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sshbpodcast · 3 months ago

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To Be Continued: Multi-parters in Star Trek (Part 2)

By Ames

Last week, we touched on Trek two-parters from TOS and TNG, and the resounding refrain from your A Star to Steer Her By hosts was “Well, that was uneven.” Most of the time, the two-parters we got seemed so deliberately stretched that we questioned if it was even worth dedicating two episodes. Sure, you can apply more budget, but if there isn’t enough story, then you might as well have scaled back and used that week’s monetary allotment for a new, better story.

Deep Space Nine, on the other hand, more frequently knew what to do with serialized storytelling. They were ahead of their time in a lot of ways, and telling Trek stories over the course of a couple of weeks was even more common. What made them so good? Was it just that the writers clearly planned things out better and had characters that developed more than Picard’s crew? Let’s take a look through the two-, three-, six-, and even ten-parters of DS9 by reading on below and listening to the week’s chatter on the podcast. When it comes to bigger stories, fortune does favor the bold!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

DS9: “The Homecoming,” “The Circle,” “The Siege”

Okay, our first example may not be the best, as the pacing is still not entirely fleshed out. From the three-parter that opens season two, we definitely found that the middle episode, “The Circle,” spins its wheels a little bit to make sure the bulk of the resolution could be delivered in the third. Poor Li Nalas has to sit around questioning what he’s doing there so much that the audience also starts to question what he’s doing there!

We have a good suggestion here: Excise the whole Li Nalas plot to his own episode. It’s a good story: someone who doesn’t deserve his hero status being upheld as this figurehead and finding out what that means for him. He could have contrasted nicely with Sisko, the emissary to the Prophets who ALSO doesn’t entirely accept his role [yet]. And then you can leave the Circle plot to its own two-parter. Or better yet: clean it up even more and cut it down to its own single episode! As long as we retain all the great Winn plotting, we’re cool here.

DS9: “The Maquis”

Later on, we get another retread of the ethical conundrum that is the Maquis in the eponymous two-parter “The Maquis.” Our biggest takeaway is YAWN! Somehow, this one not only didn’t feel like it should have been a two-parter, but it barely felt like it should have been a one-parter! How was there so little to say about the cause of these people who’ve been screwed over so much by the Federation-Cardassian alliance?

How do you fix this? I dunno. Maybe making Cal Hudson a more interesting character. And definitely killing him off by the end OR endeavoring to ever revisit him again. There are just no stakes this whole two-parter long and it doesn’t keep our attention long enough for us to feel anything for his character. TNG’s “Journey’s End” first aired a month before this, so there was already a foundation to build on… and these episodes somehow just don’t.

DS9: “The Jem’Hadar,” “The Search”

It’s when we really get into the Dominion material that Deep Space Nine turns a new leaf in serial storytelling. The season 2 finale “The Jem’Hadar” does a lovely job opening that door by introducing the eponymous Jem’Hadar and the Vorta and allowing season 3 to launch right in with the two parts of “The Search,” which introduce the elusive and wily Changelings, and where would this series be without them?

And as a two-parter (or three-parter if you include “The Jem’Hadar”), “The Search” is stellar at slowly revealing more and more information, twisting and teasing the expectations of the audience until the facade is dropped and we learn the true identity of the Founders. For perhaps the first time, we see serial storytelling not only being worth the episodes they take up, but also setting the stage for the whole rest of the series. Praise be to the Founders!

DS9: “Past Tense”

Maybe it’s just the serial storytelling that DS9 gets right, because when it goes for another one-off two-parter that isn’t really connected to the rest of the series arc, it falls into the same tired devices and poor pacing of some of the TNG two-parters we talked about last week. Our jaunt back in time to the Bell Riots feels stretched and starts to get boring. This is yet another plot that could easily have fit into one episode if they’d trimmed some fat.

Per Jake in this week’s podcast episode, “it takes way too long to get through this episode,” which is a sign of a multi-parter that hasn’t earned its runtime. The Jadzia-Brinner plot lags. There’s way too much exposition in Part I. The O’Brien-Kira appearances, while providing much-needed levity, don’t fit the episode. Condensing down to one episode might also fix the biggest flaw of this two-parter: running out of things to do with the BC character until he becomes a series of tactless jokes in a stupid hat.

DS9: “Improbable Cause,” “The Die Is Cast”

You know what makes a two-parter worth it? Elim Fucking Garak. Just let Andy Robinson chew the scenery and you’ll have enough material to stretch for as long as you like and no one will complain. When the writers of “Improbable Cause” couldn’t find a way out of their episode and they decided to extend it to another episode, they couldn’t have known how much paydirt they’d struck.

And maybe that’s just the way to do it: don’t just stretch your story into two episodes when you hit a wall. Take a hammer to that wall and extend into a new room. A story about the investigation into who’s blowing up Garak’s shop is fine… for one week. But using that as a launch pad to tell an even bigger story the next week, with the Obsidian Order and the Tal Shiar and Changeling spies and Garak torturing Odo all over the place, then you’ve got something there. What was the rest of the crew up to during all this? Who even cares?

DS9: “The Way of the Warrior”

Star Trek’s first feature-length episode, all released together as one big behemoth thing, really feels like a movie. The great thing about this new Klingon-Cardassian War is that it raises the stakes not just for this double-length episode, but for the whole season 4 of DS9, and they do it in style!

