Deep Space Nine Review "The Stroyteller" 1x13

"You're not the true Sirah!

You won't get any argument from me!"

Hovath and O'Brien

"Mum! Grandads been at the weed again. He now thinks he's Charlton Heston. It was bad enough when he had his "Yul Brinner" in Tesco!"

Synopsis

In which a bunch of idiotic villagers are threatened by a monster thats scary nature is somewhat spoilt by looking like a huge blob of custard pie foam. And some boring land dispute involving a fierce clan led by a standard 14 year old American kid, and a middle manager from Telford. What fun!

Because when I hear the word "Clan leader of rugged harsh territory and people." I always picture this guy.

and this girl as well.

Review

I'm going to break tradition with my review narative for this one, and start with the B plot of this episode which revolves around two remote clans (The Navat and the Paqu) on Bajor who are having some boring land dispute about their territory being all screwed up because the Cardassians redirected the river Glyrhond (the natural border between their respective territories) for one of their mines. Now one side has more land than they used to have, but the other wants (I can't remember which was which. I lost interest in the first 5 minutes.) the pre occupation territory. Now Kira says that the two sides are some of the sturdiest and most tribalistic people from the harshest land in all of Bajor, and that these negotiations will go badly. So who are the leaders of these rough tough people? Who would make the warlords of rural Afghanistan look like Sacha Baran Cohens Bruno? Of course! A paunchy middle aged man who looks like a middle manager of a polystyrene firm in Telford (The Navats guy), and a 14 year old girl. (Paqu) I shit ye not! It would honestly be like Hannah Montanna being a rural chieftain in Bangladesh (I.e not very likely.) Now I'm not saying young women haven't headed these sorts of societies. But Varis Sul (The Paqu leader) suffers from that old telly mistake of acting just like a young contemporary Western teenager in a supposedly uncontemporary non-Western one (Most noticeable in Disney cartoon films like "The Little Mermaid and Alladin". I once read that there is a remote clan of Pushtan warriors in the mountains of Pakistan who every year play the traditional local sport of kicking a donkey to death. That's how the Paqu should be portrayed (not that i approve of animal cruelty btw). Not as being headed by a teenager who probably timed the negotiations so they wouldn't clash with "Glee". When Quark patronised her with that drink, she shouldn't have just thrown it in his face. She should have disemboweled him! So to cut a long and not very interesting B story short. Sul ends up befriending Nog (who fancies her) and Jake. She feels she can't live up to her father, who was the last leader of the Paqu, (who was shot by the Cardies) and that she has never had a proper childhood. Blah blah. And the negotiations sort of get sorted off screen. The moral of this all ties in with the main plot of the burdens of being thrust into a role you never volunteered for, and that is weighed down with so much expectation from others. Look this isn't really Tolstoy!

So now we have all that idiocy out of the way, to the main plot. This episode began the ongoing blokey O'Brien Bashir relationship. As we know, they grew to become close friends throughout the course of the show. Well this the first time we see them put together properly and O'Brien certainly doesn't show any affection towards his future best pal at this point. He unsuccessfully tries to wriggle out of chauffeuring Bashir to a village on Bajor that needs urgent medical help or they all might die! Yes going out of your way to not do your bit to help people survive is preferable to spending a few hours with Bashir in a runabout! After the awkward trip and Bashirs unsuccessful attempts at small talk - they beam down to the village - which seems remarkably calm for the supposed medical emergency, and the local magistrate (who looks suspiciously like the space X-Files guy off "Trials and Tribbleations"!) takes them to some old bloke who is sick. He is the Sirah, and if he dies they all die.

The Sirah takes an interest in O'Brien, and he and Bashir learn of the Dal'rok, a creature that appears from the forest every harvest and tries to destroy the village. Only the sirah has the ability to rally the people with his storytelling and allow them to collectively drive the Dal'rok away. So if he croaks they're all a bit screwed. That night the Dal'rok appears in the village. I suspect they wanted to go for a fantastic ethereal look for the monster (a bit like in the manner of the Balrog off LOTR. Hence the name?) but the Dal'Rok just ends up looking like a huge blob of custard pie foam instead. The Sirah; despite Bashirs protestations - leaves his bedside to rally the villagers, who emit a magic brainwave field or something - that seem to repel the Dal'rok, but the old bloke collapses halfway through. The Dal-rok blasts the village perimeter wall and he appoints O'Brien as his successor, and is just about able to help the Chief manage to complete the ritual and drive the Dalrok off. Unfortunately the strain kills the elderly Sirah. The villagers however appoint Chief O'Brien the new Sirah much to the chagrin of Hovath, the young man who was supposed to take over.

