Star Trek Grounded

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

1993-9

**********

Pros: Great Cast, Good Practical Effects, Good Story Arcs

Cons: Poorly Integrated Supernatural Elements, Some Bad Side Gimmicks, Lackluster Ending

           For all of Star Trek’s strengths, I find some of the franchise’s themes a bit annoying, and I was sold on Rick Berman and Michael Piller’s Deep Space Nine because it was recognized as an aversion the “hopeful and optimistic” vision of the future that I’m a bit skeptical of.  I’m more interested in drama, complex character/political relations.  DS9 was a precursor to Game of Thrones and other such shows in that respect.  There is some controversy over whether or not Paramount ripped off a pitched idea from J. Michael Straczyncki that would later become Babylon 5.  There are times when I don’t care which work ripped off another.  One instance is when one is so demonstrably superior to the other, it’s moot.  In this case, it's because DS9 and B5 both do things very well in their own way.

            The story centers around the aftermath of a war of independence between the Bajorans (a spiritual race of humanoids) and the Cardassians (slightly reptilian space fascists).  Having just won their freedom from a brutal occupation, the Bajorans now have ownership of a Cardassian space station, formerly known as Terek Nor.  The station takes on interstellar significance when a nearby wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant (along with an accompanying threat). 

              The Bajorans request the Federation’s assistance in overseeing the newly-Christened Deep Space Nine.  They send the franchise’s first black protagonist, Commander Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks).  Sisko is a good man with a ferocious side, and Brooks does a great job balancing the two character traits.  I like the man who has a temper but always succeeds in controlling it and always fights the good fight; it gives him the ability to do what he has to when he has to (cough*Picard*cough).  However, there are times when he hams it up amusingly when the story gives him an excuse; it’s a shame he wasn’t cast as the voice of Scar in the upcoming Lion King remake (or Tony Todd, for that matter).  He also provides more narrative complexity with his relationship with his son Jake (Cirroc Lofton), and his backstory involves the death of his wife (Felecia M. Bell) during the Battle of Wolf 359 with the Borg (he later finds another love interest in the form of Kasidy Yates (Penny Johnson Jerald)).  As a result, he helps spearhead the development of the Federation's first dedicated warship, the USS Defiant, which makes her premiere in this show.  He’s a likable character, except for one point later on in which he goes full SJW on a holodeck simulation of the 60’s that others are just having fun with.  One would think that wouldn’t be a concern centuries after we’ve solved racism’s long-term effects.

        The main problem with the character is that he also turns out to be the reluctant Emissary (Christ-figure) to the Prophets, a group of gods/4^th-dimensional wormhole aliens sacred to the Bajorans.  As the last sentence suggests, there seems to be a sort of have-it-both-ways approach to trying to sneak supernatural elements into a staunchly secular franchise.  It also gives credence to the idea that DS9 imitated B5, whose spirituality seems far less forced.  This side plot eventually comes to a head in which he must fight the Pah Wraiths (the devils in this religion) and ultimately sacrifices himself/his presence in this dimension at the end of the series.  It doesn't help that the Prophets also refer to him as "The Sisko" without a hint of mirth.  What's even more disturbing is the revelation that the Prophets, in some dark perversion of the Immaculate Conception, apparently possessed some young woman in order to conceive him and then sent her off to die when she outlived her usefulness.  Then again, some forms of Protestantism might as well believe that.

If I were Sisko, this would not be my reaction to this revelation.

