DS9 S04E06 & S04E07

In this installment:
(viewed Sunday, July 12th)

Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S04E06 -- "Starship Down"
Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S04E07 -- "Little Green Men"

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"Starship Down"

• Hanok, the Karemma trade representative featured in this show, is yet another guest appearance by the very talented James Cromwell (perhaps best-known in Trek circles for having portrayed Zefram Cochrane himself in Star Trek:  First Contact).
  
  
  
  The many Trek faces of James Cromwell:
  Prime Minister Nayrok and Jaglom Shrek (both on TNG), Hanok (DS9) and Zefram Cochrane (STFC)
• Listen, Kira:  If Captain Sisko isn't comfortable being the Emissary, he's probably super-uncomfortable with there being a feast day in his honor.  I think we can all understand that.  Take it down a notch, weirdo.
• "Two ships have just entered sensor range.  They're Jem'Hadar warships."
  
  Yeah...that's never good.
• There's nothing you can't do with a good tetryon pulse.
• Can you put the warhead from a quantum torpedo into an atmospheric probe?  Sure.  That doesn't mean it's a good idea.
• This episode follows in the proud Trek tradition of taking a classic submarine fight and putting them into space:  Low visibility, slow maneuvering through the depths of the ocean nebula atmosphere of a gas giant, and the specter of sacrificing one or more crew-members when the integrity of the ship is compromised.
  
  This was most famously done, of course, with the Battle of the Mutara Nebula in Star Trek II:  The Wrath Of Khan.
• But of course Bashir seals himself in with Dax!  Why wouldn't he?
• Ah, this is the episode where almost everybody dies.  And not all at once, because the ship is in danger (although that happens, too), but each of them individually, in different parts of the ship.
• And while everyone else is almost dying, Quark and the Karemma representative are having a philosophical discussion about business practices.
• Also:  Worf is cranky (err...crankier than usual).  I love O'Brien's "Hey, they're engineers.  Be nice to 'em and give 'em a problem to solve!" speech.
• Kira, did I not just say to take it down an notch?  HE'S NOT THE SPACE POPE.
• I'll just come right out and say it:  The Bajoran language sounds like freakin' baby talk.
• And everybody's friends now!  Quark and Hanok are gambling, Bashir and Dax are playin' Darts, and Sisko invites Kira to a baseball game.  Huzzah!

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"Little Green Men"

• While I thought it was silly at first, Nog's trip to Starfleet Academy (and back) is one of the most interesting and unexpected character arcs in the entire show.
  
  
  
  
  
• Quark's new shuttle, which he dubs Quark's Treasure, is of a type that we've seen previously and will see again:  Weird, squat little Ferengi shuttles that look like crabs or whatever.
  
  
  
  
  
• "All I ask is a tall ship...and a load of contraband to fill her with."
• "Doesn't this Gabriel Bell look just like Captain Sisko?"
  
  "All hyoo-mans look alike."
• This episode is Trek's tongue-in-cheek attempt to explain the so-called "Roswell Incident", in which some people believe that the U.S military recovered a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft (and perhaps even recovered its extraterrestrial pilot(s)).
  
  It's one of the most well-known fables in American UFO lore, but most actual evidence points to the debris involved in the "incident" as having been wreckage from a highly-modified, high-altitude balloon which was being tested to see if we could detect Soviet nuclear tests (these tests were known as Project Mogul).
  
  The highly secretive nature of this project probably led the U.S. Air Force to simply allow the public to believe the UFO story for decades, rather than declassify the Mogul program.
• The Divine Treasury sounds pretty hilarious.
• I enjoy any Trek episode that shows us what life would be like in the diverse Federation would be like without the universal translator.  This is also one of the few (or maybe only?) times the UT is shown as actually being implanted in the head...or at least it is for Quark, Rom and Nog.
• Nuclear testing, smoking...humans did some pretty goofy stuff in the 1940s.
• Ha!  I had completely forgotten that Odo went with them.
• Part of Quark's plan to alter the future includes selling their shuttle to the present-day (1947) Ferengi, allowing them to have warp drive before other Alpha Quadrant / Beta Quadrant powers, including the Klingons and the Vulcans.  However, from what we know, the Vulcans were an interstellar power sometime before the 9000 BCE and Klingons around 900 CE.
  
  Then again, it's not like Quark is a history expert.
• Apparently Ferengi are immune to sodium thiopental.
• "Don't you people have laws against this kind of thing?"
  
  "Not when it comes to national security!"
  
  Oh, if only that weren't true :(
• Quark's Treasure is being held in Hangar 18, which is a reference the facility at what is now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where wreckage from the alleged Roswell UFO was supposed to have been taken.
  
  It's also the name of a killer Megadeth song.
  
  
• "Stand back, or I'll disintegrate this hostage."
  
  "With your finger?"
  
  "With my death ray."
  
  "Looks a lot like a finger to me."
• "What do we do now, General?"
  
  "About what, Captain?  All we ever found was a crashed weather balloon."

Leonard Nimoy 1931-2015

Forgive the hiatus in posting commentary as I make my way through my re-watch of every Star Trek episode and film.  That project is still very much alive, but work and life and so forth have gotten in the way.  Look for additional posts in that direction in the near future.

But I felt like, hiatus or no, today was an appropriate day to open hailing frequencies.  We lost a man who was arguably the face of Trek today.  Below are my thoughts about that.  It's not special or more significant than what any other fan is feeling right now, but it's what I'm feeling.

