Masquerade

DVD, Smallville S10 (Masquerade)

Another busy instalment, but a good one, this time with the theme of identity, something that you might think had been dealt with to death on a series all about Clark and friends' necessarily secretive nature, but somehow they manage to find more to say about it, whether it's mistaken identity, chosen identity, hidden identity or any other kind, and is a well written piece at that. We've had Lionel to contend with, and now it's back to the season's main villain, the coming of The Darkness known as Darkseid, already heralded by Godfrey and Granny, both bested, while Desaad was still out there. So it's his turn, and he scores a victory which we only know for sure in the very last second when the Omega mark is visible by the ultraviolet light of a Watchtower screen on the forehead of… Oliver Queen! I thought at the time that he was in danger of falling prey to The Darkness by going off to save Chloe in that wrathful frame of mind, that's why Clark told him to stay behind. If only Clark had had time to explain that the negative emotions and the manipulation of them could be used to turn Oliver, but even when we see him beating Desaad into the pavement there's no obvious sign he's been caught. But after the seven deadly sins trial Chloe endures and comes up trumps in, as well as Clark gaining enough assurance since he last encountered The Darkness to remain unaffected, Oliver was the only one not to be ready, but Clark never says anything about it. It was already too late.

The success of this season has been in how well they've dealt with a (presumably), reduced budget, and how it's led to an improved effort on the character side of the writing, something I keep pointing out. That's the case again here, with the two couples, Clark and Lois, Chloe and Oliver, both working well as teams, either in the field or in theory, Lois not getting in on the action, but supporting Clark's resolutions. At first, the most difficult problem is how they're going to get her Dad's soldier associates and Clark's superhero friends in the same church for the wedding, without everything degenerating into chaos, but Clark himself is far from in chaos, and is in fact making good use of the breakup of the VRA by whisking round the world doing hero duty on overtime, including a nod to English viewers with a visit to the clock face of Big Ben (complete with eyewitness video of the usual American view of us as cock-er-nies, though in their defence, if you're going to find a cockney, it's going to be in London, I suppose!). The exposure, and Clark being so close to far too many crime scenes, is getting risky as his face is open to be seen by any that can make the connection, with a forensic investigator making just such a wild suggestion when he meets him again at yet another crime scene, Clark performing a very simple, but no less impressive, act by saving the man from dropping down a hole, catching him and lifting the overweight guy up with one hand, then burbling about 'adrenaline' and 'centre of gravity' to explain it!

It's enough for both Lois and Clark to reconsider what face he shows, her solution being to sew a rudimentary hood onto his existing jacket and slap on the shades like a red version of Green Arrow, to Clark's disapproval. By the end of the episode, however, he's come to the decision: he's going to wear something else that will hide his identity. No, sadly it's not the red and blue suit we're waiting for and have glimpsed previously, it is in fact the simple prop of glasses and a decision to hold back on the heroic nature and become less visible, his real identity he's realised, the person he really is, is The Blur, so why hide that, but he will become more like the Clark Kent we know and expect from the old films, with that same pushing up the bridge of the glasses and a more unassuming attitude, which was great to see! Of course they'd added in the glasses before, last season I think was the first time, but they never stuck, only now we're coming to the end so why not go full Kent about it. Okay, so he's not quite the clumsy, awkward person Christopher Reeve pulled off so successfully, but it's a step in that direction and I applaud it. It only took them how many years to realise he couldn't just show his face willy-nilly? I like that the result is that he won't try to hide, he'll use Clark as his fake persona so no one would expect he could even be close to being super in any way, something they always avoided because it's a modern TV show aimed at young people, so they wanted him to be cool.

I thought all his powers had long been discovered, but here we get one more that I had never heard of, a variation on the vision powers he has: 'micro-vision' he's calling it, or the ability to zoom in to microscopic level, complete with a closeup of his eyes adjusting their lenses (much like Geordi La Forge in the 'TNG' films). It's a great little moment just thrown into the pot, and there are a number of these - another was when we see Oliver use some parkour acrobatics, running up a wall and drainpipe to get into the Desaad club when they work out that this is where the marked people have been coming from, and it is a house of horrors where shortly after Chloe goes through her trials. A simple device of temptation through various characters showing up, and I wish they could have used it as an opportunity to bring back an old character, perhaps someone who died because of her, or for some other reason, because this is another of the few episodes not to feature a returning character from a previous season as the guest, Desaad belonging firmly to this season. At least he's dealt with, so we should get to see Darkseid next, now all his minions have been sorted out.

As usual there has to be something to complain about being farfetched, and this time it's Chloe and Oliver getting mixed up in the FBI's investigation of the Desaad club simply by taking on the names of Mr. and Mrs. Jones so they can eat out at a restaurant due to their identities making life difficult. Surely the FBI would know at least the billionaire Queen by sight if they're active in the city where he lives and he's only recently become ever more on the radar thanks to the VRA and his decision to reveal himself as Green Arrow! And there were seemingly no consequences for the pair of them beating up the team of agents who kidnapped them. It was also a little weird that while Oliver breaks into the club, leaving Chloe outside, she's then kidnapped by Desaad and they never met within? He ends up popping back to Watchtower assuming she went there. But of course this is all small potatoes where 'Smallville' hails from and just the expedient way of getting them into the thick of the story at top speed. I doesn't matter, they pack in fun little asides, good development, a spot or two of action, and the four leads are well used: a good episode can really pep you up, and this season has done well in this regard, with this one another to add to the positive pile.

***

Paul Merton in China (Episode 1)

DVD, Paul Merton in China (Episode 1)

Michael Palin has a lot to answer for, I have to feel, and in the positive sense, because his brand of Englishman abroad proved very successful over the years. Perhaps there have been many imitators, but I've never seen anyone quite like him and his open, adventurous style. And Paul Merton didn't change that. What he did was the same, but different: a very English Englishman, but one who, unlike Palin, was naturally unadventurous, and so his brand of travel documenting is almost the anti-Palin in terms of how he approaches the daily challenges and differences of the people he meets. But he's also a born performer and seems to enjoy the weird and the wonderful, and if he shows a lack of desire to get involved sometimes, that only adds to the charm of the series. He stands out even more than Palin, being larger than most Chinese people, but quite gregarious and game until he has to step outside what is comfortable, despite being "contractually obliged to be brave." So you can sense there's going to be a little friction along the way, which fits perfectly into the Chinese dichotomy, such a different culture to the British, yet both sharing a common ground of eccentricity. While the Chinese variety can sometimes be slightly chilling or creepy, it throws up all kinds of characters for Paul to bounce off, leading to some fascinating encounters, the most enduring in this first episode being the sight of a robot rickshaw from a man that invents robots of all sizes, though whether it's a career or a hobby is unexplained.

The vast differences between traditional and modern China in both values and expression is another draw. The series came out in 2007 on Channel 5, so a year before the Beijing Olympics, the perfect time to explore what makes this vast nation tick. It would be fascinating if he went back there now, ten years later, to see what the effects of all that construction and planning had had on the communities. It was a very interesting time in the country's history and its attitudes say a lot about it. The extremes are what a TV series is going to highlight, that's just good TV, but you don't get much more opposite than the shanty-like dwellings Paul visits to see where an American called Mike (who teaches English), lives, and the epic scale of a new hotel built in the style of a 17th Century grand palace! On the one hand you have the maze-like, close-knit conglomeration of one- or two-room houses the poorer folk call home, then the huge, but largely empty and cavernous spaces of the hotel, where cupboards are about the same size as the poor's rooms, and cupboards lead to smaller cupboards within!

The cuisine is something you need to be daring to attempt, and understandably, Paul is less than enthusiastic about the delicacies he's shown, and in some cases, tries. It seems to be that old China is less about wrapping things up nice and shiny, while modern China is exactly that, appearance more important, readying for the world stage. I suppose you can't really compare food to architecture, but it does point up the uneasy pull between two attitudes. Or perhaps it's just the uneasiness engendered by the government, in which officials are made uncomfortable by a Western film crew's presence, refusing to answer questions, even finding alternative transport rather than share the same tour bus. The inability for Chinese people to say whatever they want, held back probably by both a desire for their home to be recognised as a great place, but also by the uncertainty over how the authorities will react, reminds us that Paul is not in a traditionally free country in the way we understand it, but that only makes his encounters with all kinds of people more fascinating. He remains very polite, though, like Palin, doesn't mind making up silliness as he goes to get him through, and it is delightful. I do wonder how much was staged and how much planned, both by the government and by the production, as it doesn't seem quite as off the cuff as the Palin docs did, but at least his interpreter, Chinese girl Emma, is more moderate and Westernised in her approach, I sense.

Merton went on to make two or three other travel series' in this line as I recall ('Paul Merton in India,' 'Paul Merton in Europe,' I think, and some one-off visits to places), but none of them were as well-observed, or as engaging, as this one. It must have been the ideal time to examine a country that was in such a state of flux as it prepared for the world stage like never before, at a time when Western culture had been admitted (we witness Chinese youths performing hip hop on the streets, though it never gets more controversial than the subject of food!), capitalism becoming rampant, and the economic giant stirring into the superpower it is still becoming. Modern history has always held an interest, but it's strange to think we're living through such monumental times, and a documentary such as this one only amplifies that impression. Paul's genial bumbling and unwillingness to go too far, but just enough to be uncomfortable for him, makes for good viewing, and this is just the start to make you want to see more.

***

Return To Jupiter

YouTube, Return To Jupiter (1996) TV series, 13 episodes

After enjoying 'Escape From Jupiter' I was glad to know there was a sequel I could revisit to stay in that world, though I had hardly any memories of this one beyond some young Professor type riding a bicycle around a command centre in order to work something out at top speed, as well as the vague impression of things happening around a rocky cliff face. It turned out to be no wonder I didn't recall much from the series because it wasn't nearly as entertaining as its forebear. The big draw is that it continues the story of some of the characters who escaped from Jupiter, though it was slightly disappointing to find it was only three and a half of them: Gerard, Michael and Kumiko are the main ones, and we have Gerard's younger sister Anna along for about half the series. I wonder why they wrote her out, maybe she had other commitments, because there was no particular reason for losing her (she goes off to a medical facility to stay with their injured older sister Sam), replaced by the 'feral' Zac and her robot companion Quadro. Things have moved on, this coming out in 1996, so the children or teens are a couple of years older now and we're seeing them take their first steps into careers, with Gerard taking the lowest role aboard the Icarus, a new ship designed by Dr. Ghrobak, with a mission to take much-needed supplies to Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter.

