#but now? the businesses have prophets like the Ferengi intended

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Forever going to be annoyed at Deep Space Nine because I can no longer reliably choose the correct prophet/profit

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - ‘Hippocratic Oath’ Review

Bashir: "We are dealing with a complex situation here." O'Brien: "No, it is not complex. It is simple."

By nature I love brevity: DS9 continues to make use of the pairing of O'Brien and Bashir, here delivering an interesting character study of both men. But it's also a far more unlikely character study of the Jem'Hadar.

Let me start by laying out the situation. O'Brien and Bashir are made to crash land on a remote planet in the Gamma Quadrant on their way home from a bio-survey of Merik III. When they exit the runabout, they are captured by a squad of Jem'Hadar soldiers. The Jem'Hadar First, Goran'Agar, initially intends to kill them both, but decides not to when Bashir reveals he is a doctor. It turns out Goran'Agar crash-landed on the planet three years ago, and when he ran out of Ketracel-White, he discovered that he was no longer addicted to the drug. Now he wants Bashir to figure out how to free his other soldiers from their addictions to the White.

Obviously, Bashir and O'Brien have very different reactions to this situation. Bashir wants to help Goran'Agar to cure his men, and O'Brien simply wants to escape and leave the Jem'Hadar to fend for themselves. Both of these approaches are so very in character for the two.

One of Bashir's defining characteristics is his arrogance, as we all know. But his arrogance is channeled by the redeeming parts of his character: his kindness and charity, and his overwhelming optimism about the world. This is what makes him such an interesting character to watch, and his response to Goran'Agar's plight is right in line with it. Not only is he kind and generous enough to want to help the Jem'Hadar, he is arrogant enough to believe that he is capable of doing it, and he is optimistic enough to believe that the Jem'Hadar will respond to their freedom in a constructive way.

In stark contrast to this is O'Brien's harsh, down-to-earth realism. This conflicts with all of Bashir's relevant traits in such a way as to give him the opposite viewpoint. Part of this is that O'Brien was once a soldier. As the Federation edges ever closer to open war with the Dominion, his warrior instincts are coming back to the forefront of his mind, and he approaches any situation involving the enemy from a soldier's perspective. And O'Brien's soldier's perspective tells him that nothing good will come out of a situation like this, one way or the other. It tells him that they need to get out as quickly as possible to avoid worse consequences.

But this is not the only set of conflicting values that 'Hippocratic Oath' presents us with. The other one, at least in this main story, is between Goran'Agar and his soldiers, represented by Second Arak'Taral. Goran'Agar's experience of slowly discovering that his core beliefs about himself are now wrong has made him disillusioned about all he has been taught. He is questioning all of his beliefs that he was given by the Founders and the Vorta. Even his gods have fallen in his eyes. The problem is that, as a Jem'Hadar, his entire worldview has been shaped by them, and reinforced by all his Jem'Hadar brethren who believe the same way. At the end of the day, he is still a Jem'Hadar. Can he separate himself from the Ketracel-White? Yes. But can he escape the influence of the Founders and the Vorta? No, it turns out he cannot. They are his gods, impersonal and distant though they may be. And he cannot bring himself to disbelieve everything he has believed for his entire life.

But his efforts to leave the shadow of the Dominion put him at odds with Arak'Taral and the rest of his men, who are still addicted to the White and thus still buy in almost completely to the worldview they have been programmed with. To question these ideals is perceived as weak to their eyes, and weakness is to be expunged. Only the strong are of worth, because worth is derived entirely from one's service to the Founders. If you can't serve the Founders anymore because you are weak, it is better that you are dead. But they are willing to follow Goran'Agar to some extent, because he is their First and that is the order of things. As the White disappears, this willingness slowly goes too, along with their sanity.

