“So honor the valiant who died ‘neath your sword,
But pity the warrior who slays all his foes.”
     -- from Fall of Kang, by G’Trok


Traditionally, the captains are the stars of each Trek show, so it might be surprising to note that until this hour, Sisko has not been the main character of an episode since the pilot. There’s a compelling argument to be made he’s the hero of the Dax episodes (and that’s a whole other problem), and possibly parts two and three of the Bajoran Trilogy (Though those are so sprawling, it’s tough to single out one person.), but a show really entirely about the man in charge? Sisko had turned into an aloof authority figure, and it was time to humanize him.

It did not go well.

“In this job, there is no unfinished business.”
     -- Constable Odo


I have a bit of a passion for noir. While both of my fans will probably give a theatrical eyeroll and a muttered, “No duh,” it’s pertinent to this week’s episode. Of my eight books, five and a half are noir, and a good deal of my recreational reading is consumed by mugs and dames, bullets and betrayals. My personal take has always been the layering of another genre on top of the noir, whether it’s science fiction with Nerve Zero, zombie survival horror with Undead on Arrival, or comic conspiracy thrillers with Mr. Blank. I can trace the flashpoint of this obsession to a single moment. To settle me down before a flight, my mother bought me the classic Isaac Asimov novel The Caves of Steel in an airport bookstore. Now, leaving aside that I was the kind of child who could be mollified by a book written in the ‘50s, this was the first time I had seen two genres -- mystery and science fiction -- melded into one and became a building block in my understanding of genre. This week’s episode, “Necessary Evil,” owes a debt to The Caves of Steel and is almost as much of an influence on my present aesthetic. As a self-conscious celebration of noir fiction, it explored the dark days of the station, when it was still the Cardassian ore refinery Terok Nor, and the partial origin story of a certain faceless detective.

“Let’s just say, if you want to do business in the Gamma Quadrant, you have to do business with the Dominion.”
     -- Zyree


When working on a long-form project, writers are engaged in a sub rosa battle with their fans. Much like the Spanish Inquisition, that battle’s chief tactic and goal is surprise. The writer has to properly lay the foundation for crucial plot twists in advance, so that they feel organic, but not foreshadow them so heavily that the audience figures it out beforehand. Meanwhile, the audience desperately wants to be able to lean back with a smug smile, take a victory sip of their macchiato, and mutter into the face of a stunning turn, “Called it.” Who can blame them? It’s fun being the smartest person in the room, even if the price tag is having all your friends hate you. Writers hate these superior bastards more than you do, and there’s nothing we like more than the gobsmacked expression of a truly shocked fan. You think George R.R. Martin writes stuff like the Red Wedding for his health? To preserve surprises, writers will often resort to underhanded tactics. Stories have a language that we all understand from our years of listening, reading, and watching. This language informs a specific unwritten contract between writer and audience, and there are writers who love to violate this contract with intent of surprising people. In this week’s DS9, Ira Steven Behr did just that when he hid the first mention of the Dominion inside an otherwise innocuous Ferengi episode.

“You can tell a man’s intentions by the way he walks.”   
    -- Constable Odo


I chose to use that particular quote, featured in this episode’s b-plot, over ones from the a-plot, because I wanted to illustrate the way the former can underline the latter. Odo makes this comment about Fallit Kot, a former business partner of Quark’s, who has come to the station to murder our favorite Ferengi bartender in retaliation for letting him spend eight years in a Romulan prison. Personally, I think Kot should be thrilled, as I figured Romulan prisons were the roach motels of the Alpha Quadrant. Quark comes to Odo for help, and Odo makes that comment about Kot’s motive. It’s a pretty standard thing for a world-weary noir protagonist like Odo to say about one of the mooks he spends his life putting behind bars. Well, behind invisible force fields anyway. It’s more ironic in light of the entire episode, as the a-plot is all about a Starfleet officer who can barely walk at all.

“I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I don’t trust coincidences.”
    -- Garak


There is lively debate amongst Niners as to where the show takes the turn into quality. Most will argue that this occurs with the increase in serialization, and mark Season Three as the jumping off point. Others will look to Sisko’s hair: when the head is shaved and the goatee grown, we have good DS9. Others point to the second season, with the opening three-parter, the introduction of the series’ defining villain, and the return of guest stars. The truth is more complicated. There’s no real one point when DS9 becomes great. There’s a lot of little turns that happen at different times, all combining and reinforcing one another until you look around and realize you’re watching the best Star Trek has to offer and you barely noticed.

