The SmarK DVD Rant for Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Season Three
– Yes, after a prolonged absence from these things while I wrote the new book, I now have free time again and can sit down and watch 3 hours of DS9 at a time, and thus finish this review.
The Film
The third season starts to get really dark, with less of the funny episodes that punctuated the first two seasons, as the threat of the Dominion stopping by the Alpha Quadrant and killing everyone is kind of hanging over the heads of those on the station. Go figure.
This season also marks the end of Sisko’s hair, and his run as a mere Commander. And the end of his hair.
Disc One
– The Search. A two-parter kicks things off, as Sisko and the Federation ain’t f*cking around, brudda. To protect the station, Sisko is given the Defiant, an over-powered and over-muscled little starship that was originally developed to fight off the Borg. However, expressly disobeying the orders of the Dominion, Sisko decides to take the new ship on a shakedown cruise into the Gamma Quadrant. He’s got balls, you’ve gotta give him that. Odo, meanwhile, is feeling particularly unloved, as Starfleet relieves him of duty over Ben’s head, but he gets talked into joining the expedition anyway. And lo and behold, once they get there, they find a Dominion waystation and suspicious doings. However, Odo now has the strange compulsion to go to another nebula while they’re there, and soon enough the Jem’Hadar are attacking and battering the Defiant, until it appears that the only survivors are Kira and Odo, on their way to somewhere.
– The Search, Part 2. The Odo storylines are finally paid off, as Kira & Odo discover an entire planet of shapeshifters, which has Odo one happy amorphous blob. But, as is often the case in the Trek universe, the offer to stay and be happy appears to be too good to be true on the surface, as Kira finds out when she stumbles across a giant door while snooping the place out. What would a shapeshifter need with a door? That becomes the question as Odo is at peace with himself and learns to shift more effectively. Meanwhile, back at the station, Sisko and the crew have returned, apparently unharmed, but now facing down the threat of an invasion force from the Dominion, and the situation gets progressively worse until self-destruction of the station and the wormhole appear to be the only options. But, of course, Things Are Not As They Seem, and the payoff reveals who the monster heels of the DS9 universe really are. This was a great kickoff to the season, albeit with a twist ending that was pretty much cheating on the writers’ part.
– The House of Quark. And from dark foreboding to comic relief, as the Klingons return and annoy Quark by stinking up his bar. However, when he gets into an argument with one of them, it leads to one of them ending up dead and it isn’t Quark! Honest! In fact, the family of the deceased is also skeptical that a mere accident could kill one of the great Klingon warriors of his time, and soon Quark is left between the vengeful brother and the pissed-off widow. However, the widow is less annoyed at the death of her husband than at the timing, since he had no male heirs and a woman can’t rule a Klingon family. The solution? Quark marries into power, of course, which only winds up with him on the wrong end of a duel to the death. Whoops. Good, fun, Klingon stuff here.
– Equilibrium. This is actually an interesting look at the history and psychology behind the Trill — in this case, Dax starts discovering she has musical talents that none of her other hosts had possessed before, and naturally wants to dig deeper and find out why. However, when she goes to the homeworld to investigate, the message seems to be “Stop digging or else” and those in charge become increasingly hostile towards her exploration of her past. Why? Because it turns out that a hundred years previous, someone had put forth a theory that maybe more than the tiny percentage of Trill hosts who are accepted might be capable of supporting the symbiont. This is a nice character-building ep for Jadzia, although the musical coda was a bit too reminiscent of the Inner Light for my liking.
Disc Two
– Second Skin. Another one of those Braga-ish paranoid fantasy ones, as Kira gets a strange call from a Cardassian prison where she was held years previous. However, since she was never held at a prison before, this strikes her as strange. Even stranger, she’s kidnapped and wakes up looking a lot like a Cardassian. Turns out that she, according to her new “friends”, has been a sleeper agent named Illiana all along who was surgically altered to appear Bajoran. Happiest of anyone is her “father”, who had thought her dead more than a decade previous. The whole thing turns into one of those political plot deals where no one ends up happy, although seeing Garak storm in and kick ass at the end is really quite sweet. It also sowed the seeds for having the real Illiana show up in the future, although I don’t know if they ever tugged at that thread again.