All these clashing perspectives come to a head in the conclusion. Bashir, true to form, wants to stay and try and finish his work. But his arrogant optimism is still tempered by reality, so O'Brien removes his last reason for being optimistic. Was he right to do so? The episode doesn't say. Certainly, Bashir's perspective is portrayed as naive, even though it was legitimately dealt with. But O'Brien is wrong, too - this is a much more complex situation than his perspective will allow. This is one of the things I love about DS9: its readiness to not give you all the answers and to allow you to draw your own conclusions.

There's a 'B' plot here, to drive home the point about complexity and shades of gray. I don't have a lot to say about it, except that it uses Worf well. Fans will be used to seeing Worf alongside the TNG crew, and on TNG terms. 'Hippocratic Oath' cements the reality that Worf, and by extension the fans, will have to learn to play by DS9's rules here. It's good to have Worf take a few episodes to learn this, and it makes sense on both an in-universe and a real-world level. Simple judgments, such as Worf's initial assessment of Odo, are no longer necessarily accurate. We are dealing, as Bashir aptly puts it, with a complex situation here. Good and evil aren't black-and-white anymore. Welcome to DS9, Worf.

Strange New Worlds:

The planet is never given a name. It is uninhabited and in the Gamma Quadrant somewhere between the wormhole and Merik III. It orbits a red giant, but there is an unexpectedly high concentration of chlorophyll in the plants. It is never made clear whether the planet was actually responsible for Goran'Agar's freedom from White addiction.

New Life and New Civilizations:

The mercenary Worf is after, Regana Tosh, is a Markalian. This, as far as I can find, is the first canonical mention of the species' name, although members of it appeared many times before this episode.

Pensees:

-I love the new theme equally to the old one. This one suits the show DS9 is becoming better, and the old one suited the first few seasons.

-Worf never calls Quark by name in this episode, referring to him only as 'the Ferengi bartender.'

-After taking a prominent role in 'The Visitor,' Cirroc Lofton's Jake Sisko does not appear in this episode.

-This is the first mention of Ketracel-White by name.

-Goran'Agar is played by Scott MacDonald, who has had a few other Trek roles. His most famous was Dolim in Enterprise Season Three. I'll get there eventually in my reviews of Enterprise so we can talk about him.

-This is the third DS9 episode directed by Rene Auberjonois, after Season 3's 'Prophet Motive' and 'Family Business.'

Quotes:

O'Brien: "Why can't she be more like..." Bashir: "More like?" O'Brien: "Well, a man. More like a man." Bashir: "So... you wish... Keiko was a man." O'Brien: "I wish I was on this trip with someone else, that's what I wish."

Bashir: "I'm just surprised." Goran'Agar: "Surprised that a Jem'Hadar soldier would want something more than the life of a slave? You know nothing about the Jem'Hadar, except that you fear us."

Wounded Jem'Hadar: "You know the rule. If the death of one will make the rest stronger, then he dies." Goran'Agar: "We came here to be free of the Vorta. It is time to stop living by their rules."

Goran'Agar: "I have fought against races that believe in mythical beings who guide their destinies and await them after death. They call them gods. The Founders are like gods to the Jem'Hadar. But our gods never talk to us, and they don't wait for us after death. They only want us to fight for them and to die for them."

Arak'Taral: "If being free of White means becoming like you, I don't want to be cured."

Goran'Agar: "You are a soldier?" O'Brien: "I have been." Goran'Agar: "Then you explain." O'Brien: "He's their commander. They trusted him. He can't leave them."

Worf: "When I served aboard the Enterprise, I always knew who were my allies and who were my enemies." Sisko: "Let's just say DS9 has more shades of gray, and Quark definitely is a shade of gray."

O'Brien: "I'm sorry I had to destroy your work." Bashir: "You didn't have to, Chief. You had a choice, and you chose to disobey orders, override my judgement, and condemn those men to death." O'Brien: "Yes I did. Because I thought it was the only way to save your life. Whatever else you may think of who I am and what I did, at least try to understand that."

5 out of 6 clashing perspectives.

CoramDeo thinks he won the Powerball. Pshoooo.

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Star Trek DS9 Rewatch Log, Stardate 1907.22: Missions Reviewed, “Explorers,” “Family Business,” “Shakaar,” “Facets,” and “The Adversary.”