I'd always thought they were going back to the same place they escaped from, perhaps to fix the base and start up that mission again, but the two series' aren't really connected aside from the returning characters and the general Jupiter direction. In fact I was thinking through much of it that it may as well have been called 'Return To Mars' for the amount of time they spent on and around the red planet! They had the same issues as the first series with finding things to do in space when it's really just supposed to be an uneventful journey, captained once again by an uptight adult, this time Commander Dent. As was the case with Duffy on the first mission, she's not fond of the children and the little escapades they go on, though there is less of this since they're older now, so it's left to a new character called Abe to cause the problems and misbehave. He takes Kingston's role - Kingston does get a couple of mentions, but Abe is even more extreme in his imaginings of worst case scenarios, and Anna didn't really fit with him so much, maybe another reason they brought on the obnoxious Zac to be his buddy. She's a bit of a tomboy from Mars, having run off from her colony with Quadro who's very much influenced by C-3PO in his polite pessimism, but does eventually turn into his own person and a fun character.

One issue with the series is that the adults aren't as well sketched out or as sympathetic. There's really only Dent and Ghrobak on the ship, and while they aren't bad(Dent comes to appreciate the youngsters before the end, as well as getting the chance to have a bit of a heart to heart with the promising Gerard, revealing some backstory about the loss of her first command), they aren't close like the children/parent situation previously. This time there are actual villains, a couple of thuggish scrap merchants on Mars that want to capture the Icarus to make themselves rich, but as fun as Selby and Glovic can sometimes be, they are very cartoonish, and the series, despite being a little more mature in the average age of the teens, feels more childish because of them. Selby's the moustache-twirling type, Glovic the violent heavy (nowadays I'm not sure they'd allow her torture of him - twisting his injured foot repeatedly!), and though there is some threat at first, by the time they're aboard Icarus towards the end of the series, and being kept out of a room by Abe and Zac throwing mouldy cake out the door, it's just a little ridiculous when much of the series is quite realistic. The realism is helped by the good work on space models, the CGI has really come on in the two years since the original, and it's fascinating to see more technology from this world. The station they launch from is called ES-2, in keeping with the designation of KL-5, the vehicle for their escape from Jupiter, so you can see some care has gone into keeping the terminology and setting part of the same world.

Technology continues to play a part, from pads that can x-ray a patient in real-time, to bracelets that allow you to pass through forcefields for good security, and even showers that clean both body and clothing at the same time in a blast of light, or can neatly fold garments. Even Sega get a credit again for providing some holographic computer games, though not as elaborate as the three-dimensional versions from before. So the credentials are all there, and that goes for the casting, too. It's great to see the old characters a bit older, and Abe isn't too annoying, but I was amazed to realise that David Wenham was a part of the series, years before he made his name as Faramir in 'The Lord of The Rings' - it took me a couple of episodes to work out who he was playing because the cast for every episode gave the whole series' list with only one word names. I assumed it was 'the' Wenham since it was an Australian series and he was from that part of the world, but it was still a surprise to realise he was the buck-toothed boffin, Dr. Ghrobak, the only new character I had any memory of from original viewing! So I was impressed by his performance, so vastly different from Faramir (that's acting, folks). He wasn't the only name from 'The Lord of The Rings' as Bruce Spence (The Mouth of Sauron, as well as roles in 'The Matrix' and 'Star Wars'), played the disembodied head of the 'Ed Unit,' a holographic, floating tutor that was Abe's nemesis in the first episode.

It's great fun spotting familiar names or faces, but apart from that I found the early episodes to be a touch dry. There isn't the danger and imminent destruction bubbling just under the surface thanks to the deep drilling that created a tension in the original series, and the sets of this brand-spanking new ship are a bit ugly compared with the 'Star Wars' approach of battered old technology they made do with before. Once the series gets going, with some good sequences on Mars and a bit of tension over the barely concealed contempt Glovic displays towards the crew, with Selby constantly having to smooth over her inability to control herself, it's better, but it still doesn't have the family atmosphere and camaraderie the group had originally. Once Dent has been impressed with them it's a bit more inspirational, but it then degenerates into running around dealing with the villains again and it ends merely functionally without the rush of good feeling 'Escape' concluded with, though the same formula of the minors solving the problems and the adults having to depend on them, is followed quite closely. It just didn't work quite as well this time. I was hoping for a big reunion where they met up with their parents, but maybe that was too much to expect for a children's TV series, and rounding up the old cast, two years after the original, just for a cameo, was too much to ask?

The series was simply a lot less memorable than its predecessor, though it still made me wish that there could be more within that universe - even now, more than twenty years later I think it would be terrific if they could round up those original actors and show them deep in their space careers. Call it 'Beyond Jupiter' or something. Space drama is still very much in demand, and the series' links to other sci-fi was quite apparent, whether it was the C-3PO influence, or the desert locales that recall 'Star Wars,' or the shiny technology of 'Star Trek.' One thing we still don't know about this world is whether there are aliens or not - Zac tells tall tales about them, but that turns out to be only a robot guardian programmed by the villains to keep out ferals, so we never find out if humans of this time are alone in space, or not. Given the realistic approach I would suggest that it's probably not the case, but that's what's so interesting about both series': we know so little about this world, unlike the big sci-fi franchises which had time to grow and explore over many years, this is just twenty-six episodes spread across two series which came out two years apart, so there are many questions.

The series is at its best when it's about the two boys' friendship, with a great cliffhanger following Michael going down to rescue Gerard from a brave, but rash course of action to save the ship, then we don't know what's happened to Michael, so that was the high point of the series, and they seemed like they were finally getting a handle on it, then it turns into a comedy runaround with Selby and Glovic. Would I recommend the series as I did the first one? I would have to say, on balance, I wouldn't, unless you're a child, because in some ways it's more adult in that the young characters are growing up, but also more juvenile in the choices it makes to prolong the drama, but if the first series has been enjoyed and you want more, then I would watch it, but with the caveat not to expect much. I'm just glad some kind person on YouTube saw to it to get this stuff up there as it's never been available and has always been one of those series I thought well of, even though I didn't remember the details, and like I said, if they'd made more I'd have been queuing up to watch that, too, so while it's pretty average, it is watchable and completes the set.

**

Afterimage

DVD, DS9 S7 (Afterimage) (2)

A portal has opened up and it takes me back to Season 1 in this first proper episode after the wrap-up of Season 6's finale, the first Ezri Dax episode, and the first in which she meets many of the station's inhabitants for the first time. It even begins the first day after she arrived in the previous episode, so what did she do that day? Was it late and she had to be hustled off to quarters to settle in? Did Jadzia's friends just stare at her as she smiled at them and never said a word? Did they all suddenly recollect important tasks that couldn't wait? It's dramatic licence, because they wouldn't want to miss showing us a new character's initial meeting with the rest of the cast, and we wouldn't want to miss it. The episode is the natural next step for the character after she made her debut with the Siskos, and was a requirement to introduce her to the environment she'd be living in for the rest of the season. It didn't have to be this one, but if she didn't get the preliminaries over with right away we'd be left wondering how the others would react, and after a couple of epic episodes it's good to concentrate on a smaller character story, and who better to take the limelight than the new Dax. Which brings me back to Season 1, which for her, it is the equivalent of, each character having gone through the process of exploring this old Cardassian 'monstrosity,' its nooks and crannies, in a physical and metaphorical sense, to discover where they fit in to this microcosmic society.

Except everyone else has the advantage of several years' head start on young Ezri, and the part of her that is more than familiar with the place, old Dax, is turning her head upside down, literally, at times, with the memories of its past lives overcoming her personal tendencies and preferences to alarming levels. And Captain Sisko thought such a time was ideal for her to stretch her counselling training to the maximum by taking on the worst patient on the station? Just rewind to Season 2's 'The Wire' and recall how venomous and personal plain, simple Garak was when he was under the stricture of the physical, his mind as sharp as a dagger between the mental ribs, with a tongue sharper than a serpent's tooth, and then it was experienced Dr. Bashir dealing with him, a friend who knew him as well as anyone could at that time. To ask Ezri to take on the Cardassian tailor's issues was sending the lamb to the slaughter, or Red Riding Hood to visit the wolf with a basket of twee cookies, hoping he might like one. The resurgent claustrophobia Garak is suffering from isn't so bad that he behaves abominably. Not at first, anyway. He puts up his standard wall of congeniality and apparent helpfulness, seeming to take on board the simplistic pokings of this inexperienced assistant counsellor who pops her hand in the tree trunk to feel around for the honey and never even dreams of the vast swarm of bees that remain concealed, their stings quivering in anticipation. If she wants to take some honey, let her, as long as she goes away.

Ezri is a Starfleet officer, and that means she wants to do her job properly, so one cursory visit isn't going to be enough, as accommodating as Garak appears, ready to take on board her advice. But it doesn't really help him, the underlying problem too severe for some child's prattlings to solve so simply, and even a later visit to a Holosuite, and its ability to display the vastness of an ocean stretching to the horizon, isn't enough to set Garak right. It is only when Ezri starts to bother him, maybe gets too close to the real cause of it all that he turns on her, releasing the bees, the wolf, the bear and every other animal instinct within to carve her ego up like jelly. And you get the sense that when he tells her to get out before he says something unkind, he really means it! The episode is one that doesn't have a lot of strength in its setting, doesn't show DS9 in its glory, nor has any real stakes, except for Ezri's career path, nor do we know her well enough to really care if she stays or runs back to her USS Destiny, at least on the surface level. But it does do the job of making her a sympathy case, because she's so off-balance and childlike that Sisko's request to exercise her training, though harmless at the time, becomes like throwing her to the wolves. He even gets in on the act, instead of being understanding and supportive when she's rattled by her inability to help Garak, the truth of his words cutting deep, the Captain also lays into her saying she's unworthy of the Dax symbiont. His anger is motivated by care, though, and it works, shaming her into going back to Garak to at least apologise that she couldn't help.

That's when things turn around, I sense he's ready to hurl more insults if this is her idea of persistence, but guarded and more interested in keeping his control. And it is this last conversation that proves most helpful and shows Ezri to be a good person that genuinely wants to help. Both Garak's stinging comments and Sisko's equally biting suggestion of running all the way down to the dark symbiont caves on Trill where she can stir mud for the rest of her life, don't do as much for her as helping Garak realise the real reason for his panic attacks: immense guilt that his work decoding Cardassian transmissions, which he was doing to help end the war and save his home, even though it abandoned him, is actually killing his people. He is killing his people. And he's helpless to do anything else against the power the Dominion holds over Cardassia, its future destroyed however the war ends - it will be used to fight the Founders' war until every last Cardassian has been sacrificed, the Dominion wouldn't hesitate to use its ally up to the bitter end of all its resources, people, places, everything. The plaudits must be heaped upon Andrew Robinson for such a towering performance, probably only equalled by his ranting and raving in 'The Wire,' and not since 'In The Pale Moonlight' have we seen his shop play host to such vehement emotion. Which strikes me, was this Sisko's revenge for what Garak turned him into to get the Romulans into the war? Send the new girl over to wind the Cardie up, tweak his chain and get his dresses in a tizzy?