O'Brien and Bashir manage to shake off the villagers who treat him like a celebrity (much to Bashirs amusement as O'Brien hates his newfound status. Nice touch to how their relationship would evolve.) , long enough to discover that the Dal'Rok doesn't seem to be a natural phenomena. Hovath comes to meet his "rival" and tries to kill O'Brien, but he and Bashir overpower him. Hovath explains that he was supposed to be the new Sirah, but couldn't rally the crowd. The Dal'rok inflicted harm on some of the villagers, and they don't have faith in his abilities anymore. O'Brien says he can have the position as far as he is concerned, and appoints him the new Sirah, but the magistrate says there is no way in hell Havath is getting another stab after last times fiasco. Now this highlights a particularly blatant flaw in the premise of this episode. In order for the story to work, the villagers have to act especially dumb, and I'm not even getting at things like how they fail to notice all that brain energy wave thing above their heads, and why hadn't someone had the individual insight to investigate this phenomena and rumble at least part of the mystery behind the Dal'rok (I'll reveal it in a bit.)? Think how silly the magistrates logic is for a minute. Yeah Hovath screwed up, and people got hurt. But Hovath is also the most qualified person to deal with the Dal'rok threat. O'Brien knows literally nothing about this thing. He is totally unqualified to deal with it. He hadn't even heard of it before he beamed down. Hell, he can't even fucking pronounce its name right at the beginning. Why are you so willing to 100 % put all this faith in him. If O'Brien fails YOUR VILLAGE WILL BE DESTROYED! This is serious shit. Why are you so confident in putting your life in the hands of a man who clearly is out of his depth? You NEED Hovath.

Hovath reveals the secret behind the Dal'rok. The village was riven with sectarianism a hundred years ago. The first Sirah had access to a ring (which all Sirahs have on them) which has a stone made from a piece of an orb of the prophets. To unite his people, the Sirah used the stone to create the Dal'rok from the villagers negative feelings. Thus with an external threat, they would band together and use the positive feelings (the brain energy field) to drive the negative (Dal'rok) ones away. The villagers say it is time for O'Brien to drive the Dal'rok off. O'Brien of course makes a complete hash of the storytelling and the Dal'rok strikes. Hovath realises he has to intervene or the great foamy thing will do more than coat them in cack. He manages to drive the Dal'rok off. The old Sirah you see knew this would happen. That O'Brien would be so monumentally terrible as Sirah, Hovath would have to step in, and the people would have renewed faith in thier true Sirah. O'Brien and Bashir make a sly escape whilst all the commotion is going on, just in case they make O'Briens job offer permanent!

Mistakes and Questions

I do have to agree with Phil Farrand of the "Nitpickers Guide." Yeah I don't doubt that the Dal'rok could have been effective (a bit too much. Would you have made it that arbitrarily physically dangerous, as opposed to superficially and demonstratively dangerous?) in what it was set out to do in the beginning. But wouldn't the villagers get desensitised to this thing showing up every year, then the empowerment speech, then it gets driven away. All repeated again ad nauseum the following year?

Summary

The Dal'rok plot was a proposed TNG script that never got made, but Michael Piller liked the premise and used it for the basis of this episode, and it shows. You could have stuck any alien of the week in here for the Dal'rok to threaten and it would have made little difference to the story. Meany is good at being humorously rubbish and out of his depth in the scene with the Dal'rok. "Once upon a time there was this Dal'rok.....!" There is some good banter between Bashir and O'Brien, with the former relishing his colleagues irritation at his new found fame, and it is not hard to see why the friendship between them was set up in later episodes. However it all relies on the villagers being total morons, and the whole monster thing is really pretty silly when you think about it. The negotiations are also just boring, and the Nog / Jake / Sul story isn't great either. The practical joke scene is quite funny though. So overall, it has good scenes in here. But it really isn't anything special.



