DVD, DS9 S5 (The Ship)
Weyoun, the last member of the Vorta that we saw (Season 4, 'To The Death'), is mentioned by Kilana in a move that would begin to show that that particular member of the race was not going to be forgotten and moved on from as the others had. Thinking of him did make me wonder if she met a similar fate, being killed for failing her mission (though technically he was executed for not showing trust in his men), as we never hear of her again. It wasn't the Founders who killed Weyoun, but they wouldn't look kindly on her failure. Never mind, you can always grow another. Perhaps her clone 'tree' or whatever they call it, was deleted from the records so there would be no more Kilanas? She did seem an abnormal representative of her race: all the others wore strict clothing and had the same bland, black haircut and pale faces. She's a bit more rouged and made-up, adorned with earrings, long, auburn hair and brighter clothes. Was she a bit of a rebel in Vorta circles, failing to conform to their identikit style? I don't remember it ever being explained why the Jem'Hadar ship crashed. Maybe it was crewed by rebels and Kilana's ship was in pursuit, or it could have been attacked by another race. Had they been experimenting with new technology that had gone wrong? It just sails out of the sky and 'Boom!' smashes into the planet. We don't see the impact - it would be left for 'Voyager's 100th for that (on ice rather than desert).
We'll never know the reason why it crashed, and why the Jem'Hadar had all their bones broken (I know they suggest it was due to the inertial dampers being offline, but what other evidence is there? And the Changeling survived). One minor detail of the episode does stand out a little, and that's the limp Jem'Hadar arms which don't hold up to scrutiny. I always feel the arms don't look right dangling so loosely, but hearing that every bone in their bodies was broken on impact with the atmosphere does give good reason for their jelly-like state, beyond the real world answer that they were dummies. It also explains why the shapeshifter is ailing and stays hidden until it can't hold its shape. I'd never seen this episode on DVD before (I'd been going through the series on video until I got the DVDs, and so I first saw the new format at the end of Season 5 or in Season 6). It's never bothered me before, but with crispness and sharpness of DVD (who needs HD!), it occurred to me that maybe sometimes watching on a small screen on video gives a situation like this (dark, smoky and close), more depth and character because of the grainy indistinctness. I've never thought that before and it may just be a whimsy, but it flashed into my head as I watched the shots inside the ship, where it appeared less murky and easier to see further than I remembered. At the same time I revelled in details such as the Benzite makeup or the texture of Sisko's face, so sharp and real.
The Jem'Hadar were different in some ways with this appearance. They had more defined ridge protrusions than I felt we'd seen before, and some were almost bare-chested as they scrambled down the boulders to attack Sisko's team. They were also bad shots, though the story required them to at least hit the minor characters, even though they weren't wearing red. Mind you, if the Redshirt rule still applied, Sisko and Worf would have been casualties. They weren't above making main characters suffer, as happened to Jadzia in both 'Rocks and Shoals' and 'Change of Heart,' though I want to say this was our first exposure to the anticoagulant Jem'Hadar firearms. The knife one uses when he sneaks around in the ship had been seen before in 'To The Death,' but what I found more telling of that sequence was that he beamed in fully visible, then his chameleon ability kicked in as he ran off as if it could only work when in motion - maybe kinetic energy powers the technology? More firsts for the species were a look inside their ships, and the discovery of the personal viewscreen technology, sadly not in operation. I have to ask what kept those dead Jem'Hadar attached to the floor! Being such a sparse environment there were no chairs or anything for them to be entangled in, so unless the shapeshifter was covering the entire bulkhead and holding them in place for some kind of ruse, they could only really have been wedged under the consoles.
The death of the Changeling is one of several we'd seen, each having died in a different manner: there was Mirror Odo exploding like a watermelon. There was fake Krajensky, burning up in the warp field to crumble into dust. There was false Martok going off like a firecracker, and now this one, oozing to the floor and crumbling into a pile of black ash. I'm always impressed when I see the CG ooze turn into the ash, then literally breaking down under its own weight and scattering on the floor. It's both gruesome and saddening - this Changeling is somewhat more sympathetic thanks to its plaintive death wail and that we never saw it alive, so had no reason to think ill of it. Sisko is just as distraught as Kilana at the needless loss of life for all parties, and if only they could have trusted each other… It's not like the Dominion to allow an enemy to have their way, but maybe it was the despondency over the death of one of the Founders that meant they couldn't even be bothered to finish the small Starfleet band off, and let them take the ship - Kilana's beamed away, so presumably there are other Jem'Hadar aboard her ship, not counted guilty for letting one of their 'gods' die as they didn't go down to the planet.