Long one tonight! We took a run at the end of season three starting with “Explorers.” Sisko reads about Bajorans of some 800 years before building solar sailing ships to explore their solar system, and possibly even making it as far as Cardassia. 

 He decides to build one to ancient specification (adding only a gravity web to the floor because weightlessness makes him queasy) and see if he can make it work. He invites Jake, who is initially reluctant to join, but then gets some news that makes him want to hang out with his father.  As they set sail, Jake tells Ben that he has been accepted to a writing fellowship back on Earth. Meanwhile on DS9 Bashir is busy flirting with a new Dabo girl named Leeta when Dax tells him the Lexington is coming to dock.

 Bashir realizes the woman who beat him out for head of his class is on board, and he prepares to meet her.  She walks past him as if she doesn’t recognize him. Ben reads Jake’s story and is impressed, recommending he take the fellowship. Jake says he’s worried about his dad though and may wait a year. Besides, there’s an freighter captain he thinks Ben should meet.  Before they can finish the conversation, there’s a malfunction and the ship seems to slip into warp. On DS9, after a charming drunken session with O’Brien, Bashir confronts the other doctor to find that she thought “Julian Bashir” was an Andorian. She’s excited to meet Julian for real, and is envious of the long term projects he can undertake. Jake and Ben are lost somewhere in space when suddenly three Cardassian warships appear.  Dukat hails them to reveal that tachyon eddies in the Bajoran system have in fact accelerated them at warp speed right into the Cardassian system. Coincidentally, Cardassia was about to announce the have discovered an ancient Bajoran crash site on their homeworld.

There is a lot of significant stuff going on in this episode. Leeta, who will become a staple of future season and Rom’s wife, is introduced. Though not named, Kassidy Yates is introduced as an idea, and we will see her in the next episode, beginning her long courtship and eventual marriage to Ben. Jake as a writer begins to really flourish setting the stage for his future as a correspondent during the Dominion War. It’s almost enough to make one ignore how little sense the rest makes. OK- 800 years earlier Bajorans built an airtight solar wind sail ship, literally out of lumber. How did they get it off the surface of the planet and into space? But, let’s assume they had chemical rockets that could survive leaving an atmosphere to deliver their wood ships into space, a solar sail would have to be kilometers long.  But, let’s say it’s special reflective material; when the tachyons begin to accelerate them to warp, what keeps the acceleration from crushing them into a thin red paste on the back wall? Ben has gravity control, no inertial dampeners 800 years ago. And assuming they DO survive, I would assume the Cardassian system is several hours at mid-warp from Bajor. Doesn’t take them long here. Then, there’s a crash site on Cardassia; how did the wooden ship survive re-entry? Though, maybe the acceleration DID paste the crew and throw the ship through the Cardassian atmosphere hard enough to crater in.  Holy Prophets that’s tragic.

Quark and Rom have to deal with “Family Business” when a Liquidator named Brunt from the Ferengi Commerce Authority shows up to seize their business because family on Ferenginar is causing trouble. 

 It seems Quark’s mother has been earning profit, illegal in Ferengi society for a woman. She seems to be…ugh, wearing clothes too! Brunt tells Quark he has to get her to confess, and then pay back the profit she made.  On DS9, Sisko meets Kassidy Yates, and they agree to coffee.  While there, she seems restless. Seems she forgot she’s supposed to listen to a broadcast from her brother out on Cestus III. It seems he is part of a league playing an obscure Earth sport called “baseball.” Sisko is smitten. On Ferenginar, Quark has discovered that “Moogie” has made more profit than they thought. MUCH more. He plans to turn her in despite the fact it will ruin him, but she cuts him in on the profits. She confesses and turns some over, but splits the rest with Quark…mostly; she tells Rom there may be some more even than Quark found.

A neat little look at Ferengi society which of course features the marvelous Jeffrey Combs as Liquidator Brunt (one of no less than seven different Trek characters he played). 

