There is just something unintentionally funny about this line. It sounds like premise to a really stupid TV game show.
You want my hat don't you asshole. Admit it you bloody want it. I shall wrestle you naked for it before I let it leave my spiritual bonce!Synopsis
The Kai takes a trip to the Gamma quadrant in a runabout, and it all goes badly wrong. I mean what other way was it going to go. Oh and war is like really bad as well. I feel some heavy handing Trek sermonising coming on.
Review
Do you remember the Culture Clubs "War Song" . Well this episode reminds me of it. Like Boy Georges song; its heart is in the right place, but the overly simplistic and unsubtle nature of both this song and "Battlelines" really spoil the point that they are trying to make, ironically derailing much of the valid points they were setting out to make. Honestly when Sisko is spouting the gospel to Shella and Zlangco, stick the tune on in the background and you'll know what I mean!
Kai Opaka makes an unexpected visit to DS9 (She's never left Bajor before.) She wants to have a butchers at the celestial temple. Sisko and Kira are sceptical (It's not like shuttles crash a lot in Trek after all. Teehee!) but agree to take her for a quick sojourn through the Gamma quadrant and straight back to DS9 again. I must admit that Camille Saviolas(The lady who plays Opaka) face is a treat during the trip. She looks like a kid going to Disneyworld or something. Nice touch! They are about to go back when they receive a signal (which obviously had read the script) Sisko wants to investigate it later when she's safely back, but Opaka implores him to check it out there an then as she doesn't get out much. They find a moon orbited by satellites that has lifeforms on the surface, but one of the satellites fires on them and they are forced to crash land. The Kai is killed by the injuries she sustains in the crash (If only someone had invented a device to keep people restrained in a chair in a moving vehicle!) Kira laments that her strife torn world needed the Kai who was of great spiritual support during the occupation, and that someone as remarkable as she, died in a senseless accident on some shitty moon in the middle of nowhere. As the Bajorans fret over the delay of the Kais return, O'Brien and Dax decide to look for the runabout in the Gamma quadrant themselves. The stranded crew are captured by the inhabitants of the moon, a roughed up bunch of humanoids led by Shel la, who looks just like Roy Schieder off Jaws. He says that they [the Ennis] are prisoners on this moon and are at war with the Nol - Ennis, who will now see the surviving trio as allies of the Ennis as they landed on their turf. The Nol - Ennis duly attack the Ennis stronghold and inflict many casualties.
Look it wasn't my idea to have the fucking talking dolphin on the show!
Kai Opaka suddenly appears though. She is restored to full health. Bashir discovers biomechanical microbes in her body which might explain her "doing a Jesus". Soon the "casualties" start reanimating as well, they have the same microbes in their bodies also. Roy says they shouldn't be surprised at this, it is a constant process. They have all died and been revived many times. Roys people exiled them here as they and the Nol Ennis wouldn't stop fighting each other on thir world. Far from immortality being a blessing, they are cursed by their people to fight a never ending war. (nice.) This is the important revelation of this episode, and it has two problems with it. I'll bring the first up now. the writers of this episode want to put across the message that war and hate are bad (as we obviously don't know that already.), and they consciously decided not to elaborate on the nitty gritty of the conflict. Just plain show that these people behave like mindless assholes. To do this the whole conflict gets simplified to something resembling a war themed straw man. The creative writing cliches are all there. We don't know what started the war, tick. We are all motivated utterly by mindless mutual hatred. We are (ironically) both as bad as each other, and our enemies are entirely like us, but we are so motivated by each others destruction to notice this. The "war" is nothing but a plot device to get the message across. Sometimes this is done to such an extent that it doesn't even make sense. In the next scene Sisko says that his people will rescue them, and he will take them all off the moon. Arrange a ceasefire with Zlangco (the leader of the Nols) and we can all leave (a place and life Roy says is hell), but he breaks the ceasefire to "kill " Zlangco and his men. I mean is Roy really that stupid? He has the chance to finally ESCAPE HELL! All he has to do is hold fire for a few days, get beamed up and they will never have to lay eyes on the Nols ever again (Sisko says the two groups will be relocated to different worlds.) But he launches a pointless attack that serves no purpose. Anyhow why has seemingly no-one ever just thrown the towel in with all this war? They seem to have been there for a long time, or so it is implied. This is what you get when you simplify stuff like this.