There's talk of suicide and beliefs thrown in here and there, though the issues are somewhat sidestepped - Sisko admits only to believing in… things, though his deeply religious experiences with the Prophets were beginning to change his mind, and O'Brien shows disregard for Worf's insensitive view on euthanasia (I don't think Worf was really going to administer a beating to O'Brien, he was just roughing him up a little - even in anger he knew the engineer was no match for him physically, and O'Brien may have been a soldier, but he wasn't in great shape). These themes add much to the episode just by being broached at all. Worf's point of view is alien, and O'Brien forcefully doesn't share it (a bit like McCoy's regret at turning off his Father's life support machine). There's also the Jem'Hadar, who have previously stated, like a proud custom, that they go into battle as dead men to 'reclaim' their lives with victory. Aliens and their customs are what make episodes of Trek more than space action with funny-looking people.
Take the Runabout scene where we see a rare appearance from a member of the Benzite race (just mentioned in the previous episode), Hoya, (played by Hilary Shepard - I was surprised when I realised she was the same actress that played Lauren, one of the genetically-engineered savants of Seasons 6 and 7!), was the first (and possibly only), female of the race we saw, and the first not to feature breathing apparatus, as well as being a fully-fledged Starfleet officer (the dark red uniform suiting her light blue face very well). If we're talking obscure alien species we have to mention the guy in the Away Team (yes, Sisko leads an Away team - I love it!). If Benzites are on the third or fourth tier of recognisable aliens, somewhere beneath Bolians and Yridians, then T'Lor is perhaps the most unknown of all returning aliens. He's a member of the Tiburon race, the same as strange Dr. Sevrin of 'TOS' Season 3 episode 'The Way To Eden.' Those distinctive ears were not a trait to be easily forgotten, and what a brilliant and unexpected link to 'TOS'! I never even noticed the first few times I saw it, until I read in the 'Star Trek Encyclopedia' the entry featuring a closeup of T'Lor's head! Sevrin didn't have head ridges, but that can be explained if T'Lor was of mixed parentage. In that case I wonder what race he inherited the bobbly head ridge from - those dinosaurs from the Delta Quadrant? Who knows, but I adore the nooks and crannies of the Trek universe that lead to such rampant speculation!
Quark, Bashir and Kira don't take part in the meat of the story again, with a fun scene in which Odo takes great pleasure in arresting B and Q for smuggling illegal creatures. It's such a relief to see him back in his old uniform, the sarcastic attitude on full blast and showing who's boss in the law department. Even wearing a uniform, and breaking the law unintentionally, you deserve to get at least a bit worried about your state of freedom, in Odo's book! It reminded me of the scene where Quark was hauled into Sisko's office for vole fighting in Season 3, and though they hadn't found a way to use those characters yet in a story, I liked the reminder that they were still around - so many characters to catch up with, new ones being added every season, that unless it became purely serialised with no individual stories it was going to take a few episodes for us to take a peek into everyone's lives.
One character who took a backseat in the first episode gets more of the limelight in this: Dax. She's one of the few that can talk to Sisko on an equal level, so it was important that she should be along on the mission when Sisko was under such stresses, though why they thought it was a good idea to check out a planet in the Gamma Quadrant for potential mining, seems bizarre! Had Starfleet gone soft, or did they think the Dominion had? They weren't exactly at war with them, had even had about as friendly contact as they were going to get in their last two encounters (hunting down rogue Jem'Hadar and taking Odo to be judged), but even so, it is farfetched that they thought they could get away with mining in the Dominion's home Quadrant! Having Dax along was useful for Sisko, but even she comes close to being insubordinate when she flashes a 'Yes, sir!' in his face after he's snapped out orders at them all, but she's there later to comfort and console, and help him see the losses of the crewmembers in practical terms. She isn't whom the episode is about, but provides her supporting role admirably, even getting in a fight - taken unawares by a Jem'Hadar, without a weapon she gives a good fight, coming back for seconds in the fray, though it's Muniz that saves the Chief's life from a Jem'Hadar knife blade.
