{"id":3157,"date":"2022-09-04T12:00:41","date_gmt":"2022-09-04T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3157"},"modified":"2023-03-06T11:13:49","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T11:13:49","slug":"trekaday-044-emissary-past-prologue-a-man-alone-babel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/09\/04\/trekaday-044-emissary-past-prologue-a-man-alone-babel\/","title":{"rendered":"Trekaday 044: Emissary, Past Prologue, A Man Alone, Babel"},"content":{"rendered":"

DS9 S01E01-2 Emissary <\/strong>(\"3). Paramount wanted a new show and Berman and co. didn\u2019t want to send another ship with another crew out exploring. If the original series had been Wagon Train to the Stars, the new show would be Border Town in Space. Various tendrils connect the old show to the new show, although not quite as many as hoped. Michelle Forbes was asked to return as Ro Laren. When she declined, I think I read somewhere that the part of Kira was offered to Suzie Plakson. In the end, it went to Nana Visitor. Colm Meany turns up as Chief O\u2019Brien and Captain Picard passes the baton in early scenes.<\/p>\n

The big question mark hanging over TNG <\/strong>was: could they get lightning to strike again with the regular cast? And it took a while. By the time DS9<\/strong> was being planned, the TNG<\/strong> regular cast had been thinned out to just seven. I rate these actors as world class (Stewart), excellent (Spiner, Dorn, Burton) and good enough (Frakes, McFadden, Sirtis) and by now all seven of these characters have become fan favourites. That\u2019s not a bad track record. This first episode of the new show counts eight actors in its titles. None of them can hold a candle to Stewart, but at least four of them can easily take that \u201cexcellent\u201d tag (Auberjonois, Meany, Shimerman, Visitor) and Farrell, Siddig and Lofton will get better as the series continues. Avery Brooks I find a bit of a mystery. Many fans think he\u2019s wonderful, but his style of delivery never strikes me as entirely natural and I find he\u2019s stuck between wanting to emulate what worked so well for Stewart and the need to create a new character. The scenes between him and Picard want to be able to distinguish between two equally-capable yet profoundly different leaders. In fact all they do is distinguish between a supremely able actor who\u2019s incredibly comfortable in his role with one who is still feeling his way.<\/p>\n

The other contrast is in their uniforms. The Enterprise<\/em> crew stick in the same togs until Generations<\/em> (and more on that wardrobe shit-show when the time comes) but Star Fleet officers on the space station wear all black with coloured shoulders and a purple undergarment peeking through a small v-neck. I\u2019ve really enjoyed watching TNG<\/strong>\u2019s colourful episodes, the images beautifully restored from the original 35mm film elements. Watching DS9<\/strong> means watching smeary NTSC video which even modern AI algorithms can\u2019t do much to clean up, and so it really doesn\u2019t help that almost everyone is inky black from the collarbone down, without even a proper belt to break up the monotony. And those coloured v-necks flop about in a very un-military way. Alas, Voyager<\/strong> will inherit the same look (and not get the upgrade that comes around the time of First Contact<\/em>).<\/p>\n

What is welcome is an even greater commitment to diversity and complexity. Of those eight regulars (and the cast of recurring characters will grow and grow) only four are Star Fleet. The others are a Bajoran major, a changeling security guard, a human child and a Ferengi bartender. This widening of the number of viewpoints is crucial to what makes this series work and one of the reasons why it\u2019s so many people\u2019s favourite. It\u2019s also the only show never to have the airwaves to itself. These four episodes were shown in January 1993, after TNG<\/strong> went off the air for Christmas (following the mic-drop of Chain of Command<\/em>). Thereafter, both shows aired new episodes until TNG<\/strong> wrapped up its seventh season, whereupon Voyager<\/strong> kicked off. So, DS9<\/strong> became the \u201cdeep cut\u201d show which marked out the connoisseur fan from the casual viewer.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember when I saw these episode for the first time. I think DS9 <\/strong>was first shown in the UK on Sky. Possibly I watched it there, maybe I caught up with it when the BBC was finally allowed to air it. I remember trying to follow it, and admiring it greatly, but now I can only call to mind a very few episodes, mainly concerned with key events in the war. Wanting to watch the whole show through from the beginning was one of my main motivations for starting this project and I\u2019m thrilled that the moment has finally arrived.<\/p>\n