– The Abandoned. Another good Odo episode, as Rene Auberjonois really started to get a handle on the darker side of the character while developing the humanity. In this case, Quark finds an unlikely cargo on a salvaged ship — a baby. And one who’s growing like a mother, too — a teenager after two weeks of life, in fact. And you thought YOUR kids were hitting puberty fast. I blame MTV. Unfortunately for the crew, who is trying to figure out what to feed him for starters, things get more complicated when he turns out to be a young Jem’Hadar, compelled to maim and kill anything in a Federation uniform. However, he has one weakness — he’s also compelled to obey Odo, who he considers one of the Founders. Odo takes the kid under his wing as best he can, but even the best of intentions can’t make a psychotic murderer into a nice kid. Some people, he notes, just CAN’T change. We do learn another interesting fact about the Jem’Hadar, though — they’re programmed to be addicted to a drug that only the Founders can supply. File that one away for later use.
– Civil Defense. Now THIS is a clever one. While farting around in an abandoned mining section of the station, Sisko & O’Brien accidentally trip a failsafe left behind by the Cardassians, which in turn has the station convinced that a Bajoran insurrection is in the process of occurring, which leaves the station trying to kill them and Gul Dukat giving snotty updates on the futility of their struggle via pre-taped video segments. However, when they escape the deathtrap, the entire station goes into “kill the rebels” mode via automated defense systems until the Ops crew is left hiding behind the bulkheads to avoid killer lasers shooting from the replicator. Gul Dukat even beams down to gloat and possibly deactivate the defense system in exchange for them giving DS9 back to Cardassia but when he tries to beam back, that activates ANOTHER defense system, which assumes that Dukat was trying to flee the rebellion and thus the entire station must now be blown up. Gotta love the Cardassian paranoia. So with less than 20 minutes to live, our heroes try to figure out how exactly you abort the overload of an entire reactor core with no power to the station and no turbolifts. Answer: You don’t. Tremendous fun!
– Meridian. This one felt more like filler, as two unrelated plotlines are thrown out there and they’re both boring. In one, Sisko & Dax cruise the Gamma Quadrant and suddenly come across a planet that wasn’t there 10 seconds earlier. Turns out that due to a bit of technobabble that’s stretching things even for Star Trek, the planet only exists in our dimension for a few weeks, and then it disappears into a non-corporeal state for 60 years at a time. I know what you’re thinking — it must make late fees at the video store a real exercise in higher math. And of course, Dax falls in love with an inhabitant, and as they argue about which one will abandon their people to live in sin, the planet grows closer to disappearing again. Meanwhile on the station, Quark has a customer who is obsessed with getting Major Kira into the sack, and even commissions a holosuite version since he can’t have the real thing. However, Kira HATES being used like that, even in fantasy, so it turns into a game between her and Quark over control of her image. The payoff is silly and unfunny. This one does, however, hint at a Kira-Odo relationship. Oh well, both plotlines blow, and Dax would have a better match, romantically speaking, on the way.
Disc Three
– Defiant. Ooo, a double meaning. And what were they smoking when they decided to recycle the dumbest character idea in Star Trek history — Will Riker’s evil double, Thomas? Basically, someone appearing to be Will Riker shows up on DS9, puts the moves on Kira, and then takes her and the USS Defiant out for a joyride, thus revealing his affiliation with the Maquis and an EVIL GOATEE~! (in a silly beard-removal scene), which admittedly looks better on him than the full beard. Gul Dukat is naturally pissed that the super-powered Defiant will soon be flying through the DMZ and likely killing Cardassians, but, as Kira points out, Riker makes a lousy terrorist because he’s too busy trying to be a hero. Soon, he’s staring down 10 Cardassian warships while trying to expose a shipyard in a remote sector that the Obsidian Order wants covered up a LITTLE too much. In the end, the only guy to face the music is Riker, and he gets tossed into a Cardassian work camp for life, and I believe never appears again in the Trek universe. Good riddance.
– Fascination. More of a PG-rated sex farce than anything (and one directed by Avery Brooks himself), Lwaxana Troi visits the station again, bringing chaos with her. It’s supposed to be a Bajoran festival of happiness going on, but for some reason everyone is hitting on everyone else with a total lack of common sense, with hilarious results. Meanwhile, Keiko is visiting the station for two days, but things don’t go as smoothly as Miles has planned. The show builds up to a hilarious moment where a love-crazed Vedek Bareil actually attempts to kick Sisko’s ass, with predictable results. And again, more little hints of the Odo-Kira relationship are dropped. Definitely a fun and interesting episode.