No, Starfleet Intelligence needed the decodes Garak was providing, the reason it was so important for him to keep at it, and the reason the pressure was proving too much. But for the explosion of anguish, this would have very much been an inoffensive, but slightly dull Season 1 episode, with even some of the characters fulfilling those early roles: Sisko's the most obvious. Apart from his temper snapping in the face of Ezri's easy surrender he's quite passive in word and deed. Maybe it's having a Dax on the station again, like old times, or the calm following such stormy days, not to mention the old, familiar problems of station life beckoning to a man that has had far worse to deal with in recent months, but he seems positively happy to be back on DS9. Quark is back to being behind the bar and chatting to the other denizens of the station, and the other characters that have changed so much over the years, don't have as much exposure. I mentioned the nooks and crannies, and Ezri's wandering round the station, seeing its shadows, and symbols of Jadzia's life: coming into Sisko's office by the lesser used side door; popping into the Bajoran Temple where 'she' died; talking to Morn on the upper Promenade; corridors; quarters (we even see a rare view looking in from an external docking port when Garak tries to leave the fast way, probably not seen since 'Empok Nor'!), revisits the places I associate with early episodes when they were working out what the station was and how it fit together, before the larger scale of Quadrant-wide events defocused attention from the ins and outs of internal sets.

The fact she's trying to find her place on the station is another Season 1 facet, seeing how she bounces off the others: Kira, Quark, Bashir, Worf. The episode doesn't have the same kind of history and common ground that it has developed for all the other characters so that when they share scenes there's more going on than words spoken or situations faced. But there is something between them and Ezri, partly because Jadzia is within her, partly because Nicole deBoer was able to get right into it. It's not her fault that it was a difficult time for the writers - though it might have been a breath of fresh air creatively, the legwork still had to be accomplished, getting her to a place where she could contribute to the series, not be a mere press generator to up the interest in the series' seventh season. So some of the episode, I wouldn't say falls flat, but doesn't sparkle, merely occurs, getting Dax to a point she needs to reach. The others had a good few episodes for us to see that, we were exploring the station for the first time with them. This time we're in the know and waiting for her to catch up, but deBoer's performance is engaging, doesn't frustrate or annoy as she goes around putting her foot in it with people. If she fits in awkwardly then she should be told that she's come to the perfect place for misfits - it is their very 'misfittedness' that makes them fit, from Worf, a Klingon who used to have an identity problem, Sisko who didn't want to be at this remote outpost, Kira a former terrorist, Quark a businessman that had no desire to stay at such a forsaken, profitless place, Odo who didn't even know what he was, let alone who…

All these people, and more, have found purpose and position within the bulkheads of an alien structure hanging in space, the disparate finding convergence. The episode could have been better (another Season 1 trait), and it's not quite the uplifting story of finding harmony as two people work together to repair themselves and become productive, dancing or singing into the light over the course of the episode, it isn't as sophisticated or nuanced as that, but it is saved by the power of its ending, and the lead-up to it. Because although it appears to be all about Dax and her quest to regain her footing after the joining by doing those things which are unique to Ezri, it's also about others facing up to their own difficult situations. Garak didn't realise it was guilt that was driving his claustrophobia. Worf goes full thug, slamming Bashir up against the wall of his own Infirmary in his quest to have Ezri blocked out of station life when the Doctor shows her affection. Even Bashir himself is momentarily pained when she insensitively goes round telling people like him how Jadzia felt about them - he would have been 'the one' if Worf hadn't come. She's a bit thoughtless - it's one thing reminiscing with Quark about their nights playing Tongo, and quite another to drop such a bombshell on Bashir. And Sisko doesn't know what to say when she reveals Worf is intimidated by him! Yes, this is the episode, it's such a memorable thing to learn, and I'm surprised it was so late in the series as I'd thought it was earlier we heard this, but Sisko is thoroughly bemused. I feel like it's something Jadzia said.

It could be said that Worf has the toughest challenge to overcome, but then he wouldn't want it any other way, would he? He's a Klingon warrior, no quest is too tough, and the tougher the better. Except when it comes to the personal, and the honour of Jadzia's memory, which has become twisted up inside his head as not allowing anything to do with her, including the symbiont she carried, to have anything to do with the station. I always thought Trill laws prohibited new hosts from taking up where their previous host's life left off. So they shouldn't become friends with those they knew before (though that's demonstrably untrue since Jadzia took on the friendship of Ben from Curzon), don't take on the debts, or any other continuance from that life (though Ezri remembers Quark owes her from their last Tongo game!), and generally don't interact with that past. Yet it is part of her past now, inheriting eight pasts, and it would be impossible for Trill to avoid all contact with previous hosts' friends or family in a normal society so they must have found a way to coexist within the tight rules imposed. The only thing we really learn here is that they aren't allowed to get involved, but they can talk to past husbands or wives, and Ezri desperately needs to talk to Worf. It's just very hard for him to accept something which is, and is not, partly his wife. The disappointment and rejection Ezri has to endure about Worf doesn't help her, and serves to bring her down much harder with the other issues she has to deal with, whereas if he had been accepting she might not have been so ready to flee.

We know that's true because that's exactly what does happen - when Worf 'Klingons up' and visits her quarters to explain himself and admits that Jadzia would have wanted him to treat her better and to stay if she wishes. We'd already had a wringing, affecting pull on the tear lever from Garak's flying off the handle, and this, in its quiet way is almost as powerful. Worf is a man of few words, preferring deeds to speak for him, but words are needed, so he does what the honourable must do and lives up to his code. What makes the episode, though, is that he also performs in deed, there at Ezri's party for her promotion to Lieutenant, seeing eye to eye across the crowded room and raising a flagon to her, even after he's said it will not be easy to be around her for a while and that he needs space, so I didn't think he'd be there, the last place he would feel comfortable. But he does it anyway, and when Trek is at its best is when characters are demonstrating self-sacrifice. Only Worf could make the final piece of her puzzle of where to be and what to do, fit, and he graciously did to the betterment of the station, a better man than most. The party is also the opportunity for the others to show their appreciation and acceptance when they too have had an effort to adjust, with Odo and Kira inviting her round for dinner and that sort of thing. While the majority of the episode's direction didn't stand out to me, the elegant choreography of all those people coming up to Ezri at the party in one continuous shot gliding around, was one scene that did!

As much as I'd have preferred an episode that came in firing on all cylinders, really getting into the meat of Ezri on the station, working every situation to the best dramatic advantage, and foregoing a pedestrian mind mangle in favour of more direct problems and solutions, I can't deny that the resolution provided through Garak and Worf, if not completes her arc, at least wedges her firmly onto the series, ready to be used. And she did get use, overuse if truth be told, in the same way Worf had so much to do when he joined in Season 4, or when Seven of Nine did the same on 'Voyager,' only natural for a new character to be given the most time, even to the detriment of other characters, though they would have been used to sharing the screen time thanks to so many recurring characters being bolstered into the ranks of almost regular cast members. That's another thing: there weren't to be many more episodes featuring Garak, this is probably the last that could be said to be one focused so firmly upon him, so it is disappointing that it wasn't another great spy story with Bashir, or something which allowed us to see his skills in practical use again, rather than an object for Ezri to find her confidence through. But no series is perfect, though there are few things I could complain about in this final season, and it's far from the last time he'd be heavily involved in the unfolding saga.

If I wouldn't complain about them, then I can at least point out some inconsistent items on the agenda. I've never understood the need for people to go into the Holodeck wearing the costumes they'll be playing in - it happened all the time on 'TNG' and the others, either they'd show up in costume, or leave like that (Picard in 'Generations' probably the most fun, in full naval uniform marching onto the Bridge having been called away!). From a technical perspective there's no issue, they aren't holographic outfits, but why not wear a holographic skin over your uniform? Or why not create a pattern that the Replicator can beam into being, and why ask Garak to make them for you? Was it just O'Brien and Bashir wanting to give him some work in these difficult times for business, or do they prefer the accuracy and beauty of a real tailor's work to the mechanical manufacture of clothing through the computer - that's a point, could it be that even in the 24th Century skill in design and craft is something that can't be equalled by a computer and needs a living hand to work its genius? Maybe connoisseurs of holographic entertainment prefer the reality of homemade garments, and since they don't use money they don't need to worry about paying people like Garak… But he must be reimbursed somehow.

It can only be authenticity, and while on that subject, what about Sisko's point to Starfleet questioning what Ezri could learn to bump her up to a full counsellor and a Lieutenant, that she doesn't already know from three hundred years? It works, they 'fell' for it, but how do other Trill in Starfleet or other organisations use this advantage? Are all Trills allowed to skip through the ranks because of being joined? Wouldn't that have created exactly the bartering system the Trill were trying to avoid in the first place when they maintained the false notion that only a select few could ever be joined successfully? Seen in that light such a wangle from Sisko seems to have far-reaching consequences, unless of course it had all been worked out before in other cases, and it was more a case of pleasing a successful Captain than listening to his logic. And still in the vein of authenticity, Worf says a part of him is glad that Jadzia isn't gone forever, living on through Ezri, but what about the whole battle to get her into Sto-Vo-Kor, doesn't he have faith that he will see her there, or is he merely referring to temporal remains? Regardless of such things, overall, this becomes a better episode than it seems to be through much of it, and an essential introduction for the new character.

***

Beacon

DVD, Smallville S10 (Beacon)

All due credit to this story for not going the expected route. Things look bleak, like the series is about to step into a second Dark Age of Seasons Three to Seven, when the character dynamics were pushed askew and the plans of Lionel Luthor and Lex were what guided the series to its low points. That's the way Lionel would have had it, if he'd had his way, and perhaps there is, even now, still time for him to regroup and use Alexander as his pawn. But for now, he goes from the returning magnate of LutherCorp, buying out Oliver without a by your leave, taking his place at the Luthor Mansion, just like the old days, and taking young, but rapidly ageing, Alexander under his hoary old wing. But before the episode is out his plans are gone astray, the Mansion burns, and Alexander returns to the (well-meaning, but questionable), protection of his 'Mother,' Tess, his memory failing along with his body, though not so much that Tess can get away with trying to murder him with a hypodermic of cyanide which mysteriously fails to penetrate his skin as if he's made of steel… like Clark… I really anticipated, with sinking feeling, the return to the old wells of misused story and character, so it was pleasing to witness Lionel's grand schemes, at least partially, crumble in the face of Clark's strong family ties. Because without the tireless campaigning of a certain Senator, the Vigilante Registration Act would not have been repealed.

