StarTrek | the m0vie blog

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Playing God (Review)

Posted on October 6, 2013 by Darren

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

Playing God is – structurally – quite similar to Shadowplay. The episode follows the same basic format. We have three plots running concurrently. One of these plots is a science-fiction plot while the other two are centred around character development. What’s interesting about Playing God is that the script essentially changes the priority of these plot threads. In Shadowplay, the central plot concerned the science-fiction mystery in the Gamma Quadrant, while here the ethical quandary is pushed firmly to the background. (Much to the chagrin of writer Jim Trombetta.)

Instead, Playing God brings the character plotline to the front, giving us the first Dax-centric episode firmly based around Jadzia rather than the symbiote inside of her.

Quark smells a rat… er… I mean vole…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Benjamin Sisko, Black hole, Dax, deep space nine, Ira Steven Behr, Jadzia, Jadzia Dax, Large Hadron Collider, Michael Piller, Miles O'Brien, Sisko, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: the next generation, Star Trek:Deep Space Nine, StarTrek, Switzerland, Terry Farrell | 5 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Shadowplay (Review)

Posted on October 5, 2013 by Darren

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

Shadowplay is a great example of the kinds of things that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is beginning to do very well. While the main plot works very well (so well, in fact that Star Trek: Enterprise would borrow it – and Rene Auberjones – for their first season episode Oasis), it’s remarkable how much of Shadowplay is given over to the two character-development subplots unfolding back on the station. Indeed, Dax and Odo have effectively solved the mystery of the missing villagers by about two-thirds of the way into the episode.

The character-development stuff in Shadowplay is interesting because the two subplots are not written with resolutions in mind. Indeed, they don’t even kick off the respective character arcs. Kira and Bariel have been waiting to become a couple since The Siege at the latest. The last episode, Paradise hinted that Jake might not be cut out to be a Starfleet officer.

In short, what is interesting about Shadowplay is the fact that it’s really just demonstrating that the show has reached the point where it is doing the things that it does relatively well. Deep Space Nine has found its groove, that point in a show’s history when it seems like it’s relatively easy to produce an hour of television of reasonable quality.

A holo crowd…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: deep space nine, Dominion, Game, Ira Steven Behr, Michael Ansara, Noley Thornton, Odo, Shadowplay, star trek, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: the next generation, star trek: the original series, star trek: voyager, Star Trek:Deep Space Nine, StarTrek, Tempest | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Paradise (Review)

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Darren

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

In a really weird way, this second half of the second season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine really has its finger on the pulse of the nineties. Whispers tapped into pre-millennial anxiety, the sort of paranoia that fed into shows like The X-Files and would play itself out through the show’s admittedly underdeveloped “Changeling” arc. In a few episodes, The Maquis will play with the old “freedom fighter/terrorist” debate in a way that was only really possible in an America completely at peace, post-Cold War but pre-9/11.

Paradise taps into some other anxieties. According to The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, writer Jim Trombetta was heavily influenced by the anti-technology philosophy of the Khmer Rouge, the infamous regime where even the stereotypical signs of learning and education (for example, wearing glasses) were justification for execution. However, whatever the inspiration, Paradise seems to tap into something decidedly more contemporary.

“This is my boom stick!”

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Chellis Glendinning, deep space nine, Game, Luddite, Michael Ansara, O'BRIEN, Sisko, star trek, star trek: deep space nine, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, star trek: voyager, StarTrek, Ted Kaczynski, United States, Wild Oats Markets | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Whispers (Review)

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Darren

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

You could make a credible argument that each of the first three Star Trek shows beautifully encapsulated their time and place. The original show was the very embodiment of the sixties zeitgeist, providing a channel for commentary and insight into counter-culture and the Vietnam War, and an outlet for various fixations and phobias. Star Trek: The Next Generation was a show that spoke to a version of America which was emerging from the Cold War, a clean and sterile morning for a new America.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was positioned somewhat strangely, as the idealism and enthusiasm of the early nineties gave way to paranoia and insecurity. If the hyperreal technicolour production values of the original Star Trek spoke to the energy and enthusiasm sixties, then the drab grey Orwellian design of Deep Space Nine was a reflection of the late nineties.

Whispers is really the first time that the show has pushed its sense of paranoia to the fore, and it confirms that Deep Space Nine will be a show of its time, anchored in the nineties.

It’s all a bit askew…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Cold War, cynicism, deep space nine, games, Lance Parkin, Next Generation, O'BRIEN, Philip K. Dick, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: the next generation, StarTrek, Ted Kaczynski, x-files | 12 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Armageddon Game (Review)

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Darren

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

It’s been a while since we’ve had a fairly generic “could have happened on any Star Trek“ episode of Deep Space Nine. So it’s a lot easier to forgive Armageddon Game its simplicity and lack of nuance. This isn’t a story specific to Deep Space Nine. The basic concept could – rather easily – have been tailored to fit Star Trek: The Next Generation or even Star Trek: Voyager, with two crew members on the run for their lives on an alien world.

Armageddon Game is another story idea from Morgan Grendel, a writer who tends towards extremes. The Inner Light remains one of the best episodes of Star Trek ever produced. The Passenger ranks among the worst episodes of Deep Space Nine ever to make it to the screen. Armageddon Game sits somewhere in the middle.

