"It is Not Linear" (DS9 1-1 & 1-2 "Emissary")

A contrast in captains.

(Synopsis of "Emissary" on Memory Alpha)

January 3, 1993 

On January 3rd, 1993, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine debuted with a two hour premiere, "Emissary." However, Deep Space Nine wasn't just any show. It was a Star Trek show, and being a Star Trek show comes with certain advantages. It also comes with certain problems, as any long term legacy does, but we'll get to those later on.

For now, let's see what being Star Trek does for you. And what it brings is in play from the very first scene.

The opening scroll tells us that:

"On stardate 43997, Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation starship Enterprise was kidnapped for six days by an invading force known as the Borg. Surgically altered, he was forced to lead an assault on Starfleet at Wolf 359."

Have a look at that, and note how much they don't feel the need to explain. What's the Federation? Who are the Borg? Who is Captain Picard? None of these things are spelled out to the audience, because it's assumed that anyone watching Deep Space Nine will already know them from watching Star Trek: The Next Generation.

What's more, a large part of the pilot is steeped in The Next Generation lore. Sisko's experiences at Wolf 359 obviously, but also in the existence of Trills, Miles O'Brien, the plight of the Bajorans, and the wickedness of the Cardassians. This last had, in a smart bit of scheduling, been the focus of the last pair of The Next Generation episodes to air in 1992, "Chain of Command, Part I" and "Chain of Command, Part II." When "Emissary" aired it had only been a couple of weeks since Part II had hit the airwaves, so most The Next Generation watchers would know all they needed to about the Cardassians, namely that they're militaristic and had been about to attack the Federation until the Enterprise crew stopped them. They'd also spent an entire episode torturing Captain Picard. In short, they're the bad guys.

It's hard to overstate how helpful not having to explain is to a new show. A lot of time and dialogue in Babylon 5's pilot, "The Gathering," is spent detailing the B5 universe for us. And while some of that dialogue is quite good, and I'm thinking about Londo's scene about the decline of the Centauri in particular, some of it isn't. Even when it is, the time taken still limits the show's ability to tell a story and to introduce the characters to the audience. The pilot simply doesn't have as much time to do everything else.

So how does "Emissary" take advantage of its advantage? Primarily by dedicating most of the pilot to driving around in the lead character's head.

"Emissary" starts at the Battle of Wolf 359, the infamous massacre of Starfleet ships at the cybernetic hands of the Borg. Right away we see another advantage that Deep Space Nine has: their special effects are polished and skillfully handled. After five and a half years of The Next Generation, there's a lot of Star Trek resources available. Ship models, and the expertise in how to use them, are all brought to bear in this first sequence. It works, too. The ships move, and move quickly, bringing a life and excitement to a Star Trek battle that is much more engaging than the usual "two ships standing still and blasting each other" setup that was common in the earlier years of The Next Generation.

Alas, the battle is only on screen for a few seconds before we cut to the crew of the Saratoga, including first officer Benjamin Sisko. Things go badly, as they do when you're losing a battle, and soon enough Sisko has called for an evacuation. He heads back to his quarters and manages to get his son Jake out, but his wife Jennifer is already dead. Though overcome with grief, he eventually escapes the destruction of the Saratoga in an escape pod.

The scene shifts and we're informed that it is now three years later, and we catch up with Ben and Jake talking about Ben's new job running a space station orbiting Bajor. Jake's not happy about having to move, but Ben tells him it won't be that bad. Credits roll, including a cute bit where they leave out the opening of the wormhole from the first episode's credit sequence, and then we see that it is that bad, if not worse. The station is a wreck in space, since the Cardassians trashed it on their way out the door. Sisko gives orders to try and make the best of it.

What follows is a rapid fire introduction to the rest of the main cast, and their plot functions. Chief O'Brien is competent but overworked and does the technical stuff. Major Kira fought the Cardassians and doesn't trust the Federation. Constable Odo is a cynical and sarcastic shape shifting cop. Quark runs the local bar and has his fingers in local crime. He's pretty sarcastic, too. Jake Sisko is the kid. Doctor Bashir is enthusiastic and naive, but good at his job. Dax is an old man in a young woman's body. She's also one of the primary technobabble mouthpieces, a job she shares with O'Brien.