And it is repealed, in an episode that at first looks grim, but turns out to be the greatest victory of the season so far for Clark and his supporters. I know things can't go on looking so rosy for long, and we're only just over the halfway hump of the season, so there's plenty of time for things to come crashing down before a triumphant finale (I assume), sets all right and finally puts Clark in the red boots and cape of Superman. That the episode surprises in how upbeat and optimistic it is, allows it to just climb over the cusp of mediocrity that threatened if they had chosen to do the expected thing of Lionel building his empire back up with the help of a misguided Alexander. It all happened in fast forward, so I hope that, if not the end of his lofty ambitions, it curtails them enough so that he isn't the only, and main, threat to deal with as I began to wonder it would. We mustn't forget the spirit of anger, hatred and negativity that is supposed to be holding sway over the world at the moment, which is easy to forget when so many came to the aid of the 'vigilantes' in general, and The Blur in particular (even if it was a little inspired by similar individual citizen points of view like the old 'Spider-Man' films), somehow breaking through the evil that had settled on men's minds. Even the look of the episode reflects Clark's glory as 'the light' Martha Kent says he is (for the Senator behind the motivational campaign was of course she), a beautiful sunset glow over so many scenes, whether it be the Kent family home, or other places, while Lionel is left to crawl back into the dark from whence he came, saved by Clark to freely go about his business.

As soon as I saw Annette O'Toole's name in the Special Guest Stars credits at the beginning I had hopes that this episode would be a vehicle to serve her well - we'd already been teased with Martha a couple of times, but it's only now that we finally get to see her, and it is lovely to have her back, even though she was one of the last of the originals to leave, and didn't have that much of a place on the series by the time she did (which was probably what caused her to do so). Here she is the ideal person to go up against Lionel, but especially to be the face of reason and support for heroes, bringing her message of a beacon of hope to rally the many that are still out there whom support The Blur and recognise what he and others like him do. Maybe Lois' little subplot of being inspired by looking up one of Perry White's old campaigns fell a little flat, and I didn't feel the idea of her having an impact on the repeal was very strong in execution, but the episode could survive a few missteps or underdone threads. I suppose the implication was that she asked Chloe to hack into all the online newspapers and create more support that way, but it wasn't very clear. I could also have done with a little more of Clark being the investigative reporter we all know he can be, or could be - instead he sees the sign Alexander had scratched from his position taking potshots at Martha (an 'S' symbol crossed out), and was instantly able to narrow it down to him because he'd made the sign before, but in reality anyone who hated superheroes could have done the same thing.

It didn't matter, it kept the story flowing quickly, and is hardly the most ridiculous thing the series has done, so I give it a pass, and there's enough nostalgic or inspiring interplay between characters that such tiny issues are unimportant. There were three key moments that it went beyond a mere average episode, the first being Mrs. Kent and Lois in the Kent kitchen, the second being Alexander talked down from his rampage by Tess, and the third was Martha's encouraging words for her son when he wonders if he's not being honest by hiding his identity and considering revealing it to the public. But then he wouldn't really be Clark Kent as we'd know him from legend, and as much as the series has strayed from comics history to create its own narrative right from the start, key aspects of the Superman myth are needed to make it feel right, so I was glad that she reassured Clark as long as he was standing up for right, it doesn't matter what name he uses or what clothes he wears. Before the VRA is repealed it obviously does matter what anyone wears, with Oliver eschewing his Green Arrow clobber for a more modest hoodie, ironically a better disguise now than his old outfit, but hopefully with the act history the heroes can get back to hero-ing again, without fear that the general public will curtail their moral deeds with suffocating politics and dark rhetoric. It was like a new dawn had arisen, bright and cheerful, and I only hope the inevitable collapse into gloomy mire isn't too depressing in counteraction of all this happiness.

***

Shadows and Symbols

DVD, DS9 S7 (Shadows and Symbols) (2)

Three wise men crossing the desert with one confused woman, that's an image in the sand if ever there was one, especially when it turns out the most confused of all is actually the leader, Captain Benjamin Sisko, striding out purposefully with no real idea of where he's going. It could have been the sensible course of action, a commander has to appear to know what he's doing, even if he doesn't - like Joseph said in the previous episode, you make your choice and hope it's the right one. Perhaps it was faith that The Prophets would guide him to their destiny. It may even have been that the good Captain was moving on autopilot - ever since Ezri came into the Sisko restaurant he'd had a happy, almost dreamy good humour, as if his wish for Dax to be there to help him had come true, and if The Prophets had granted even such an impossible wish as that, they really must know what they're doing. But he becomes more and more internalised, forgetting his son and old Father trailing behind (though Joseph does his best to keep up, intent on helping his son in his strange quest, to the utmost that his failing old body can manage), and becomes intently focused forward, like a man in a trance seeing sugarplums dance. Focus was the necessary component missing before this mission came to him, he had no obvious direction or solution, so now that he has a definite goal to achieve it suits his personality. Sisko has always been somebody that does; a doer; one who has something to do, Prophet Sarah confirming this.

Ezri's arrival (previously assigned to the USS Destiny, we learn, a ship she ended up commanding in a non-canon book trilogy), whether the influence of The Prophets or a happy accident, is a catalyst back to a semblance of normality for both her and Ben. He could very easily have rejected her, this Dax that comes so unexpectedly into his life, as Worf does at the end of the episode, storming off in dismay - the Captain has a mission to accomplish of vital importance and doesn't need to rake over the ashes of a friendship he'd thought dead, a failure to protect his dear friend, and her face could be a reminder of all that went wrong. Likewise for Ezri, Sisko was the previous host's greatest friend, and at this time of turmoil, a flood of confusion from the many different voices swamping her personality, his strong, solid frame of reference was exactly what she needed to become grounded, and what better for both of them than to set off on a mission together, assisting each other in work as they always used to do. Ezri is immediately likeable (and that baseball throwing arm would be an asset a couple of episodes down the road!), an achievement in itself because it could have been hard to accept her, as a viewer, replacing as she did one of the best-loved characters of the series. I think this is where Sisko's immediate acceptance of her, greeting her so warmly, helps us to allow her presence on the series: if it's good enough for the star of the show…

It's also as if Jadzia hadn't quite left, with Worf's very personal mission of honouring her memory through the completion of a difficult and dangerous mission in her name, a hearty reminder of her big-hearted place on the station and among these people. O'Brien and Bashir going along to pay their own respects says a lot, but not more than Quark himself taking his place among the valiant. Quark the bartender. Quark the profiteer. Quark the good Ferengi that cares only for himself. As we've seen over the course of the series, he isn't such a good Ferengi as he'd like to think, and in the eyes of the Starfleet people that's a credit to him. That he would risk his life, even with all the constant complaining and irritating everyone around him, perhaps to keep reminding himself he is a traditional Ferengi, shows how much Jadzia meant to him, and also how brave he can be when the need arises. I think it was as much to show the Klingons and Starfleeters what a Ferengi is capable of as it was to settle some kind of debt to the memory of the much-loved Dax. In typical style for the 'DS9' writers, it wasn't enough for him to simply be there, he had to play a role, and as unexpected as it was, his needling and niggling at Worf is what provokes truth to the surface, prompting the angry Klingon to blaze at Quark and the others about being grateful to him for allowing them to come, and that he loved Jadzia more than any of them and would have liked to complete the mission for her alone. With Martok's wise words he actually apologises for his outburst and accepts them as the great friends Dax thought them, a surprise, and a moving moment to hear an apology from Worf! None of which would have been worked out if Quark hadn't been there to get under his skin.

While 'Image In The Sand' was… I don't want to say muddled or disparate, but compared to this episode, that's almost how it seems now, with only the brief return to Weyoun and Damar as extraneous (now Damar's mixing women with his drinking, taking another step down in his colleague's estimation), but even that was tied into the Klingon raid, the Monac shipyards discussed as needing to crank out ships faster. Because this is, or becomes, tight as a drum before the end, the A, B, and C-plots (though all of equal stature, so more like A1, A2, A3-plots), three defined through-lines, had already been separated out and set up for resolution in Part I, so we begin the episode with no distractions or diversions (unless you count Odo and Kira cosying up, which still feels odd when you remember how spiky both used to be), and we see an artistry at work as three distinctly separate stories become, not intertwined, but solidly merged, all building to a crescendo at the same moment: the attack by the Rotarran on the shipyards; the standoff between Kira's flotilla and a fleet of heavily armed, powerful Romulan Warbirds; and Sisko coming under the devious diversions of The Pah-Wraiths in his moment of destiny. The Klingon attack shares no connection with the other two story-lines, but it plays out with the same momentum so as to enhance the jeopardy and rising stakes, where everything has to appear to be about to fall off a cliff before turning around at the last moment and soaring in wondrous flight, all three angles converging in Sisko's triumphal return to the station.

I expect an episode like this could be taught in film school because it is expertly woven together, and though there were minor additions I could make to improve tiny aspects of it here and there, the boldness of the storytelling is refreshing, and the structure brilliantly formed. It works because all three of the most important characters have their individual challenge - the 'DS9' videos from CIC in the 90s changed their design for the sleeves when they came to release Season 7, putting Sisko, Kira and Worf permanently on the front cover where before it would be a different character (or object, occasionally), for each video. It seemed a strange choice at the time, especially as it remained those three characters rather than mingling others in the mix. Now I can see it was a business decision: the videos were more likely to appeal if the most popular, or well-known characters, were on the front. But I also see that they could well have been influenced by this opening two-parter, since it really is each one of Captain Sisko, Colonel Kira and Commander Worf that have their personal battles to face. Interestingly, for Worf I would say his was not the obvious, the threat to his life in battle against Jem'Hadar ships, because that's his bread and butter, it makes him sing, it's what he was born for. No, his challenge is admitting, first to himself, then to Jadzia's friends, that he was jealous of those friendships and wanted her all to himself, sealing the rift and truly being an honourable Klingon.

For Kira, it was about how far she was going to carry her bluff in the face of ridiculous odds, her small Bajoran fleet outmatched many times over by the superior Romulan vessels. I knew as soon as Admiral Ross told her it was a fight she couldn't win, that that would only fire her determination. Bajorans had been fighting a war they couldn't win for decades before the Federation came along, that's what they're good at, that's what Kira knows, and it's good to see she hadn't lost her edge, because it's exactly the sort of thing you would have expected from Major Kira in the first few seasons when she was a lot more liable to fly off the handle - why, in the pilot, 'Emissary,' she bluffed the Cardassians in much the same way, firing all the torpedoes the station had, as warning shots in the hope that the enemy would think their intelligence was incorrect about how well-armed the station was! She may have become more of an administrator with less time at the coalface of combat, Sisko or Worf tending to take that role, but she hadn't lost her abilities, certainly hadn't grown soft, and with the added encouragement of Odo at her side, she faced down the green devils as they took up position on the viewscreen, and stood her ground.

