the m0vie blog

This February and March (and a little bit of April), we’re taking a look at the 1995 to 1996 season of Star Trek, including Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. Check back daily for the latest review.

What is perhaps most surprising about Broken Link is how quiet and subdued it all it.

The fourth season began with a bang, with the dissolution of the alliance between the Klingons and the Federation that had been established in Heart of Glory and dramatised in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. In fact, The Way of the Warrior featured the largest and most impressive combat sequence in the history of the Star Trek franchise to that point. Even allowing for The Sacrifice of Angels and What You Leave Behind, the fourth season premiere still ranks as one of the most elaborate set pieces in the franchise’s history.

Broken Link consciously circles back to that. It features the first reappearance of Robert O’Reilly as Gowron since The Way of the Warrior. The episode makes it clear that the problems depicted in The Way of the Warrior are only worsening. There is no small suggestion that Gowron is hoping to turn the cold war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire into a shooting war. Broken Link is very much a show about taking the status quo that was established in The Way of the Warrior and ramping it up.

However, what is most striking about Broken Link is the manner in which it escalates the situation. Not a single weapon is discharged in Broken Link, which is the last season finalé of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine not to feature a combat sequence of some description. The actual plot of the episode is remarkably straightforward and linear, keenly focused on a single member of the ensemble rather while relegating politics into the background. Even in terms of the scripting of the episode, care is taken to slow the pace down and allow character-driven dialogue scenes.

The result is a strangely intimate season finalé, one free of the bombast that comes with the season-bridging two-parters favoured by Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. It is interesting to compare Broken Link to something like Basics, Part I, if only because the latter would never make room for Jadzia joking about being surrounded by “naked men” or Garak playing “Star Trek Cluedo” with Odo in sickbay. In fact, Broken Link is even relatively quiet by the standards of Deep Space Nine, lacking the galactic status quo shift of The Jem’Hadar or A Call to Arms.

As with a lot of the fourth season, there is a sense that the production team have made a point to learn from the third season: to improve upon what works and to fix what doesn’t. The Adversary was something of a happy accident at the end of the third season, a script thrown together at short notice when Paramount vetoed a season-ending cliffhanger that would be loosely adapted for Homefront and Paradise Lost. The slow character-centric tension of The Adversary was never intended to close the third season, but Broken Link realises that such an approach worked well.

The result is an episode that feels incredibly comfortable in its own skin. Deep Space Nine is well aware of what it is, regardless of the direction and input that the studio offered the production team at the start of the fourth season. In fact, despite its somewhat relaxed pace and the space that it affords its character interactions, Broken Link is remarkably focused on what it wants to do. The closing line of the episode (and the season) is clever, consciously tying back the bold new direction of The Way of the Warrior back into the series’ own larger endgame.

In hindsight, Broken Link is something of a misleading title. Instead, it ties everything together.

One of the defining aspects of the fourth season of Deep Space Nine, particularly as compared to the second season of Voyager, is how it approaches the issue of continuity. Under the direction of Michael Piller, the second season of Voyager went big with its continuity. The second season attempted to tell a long-form arc built on a serialised plot that tied together threads seeded across various episodes. The references carried across were largely plot-driven, whether awkwardly shoehorning Jonas-as-traitor into Threshold or slotting Paris-as-rebel into Meld.

The second season of Voyager made everything secondary to this recurring plot continuity. It didn’t matter that the Kazon were a terrible concept for an alien species, they were slotting into the role of primary antagonist. What little character development Threshold afforded Tom Paris suggested that the wayward officer had finally made peace with himself and his place on the ship, only for the season it immediately kick off an arc that culminated with Paris leaving the ship in Investigations. There was no character continuity involved in these larger arcs.

When Paris left Voyager in Investigations, one might assume that Harry Kim would be the character to put it all together; however, that plot thread was tied to a Neelix episode, so it fell to Neelix to redeem Tom. What little of Paris’ character arc actually existed was shunted off-screen. Little character details were promptly mentioned and forgotten, like the discovery of Harry’s childhood fear of hospitals in The Thaw. Chakotay was not even punished for mutiny in Manoeuvres, the show tacitly acknowledging its own lack of consequences.

