective, especially the ones where things about the characters are revealed alongside the data dumps.  For example, the scene where Londo laments the fall of the Centauri shows how much his people's decline galls him, despite the smiling face he's obligated to put on as his people's ambassador:

"There was a time when this whole quadrant belonged to us! What are we now? Twelve worlds and a thousand monuments to past glories. Living off memories and stories, and selling trinkets. My god, man! We've become a tourist attraction. "See the great Centauri Republic - open 9 to 5 - Earth time."

                                                                                   -Londo Mollari, "The Gathering"

That's the brilliance of Babylon 5, really.  Because Straczynski knew where Londo was going character-wise, he could put clues to his rise and fall in the very first episode.  For all that Babylon 5 spends a lot of time breaking televised science fiction traditions, "The Gathering" spends much of its time playing strictly to type, primarily so that the series itself can break those types over its knee.  Londo, for example, is set up as the semi-serious victim who's pushed around by the Narns, faded in glory, and needs the protection of the powerful Earth Alliance.  By comparison, G'kar is clearly the villain of the piece.  He's a devious schemer who's trying to start a war and is the guy to be watched out for.  And yet by the end of the series, five seasons later, one could say with some honesty that Londo and G'kar had managed to swap roles along the way.

Speaking of G'kar, another example of decent exposition worked into a scene rather than just dumped into the middle of it came in G'kar's confrontation with Delenn.  G'kar's frustration that Delenn won't play ball causes him to yell at her about the conclusion to the Earth-Minbari War.  With that conversation we learn more about the mystery there, without a single human in the room.

Delenn in "The Gathering"

We should talk about the three faces of Delenn, which is appropriate given how important the number three is in Minbari culture.  The original plan was for Delenn to be male throughout the first season then have him become female through the chrysalis.  That plan was abandoned when the techniques for altering Mira Furlan's voice proved to be inadequate.  So the plan was changed to make it so Delenn was a normal hairless Minbari throughout the first season, then have her become half human thereafter.  The problem was that they didn't realize the sound technique sucked until well after they'd shot the pilot.  So Furlan ended up in the distinctly masculine prosthetics throughout the pilot, leading to one of several discrepancies between the pilot and the show proper.

First season Delenn.

So far I've only talked about the alien ambassadors.  The reason for that is because the casualty rate among the human characters was pretty ridiculous.  Indeed, of all the humans in "The Gathering" only Michael Garibaldi makes it to the start of season two.  We'll discuss who left and why in the '98 analysis, but suffice it to say that the three characters who worked the best in the cast were the alien ones.

Delenn as we mostly know her.

So what else can we say about "The Gathering" in 1993?  The story is pretty basic once you get past all the world-building and exposition that's being flung around hither and yon.  Assassin tries to kill the Vorlon, nearly succeeds, frames Commander Sinclair, and nearly gets away with it but the good guys catch him in the end.  

The CG graphics were state of the art for 1993, but are laughable two decades later, especially when viewed in HD.  The show would get better at them later on, but these early efforts are difficult to take seriously now.  Granted, some of the effects are still effective, especially the Vorlon fleet deploying around the station.  But others, such as the close up of the breaching pod on the side of the station are just so obviously computer generated as to be distracting.  

Not that I could tell that when I saw "The Gathering" myself on a cold February night down in Champaign, Illinois, where I was attending college.  Unlike the gathering of friends in a comfortably furnished basement with discounted pizza and a big TV that were there for my first exposure to Deep Space Nine, my first experience watching Babylon 5 was a solitary one.  I was alone in my dorm, watching it on a fuzzy 13' black and white portable TV.  The heating there had never been adequate, so I was bundled up under blankets with the TV in my lap. 

Even with the inadequate viewing conditions, I could tell that there was a lot of potential in that ninety minutes of TV.  There was a lot wrong too, of course, but even then I was TV savvy enough to know that they usually fix things after the pilot.  I was ready, willing, and able to get into watching the show proper next week.  Except I couldn't.  The show wasn't on the air yet, and wouldn't be for another year.  So I gradually forgot about Babylon 5, and when Deep Space Nine came back on in March, I watched it instead.  

So what happened?  What changed from '93 to '94?  Or, for that matter, what got changed between '93 and '98 when "The Gathering" got re-edited and put on the air again?  To find that out, you'll have to come back on Friday for "The Gathering" '98!

