"I am Tosk."
"I'm sure you are."
Odo / Tosk small talk
"So let me get this straight. I don't get a cool "victory is life.", free drugs and an entire fleet battleships to blow shit up like my badass cousins. I just get to be chained up by the bloke who played that other Q on Voyager, and can look forward to being put in a zoo cage where jeering kids will throw chicken nuggets at me if I'm lucky! F*&%^&*& F$%&%*&^ B$£$%^^&!!!!"Synopsis.
O'Brien befriends a strange alien visitor from the Gamma Quadrant, who appears to be on the run from something. And we learn that if you want to, you can shirk making difficult moral decisions by saying it goes against the "prime directive".
Review
A damaged ship from the Gamma quadrant arrives through the wormhole. It is the first alien ship ever to have come from the other side. The occupant Tosk is obviously nervous about something, but Chief O'Brien manages to talk him into tractoring his ship on board. As O'Brien seems to have opened up a dialogue with the visitor Sisko tasks him with showing Tosk around the station. Isn't that cool. If this had been TNG and they had met up with the first alien visitor from the Gamma quadrant, you know Picard and Riker would hev been there in full dress uniform. But on DS9, they send the engineer in coveralls to initiate such a momentous first contact! That the guy who was a peripheral character on the old show, becomes the first man to meet someone from the Gamma quadrant! (well apart from Odo) Anyway O'Brien shows the alien around DS9, tries to learn a bit about the taciturn Tosk, and assigns him some quarters. (turns out he only sleeps for 17 minutes a night, and doesn't eat as he has nutrition fibres throughout his body. See Bettys thought....). When O'Brien departs Tosk asks the computers to locate where the weapons on the station are kept. The computer then denies him access as he is a stranger and informs security that he has tried to locate them. Er no! It actually shows him where they are. Anyone can just walk in and find this stuff out!
O'Brien reports back to Sisko his concerns. Tosk is clearly agitated about something, and has tried to pass off the damage to his ship as caused by travelling through the wormhole. It is in fact battle damage. Tosk is indeed an odd character. As O'Brien says there is no real malice in him, or indications of him being a hard case. No ill intent on behalf of the station on Tosks behalf. He is almost a naif in his manner. He is; in a way - the straightest person going. He claims that he has no vices to indulge when Quark tries tempting him with some of the more "indulgent" experiences on offer. He says he doesn't need them. He is on the greatest adventure of all (which he won't elaborate on). Which I always think someone on the Alpha course would say if you offered them a free weekend bender in Hamburgs reeperbahn.
Tosk is caught by Odo trying to access weapons. He non violently tries to escape but is cornered. He claims he has to prepare (for what?) In a holding cell, O'Brien tries to get him to spill the beans, but Tosk says that O'Brien must help him die with honour. A ship similar to Tosks appears which aggressively scans the station and the heavily armed, helmeted occupants beam aboard and storm the promenade. I say heavily armed, the suits they wear are made of spandex, which is well known for its ability to fend off ray gun hits. They are who Tosk is running from. They quickly commandeer the holding cell and capture Tosk. The reason for Tosk's strange anatomy and personality is revealed. Tosk (or Tosks) was (are) genetically created as sentient beings, specifically bred for these guys to hunt down and kill. The chief hunter is disgusted that Tosk has been captured alive (It's considered sporting to kill them), and as it was a "bad hunt", they'll stick him in a zoo so kids can laugh at him (I'm not saying the writers are trying to hammer home these guys are assholes BTW!!), the failed quarry.
The chief hunter tells a naturally disgusted Sisko that deliberately breeding and hunting a sentient lifeform is considered the ultimate test of strength, and that it is a noble and exciting existence for a Tosk, and a huge honour. I'd like to see how "noble and exciting" this prick would find it if he had was the "prey". The hunter wants Tosk transferred home to compound his "disgrace"
Now this is where the prime directive, Starfleets general order number one of not interfering in the affairs of others is brought up. Now as anyone familiar with the reviews of SFDebris will know, the Prime Directive has been used to justify some pretty lousy moral decisions in Trek in the past (well some were in this episodes future). Now Sisko says that the prime directive means there is little they can do to stop the hunters taking Tosk back. They may find what the hunters are doing, and the fate that awaits Tosk despicable. The hunt, and the entire episode is "part of their culture". Now I personally dislike this statement being wheeled out to justify cruel cultural practices (and no this does not make me a racist either.). I see it as a cowardly way to turn a blind eye to people suffering being dressed up as having an open minded philosophy to other cultures. Now unlike stuff like "Dear Doctor", this episode visibly demonstrates that the crew think that although it is "the rules", it stinks. The episode is explicitly saying that it is a lousy justification and not trying to actually say it is "moral". This episode is a good example of how DS9 was more willing to bend the rules, and shake off some of the almost dogmatic baggage Trek has. Kira says that if Tosk requests asylum he could avoid being sent home.
