In which Kira turns into a rock. No, seriously.
I’ve completed my re-watch of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Now it’s time to start Deep Space Nine! I am much less familiar with this show, though I’m pretty sure I’ve seen about 80-90% of the episodes. It’s been so long that I’m sure it will all feel brand new. My wife has never seen the show. She and I will go through, review every episode, and give commentary and a grade from A-F. There are SPOILERS for each episode below. Without further adieu, here’s:
“Life Support”
Synopsis
Vedek Bareil is injured on a transport coming to DS9 and Bashir must try to help forestall the potential brain injury that’s happening. Meanwhile, the Bajorans are in important peace talks with the Cardassians, spearheaded by Bareil’s efforts and grudgingly agreed to by Kai Winn. Bareil’s condition continues to deteriorate even as the peace talks enter pivotal phases. Bashir utilizes experimental techniques to keep Bareil alive, but strongly urges him to go into a kind of stasis so they can cure him later. Bareil refuses the recommended treatment and continues to push for more and more dangerous treatments. Ultimately, the peace talks seem to be successful, but Bareil dies, having already had enough treatments to be very little of the man he once was.
Commentary
Wow, this was a tough episode to watch. Somehow you keep hoping that Bareil may just pull through, but it all seems inevitable from the beginning. The ethical dimensions raised here are interesting, but some of the difficult questions they’re dealing with–whether to do treatments that may cause more harm than good, whether the patient is truly the last say so far as which treatments can or should be done, and more.
I genuinely thought Kai Winn must have had something to do with Bareil’s injury, and that the plot would go in the direction of having the peace talks undermined by that very thing, but the writers didn’t go there, and I have mixed feelings about it. It seems like a potential missed opportunity for increasing the nefarious nature of Winn, but it also seems like it would be possibly too much if they had gone that way.
It’s worth mentioning this is also a piece of good development for Kira, who is stuck between the wishes of Bareil and her own.
The secondary plot following Nog and Jake and their different cultures is a good development for them, too, adding another dimension to their relationship that wasn’t there before.
Grade: B “It felt a little like it could have been more, and the questions it raised could have gone father, but it was an interesting character piece with some good ethical quandaries.”
Wife’s Grade and Comment: A- “It was good further development of characters we already knew, plus some ethical dilemmas from Dr. Bashir.”
“Heart of Stone”
Synopsis
Kira and Odo crash land on a rocky moon after chasing a Maquis vessel. On the moon, Kira gets stuck in a rock which quickly reveals itself to be some kind of energy shifting organism. Meanwhile, Nog has come to Sisko to ask to get a recommendation for joining Starfleet.
As the two try to figure a way out of the mess, and the rock-energy-organism takes over Kira more and more, Odo begins to open up to Kira more than ever.
Commentary
Odo! Tell Kira already!
The genius of this episode is that it uses Odo brilliantly. Here, we don’t have him using tricks of his own shapeshifting to do something mundane like being a glass on a tray or something. No, he is purely using his powers of deduction to show that he remains as totally awesome as he did before.
Perhaps the greatest difficulty in this episode is the plausibility of having the other Changeling as the villain. It’s not so much that a shapeshifter like Odo couldn’t turn into Kira and look as it did, but the problem is rather that Odo at one points fires a phaser on fake Kira which would, presumably, have greatly harmed the Changeling. Yet there is little-to-no reaction from her. Oh well.
Grade: B+ “Odo being Odo as Odo does best.”
Wife’s Grade and Comment: B+ “I think it was an interesting look into Odo’s character and fun Nog development, but utterly implausible.”
Links
J.W. Wartick- Always Have a Reason– Check out my “main site” which talks about philosophy of religion, theology, and Christian apologetics (among other random topics). I love science fiction so that comes up integrated with theology fairly frequently as well. I’d love to have you follow there, too!
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Star Trek: DS9– For more episode reviews, follow this site and also click this link to read more (scroll down as needed)! Drop me a comment to let me know what you thought!
SDG.
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