The Sword of Kahless

DVD, DS9 S4 (The Sword of Kahless)

In Season 2's 'Blood Oath' Jadzia was D'Artagnan to The Three Klingon Musketeers, but this time she becomes one of the three, along with Worf and Worf's hero Kor who's come to the station to stop off before pursuing the quest for the Sword of the title. Sisko's reaction to Dax' mission is quite different to her last 'quest' - back then she went against his wishes, but here she makes the request and Sisko gives his blessing, the circumstances quite different from a vengeful killing. If the Sword is so revered among the Klingons, then a couple of Starfleet officers returning it could be just the solution for the Klingons to consider an honourable rapprochement with the Federation. He warns them to bring back the Runabout in one piece, but it's the Rio Grande: she'll always bring you home!

Kor telling an exaggerated story of great battles to a rapt audience in the bar, is excellent reintroduction and gets the cast in for a scene before it becomes purely a Dax and Worf story. Levar Burton, directing his second 'DS9' makes a good scene better by his smooth transitioning along the row of Bashir, Odo, Kira and O'Brien as each has something to say on the storytelling. This is Kor's strongest ability in his old age - the strength may have lessened in his old muscles and his mind may not be as fertile as it once was, but his good humour and off the wall attitude, for a Klingon, not to mention his opposition to Gowron and authority make him a great character and one it's a pleasure to welcome back to the station. He, along with Worf, carries the weight of the narrative on his back, heightening the drama. If you remove them from the scene the episode could be seen as a simple trophy-hunting plot with the occasional fight and some wandering around the evergreen cave sets.

Using the caves for much of the episode didn't bother me as it was well-disguised, this time with a sandy floor and rocky outcrops (reusing a scene from 'Move Along Home' where both times someone falls off the edge), with pursuers in the dark to create tension. Perhaps the menace could have been yanked up a bit, but these are Klingon warriors (and Dax), after all, and the linchpin to the story was the legendary Sword. This did lose some of the threat Toral and his Klingon accomplices might have wielded. Using Toral as the enemy, a solid link back to the 'TNG' days for Worf, was a little so-so. There was no scene where Toral acknowledges that Worf saved his life rather than exact vengeance as was his right, so the young Klingon appears as one-dimensional, a plot device to add action and a reason for speed. The Duras family seeps into all kinds of places, be it 'Generations' or 'Enterprise,' but an enemy needs to be developed beyond enmity to make for a classic villain. If it wasn't for Toral's Lethean, they would have seemed almost fangless…

Letheans: I love 'em! They are my favourite of the minor races first invented last season for 'Distant Voices' and the return appearance validates them as a race. If there had only been one example they could have been dismissed as a monster-of-the-week in the tradition of the Mugato or the Gorn on 'TOS,' when they deserved to be fleshed out. We'd already seen the devastating mental attack they had at their fingertips (literally), but this time we see another action, a kind of mind meld reading of Kor's brain from a touch of the clawed hand to the forehead. The design is one of the best they ever did, a full-head mask with dinosaur-like spikes curving over the skull and down the nose. They certainly look fearsome, but Soto wasn't given the exposure Altovar had and so seems less dangerous. He should have been played as a sinister figure that prefers standing back in the shadows until he chooses to stride out and grip his enemy, the Klingon's secret weapon, a bit like the revealing of the Balrog in 'The Lord of The Rings,' something Worf would need to take on to ensure they escaped without falling into a coma. But Dax wallops him fairly easily both times they meet and the threat of those electrical pulses doesn't get near enough to create tension. Unfortunately this mysterious race had become like the Nausicaans - simply hired muscle.

It would have been great if the episode had done really well and had got people talking about Letheans, but the episode was seen as a bit of a failure at the time because people couldn't accept that the Sword itself had no hold over the bearer. The writers intended to show that the Sword was such an icon to its people that the very suggestion of it was enough to fill Klingon hearts with desire for power. I think this was achieved, Worf's eyes staring into a vision of destiny to which he is drawn, with Kor the same, but many viewers didn't see it that way and so the Letheans were a casualty of a great episode being misunderstood, and never appeared again. Neither was there a sequel, deserved and perhaps hinted at by the final scene showing the Sword abandoned to spin off into space until the time of destiny is right, both a poetic and worthy ending of mythical proportions, underscored by that hauntingly wistful music as the only accompaniment to its lonely parade to where no Sword had gone before.

It was supposedly something to reunite the Klingon people, but I wasn't aware they needed reuniting. It seemed that under Gowron's banner of war the race were more unified than ever against their enemies, but they may have been referring to the dissent of the Emperor who opposed the Chancellor's attack on Cardassia. It had been said that Gowron needed to keep pushing into new territory in order that his followers didn't feel his actions were mistaken and turn on him. And there were probably some that rallied to the Emperor's views - they could even have been talking about the split with the Federation and how the Sword could bring understanding back between the former allies.

Klingon history is something that has been part of the mythos since 'TOS,' a recreation of Kahless himself seen in 'The Savage Curtain,' but little has been established of the pre-Kahless time, just as we still don't know that much about the Vulcan's Time of Awakening or the Romulans divergence. The Hur'q, the Klingon word for outsider, fascinate me as there's so little to go on. We learn that they were a race that preyed on others, raiding, like Vikings and pillaging planets a thousand years before, stealing artefacts such as the Sword. Like the Letheans this could have been ripe ground for storytelling (a time travel episode back to the day of the Hur'q, anyone?), if there weren't already a feast of opportunity with events in the current timeline.

