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shallownessSo, given that E4 wasn’t making it easy for me to watch Star Trek: Discovery, and while those with Amazon can watch Star Trek: Picard, I realised that season 3 of DS9 was next on my DVD boxsets to watch pile.
Overall I’ve found the episodes of a similar quality, which is quite good, but with a sense that elements could be developed further (as I found when I rewatched seasons 1 and 2, back in 2015-16). I like that the events of the first two episodes have an impact on what follows, on top of the interspecies space politics already established and the on-station relationships—familial, working and maybe more.
Disc 1
I was grateful for the mini recap of the season 2 finale at the top of ‘The Search’ (a two-parter). Instead of waiting for the Jem’Hadar to invade through the wormhole, Sisko brought a new toy, er cloaked warship, the Defiant, from Earth (which would have the effect of making them more like other Trek iterations). They found a reason for pretty much everyone to go on it to the Gamma Quadrant, on a mission to find the Founders and forge a way for the Dominion and Federation to co-exist.
There was decent action, give or take the odd bit of camera shaking, there was some tension because of what Starfleet proper thought of Odo. But once he re-entered the GQ (why now? He’d been there before), it was like a homing signal had gone off inside of him. His relationship with Kira was the most multi-faceted in the first episode, while everyone else’s relationships were quickly re-established. Unlike the first time I saw it, I knew that Odo had not only found his people and where he’d come from, but the Founders.
He would find that out in the second episode, which, like many following episodes, had two strands. The other was a miraculous rescue for Sisko and Bashir. I didn’t quite believe it, DS9 and everything weren’t quite right, until Garak turned up (take it as read from this point on that Andrew Robinson’s Garak turning up and stealing the scene is always welcomed by me.) Indeed, they hadn’t truly returned to DS9, the Founders were running through a ‘can we take them over?’ simulation.
‘The House of Quark’ wasn’t quite as good – though the B-plot follows through the ramifications of civilians being scared of the Dominion threat for the station and leaving on the O’Briens. Trying to drum up business and because he’s a Ferengi, Quark lies about the nature of the death of a Klingon customer and gets abducted and dragged into Klingon politics for it. I liked that he found a very Quark (i.e. dishonourable, heh) way to deal with it all – ‘it’ involving a brief marriage to a Klingon woman you knew could kill him a dozen different ways.
‘Equilibrium’ didn’t quite pop. I found myself grumbling about the overly medical model used to treat Jadzia Dax, why she was still in her uniform most of the time when she was clearly unfit for duty (and the civvies she wore were much nicer than what some characters have to put up with.) There was some more ‘Dax is a very special Trill’ (see previous episodes), which always happens with Star Trek aliens. The hallucination scenes were effective.
Disc 2
‘Second Skin’ was back up to the standard of ‘The Search’ possibly because it focused on Kira becoming what she most hated and Cardassian intrigue/skulduggery. I was just sighing at them using a lost memory again when the story flipped, and Kira was thrust into a mind-bending situation. The reveal of a Cardassian!Kira is powerful enough for the audience, but the reveal to Kira herself is something else.
The claim that she was a long-running infiltrator for the Obsidian Order never stacked up - why have an agent who didn’t remember she was one? How could you gather useful intel from her? But the psychological torture of the situation was deftly done, with a sweet(!) Cardassian claiming to be her father and everyone insisting that her early, Bajoran memories were fake. Nana Visitor was so emotive.
Meanwhile, Garak was ambiguous, but tough!Sisko and suspicious!Odo rightly knew he knew more about what was going on.
As Kira watched a deepfake video of ‘herself’ about to undergo tha transformation into a Bajoran like a good little (Cardassian) patriot, it was one of many examples of Trek forecasting or shaping futuretech.
‘The Abandoned’ overcame what I thought was a very male gazey perspective, although 16-year-old Jake’s relationship with 20-year-old Dabo girl Marta was wish fulfilment, for all that it was about messing with Sisko’s preconceptions.
Anyway, the episode is about a mystery alien baby who grows very fast into a Jem’Hadar. Odo overidentifies or tries to overcompensate for his people, who have genetically modified the JH into drug-dependent violent types. Odo and Sisko find a way of avoiding the labrat future Starfleet wanted for the kid and the bloodshed that looked likely to happen at this point. There’s also significant Kira-Odo friendship stuff in this episode.
