DS9 S01E01

In this installment:
(viewed Wednesday, May 28th)

Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S01E01 - "Emissary"  (Parts 1 & 2)

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"Emissary" (Parts 1 & 2) 

• At last we come to it, the premiere episode of my personal favorite Star Trek series.  No, it's not perfect.  Yes, it has rough spots (especially in the early seasons).  Yes, Avery Brooks is bat-crap insane and a scenery-chewer extraordinaire.  I don't care, I love it.
• Fun fact that I just learned when visiting his IMDb page to link it in the comment above:  Avery Brooks is from Evansville, Indiana.  I guess we just breed crazy in this state (see also: Michael Jackson, Axl Rose).
• The series opens on a cool flashback to the year 2366.  At the Battle of Wolf 359, Picard-as-Locutus leads a Borg attack against the Federation and is resisted by a hopelessly-outmatched and hastily-assembled Starfleet task force. 
  
  Benjamin Sisko, then a lieutenant commander and first officer of the Miranda-class USS Saratoga (NCC-31991), loses his wife and shortly thereafter he and his son Jake are forced to abandon the Saratoga on board one of its weirdly-roomy escape pods.
  
  So if you want to know why he's so cranky all the time, that's why :P
• USS Saratoga shares its name with another, much older Miranda-class starship.  NCC-1887 was one of the ships impacted by the alien probe in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
  
  It's also the Saratoga that I have sitting on top of the pile of hard drives that sits on top of my computer :)
  
  
  
  (I just wish I could Photoshop out the dust back there.
  And yeah, I realize the registry is wrong; blame Hot Wheels.)
  
  Sisko's Saratoga is obviously a newer uprate to the design, and it lacks the class' signature "rollbar".
• Three years later, Sisko (now promoted to full commander) reluctantly takes an assignment as the Federation commander of the joint Federation-Bajoran space station Deep Space 9 (formerly the Cardassian station Terok Nor).
  
  
  
  
  
  Originally built by the Cardassian military (using Bajoran slave labor) as an ore-processing facility during its brutal occupation of Bajor, it was handed over to the Bajoran Provisional Government when the Cardassian Union withdrew its forces from Bajor.
• In an appropriate hand-off from one series to the next, the USS Enterprise-D delivers the first contingent of Starfleet officers to Deep Space 9.  Among them is Chief O'Brien, who will serve as the station's Chief of Operations for the duration of the series.  They later poach Lt. Cmdr. Worf as well, but we have to get by without him for a few seasons.
• Although I've already seen them in my re-watch of the TNG films (in Generations), this premiere was technically the first time we saw the re-designed Starfleet uniforms.  These intermediate uniforms (in between the late-TNG tunics and the First Contact and later grey jumpsuits) feature a black jumpsuit with the officer's department colors across the shoulder and chest, with a grey turtleneck underneath. 
  
  
  
  
  
  Although it's never explicitly stated, the usage of the new uniform toward the beginning of DS9's run indicates that it's issued to space station personnel, and that starship personnel continue to wear the standard late-TNG tunics.
  
  
  That all changes, of course, when we see them used on board a starship in Generations and then later see them as the standard-issue uniform on VOY.
  
  A relatively short-lived design, these uniforms will be used for the first couple (three?) seasons of DS9, will be mixed in with the standard TNG uniforms for Generations and will appear for the entirety of VOY's run. 
  
  Note that at the time of the DS9 premiere, the new commbadge (using the updated Starfleet insignia for the 2370s) has not yet appeared (because it's not yet the 2370s, of course).
• Nobody else likes emergency rations as much as you do, O'Brien.
• "Sir, have you ever served with any Bajoran women."
  
  "No.  Why?"
  
  "I was just wondering, sir."
• Major Kira Nerys:  Former resistance fighter (or terrorist, depending upon your perspective), and one of my favorite Trek characters.
• For Constable Odo's first act, he'll start by letting alien nunchuks pass through his head, then he'll ask the new Starfleet commander of the station "Who the hell are you?"
  
  
  
• Oh, and he doesn't like phasers.
• And Sisko's first move is to bribe Quark to stay on the station by agreeing to let Nog go.  These are not your typical Star Trek characters.
• Captain Picard is clearly taken aback when Commander Sisko mentions Wolf 359.  And yet, being the consummate professional officer, he has no problem issuing orders to Sisko over his objections.
• "I have a son that I'm raising alone.  This isn't an ideal environment."
  
  "Unfortunately, as Starfleet officers, we don't always have the luxury of serving in an ideal environment."
• "We need a community leader...and it's going to be you, Quark!"
  
  
  
• Kai Opaka:  Space Pope!
• I never cared for the Bajoran religion and all of its accoutrements, which is kind of odd given how central a theme they were and how much I otherwise love the series. 
  
  Call me crazy; I just prefer the geopolitical and military drama that's also heavy in the show over the spiritual mumbo-jumbo of the silly Bajorans and their Pah and orbs and Emissaries.
  
  Of course, at least their gods turn out to be real (just aliens).
• I don't know if they were looking for an actress to play Jennifer that could match Avery Brooks for awkward delivery, but if that was their goal they definitely succeeded with Felicia Bell.  I've never seen her in anything else, so for all I know she's awesome and it's just this performance.  But somehow I doubt it.
• I would totally party at Quark's.  One of my great regrets in life is never having made it to the version of Quark's at the Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton before it was shut down.
• "Never trust ale from a god-fearing people...or a Starfleet commander who has one of your relatives in jail."
• Overly-eager and boyish Dr. Bashir is pretty annoying at first.  He becomes much more tolerable as the series progresses and he gets some seasoning.  I guess war knocks the boyish charm out of a guy :P
• I remember being fairly intrigued by the Dax character when the show premiered, and not just because Terry Farrell is pretty.  The Trill were first introduced in the TNG episode "The Host", but never mentioned again.  A symbiotic species (where both components are sentient) was a pretty novel idea, even for Star Trek.
• "Major, I had my choice of any job in the fleet."
  
