DS9 S3.13 - Life Support

Season 3, Episode 13 - "Life Support," or "First, Do No Harm"

My assessment of this episode changed dramatically between the time I spent watching the episode and the time I spent realizing the credits were rolling and that Vedek Bareil really is dead. I didn't see his death coming at all, partly because I am deeply unaccustomed to Star Trek killing off one of its recurring characters, but also because I am so inured (after three seasons of DS9 and seven seasons of TNG) of the Star Trek formula: a problem in Act 1; a complication in Act 2; a last-minute solution and a return to the status quo in Act 3.

"Life Support" breaks that formulaic structure. I noticed curious inconsistencies in "Life Support," which should have clued me in to feeling like this episode was going to end differently. But I simply never did the arithmetic. For example, the complication in Act 2 is unsolvable. We march steadily toward Act 3 without any kind of viable solution proposed for Bareil's condition. The "problem" in this episode is a problem of attrition. Bashir is trying in vain to prolong the life of someone who is dying in pieces.

Days before critical negotiations for a peace treaty between Bajor and Cardassia, Vedek Bareil--one of the principle architects of the treaty--suffers a serious accident that very nearly takes his life. But for a miracle of medicine, Bashir manages to snatch Bareil from the jaws of death. Bareil's condition is critical, and deteriorating by the day. He's living on borrowed time. Bashir can't cure Bareil, but he can put him in a comatose stasis so that one day, years from now, maybe someone can find a cure. The other option is a dangerous, destructive medicine that will prolong Bareil's life for a few days, but almost certainly kill him in the end.

Bareil insists on the latter. He doesn't even have to think about it.

This entire episode is haunting me in ways I can't quite understand, so I'm trying to unpack everything that happened. This is a very strong episode for Dr. Bashir, because it demonstrates a fundamental problem for any good doctor: sometimes you can't save a life. The purpose of a doctor is to save lives, but inherent in that purpose is the realization that you're always fighting a losing battle against death. Everyone's going to die sooner or later, and sometimes the best thing you can do for your patient is to allow them to go in dignity, after you've exhausted every other option.

Bashir spends the majority of this episode arguing passionately on behalf of his patient. He absolutely will not give up on advocating for saving Bareil's life, even if it means trying to manipulate Kai Winn into lying to Bareil. (Winn refuses, but Bashir still tried.) Bashir will do absolutely anything for the highest good, even if it means breaking social norms. Bareil will do absolutely anything for the good of the system in which he lives, even if it means giving up his own life. The central tension in this episode--Bashir who wants to save Bareil's life at the cost of the negotiations, Bareil who wants to save the negotiations at the cost of his own life--beautifully illustrates just how deeply entrenched and bitter the difference between a Neutral Good and a Lawful Good character can be.

This is also an episode about what it means to have a good life. I was badly shaken when I realized, at the very very end of this episode, that Bareil was not going to make it. And I had distant, inkling suspicions this might be the case. His halfway brain operation which left him an emotional ghost of his former self felt like a lobotomy. His life had been prolonged, but how much of his soul was lost? Bashir is not a religious person. I'm not sure religious people exist among humans in the 25th century. But what he described as the "spark of life," the ineffable neurological mystery that exists in some abstract space in the synapses of the mind, is essentially the soul. If Bashir had replaced Bareil's whole brain with an artificial one, his soul would have been lost.

Part of having a good life is realizing that none of us are immortal, and that when we pass, we can pass with dignity, knowing we had spent our time well. It's touching and sweet to me that Kira doesn't spend her last moments with Bareil begging him not to go, grappling in futility with an inevitable death. Instead she reminisces about their first meeting, and remembers why she loved him. The moment is sweet because Kira accepts how transitory her life and her relationship with Bareil is. She accepts his passing and all the pain that comes with it as Bareil accepts the confusion that comes with being a Bajoran at this moment in history.

I was so taken by Bashir's ongoing struggle to save Bareil's life, and Bareil's subsequent passing, that the news of a peace treaty felt dull and distant to me, like a faintly registered feeling. Yes, the Cardassians and Bajorans have made peace--but Bareil is dead. It's a new day for Bajorans, and the possibility of a lasting peace for both species is still alive--but Bareil is dead. I couldn't get over how big a moment this was.

There's a side story here about Nog and Jake struggling with their socio-cultural differences as a result of being Ferengi and Human. And it might seem inappropriate when cast against the backdrop of such a big, brooding story about life and death. But...it's not. Nog and Jake are young. They're kids. Kids don't think about death and shouldn't. Kids think about dating, relationships, growing up, and the stupid things that piss each other off. Life goes on in the space station even as Bareil passes away, and the B-Plot was a potent reminder of that.