‘The Enemy Within’ has the station turn against its new peeps, but it’s niftily constructed. In Ops, Dax had the most technobabble to utter and, of course, everything they did made the situation worse, as testified by ever grimmer messages from Gul Dukat. Enter Garak and Actual Gul Dukat…to needle each other. Despite them, and it was satisfying when Guk Dukat was hoist with his own petard, things were sorted (in a way that reminded me of Galaxy Quest). The episode ends with Odo and Quark, who’d been stuck together in Security while all this was going on, but a lot of other, more intriguing strands were left hanging.
‘Meridian’ is just as good as the last two episodes and features two equally interesting plots, although one is meant to be lighter, but kind of lands differently in 2020. It’s well-meaning, but I found it skeevy. The plotline the episode is named after is more affecting.
On the Odo/Kira front, she uses him as a fake boyfriend to put off a creep who couldn’t take a hint. Let’s call him Mr Skeevy Moneybags. Odo’s reaction to the hand-grabbing when this happens intrigues. We’ve obviously known he cares for a while, and the relationship has been developed more this season. Anyway, Kira and Odo are always an unimpressed step ahead of Quark who gets roped into what happens next. Whatever my issues about some of this, Mr Skeevy Moneybags’s comeuppance was funny.
In the GQ, the rest of the crew are exploring and find a planet that slips in and out of our dimension for increasingly short period of times. They’re handily humanoid and, despite the disruption, at about current Federation levels of development. A sensualist (well, you’d be if you spent a lot of time as incorporeal consciousness) played by young Brett Cullen falls for Jadzia and they have an accelerated romance with better cause than is often the case. First he’s going to leave his people and cleave to Jadzia, then she’s going to resign from Starfleet to become a non-corporeal being for 60 years. She says her touching goodbyes and everything, most of all to Sisko, but, of course, she can’t make the shift. Knowing Jadzia Dax won’t be around in 60 years makes if even more touching.
I’d noticed Jonathan Frakes was directing this episode, and he went mad for camera angles from which to shoot, not jst when they were planetside
I'm three quarters of the way throgh disc 3, but who knows when I'll post about it.
Overall I’ve found the episodes of a similar quality, which is quite good, but with a sense that elements could be developed further (as I found when I rewatched seasons 1 and 2, back in 2015-16). I like that the events of the first two episodes have an impact on what follows, on top of the interspecies space politics already established and the on-station relationships—familial, working and maybe more.
Disc 1
I was grateful for the mini recap of the season 2 finale at the top of ‘The Search’ (a two-parter). Instead of waiting for the Jem’Hadar to invade through the wormhole, Sisko brought a new toy, er cloaked warship, the Defiant, from Earth (which would have the effect of making them more like other Trek iterations). They found a reason for pretty much everyone to go on it to the Gamma Quadrant, on a mission to find the Founders and forge a way for the Dominion and Federation to co-exist.
There was decent action, give or take the odd bit of camera shaking, there was some tension because of what Starfleet proper thought of Odo. But once he re-entered the GQ (why now? He’d been there before), it was like a homing signal had gone off inside of him. His relationship with Kira was the most multi-faceted in the first episode, while everyone else’s relationships were quickly re-established. Unlike the first time I saw it, I knew that Odo had not only found his people and where he’d come from, but the Founders.
He would find that out in the second episode, which, like many following episodes, had two strands. The other was a miraculous rescue for Sisko and Bashir. I didn’t quite believe it, DS9 and everything weren’t quite right, until Garak turned up (take it as read from this point on that Andrew Robinson’s Garak turning up and stealing the scene is always welcomed by me.) Indeed, they hadn’t truly returned to DS9, the Founders were running through a ‘can we take them over?’ simulation.
‘The House of Quark’ wasn’t quite as good – though the B-plot follows through the ramifications of civilians being scared of the Dominion threat for the station and leaving on the O’Briens. Trying to drum up business and because he’s a Ferengi, Quark lies about the nature of the death of a Klingon customer and gets abducted and dragged into Klingon politics for it. I liked that he found a very Quark (i.e. dishonourable, heh) way to deal with it all – ‘it’ involving a brief marriage to a Klingon woman you knew could kill him a dozen different ways.