– Past Tense, Part 1. This would be the total opposite of fun and interesting, as once again the writers go back to the hackneyed clichés of mucking around with accidental time travel, this time via a transporter accident. Dax, Sisko & Bashir get transported back to August 30, 2024 (which will be my 50th birthday, oddly enough), in the midst of growing tensions in San Francisco. Bashir & Sisko get mistaken for homeless people and assigned to live in a ghetto for the jobless called “Sanctuary District”, while Dax is befriended by a media mogul and gets nice clothes. And while Sisko is constantly preaching to Bashir about the importance of NOT CHANGING ANYTHING, they accidentally trigger the death of a major historical figure, and soon find themselves taking his place in the center of a hostage crisis that historically ends with Sisko’s death and hundreds of civilians getting killed.
– Past Tense, Part 2. While Miles & Kira indiscriminately beam back in time to see if they can find the rest, they suddenly discover that everything has changed in the future. This, however, does not match the internal logic of time travel in the Star Trek universe. Since the accepted rule is that changes are instantaneous, when Sisko & Bashir changed one thing, but continued onwards and set it right again, the people in the future should have perceived no change at all, because it’s all part of the same timeline. Had the people FROM the future beamed back in time to help them, changed something, and then beamed back to find things changed (ala First Contact) then you’re okay because you’re playing by the rules, but the stuff that happened in the past all happened along the same timeline and shouldn’t have affected the future. Anyway, the episode itself really sucks, as Sisko & Bashir are involved in a thrilling hostage standoff that finally leads to the police storming in and killing everyone. The thing that bugs me is the preachy, left-wing crap being shoveled at me by the plot. Basically the writers are saying that society would be better if the government gave everyone jobs. The upper classes are portrayed here as bourgeoisie idiots who are totally clueless of the impending riots, and all the people in the shelters are just hard-working folks who only need a second chance to get another job. So basically, the message is, if we participate in a socialist revolution, the world will turn out okay. Star Trek is the only place I know where Communism actually works. Now that’s the REAL sci-fi.
Disc Four
– Life Support. Well, this one answers the whole question about what to do with Bareil pretty definitively — a Bajoran transport with Kai Winn and Bareil arrives at DS9, damaged by a blown power coupling, and the unfortunate result is the death of Vedek Bareil. However, Bashir works a miracle and brings him back to life, but only barely. Winn is busy negotiating a peace treaty with Cardassia and needs Bareil’s assistance, but somehow manages to turn it into an even and selfish act. She just has that talent. Bashir uses more and more outrageous methods to keep Bareil in the land of the living, and once the treaty is signed, well, Kai Winn isn’t so anxious to violate the will of the Prophets any further with regards to keeping him alive, and suddenly Kira is single again. This one also has a silly subplot about Jake & Nog getting into a fight over girls, but that seemed mainly like closure on their relationship before Nog moved onto another course entirely. It’s too bad they had to kill off Bareil to further the Odo relationship, but war is hell.
– Heart of Stone. They seem to jump right into further the Kira-Odo deal, as they get trapped on a moon in the Gamma Quadrant while searching for a runaway Maquis ship, but Kira steps in some crystal goo and soon the thing is forming itself all around her and crushing her to death. Slowly. Yikes. Odo consoles her with tales about how he got his name and finally confesses his love to her but Things Are Not As They Seem, and I’ll leave it at that. A nice, unexpected twist ending here. Meanwhile, Nog wants to join Starfleet, and picks poor Sisko as his role model. Good little filler episode.
– Destiny. Sisko’s role as Emissary pops up again, as Cardassian scientists are now working with Bajor on a way to relay communications THROUGH the wormhole. However, a crazed Bajoran Vedek is convinced that their actions are coinciding too closely with an ancient prophecy which states that if they’re allowed to succeed, the wormhole will collapse forever. Sisko doesn’t believe so much in that stuff, but Kira DOES, and when a comet starts heading towards the wormhole, with potentially disastrous results, Sisko begins second-guessing even his own beliefs.