Rating 6 / 10

Next Time

Kira has to try to get Anthony Hopkins to evacuate a habitable Bajoran moon which no one else apparently ever bothered to settle on. It's not like Bajor is short of resources, or was occupied by brutal oppressors was it?

Deep Space Nine Review. "The Passenger" 1x08

"What kind of fool are you?" Ty Kajida.

"My own special variety" Odo

I can't think of anything particularly pithy to say about this line. I just think it is a splendid retort!

Dodgy looking alien cadaver of former baddy scientist. I wonder where this plot may be boldly going?



Synopsis

It's the alien possesses one of our heroes story. Bashir commits crimes against acting, and Adrian Chiles shows up. God are "Daybreaks" ratings that bad?!

Review



Bashir is yet again boasting about his medical skills, and just how fricking awesome he is. This is just in case we forget that he is supposed to be an overbearing swaggering great cock of a human being, for about the fifth time this season. (They crank the asshole scale to 11, by having him banging on about "destiny fated him" to be a great healer*, and that he even impresses himself sometimes. What a cockend) God, or the prophets intervene to shut him up with a distress signal from a Kobliad ship which is breaking up. They rescue security chief Ty Kajada (who looks and sounds like Na'toth of Babylon 5. I can't imagine why! (-;{). There is another occupant in one of the cells. Kajada implores Bashir not to save his life and to leave him to a fiery fate, as he is an extremely dangerous criminal. Bashir refuses to just leave him there, and the dying man implores him to "make me live" before croaking on there the spot.




On DS9 Kajada wants to inspect the body of Vantika (the dead criminal). she is paranoid about being doubly sure he has kicked the space bucket. He was some mad scientist who used various incredibly dodgy methods to prolong his life anyway he could, and has the habit of faking his own death to evade capture.



Odo warns Quark not to have eyes for a shipment of rare deuridium ore bound for DS9, in the manner of him having eyes for Jadzia. This is where we meet Adrian Chiles lookalike, Leutenant George Primmin, a Starfleet security officer who appeared for this episode and the next. Primmin was essentially a prototype version of Michael Eddington, a qualified Starfleet security officer who would conflict with the unorthodox approach to law enforcement by Odo. This was a good idea, and brought some good conflict scenes between Primmin and Odo, and Odo and Sisko, where Odo even threatens to resign in a scene very reminiscent of "The Search" where he felt his position was being undermined by Starfleet. Admittedly it works better in the context of the whole Dominion thing, what with the increased security and other issues we shall look at when the time comes. So perhaps they shelved this plot for later, when it was more dramatically in context, and why Primmin disappeared so quickly.


Whilst Dax surmises Kajada is so zealous about the threat even a dead Vantika poses, because she has been so consumed with apprehending him for so long. Primmin complains to Odo, that namedropping the deuridium shipment (that is very valuable as the dying Koblaid species need to survive.) in front of everyone in Quarks bar was a risky idea. Odo tells him to fuck off and mind his own Starfleet business as he's chief here. Sisko warns a put out Primmin that he shouldn't be seen as lording the Starfleet spiel over their Bajoran hosts, and that no-one watches "Daybreak" anyway.

"Should have stuck with Christoyne on the wun shoaw! Having to pretend to be interested in whimsical TV links on roundabouts in Swindon, and bat colonies, sure boyts being on deep spoyce noyne!"

Odo realises someone has purged a load of computer files through a complex but indirect means. Kajada says Vantika has pulled this stunt before. Sisko doesn't accept that Vantika has somehow survived his death, but he may have an accomplice who wants to steal the valuable ore. Things get more mysterious when they discover someone snuck on board Kajadas ship and pinched some files pertaining to the humanoid brain. A cloaked figure threatens Quark in his deserted bar. He claims to be Vantika! Quark had pre - agreed to help him gather up some mercenaries to er... borrow the ore freighter, thus why he was nearby when the ship was damaged.