I've had my criticisms of Bareil in the past. There were times where he seemed dry and wooden enough to make Al Gore look like Guy Fieri. I sometimes struggled to appreciate his relationship with Kira. But, this episode has put my misgivings aside. He was a good-hearted, noble character in a story full of complicated and morally gray individuals. In the end, he did right by the Bajorans and by himself.

DS9 S3.E11-12 - Past Tense, Parts I & II

Season 3, Episodes 11-12: "Past Tense," or "Riots-A-Roni: The San Francisco Treat"

Star Trek really loves naming its time travel episodes after the rules of English grammar. We had "Future Imperfect" during Season 4 of TNG, and "Past Tense" in DS9. I'm looking forward to the episode titled "Subjunctive Mood," where the cast talk about the possibility of doing something in the future.

"Past Tense" is a pretty traditional Star Trek episode, even for DS9. Ever since Harlan Ellison's "City At the Edge of Forever" (Star Trek: TOS), time travel episodes have been a staple of the series. Often these episodes are among the best of the series. "Yesterday's Enterprise" may be TNG's very best episode, if "All Good Things" didn't exist--also a time travel episode. "Time's Arrow" had Data traveling back in time to a 19th century San Francisco to clash with a cantankerous Samuel Clemens; it wasn't brilliant, but it was good fun. "Tapestry," "Cause and Effect," the list goes on. Star Trek loves its time travel episodes, and "Past Tense" is one of the better ones.

Past Tense has more in common with the original City at the Edge of Forever than anything else. And I believe Tense is the better episode of the two. While "City" was a good piece of science fiction, ultimately it had little to do with Star Trek; "Past Tense" is a powerful exploration on causality, and the fragility of individual moments in history; but it's also an episode relevant to the Star Trek universe.

The mechanics of time travel aren't important here. Sisko, Bashir, and Jadzia end up in the good old 21st century after a transporter accident. 2024, to be exact. Four years from now, mass unemployment and income inequality has driven America into a state of enforced segregation; the ultra-rich live in luxury, while every undesirable in society--the jobless, the mentally ill, the poor, the violent, and the unfortunate--are sent off into Sanctuary Cities where they live and die in silence.

Sanctuary Cities are reminiscent of Venetian and German ghettos. They carry the emblems of apartheid and Japanese internment camps, ICE detention centers and post-apocalyptic ruins. They are places that have existed in our history, exist today, and may exist again in the future; what the Sanctuary Cities lack in verisimilitude, they make up for in accurate symbolism. It's 2019, and we talk about building walls and shoving illegal immigrants behind them. Out of sight, out of mind. Sanctuary cities are places for the unwanted elements of society to disappear and stop being a problem. They're quarantine zones, and the implication is that people without a job ("Gimmes"), people with mental health problems ("Dims") and people with a criminal record ("Ghosts") all constitute the same class of pariah; they're all part of the same melting pot of the unwanted and unwelcome.

This episode aired in 1995, thirty years away from 2024. The people writing this episode imagined a world thirty years in the future. Many of the same problems interrogated in this episode are problems we're struggling with today: poverty, class division, joblessness, homelessness, lack of adequate mental and physical health care. If this episode were written and produced in 2020, then we would be imagining the world in 2050. Would these ideas feel dated if they took place in 2050, rather than in our present day? Are they any less relevant?

Sisko and Bashir are trapped in a sanctuary city a few days before a historic riot. A violent uprising in Sanctuary City A ends with the deaths of hundreds of civilians, but out of the brutality and violence, public opinion begins to change. These riots--known as the Bell Riots--represent a watershed moment in American history. This is rock bottom for our country; after the Bell Riots, we finally begin addressing the problem of social and economic inequality, a trajectory which leads to Starfleet, the Enterprise, and the stars

The Bell Riots are named after Gabriel Bell: a good man in the right place at the right time. Bell was supposed to save the lives of several hostages and die in the process. His martyrdom becomes emblematic of the riot itself and helps change public opinion. While trapped in Sanctuary City A, Sisko and Bashir accidentally get into a fight that was never supposed to happen. Gabriel Bell dies in the scuffle, and Sisko takes up his name in an effort to repair history.

This is all fairly rote time travel fiction. Something disrupts the timeline. The heroes have to repair the timeline by replicating the arrow of causality, so that everything that was supposed to happen actually happens.