– Prophet Motive. A truly witty title for once. Anyway, Grand Nagus Zek returns to kick Quark out of his quarters again, but this time with an apparent change of heart. He’s happy, generous, giving, courteous, and has re-written the Rules of Acquisition to show a softer side of the Ferengi people. Obviously Quark interprets that as him going off his rocker and sets out to discover what the hell is wrong with him. However, the discovery of a Bajoran Orb in his shuttlecraft seems to answer the question. Meanwhile, Julian is up for a very prestigious medical award and no one, including himself, seems to think that he has a shot at it. A really funny light comedy episode, directing by Rene Auberjonois of all people.
Disc Five
– Visionary. Yup, it’s more time travel weirdness. The Romulans and Klingons are both visiting the station, and wouldn’t you know O’Brien has a weird radiation sickness that makes him jump forward in time five hours on a regular basis. I hear you can buy a cream for that. At any rate, his visions of the future start to get more dire, leading up to him seeing the station exploding while a few people escape barely in time. The answer to the puzzle is actually pretty obvious if you remember your technobabble. The really creepy thing about this episode is Miles meeting himself in the future on several occasions, once while his future self is dead, and eventually switching places with him, sending the future Miles back to live out his life while the “present” Miles dies there. Of course, he should then be dead in the future as well, but as they quoted so astutely together in the future, “I hate temporal mechanics”. Amen, brother.
– Distant Voices. This one’s so bizarre that you’d think Brannon Braga wrote it, but it turns into a pretty good episode by the end. Bashir, paranoid about his 30th birthday, is attacked by a pretty alien thug who’s looking for some illegal medicine, and wakes up on what appears to be a deserted station, with a monster running around and killing people. He soon discovers that he’s actually in a coma, and the remaining crew members are just facets of his personality within his own mind. Thus, he has to find a way to repair the damage internally or else die in the real world, while aging at an incredible rate (in an impressive makeup job, I might add). Weird and slow to start, but once it turns into an internal debate with the monster, it gets really interesting, believe it or not. And I liked that it was established early on that it was all a dream, rather than playing it out and then going “Ha ha, we fooled you”. But I can just imagine what the “Next week ” promos for this one looked like, though.
– Through the Looking Glass. And back to the Mirror Universe we go, as Smiley O’Brien transports from one universe to the other in order to kidnap Sisko on behalf of the rebels. It seems that Evil Sisko is dead now, and they need a replacement to convince Jennifer Sisko, a scientist working for the Alliance, to defect to their side. Of course, our Sisko has his own motives in wanting to help bring Jennifer over, and soon a plot is hatched. But not before Sisko finally gets some action from Jadzia, who is his mistress in the Mirror Universe. Talk about awkward pillow-talk. More fun from the evil goatee crew, as everyone hams it up and plays it over-the-top.
– Improbable Cause. Yet another two-parter (the third for this season alone) is something of a mystery come to life, as a routine lunch between Garak & Bashir is interrupted by Garak’s shop blowing up and nearly killing him. Odo launches an investigation and suspects the involvement of a visiting trader, but no sooner do they go after him than HIS ship mysteriously blows up, too. And now the Romulans seem to be involved. With his curiosity now fully piqued, Odo calls in a few favors and travels with Garak to see Garak’s old mentor in the Obsidian Order (assuming that Garak WAS in the Order, of course), who in turn reveals the true nature of the plans and makes Garak an offer he can’t refuse.
Disc Six
– The Die is Cast. Continuing on from the last episode, Garak becomes part of a joint Romulan-Cardassian plan to invade the Founders homeworld in the Gamma Quadrant and thus wipe them out before they can strike at the Alpha Quadrant. However, they think that Odo knows more than he’s letting on, so Garak’s first assignment is to torture him for information. Odo’s reaction is hilarious, by the way. But when Garak reveals an experimental device for use against changelings, his humor is lessened. Meanwhile, Sisko and the Defiant travel into the Gamma Quadrant to try and stop things from getting out of control, and get a chance to REALLY test out the weapons against the Jem’Hadar. Political intrigue, mystery AND a big-ass firefight what more can you ask?
– Explorers. Another good episode within the milieu that DS9 is good at — character-driven shows without much in the way of conflict. In this case, Sisko (who is now sporting his trademark goatee, although not the bald head) finds blueprints for an ancient Bajoran solar ship, and decides to build it in order to prove that they could have discovered Cardassia thousands of years ago. Naturally he brings Jake-o along for some bonding, which is what they do. No enemies shoot them down, or kidnap them, or throw them forward in time, they just talk about Sisko’s love life and Jake’s writing and generally hang out like a family. Meanwhile on the station, Bashir is anxious because the only person from his medical class smarter than him is coming for a visit and it gets even worse when she arrives and doesn’t even notice him! This leads to a classic scene of Julian & Miles getting bombed on whisky in Miles’ quarters and singing “Chariots of Fire”. Badly. Notable for introducing Chase Masterton as Dabo girl Leeta, in what would become a recurring role.