DS9 S04E04 & S04E05

In this installment:
(viewed Thursday, January 1st)

Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S04E04 - "Indiscretion"
Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S04E05 - "Rejoined"

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"Indiscretion"

• DS9 episodes that involve a story element from Kira's past and the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor in general are generally pretty good.  If I remember this one correctly, it's no exception.
• I love that Odo expresses his support and well-wishes for Kira's search for survivors from the Ravinok, even though he doesn't think her efforts have a particularly high probability of success.  It's one of the small ways that the writers both deepened the bond between Odo and Kira, and also displayed Odo's incrementally-improving understanding of how the "solids" feel and act.
• "You can't go try to rescue your friends without taking a Cardassian chaperone.  Sorry."
• Also:  Kassidy Yates and Captain Sisko are totally still dating.  We just want to put that in this episode so that no one forgets about her.  She's important later.
• Oh, that Cardassian chaperone?  It's kind of our worst enemy.  Surprise!
  
  
  
• "Stop me if you've heard this one:  A former Bajoran resistance fighter and the former Cardassian administrator of the brutal occupation of Bajor are in a runabout..."
• "Ah, the infamous Shakaar resistance cell.  We never could quite eliminate that little group of yours.  And it was not from lack of trying, let me assure you.  I hope you don't take this the wrong way Major, but I've always admired you."
  
  Say what now?
• "I know you find this hard to accept, but I believe that in some ways the Occupation actually helped Bajor."
  
  "Which part, the massacres or the strip-mining?"
  
  SNAP.
• Quark's School of Playful Misogyny.
• General rule of thumb:  If you're about to test DNA to identify bodies and someone suddenly doesn't want you to help them, they have something to hide.
• This episode is the beginning of a widening of the scope of Dukat's backstory, as it's revealed that he had a Bajoran lover during the occupation.
• In which Dukat gets an ouchie on his tushy...
• "Tell me something...who's Tora Ziyal?"
  
  Well, that's going to be a whole thing.
• "Now I know why you're in such hurry to find the survivors.  You're hoping your daughter's still alive, and you can rescue her."
  
  "Not quite.  You see, if my daughter is still alive...I'll have no choice but to kill her."
  
  Okay, yeah.  That sounds like a Dukat solution to a Dukat problem.
• Interplay between Kira and Dukat is always some of my favorite dialog on DS9 (perhaps second only to any scene featuring Garak).  They're two of my favorite characters on the show, and they were played very well by their respective actors.
• While they've been mentioned many, many times before on Star Trek, I do believe this is the first time that we actually see the Breen (who will of course become major players later on in the Dominion War).
  
  
  
  Emblem of the Breen Confederacy
  
  It's also the first mention of their homeworld being a "frozen wasteland".
• And yes, the Breen outfits do look suspiciously like the Ubese bounty hunter Boushh from the Star Wars universe (aka Princess Leia's diguise when she shows up to rescue Han from Jabba's Palace in Return of the Jedi).
  
  
  
• In Ziyal's first couple of appearances, she's played by Cyia Batten.  Two other actresses will play her throughout the course of the series.
• And this would be the episode where we learn that the devil in our little play, Dukat, has a bit of a heart after all.  Not much of one, but he has one.
• Oh, and back to Ben and Kassidy.  Yay.
  
  (I actually like Kassidy a lot, this particular "B" plot just seems weird and out-of-place in this episode.)

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"Rejoined"

 "Sure you can do a same-sex kiss in this episode.  But we're talking two hot ladies, right? 
Not like...two ugly Klingon dudes?"

• Seriously, what kind of Trill would you be if you hadn't figured out how to do magic at some point during your bazillion lifetimes?  You almost have to assume that every joined Trill knows magic tricks.
• "So, there's a Trill science team coming here to use our stuff.  And the leader of the team is one of your ex-wives.  Err, one of your former host's ex-wives.  Or whatever.  My point is that you should probably take a vacation so it won't be weird."
• Like the TNG episode "The Outcast" before it, this episode (and the Trill taboo against "Reassociation") is a clear--but effective and welcome--allegory for taboos and discrimination in our own societies when it comes to gender and sexual orientation. 
  
  Just like TOS using the mirrored make-up of the aliens Lokai and Bele in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" to talk about a sensitive subject in the 1960s (racial discrimination), TNG and DS9 used alien cultural taboos to talk about sensitive subjects in the 1990s (sexual and gender discrimination).
• "I don't understand how two people who have fallen in love and made a life together can be forced to just walk away from each other because of a taboo."
  
  We don't understand it either, Kira.  Thankfully, it's a little bit better now in 2015 than it was in 1995 (although there's a ways to go yet).
• "What do Klingons dream about?"
  
  "Things that would send cold chills down your spine, and wake you in the middle of the night.  It is better that you do not know."
  
  Intense much?
• Oh hey, it's Lt. Cmdr. Eddington.  Yep, he's still a thing.
• "Our chaperone has left.  Let's trade earrings and hold hands."
• Aside from its value as social commentary (which is significant), this episode is a bit on the dry side for my tastes.
• By the 1990s, it was becoming more and more acceptable to feature same-sex couples on television programs.  From science fiction shows like DS9 to sitcoms like Friends, gay and lesbian couples were frequently secondary characters and sometimes even main characters.  Subjects important to that community were starting to be talked about in public.
  
  But if you wanted to do a same-sex kiss on your show, I'm sure it was still a little easier to sell if it was two attractive actresses and not to big, fat ugly dudes :P
• "But if you're sure, if this is what you really want...I will back you all the way."
  
  "I've lived seven lifetimes, and I have never had a friend quite like you."
• "I'm reading a massive plasma leak in the engine room."
  
  Well, that's never good.
• Walking on a plasma leak?  Way more impressive than walking on water, if you ask me.
• "And if you leave on that transport tomorrow, I think we both know you're never coming back again."Of course she's not.  Steamy kiss or no steamy kiss, we need you to marry a Klingon in a couple of seasons.