The prophets also (ambiguously) send Sisko visions of himself as Benny Russell, a 1950's sci-fi writer struggling with racism.  This is one of the dumbest ideas this show has, and seems to be a holodeck-like excuse to have a period piece.  Even worse, it plays with the idea that the whole story is just a fantasy (and with it the whole franchise) in this guy's head.  At least it was interesting to see some of the other actors without their alien makeup, and the Terran version of DS9 looks interesting.
        The show also has a solid supporting cast.  An energetic Nana Visitor plays Major Kira Nerys, a Bajoran who acts as the second-in-command and struggles with her past as a guerilla during the occupation.  Constable Odo (Rene Auberjonois) is a changeling whose isolation from the other species manifests into an aumusingly sardonic attitude and a dedication toward enforcing law.  He later faces internal conflict when his species is discovered to be an enemy. Quark (Armin Shimerman) is a Ferengi bar-owner who butts head with Odo and acts as the anthropomorphic soul of the station and its inhabitants.  Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney) is the ship's Chief Engineer, and is on the receiving end of all sorts of tragedies and tribulations when the writers decide to do another episode dedicated to making us feel sorry for him.  Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) is the ingenious medical officer.  Worf (Michael Dorn) joins the crew and acts as a love interest to Lt. Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell).
           Jadzia is a Trill, a humanoid species who can bind with a symbiont that carries the memories of the all its previous hosts and turns each current one into a mixed personality.  Her previous host Curzon (Frank Owen Smith) was a friend and mentor to Sisko (as well as a bit of a mimbo), which causes him to affectionately refer to Jadzia as "old man."  It's an interesting dynamic and it's a hit in DS9's favor that B5 has a one-off episode that comes off like a half-assed rip-off of the Trill symbiosis.  I'm not a big fan of the implication that Jadzia's post-fusion promiscuity is a sign of confidence, though.  This may come off as iconoclastic (then again I never watched this show in earnest until I did a Netflix binge in the last few years), but I prefer Ezri (Nicole de Boer), who reluctantly took over the Dax symbiont after Jadzia's sudden, shocking death.  She struggles with the joining that she wasn't ready for.
         The Ferengi are another species given the limelight.  In TNG they were not much more than straw conservatives reduced to a joke.  In DS9 they're treated like actual people, some of whom rankle under the misogynistic status quo of their society.  Even the males are under pressure to produce "profit."  Quark's brother Rom (Max Grodenchik) is a technical genius treated like dirt until he finds work with the Bajorans.  Rom's son Nog (Aaron Eisenberg), disillusioned by this, joins Starfleet.  Quark, despite his own loyalty to Ferengi customs, stretches its rules by helping others to the point of provoking Ferengi enforcer Brunt (Jeffrey Combs).  There are often episodes involving Quark's defiantly feminist mother Ishka (Andrea Martin/Cecily Adams) and the Ferengi leader Grand Nagus Zek (Wallace Shawn).  The Ferengi episodes have good drama and worldbuilding, and I was surprised to find out that they're unpopular among fans.    
         The Bajorans have a religious structure similar to the Church, albeit with female priests (Vedek) and the apparent equivalent of a pope (Kai).  Vedek Bereil (Philip Anglim), a love interest to Kira, was a character I found bland to the point where I inadvertently skipped the episode in which he was killed off.     Kai Winn is a hypocritical conservative cleric and ultimately an agent of those pesky Pah Wraiths.
         The Cardassians are a primary antagonist race.  Unlike the Klingons, who are very creatively thought out society, they're basically space Nazis.  Still, this does result in some of my favorite drama in the series.  One of the primary antagonists is the dastardly but complex Gul Dukat (Marc Alaimo), who sees himself as a guardian of the Bajorans despite his treatment of them.  He also has a weakness for Bajoran women, and has to come to terms with his half-Bajoran daughter Tora (Cyia Batten, Tracy Middendorf, Melanie Smith), after considering murdering her, of course.  The latter's death puts him over the deep end.  He leaves the Cardassians and eventually becomes the Emissary for the Pah Wraiths.   A Cardassian who's a great breakout character late in the series is Damar (Casey Biggs), who struggles under the Dominion's rule of Cardassia until he finally joins the good guys.  The Cardassian dissidents are also a good source of drama, especially when characters like Kira learn that things are not as simple as they seemed.  One of my favorite episodes deals with this.  The Cardassians are also known for laying booby traps for occupying enemies, much to the chagrin of DS9's  crew.  This race does have a distinctive, dark style motif that the space station effectively conveys.  Even there uniforms have a giant spike pointed directly at their own crotches, which I assume is to enforce military posture in the same way Chinese soldiers put pins in their collars pointing at their necks.