Kira takes time out to have a chinwag with the Kai. Opaka says that Kira is so chuffed off with the inmates because she sees stuff in them that she doesn't like in herself. Kira is mortified that the Kai thinks she is just someone who likes a good fight. She says that the occupation forced her to fight, and that all she has ever known is violence. But that doesn't mean she likes it. She's had her fill of violence. This is the first time we see that Kira is a religious person. That she deeply reveres the Kai, and why she was so hurt to think that the Kai may see her in that light. That the violence she committed doesn't square with her beliefs. And it's safe to say that the reason she was so pissed off in the early episodes, is that the Kai correctly deduces that she has never come to terms with the violence she has committed, and that she has to to find peace in herself. In a way it echoes Sisko's encounter with her, as he had yet to move on after Jennifer's death.
Bashir discovers that the microbes are tailor made for this moon and that anyone "infected" will die if they leave the biosphere on here. This is the second thing wrong with the revelation I mentioned. This reminds me of a comment a video games reviewer made about mid 90's beat em up "World Heroes". In this Street Fighter 2 esque game (and I mean really esque in parts!!) the plot was that a genius scientist had built a time machine in order to find out who the best fighter in history was. As the reviewer pointed out. What a monumentally lame use for something so marvelous and full of potential. Likewise, these guys went to so much trouble, creating immortality nanites, (tailor made for a moon as well.) - and just to teach a bunch of fuckwit warring tribes a lesson! Think of the wasted potential of that! Fortunately, Cheif O'Brien manages to penetrate the sattelite defence grid with a decoy, and slip in to retrieve them all. Kai Opaka meanwhile stays behind (not that she had much of a choice.), she believes that the prophets wanted her to be in this place to bring peace to these two factions, as was Kira - to find her inner peace. (or was that what I read in a self help book I shoplifted?)
Mistakes and Questions
Opaka gives O'Brien a bracelet to give to Molly (It's like she knew shew wasn't coming back or summat!!), and they make it out as sort of a big deal. Was this a plotline that was simply abandoned, or did she just give Molly something to flog on EBay?
How big a bunch of bastards are Roys people? Making them fight for all time? It is one of those incidences where the bad guys are made to pay the price by being subject to a far worse evil than the one they originally committed.
Kira calls the Kai "Opaka". In later episodes the Kai is called "eminance". Admittedly Opaka's successor is probably a stickler for formality. But Kira is shown to be reverential of Opaka. It's a bit like a devout Catholic saying addressing the pope as "Ratzinger"
The nacelle on the exterior shot of the crashed shuttle is nothing the same as the one we normally see on the model exteriors.
Bashir uses a medical tricorder to pronounce someone dead. You know what was supposed to be difficult to do.
The Kai may have survived if they had had seatbelts. Just a suggestion in a fast moving ship that gets buffeted around a lot.
I'm surprised Sisko and Kira didn't get the book thrown at them for putting the Kai in danger in the first place. I don't think "The old girl didn't get out much to be honest your honour!" will cut it at the tribunal.
Betty's Thought for the Day
Two scenes stand out in this episode that don't fit in the review. The first is when they discover Kiras file kept by the prefect (Not mentioned by name as Dukat) on her resistance activities. She is displeased (to say the least) to hear the rather perfunctory description of her resistance days! Secondly Bashir does suggest that he could "switch off" the microbes and let the warring tribes be at the mercy of death again. He suggests it is the "kindest" thing to do. Not only is this willingness on DS9 to muddy the waters, but it also leads Roy to the conclusion that it is the ultimate weapon, if his lot live and the others die. We see how he has become so corrupted by war he can't think in any other terms than that, even for an act of "mercy". It's one of the few subtle moments in this very unsubtle episode.
Summary
Battlelines is alright. It suffers however from the contrived immortality microbes thing, and the fact that the nature of the war and the sermonising around it lack subtlety and any real form of depth, and the planet sets and alien design aren't up to much either. It's not terrifically profound stuff to state that love and peace are better than hate and warfare. We sort of know that. The scenes with Kira and the Kai are probably the highlight (if also not terribly profound stuff either.) of the episode, and it really exists to get the unifying Opaka out of the way for future strife on Bajor in later episodes . Its not a terrible episode, but there's nothing really great about it either.
Rating 6 / 10
Next Time.
The worlds least convincing clan chieftain. A sky monster that looks like a huge custard pie, and that guy was the space FBI bloke in "Trials and triblleations."
No comments:
Post a Comment