This wasn't the kind of Klingon episode that might have been expected. There had still been no follow-up to the invasion of Cardassia in terms of encounters with the Klingons (such as would be seen in the following season in episodes like 'Nor The Battle To The Strong'). This was most likely because the preceding episodes had been written before Michael Dorn was confirmed as joining the series so they may not have been completely certain of how far they were going to take the Klingon arc. This is also the reason it had taken so long to get to a proper Worf-centric episode, and one that continued the setup of Dax' understanding of him, though there's very little of the playful Dax in this one, dubbed 'Action Barbie' by Director Burton, she certainly lived up to the moniker, once again slashing and thumping her way through the enemy, but also barking out angrily when greed for the Sword begins to take hold over her companions. She even joins in on a feast of spiky cave rat, which looked worse than the Cardassian voles.

The Sword itself was a masterpiece of design, both believably aged and yet a true outgrowth from the standard bat'leth, though technically the modern bat'leth came out of that design. It is wielded well, and even though Kor is an old man, the confidence and pride the Sword gives him enhances his brashness to the point where he rushes headlong into battle, even taking on two warriors at a time, though I'm not sure I agree that they felt proud to be offed by such a sacred blade! Worf's mek'leth also deserves mention, as we see him wear it at his back like a throwing axe or some small weapon, placed for easy and impressive drawing. Mind you, Worf's back is long and broad enough to conceal a full-size bat'leth, but fighting with a smaller blade makes him seem even more the warrior - 'First Contact' got its ideas here.

The Hur'q must have been a very special race. Not only did they understand the value of the items they stole, they actually created underground museums in which to show off the pieces, complete with lighted stands and holographic false walls for the most important part of the collection. Not only that, but their power systems are still working all these centuries later, and that's despite someone else ransacking the place in the meantime. It's always something that annoys me in Indiana Jones-type productions - ancient traps and rooms operate at peak efficiency when in reality things rot and break down over time. The lighting would have been more believable if Dax had twiddled her Tricorder and the lights had flickered on. It can be argued that if there's a power source for forcefields and holographic projection (though only a simple covering with no substance), then a few lights wouldn't be a problem and may have been activated by proximity. The power could well be self-regenerating in some way, and technology's no problem for a race that were spacefarers so long ago.

The other niggling thing is how Dax is able to shut off the forcefield so easily when it's said the Vulcan mining team that discovered the caverns couldn't deactivate it. The same goes for the Klingons - at least Dax is an accomplished scientist. My theory is that Vulcans simply didn't have time or the sensitive equipment needed, readily available. The only alternative is that they were a ship full of stupid Vulcans, miners that had no scientific training, but that's about as likely as a Ferengi warrior. It could be the 'jam jar effect' - the Vulcans put effort into it, then Dax came along and finished up. But how did the Klingons escape when Worf sabotaged the equipment keeping the field off? They probably just called their ship and some Klingon engineer came to rescue them. Even through these unexplained things I notice great touches: the effect of the explorers walking through the holo-wall, the ripple when Dax touches the forcefield, and the way the Lethean blunders full speed into it, knocking him flat.

That Kor is Worf's hero gives them an instant connection beyond being Klingon. Last time Kor came aboard Worf wasn't there so it's obvious they had to have them meet. As well as all these connections to 'TNG' with Duras and the clone Emperor, there's also a reference to 'TOS' and Kor's first appearance, with Kirk as his opponent on Organia. He also has dreams of Kang and Koloth returning to life, a sad reminder of their honourable demise. The character is coming to the end of his life, just like the actor was, though he'd appear one more time before the series ended, so there's a feeling in his words that is real. Past glories, and that he's beyond the time of his greatest achievements. Not in the eyes of Niners, of course! When Worf ends up fighting his hero it's a sad revelation of the Sword's divisive nature, far from their original noble intentions, much like the Ring in 'The Lord of The Rings.' As tempers rise Dax shows them who's boss, but eventually even she can't hold back their bitter rivalry. It's almost a fair fight - though Kor's old, Worf is injured, isn't thinking straight and is taken by surprise, but he's in his prime, quickly gaining the upper hand, pushing Kor up against the cave wall above his head, like Darth Vader or Superman might. Only Dax' clear head and sharp phaser skill breaks it up.

The story is a very good attempt at doing something mythical and legendary, a quest more suited to fantasy than sci-fi, but the series and franchise has always had that fantastical mythos alongside the sterile science. I think the episode works very well, despite the cave setting with it's dinginess (they couldn't very well film in pitch darkness), its limiting factors aren't too noticeable - the fights are reasonably good, the mix of characters was successful and it is this that keeps the episode (and the series, as we get used to more impressive effects in modern TV and films) fresh and as strong as ever, underscored by some emotively pensive and myth-making music that points towards the eventual perfection of the Klingon themes and general incidental music in later seasons. Hearing about Worf's outcast nature, doing stuff with the character that hadn't been done on 'TNG' and showing how much more can be mined from even someone well-established, given the right circumstances, rewards the makers again for their diligence. Worf may have appeared in so many episodes, but there was still so much to learn about him and 'DS9' was the place to do it.

****