This experiment was largely considered a failure. Notably, Voyager never attempted another long-form storytelling experiment on the scale of the Kazon and Jonas arcs. The closest it came was teasing the introduction of the Borg at the tail end of the third season, a much more modest effort. There are a lot of reasons why this attempt to graft long-form storytelling into Voyager didn’t work. Some of that was down to the fact that Michael Piller was consciously pushing against his team of writers, but there was also a sense that Voyager tried to go too large too fast.

In contrast, Ira Steven Behr’s experiments on Deep Space Nine were a lot more successful. There are lots of reasons for this. Most superficially, the writing staff on Deep Space Nine were always more keenly aligned than on Voyager, friends as much as colleagues. Ronald Moore reflects of the difference between writing for Deep Space Nine and Voyager:

We were so tight as a writing staff, we loved the show so much, that we could sit in that room and literally scream at each other. Hans Beimler and I could just go at it, hammer and tongs, yelling and really getting upset. We would just sit there and yell about story points, and then, ‘Where are we going to lunch today?’ We would all go out, and really enjoy each other’s company and have a good time. What I found on Voyager was suddenly it wasn’t about the work anymore. It wasn’t about making the best show that we possibly could; it was about all these other extraneous issues. It was about the politics of the show, and the strange sort of competition of egos within the writing staff and the producing staff and the management of the show.

Moore is obviously speaking to his experiences on the Voyager staff at the start of the show’s sixth season, but it seems to reflect the tone behind the scenes throughout the run; most notably, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor had profound disagreements that they both took to the fan press during the second season. It goes without saying that it is easier to build continuity and cohesion among a writing staff that actively get along.

Deep Space Nine also had the luxury of patience with its more difficult elements. It took the show about three seasons before it figured out how to write for both Julian Bashir and Jadzia Dax. In the early seasons, Bashir was treated as a fairly generic character who landed bland scripts like The Passenger, Melora and Distant Voices. The producers and Terry Farrell struggled to find a voice for Jadzia Dax, with the show prone to reducing Dax herself to a plot object in scripts like Dax, Invasive Procedures and Equilibrium.

However, the writing staff never abandoned the characters and never shuffled them to the background. Although it took some time and effort, the fourth season paid off the investment. Rejoined might just be the best Dax-centric episode of the show’s seven-season run. The fourth season managed three great Bashir episodes in Hippocratic Oath, Our Man Bashir and The Quickening. In contrast, Voyager tended to quite readily abandon characters who did not work out the box. Chakotay, Harry and Tuvok were all but forgotten about by the mid third season.

However, it is also worth noticing the differences in the way that the Deep Space Nine staff approached continuity, as compared to their counterparts on Voyager. During the second season of Voyager, the show effectively went “all-in” on a long-form story arc involving the Kazon, to the point that Michael Jonas would pop up for superfluous scenes in episodes like Dreadnought just to remind audiences that there was definitely a long-form story arc unfolding. The result was a show that felt it was trying far too hard.

In contrast, Deep Space Nine built its continuity in a much less intrusive manner. Character details spun gently from episode to episode. There were the larger elements, like Odo’s attraction to Kira. However, there were also smaller elements that demonstrated that the writers were all sitting down and reading one another’s scripts. These references do not necessarily call attention to themselves, but they suggest an attention to detail. This is impressive, with little details like Bashir’s stuffed teddy referenced in The Quickening appearing in In the Cards.

Serving as a capstone to the season, Broken Link is absolutely saturated with these little nods and references. Kira’s sneezing fit pays off a gag set up in Body Parts, even if Kira reiterates the point here. Kira trying to life Odo’s spirits by bringing him the criminal activity reports harks back to their importance to the Kira-Odo relationship stressed in Crossfire. Garak’s discussion of his time on Romulus as a gardener pays off a nice verbal exchange with Quark from Body Parts. There is a sense that the characters live beyond the individual episode.

This is obvious even in the smaller details. When Odo attempts to thwart a smuggling operation while struggling to hold himself together, he finds himself dealing with Rionoj, the Boslic freighter captain played by Leslie Bevis. Bevis had previously played the role in The Homecoming and The Abandoned. The character was never actually named on-screen. In fact, Broken Link would be her last appearance. Nevertheless, the attention to detail in using such a minor character in such a specific way speaks the show’s model of continuity.

One of the more impressive aspects of Broken Link is just how much space the story affords to character interactions and development. Broken Link is unique among Star Trek season finalés in that the original pitch came from outside the writing team, illustrating just how inessential the material plot is to anything unfolding in the episode. The plot is fairly light: Odo gets sick, Odo visits the Founders, the Founders make Odo human. Those are fairly simple beats, and there is no major twist within the episode itself, no huge set piece to catch the audience’s attention.