And to be honest, as a time-travel episode, this is okay. It doesn't do anything particularly new or exciting with the tropes of time travel. The Bell Riots happen. Sisko fills in for Bell. The momentary disruption of history repairs itself with Sisko acting as a temporal band-aid.

But where "Past Tense" stands out is in its raw and honest interrogation of contemporary society. This is a two-part episode that could easily have been edited down to a single, full-length episode. Instead, "Tense" spends scene after scene wallowing in the quagmire of its own setting. Half an episode's length goes by before Bashir and Sisko do anything. There are long, hard scenes consisting of nothing other than Bashir interviewing a social worker or Sisko arguing with a local guard. Very little actually happens in Past Tense.

And I like that. Past Tense is as much documentary as it is a piece of science fiction. It forces the audience to look at the problems of the 21st century in the eye. Bashir and Sisko spend the majority of the episode helpless to do anything but wait, and we're stuck right there with them, just hanging out in Sanctuary City A until the inevitable riots happen.

This isn't to say that I loved Past Tense. There's a lot about this episode that irritated or exhausted me. I hated everything about Biddle "B.C." Coleridge--a long-haired, fedora-wearing douchebag who comes across like a very bad impression of Jason Mewes. Everything BC said and did got under my skin. He's like Fox News's idea of an angry Millennial.

It's tempting to say that Past Tense is topical, or appropriate for 2019. It's more accurate to say that Past Tense is relevant, because it has always been relevant. We have always been fighting a slow, hard fight for human and civil rights. The Million Man March to DC was a demonstration for jobs and civil rights. The issues brought up by this episode were relevant in 1995, and they're relevant in 2020, and they're going to be relevant in 2050.

Change is slow and difficult to measure. I don't know if the world of 2024 will be better or worse than the one imagined by this episode. I don't know if the world of 2050 will be better or worse, whether we will have destroyed our environment or cured cancer, whether we'll be living in a dystopian-fascist society or in some kind of post-capitalistic golden age. For some viewers, "Past Tense" is an idealistic exercise in naivete, placing its faith in the rickety idea that sooner or later, we'll hit rock bottom and finally realize that things have to change. For other viewers, this episode is an inspiring reminder of the possibility of change--that all things must inevitably change, because nothing about us is permanent.

I'm in the latter camp. Nothing really last. Not the good days, but and not the bad ones either. I had problems with Past Tense. I'm not even sure I enjoyed it, or would watch it again. But for all its narrative flaws, this episode made me think seriously about the future. The best science fiction always does.

DS9 S3.E10 - Fascination

Season 3, Episode 10 - "Fascination," or "..."

DS9 really is a show dedicated to its fans. I can't imagine Star Trek series of this caliber, with actors as talented as this cast, willingly devoting an entire episode to a fanfic writer's script.

I don't really have a lot to say about Fascination, an episode in which every character in the series becomes madly infatuated with someone other than their significant other. I could talk about how uncomfortable this episode was to watch, alone in my living room in 2019. I can't imagine how uncomfortable it must have been to watch this episode with family at prime time in 1997. I could talk about how Fascination feels like it was written by a little cabal of breathtakingly untalented producers insisting on shoehorning low-brow sex jokes and the crappiest tropes of Harlequin rom-coms into a series known for its subtle and high-minded character development. I could talk about how extraordinarily relieved I would be if this entire episode was the fever dream of a drug-addled Quark passed out in one of his own holosuites, except Quark has entirely too much taste to indulge in this schlock.

DS9 has been so consistently outstanding that the show had to balance itself out with this episode.

A million monkeys on a million typewriters are more likely to produce a work of Shakespeare than they are to produce anything worse than Fascination.

If the Dunning-Kruger effect were an episode of Star Trek, it would be Fascination.

Fascination is the Uwe Boll of episodes.

Fascination is to Star Trek what M. Night Shyamalan is to Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Fascination is the lowest point in the actors' careers and in their characters' lives.

Fascination was written, directed, and played by Lwaxana Troi.

If this episode has a single redeeming quality, it is that it ends.

DS9 S3.E9 - Defiant

Season 3, Episode 9 - "Defiant," or "will.i.am.not"

For the life of me, I cannot remember an episode about William Riker's Chaotic Good twin. I know I've seen this episode, because I have reviewed every episode of TNG. I suspect that if I were to rifle through my archives of TNG reviews, I would have said something about Riker's Twin along the lines of: "an unforgettable episode that will haunt me for the rest of my days."

