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. "Captive Pursuit" 1x05

"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.

"This old Gamma quadrant game is called "whips n wormholes." If you bring a bottle of Smirnoff along, I'm sure Terrans will be allowed to join in!"

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.