We open with the Borg attack on Wolf 359, referred to but never depicted in The Best of Both Worlds<\/em>, and now seen from Sisko\u2019s perspective. This is followed in short order by the fridging of Sisko\u2019s wife Jennifer. Most of this I think is model work, but the wormhole which is the main MacGuffin of these early episodes is primitive but effective CGI. That\u2019s why these episodes look like crap compared to TNG<\/strong>. Everything in the earlier show was shot on film, even the spaceships. But so much of DS9<\/strong> was created digitally, and at 1990s TV resolution, that it would all have to redone from scratch to create a Blu-ray master. The relatively poor sales of the TNG<\/strong> remasters didn\u2019t inspire Paramount to spend even more money on a less popular series.<\/p>\n

The titles are only so-so as well. Visually, it\u2019s just a montage of shots of the space station for the most part, and the title music keeps threatening to arrive at a really good melody and never quite gets there. What\u2019s far more effective is Sisko\u2019s initial tour of the space station. After the gleaming newness of the Enterprise<\/em> for more than five years, the grime and disrepair of this environment is quite a tonic. We\u2019re also introduced to our regulars more smoothly than we were all those years ago in Encounter at Farpoint<\/em>. Familiar Miles O\u2019Brien shows Sisko (and us) around and introduces him to Major Kira. Nana Visitor makes an instant impression, immediately dispelling any regrets about Michelle Forbes. She\u2019s electric and her character is fascinating. O\u2019Brien later gets a whole scene in which he formally leaves the Enterprise <\/em>which feels unnecessary and poorly placed. Acting royalty Rene Auberjonois is next, his highly impressive Odo taking on a small gang of bandits including Nog \u2013 a series regular in all but name \u2013 who in turn brings us to Quark, already spouting aphorisms but these are not yet dubbed \u201crules of acquisition\u201d.<\/p>\n

In amongst all this, there isn\u2019t much room for a story. When we first meet him, Sisko seems just as fed up with his job as Pike was in The Cage <\/em>but he rapidly ends up more like Picard than anyone else: pragmatic, compassionate, prone to giving inspirational speeches. He also comes up against a Bajoran high priest who recognises him as The Emissary of their legends. So, he\u2019s either Diet Coke Picard or The Second Coming of Space Jesus \u2013 take your pick. He gets the chance to revisit his first meeting with Jennifer (so this is the kind of fridging where you\u2019re really saving something for later). Sisko, having been charged with keeping the peace by Picard, is now charged by Kai Opaka with finding Bajor\u2019s Celestial Table. Big day for Sisko who takes the flashback machine with him for safekeeping (and the supplying of backstories).<\/p>\n

As noted when I wrote about The Host<\/em>, the Trill get reinvented here. Jadzia Dax is still the same old Dax, more or less, unlike Odan who was exactly the same mind but in a different body. Terry Farrell doesn\u2019t get much to do, but seems happy enough to do it. Dr Bashir is keen as mustard, which is something we haven\u2019t seen much of in adult Star Trek <\/strong>characters, but the actor seems a little uncertain at this early stage. It\u2019s also in this first episode that we meet recurring villain Gul Ducat. Marc Alaimo was the original Cardassian, but following David Warner is no easy task, especially when he\u2019s given the series-sell speech in the middle of the episode. Like so many others, he’ll grow into the role as time goes on.<\/p>\n

Before long, Dax and Sisko find themselves on Planet Blue Screen in the centre of the wormhole. The trippy visuals here are quite a treat but the concept of non-linear time is one of those things that you really don\u2019t want to interrogate too closely. Why do beings which exist in all points in time fear their own demise? And why don’t they know that the Federation is coming? At one point, one of the wormhole dwellers pretty much says \u201cWhat is this thing you call love?\u201d for crying out loud. Moving the station to the edge of the wormhole is a great sequence for O\u2019Brien (virtually mirroring the saucer-separation procedure from Farpoint<\/em>) but not many of the other characters get moments as revealing as this. Kira pops, Odo is fun, Quark shows promise but (despite getting the lion\u2019s share of the screen time) Sisko is all back-story and no personality so far, and the others just get TNG <\/strong>Season 1-style functional dialogue.<\/p>\n