‘Equilibrium’ didn’t quite pop. I found myself grumbling about the overly medical model used to treat Jadzia Dax, why she was still in her uniform most of the time when she was clearly unfit for duty (and the civvies she wore were much nicer than what some characters have to put up with.) There was some more ‘Dax is a very special Trill’ (see previous episodes), which always happens with Star Trek aliens. The hallucination scenes were effective.
Disc 2
‘Second Skin’ was back up to the standard of ‘The Search’ possibly because it focused on Kira becoming what she most hated and Cardassian intrigue/skulduggery. I was just sighing at them using a lost memory again when the story flipped, and Kira was thrust into a mind-bending situation. The reveal of a Cardassian!Kira is powerful enough for the audience, but the reveal to Kira herself is something else.
The claim that she was a long-running infiltrator for the Obsidian Order never stacked up - why have an agent who didn’t remember she was one? How could you gather useful intel from her? But the psychological torture of the situation was deftly done, with a sweet(!) Cardassian claiming to be her father and everyone insisting that her early, Bajoran memories were fake. Nana Visitor was so emotive.
Meanwhile, Garak was ambiguous, but tough!Sisko and suspicious!Odo rightly knew he knew more about what was going on.
As Kira watched a deepfake video of ‘herself’ about to undergo tha transformation into a Bajoran like a good little (Cardassian) patriot, it was one of many examples of Trek forecasting or shaping futuretech.
‘The Abandoned’ overcame what I thought was a very male gazey perspective, although 16-year-old Jake’s relationship with 20-year-old Dabo girl Marta was wish fulfilment, for all that it was about messing with Sisko’s preconceptions.
Anyway, the episode is about a mystery alien baby who grows very fast into a Jem’Hadar. Odo overidentifies or tries to overcompensate for his people, who have genetically modified the JH into drug-dependent violent types. Odo and Sisko find a way of avoiding the labrat future Starfleet wanted for the kid and the bloodshed that looked likely to happen at this point. There’s also significant Kira-Odo friendship stuff in this episode.
‘The Enemy Within’ has the station turn against its new peeps, but it’s niftily constructed. In Ops, Dax had the most technobabble to utter and, of course, everything they did made the situation worse, as testified by ever grimmer messages from Gul Dukat. Enter Garak and Actual Gul Dukat…to needle each other. Despite them, and it was satisfying when Guk Dukat was hoist with his own petard, things were sorted (in a way that reminded me of Galaxy Quest). The episode ends with Odo and Quark, who’d been stuck together in Security while all this was going on, but a lot of other, more intriguing strands were left hanging.
‘Meridian’ is just as good as the last two episodes and features two equally interesting plots, although one is meant to be lighter, but kind of lands differently in 2020. It’s well-meaning, but I found it skeevy. The plotline the episode is named after is more affecting.
On the Odo/Kira front, she uses him as a fake boyfriend to put off a creep who couldn’t take a hint. Let’s call him Mr Skeevy Moneybags. Odo’s reaction to the hand-grabbing when this happens intrigues. We’ve obviously known he cares for a while, and the relationship has been developed more this season. Anyway, Kira and Odo are always an unimpressed step ahead of Quark who gets roped into what happens next. Whatever my issues about some of this, Mr Skeevy Moneybags’s comeuppance was funny.
In the GQ, the rest of the crew are exploring and find a planet that slips in and out of our dimension for increasingly short period of times. They’re handily humanoid and, despite the disruption, at about current Federation levels of development. A sensualist (well, you’d be if you spent a lot of time as incorporeal consciousness) played by young Brett Cullen falls for Jadzia and they have an accelerated romance with better cause than is often the case. First he’s going to leave his people and cleave to Jadzia, then she’s going to resign from Starfleet to become a non-corporeal being for 60 years. She says her touching goodbyes and everything, most of all to Sisko, but, of course, she can’t make the shift. Knowing Jadzia Dax won’t be around in 60 years makes if even more touching.
I’d noticed Jonathan Frakes was directing this episode, and he went mad for camera angles from which to shoot, not jst when they were planetside
I'm three quarters of the way throgh disc 3, but who knows when I'll post about it.