SNL’s Andrea Martin plays Moogie here, but will not reprise the role later due to makeup issues. We see Ferenginar is constantly raining, and the traditional house greeting of “welcome to my home; what’s mine is mine” is given. The whole episode will prove to kick off some interesting turns for Ferengi society.

Kai Winn comes to DS9 to see Kira, as her old friend and cell leader “Shakaar” is causing trouble in Kira’s home town.  The minister of the Provisional Government has died, leaving Winn not only as Kai, but as political leader. She makes some changes which will pull some farm equipment out of Kira’s province, and away from the farmer Shakaar. He won’t give it back. Winn expects Kira to talk him into it, but instead she negotiates a meeting with Shakaar to find a compromise. 

Winn dismisses that and sends in security forces to seize the equipment, causing both Kira and Shakaar to gather up the old cell and go back on the run. Sisko refuses to intervene in what Kai sees as a test of her authority. She scrambles more troops into the area, and discord begins to mount, risking a civil war. Shakaar approaches one of the Colonels chasing him, and they realize how futile this is. The colonel brings Shakaar back…with full military support as he decides to run for the position of First Minister displacing Winn.

  I love how Kira can basically start a civil war on Bajor (as much as I hate Winn) and then just come back to the station when it is all over. It is a tight episode though that really makes you swell your dislike of Kai Winn, and gives Louise Fletcher yet another great opportunity to be loathsome.  Shakaar of course is played by Duncan Regehr, once a staple of tv sf and genre: TNG, V the Series, Disney’s Zorro. I thought he had faded away, but it turns out he is in fact now a very successful painter with art on exhibition all over the world.

“Facets” brings us to Jadzia Dax undergoing a Trill ritual where the memories of each specific host are taken from the symbiont and placed temporarily in another host. This allows a Trill to “meet” all the previous hosts. She selects various people close to her on the station to house the various personalities (including sexually coercing Quark into participating…and then assigning him a female host). 

 Things get dark when Joran-the short lived host we learned was a psychotic murderer-goes into Sisko, and tries to kill Dax, but it becomes worse when Curzon enters Odo and they two of them merge into a single entity. One that does not intend to return to the Symbiont. Meanwhile, Nog is working on a preliminary Starfleet exam, and ends up failing. Rom realizes Quark rigged it to keep the boy out of Starfleet, but Rom gets Sisko to administer the test again, setting him on the path to Earth next season. 

Jadzia confronts Odo/Curzon, and realizes that Curzon is ashamed because when he initially failed her out of the symbiosis program it was because he loved her. She accepts his love and tells him she loves him too-as a part of her. An abashed Odo meets her later, admitting that the sensory input of Curzon was tempting, but she thanks him as she now has Curzon’s memory of being part of Odo, and what it is to be a changeling.  

The Dax stuff is fun here, if a little contrived, but we get some great performances out of each of the stars as they assume the personalities of the hosts. Rene Auberjonois is particularly effective as Curzon, though Avery Brooks is downright sinister as Joran. The b-story with Nog is neat, as it is such a great bit of character development for the annoying Ferengi kid from season 1 who is now on his way to a career in Starfleet.  Go Nog!

And season 3 comes to an end when “The Adversary” makes itself known. Sisko is promoted to Captain while a Federation ambassador visits the station. 

The ambassador mentiones a hostile race, the Tzenkethi, have had a coup, and may restart what were apparently rather brutal hostilities with the Federation. Sisko takes the ambassador out on a flag waving mission along the Tzenkethi border with the Defiant, but O’Brien soon notices strange things are afoot. They realize the ambassador is actually a Changeling, and a hunt through the ship starts to try to keep him from his real mission- using the Defiant to attack the Tzenkethi  and occupy the Federation so the Dominion can make its move. The crew becomes more paranoid as they begin to suspect any of them could be the shapeshifter. A very Carpenter-esque blood test scene happens and Commander Eddington is id’d as the culprit.

