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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Battle Lines (Review)

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first season. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

Battle Lines is, quite frankly, not a very good piece of television. Like a few of the episodes scattered throughout the first season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, it feels like it was pulled from a list of rejected scripts for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Ironically, it feels more like a reheated left-over than the next episode, The Storyteller, which was actually a recycled script from the first season of The Next Generation. Were it not for the involvement of Kai Opaka and a few hints about Bajoran spirituality, Battle Lines would feel almost as generic as The Passenger.

The concept is fascinating, and it represents another long-term shift in Deep Space Nine, but the script from Hilary J. Bader feels too functional and broad to do the episode justice. Instead, it feels fairly bland, which is a bit disappointing for an episode where Sisko accidentally gets the pope caught up in the universe’s most deadly game of laser tag.

Taking a stab at bringing peace...

Taking a stab at bringing peace…

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