Seeing her in command of a ship is great in itself, especially a Bajoran one, as we see so few of them in the series, and I don't think we'd ever had a Bajoran Bridge before. I do wonder what the mood was amongst the Bajoran militia serving under her, the ship she's on remaining calm and almost detached. I couldn't help feel that maybe the young helmsman, or whatever he was, should show some jitters, maybe some of the Captains of the other ships should have contacted her on a secret channel and showed signs that the little fleet was on the verge of breaking up in the face of such impossible odds, some sense of the rising tension within the ranks. Not to say that Nana Visitor doesn't control the dial on the tension with her performance, because she does, with even Odo close to becoming a naysayer behind her, as the danger reaches critical he interjects more and more that it might be time to back down, and how far is she going to take it, not in accusatory tone or trying to influence her to give up, but as a warning. He's like a ship's computer when it reports that shields are down to 40%, now 20%, now 5%… He was a support, but he didn't want to see her die, though the impression is he was with her to the end, whatever happened, a true friend. Actually, the Bajorans too, acted with distinction, never questioning Kira's orders or showing a sign of fear, acquitting themselves with honour. It was their job, they are soldiers after all, but never once was there an indication of no confidence in the Colonel's brazen tactics, when the Romulans could have swatted them away like flies.

Knowing the extreme nature of the Romulans, much like the Bajorans' historical foe, the Cardassians, while they could probably have disabled all the Bajoran ships and gone on their way to Derna, they were far more likely to have been ruthlessly efficient in eliminating the threat entirely. It would have been an end of the alliance against the Dominion because I can't imagine the Federation would have stood by and allowed the Romulans to massacre their ally, and so it would most likely have become an uneasy truce to avoid war between them, they'd have parted ways to pursue victory against the Dominion separately, their interests sometimes coming into conflict and the Founders picking off each side as they had been doing before. So Kira's last stand could have spelt absolute destruction for the Alpha Quadrant. Is it right to risk that much for so little? The trouble is, if the Bajorans had backed down this time they'd have lost their planetary pride, they would have sunk back to the days of the Occupation and have shown that they could be bullied, weakening their status and their standing. Because they aren't a Federation world, they stand alone (as Sisko told them to in Season 5, a choice that saved them from annihilation when the Dominion took over the station at the end of that season), and have the autonomy to decide what can and can't happen in their space. Ross must have eventually recognised what he was dealing with, his qualms about allowing the Romulans to pull such a stunt against Bajor causing him to back her play and save the day, massacre avoided at only the cost of some severely rumpled Romulan feathers, a very acceptable bargain, considering they must have known how far they were pushing it in terms of their alliance with a historic enemy, the Federation.

Kira has to convince others that she means what she says, but Sisko goes through a more ambiguous trial, having to make a difficult choice about what is reality on the desert world of Tyree. It was almost too good to be true that we got a mini sequel within the episode to one of the greatest 'DS9,' and indeed, all of Trek, stories ever told, when he returns to the character he experienced from the previous season's 'Far Beyond The Stars' again, in the world of Benny Russell. It is this, above all the action and visuals, character interactions and developments, that puts it over the top as a great story. It's unexpected, just as the reality of Dax returning in some form, but it's real. This time, rather than being a vision from The Prophets, it's a false vision sent by The Pah-Wraiths to prevent his opening the Orb of The Emissary and releasing the one he knows as Sarah into the Wormhole where she can set things right and cast out the evil of the Kosst Amojan. Having one of the few actors play a role in this world, that didn't appear in the original episode, is icing on the cake, Casey Biggs the one to get out from under makeup this time, his Damar mask off to play Dr. Wykoff at some kind of mental hospital where Benny has been continuing to write his stories of DS9 and Captain Sisko up until the point he's about to open the Orb. Denied paper, he's nevertheless written all over the walls of the isolation ward (I wonder how long it took production assistants to write all that!), but is given a chance to go free if he paints over it all. It's a stunning moment as the urge to give it all up is strong, but somehow he chooses to keep writing the story, thus giving Sisko permission to open the Orb, fulfilling the plan of The Prophets.

To someone coming in and not knowing who Benny Russell is it would seem a bizarre departure, but again, it all makes sense in the context of the story and the series, with every nuance they could add pulling together the wider 'DS9' history (poor Jake has bad experiences with non-corporeal entities since Onaya sucked the life out of him in 'Muse,' he was host to a Pah-Wraith in 'The Reckoning,' and now he gets thrown on his head by touching the Prophets' Orb!), or the even wider Trek lore, to be used at their leisure and for the furthering of a grand story. And it is grand, played out with Klingon, Romulan, Bajoran and Federation ships, the scale audacious and the use of all the elements so well constructed that an illusion of events that seem Quadrant-wide is upheld as never before in previous Treks, a huge scale presented down to an intimate level. It's not about vast battle fleets, they are merely the backdrop to personal drama, they provide the spectacle, but aren't the theme or the end goal. It's not a 'ride' as so many films are, including the Kelvin Timeline series of the last nine years, a journey, yes, but not a spectacular, effects-driven ride designed to exhilarate. Trek is meant to be thoughtful and show a positive future where people overcome, and that is exactly what Sisko, Kira and Worf accomplish, while allowing the continuation of past story threads and the dangling, loose ones leaving us excited to see the resolution: what further tasks does Sisko have to do, and is Sarah talking about the tomorrow of the series, beyond the tomorrow, or maybe even yesteryear…

As strong as the story is amid all these big moments, the height of it all comes at the very end after all the excitement of completing the tasks and setting right what was wrong: the victorious Klingon battle is won, the standoff has been successful, and The Prophets are no longer silent. It's the return to the station for the Captain and Ezri that fulfils the promise of the first two episodes, Sisko greeted with open arms and welcomed with tears of gratitude from the Bajorans. But even this isn't the best moment. That comes right at the end when Ezri breezes past all Jadzia's old friends, carried along in the procession and the joy of the moment, nonchalantly greeting them without really thinking, lost in seeing the station through new eyes, a place both alien and familiar to her, then she suddenly realises where she is and who these people are, turns and looks back lovingly at this group that means so much to her, and smiles, the episode closing on that look, a warm flourish to end with. It leaves the questions hanging of how she'll integrate into station life, the awkwardness of meeting old friends for the first time, the dichotomy of all this both impossibly old and new, and just rests on that moment ready to take up the issues in the next episode.

Ezri's addition to the cast was both a shot in the arm for the writers, a new toy to play with, when they could easily have done with one less character on the series - just look at how many recurring cast had become staples, they really weren't in need of someone new, but they made the addition, and for the most part it worked out well. I do sometimes wonder what great stories the other main cast members might have had, since she tended to garner a greater share of the story time, and so in that respect she was something of an intruder. But then so was Worf when he was introduced in Season 4, and he went on to be one of the best characters on the series, an improvement on the development he'd already had in 'TNG.' It wasn't Nicole deBoer's fault that the series didn't run for another two or three seasons, and she made her character likeable and different from what we'd seen before. For a start we get every previous host mentioned as she's finding it hard to judge what are her own preferences or the influence of the symbiont's experiences through the other hosts, and that's an interesting approach. It both reminds us of the biggest secret of Trill society, and also shows what can go wrong if someone hasn't had any training or preparation. In Season 3 we learned that there are many more Trill that could be joined than the authorities admit, because there wouldn't be enough symbionts to go round and they'd become commodities to be bartered with and abused. At the same time, the joining is a difficult process and Ezri wasn't ready, a case of necessity to save the symbiont, a ripe topic to explore.

It seems harsh of Worf to react in such an angry way, refusing to believe that a Dax would return to the station, storming off as soon as it becomes known who she is. But I can understand his position perfectly - they've just been in the midst of battle for the memory of Jadzia, and after all they've gone through, they return home to an imposter, or someone that is writing over the memory of his beloved. There's a reason past hosts aren't supposed to track down and be friends with those they knew from former lives, because it causes much confusion over identity. Ezri needed Sisko in this turbulent time of transition into a new way of being, but that doesn't stop it from being unfair and hard on Worf who always found change hard to accept anyway. That everyone is so instantly curious and bemused by it all must have been tough for his set ways, as if his mindset was being attacked. There had to be some kind of negative connotation to Ezri's appearance, otherwise she'd have nothing to overcome (aside from her internal identity crisis), but it was far too soon for Worf to be able to accept such a massive and intrusive betrayal of the order of his world.

If there was something missing from the episode, it's a final scene between Sisko and his Dad, as this is the final appearance of Brock Peters on the series, much of which he spends trying to keep up through soft, yielding sand that makes climbing uphill more difficult than ever, and he is an old man, going off for his nap during the journey on the Runabout (handy to be able to beam up at any time if you get too tired - that's my kind of hike!), to remind us that even in the 24th Century, old people are old. It could be that the beautifully designed Starfleet desert gear was intended to mask Peters so a stunt double could do most of the sand dune climbing, the hoods kept up most of the time. But they are superbly designed with just a ribbon of colour to denote the wearer's division, and smart, comfortable white walking boots that match the coolness of the underclothes and hood. I don't believe we'd ever seen the like before, and I'm pretty sure they weren't used again, so the episode was happy to spend money! When Sisko is at first digging up the Orb, then burying it again in the grip of the false vision, the sand really wasn't helping him, so soft that he was barely able to make a hole, especially with the small spade he was using. I like that the episode distinguishes between true and false visions, because it would be all too easy to either dismiss such things entirely (as would be the general Trek way), or suggest that all such mystical experiences are good. Instead it gives the impression that such things must be weighed and considered, questioned to validate them because the alternative of following every impression or feeling that comes along could be disastrous!

With this being Joseph's last episode, it was also the last we'd see of his restaurant, though the final time we go there is in the vision of Sisko as he speaks with his 'Mother,' the Prophet he calls Sarah after the woman she inhabited. And that's exactly what we find out: that his birth was ensured by The Prophets for the very purpose (among others), that he's just carried out, the reversal of the Kosst Amojan's attack on the Celestial Temple, and the blooming back into life of the Wormhole. Sarah was corporeal, but had been inhabited by a Prophet, which is why she inexplicably left Joseph so shortly into their marriage. While there are many tasks left for the Sisko, she is well pleased - you had to get the story to a point where everything is good and happy, in order for evil to creep back, then to build to the next confrontation that would be the crowning of the series, or the capping of it, the end of a seven year epic beginning with tiny steps. Although I could hardly call these first two episodes tiny - Sisko got to be Benny Russell again, saw his unknown Mother again; Kira got to return to her terrorist routes, blockading the wrongdoers; and Worf got to dress as a Klingon and fulfil his heritage. Maybe what he said about it being the best mission it could have been wasn't entirely accurate (I can't imagine he didn't wish for at least some hand to hand combat and bloodletting!), but it was all about Jadzia and they honoured her well.

