Deep Space 9 WatchParty (Drake) – Season 1, Episode 1 – Emissary

I was asked by my friend Phil to do a review/watch party of Star Trek: Deep Space 9, as several people recommended it to us, and I had only watched about midway through the second season, only picking up an episode here or there afterwards for reasons to be discussed later, but I considered watching through it again because I’ve previously enjoyed going back to a show that I gave a second chance to. I thought it was a great idea, giving me something to write and post on my blog besides what video games I’ve been playing. I’ve wanted to have reviews of games, movies, TV, etc. since the beginning, but I never did much because frankly, I’ve been lazy about it and wasn’t inclined to write about these things when I could be watching/reading/playing them. Also, I really suck at reviews. At least I think I do. So this will give me some practice and maybe some inclination to write other things that maybe few will want to read, but at least I’ll have fun with my friend and have a sense of having done something more worthwhile with the site.

This first post will be extra long due to the requisite exposition, they should tame down as we progress.

Due to my interest in sci-fi, instilled by my mother, I had been an avid Star Trek fan since about the age of 13, watching reruns of the original Star Trek TV series. I mocked Star Trek: The Next Generation when it first came out: with some old guy as a captain, a blind guy as a pilot, a Klingon science officer, and a female security chief – oof, but started watching it at a friend’s suggestion during second season reruns, and really liked it. I’ve watched every episode of the original, nearly every episode of Next Generation, a lot of Voyager and Enterprise, the movies (including the first two J.J. Abrams movies, though they are irrelevant to this), and as previously stated, the first season and a half of DS9. I have some of these on DVD/Blu-ray/VHS taped off-air. I do know most of the lore, and even some of that of the bits of DS9 that I didn’t watch.

So, the first season and a half or so will be a re-watching for me, though I haven’t seen these episodes for nearly 30 years. Will it be an awkward experience with something that no longer holds up, and has become really cringey, especially since I’ve grown up and changed a lot since, or will it be more like a delightful reunion with an old friend?

I’m really dreading this due to some of the left-wing themes that I have outgrown, and I know permeate Star Trek. After watching the first 15 minutes on my phone to test the waters, it took me about a week to get back to it, partly due to illness, when I watched the whole episode on my TV.

It starts out with Sisko1 captaining? a ship at Wolf 359.2 Wow, I had forgotten about the Borg attack, don’t really remember it, but I totally should have. It has been a few decades. So, he’s in charge of the ship but he’s still a commander, interesting. I thought maybe he was a captain and got demoted to commander to run the space station. I guess commanders can run starships.

Fishing, this feels like the holodeck, or a temporary residence between assignments.
Holodeck. My “reviews” may be more like “live tweeting” the episode. Hopefully, I’ll take better notes and be able to effect a better synopsis as we progress.

The title scene is just lovely. Gorgeous, with music reminiscent of fanfare for the common man, but less bombastic and more understated. I think this was my favorite intro of all the treks3. It looks kinda fuzzy on my TV, probably due to the upscaling, as this is only standard definition.

Now we get into the episode proper, and there will be lots of instances of this kind of exposition (and later character development) that I will want to unpack for you when I probably ought to be summarizing instead.

So, Miles O’Brien, who was the Transporter Chief on the Enterprise D, and is now effectively the Chief Engineer of the titular space station as a carry-over from Next Generation, is now is briefing Sisko, and therefore the audience, on the situation. Sisko is taking over command of the space station in orbit of Bajor, Deep Space 9, for the Federation, in cooperation with the Bajoran provisional government after the Cardassian occupational forces have left.

In 1993 this seemed to me to be a vague representation of Israel as Bajor, Cardassians as Arabs/Muslims, and the Federation as the United States/Nations as per usual in Star Trek. Recently I’ve read that the Cardassians were supposed to be representative of Nazis and that Bajor was more like Poland and they were supposedly more representative of Catholics. I think in hindsight, the analogy is more accurate to Bajor being Afghanistan, and Cardassians being the Soviet Union, but a lot of that history of the US side hadn’t happened yet. In the end, it’s only a fictional analogy and we must be mindful not to take it too far. Suffice it to say that as I was watching it in the mid 90s, I saw the Bajorans as Israeli-like, and that’s how I will treat it until and unless I see something in this watching that convinces me otherwise. The World War II situation never would have occurred to me at the time, and feels very tired and worn-out to me now, and the Bajoran religion always seemed much more Eastern, like Hindu, than Catholic to me. It is important to consider that my opinions and feelings of all the earthly parties referenced has changed dramatically in the intervening years and that complicates my analysis of my earlier perceptions and my current perceptions. This is also why I was dreading it to some extent, and partly why I stopped watching it shortly after this point, before going back and watching the whole episode later on the TV. Fortunately, it turned out not as bad as I feared.