Fortunately, there's not a lot of technobabble in this episode, and what there is of it is mostly confined to the scenes moving the station from Bajor to the wormhole. Therefore I'll defer a discussion about it to a later episode when it's more relevant. Suffice it to say, however, that I'm not a fan of technobabble and the way that Star Trek tends to use it.

I'm also not going to delve too deeply into the rest of the cast in this episode. They'll each have their own episodes where they're the star and we can discuss each of them then. Major Kira gets the second episode of the series, in fact, so it won't be a very long wait for more cast biographies.

No, "Emissary" is about one Benjamin Sisko, and we'll spend the rest of our time in this entry talking about him. Sisko is an interesting character played by a good actor. Avery Brooks has charisma, and brings an enthusiasm to the role of Sisko that's refreshing. That's in pretty sharp contrast to his counterpart on Babylon 5, Jeffrey Sinclair as played by Michael O'Hare. O'Hare plays the role of Commander Sinclair rather stiffly, especially in the early episodes of his first and only season as the series lead. Brooks, on the other hand, puts his charisma to work, making Sisko among other things likable. Not only is that a different take than O'Hare's Sinclair, it differs from his immediate predecessor as a Star Trek leading man. Patrick Stuart's Picard can be called many things, but "likable" isn't one of them.

This scene doesn't work as well as it should, alas

We can see that expressed in the passing of the torch moment in the pilot, the scene where Sisko gets his orders from Picard prior to the Enterprise's departure from the station. It's a decent scene, with Brooks playing Sisko's barely controlled anger at the man he blames, at least partially, for his wife's death while Stuart shows the guilt he feels for the same encounter. The problem with it is its failure to cohere with what we've seen in the episode to date. You see, everything we've seen from Sisko since the pre-credits sequence implies strongly that he wants to stay on DS9 and make it work. He tells Jake that twice. He has Nog, Quark's nephew, arrested so he can use him to keep Quark on the station. He even kicks Major Kira out of her office and claims it for himself. Yet, in this scene, he's telling Picard that he's thinking about leaving Starfleet entirely rather than keep the job!

That's a bad piece of writing right there. Everyone knows that Brooks is playing Sisko for the whole season. No one believes he's going to quit the show after the first episode. Having Sisko claim otherwise hasn't got any dramatic weight. We know he's going to change his mind. So there's nothing to it beside waiting to see when and how he changes it. You could perhaps argue that his sudden decision to quit is a symptom of Sisko's unresolved grief over his wife's death, but for that to work, you should set that up properly in the scenes before it. After all, if Sisko was ready to throw in the towel before he's even begun, then why was he encouraging Jake to get used to living on DS9? Wouldn't saying something like "hey son, don't worry, I'll get us out of this soon enough" or something similar be more appropriate? Why is he kicking Major Kira out of her office if she's just going to move back in a little while later once he quits?

It doesn't hang together. Even if you want to say that seeing Nog get arrested or being in Picard's presence triggers his desire to "get out of Dodge", he doesn't act like he's only short timing it through the rest of the episode either. No, the whole "Sisko quits" thing feels tacked on as a way to get conflict between Sisko and Picard. It feels artificial.

What's worse, it comes at the expense of what could have been a great Sisko/Picard scene, one where the former confronts the latter about the part Locutus played in Jennifer Sisko's death. There's a hint of that when Sisko reveals to Picard that he'd been at Wolf 359, both in Sisko's anger and disrespect for Picard and in Picard's sudden expression of dismay, but frankly it's underplayed. We want the great confrontation that the Locutus scene promised us. What we get is Sisko acting like a jerk. It's disappointing.

Poorly handled quitting issue aside, though, the rest of the episode does give us a reasonable look at Benjamin Sisko. We see in the scene with Quark and Odo that he's willing to use blackmail to get his way. He has Odo sabotage the Cardassian ship so he and Dax can go look at the wormhole without the Cardassians knowing about it. That marks him as rather more underhanded than his Enterprise counterpart and more roguish. And throughout the second half of the episode, we see that he hasn't gotten over the death of his wife.