The big twists within Broken Link all serve to set up future events. Odo is made human, but the implications of that development are left until the following season. Gowron is suggested to be a Founder, but that is a problem that the crew will address in Apocalypse Rising. In terms of basic plotting and pacing, Broken Link does not feel like a season finalé. There is none of the mounting tension that marked The Best of Both Worlds, Part I and none of the dramatic plot twists of Basics, Part I.

Broken Link is not too far removed from Body Parts. Both are episodes about characters who are forced to face the consequences of breaking the social contract. Quark is punished for breaking a literal contract with Brunt, while Odo is punished for violating the principle that “no changeling has ever harmed another.” Odo’s crime (and his punishment) are arguably more severe than those facing Quark, but there is something remarkably intimate about choosing a story like this to end the season.

The idea that Broken Link is a repetition of Body Parts also plays into the show’s theme of historical recurrence, the idea that history tends to move in arcs and circles that is emphasised across the show’s seven year run – but particularly over the course of the fourth and fifth seasons. In a neat structural touch, Broken Link ties into this idea by mirroring the scene between Odo and Garak at the start of the episode with the scene between Garak and Odo at the end of the episode. Even within this episode, history tends to repeat and arc.

This is a rather strange structural decision for a Star Trek season finalé, given the franchise’s fondness for cliffhangers. As a rule, season-ending cliffhangers work best when the juxtapose where the cast was at the start of the hour with where they were by the end of the episode. There are obvious differences between the two scenes between Garak and Odo that (almost) bookend the episode, in that Odo is human and Garak is under arrest in the second scene, but these differences are more subtle and intimate than “Voyager’s crew are stranded on a planet.”

In keeping with this intimacy, writers Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe make a point to fill the episode with character-centric scenes and dialogue. After all, the plot itself is not quite enough to fill forty-five minutes, hence sequences like Odo’s failed attempt to arrest the smugglers. These conversations and exchanges serve to demonstrate what a wonderful job the writers and actors have done in bringing these characters to life and fleshing them out. It is hard to imagine a Voyager episode with these sorts of exchanges, even in its seventh season.

Even the character exchanges and interactions are coloured by earlier events. Garak’s subplot in particular explicitly and implicitly references The Die is Cast, from his appeal to the Female Changeling about survivors to his interactions with a disintegrating Odo to his plot to destroy the Founder homeworld from orbit to his final exchange with Odo in his tailor shop. Indeed, the revelation that Garak will spend time in the brig for his actions is a direct rebuttle to the writing staff of Voyager letting Chakotay off the hook in Manoeuvres. He will not reappear until Things Past.

This continuity is not necessarily continuity of plot. Whereas the second season of Voyager was fascinated with serialised plotting that very consciously led from point “a” to point “b” to point “c”, Deep Space Nine is more engaged with continuity of character. Where are given characters at this moment in time? What is the next logical step for them, given where they have been and where they are? The writing staff on Deep Space Nine never planned too far ahead, but they generally worked on the logic of where it made sense to take a character at that moment.

The actual plot mechanics are less important. Consider the question of how exactly Odo got infected by the virus that affects him here. It would make sense for Weyoun to have infected him in To the Death, adding extra relevance and depth to their conversation. In fact, the script to To the Death explicitly states as much:

Weyoun looks at Odo for a beat, then gives him a good-natured clap on the shoulder. (In case anyone’s interested, when he touches Odo, Weyoun is purposely infecting Odo with the disease that almost kills him in “BROKEN LINK.”)

However, the sequence in To the Death is shot so as to obscure that gesture. The connection is never acknowledged in dialogue. Asked about whether Weyoun was responsible for infecting Odo in To the Death, Ronald D. Moore dismissed the possibility as “just a rumour.” While it’s certainly not a plot hole or anything like that, Broken Link is remarkably unconcerned about how Odo became infected. All that matters is that Odo is infected.

The basic plot of Broken Link is about consequences. In most cases, these consequences stretch back quite far into the past. Garak asks the Founder about an attack that took place more than a season earlier. Odo is being punished for a murder that took place in the previous season finalé. Broken Link demonstrates that the production team is not going to forget about events because they occurred a little while ago, that the plans for the series that began with The Jem’Hadar have not been forgotten.