"The Prophets Await You" (DS9 Early Season One Interlude)

February 22 - March 13, 1993

Station, wormhole, runabout.  This is Season One.

(Season One Summary on Memory Alpha)

On the eve of Babylon 5's debut, we should pause here and see what we've learned about Deep Space Nine so far.  Normally, we'll be doing these interludes at the end of the season, and we will still have one for Season One in a few weeks time.  However, this is a natural break point, not only because we're going to be having our first close look at Babylon 5 in the next installment, but because this was the first real break for the series itself.

In American network TV one rarely gets an entire season of a show in one uninterrupted string of episodes.  Instead, a show's episodes are strung out over much of the year, with frequent breaks with the show putting on repeats of earlier episodes.  Furthermore, the way shows get paid in the USA relates to the Nielsen Company ratings system.  How much a network can charge its advertisers in any given quarter is based on how well a show does in each 'Sweeps' period.  Naturally, a show has incentive to put its best foot forward during Sweeps, so new episodes inevitably appear during those periods.  When are Sweeps?  Well the exact dates vary from year to year, but in general they correspond to the months of May, July, November, and February.  What a surprise, then, that here at the end of February as Sweeps in '93 ended, Deep Space Nine would take its first break.  Further, when it comes back in March it will only be for two episodes before going on break again until the middle of April.  Then there's a continual stream of episodes until the end of May, catching the May Sweeps, with first season concluding in in June.

So the string of episodes we've just talked about was the first chance that viewers had to evaluate Deep Space Nine and decide whether to continue with it.  After all, while watching a new show every week can be habit forming, you have to really enjoy it to get back into that habit after a few weeks away.  So let's make our own examination of the first batch of episodes ourselves, shall we?

From an overall impact perspective it's fascinating how little there is through out the first half of the season.  Events in "The Emissary" are mission critical, of course.  And there are a few references to the Kohn Ma and Kira's history as a terrorist from "Past Prologue" to be had throughout the series, especially while the Cardassians are the main villains in the first couple of seasons prior to their displacement from that role by the Dominion.  Garak, of course, would be a major addition to the show who came out of "Past Prologue" as well.

But beyond those first couple of episodes, it is amazing how disposable the rest of the season is.  Q and Vash never return to DS9, thogh Q does go back to his natural foil on the Enterprise.  Neither does the race whose civil war Dax meddled with, or the people that Kajada and Vantika are from.  Indeed, the idea that it is possible through technology to pass your mind into someone else's body is also never mentioned again.  For that matter, the first race we meet from the other side of the wormhole, the Hunters and Tosk, are never heard from again either.  There were some plans to include the Hunters as part of the Dominion, but they were dropped, and the Tosk shrouding ability was given to the Jem'Hadar instead.

So these episodes are mostly dispoable one-shots except for the way they introduce us to the characters.  So how did that work out?

Structurally, the first half of the season was mostly single character focused with one group piece, "Babel", and one poorly conceived guest episode, "Q-Less".  Every actor who's listed in the opening credits got his or her own episode to play with, except Armin Shimmerman's Quark who gets his in two episode's time with "The Nagus" and Cirric Lofton's Jake who doesn't really get his own episode at all this season.

Indeed, Jake is more or less a forgotten character through much of the series.  When he does get the spotlight, such as the fifth season episodes "...Nor the Battle to the Strong" and "In the Cards" and especially the fourth season "The Visitor", they're able to do some quality work.  But for the most part Jake only appears to add a layer of complication to Sisko's life rather than as a major player in his own right, despite his being in the opening credits.

What then have we learned about the characters to date?

Commander Benjamin Sisko is treading new ground as a Starfleet captain.  He's not as diplomatic or rules bound as his immediate predecessor, Jean-Luc Picard, but neither is he a frontier renegade like James T. Kirk.  What Sisko is, however, is more devious than his counterparts.  That was most notable in the season premiere before he heads into the wormhole when he blackmails Quark into staying on the station, or when he commanded Odo to look the other way to let Tosk escape in "Captive Pursuit".  Most recently, he faked out Vantika by sneaking the reversion beam in the with the tractor beam in "The Passenger".  Granted that last was just a variation of the trick Kirk played on Khan in The Wrath of Khan, but even so, it was nicely handled. Still, the point remains.  Until later in the series, Ben Sisko hasn't got much in the way of military force available to him.  As such, he has to out think his opponents, and so far  they've been pretty consistent about portraying him that way.