Dax thinks Kajada is right that Vantika managed to "transfer" himself from death. He has a tidgy mind control thing that works by bullshit science altering brainwaves (look does anyone really care about the minutia of this?) so he can possess them. Bashir thinks Kajada has been "possessed" (though if she had, why would she say he could cheat death? Encourage them to at least entertain the possibility? Vantika could just do what he wanted undetected?). I must add that this was the original idea in Morgan Gendell's original draft (and it perhaps would have been a more sensible "host"). But honestly you never fall for Kajada being Vantika for a minute. Odo says they should cut her out the loop in the investigation. That she'll be forced to show her hand and reveal herself. But Kajada just does her own unofficial investigation and is incapacitated in the attempt. It turns out Bashir is Vantika (yeah, I was surprised as well. Not!), he leads the mercenaries on a runabout to seize the freighter. We know Bashir is now evil, because he starts speaking slowly in a deep voice. Now I don't know if this was bad direction, or just Alex Siddig being thrust into such an unusual take on his normal role (Alex is a good actor in my opinion, and he played Bashir very well.) but his performance as Vantika is just... bad. It is so forced and laboured. He threatens DS9 to release their tractor grip of the freighter, or he'll attempt to escape, killing Bashir (which is a bit weird for someon so determined to be essentially immortal) and spreading yucky deuridium all over the Bajoran system (because it's not like a star system is very big volume wise, relative to a small cargo ship or anything) Dax suggests sending an EM signal through the tractor beam that would reawaken Bashirs personality and they stall him long enough to do just that. Vantika fights the Bashir personality, but he prevails and lowers the shields where they beam him out and stun him with a phaser (not because he's dangerous. Sisko just likes to take time out to enjoy himself!) They manage to extract Vantikas personality from the doctors, and it gets trapped inside a futuristic ashtray thing for all eternity, which of course Kajada has to arbitrarily vapouris much to the shock of the regular crew, because obviously the laws of due process aren't that big a deal. In short; the DS9 team are triumphant once more.


Mistakes and Questions

There is no background music in the opening shot of the runabout flying through space, or one of the exterior station scenes. A first I believe. It certainly feels weird to listen to.

Bashir says medical tricorders find it difficult to register death. Obviously because that ability isn't all that useful to a doctor anyway. But he then registers a death with one in this episode. Then he does in "Battlelines". Need I go on!!

Kira and Bashir beam onto a burning ship with toxic gasses in the atmosphere that is also venting into space rapidly. Note to the runabout manufacturers. There are things called spacesuits (or at the very least breathing apparatus) which are very useful in an oxygen poor /deficient environment (i e: most of the bloody universe), why not equip your ships with them.

Odo says Dax has 10 lifetimes of friends to choose from, before shacking up with Quark. Shouldn't that be 7 lifetimes?

Bashir says humanoids only use a tiny bit of the brain. This sounds suspiciously like that old urban myth "you use only 10% of your brain" which is not true at all. You use all your brain.

The thing Vantika uses on his fingernail to transfer his entire neural capacity to another is tidgy. In "Our Man Bashir" transferring the neural capacity of a humanoid nearly flooded the entire stations computer capacity to the max. Awesome bt of design that!

Betty's Thought for the Day.

Bashirs comments about him being fated to be a great healer, or being touched by destiny to be the great doctor he is would be shot down in flames in the fifth seasons "Doctor Bashir I Presume?" I won't spoil the revelations in that episode. But it is certainly an interesting contrast to what he says here!


Summary

There is nothing inherently that bad about this story, though it isn't all that great either. It's a pretty statndard "alien possession of the week" affair. It's pretty entertaining as it is, and the whole Odo / Primmin conflict is probably the strongest part of the episode (nice payoff when Primmin saves the day using Odo's unorthodox methods!), and sets up a plot thread that would be more effectively used later on down the line. It is a bit let down by the laboured acting in the "Bashir is possessed" scenes, and some of the contrived sciencey bits. But it is an enjoyable if fairly forgettable episode.


Rating. 6 / 10

Next Time

"Move Along Home". The low point of season 1. We watch some daft looking aliens play a boring game. Our main heroes hopping about singing stupid rhymes. And you can act like a complete bastard, because it's only a game after all.

Deep Space Nine Review. "Q-Less" 1x06

"You hit me! Picard never hit me!"

"I'm not Picard!"