O'Brien tries to persuade him to claim asylum, but Tosk refuses. This scene is the strongest in the entire episode. It also highlights just how alien this guy is. He can't claim asylum as
"I am Tosk. The hunted. I live to outwit the hunters for another day. To survive til I die with honour."
Tosk simply cannot conceive of life without the hunt. It is the entire purpose of his existence, his whole world. The whole context of how he lives his life and how he thinks. He's a bit like some of the Jem Hadar were portrayed as in the show. He can't live outside the contexts of the hunt. O'Brien is visibly moved by this alien who totally lacks any form of deceit or corruption. Who speaks of honour (and this gets thrown around like confetti) and actually is the embodiment of it. Who literally is the straightest guy there is. O'Brien realises in an offhand comment to Quark, that although Tosk can't bend or even change the rules, O'Brien can on his behalf. He tricks Odo and the hunter into letting him escort his friend to the hunters ship (gesture of goodwill from Starfleet). There they incapacitate the hunters and O'Brien helps Tosk to flee and fight yet another day. Sisko who deliberately made a half arsed effort to stop them, is angry with O'Brien for deceiving his CO, but the Chief points out the hunters were unhappy he was captured (it wasn't a satisfying hunt remember), so he has backhandedly helped them too. When O'Brien leaves Sisko secretly smiles, glad that Tosk got away. It may not have been the done thing to do, but it was the right thing.
Mistakes
There is a scene at the beginning where one of Quarks Dabo girls complains about sexual harassment being in her contract. we never hear anything more about this scene in this episode or ever hear from the woman again. Was this some abandoned B plot? (she has quite elaborate alien makeup on too. I can't imagine that they went to all this trouble for a minute long scene) I am told she was originally supposed to proposition Sisko but the writers thought that a step too far.
Sisko tells Tosk he has travelled 90'000 light years in the wormhole. This contradicts the usual number of 70'000, given in most episodes.
There are security fields on the docking ring doors that glow when someone who has a weapon passes through them. We never see these again, and armed people can clearly walk through them (Invasive Procedures is a good example.) Why was such a useful system deactivated ?
Tosk can easily locate the stations weapons on the computers. So anyone can just find them. No I can't see the inherent silliness of this either.
Odo manages to confine Tosk pretty easily when he catches him trying to access the weapons lockers. I mean it's not like Tosk is ever in a situation where people want to get hold of him, and that he may need to get out of a sticky situation fast, is it?
Bettys Thought for the Day
Watching this episode again in hindsight of having seen it all before in a previous run, it is quite easy to see that Tosk is a proto Jem Hadar (though a much more pleasant chap!). He doesn't need to eat, or has need of too much sleep. He is of reptilian extraction. He was genetically engineered for combat purposes, and has difficulty thinking beyond the confines of what he was engineered for. He values honour through overcoming combative situations to the exclusion of all else. And he can shroud himself in an invisibility field. All of which to some extent were seen on the Jem Hadar. The writers have later confirmed that the Jem Hadar shroud and Tosks shroud are the same effect (they look different to me. Tosk just winks out, the Jem Hadar "shimmer" in), and that whoever clones the Jem Hadar also create the Tosks. I don't know how much of the concepts for the Dominion were layed out when this episode was written (if any), but it is a nice bit of foreshadowing. Give yourselves a bloody round of applause writer people.
Summary
Definitely the strongest episode brought out since the pilot episode at this point. At its heart it is a tale about how far we should follow or tolerate rituals and rules, even when they are immoral and actively harm us. That rules and rituals have to be bound with empathy and the context of circumstance (especially here on the frontier), or we end up with the ritual being automatically good because it is .... the ritual, hence a guy can actually justify hunting a sentient being as a "noble pursuit", which was part of the problem of the "prime directive" episodes we mentioned before, and that this one avoids. Credit must be given to both Colm Meaney for providing the emotional pathos of the episode as he gets drawn into Tosks plight, and Scott Macdonald for bringing Tosk to life with his strong physical presence, making Tosk both very alien but simultaneously someone whose plight we can all relate to. All in all a well paced episode, with an engaging story and mystery plot, that foreshadows what we might end up finding on the other end of the wormhole in later seasons.
Rating 8 / 10
Next Time.
DS9 is greeted by two old familiar characters who are on an epic mission to get fans of the Next Generation to bolster viewing figures, and Dr Bashir acts like an insufferable throbbing cockend.
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