 They soon find Bashir locked away though, and realize the Bashir who conducted the test was the Changeling. Odo liquefies to chase him down, as Sisko prepares to self-destruct the Defiant to prevent war with the Tzenkethi.  Odo stops the enemy in engineering, and for the first time in history a Changeling harms another Changeling as Odo kills the other to save the ship.  As the invader dies he tells Odo, “it’s too late; we are everywhere.”

The “Thing” like horror aspects of this episode play off pretty well, keeping you guessing who may or may not be the Changeling at any given time. The paranoia we see the crew experience is shared by us as viewers at the end as we realize just how prevalent the threat from The Dominion may be, leaving a very disquieting end to season three. We have to talk here though about Sisko not becoming a Captain until S3. Really? Come on Trek, your first Black commanding officer leading a TV show, and you left him a Commander for three years? At least now Sisko has the rank, he has the goatee, and as we head into season 4, we get the shaved head; Sisko will soon evolve into his final form!

NEXT VOYAGE: Season 4 begins with more Klingons that you can shake a Bat’leth at as paranoia about the Dominion threat leads the Empire to pursue “The Way of the Warrior.” Best of all?  WORF!!!

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Star Trek DS9 Rewatch Log, Stardate 1909.24: Missions Reviewed, “Prodigal Daughter,” “The Emperor’s New Cloak,” and “Field of Fire.”

In “Prodigal Daughter,” Chief O’Brien has gone off to find the widow of the man Bilby he befriended in the Orion Syndicate the year before (I personally wonder if it is to return their cat) and gone missing.  He happens to have disappeared on a world where Ezri’s family, the Tigans, own a mining business. Ezri has not been home in some time, but goes to see what she can do for Miles.  

Getting there, she finds her younger brother emotionally troubled, her older brother trying to please mom running the business, and her mother fawning over and protecting the younger brother while sharply critical of the older. Through the uncomfortable family dynamics, Ezri’s mother does find O’Brien is in local custody, picked up having been in a fight with two Naausicans of the Orion Syndicate. He found Bilby’s wife, and she is dead.  

She also worked for the Tigan family. Ezri and O’Brien start digging and find out her older brother made a deal with the syndicate when the mine his some hard times a while earlier. In exchange they wanted the company to “hire” Mrs. Bilby and pay her regardless of the work she did.  Ezri confronts him on this, but it is her younger brother who comes forward to say that Bilby was going to extort them for more, so he handled it and killed her. After he’s arrested, Ezri’s mother ask Ezri to tell her that it’s not her fault. Ezri cannot and walks out.

Not that this is necessarily a bad episode, but the return to episodic tv is a little jarring with so many episodes in a row that tied to either the ongoing war story or story of the Bajoran Prophets and Pah-Wraiths. I need to remind myself that those contiguous arcs were NOT the norm then, and having them at all made DS9 ahead of its time. It was still an episodic landscape though, and each episode I watched last night being stand alone well, stands out. It also seems in a rewatch that the staff was trying very hard to get “caught up” on Ezri’s character development. They don’t pull a “Voyager” where every episode after Seven of Nine is introduced is about her, but all three tonight feature her prominently. Though, there are still ties here to earlier storylines, again engaging on O’Brien’s time undercover in the Orion Syndicate. Seems pretty coincidental though that in a big galaxy, Bilby’s widow happens to go to the family of the new counselor on DS9.

In “The Emperor’s New Cloak,” Quark continues to pursue Ezri when Rom tells him the Nagus is missing. They decide to look for him, when Ezri comes to Quark’s quarters but he realizes this isn’t “his” Ezri, but rather the one from the mirror universe. She has Zek, and will return him in exchange for a cloaking device since they don’t have them in the MU. Quark and Rom steal one, and Ezri takes them over where the Human Alliance lead by Smiley O’Brien immediately steals it (after killing Ezri’s co-conspirator a non-hologram Vic Fontaine). 