Though the episode isn't about the effects, that's what always stayed with me from the time I first saw it, the harsh beauty of the desert environment we see the Siskos and Dax traverse, the shiny, smart interior of Kira's Bajoran Bridge, and especially the close-up glory of a brilliant sun, and the aftermath of the successful act of destroying it, taking out the shipyards in its enveloping blast. You can see the individual panels come apart from the ships docked in their construction cradles, ripped through by the solar wave, and while I'd have liked a 'Return of The Jedi' leap out of the flames by the Bird of Prey, warping away as the facility is disintegrated (always terrific to see a ship escape an exploding star by the skin of its hull, the best example being in 'Generations'), it's only a minor loss. I also appreciate their decorum in not showing Ezri being sick on the Runabout's nice, shiny panels. Nowadays we'd have to see all its 'glory,' but there's generally something a little more refined about Trek in those days. The last thing I take from the episode is Sisko's question to Sarah: why did it have to be him? It reminds me of a similar scene in 'Zulu' where the young soldier is pitifully asking why did it have to be us, and the staunch old Colour-Sergeant says: "Because we're 'ere lad, and nobody else," and the same answer stands for Sisko. Because it could be no one else. Something we can all take to heart.

****

Retrogaming Review of The Year 2017

Retrogaming Review of The Year 2017

The most monumental event of the year in terms of retrogaming was getting a scandoubler so I could play my Amiga through a VGA connection, and what a relief it was to be able to go back to the old computer. The item itself wasn't too expensive, about £60 with postage, and it worked very well. There was a minor setback only a couple of months into its use when the cheap power adapter failed, the ebay seller I bought it from very unhelpful, offering to sell me a new one instead of replacing it, despite it lasting such a short time. But once I managed to find a suitable replacement elsewhere and got up and running again, it was freedom to once again be able to continue my decades long game of 'UFO,' and complete another game from the nineties I'd got stuck on back then, to add to my tally of recent years (such as 'Alien Breed II' and 'Elf' actually on the Amiga, or 'Curse of Enchantia' and 'Future Wars' via DOSBox). I'd award the scandoubler ****, because it does give excellent picture and sound, but my experience with the seller wasn't the best (I should have asked about a warranty before buying - instead I asked after I'd paid the money and had no response at all!). That was the highlight in a year of generally underwhelming gaming time spent on too many average games, proving yet again how important it is to commit to the best games and avoid the others if possible.

[Ratings reflect total, historical experience, not just the enjoyment level I got out of them this time.]


January: Starfox Adventures (2002, GameCube) - The first month of the year is traditionally finishing off time for whatever game I played over Christmas. As I said in my review, it was a nice-looking game, but not very deep, yet had enough of the 'Zelda' clone about it that it was reasonably involving, and as Rare's final game for a Nintendo home console, held a special place of nostalgia, though that was thanks to the legacy of games before it more than its own merits. Added interest came from its original development being on the N64, so it had some heritage, it's just a shame that it shows the falling from grace Rare went through, and as far as I know, have never fully recovered from, creatively. ***

January - March: Armorines: Project SWARM (1999, N64) - My first game proper of the year, and I chose to go back to the N64 era for this FPS which I'd never played, but had a long association with, thanks to the closest N64 Magazine to when I got my console featuring it, staying in mind as something worth exploring in future. It only took eighteen years to get there, but it was another reasonably enjoyable game in the same genre as 'Turok,' for which I have fond memories. It was also brilliant to find its resolution was high enough that I could plug the N64 directly into my LCD monitor (the Dell FP2007), instead of having to make do with a convertor as most N64 games require with the screen, which must be played through a VGA connection, upsetting the contrast and making the visuals inferior and the setup process more fiddly. That accessibility helped endear the experience to me, and creeping around in dark tunnels was ideal in the waning winter months. ***

March - December: UFO: Enemy Unknown (1993, Amiga 1200) - I finally got around to continuing my longest single gaming experience, almost a year after it had been curtailed thanks to the loss of my trusty old Amiga monitor! And it was a joy to return to the familiar disk-swapping, precise pixel graphics, and slow, but reassuring gameplay I've stuck with for so long. In July I passed the milestone of my 1700th UFO and I have no intention of slowing down or of finishing the game naturally by taking the trip to Cydonia, as long as the scandoubler holds out. *****

March - April: Dune (1992, DOSBox) - A game I never played on the Amiga, but knew of, this precursor to the superior 'Dune II' was hard to get into, but once I had its measure became fairly enjoyable and challenging, and most importantly encouraged me to play the sequel not long after. It's really the Grandfather of RTS games, though rather basic and fiddly, with the sequel better known as the true originator of the genre for the more recognisable setup and improvements, but it wouldn't have existed except for this. Games history, for sure. ***

April: Watchtower (1995, Amiga) - Never a keen shoot-'em-up-er I got this out of the loft when I was going through a box of games and fancied trying some mindless blasting. It's pretty basic, a step back for the A1200, something the original A500 could have coped easily enough with, but that's what was happening towards the end of the Amiga's life: small companies releasing the dregs of gaming, only better than nothing to a starved and dying platform. This wasn't too bad, except for being rock hard - no saves or passwords, complete all levels in one sitting! Those were the days, the bad old days - I never appreciated that kind of gaming much, not being great at it, but was determined to complete at least the first level, and on the standard difficulty of double trouble, not wimping out on the easier option. Controls weren't bad with the CD32 pad I used, much better than many of the joysticks of that time, but it still made hands ache after a while - ergonomics hadn't been invented then, maybe! Two hits and you're dead, unless you can find a medi-pack to boost you up after one hit, and there was strategy to it, but mostly being careful. It's not ugly, but the kind of thing you'd see in mobile gaming now, and a hundred older shoot-'em-ups from the 80s and early 90s. Never tried the two-player, and if it had been password save for each level I'd have persevered, but I never liked those games which had to be finished in one sitting and through a process of trial and error, slowly pushing further each time. Too much of a chore. **

April - May: Dyna Blaster (1991-1992, DOSBox) - The fun little origin of 'Bomberman.' I played 'Bomberman 64' on N64, and it was a moderately enjoyable, if basic platform adventure, but it was the multiplayer that really made it worth playing, and that classic gameplay is what this original is all about, blowing up the opposition while avoiding the same fate yourself. At the opposite end of the spectrum to 'Watchtower,' this was extremely forgiving, allowing you infinite continues via a password system. You lose the power-ups you've collected, but otherwise it's a free ride. It says something that I wanted to get to the end, because it didn't have that much challenge, but was satisfying, especially stringing bombs together. The real test would be to complete the game in one sitting without using more than the two continues before you have to resort to passwords, but I wouldn't have the patience for that. It was a nice little thing, looked pretty, cutesy graphics and basic, jaunty tune, not to mention job satisfaction, but nothing more. **

June: Dune II: The Battle For Arrakis (1992, DOSBox) - The only question with this game was whether to play it on my newly restored Amiga or go for the more accessible, but less nostalgically appealing version via DOSBox. Still early in my use of the scandoubler, and concerned about how long the power adaptor would last, I decided to keep the Amiga mainly for 'UFO,' so although this wasn't strictly the version I played years ago, it was less hassle and practically identical (with the enhancement of actual speech in the cutscenes). The retrogaming purist in me baulks, but it was still a top game, even in this version, and remains one of my all-time favourites for the revelatory gameplay and sense of involvement. Many things would improve about the genre, you're constantly in a state of repairing individual buildings one at a time, or moving one unit here, and one there, so it's not an easy game on the mouse or the wrist holding it, but it was the first of its kind, building so much on the first game, stripping away the entirety of the RPG elements to concentrate on the action and satisfaction of building bases, massing an army and taking out the forces of the opposition. Along with 'Settlers' and 'UFO' it was one of the big three strategy games I played on the Amiga, and while always in mind as something to go back to (I'd already won the game with all three Houses, so this time I returned to Ordos, the House I began with when playing originally), it was only a question of when, not if I'd get to this. *****

June - July: Pac-Man World 2 (2002, GameCube) - The best thing about this game was selling it for more than I paid! Sure, it looked pretty good after the basic graphics of N64 and DOSBox that had dominated the year's play, and any chance to find another good 3D platform world was one to be seized, but sadly, as with most of the genre on the 'Cube, it didn't impress, failing in the control department, and being largely linear. It also lessened its appeal with an insistence on precise jumping. There was little to no joy of exploration, or freedom to express yourself through the character, and while there were collectables, they paled in comparison to the N64 greats from Nintendo and Rare. It seems you just can't beat 'Banjo-Kazooie,' 'Super Mario 64,' and 'Donkey Kong,' and having any expectations even close to those makes for an instant fail. Hence why I sold it: I knew I wasn't going to spend any more time on it once it was beaten, and not even the prospect of unlocking more classic 'Pac-Man' games could persuade me. Ultimately it was another example of being too much of a chore and not enough freedom to explore. **

July - August: Jurassic Park (1993, Amiga) - While I was saving the Amiga for the ongoing 'UFO,' I did manage to complete this game which had remained in limbo ever since the late-nineties (I got stuck on the Stegosaurus paddock), providing some satisfaction by its defeat, though as a game it was another to stick on the homework list rather than fun time. It wasn't easy, but an adult brain proved more able to cope with the puzzles, and endurance to see it through, and again, the graphical beauty was the main draw, just a shame I didn't get to play more games this year I fully enjoyed. That's the trouble with my system: I mostly play just one game at a time, so if it's not much good, then it's hard to remain motivated, drawing out the experience before I can start a new, and hopefully better game. I'm not above abandoning a game, as happened with 'Watchtower,' but when you can save or use passwords there's not really an excuse for it, and this year I made too many poor choices, miring myself in average software and losing the will for it all. At least this one was a challenge I could overcome, and was pleasing to finish and see the end at long last after about twenty years! **

August - October: Age of Empires II: The Conquerors campaigns (2001, MacBook Pro) - My quest to play through all the 'Age of Empires II' campaigns on the hardest difficulty continued this year with two more ticked off the list (Attila The Hun and El Cid). The good thing about this game is that I know I'll enjoy it, it has a definite challenge, and is as involving and engrossing as they come, so I knew I wouldn't be disappointed. It still took me a while, so I was happy to leave the final two campaigns for 2018, eking out the pleasure into another year because it's one of those rare games I don't want to finish too soon because I want to look forward to it, and playing it in summer seemed to be a good fit. *****