There's a lot riding on that plot point. Benjamin Sisko is the Emissary of the Prophets, and the thrust of the episode seems to be that for Sisko to move forward and fulfill his destiny as the Emissary, he needs to set aside his crippling grief at Jennifer's death. In short, we're treated to a grief counseling session as performed by non-linear semi-omnipotent wormhole-dwelling energy beings. That means a lot of portentous statements, some out of focus camerawork, and Sisko doing Picard one better, as he's not just defending humanity, but all linear matter intelligence!

It sort of works, at that. Sisko's final revelation that life isn't totally linear after all, and therefore that he needs to get over Jennifer's death is nicely handled, but there's no real indication about what being the Emissary of the Prophets even means. Now that isn't a problem per say. Having some mysteries hanging over the show that you take your time resolving is perfectly fine. Babylon 5 will do much the same with Sinclair's "there's a hole in your mind" business throughout the first season.  It's just a shame that, when we find out what the point of the Emissary business is come Season Seven, the answer is so underwhelming. Said point was almost certainly not what the writers of the Season One had in mind, presuming they even had a specific plan at all.   And, as we'll see, B5's version doesn't fare much better, albeit for different reasons.

That's for much later on, though, after DS9 had remade itself a couple of times over. For now, we have Sisko as both military commander of the station and a religious leader for the Bajorans. The station, seemingly miraculously repaired from the damage the Cardassians did to it, stands guard at the mouth to the wormhole. Deep Space Nine is online and going strong.

So what were the reactions to the show? Over at Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski wasn't impressed. His first response was a simple "Heh." His explanation of that remark the next day was:

"...imagine two boxers in the ring, each bloodied and exhausted after 11 grueling rounds. It's now the last round. You've each got one last shot in your heart. Your opponent comes in with a big name, with the sports critics approval, with fancy clothes and a twelve million dollar windup. He pulls back and lets you have it with everything he's got." 

"Then you look around...and you're still standing. And you're thinking THAT was their best shot?"

"Because everything he had was intent on one hard shot to knock you out of the ring...speed training, massive amounts of promotion, just to knock you out."

"And you're still standing. And you smile."

"Because now it's YOUR turn."

Of course, it wouldn't be for another month and a half or so before he got to throw his own punch back.  And in the event, it was Babylon 5, not Deep Space Nine, that got sent to the showers for a year.

For myself, "Emissary" was one of only a handful of episodes of either show that I can clearly remember watching live.  I was in college back then, and much of the time I spent watching either show live is lost in the haze of those years. I do still remember watching "Emissary," though. It was over winter break and I was home from school. I had re-united with my high school Dungeons & Dragons group for a one-off game before we all went our separate ways again. We took a couple of hours out of that game to watch this new Deep Space Nine. Back in 1993, the advent of a new Star Trek show was still an event. Voyager and Enterprise hadn't yet diluted the brand name,  and watching the show was almost a religious experience, albeit one with the host replaced by bad Little Caesar's pizza where one of our guys worked and could get it for us on the cheap.

There was surprisingly little discussion about the show when we'd finished watching, though. The general consensus was that it was decent if not great, and that it had gotten the job done. None of us delved into deep discussion about what it all meant or what secrets there were to find in the episode. It had been what it was and that was all. Instead, we picked up our dice and got back to the business of hacking up some dark elves.

That lack of involvement in a show wasn't something new, of course. Most television, even some of the very best, is like that. You watch it, maybe remember a scene or two, then go on and do something else. If there was one thing that distinguished Babylon 5 from Deep Space Nine, it was that B5 broke the usual mold. Babylon 5's ongoing story arc made you want to talk about it with other B5 fans. You got online or met in person and discussed the show. You looked for clues and made wild guesses about what things meant or what would happen next.

Occasionally, you were even right.

Alas, the 1993 version of myself wasn't a part of the B5 club. It wasn't until late 1995 that I started watching B5 regularly, and even then, my conversations were limited mostly to my friends in person rather than online. So I missed the great era of the Babylon 5 Fan. Perhaps this project is in some small sense a way to make up for what I didn't get, but could have, back in the mid-90's.

Because, as it turned out, I was mostly watching Deep Space Nine instead for the first couple of years. But that show had its good points too. Something doesn't have to be deep to be entertaining. And sometimes Deep Space Nine tried to make a point. One place where they tried was the second episode, "Past Prologue." Did they succeed? I guess you'll have to tune in next time to find out.