Hope you’ve got that uniform insured, bud.
I’ve completed my re-watch of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Now it’s time to start Deep Space Nine! I am much less familiar with this show, though I’m pretty sure I’ve seen about 80-90% of the episodes. It’s been so long that I’m sure it will all feel brand new. My wife has never seen the show. She and I will go through, review every episode, and give commentary and a grade from A-F. There are SPOILERS for each episode below. Without further adieu, here’s:
“The Maquis, Part II”
Synopsis
Hudson accuses Sisko with siding with the Cardassians over his longtime friend and all of humanity, but ultimately frees him and his officers. Admiral Nechayev remains fairly oblivious to the realities beyond her office (as she was in a few situations in TNG) and, when Sisko asks her for help, simply orders him to deal with the “nuisance” that is the Maquis. Quark reveals more about his selling of weapons and that he believes the Maquis will be making an attack on a Cardassian base soon. The Cardassians have clearly set Dukat up as a scapegoat for their illegal smuggling of weapons into the colonies. After rescuing Dukat, Sisko goes to intercept the Maquis attack. He leads a couple runabouts, who succeed in routing the Maquis, but, much to the rage of Dukat, allows Hudson to escape unharmed. Sisko believes the situation may continue to escalate, but couldn’t bring himself to kill his friend.
Commentary
The Maquis are here to stay. Though Sisko managed to thwart the immediate danger, it seems clear from this episode that the conflict may only escalate. That’s something that is kind of refreshing for a Star Trek episode, because so often everything is tied up neatly with a bow and handed off. Very rarely do conflicts continue, especially when those conflicts involve Starfleet. This episode shows that DS9, again, is going to be grittier than the previous iterations of Star Trek.
I particularly enjoyed the ending. For a moment, I thought Sisko might indeed destroy his friend’s ship, but it makes sense for him as a character not to have done so–after all, among other things, they share loss together. But Sisko lets Hudson go in the full knowledge that he is likely prolonging the conflict. That’s the kind of thing that challenges the standard Star Trek scenarios where the leader basically always does what is right, in the end. Here we don’t know if what Sisko did was the right choice, nor will we… though maybe later if the Maquis show up again we can get a bigger picture.
The main problem with this episode is that people frequently act in sort of strange ways. In the summary I already noted how the Admiral once again misjudges the situation. But there is more: like why do the Maquis just let Sisko go when he could be a valuable asset? Or why do the Cardassians move so swiftly to throw Dukat under the bus… only to, apparently, easily accept him back later? Some of these threads just don’t make sense.
I particularly enjoyed that they didn’t 100% close off all the plot threads here. It is clear the Maquis can continue to be a political plotline going forward. It was a well-done conclusion to the two-parter.
Grade: A- “A good conclusion that leaves open the possibility for future conflict.
Wife’s Grade and Comment: B+ “It was pretty good, but it wasn’t outstanding in any way.”
“The Wire”
Synopsis
Garak is having headaches and Bashir wants to help him, but the Cardassian doesn’t want help. This is a really convoluted mess of lies and half-truths so it may be more prudent to just read the summary on Wikipedia.
Commentary
Garak is a lying sack of crap. That’s what I learned in this episode. I have always thought there is something weird about him, and maybe even nefarious (the latter coming out more in “Profit and Loss”), but didn’t really decide he’s a massive liarface until this one. It kind of took away some of my liking for the character. But maybe that’s a good thing, because it challenges ignorant acceptance of everything Garak says. We knew he was a loyal Cardassian in some way, possibly even a spy, but this episode reveals even more how strange his past is.
I was left after this episode with confusion on my brain. I just don’t really know what is true or what really happened with Garak’s past any more than I did at the beginning. I’m sure that was intentional, but it was also kind of annoying. It gives all the reveals throughout the episode a kind of “who cares” aftertaste, because we don’t know what was true or what was a lie. Overall, it makes the whole thing feel unsatisfying.
All my complaining aside, I did enjoy watching the episode, mostly because the actor who plays Garak dons the role so well.
Grade: C+ “What the what? I don’t really know what to think, but I did still enjoy it.”
Wife’s Grade and Comment: A- “I’m torn because, on the one hand, there was really great acting; on the other hand, actually nothing happened except Garak having a weird device.”
Links
J.W. Wartick- Always Have a Reason– Check out my “main site” which talks about philosophy of religion, theology, and Christian apologetics (among other random topics). I love science fiction so that comes up integrated with theology fairly frequently as well. I’d love to have you follow there, too!
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Star Trek: DS9- For more episode reviews, follow this site and also click this link to read more (scroll down as needed)! Drop me a comment to let me know what you thought!
SDG.
Eclectic Theist 