Turns out Ezri is in league with The Intendant (Mirror Kira) who is trying to get the cloak for The Regent (Mirror Worf). Brunt appears and breaks Quark, Rom, and Ezri out of prison and they again steal the cloak and make a break for it. Getting to the Regent’s ship, they find that the Intendant never planned to trade Zek back. Ezri and Brunt help them all escape, though Brunt is killed in the process by the Intendant. When the Defiant under Smiley shows up, they help disable the Klingon flagship. The Terrans capture Worf and the cloaking device and send the Ferengi on their way.

I have long hated this episode, finding it pretty ridiculous. We saw the MU has cloaking tech already, but making it cloak allows for a gag scene of Quark and Rom walking around carrying an invisible box. Ezri being literally in bed with the Intendant feels very exploitative (the polar opposite of how well done the same-sex relationship was with Dax in “Rejoined). Reading up on this one though, it seems producer Ira Steven Behr wanted to point out the inherent ridiculous nature of a “mirror universe.” He does manage that well, particularly with Rom’s running commentary on how “alternate” this alternate universe is, making it something akin to Bizarro World in Superman comics.  I will just say that I am glad “Discovery” doesn’t take this track when they get into the MU.

“Field of Fire” opens with the crew celebrating with the extremely talented new Defiant helmsman, whom Ezri walks back to his quarters after too much partying. 

The next morning though, he is found dead, shot with a projectile weapon at close range, but no power burns, and no sign of anyone entering his quarters after Ezri left. At the scene she is struck by how happy he had been, even finding a picture of him smiling and laughing with fellow officers. Soon after, another crewmember is found killed the same way and O’Brien figures out the method of murder. A sniper rifle with a mini transporter and trans-dimensional scope that allows the person to stand anywhere on the station and fire a round into anyone without being in the same room. Ezri, seeing a happy wedding picture of the new victim decides to act. She calls forward the memories of her host Joran, the murderer, to solicit his advice on finding the killer. He seems pretty bent on driving her over the edge too, but his insight is helpful. A third victim appears and Ezri notices this one too has a smiling photograph. If the killer can see into anyone’s quarters, they must be triggered by the emotions in the pictures. She begins sorting through the records of Vulcans. Narrowing to 28 suspects, she is on her way to her quarters when a Vulcan gets on the turbolift, and the Joran echo is convinced it’s the killer. He has Ezri use their model of the rifle to spy on this Chu’lak in his quarters where he is looking at Ezri’s personnel file. 

 As she watches, he takes out a transporter sniper rifle and starts looking for her. Joran is telling her to shoot him, to kill him, and when Chu’lak sights in on her, she does fire, hitting him in the shoulder and causing him to miss her. She and “Joran” go to the Vulcan’s quarters where Joran urges her to use his rifle and finish the Vulcan off.  Ezri does not, finding that the Vulcan just lost the crew of the ship he served on and has decided no one can ever be happy again. With Chu’lak stopped, she goes to reintegrate Joran, knowing that he will always be part of her, perhaps more so than Curzon and Jadzia; now he will not be buried.

Again, our third Ezri episode, but an effective locked door mystery.  The method of murder is interesting, and Ezri dealing with Joran now calls to mind watching “Mindhunter” on Netflix.  The idea they find the killer when he happens to get on the elevator with them seems like a bit of a shortcut in the story, and I think more investigation and less coincidence should have led to the end.  Also, the motivation on the Vulcan seems a little suspect, but the writers wanted the surprise of it being a VULCAN SERIAL KILLER, which perhaps again ties to the deconstruction of the Vulcans so prevalent in “Enterprise” and first seen in “Take Me Out to the Holosuite.”  Maybe I am comparing it too closely to “Mindhunter” which exists explicitly to explore murderer motivations, and here, it’s more of a character piece for Ezri. In the novels, Erzi will go on to become a starship captain in the fleet, more focused in sure of herself.  I wonder if we can say that’s due to her “wolf” being more assertive, a callback to the original series “The Enemy Within” where Kirk without his predator instinct becomes an ineffective leader?

NEXT VOYAGE: Odo finds another one of the 100 Changelings sent out into the universe in “Chimera.”