Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Soldiers of The Empire
DVD, DS9 S5 (Soldiers of The Empire)
A Klingon 'Star Trek' series is an enticing prospect and always has been. I'm not sure a straight up Klingon crew on a Klingon ship boldly going to strange new worlds, conquering and pillaging, would necessarily have worked in the same vein as the other Treks, but with this episode we see the kind of angle, the slant that makes the concept stand out from the norm: this is the closest they ever got to being Klingon Trek, an episode fully featuring a ship of the race, but one which is crippled; damaged; repressed. For Klingons this is a shameful way state of affairs, but this crew has faced so many defeats their run of misfortune could only be cured by the Son of Mogh and his Par'Mach'kai: Dax and Worf were the obvious Starfleet flavouring that would allow the warrior race the situation to star in an episode. Worf's interactions with his people have always been fraught with difficulty and disappointment for him, and what Martok gave him was a chance to start again with a clean slate, and I'm not even talking about the greatest sign of confidence in a fellow Klingon of the episode's ending: Martok inviting Worf to become part of his House.
No, just the chance for Worf to serve in a Klingon way, to bring that Starfleet dedication to a position a warrior would be proud of is more than enough to give him that lust for battle in his eyes. He takes his duties seriously, it's up to Dax to bring fun on the journey, though she also serves as a barometer for the crew, giving Worf updates on morale and the dangerous levels of tension that are simmering aboard. This isn't exactly a chance for Worf to prove himself as much as it is a holiday to get away from regulations and paperwork, the bane of a Starfleet officer's life (as the other crewmembers discover when they have to do Worf's job for him - makes you wonder who did these things before Worf joined the station! Bashir's position at intelligence would come back to haunt him, or is a small arrow pointing to when he'd be approached by the shady organisation Section 31 next season). On a Klingon ship Worf can enjoy battling the Jem'Hadar, and with both he and Martok having something to hold against the Jem'Hadar after their time in the prison camp, this should have been a release valve.
Except it doesn't work out that way, with Martok having lost his fighting spirit in the dungeons of the Jem'Hadar. At first you think he's being a more conservative Klingon, making sure the High Command's orders are carried out, his mission taking top priority over the usual Klingon love of battle. Not until they have the B'Moth (or B'Mock as I thought I heard Martok call it once - maybe he was after a different ship?), in their sights and he refuses to even contemplate crossing the border into Cardassian space, do we realise what the crew have sensed from early on: Martok is not the leader he should be. I don't call him a coward because in any other race it would be considered prudence and care. Why they didn't just cloak and head closer to the drifting ship so they could get more accurate readings on survivors, I don't know. That the border is considered so carefully shows what the Dominion's presence has already done for their new allies, the Cardassians. We hear that a starship has been attacked, and now this Klingon vessel, so the Cardassian territory is being vehemently defended, battle lines being drawn.
Martok was never really a coward in my eyes, he was merely doubting himself and his capabilities. He admits to Worf early in the episode (showing how close he regards him that he would share something so personal), how some days in the prison camp he wept for the want of a Klingon ship! I have to assume he was speaking figuratively, since Klingons don't possess tear ducts. Still, I can imagine him snivelling into his beard, bent over in a dark corner, and the image is a disturbing one. Fighting and killing an opponent in combat is one thing, but that the Dominion can, and are willing, to sap the spirit of their enemies, to take away their courage and determination, to destroy them from the inside on a personal, as well as galactic scale, is horrifying, and another reason to see them as inhumane, without the morals, ethics or belief systems that these Klingons hold to, or any sentient species should follow. When Worf does his duty as a Klingon First Officer, and challenges the Captain, it seems that he's made a mistake when Martok gets the upper hand, but we learn at the end of the episode that he dropped his guard purposefully, knowing what was best for, not just crew or mission, but for Martok: it reinvigorates him, the sense of betrayal galvanising him to regain his sense of honour. No longer does he care to second guess the Jem'Hadar and their tactics, he realises it's not good for him to be trying to play them at their own devious game, but to be true to himself and do what a Klingon warrior does!
The actual mission, the battle against other ships, even the rescuing of the survivors was irrelevant, because this was a story of redemption, the return of courage to an old warrior, Martok's episode as much as it is Worf's. While it's good for Worf to be accepted by members of his own kind and to command them in the environment they inhabit, that wasn't necessary for his sanity, it was a bonus for him. He realised a long time ago ('The Way of The Warrior'), that he had been stripped of his blood race's kinship and had found solace and fulfilment in Starfleet, assisted greatly by Jadzia's acceptance of him. For Martok, the situation is different, he's been a commander of men for a long time, we presume, and it's the ghost of his prisoner self that preys on his mind, the superiority of an enemy, where usually a great and glorious death to be welcomed, is not so, his instincts nulled by the prison experience. Together, he and Worf turn the crew around, and if there was one thing I took from this episode it was that I'd have loved to see the Rotarran's crew again. Martok got to keep the ship and had other adventures, but we never got to know his crew as we do in this episode. People get reassigned, but I'd like to think that the main crew would have stuck together and we needed to see that in future. It's just one of those things (like not getting to see the Enterprise-E in the Dominion War), that slipped through the net.