“I spent my whole life trying to qualify for the joining. I studied constantly, every day, every waking hour. I sacrificed everything, and then went before the symbiosis evaluation board and they reduced my entire life to one word: ‘unsuitable.’”  -- Verad


How do you solve a problem like Jadzia? This is the second Dax-centered episode, following season one’s enigmatically titled “Dax,” and it suffers from a raft of related problems. “Dax” was all about telling us the difference between “Jadzia” (the host) and “Dax” (the symbiont), which it chose to do by telling us a story about how Curzon Dax punched a war until it stopped. “Invasive Procedures” deepens the Trill mythology by establishing that not only are not all Trill joined with a symbiont, it’s actually a rare honor that Trill have to compete for. It’s like getting into an Ivy League school, if Harvard was a 300-year-old slug you could keep in your abdominal cavity. Yet, in this episode establishing important things about Jadzia Dax and her fascinating species, she spends over half of the running time unconscious.

“Li Nalas was the hero of the Bajoran Resistance. He performed extraordinary acts of courage for his people and died for their freedom. That’s how the history books on Bajor will be written, and that’s how I’ll remember him when anybody asks.”
     -- Commander Benjamin Sisko


Wow . . . spoiler alert. Yeah, Li Nalas does not survive the Bajoran Trilogy (as this three-parter is known), but that shouldn’t surprise any savvy TV watchers. It’s not like a cast as already sprawling as this one is going to add another regular when the other option is to just kill off a compelling guest star in a dramatically appropriate way. There really is no other way Li’s story could have ended. He occupies that most tragic of places for all former heroes: he has outlived his own legend. Had he remained on that Cardassian prison colony, he would have been preserved in amber as the Hero of the Resistance and would never had to deal with the unwelcome responsibilities that entailed. Once Kira rescued him -- coincidentally right around the time Minister Jaro and the Circle were attempting their coup -- there was no other fate for poor Li. He might as well have put on a red shirt and given a Horta a colonoscopy.

“Major, I don’t have to tell you. I’ve heard your opinion of this government. Government! They can’t even agree it is a government, so they call it provisional. It’s just another word for powerless.”
     -- Minister Jaro Essa


I separate genres into two distinct categories. The first are those intended to evoke mood: drama; horror; comedy; and so on.  The second are those more predicated on trappings: science fiction; fantasy; noir; and the list really goes on and on. While it would be easy to dismiss certain genres as amounting only to their window dressing (Westerns, in particular, seem to fall victim to this.), there is always something deeper that turns even the most specific genre into a richer experience. It’s tempting to turn this entire review into a discussion on genre, but the single point I want to bring up is how freeing it is to work in one of the “trapping genres.” Take fantasy, for example. As long as you have swords, and possibly magic and dragons, you can tell any sort of story you want. A tragic love affair between a knight and an elven princess? That’s a romance. Some suburban twits stumbling into a subterranean tomb filled with undead monsters? That’s horror. A bitter, drunken speech at a birthday party? Comedy. And, all three happen in The Fellowship of the Ring.

“What you did today, Major, was declare war on Cardassia. Thankfully, they declined the invitation.”
    -- Minister Jaro Essa


With the commencement of the second season, Michael Piller (still the guiding force until Voyager hit the air a year later and DS9 would be turned over to writer Ira Steven Behr), mandated that DS9 begin to distance itself from the other parts of the franchise. This started, ironically enough, by adapting a script originally written for TNG, about a reluctant Bajoran war hero. Behr, whose praises I will continue to sing, stripped out the sentimentality and gave us “The Homecoming,” the first episode of the second season, and the first of a DS9 three-parter that throws us bodily into the murky pool of Bajoran politics.

“You live without a soul, Commander. You and your Federation exist in a universe of darkness, and you would drag us in there with you, but we will not go.”
     -- Vedek Winn


Star Trek can feel pretty homogenous at times. It’s just that every Klingon you meet is a proud warrior, every Ferengi a greedy criminal, every Borg a . . . well, a Borg. It’s understandable, as the writers only have a fraction of your typical 44-minute episode to devote to designing a new race, and variation in a single species can actually be detrimental to the show’s point. When it annoys me is when it persists beyond a one-off appearance into the signature races of a television show. No part of the franchise was better at developing its core species than DS9.