      Among the Cardassians is my favorite Star Trek character: Elim Garak (Andrew J. Robinson).  A Cardassian spy posing as a humble civilian tailor, he strikes up a tense friendship with Bashir based on the lack of any illusion of truthfulness between them.  He’s witty and complex, and even in spite of his anti-heroism he has dramatic moments with loved ones from his past, particularly his abusive father Tain (Paul Dooley).  His loyalties are mysterious until the Dominion takes over Cardassia, and then he’s tormented by having to fight his own people even though he knows it’s the right thing to do.  It’s a good subversion of the “category traitor” trope that can be so toxic in politics nowadays.  Robinson and Alaimo in particular do a great job acting under prosthetics, which seems to be a lost art nowadays.

         Eventually the Cardassians give way to the Dominion, an empire from the Gamma Quadrant led by the Changelings.  I missed the drama between the Cardassians and the Bajorans, and sometimes these looming threats’ serving as the backdrop for political dramas are often only interesting as looming threats (the Others from Game of Thrones, for example).  Fortunately, the Dominion is interesting in its own right.  The Founders/Changelings engineered two races for service: The Vorta, a diplomatic race, and the Jem’Hadar, a warrior race.  These two races have weakness and strengths that help them stay in their place.  In a prescient commentary of identity politics, both peoples are inculcated with a strong racial identity, so long as unquestioning loyalty to the founders is a part of that identity.  Hell, they even attempt prevent the Vorta from "appropriating" food by engineering them to only be able to taste nuts.   The Founders also arrogantly believe themselves to be benevolent leaders, pretending to guide other races while having no qualms about destroying them if they rise up.  They eventually ally with a few Alpha Quadrant races, most prominently the Cardassians.  The two most prominent Dominion characters are a female Changeling (Salome Jens) and multiple Vorta clones of Weyoun (Jeffrey Combs).

         The Klingons prove to be valuable allies against the Dominion, with arcs involving Chancellor Gowron (Robert O’Reilly), Martok (J.G. Hetzler), and Alexander (Marc Worden).  Further illustrating the newfound complexity of this series is the Maquis, a group of human rebels unsatisfied by the Federation’s allegedly selling out their colonies in a deal with the Cardassians, with Michael Eddington (Kenneth Marshall) acting as an operative.  Morn (Mark Allen Shepherd) is a frequent patron at Quark’s bar.  Reflecting the show’s occasional distraction by silly gimmicks is Vic Fontaine (James Darrin), a holosuite AI who acts as a 60’s singer/club owner and has entire episodes dedicated to him for reasons scientists are still attempting to ascertain.  On the plus side, his club was the backdrop for a good arc episode about Nog, which even had the nerve to imply that Shane is a boring, overrated movie.

The world wasn't ready for this much truth.

Other cast members include Rosalind Chao as Miles' wife Keiko, Chase Masterson, Iggy Pop, and others.

            Visually the show looks good.  It mostly uses great miniature effects for the ships, but later delves into mediocre CGI (unlike B5’s so-bad-it’s-good CGI).  Makeup looks great but sometimes the costumes look like they were fashioned out of bus seats.

         Deep Space Nine is memorable for its complex political and character arcs and it arguably broke ground in that arena.  It took a break from the eventually-tiresome monster-of-the-week story-telling that the idealistic depiction of the Federation limited the franchise.  Still, there were some absurd distractions from this premise.  The series finale, in which Sisko and Dukat eliminated each other in a battle of terrible CGI in the name of ill-advised supernatural elements, left something to be desired.  It featured a “Well I guess this is it” montage of the remaining characters which wasn’t quite as creative as the card game at the end of “All Good Things.”