– Family Business. Another try at a character episode right away doesn’t quite work so well. In this case, Quark is in trouble when the Ferengi financial authorities arrest his mother for gasp making a profit! And wearing clothes! The scandal threatens to ruin Quark, so he and Rom visit the wayward mother (played by a scene-stealing Andrea Martin) and it soon becomes worse when he realizes that she’s doing better than him at business. Meanwhile on the station, Jake fixes his dad up with a freighter captain named Kasidy Yates (played by Penny Johnson, who I’m now conditioned to WISH DEAD because of 24) who everyone seems to love even before Ben has met her. This one dragged for me, but then I’m not a big fan of the Ferengi stuff anyway.
– Shakaar. Well, everyone’s nightmare comes true, as the head of the Bajoran government drops dead and Kai Winn of all people is named the new head of state. And in her first act as EVIL OVERLORD, she makes Kira go down to the planet and convince some farmers who had been waiting years for equipment that will save their crops to just give it back for the good of Bajoran trade interests. Nothing too exciting.
Disc Seven
– Facets. This is another interesting one, as Dax gets to meet her former hosts, sort of. An ancient Trill ceremony allows a Guardian to put the personalities and memories of the former Dax hosts into the bodies of current people, so that Jadzia can have a metaphysical meet-and-greet with them. This leads to some interesting combinations (a woman inhabiting Quark’s body, much to his chagrin, as well as Sisko getting the crazy musician and Odo getting Curzon). However, the first complication sees Sisko (even from behind a holding cell forcefield) both trying to kill her physically and mentally, attacking her self-esteem and then choking her out until the real Sisko can take over again. Then the weirder one sees Curzon merging with Odo so completely that Odo even changes his hairstyle, and soon it becomes apparent that neither guy wants to give up the new arrangement. Funny stuff results, but Jadzia is less than amused. Meanwhile, Nog takes the entrance exam for Starfleet, but a suspiciously low score makes people think that Quark may have had something to do with it.
– The Adversary. The season finale sees a long overdue promotion, as Sisko becomes Captain Sisko. And in his first mission with the four pips, he and the Defiant are assigned to babysit a diplomat who has reported an uprising in a small galactic empire that could mean war with the Federation. However, on the way to the system, the ship is sabotaged by a changeling. It could be anyone on board, and soon paranoia takes over the ship as they systematically try to determine who’s screwing with them and why. Things get REALLY tense, and it comes down to Odo facing off against his fellow changeling with ugly results. And a dire warning is left for Sisko at the end, as the changeling announces that they are EVERYWHERE, meaning that the shit is about to hit the fan for the Federation.
Overall, I’m REALLY hooked into the show now and anxiously awaiting the chance to crack open season 4 and get started on that, with badass bald Sisko and Worf. Lots of good stuff here in the meantime, and the Dominion War looks to be kicking into high gear any day now.
The Video:
Pretty much on par with the last couple of seasons of TNG (obviously, since they were done at the same time), colors are spectacular and contrasts are strong. There’s some serious compression artifacting during black portions and scene transitions, however, and I could make out matte lines in a lot of the SFX shots in space. So not a perfect transfer, but certainly not distracting like the first seasons of TNG were.
The Audio:
Redone in Dolby 5.1 like all the Trek releases, this season really starts to make use of it, especially in “The Die Is Cast”, although 90% of the other episodes are in the center channel. However, the music and sound effects on the Defiant really start to creep around to the surrounds in this season, and I imagine things will get even more surrounding in the fourth season when it’s space battles galore.
The Extras:
As with the TNG releases, you get about 90 minutes worth of featurettes and documentaries. I’ve heard of major spoilers in them for the later seasons, so I’m going to avoid watching them until I’ve seen the entire series on DVD and then go back and do them later, because I’d like to experience things blind. I’ll assume it’s the same rating as the TNG releases.
The Ratings:
The Film: ****
The Video: ****
The Audio: ***1/2
The Extras: ****