  "Did you?"
  
  "I didn't want some cushy job or a research grant.  I wanted this!  The farthest reaches of the galaxy--one of the most remote outposts available.  This is where the adventure is.  This is where heroes are made.  Right here, in the wilderness."
  
  "This wilderness is my home."
  
  "Oh, well, I, uh..."
  
  "The Cardassians left behind a lot of injured people, Doctor.  You make make yourself useful by bringing your Federation medicine to the natives.  Oh, you'll find them a friendly, simple folk."
  
  See, dude?  This is why no one likes you for like three seasons.
• One does wonder how the Trill symbiosis developed before modern surgical techniques were available to transfer the symbiont from one host to the next.
• Chief O'Brien's wistful goodbye to the Enterprise-D is a nice touch :)
• Cardassian Galor-class warship shows up in your back yard without an invitation?  That's not going to be good news.
• Hey kids, it's Gul Dukat!
  
  No joking, he's probably my second-favorite Trek villain (after the original Khan and just above General Chang).
• "Your Cardassian neighbors will be quick to respond to any problems you might have."
  
  "We'll try to keep the dog off your lawn."
• I don't think it's ever established exactly how far from Bajor the Denorios Belt is located, although it's definitely within the Bajoran System (and close enough to Bajor that Deep Space 9 can maneuver to the location of the soon-to-be-discovered wormhole in a reasonable amount of time using some combination of slower-than-light propulsion).
• And for my next trick, I will be a duffel bag!
• This is the second appearance of the Danube-class runabout, which was first seen in the TNG episode "Timescape" but will be the way that our crew on DS9 get "out and about" for adventures away from the station (until they get something with more...teeth).
  
  
  
  (image courtesy of Ex Astris Scientia)
  
  In this case, it's the Rio Grande.  All Danube-class runabouts are named for rivers on Earth.
• O'Brien Engineering:  Kick it 'til it works.
• OH HAI WORMHOLE.
  
  
  
• So we establish (more or less) the location of both ends of the soon-to-be-famous Bajoran Wormhole:  One end is in the Alpha Quadrant lies in the Donorias Belt within the Bajoran System.  Its other end is in the Gamma Quadrant, but not within a star system (but a "little under five light years") from the Idran System.
  
  It covers a distance between those two points (well, "covers" is the wrong word...but you get what I mean) that would take a conventional starship traveling at high warp speeds something like 60-70 years to traverse.
• Some part of Starfleet training must include a course in "Screw it, I'm going out there!"  Consistently, our adventurous Starfleet crews beam down to dangerous planets, exit their shuttlecraft on an unknown world, etc.  This episode does not disappoint, as Cmdr. Sisko and Lt. Dax exit the Rio Grande onto an inexplicable patch of earth with a breathable atmosphere that miraculously appears within the wormhole.
• "We're seeing different planets?  That's probably fine.  No need to be concerned."
• Yes, I understand that the Prophets and their relationship with Sisko is one of the core themes of the series.  Yes, I understand that this is my favorite show and I shouldn't hate it so much.
  
  But every single sequence on DS9 wherein Sisko interacts with the Prophets makes me positively somnolent.
• The concept of beings that exist without corporeal form and outside of linear time is a little far-fetched (even for Star Trek), given that anything that exists within our universe must adhere to the properties of time and space that exist within our universe.
  
  That being said, I'm ultimately un-bothered and even a little intrigued at this one aspect of the Prophets (if not their tedious lectures), for two reasons:
  
  
  1. Who's to say that they exist primarily within our universe?  It's possible that they're extra-dimensional; from a different universe than ours and the wormhole is a crossing point between the two.  Compared to other concepts that are extremely hypothetical in our known physics today that Star Trek then takes and fleshes out into established phenomenon, the concept of alternate dimensions and/or the multiverse is pretty tame.
  2. Even if it's scientifically dubious, it's a cool concept.  It's just a shame that the beings themselves are so dull.
• Oh, so I guess it's not "just" thrusters or whatever that they use to get the station to the Donorias Belt.  I forgot that Dax and O'Brien work up some deflector shield mojo to get them there faster.  It's still clearly sub-light.
• Odo's origins (found in the Donorias Belt) and his draw to the wormhole (and thus the Gamma Quadrant) is established early on.
• Chief O'Brien arguing with the station's computer is pretty awesome.  I like that they establish him as an engineering badass in his own right in the first episode :)
• "Doctor, in my experience most people wouldn't know reason if it walked up and shook their hand.  You can count Gul Dukat among them."
• ...in which Benjamin Sisko explains linear time to non-linear aliens using baseball as an analogy.
• Gul Jasad:  Otherwise known as "that Cardassian that we'll never see again".
• "Red alert!  Shields up!"
  
  "What shields?"
  
  O_o
• ...in which Chief O'Brien explains to wet-behind-the-ears Dr. Bashir that the Cardassians are not nice people by referencing the massacre on Setlik III.
• Dude.  Major Kira totally gave these guys the George Rogers Clark.
• How was Bashir not already in the Infirmary?
• BLOODY CARDASSIANS!
• "Good luck, Mr. Sisko."
  
  And thus begins the new series :)