Dax and Kira, alas, haven't had as much luck.  Both are pretty distinct in their own episodes, but outside of "Dax" and "Past Prologue" respectively, they pretty much just act like regular button pushers, pilots, and sensor scanners.  There hasn't been as much opportunity for them to distinguish themselves from the rest of the cast as yet.  O'Brien on the other hand, is pretty well characterized, though of course Colm Meany had years to work things out for O'Brien on The Next Generation first.  Bashir, like Sisko, also plays counter to  type by avoiding the humble and wise Starfleet doctor trope as exemplified by Doctors McCoy, Crusher, and Pulaski.  He's mostly been pretty annoying, but that will eventually change.

One pair of characters that works brilliantly is, of course, Odo and Quark.  Like Londo and G'Kar on Babylon 5, there's an instant chemistry between a pair of veteran actors playing antagonists who become almost friends by the end.  The downside to that, however, is the temptation to keep those two together as often as possible, to the detriment of their interactions with other characters in the series.  The solution to that quandary is a mixed bag.  For Odo it eventually leads to a relationship with Kira and the Changeling episodes.  For Quark the often dire Ferrengi episodes, the first of which is our next DS9 episode, "The Nagus".

In conclusion, the character work is a nice beginning but still mostly incomplete, while the episodes themselves are mostly forgettable.  It's a mixed bag, to be sure, but not actively bad in most cases.  Much of DS9's audience felt the same way and most returned after the first break.

But before we do so, we have to get 1993's only Babylon 5 entry.  So "The Gathering" is on deck.  I'll see you there.

"There's Nothing Wrong With a Good Delusion" (DS9 1-9 "The Passenger")

February 21, 1993

Dammit, I'm just here to help!

(Synopsis on Memory Alpha)

This should have been the Bashir episode.  Indeed, he has more to do in this episode than he had in any episode since he got to hang out with Garak back in "Past Prologue" or failed to cure the disease in "Babel".  Certainly this is Siddig El Fadil's episode to win or lose.

So let's start with him.  Properly, the actor who plays Julian Bashir is named Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig Abderahman Mohammed Ahmed Abdel Karim El Mahdi.  For the first few seasons of Deep Space Nine he was credited as Siddig El Fadil.  By the start of the fourth season he'd grown tired of people mispronouncing even that shortened version and switched his credit to Alexander Siddig.  His friends call him Sid.  We'll go with Siddig.  Siddig's from the Sudan but grew up in London.  During the show he'll fall for Nana Visitor and when we get the odd plotline of Kira carrying Miles and Keiko's baby at the end of the fourth and through the fifth season, it would be because of Visitor's pregnancy with Siddig's son Django.

So far Siddig's been playing Bashir as an arrogant prat.  He's simultaneously totally full of himself and blindingly naive.  He was unpopular to begin with and, after the first season, there were network executives who wanted him gone from the show, much as Dr. Crusher was removed from The Next Generation, and the way Dr. Kyle would leave Babylon 5 after the pilot.  In all three cases, the result was different.  For Kyle the pilot was the end of the road.  For Crusher, the executives would repent after they found her replacement, Dr. Pulaski, even more objectionable.  Here on Deep Space Nine, the showrunners had both a plan and the will to hold on to Bashir.  They stood their ground, and Bashir stayed.

The plan that saved the good doctor was, as it happened, the same thing that almost got him booted from the series.  Bashir was designed to be unlikable and arrogant.  The plan would be to show him grow as a person, learn humility, and become a shining example of a Starfleet officer by the end of the series after having been through the crucible.  In the end the plan more or less succeeded, but it had a rough start here.  Siddig plays Bashir as so oblivious and arrogant that he can be hard to watch.  In addition, the way he's been portrayed as an inveterate womanizer, while in the tradition of Kirk and Riker, adds an unpleasant aspect to the character as he overplays his hand and shoots way past charming into creepy.  That doesn't come into play much in "The Passenger", mind you, but was pretty distinctive in both "Q-Less" and "Dax:".

You can transport memories now?  Really?

