Star Trek: DS9 Season 4 “Crossfire” and “Return to Grace”

“You know how I can tell you’re upset? That out of place hair.”

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:

“Crossfire”

Synopsis

Shakaar, the onetime Bajoran freedom fighter whose backstory was largely revealed in the episode of his name, is back on DS9 and Odo is not pleased by his apparently budding relationship with Major Kira. Quark and Odo have a story that goes laong with the main plot all the way through this one, going back and forth with complaints even as Quark is making it clear with his actions that despite his adversarial relationship with Odo, he enjoys his company. Quark counsels Odo to tell Kira his feelings, but even as he works up his courage to do so, she reveals she is falling for Shakaar. Meanwhile, a plot to kill Shakaar is unfolding and Odo, distracted, has to act himself to save Kira and Shakaar’s life. Worf, much to Odo’s annoyance, is the one who ends up capturing the Cardassian agent involved. Sisko is surprised by Odo’s distracted nature. Odo puts soundproofing in his floor at the end of the episode, ending something that was annoying Quark. The latter thanks him, but Odo plays it off as business, once again seeing Shakaar and Kira together.

Commentary

This is a good character-building episode for Quark and Odo. It shows the sometimes comical nature of the adversarial relationship. It also shows how they seem to be molding that relationship into a strange friendship. Odo’s feelings for Kira are a major theme, of course, but that seems to be played out in my opinion. He needs to just tell her already, or, like Quark said, get over it. The enigmatic ending of the episode made it hard to figure out where it might go next.

Seriously though, Quark. He basically is the glue that makes the whole show work at times. This episode is one of those. I could see this episode being quite boring, to be honest, but Quark’s character added the dimension of humor and friendship that pushed it over the edge into a good episode.

Grade:  B “I love the interplay between Odo and Quark, but wow Odo needs to just tell Kira his feelings already.”

Wife’s Grade and Comment: B

“Return to Grace”

Synopsis

Kira must ride with Dukat on a transport ship to a conference about the Klingon Empire. When they arrive, the site is a wreck and a Klingon Bird of Prey is leaving. Dukat and Kira rig the ship to fight the Klingon and defeat it, capturing the warship. Dukat destroys his transport gleefully, but is annoyed, to say the least, when the Cardassians don’t welcome him back into leadership for the capture of the Bird of Prey. He decides to strike out on his own in the Bird of Prey in order to fight the Klingons, but Kira refuses to join his crew and she and his daughter, Ziyal, go back to DS9.

Commentary

This episode is an action-packed whirlwind of crazy. Dukat, stripped of rank, is commanding a lowly transport! Ha! But then he manages to turn the transport into a kind of Q-Ship and takes over a Bird of Prey? Then, he goes seemingly mad for a personal vendetta against the Klingons? Yeah, these are the things that happened in this episode.

I think if there is any specific meaning in this episode, it is that the writers are saying Dukat isn’t going anywhere. That’s good, because he is a spectacular villain that I love to hate. They’ve given him some reasons to like him a little bit now, but this personal war seems a good setup for more drama.

Grade:  B “There’s a lot that happens in this one, and it makes me wonder what they’re setting Dukat up to do next.”

Wife’s Grade and Comment: B

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!

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

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.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 3 “Shakaar” and “Facets”

Didn’t I have enough makeup already?

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:

“Shakaar”

Synopsis

Kai Winn calls on Major Kira to intercede on Bajor in a dispute between a group of farmers and the government. Essentially, the farmers have some equipment the Kai believes would be better put to use elsewhere, but the farmers point to a contract they have allowing them use of the equipment. It turns out some of the farmers are former resistance members who fought alongside Kira. Kira manages to convince Shakaar, the leader of the farmers–and of her former resistance cell–to speak with Winn directly, but instead of trying to speak with him, Winn simply sends soldiers to arrest the farmer. Shakaar and others resist the arrest, and Kira joins in. They flee to the mountains and an escalating conflict develops as Winn devotes more and more soldiers to the pursuit. The conflict ends when the soldiers and resistance fighters refuse to fire upon each other. The leader of the government soldiers takes Shakaar and Kira to Winn, and the two explain to Winn how Shakaar now plans to run for First Minister. Kai Winn, ever the amoral person that she is, steps aside to ensure her crazy actions bringing Bajor to the bring of Civil War are not exposed.

Commentary

Kai Winn… she really has it coming sometime. She’s a slithery snake; an eel! She manages to get out of every situation mostly intact, and often on the better end of things! In this one, it feels like she’s gone too far, but she still seems to get out of the consequences of her rather insane actions. Also, the actor who plays her is fantastic at making a really love-to-hate persona come to life.

Overall, this episode’s main plot is pretty astonishing. I mean, I don’t know what kind of media services Bajor has, but I’d imagine pretty much everyone would be outraged by the Kai sending the military after some group of farmers who were basically just insisting the government follow its own agreement. These are Bajorans, after all! Haven’t they had enough of governments ordering them around and going off the deep end in response to minor slights… like the Cardassians? Also, how believable is it that the thing escalated as quickly as it did? I’m fully willing to believe that Shakaar and his group could elude their pursuers on ground they knew better (though what kind of technology Bajor is using to track them is another question), but to go from “Yeah, we’d like this farm equipment back” to “KILL THEM!” seemed pretty abrupt.

What sets this apart, though, is what I just mentioned with Winn, and it applies to all the characters here. There’s some pretty good acting happening here and it helps sell the crazy plot. Somehow, I want to believe that a culture that just threw off the shackles of oppression would be totally willing to just do the same thing to their own people. Indeed, knowing humanity, it doesn’t seem that surprising that another people would do the same kind of crazy stuff, does it? But still, my suspension of disbelief did struggle here.

Grade: B- “It is pretty unbelievable, but the actors all do a great job pulling it off.”

Wife’s Grade and Comment: B+ “Kai Winn should not expect any other outcome from sending Kira to put down a people’s rebellion.”

“Facets”

Synopsis

Dax wants people to take on the roles of previous Dax hosts so she can learn from them. Nog fails his exam, but only because Quark rigged it. Rom makes Quark admit to it, Nog retakes the test and passes. High fives.

Commentary

Yeah, that first sentence summarizes the main plot of the episode pretty well. We’re already familiar with many of the Dax hosts, but here we get to see them as various crew members. Somehow, we’re supposed to get past the idea of Odo somehow–without any neural network–getting the memories of a completely different species and changing his appearance perfectly for it. Oh yeah, and a Bajoran, and humans, and a Ferengi all manage to have the same thing happen to them. Sorry, not buying it. It also wasn’t all that interesting, because the transformations really just get used as ploys to make the main characters do weird things. I guess it was kinda cool to find out the reason Curzon Dax was so harsh on Jadzia was because he was in love with her, but that’s also creepy. The Nog side story is really the saving grace here, because it’s cute, simple, and resolved.

Grade: D+ “Weird. Too weird. But the Nog side story was good.”

Wife’s Grade and Comment: C “It just felt like they couldn’t think of anything to do with an episode, so they just made all the actors be weird.”

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!

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

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.