Sisko's more hands on approach to Quarks shenannigans

"We don't need the slaphead! And if it all goes pear shaped, I'll give Columbo's wife a visit!"





Synopsis
Q and Vash pay a surprise visit to DS9 in an attempt to win over TNG fans, and mysterious forces threatens to destroy the station, and one of those is just the stations inability to physically contain the insufferably massive ego of Season 1 Doctor Bashir.


Review

There is no real other way to say this. The reason this episode was created was to draw fans of TNG to the new show. Place a popular TNG character onto DS9 and reel the viewers in. Now I don't have a problem about this, TV is after all is a business, and a lot of good stories can flow from capitalising on popular characters from other shows, and from nostalgia itself - if you have a solid piece of writing underpinning it, and not just come across as just an excuse to give a popular character a vehicle at the expense of the episode itself. This is unfortunately what happens here, and probably why this was Q's only DS9 outing. So, to the actual episode itself.

Bashir is boasting to his latest conquest about how clever he is, and how he was just so bloody good at medical school. If this was real life she'd have either told him she was a lesbian or made her excuses to go the loo and binned the date off after about 30 seconds of this nonsense, but no. He starts banging on about how he mistook a pre ganglionic fibre for a post ganglionic nerve (see mistakes) in an exam and that is why he graduated second in his class. O'Brien who can hear all this, looks like he wants to throw up, and to be quite honest me too. Don't worry thought they do tone Bashir down from the cockend he is here, to a rather likable character.

They discover that a runabout returning from the Gamma quadrant has been totally drained of power, they open it up to rescue Dax and find she has a passenger Vash, a rogue archaeologist, and former shag of Captian Picard; who has been in the Gamma quadrant for two years (before the wormhole was discovered.) What they don't see is Q, hiding in the corridor, because as we know (but they don't) it was established in TNG Q and Vash explored space together, but have presumably returned as they felt they had to do their bit to bolster Paramount's ratings.

Vash won't say how she got to the Gamma quadrant, and she deposits some alien bric a brac she picked up in the assay office, including a glowing crystal, and as we know glowing crystals on Trek are not a good sign of things to come.

The power outages move from the runabout to the station. Meanwhile we learn that Vash wants to part company with Q, turns out he's a bit of an obnoxious travel companion, but Q wants her back. Now I must point out that SFDebris made a big point out of the major flaw in this episode in his video review. That Q, the omnipotent has been reduced to chasing skirt for laughs. Originally this episode wasn't supposed to feature Q, just Vash. Obviously they saw her backstory coincided with Q and thought hell; we'll stick him in as well. Unfortunately there is little reason for Q to be in this episode at all (more on this when he meets the DS9 crew), so they have had to come up with him trying to get Vash back. Now Q justifies his actions by saying that as he's been there and done that, the wonders of space now hold about as much inherent wonder as filling in a tax return form. But watching Vash experiencing these things for the first time makes it seem interesting again. I suppose that is sort of plausible, that experiencing it with a human who is not encumbered with all that boring Starfleet nonsense (as Q sees it), and can appreciate it at face value, someone who is willing to bend the rules, and most importantly was Picard's ex girlfriend, rather than going all Prime Directivey and taking the moral high ground at every M class world they land on"Q didn't take not coming first in the Tsar lookalike contest, very well."