Talk about chemistry…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Armageddon Game, Bajoran, Bashir, deep space nine, games, Ira Steven Behr, Julian Bashir, O'BRIEN, science fiction, Star Trek Games, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek, video games | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Alternate (Review)

Posted on October 1, 2013 by Darren

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

Well, at least the second season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is experimental. It might not always pay-off, but there’s a clear sense that the show is trying new things, bending various genres to make them fit within the broad outline of a Star Trek show. Necessary Evil was a fascinating attempt to construct a noir episode, while Rivals was a less-than-successful sit-com in space. The Alternate is very much doing “Star Trek as monster movie”, which is surprisingly fun.

To be fair, it’s not a subgenre new to the franchise. Indeed, the first episode of the original show to air, The Man Trap, was essentially a monster horror in space. Still, The Alternate feels a bit more sinister and dark than anything that Star Trek: The Next Generation might attempt. (Schisms probably comes closest, but – even then – there’s no sense that the monsters are stalking the starship. They have to abduct their victims to experiment on them.)

More than that, though, The Alternate is also a fascinating exploration of Odo as a character, looking at the relationship that Odo has with his co-workers and how that is rooted in his relationship with the man who claims to be his “father.”

Melting! Melting! Oh what a world!

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Alternate, Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, Cardassian, deep space nine, Ferengi, Ira Steven Behr, Jake Sisko, Kira Nerys, Man Trap, MORA, Odo, Quark, Recreation, Sisko, spock, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek | 1 Comment »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Sanctuary (Review)

Posted on September 29, 2013 by Darren

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

Sanctuary is a very weird little episode, a nice concept with too much padding, reserving its best hook and twist for the final ten minutes, but capping it off with an attempt to soften the harsh blow somewhat. It’s another of those “shows we could only do on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine“ from the series’ second season, and it’s certainly more interesting and ambitious than Second Sight. However, for all the clever stuff that it does, it feels somewhat oddly structured and paced, as if the writing staff knew there were good ideas wrapped up inside here, but weren’t exactly sure how to get them out.

A blip on the radar…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Bajor, Bajoran, deep space nine, Ira Steven Behr, Michael Piller, Sanctuary, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek | 4 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Second Sight (Review)

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Darren

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

You know, this the first real Sisko-heavy episode we’ve had since Emissary. He’s the lead, so he’s never too far from the heart of the story, and episodes like Dramatis Personae and Invasive Procedures gave Avery Brooks an opportunity to demonstrate his acting chops (and ability to be just as bad-ass, albeit in a different way, as Kirk and Picard). However, Sisko never really dominates or towers over Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in the same way that Kirk and Picard seemed to anchor their shows. Deep Space Nine is closer to an ensemble show than any other Star Trek series, and characters like Odo and Kira (and even Quark) have received as much (if not more) definition than Sisko, despite the fact he is the lead.

That’s not a bad thing. Over the run of the series, Deep Space Nine would produce a number of classic hours of television centred around Sisko as a character. The Visitor, Far Beyond the Stars, and In the Pale Moonlight are all hours that lean heavily on Brooks and can all be counted among the very best episodes of Star Trek ever produced.

Second Sight, on the other hand, is not.

Burning passion…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Avery Brooks, Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, Cirroc Lofton, Dax, deep space nine, Jake Sisko, Julian Bashir, Kira Nerys, Odo, Second Sight, Sisko, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek | 4 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Necessary Evil (Review)

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Darren

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.

Commence Station Security log. Stardate 47282.5. At the request of Commander Sisko, I will hereafter be recording a daily log of law enforcement affairs. The reason for this exercise is beyond my comprehension, except perhaps that humans have a compulsion to keep records and lists and files. So many, in fact, that they have to invent new ways to store them microscopically, otherwise their records would overrun all known civilisation. My own very adequate memory not being good enough for Starfleet, I am pleased to put my voice to this official record of this day. Everything’s under control. End log.

Necessary Evil continues to deliver on the promise of “things you can’t do anywhere but Star Trek: Deep Space Nine“ that Michael Piller made at the start of the show’s second season. It’s a genuinely ambitious piece of Star Trek, all the stronger for the fact that it’s idea that could go horribly and spectacularly wrong. Movies like Blade Runner demonstrated that it is possible to blend the aesthetics of science-fiction and film noir, but it seems like a mix that would sit rather uncomfortably in the bright utopian future of Star Trek.

However, Deep Space Nine was never afraid to experiment with its format. This wasn’t always successful, but it did give the show a unique flavour. And when it did work, as it does here, it offered something new and exciting to the franchise’s playbook.

Time for a Changeling…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, Cardassian, deep space nine, games, Ira Steven Behr, Kira, Kira Nerys, Odo, Peter Allan Fields, Quark, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, Starfleet, StarTrek | 6 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Terok Nor #0 (Review)

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Darren

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.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

Terok Nor might be the best of Malibu Comics’ Star Trek: Deep Space Nine range, a one-shot written by Mark A. Altman and illustrated by Trevor Goring. It isn’t so much the plot that makes Terok Nor so distinctive – there is a lot of running around, some betrayals, some action sequences – but rather the execution of Altman’s story and the atmosphere provided by Goring’s pencils. The origin story of the space station Terok Nor, Altman very shrewdly frames the story as something of an oral history. It’s almost mythic and grand and epic, drawn in broad strokes rather than finer detail.

It serves quite well as the story of the construction of the central hub of the Star Trek show most concerned with legacy and history.