While this whole left turn into Klingon politics does sidetrack us from the ever-intensifying Dominion arc (we learned in the season 3 finale that Changelings Are Everywhere™), it’s worth it to keep upping the stakes. Having the Klingons pull out of the Khitomer Accords not only changes our relationship with a legacy species, but also provides the perfect entry point for Worf! And sure, characters like Kira and Dax have some very excisable scenes for padding, but there’s enough going on throughout.

DS9: “Homefront,” “Paradise Lost”

This renowned two-parter was originally planned to be the season three finale / season four premiere. And frankly it’s much better served after a couple months of ramping up the action. Ending season three with “The Adversary” was a much better landing because it sets up possibilities for the following season, which these midseason episodes capitalize on because things have been simmering in the meantime.

And this Starfleet plot builds so nicely across both episodes! The tension that Joe Sisko embodies because of all the increased military checkpoints and constant blood screenings for Changelings really starts to boil by the end. And yet another corrupt admiral is stirring up trouble, as they are wont to do! It all adds up to a suspenseful two-parter that is excellently paced and which pays off with revelations every couple of scenes to keep viewers satisfied.

DS9: “In Purgatory’s Shadow,” “By Inferno’s Light”

We’re in for a treat with another Garak-heavy two-parter! Deep Space Nine has really mastered the continuous plot by this fifth season dynamo. For a change, both sides of the plot (on the station and in the Dominion prison) hold their own and play off each other, especially when we learn that each side has its own copy of Bashir.

And like in “Homefront” and “Paradise Lost,” there is no shortage of plot twists that continuously increase the momentum of the two episodes. Bashir’s been a Changeling for the last while, Martok is alive in a Dominion prison, Tain is ALSO alive in a Dominion prison AND he admits to being Garak’s father, and Cardassia allies with the Dominion. Somehow under all that weight, the episodes don’t crumble because the pacing has been spot on, the acting has been superb, and the revelations have been jaw-dropping.

DS9: “A Time to Stand,” “Rocks and Shoals,” “Sons and Daughters,” “Behind the Lines,” “Favor the Bold,” “Sacrifice of Angels”

Season 6 opens with a six-parter, which has been unheard of up until this point in Star Trek. The show really was ahead of its time, and has been seeing a whole new appreciation with the ability to binge seasons without the risk of missing an episode and finding yourself entirely lost. If only streaming had been around in the 90s, DS9 would have been everyone’s favorite show.

The long plot to take back the station from Dukat and his Dominion buddies is a master class in serialization. Everything builds to a frenzy and it’s so clear the writers were in constant communication to keep as many characters busy as possible. It all culminates in “Favor the Bold” and “Sacrifice of Angels,” which are the most two-parter-y of the bunch. The prophets ex machina does end up feeling like a cop out when Sisko flies headlong into the wormhole like a maniac; it could have just been fixed with an explanation that he intended to blow up the wormhole because he had an actual plan, but whatever. Sisko’s gotta Sisko.

DS9: “Image in the Sand,” “Shadows and Symbols”

The opening of season 7 is a bit of a weird one. We start the final season of DS9 by dealing with loss. Jadzia is dead. The wormhole has closed. Sisko has taken his ball and gone home, clearly at his lowest point. I’d argue less for cutting the fat to make this one episode, and more for cooking up that fat a little better because not everything is fully baked. We’ve complained in the past that Quark and Julian regress as characters when they make Jadzia’s death somehow about themselves when Worf is the one mourning. So knock that off, for one.

But the emissary plot with Sisko learning that he’s part Prophet is a little… out of the blue. Were there ever hints of this? And some of the Benny Russell scenes caused by the pah-wraiths muddy the near-perfect episode “Far Beyond the Stars.” It’s a little more gimmicky and murky in its messaging, especially when we saw Benny before and it was the Prophets directing him. Now it’s the pah-wraiths? I’m confused. Oh, and Ezri’s here too, I guess.

DS9: Season 7 ten-parter!

The whole series climaxes with a great big ten-parter that concludes with a very uneven finale (but we ragged on that the other week already). Most modern shows on streaming have seasons that are basically ten-parters, give or take, but they don’t have sixteen previous episodes in their season building up to it. And many current series aren’t as successful at moving a plot forward and continuing to develop their characters over those episodes as Deep Space Nine was.

That’s not to say the ten final episodes of the show were perfect. There were definitely places where they lagged. Clearly, the writers quickly ran out of things for Ezri to do and fell back on a tired and unnecessary romance gimmick. And though it solved the Changeling disease plot, the whole of “Extreme Measures” felt like it dragged the pacing of the story arc to a gross and unethical halt.

On particular display is some absolutely excellent work from Marc Alaimo and Louise Fletcher, which we could watch for hours if you’d let us. A lot happens over these ten episodes, and for the most part, the storytelling is so skilled that it rarely feels like too much or too little is happening at once. Certain plots are left to brew until it’s their time, and other threads like the Gowron plot and and the Nagus plot wrap up tidily before we get to the finale. Oh, and Damar is great.

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Things will be a little less serial (even when they should be) when we talk more two-parters next week, this time as we revisit Voyager. So keep your eyes here for that. Additionally, you should keep up with our watchalong of Discovery on the podcast via SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts, and debate who’s a Changeling with us on Facebook. And watch out for Breen—they change everything!

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