The funny thing about "The Passenger" is the way the mystery wraps up.  Once you've heard that evil scientist Vantika can pass his memory and personality by touch, it's not hard to remember that he choked Bashir in the teaser.  For that matter, if you pay close attention, it's clearly Siddig's voice whispering the threats when Vantika confronts Quark.  So it really wasn't as much of a surprise as it ought to have been when they make the big reveal of a possessed Bashir as the villain.  Alas, the solution to the crisis is more technobabble.  Modulate the tractor beam here, use the transporter to beam out the bad memories there.  It's all quite unsatisfying.

Future showrunner Ira Steven Behr wasn't a fan of "The Passenger", saying:

""The Passenger" was a show at the time I felt could have just as easily been about Geordi. There's nothing wrong with the episode; I just don't have much of a feeling for it. It could have just as easily taken place on the Enterprise"

                                                           -Ira Steven Behr, Captains' Logs Supplemental

So if the plot of the episode fails to impress, what about the performances?  Siddig's reading of possessed Bashir was too stiff for my taste, though the fact that we only get the one line from the original Vantika before his death makes it hard to compare.  Still, there are just too many odd pauses that makes the line readings seem forced and unnatural to me.

The Law and a Criminal meet in a bar...

More successful, however, is the banter between Odo and Quark.  It's funny and the chemistry between René Auberjonois and Armin Shimmerman is perfect.  It's rare to find that kind of excellent teamwork between actors, especially only a few episodes into the series, and the people behind Deep Space Nine were quick to realize the potential there.  Eventually we'd get an episode of the show that was nothing but Odo and Quark, season five's "The Ascent".

Speaking of security, we're introduced to a new recurring character who only barely recurs, Lieutenant Primmin.  Primmin is thrown in as a Starfleet security representative.  His main role is to act as a red herring for this mystery and to annoy Odo by stepping on his turf.  The drama in that aborted B-plot is neutered right off the bat, though, as Sisko back Odo unequivocally, which means there's no conflict since Sisko forces Primmin to accept Odo's authority.  By the end of the episode the two learn to work together somewhat, but it means little because Primmin's next appearance in the next episode "Move Along Home" would be his last.  When DS9 would add another Starfleet security officer at the start of the third season they would do a better job.

Always with the prosthetics.  Well, at least it's not the Narn get up!

A character who performs better in this episode is someone else who's changed her crediting the way Siddig did.  At the time of this episode, and later when she appears on Babylon 5, the actress who plays space cop Kajada was going by Caitlin Brown.  Nowadays she's Julie Caitlin Brown, and more of an agent than an actress, though she still got minor roles as recently as 2010.

Brown would go on to play a character on The Next Generation later in 1993, then switch over to a recurring role on Babylon 5.  There she played G'kar's firebrand assistant, Na'toth.  It was a great shame when Brown decided not to continue in the role beyond the first season, and, like Saavik's switch to Robin Curtis after Kirstie Alley, Brown's replacement as Na'toth, Mark Kay Adams, just wasn't the same.

That brings us to the Babylon 5 moment of the analysis.  The crossover actor.  There is, of course, a finite pool of character actors to draw on in Hollywood at any given time.  When two shows are running simultaneously, it is pretty much inevitable that some actors and actresses would appear on both shows.  The most egregious of them was Robert Foxworth who played a general on Babylon 5 but was unavailable to return to the role for an important episode because he was off playing an admiral on Deep Space Nine.  There were, of course, others.  Andreas Katsulas would take some time off from B5 to appear as Romulan Commander Tomalak in The Next Generation's finale, "All Good Things," and, as mentioned previously, Walter Koenig would have a major recurring villain role on Babylon 5.  Even the voice of the computer, among other Trek roles, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, would get a guest role on B5.  In short, we should remember that neither show was being made in a vacuum, and that there's a lot going back and forth between them, including members of the cast.

Next up, we'll have a look at where we've been for DS9 then get into B5's pilot, "The Gathering".

"Live, Jadzia Dax" (DS9 1-8 "Dax")

This isn't even about you.

February 14, 1993

(Synopsis at Memory Alpha)

"Dax" is a sucker's bet, because you go in thinking you're finally going to get to know Lt. Jadzia Dax of Starfleet, and instead you find out far more about the late Trill Ambassador Curzon Dax.  And yet it still qualifies as one of our character introduction episodes, because it introduces us to the complexity of being a Joined Trill.