That's the way of things, even when the 'net' is so tiny that dredging it along the Trek galaxy brought up so many wonderful characters and adventures, and sometimes even the tiniest person got caught in the haul of 'DS9' and secured aboard the vessel. Still, enough with the fishing analogy, I'm talking about Nog! His scene is only a small one, but he makes it hilarious and sets up the subplot of wanting to gain respect in future episodes. At first his familiarity with Worf as they work on the Defiant's systems is the source of amusement, but that's nothing compared with him getting stuck between two burly Klingons as they talk over his head until finally plucking up his voice to ask politely if he could just 'slip by' General Martok, who grudgingly obliges this little pipsqueak! Jadzia, on the other hand, knew exactly how to treat her Klingon shipmates, having so many lifetimes of experience with different races she's developed a fine sense of any given situation. She's loud, brash and forceful, chucking people out of chairs, making friends by bringing along kegs of Blood wine, and generally being sharp and responsive to every attention. When first around them the Klingons are slightly apprehensive of this delicate-looking woman, so pale and thin compared with the muscular, dark, hairy state of the crew. But you don't judge Dax by her cover, and she knows how a Klingon mind works - she wouldn't have been there otherwise! The Blood wine opens the tongues of the crew and she has a direct line between them and the leadership, so she's the saviour of the ship, in a way. Worf might have reacted too late if it weren't for her timely updates.
The crew were a well drawn bunch, proving that all Klingon needn't look alike or behave exactly the same. I wanted to draw them, they were so individualistic, and right from the their first appearance, walking moodily into Quark's (where the sound level is so quiet it's almost like the Dabo table itself timidly bleeps a loss), they exude Klingon menace, though this time it's with a depressive air. Whether Rick Worthy (in his first Trek role of several), and his thin, dangling beard and huge arms, or Leskit with that sarcastic way of speaking and those deep, bony head ridges, even Sandra Nelson's Tavana, a Klingon Engineer, showing that the traditional roles of a starship are necessary even on a warrior's vessel, they all have character. It suggests Engineering is a career less well regarded if it's filled with a female, as the males tend to prefer the physical side of things and don't enjoy thinking, something that a technical position would require. Nelson went on to be on 'Voyager' in the episode 'Alter Ego,' in quite a different role. Actually she'd have done that one first as that was halfway through Season 3, and Season 5 of this series ran concurrently with that. There's mention of a medical bay, but I like to imagine, given general Klingon disposition towards doctors (getting in the way of a glorious journey to Sto-Vo-Kor, I expect, though Bashir's an exception, having lived side by side with Martok in the prison), their version of sickbay would be a trunk filled with bandages and a few hyposprays in the corner of a Cargo Bay.
For a Klingon-centric piece this is surprisingly talky, but as I said before, this isn't about the usual tropes of the race; battles, shouting and live gagh. This was about the inner workings of an alien ship, and even more, the inner workings of Martok and shipboard politics. Such ideas had been tackled to a lesser degree way back in Season 2 of 'TNG' when Riker took part in an exchange programme, and served on a Klingon vessel ('A Matter of Honour'), just as the idea of a crewmember wanting to go off on a personal mission (Kira, Dax, etc). We probably hadn't seen a Klingon mess hall since that 'TNG' episode, but sadly there's no live food here. When we did, at last, have a fight, the turning point where Martok and Worf battle, I could make out Martok's double in some of the scenes - he looked slightly thinner and more agile, and I never noticed that in the times I watched this on video, so that brings up my point about transferring old episodes to bright, fancy-dan high definition, because if stuff like this can be picked up on DVD, imagine the flaws and cracks that would show through in the uncompromising higher res shots! Not that it took away from my enjoyment of the knife fight on a Bird of Prey's bridge, since that's something we don't get every day, or season, or even series!
Levar Burton returned as Director again, and I don't know whether this was intentional on his part, or whether it was the logical place to put the camera, but he appeared to replicate the shot of the Klingon Captain leaning forward in his chair from 'The Motion Picture,' the camera low and looking up at what was probably the very same set used back then, over fifteen years before! That's the amazing thing about Trek: you can have an episode that comes fifteen years after a film, or eight years after an episode, that references them, and then you look forward to the future and see something like this set again on 'Enterprise.' I don't care about people pointing out that it was a budget-saving measure, whatever the reason, it connects the years together and provides consistency over so many productions and so many people's work, all in the same universe. I look forward to seeing the Abramsverse version of the Bird of Prey, but at the same time I don't worry too much about that film series because it's in a separate universe, its own thing. For everything else there's that warm glow of connection and cross-referencing and learning new things about familiar races or ships. That's 'Star Trek'!
I haven't even mentioned the Klingon singing, such a glorious sound! I wish there had been subtitles for the times when the language was spoken, as I love seeing a direct translation (I needed one of those handsets Kirk and McCoy used in the Klingon court of 'Star Trek VI'!), but the atmosphere of the ship, the smoke and glaring, red lights, the foreboding darkness and oppressive alienness of the place spoke volumes. I think out of all the new Klingons we meet, Leskit was the one I enjoyed most, though Kornan's dire talk of curses and defeat were played to gloomy perfection. It was also useful to have Martok address the missing eye when Bashir suggests he could have an ocular implant. It's a signature of the man, a sign of pride and the mark of a 'War-yer,' as they call it. JG Hertzler was such a strong addition to the cast, it's a wonder it took so many episodes before he got to star again, but his growling voice and pointy fangs, the impression of refinement juxtaposed with the scars of a fighter, make him an imposing figure eventually. He still isn't quite the man he would become, but he takes another step closer with his honour repaired and a ship of his own. He came into the series at the right moment, another ingredient in the boiling pot to add seasoning and a different flavour to what was fast becoming the ideal broth of TV entertainment. Best served live!
****
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