In many respects, the fourth season of Deep Space Nine could be considered a narrative cul de sac for the show. In terms of basic plotting, relatively little lasting change is accomplished. The Khitomer Accords are dissolved in The Way of the Warrior, but they are restored in a small throwaway scene in By Inferno’s Light. Gul Dukat goes from be a senior official in The Way of the Warrior to losing his post in Return to Grace to being the most senior government official in By Inferno’s Light.

(This is to say nothing of the smaller character-centric cues. Kira hooks up with Shakaar in Crossfire, only to break up off-screen in Children of Time. Odo is made human in Broken Link, only to have his powers restored in The Begotten. Worf is exiled from his people and his homeland in The Way of the Warrior, only to find his place and honour (mostly) restored in Soldiers of the Empire. Quark loses his license in Body Parts, but earns it back in Ferengi Love Songs. This does not invalidate the character development that comes with these beats, but there is a sense of retreat.)

At best, the plotting of the fourth season is used as a springboard to the status quo that stretches from the second half of the fifth season through to What You Leave Behind. The Klingon invasion of Cardassia leads directly to their alliance with the Dominion. Gul Dukat’s fall from grace makes him perfectly willing to deal with the devil in order to restore his position. However, there is an eccentricity to the status quo of the fourth season, a sense that regular service has been interrupted briefly to make room for Klingons.

This reflects the situation behind the scenes. The start of the fourth season marked a rare example of the studio directly intervening in the plotting and running of the series, suggesting a number of alterations to the format of Deep Space Nine. The production team handled these suggestions quite gracefully, finding a way to include the Klingons and incorporate Worf without sacrificing their own unique sensibilities and approach to the franchise. Some great stories came from that set-up, even if it was not what the writing staff had originally planned.

Broken Link signals that it is time for Deep Space Nine to get back to the priorities that the production team set forth in the gaps between the second and third seasons. The Dominion is reaffirmed as the biggest threat, the storm clouds gathering on the horizon even beyond Gowron’s sabre-rattling. The final scene of Broken Link is a masterful example of the production team’s unique ability to improvise their way out of a potential narrative cul de sac, by tying the Klingon threat directly back to the challenge of the Dominion.

Deep Space Nine has suggested that the conflict with the Klingons was the result of a Dominion long game since before it even began. In The Die is Cast, changeling!Lovok coyly floated the idea that the Federation and the Klingon Empire represented “the only real threat” to the Dominion, but that steps were being taken. This was before the production team received instruction to incorporate the Klingons into the fourth season, providing a rather fortuitous hook back to the Dominion plot. It is no surprise Broken Link references The Die is Cast so heavily.

Even at the climax of The Way of the Warrior, an episode that began with an emergency drill to find a changeling infiltrator, Sisko suggests that such a war plays directly into the hands of the Dominion. Even when the Klingons posed the most immediate threat, the fourth season worked hard to suggest that the Dominion represented something far more insidious and dangerous in the long term. In fact, with episodes like Hippocratic Oath, Homefront, Paradise Lost and To the Death, the fourth season kept the Dominion more engaged with the show than the third had.

The reveal that Gowron may be a Founder is a clever twist, for a number of reasons. Like the best twist, it makes a great deal of sense and has been properly established. “Gowron is a Founder” is really the next logical step from “the Dominion is fermenting war between the Federation and the Klingons.” More than that, it provides a suitably “game-changing” note on which to end what is in effect a very quiet character-driven episode. It also fits with the series’ larger approach to season finalés, eschewing the immediacy of cliffhangers for more fundamental shifts.

The suggestion that Gowron is a changeling is paid off in Apocalypse Rising, but that it is not necessarily the biggest takeaway from Odo’s revelation. The final lines of Broken Link build upon the promise at the end of The Adversary, the ominous threat that the Dominion is “everywhere.” If Gowron, the head of the Klingon Empire, can be replaced, who is safe? If the Dominion can set the Federation and the Klingon Empire against each other as a prelude to all-out war, what might the future hold?

It is a threat with much more ominous (and exciting) implications than the image of the Voyager crew abandoned on an alien planet. While Broken Link might be a much quieter and more personal episode than Basics, Part I, its ending echoes much louder.

Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: continuity, deep space nine, Dominion, klingons, Odo, Season finale, star trek, star trek: deep space nine, Television |