Unfortunately, Terry Farrell doesn't play up that complexity very often on Deep Space Nine.  If it weren't for the spots and the way she sometimes seems unusually smug, you would rarely get the feeling that there's a three hundred year old symbiote living in a young woman's body.  She just doesn't know how to play an old person in a young person's body.  For a clinic on that technique done right, I refer you to Doctor Who, and in particular Matt Smith's performance as the Eleventh Doctor.

So we're not even going to try to stick to the source material, are we?

Most of the time, the only way you would guess that there's anything beyond 'science officer' going on with Dax is when they go out of their way to do a Trill episode, of which "Dax" is the first.  So let's talk Trill, shall we?  First of all we need to admit that beyond the name and basic premise, there isn't a lot left from the original Trill concept as seen in the fourth season The Next Generation episode "The Host."  In that episode, the Trill character doesn't have spots, he's got forehead ridges instead.  Fine, that's just a cosmetic thing.  Spotted Trills are from the north and ridged Trills the south or some such.  Besides, it was pointed out that Terry Farrell didn't look as hot with the ridges than she did the spots, and further, prosthetics cost more and take more time to apply than dotted makeup.  Just ask Michael Dorn.

Okay, maybe they had a point vis a vis spots vs. ridges.

But that wasn't all they changed.  In "The Host" it's made clear that whenever the symbiote enters a new body it totally takes over that body.  There was nothing left of Will Riker throughout the second half of "The Host."  Instead, the Odun symbiote was in total control of Riker's body while they were merged.  So much so that Odun kept up his romance of Dr. Crusher despite the fact that it had to be pretty awkward for her to be getting backrubs from what used to be a colleague and superior officer.  Indeed, the fact that Odun was perfectly willing to keep up the romance even when transferred to a female body speaks well for Odun's open-mindedness, even if it doesn't say much for Crusher's that she rejects the new her.  Babylon 5 would go rather farther in that regard, though the final revelations on that score would prove to be somewhat unsatisfying.

Oh, and in "The Host" it's made clear that Trill's can't use transporters, as that disrupts the link between the host and symbiote.  Needless to say that complication, as well as the symbiote dominance aspect of Trills, is jettisoned pretty damn quick.  All told, I can't even say that these were the wrong decisions.  What are fun complications when used on a guest star can be crippling liabilities for a main character, so changes in appearance and in the way Trills function were made and no explanation was given.  It was assumed that the fans would come up with some sort of in-universe explanation, and indeed one was found in the DS9 novel "Forged in Fire."  In short: it's all the Klingons fault.

So setting aside how Trills were introduced on TNG, let's see how they get used on DS9.  In "Dax" we get the question of whether crimes committed during one host's lifetime carry over to the next.  As the crimes Dax is accused of here carry the death penalty we have the added problem that, since Jadzia can no longer survive without the symbiote, to kill the Dax symbiote for the crimes of Curzon Dax would necessarily mean executing Jadzia for a crime that occurred before she was born.  Had they kept the 'symbiote-takes-all' angle from TNG this would have been less of an issue, but here in "Dax" they argue that each new joining is a true merger of separate entities.  That's what gives Sisko his case to try and halt Dax's extradition, and it makes for an interesting debate, and one that isn't actually settled by the episode before Odo shows up with a witness to get Dax off the hook.  

Of course since the episode  brings in a Trill expert from Trill itself, it's pretty odd that neither lawyer nor the arbitrator bothers to ask how they handle symbiote crime on Trill.  After all with your entire society built around the little worm guys, you'd think whether or not the current host is responsible for past crimes would be a pretty basic legal precedent to set, eh?

Though Dax sitting silently while on her way to the gallows is kind of frustrating, it's no more so for us the audience than it is for Sisko who's watching an old friend seem to be willing to walk off a cliff without being willing to explain herself.  This is a pretty good episode.  Sisko has some good scenes, and we see Odo in investigator mode for the first time, and it's well done.  Finally, some kudos.  I've pointed out in the past when we've run into guest actors who don't measure up, so it is just that I also mention particularly effective performances as well.  The late Anne Haney played her role as the annoyed and sarcastic Arbiter perfectly.  She doesn't have a ton of scenes, but the ones she's in, she steals.

That was "Dax."  We now know that she's willing to face execution to keep her word to an ex-lover, and that she has a lot of baggage from her past lives to work through.  It will turn out that much of that baggage will have to do with Klingons, but that comes later.