October - December: Starshot: Space Circus Fever (1998, N64) - The low point of the retrogaming year, because even the attractive graphics of other games weren't in evidence as solace from the poor gameplay and control. The music wasn't too bad, and that's about the most positive I can be about the game. Yes, it's from the early N64 era, but it came out the same year as 'Banjo-Kazooie' and couldn't be more different. In one way I was annoyed that I didn't get to play one of the levels, because I visited Earth as soon as I could, not knowing I couldn't go back to the other planets once I'd gone there, but on the other hand it did mercifully shorten the experience. A struggle to get through, not so much because of the difficulty (although it did have its share of challenges to surpass, just mainly in the irritant category - I was stuck on the outside of the ship in the final level for far too long!), but the annoyance of bad controls and cluttered visuals, not helped by the necessity of playing through a VGA convertor. It was certainly the worst experience in a year where too many games were merely average, and didn't cap it well: its score may reflect the cumulative effect of so much mediocrity across the months, so I was only too pleased to get it done and sell it to some poor customer whom I hope gets more out of it than I did! *

December: Beyond Good & Evil (2004, GameCube) - This should probably belong in the honourable mentions section as I only played a few hours around Christmas so it remains too early to judge (though at time of writing in January 2018 I'm just starting to get into it). It was supposed to be my big Christmas game this year, but I didn't have the focus to be able to concentrate on gaming this Christmas, so it suffered. I also found it too full of stuff, places to go, people to see and not enough focus, so it was hard to get motivated. Ironically, it's been one of the top three games I've been after on ebay for a few years (along with 'Animal Crossing' and 'Starfox Adventures,' the former of which I have yet to win), one that looked like it could be my cup of tea, and I finally won it at auction in May. Perhaps it's the gloomy graphics that didn't warm me to it, as well as the multiple, but samey items and story to keep track of, but despite any reservations, and that it hasn't grabbed me from the start, being a little too simplistic in terms of overly context-sensitive controls, it was always going to be a big improvement on the previous game, 'Starshot,' it just remains to be seen whether it can reach the heady heights of above average! Provisionally I'd give it **, but it's fairly engaging so I could see it go to ***.

Honourable mentions go to 'Colonisation' on the Amiga, one of the games I tried out in my joy at having the machine back to life again, but found it ultra-heavy on the disk-swappage, not to mention one of the disks immediately developed a problem, and while I'm sure we've got another copy somewhere, I didn't have the inclination to track it down - nice music, though! '1080º Snowboarding' and 'Snowboard Kids' both had some play when I celebrated my N64's 18th 'birthday' (when I first got it on the 12th October 1999), snowy games seeming the obvious choice for winter. And 'Mario Kart: Double Dash' had its moment at Christmas in honour of past Christmases when it used to be a highlight of the family season.


Next Year - I kept up the tradition for playing games from as many of my various machines as I could, NGC Magazine continuing to be a source of potential new gaming suggestions, and I came close to buying either a Nintendo Switch or a Wii, but in the end couldn't justify either, really, since I have so many games still to play. At least I was successful in completing several of the tasks I set the previous year, with 'Age of Empires,' 'Dune' and the Amiga all figuring strongly, but too often I was let down, so in 2018 I need to:

- Make better choices on the games I play!

- Get back to some Game Boy games, whether that's 'Advance Wars' or 'Return of The Jedi,' I still feel drawn to the old machine, the first I owned.

- Play more DOSBox, though I don't know specifically what out of the large selection - again, careful choice is required!

- I will certainly finish the last of the 'Age of Empires II' campaigns from 'The Conquerors Expansion.'

- Other than that, it's GameCube all the way, as I have a number of games I've never played, most of which I'm sure I'll enjoy, with the next 'Need For Speed' at the top of my list after 'Beyond Good & Evil' is conquered.

- I really don't know if I'll buy a new console, the price of the Switch would need to drop to make it justifiable, and I'd only get a Wii if I could get one that plays 'Cube games, and came bundled with some of the top titles on that system.

Happy New Year!

Image In The Sand

DVD, DS9 S7 (Image In The Sand) (2)

I felt like I had arrived at the station and was a fly on the wall to all the things happening, and it was a very interesting time to visit. The reality is that I've been to this time period many times before, but it genuinely gave me the impression of stumbling into a bustling world full of fascinating developments for the ears of the weary traveller. So much is going on, it is as the series would become for its final ten episodes, a fully-woven tapestry where the threads are indistinguishable from the whole fabric and the plots and arcs mingle organically from scene to scene, a far cry from the staid, but somehow reassuring style of the early seasons and their generally standalone style of storytelling, the traditional Trek method that has stood the test of time. Here, we're right into what is now contemporary TV series' as we know them, to an audience expecting development as its own source of interest rather than the satisfaction of a complete beginning, middle and end. Season openers have always been this way, however, especially on 'DS9' because the previous season always ends with some kind of cliffhanger, be they low-key (Odo ominously realising that Gowron is a Changeling at the end of Season 4), or fraught and exciting (the station relinquished to the combined might of Dominion and Cardassian forces as our heroes flee for their lives at the end of Season 5), so it's no strange thing to see Season 7 begin with what could have been a continuous story all the way to the end, but is in fact just the familiarity of a two-parter to bring us back into the beloved world of DS9, Bajor and the Dominion War.

One reason to feel like a fly on the wall observing all the fascinating plots is thanks to some strong visual direction from Les Landau, not a name I usually pick out for praise such as an Alan Kroeker or a David Livingston, but right from that shot moving up from the ground level of the Promenade (many years before drone filming made laborious and restricted crane shots unnecessary), across and up to Odo and Kira talking above, following them as they walk and talk, the story is told functionally, but also with a zest for creation, whether that be the sight of Kira looking small as she sits at Sisko's desk having just taken on his mantle against an Admiral Ross bringing bad news, or the great Captain himself, playing piano all day at his Father's full restaurant, and going from wide and busy times at the station, both inside and out (such as the beautiful view of Federation, Romulan and Klingon ships orbiting or docked), to the utmost intimate of a back alley where Sisko is violently, and shockingly, stabbed. The focus is both large and small, taking in a huge picture or giving us small and personal moments, and handling the many plot points they needed to hit, with aplomb. It's good to be back here once again, as Sisko would agree at the end of part two.

Before all this could happen there had to be a reminder of the dark times that had driven things to the point where they are and we see the traditional pre-teaser recap with Majel Barrett's computer voice inviting us back to the party. We see again the tragic, senseless death of Jadzia Dax, the monstrous Dukat and his embracing of evil, with the aftermath cold and sorrowful, especially for Worf in an anguish of rage, and for Sisko, feeling a failure as the Wormhole has collapsed, cutting him off from The Prophets, and Dax' death cutting him off from the wise advice of the 'old man,' his dearest and oldest friend, driving him to seek a stunned solace in the comforting familiarity of home on Earth. And that's where he's remained, nothing resolved, a period of healing, but one that hasn't progressed anywhere, he's waiting, but for what he doesn't know, listless, but pensive until the penny drops, or at least the baseball, and a vision brings mystery into his safe, routine life, far from the Starfleet one which he'd retreated from. I appreciate the quality of the writing, the way important happenings are arrived at in small, organic ways, a story woven gracefully despite its many pieces, avoiding big battles and adventures to allow time for introspection and the arrival at decisions and choices ('life is full of choices,' states Joseph, you make them and hope for the best'), much of the story setting up the journey many of the characters will take in part two.

If this series were 'Smallville,' the pendant featuring Ancient Bajoran writing on the back (belonging to Sarah, a new character whom we learn very quickly was a terribly important person in Sisko's life), would have dropped out of some portal in the heavens, a fight to possess it would have ensued, and the quest it presented would have been over and done by the end of the episode (or alternately the narrative would have been dragged, dying or half-dead, across a third of a season!), Sisko having been commanded to go to Tyree in the vision rather than the revelations allowed to bubble up gently in the realistic, yet mythic manner they crafted here. That story would have been all about bashing a villain, or someone being in jeopardy for a few minutes, but here we see mature storytelling where people's life experiences and feelings are brought into focus, making this mystical path to action believable and complementing the characters rather than forcing them into a course they wouldn't naturally go. I'd say the episode is an object lesson in juggling the needs of drama, the requirements of the unresolved Season 6 plots, and a new dawn for the characters, and while it may not be one of the greatest episodes of the entire series, it is certainly one of the better entries, and that without the need for explosions, shouting and running, all devices to disguise a lack of direction in poorer genre examples. The closest we come to action is in the culmination of Kira's encounters with new Romulan character, Senator Cretak.

Cretak is quite different from the usual stereotypes of her race: amenable instead of arrogant, accommodating instead of vicious, civil and open to new things rather than rabidly xenophobic, and she immediately puts herself, if not in Kira's good books, then certainly off the books, a big question mark hanging over her. Knowing Romulan character so well I suspect she was chosen for this mission for the very reasons laid out above. If there were any way to establish a dug-in presence for the Star Empire in Bajoran space then it would be to put its highest ranking official off-balance. Cretak isn't openly devious, but what could be more deceiving than a Romulan that seems open? It's an excellent guise and if it weren't for those pesky torpedoes she would'a gotten away with it, too! Despite the promotion Kira hasn't lost her vim and vigour, something of her old volatile self blasting into a meeting between Ross and the Senator, neither of which is particularly happy to be disturbed, especially when allegations of illegal weapons are fired liked missiles into the middle of a cosy talk. Kira has more than one run-in with the good Admiral, and you almost feel sorry for him ('Have you ever worked with Bajoran women before, Sir?' as a Chief once said, back on the Enterprise-D), but in her new position as Colonel (complete with more constructed hair, fancy braids here and there), she has to swallow her distaste because the decision to allow Cretak and some of her soldiers to station a permanent garrison on DS9 had already been made. Cretak sees to it that any objections are smoothed over and seems reasonable… for a Romulan, going as far as Kira wanting to help by endorsing the request for a hospital facility on an uninhabited Bajoran moon, before the real issue rears its head, the final confrontation leaving no one in doubt Kira will remove the weapons herself if no action is taken.

As far as action that's about it, unless you count Worf mashing his fists into poor Vic Fontaine's Holosuite bar and lounge set, although if the burly Klingon needed something to smash (Worf Smash!), he could have chosen worse than a holographic simulation, though his choice might have been better spent on replicating the skull-faced alien and the safeties off for some warrior training rather than taking it out on a sentient holo-character's business who's only trying to help. Sure pally, he knows the whole shebang can be put right with a simple command, but it don't do a guy any good seeing the place he's worked so hard at get wasted, you know? The thought struck me on seeing the post-Worf devastation (sadly we don't get to see much of the rage mode in action), about whether those smashed bottles had contained actual, replicated drinks, or were just for show, because it's got to come out of somebody's bar bill, surely? Oh yeah, I forget they don't do money, except for Quark and he's just concerned that Worf will tire of holo-violence and come and pull the real bar apart. The trouble with Worf is he's trapped in frustration, an example of a time when Starfleet can't indulge his Klingon side leaving him incomplete, distraught as he feels his wife, Jadzia, won't make it to Sto-vo-kor (Klingon Heaven), because she didn't die in battle. His friends, Bashir, O'Brien and, yes, even Quark, learn all this thanks to the Chief's brave night of drinking with his old Enterprise crewmate, kicking back and talking about the good old days in the hope that Worf will loosen his tongue. He does, but not until O'Brien's tongue is feeling hot and heavy for trying to match the Klingon nervous system drink for drink.