Serves you right, Past Me.

Anyway, I was absolutely certain Defiant would've been the first DS9 episode I actually disliked. Its first fifteen minutes unfold like a droll by-the-numbers Very Special Episode of DS9 in which an aging Jonathan Frakes appears on set to make one last desperate attempt to remind the show's fans that Riker is still the galaxy's most eligible beard.

Riker saunters into the show with all the swagger of a walrus on a ketogenic diet. Kira and Jadzia give him sidelong glances like gossiping schoolgirls eyeing up the hot new substitute teacher. Riker and Sisko banter about gambling and gambling-related dancers, as men should. And right up until the moment Riker shoots Kira in the back, I'm convinced I'm going to have to MST3K this entire episode.

But something I'm discovering about DS9 is that my expectations are routinely undermined by the show's commitment to good storytelling over familiar, well-worn tropes for their own sake. The concept of a guest star in an episode is an old and familiar one, reminiscent of Chief Engineer Scotty's heartwarming and bittersweet appearance in the final season of TNG. I expected a valedictory episode saying goodbye to Riker (and by extension, Frakes, and all of TNG) using DS9 as its vehicle. I expected this to be an episode where the usual business of DS9 steps aside for a few moments, yielding 50 minutes of space to a charmingly self-indulgent episode about a charmingly self-indulgent William Riker.

As usual, I was wrong.

Defiant's plot is fairly simple at first glance. Commander Riker is actually "Tom Riker," a clone of our original, familiar Riker whose life diverged from his origin point following a tragic transporter accident. Like two species experiencing divergent evolution, Tom Riker and Will Riker become two different people. But there are still similarities, still some overriding characteristics they both share. A penchant for the dramatic, a flair for grandstanding, and a commitment to doing the right thing at any cost.

Tom Riker has joined the Maquis. He steals the eponymous Defiant, ostensibly with the intention of using a massive warship against the Cardassians. The Cardassians--namely, Gul Dukat--freak out at the realization that the Maquis have a warship in their hands. This is roughly the equivalent of the Sinn Fein getting their hands on Optimus Prime and turning it against the British Empire. Riker's actions precipitate the Cardassians and the Federation to the brink of war, so Dukat and Sisko put aside their differences and try to prevent Riker from striking a match on the tinderbox of Federation diplomacy.

What I love about Defiant is its elaborate layering of its own plot. This entire episode reads like a cold war thriller. The Cardassians don't want to go to war with the Federation. The Federation doesn't want to go to war against the Cardassians. Riker doesn't want to hurt Cardassians--he wants to destroy a group of clandestine Cardassian extremists building up their forces, illegally, in the Delta Quadrant. Meanwhile, the Obsidian Order doesn't want Gul Dukat discovering what Riker knows. Everyone has a gun to everyone else's head in this episode, and nobody wants to shoot first.

There's a lovely episode of West Wing about a tense Cold War situation between Taiwan and China involving wargames in the South China Sea. The crux of the episode involves the United States having to choose between supplying Taiwan with advanced ballistic missiles while dealing with Chinese belligerence, and over the course of the episode, we realize that the US was never going to give Taiwan any missiles, but had to pretend like they would, so that China could pretend like they were being belligerent, so that Taiwan could act like they had the US on their side. So everyone's beating their chests and rattling their sabers and waggling their metaphors, but no one's actually going to do anything.

This episode reminded me of that quality of dangerous Cold War brinksmanship. The Obsidian Order is playing a dangerous game of brinksmanship by raising a military fleet in secret, gambling that the Federation's treaty with the Cardassians will inevitably dissolve. Riker is playing a dangerous game of brinksmanship by driving the Defiant right into the heart of the Obsidian Order's operation. Sisko and Dukat are both grappling for advantage, trading one another political favors in exchange for Riker's life.

This episode is political maneuvering on the highest level, and it is delicious. I was stunned by the deftness with which the episode pivots away from a Very Special Riker Episode and hammers right into Hunt for Red October territory. In a way, this episode wants me to be fooled by the folksy, hammy charm of its first ten minutes. As I lower my guard at the sight of Riker's cheesy grin and poorly aged smolder, I'm vulnerable to the sucker punch that follows.

Any episode in which Gul Dukat and Sisko play political chess for the preservation of Federation-Cardassian peace is an episode I love. Throw in some razor-sharp Cold War maneuvering and a genuinely strong performance from our beloved Jonathan Frakes, and I'm in love.

Excellent episode.