So let's have a look at Babylon 5's equivalent character, Commander Sinclair's old friend Delenn.  Here's what Straczynski had to say about the Minbar ambassador in one of his first posts about B5 back in late 2001:

"Shortly after Sinclair was named Commander, the Minbari assigned their first ambassador to the station.

His name is Delenn. And he stays very close to Commander Sinclair.

Some say he is keeping a close eye on Sinclair.

Some say he is Sinclair's friend. And some say there may well be something very lethal behind those unreadable Minbari eyes."

                                                                  -J. Michael Straczynski, GENIE 12/31/91    

You read that right.  He.  We'll talk more about the changes to Delenn in once we finally get to "The Gathering," but suffice it to say that the Curzon to Jadzia Dax thing almost had a direct analogue over on Babylon 5.

First, though, we have a little more DS9 to cover.  So come back next time to get to an unusual mystery episode, "The Passenger."

"I'm Not Picard" (DS9 1-7 "Q-Less")

Star Trek can tell many stories well.  Romantic comedies are not among them.

February 7, 1993

(Synopsis on Memory Alpha)

For the most part, the various Star Trek shows didn't really crossover with one another very much.  Star Trek, of course, had nothing to crossover with, excepting the second season episode "Assignment: Earth," which was a backdoor pilot into a spin-off series that never materialized.  The Next Generation managed to get some of the original series characters in for guest spots, but otherwise did not acknowledge the other shows.  Voyager and Enterprise being separated from the rest of Trek by space and time respectively had limited opportunities to crossover.  Indeed, the one time Enterprise did manage to do a crossover was the series finale, and doing so sparked tremendous outrage from Enterprise fans who felt cheated to have an episode focusing on Will Riker rather than a proper resolution for Captain Archer and company.

Deep Space Nine was different.   Characters and concepts from The Next Generation in particular showed up all the time.  And that wasn't all.  Deep Space Nine the station appeared in the first episode of Voyager, and the DS9 crew would crossover, in an episode cheekily named "Crossover", with the Mirror Universe introduced in the original Star Trek.  The piece de resistance would be season five's "Trials and Tribble-ations" where-in digital technology would integrate the DS9 crew in and out of the Star Trek episode "The Trouble With Tribbles."  And of course, as we've discussed, Miles O'Brien is himself a crossover character from The Next Generation, and TNG's Captain Picard was there for DS9's first episode.

The odd thing about "Q-Less", then, isn't its status as a crossover episode.  We'll be having another more traditional crossover episode later in the first season when Lwaxana Troi shows up in "The Forsaken," and arguably "Past Prologue" could be considered a crossover episode in that the Duras sisters from The Next Generation showed up in Garak and Bashir's B-Plot then smuggled the bomb to Tahna Los in the A-Plot.  They weren't all that important in the episode as a whole, though, so I wrote them out of that analysis entirely.  That said, Deep Space Nine would tend to have two to three episodes per season that could be considered crossovers. So crossovers were a pretty common event on DS9.

No, what makes "Q-Less" such an odd duck is that none of the Deep Space Nine characters are the lead in this story.  Instead, this episode is about Vash.  Vash is an interesting character.  For one thing, through three appearances on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine we never find out what her first name is.  Which is odd, since she's presented as a potential love interest for both Jean-Luc Picard and Julian Bashir.  One would think that he first thing you'd ask your date is what her first name is, right?  Given that this is the Federation and its infinite diversity I suppose it's possible that Vash is her first or only name, but if it's the former then we never learn her family name which is still weird, and if it's the latter then why does she reminisce about not seeing Earth for years?

In her two previous appearances on The Next Generation, Vash served primarily as a foil and romantic complication for Captain Picard.  She represented everything he'd left behind when he set aside his first love of archaeology in favor of a career in Starfleet.  As the "road not taken", Vash is a figure of temptation to Jean-Luc.  What's more, she's the Belloc to Picard's Indiana Jones: the dark archaeologist interested in profit rather than  preserving the historical legacy of her finds.  She can lie, cheat, and steal to get her way in a fashion that Picard cannot.  That interaction and counterpoint between the way she acts versus the way Picard does sets up most of her best scenes.