It's another scene we're not privy to, left out in the corridor when O'Brien tries to inveigle his way into his old friend's quarters, and though we get a nice little starter with Barclay, Geordi and their Holodeck adventures recounted (so weird to think Barclay was in a Trek series later than either of these characters talking about him!), you have to cut something from such a packed episode when you only have forty-five minutes to tell it, and this way at least it leaves it up to the imagination as to what the whole fascinating conversation must have been like. We learn that Klingons usually have shorter mourning periods than humans because they don't value the body left behind, and it is thanks to Bashir and O'Brien that someone who does understand and can help, is called in, providing a little combat for Worf (we'd previously seen him fight Martok back in Season 5's 'Soldiers of The Empire'), though the younger, driven Klingon, well rested from too much uneventful convoy duty and itching for some outlet, doesn't take long to deck the worn, older warrior, but it's Martok's way of offering a solution to Worf's needs as a Klingon rather than the human way of simply talking to him (why miss out on the opportunity of a duel if you can have one). It's in moments like these that you see what great value having a recurring Klingon character brings to a series, complementing the regular in a way that couldn't have been achieved so naturally had he not had two years in which to build a friendship - as important as Starfleet and his humanity are to Worf (one of the things he and O'Brien talked of was growing up in Russia), he's remains Klingon at heart, with all the specific needs of that race which cannot be fully understood by outsiders.

Angry Kira and Angry Worf initiate the injection of heat into a calm episode, but the most dramatic and disturbing moment is awarded to Sisko, whom I'm sure would rather have declined such an honour, since it comes with a knife to the gut from a crazy Pah-Wraith cult worshipper who's tracked The Emissary to his Earthly hideaway where the sudden and surprising attack is all the more horrifying for taking place in the heart of his security, as far from war, enemies and malice as can be, aside perhaps some Vulcan monastery somewhere, as I can't imagine them allowing a psycho to get so close to such an important figure. Jake's quick thinking saves his Father (those sacks of clams came in handy after all - I wonder what happened to the attacker, was he marched off to gaol by Starfleet Security?), but if the Pah-Wraith's are so opposed to Sisko finding the Orb of The Emissary then that's a good enough reason for getting up and getting on, leaving the clam-scrubbing behind for actions more appropriate to an inquisitive and bold Starfleet Captain. The fact that his aged Father decides to go, as well as his son, makes it a Sisko Adventure through and through (though you want to watch that Joseph, I wouldn't bet against him smuggling some sacks of clams up to the Runabout to give young Jake something to do with his time!). It would have been exclusive to the family Sisko had not one late arrival appeared at the door of the restaurant asking for Benjamin: a petite little lady calling herself Dax…

The episode doesn't have a typical cliffhanger, a moment where the characters are trapped or in fatal jeopardy, we're merely left to wonder how Sisko will react to this young pretender to the Dax throne. But it was like his Faerie Prophet-Mother had answered his wish that if he could only have Dax here to help him: and lo! she did appear. I still remember the wonder at how the series would be with a new character added so late in its run (the first main cast change since Worf joined at the start of Season 4, and we saw how incredibly well that worked out), and it's a very small cameo for her first appearance, but still so exciting to speculate on what this new person will be like, continuing the lineage Jadzia was a part of - how she'll react to each of the characters we know so well, and how they in turn will react to her. But that's all for next time, and a very effective way to close out the episode it is, in typical serialised style leaving you eager for the next part to devour, though there's much to be said in the waiting of a week so that the nutrients of this episode have time to filter down into the mind and the anticipation is built up instead of being instantly satisfied, because a lot can be forgotten or overwritten by jumping straight into another instalment when each one is as rich as this series was.

The hardest thing to accept about 'DS9' coming back was the loss of Dax, so it made sense to introduce a new character that had some connection with her rather than forget, or ignore, the impact she'd made over the course of six years, often the soul of fun and joy in a series that was visually and tonally grey, with lots of characters that were slanted towards keeping their distance and dealing with serious things of great gravity. I'm glad they didn't make the next host a male, not just because Kira would have been the only female main cast member, and the series would have looked unbalanced, but because having another female Trill is like having a piece of Jadzia with us, not too far removed from the way things were, though as we'd soon find out, she was quite different to the confident, assured, playful Dax we knew. One way the season could have improved was if they'd had Terry Farrell back in some recurring capacity - I know Jadzia was dead, but there could easily have been times her memory spoke to Worf in dreams or in visions. Ezri Dax could have seen her past hosts portrayed as characters for her to interact with (a little like the zhian'tara ceremony from 'Facets' where each of her friends took on the memories of the hosts for a short time), perhaps even The Prophets communicating with Sisko through her image. All we actually got was occasional sight of a wedding photograph on Worf's bedside table as we did here, but at least her memory wasn't forgotten since much of the preoccupation of Worf and the others, especially Sisko, was her loss.

Worf's dilemma, squashed by his Starfleet duty, but needing and wanting a way to prove his loyalty to her and win her a place in Sto-Vo-Kor, was as much for our benefit as his, a route to move on from such an integral character as Jadzia. It was handled well and used the Bashir/O'Brien friendship to excellent effect, where humour was allowed even though it had been such a devastating loss, and their escapades continued. I can't remember if the rest of the O'Brien clan had returned to the (relative, as we'd find out later in the season), safety of Earth, because it certainly seemed as if the Chief had the freedom to spend his time with his best mate, and Keiko, Molly and Kirayoshi would remain almost entirely unseen this season, sadly, since I always loved the little domestic scenes that spiced up the series and added a dose of reality. Reality is important to the series, because if it had degenerated into fantasy (as Trek can sometimes do, such as Voyager and its future armour in 'Endgame'), it can begin to unravel - one reason I think a new series still hasn't explored post-'Voyager,' the general impression being that technology would be too advanced to be taken seriously and would lose the grounded nature of Trek science and lore. What works well here is we're still in the middle of great events, larger in scope than we'd ever seen before, yet with daily life and the minutiae of continuing to live even in wartime an important component of the drama - everything seems comparatively settled in appearance, with the battles and their victories and losses happening far away, offscreen. DS9 appears to be something of a haven thanks to the combined forces surrounding it, so the danger comes internally, whether that be from Kira letting her guard down when presented with a seemingly reasonable Romulan, or Worf, almost unable to keep his frustrations bottled up. Just below the surface things are fraught and uncertain for everyone.

The perspective of the opposition is granted little screen time, but what we do see plants the seeds for the future, with Damar comfortable in his role as head of Cardassia, though Weyoun is disapproving of him and his penchant for drinking. We also see him as more thoughtful than he's seemed before, speculating on the celestial battle that must be raging inside the Wormhole (a bit like the Q civil war in the Continuum, as seen in 'The Q and The Grey'), this thoughtfulness and the drinking two characteristics that would become key to his development through the season and the man he became before it ended. It's always the little details that show how well these writers knew their stuff, whether that be the ongoing continuity or the references to the past, from stembolts and Jumja sticks, to talk of the Enterprise and Worf's growing up in Russia. But hang on, I thought he grew up on the farming world of Gault? Well, details and chronology are a bit sparse, though according to the 'Star Trek Encyclopedia' he did grow up on Gault, and then Earth, so it's not a mistake for him to speak of Russia (I'm surprised he doesn't claim everything Klingon was originally Russian-invented, or vice-versa: you've never read Dostoyevsky unless you've read him in the original Klingon, and you've never read Kahless unless you've read him in the original Russian!). One piece of apparent continuity is actually nothing of the sort: I was sure Tyree, the planet Sisko's drawn to, was named for Kirk's friend from 'A Private Little War,' but according to Ira Steven Behr in the immortal 'DS9 Companion' it was named for a character in the film 'Major Dundee'! Perhaps 'TOS' got the character name from that 1965 film?

If Worf's history isn't a nitpick, I can spot a few that are. One is subjective, with Quark claiming Jadzia always was squeamish when it's said she never ate the heart of an enemy, but I would have thought of her as anything but squeamish, always ready to try new things, such as her baffling enjoyment of Ferengi culture, at least in terms of the food and Tongo! I also found it strange when Kira and Odo are discussing the Pah-Wraith cult and how numbers are up, inferring that those chanting in the doorway to the apparently packed Temple on the Promenade are members, but why would the monks allow a cult to take over a Temple to their Prophets? That didn't make sense and we could do with a lot more than throwaway lines to explain the Bajoran religion is in chaos because of the Wormhole's collapse. We need to see Kai Winn and find out what's going on, though unfortunately that side of the series got less and less shrift after the first couple of seasons, except for its part in the mythos and the Emissary's journey. The Emissary himself must have great powers of vision because somehow he's able to create the full head of the woman he saw, when, as far as we could see, only her face was visible to him. Unless he had more than one vision, or was extrapolating from instinct, maybe a buried memory, since she turns out to have been his Mother, and in his life for a full year. The fast-paced, instant adjustment of his digital photo-fit on a padd was some cool tech! Lastly, a minor continuity glitch I noticed was the shoulder strap of Joseph's bag flipping from flat on his shoulder, to tangled, and back again as they stand ready to leave for the mission at the end. Unimportant, but it stuck in my mind.

A lot has happened in the Trek world since I last saw this season almost nine years ago, both big and small, films (and maybe even film series'?), have come and gone, Trek has returned to the small screen, in a manner of speaking, with 'Discovery' debuting mere months ago, and we've lost many more of the actors and creators behind the greatest sci-fi saga ever made, but when watching this particular episode it was a reminder that this is the first time I've seen an episode of the series with Barry Jenner dead, the great Admiral Ross himself. His Admiral was probably the most well-adjusted, believable authority figure in Trekdom, able to be both friend to his subordinates, especially Sisko, and the stern giver of orders when he needed to be, Jenner's portrayal a great asset to what could have been an unsympathetic role as almost all other Admirals were. It's come to something when people start dying off from the TV shows you watched on their original transmission, a reminder of mortality and the ever-increasing speed of life. But it's watching 'DS9' and other greats that helps in that place of struggle with life and death, and even though so much time has passed since I last watched the series I can't help but feel a warm glow of comfort and happiness when surrounded by these characters I have so much affection for. Though Season 7 is far from the days of the series when so much was left to discover, when a simple visit from an alien was enough to satisfy the demands of the running time, it mirrors the uncertain times we live in, while providing solace, just like Sisko craved, sitting engrossed at the piano in the middle of his Father's busy restaurant.

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