Muniz wasn't quite a recurring character, he was more of a bit-part, who'd been in a couple of episodes, his biggest role being in 'Starship Down' where he's a nervous junior engineer in the middle of a war situation (against a Jem'Hadar warship again, interestingly). He hadn't been built up into this big pal of O'Brien's, but that doesn't make his death any less poignant thanks to the quality of the writing. My favourite line of the episode is O'Brien's reply to his delirious joy at a firework only he can see: 'Yeah. That was a good one,' O'Brien repeats, rich with meaning as if he's summing up his friend and accepting that he is going to die. Worf's klingon attitudes to death cause anger for O'Brien who wants to believe 'Quique' will make it, as much for Muniz' mental wellbeing as for O'Brien's hope that he will. Another thoroughly affecting moment is when Sisko hands out orders to each of the surviving crew, then turns to the almost unconscious Muniz and orders him to stay alive.
Sisko's put through it in this one, it almost makes his assignment to a Klingon party look like… well, a party. This time it's hot and cramped, like a submarine, with constant bombardment from outside as the Jem'Hadar vessel pounds the area to shake them up. His crew are coming to blows, the tension's rising and he has to deal with a volatile diplomatic situation with a devious opponent in the Vorta. She tries to be all nice and apple pie to him, (after the Jem'Hadar have come tearing down the rocks, killed one, fatally maimed Muniz and blown a Runabout out of the sky!), once her men no longer have the upper hand, and Sisko can be reasonable, as he says, but Kilana's playing any game she can to wrest control since the prize she's after is greater than he could guess - if it weren't for that Changeling, the Jem'Hadar wouldn't have hesitated to beam in and carry out hand to hand slaughter, which would certainly have made it a different episode (more like 'Impulse' from 'Enterprise,' perhaps?).
Was it worth it? That's the question the episode boils down to. Sisko has to deal with losing people in close quarters in ways that show his vulnerability. But that comes after he's secured his people and the ship, he's made the big decisions and stayed in command of himself and retained discipline among his people. Later he has time to question his choices, and as Dax says, that's what it comes down to. None of the people who died (Hoya, T'Lor, Muniz, Bertram and Rooney - I always think of the England footballer when I hear that name!), were forced into Starfleet, and like many of those that have been lost in the course of duty, they knew the dangers of the life they signed up for. You can't imagine Kirk, or even Picard, sitting down at the end of an episode and ruminating on those they lost, and it's not something Sisko does on a regular basis, but in this particular case it was about the sacrifice of soldiers and whether any military target can ever be worth it. But if it saves lives in the future… The technical knowledge and tactical scans taken from the captured ship would be useful to the coming war effort, just as the ship itself would come to be.
There's actually a lot left to the imagination in this episode. Although we do see the brilliant flashes as the Jem'Hadar ship falls through the atmosphere, and the Runabout's explosion, (connection between planetscape and space usually consisting only of beaming from one to the other, making this rather special and putting it more into reality), we don't see the ship crash to the surface. Nor do we see the salvage operation with the Defiant tugging it out (it would be done with CGI these days, the sand draining off), or the Jem'Hadar mass suicide, perhaps more chilling because we're told about it rather than witnessing something gory (again, nowadays we'd probably have to endure it for the sake of 'realism'). We don't even see the fabled gun turret they keep talking about! But what we do see is almost film quality: they actually built a huge portion of ship embedded in a sand dune! They'd accomplished this feat before, with the transport Dukat and Kira search for in 'Indiscretion' (shot at the same location I believe), but this time they sell it as a recent event with a fiery graze into the ground over a huge area. The inside of the ship isn't much to look at, being a sparse Jem'Hadar environment, and mostly dark, but to create the style and build it upside down on a TV schedule… Well, it just shows the ambition to put on screen standards of production Trek had rarely achieved.
O'Brien and Worf's differences are made up by the end when he comes to sit with his comrade over the body of Muniz (in a torpedo tube as any self-respecting Starfleeter should go out!), in the cargo bay, (or was it the hold of the Defiant - if so it was the first, and probably only time we saw that part of the ship), a bit like 'Hard Time' when Bashir and O'Brien end up in a similar position. Worf's understanding of what O'Brien had gone through seeing one of his own suffer and die, had increased, and he had softened to his human comrade's impression so that no hard feelings remained between the two Enterprise friends. Muniz gave a lot, and got to be a hero saving O'Brien's life - written as well as he was here, it makes you wish he'd been in more episodes! The actor, F. J. Rio, would return as a couple of characters in 'Voyager' ('Repentance'), and 'Enterprise' ('Cogenitor'), but it's Muniz, and this episode in particular that I remember him best from. The success of the mission, in spite of the loss of life would mean a daring plan could be carried out during the Dominion War. Remember this episode, and Muniz, when you're watching that.
****
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