We need a little exposition to carry on to the next scene. O'Brien has spotted Q and informed Sisko. O'Brien believes Q is behind the power outages and graviton surges, which are now strong enough to have punched a hole in the hull of the station. Sisko confronts Q, and thus we get the second major scene with De-Lancie (It is striking how little Q is actually in this episode.), and it is here that the real flaw of the episode is laid bare. Now don't get me wrong De-Lancie is great hamming it up as Q, and some of his lines are the funniest of the entire show (O'Brien being one of the "little people" on the Enterprise, and how Picards lackeys would have solved th technobabble behind the outages hours earlier than this crew.) But it does highlight that Q is essentially tied to the TNG crew in a way he isn't here. The dynamic between Q and Picard was driven by this slightly pompous and formal captain being, who was used to being addressed in a certain way, being antagonised by the thoroughly impertinent and irreverent character. There was also a reason for Q to behave the way he did. He was annoyed about the self righteous and complacent nature of TNG humans, and wanted to point out that they weren't half as great as they thought they were. The comedy of the Q episodes derived from the crews antagonism towards him for all the horrid things he tormented them with. On DS9 that dynamic was not there. (Voyager had to use Janeways gender to create a dynamic.) Apart from O'Brien, they don't know who he really is. They don't really interact with him as they are too busy trying to locate the source of the graviton surges, to respond to his insults. I mean you may as well have had Simon Cowell stood on ops insulting the crews competency and it wouldn't have changed much. Yes we might argue that Sisko did confront Q, when he accuses him of causing the surges (which Q denies) and thus we get the "boxing scene where Sisko floors him (funny scene). But that was the problem, Sisko's brief with Q was a practical one. "I think you have caused this! You help me fix, no games! either stop what you are doing or shove off!" That is essentially the limit of their dust up. Despite Q saying that Sisko is easier to rile than Picard, it isn't true. Sisko is only pissed off at Q because of the fix they are in. With Picard, Q was philosophically able to get under his skin. Thing is Sisko isn't going to cite Shakespeare out of context with him, or go off on one about how "evolved" humans are. It just isn't Siskos thing. Sisko just isn't a foil for Q's games, and for Q that means he's no fun at all, and this is why Q was never seen again on DS9.

The graviton beams are getting so bad that the station is getting pulled in towards the wormhole which will destroy DS9. Sisko doen't think Q is behind it. The damage is too crude and lacks style for it to be him. We are now treated to a boring scene where the "valuable" Gamma Quadrant relics are auctioned off at Quarks. I'm not saying they were forced to pad this epidoe out, but Christ this scene is boring. If I wanted to watch the Antiques Roadshow I'd bang the I-player on. It alsoi doesn't help that the "relics" are those classic telly sci fi ones. The kind of kitschy shit you'd never take out of the cardboard box in the basement as they are that naff. Well to cut a long story short. The crew manage to locate the source of the graviton disturbances, that glowing crystal (what else?), which they beam into space before it tears the station apart, and before Quark can flog it for a huge profit. It is in fact a luminous (if incredibly shitty looking) alien life form, that beggers off into the wormhole. Everyone is saved, we all have a laugh at Quarks expense. Q can't convince Vash to leave, who decides to explore Tartaris V with Quark instead. Er.. and that about it.

Mistakes & Questions

Bashir claims he graduated second in his medical class because he got the Post ganglionic nerve and pre ganglionic fibre mixed up. I'm no surgeon, but apparently these two organs are so dissimilar this would be like a mechanic mixing up the gearbox of a car with the gear lever, as they both have the same word in them.

O'Brien claims that the runabouts power (which was used to bring Vash back) is do drained that the warp drive is close to losing magnetic containment. Shouldn't it be serviced in outer space within beaming distance of DS9 rather than in the dock, in case the warp drive does actually fail.

Bettys Thought for the Day

The climax of this story involves a seemingly inanimate object that becomes a spacebourne organism, which unintentionally threatens our heroes trying to escape confinement. In a way that is similar to Encounter at Farpoint, the TNG pilot (which also introduced Q to that series, who again knew what was happening but waited to see if our heroes figured it out in time.) So a nice bit of continuity there.

Summary

Q-Less is not without it's entertaining moments. De -Lancie as I said is great, scenery chewing and generally arseing about for our entertainment, and he has good chemistry with Jennifer Hatrick (Vash). The scene where Sisko hits him is a definate highlight. However the story just doesn't hang together very well. The idea to have Q on DS9 was clearly decided before they had a solid script to justify his appearance. This leaves the episode with a lot of filler moments (I can't believe how dull parts of this episode get) and it is noticeable that Q isn't in all that much of the episode. It is best to see this episode as a gimmick to get a popular TNG character on DS9. But it was a gimmick that didn't really work, and it is unsurprising Q returned to DS9. The first disappointing episode of the show.

Rating 5 / 10

Next Time

All American TV shows have to do a courtroom drama, and DS9 in no exception. Oh and they try and explain how the Trill slug thing works (which was probably Curzons excuse as well!),and I get Lady Gaga on the brain.