Space babies, menacing Starfleet since "An Encounter at Farpoint"

Unfortunately, Picard is nowhere to be found in "Q-Less."  And without him, without someone to transgress against, we find that Vash is like a mirror without anyone's image to reflect.  There just isn't that much there.  Which is a problem because this episode is about Vash, and she doesn't actually do anything particularly interesting.  You see, as a trangressive figure, Vash should be going around causing trouble in sneaky and clever ways.  Instead, she ends up spending the whole episode reacting to everyone else.  She gets rescued from the Gamma Quadrant, stashes some loot at the bank, gets hit on by Bashir, and gets offered a chance to auction off her acquisitions by Quark.  Sure, it turns out that her best piece of swag is in fact yet another space egg that's about to hatch, but she had no way to know that.  Even at the end, when Q inspires her to get her mojo back and she chooses to work with Quark to explore the Tartarus system rather than take a cushy job back on Earth, it's an empty gesture because this is also her final appearance in any Trek on screen.  The promise of further Vash adventures is never fulfilled.

Who wouldn't want to punch this face?

Of course, "Q-less" doesn't just bring back Vash, it brings back John Delancie's Q.  Alas, Q turns out to need Picard almost as much as Vash does.  Sure, the scene where Q taunts Sisko is fun, but since Q isn't there for anyone else except Vash, the scene ends up being basically meaningless.  There's that exchange that everyone remembers from this episode:

"You hit me...Picard never hit me."

"I'm not Picard."

"Indeed not.  You're much easier to provoke.  How fortunate for me."

                                                                                                      -Q and Sisko, "Q-less"

But it isn't fortunate at all, because provoking Sisko means nothing to Q.  And since Q, like Vash, never returns to DS9, learning that about Sisko doesn't help anyone.  So instead, Q just flits around being sarcastic at people.  His only really meaningful scene is at the very end where he accepts that his time with Vash is really at an end, and he manages to return her to her "true destiny" of a shady archaeologist.  But one good scene does not redeem an episode of wasted opportunities.

There is one thing else that happens in this episode that I have, albeit reluctantly, to touch on.  And that is Ferrengi ear sex.  It's a weird thing to have to discuss, but here it is.  Vash strokes Quark's ears to get him to lower his percentage of the auction proceeds.  Since the ears are an, perhaps even the, erogenous zone for Ferrengi, what Vash is doing here is pretty close to giving Quark a blow job to get a better deal out of him.  Which is, on one hand, about the only rule-breaking thing she does all episode, and since I was disappointed by how little of her old roguish personality was on display in this episode seems like an odd thing to complain about.  Furthermore, stroking someone's ears is a somewhat intimate but not an overtly sexual act from a human perspective, so Vash could easily defend herself by saying "it's just his ears!"  And yet...

And yet there's a layer of seediness to the act that I find uncomfortable.  Certainly, Quark is a seedy character.  He took the obvious next step to holodeck technology and created his holosuite brothel with it.  There was a scene at the beginning of "Captive Pursuits" where we learn that Quark's dabo girls are contractually obligated to provide him sexual favors.  So from Quark's perspective, this kind of manipulation makes sense.  But not so for Vash.  Vash, after all, distinguished herself to Picard as the one person on Risa who didn't want to hop into bed with him at the first chance.  Granted, she became more attracted to him later on, and him to her, but that was after they'd gotten to know one another better.  Vash's debut on The Next Generation was about her archaeology and the fact that she was something of a scoundrel, not because she was a sex object.  To see her used as such in "Q-less" was another disappointment in an already disappointing episode.

Thus "Q-less."  What was going on over on the Babylon-5 front around then, I wonder?  Well, it's hard to say because there's a gap in the JMSNews archive from the end of January to the beginning of June in 1993.  Which is a shame, because that covers the public debut of "The Gathering" on February 22nd of '93.  Still, in late January Straczynski was talking about the results of some press screenings, in which we find the following throwaway line:

"BTW, Walter Koenig saw the pilot and said it was "a winner," adding that he thinks it "should get a lot of the Trek fans, plus a lot of more mainstream viewers."
                                                                            
                                                                  -J. Michael Straczynski on GENIE, 1/30/93

Koenig was willing to put his money where his mouth was, as he would appear several times through out Babylon 5's run as the ruthless PsiCop Bester.

So "The Gathering" looms ever closer, but we still have a couple of DS9 episodes to get through first, then I'll do a "what we've learned so far" post for DS9, then blow down the doors with "The Gathering," about which I have a lot to say.

But first, our one by one character examinations continue with "Dax."  Guess who that one's about?