Compared to the TNG<\/strong> pilot, this has the advantage of taking place in a universe that\u2019s already five years old, and all of the additions to the lore work well. Ultimately though, this is trying to keep too many balls in the air to be truly satisfying as a ninety minutes of television drama. It\u2019s a overly-complex guided tour of a place stories will take place in, rather than a narrative in its own right, but never dull for all that.<\/p>\n

DS9 S01E03 <\/strong>Past Prologue <\/strong>(\"3). Virtually the first thing we see in this episode is Garak the Cardassian \u201ctailor\u201d who will prove to be one of the most fascinating and enduring members of the supporting cast. It\u2019s very clear what Andrew Robinson thought the subtext was, but it was never allowed to anything more than a hint. For the full sorry story, see this fascinating YouTube video<\/a>. Meanwhile. Sisko and Kira are in (whisper it) conflict once more as she attempts to go over his head regarding his dealings with a Bajoran \u201cfreedom fighter\u201d. And \u2013 hey! \u2013 it\u2019s the Kleavage Sisters again, being made to surrender their weapons to Odo. Speaking of which, he seems to be able to morph into the shape and size<\/em> of a rat, which either means that that\u2019s an incredibly heavy rat which would probably overstrain the floor structures, or that his shapeshifting is little more than magic and he doesn\u2019t have to maintain the same mass. The Klingons are in league with the freedom fighter, who isn\u2019t nearly as reformed a character as he maintained, so the Federation is proven right and the Bajoran liaison proven wrong, which is probably inevitable, but does make the balance of power on the station a little more stable and thus a little less interesting. This episode doesn\u2019t screw anything up but it isn\u2019t terribly interesting on either a plot or a character level. It feels like more table-setting, a continuation of the pilot rather than a bold new leap into a fresh world of storytelling possibilities. In the pilot, I\u2019m pretty sure people called the Ferengi bartender \u201cQuark\u201d to rhyme with bark, lark, stark, park, hark and \u2013 as the word\u2019s inventor James Joyce had it \u201cMuster Mark\u201d. Now people are starting to rhyme it with pork, dork, fork, cork and so on. This is going to piss me off.\u00a0Speaking of Quark, this is the first mention of gold-pressed latinum, needed to solve the problem of a profit-oriented culture in a post-currency society.<\/p>\n

DS9 S01E04 <\/strong>A Man Alone <\/strong>(\"2.5) opens with the limpest, most nothing-burger of a teaser we\u2019ve seen in ages, with the two least-well-defined characters playing a video game for a while before deciding not to. SMASH CUT TO TITLES. The interplay between Odo and Sisko is more interesting. The most senior authority figure and the head of security and they \u2013 gasp! \u2013 don\u2019t trust each other, or at least not yet. While Gene Roddenberry gets over his attack of the vapours, there\u2019s yet another shady Bajoran dude sneaking around the station while Nog and Jake are making friends and the O\u2019Briens are doing their best to stay married. So, again, this feels low-key, soapy and I\u2019m still waiting for the show to earn its keep as a syndicated science-fiction adventure series, since the characters aren\u2019t nearly well-defined enough or being put through enough for this to qualify as prestige drama. First appearance of Morn whose presence will soon become a very funny running joke.<\/p>\n

DS9 S01E05 <\/strong>Babel <\/strong>(\"3). Hey! An actual science-fiction plot with the potential to deeply affect our characters. Some kind of bug is going around and first O\u2019Brien and then Dax lose the ability to process language. This results in their speech coming out as word salad \u2013 a challenge which the actors rise to very impressively. Odo tries to organise a lockdown, but you know how well that kind of thing goes down. So, although the symptoms are frighteningly novel, this is that familiar Star Trek<\/strong> clich\u00e9, the virus on the loose, complete with mutating strains, the regular cast dropping one-by-one and a last-minute cure which works almost instantaneously and leaves zero ill-effects. But it is at least exciting, which is more than can be said for the last couple of episodes, although the most exciting moment \u2013 the ship trying to pull away from the docking clamps \u2013 barely registers because the show can\u2019t afford to show us what\u2019s physically happening.<\/p>\n

Stray remarks<\/strong><\/p>\n