So then we see Quark, as played by Armin Shimerman, though he previously had appeared as the first Ferengi character in Next Generation. The Ferengi represent all the worst aspects of capitalism, according to that first Ferengi episode in Next Generation, which I think kind of backfired on me and my friends, as we generally like the Ferengi, I even bought a copy of the Ferengi rules of Acquisition. Simply regard them as a poker opponent, and you’ll do fine. Then this weird hooded Bajoran, apparently some sort of religious devotee, says, “Prophets await you,” which may be funny if you think about Quark (profits await you). Sisko says, “Another time,” and there are some odd moody eye flashes for some reason. Engineer Exposition O’Brien explains that the conditions are kinda crappy, they go over the staff roster a little bit and O’Brien hints that Bajoran women are temperamental in some way, being familiar with Ensign Ro from Next Generation.

Now we see Kira, the strong female archetype. This didn’t seem so incongruous to me back then, I generally like bold women, but I’ve become somewhat jaded to women in leadership roles. Re-analyzing my dim recollections of the show through my current perceptions, doesn’t set off any alarms. I remember her being cuter, though. I remember they put her hair up after the pilot, and at the time, I thought it looked so much better this way. Maybe I didn’t miss it until it was gone, but now it just looks kinda frumpy.

She’s upset that the federation is coming in to manage things after the Cardassians withdrawal. I would have been puzzled at that back then, because I saw the US and the Federation as a benevolent friend back then, but now I understand and relate to the desire of self-governance. Ultimately Bajor, and every nation, is better off being left to themselves.

Some action starts happening and Kira says they’ve been having a lot of break ins. How does that work on a space station, lots of pirates or something? Oh, it’s just some kind of local trouble. The space station is big enough to have a seamy underbelly or something. Now we get to see Odo in action doing his T-1000 impersonation as a liquid-based shape-shifter. He’s the local constable and arrests a Ferengi youth (Nog).

On to a Captain Picard cameo. He states that Bajorans aren’t self sustainable, but he is the main advocate for them to join the Federation, even though there are many Bajoran Factions. Sisko says he doesn’t even want the job, citing lousy conditions and not really having any skin in the game for Bajorans. Also, he doesn’t like Picard due to his wife paying the ultimate price on the receiving end of the Borg attack at Wolf 359. Sisko decides to make the most of the assignment he’s been given until such time as he can get beamed the heck out of there.

Quark is trying to leave because everything sucks, when Sisko makes him “community leader,” for an urban renewal project of sorts. These days that would be called gentrification. He appeals to some universal sense of Fatherhood regarding Quark’s nephew, because we’re all the same deep down, don’tcha know, or something.

It’s time to see the religious guys now. Bajor looks like Rome, all beautiful classical architecture. I can’t help laughing at this with my current perceptions, given that I heard that someone has claimed that the Greco-Roman legacy is somehow Israeli or something, though the classical architecture here is suggestive of Rome and the Catholic church.

So now we see this “orb,” thing, which looks more like a grail shaped sparklee from the City of Oz, and it causes Sisko to have a flashback, as typically happens in these situations. Somewhere in this episode we get the idea that Sisko is their “Emissary.” I remember these religious guys being weird. This is probably spoiler territory, but they seem to start out with a positive, trustworthy connotation as one would see one’s own religions leaders, but later they seem to be just another ambitious earthly faction rather than a mystical source of Truth. That does conform to what I’m going to say is Hollywood’s perception of Catholicism and Christianity, but not mine.

Quark has miraculously spruced the place up with wholesome activities like gambling and drinking, and “holo-suites” and such. A place you’d love to have your 14 year old son hanging out in. Maybe this would justify Sisko’s reluctance to stay, but he’s the one who required Quark to remain on the station. As a 19 yr old at the time of watching this originally, I, of course, loved it.

And so we have the introduction of the Trill. Of course I knew that was coming, having watched the show before. For the unfamiliar, the Trill are a symbiotic life form, consisting of a “symbiont,” which is a slug-like creature about the size of a couple fists, that lives inside the abdomen of a “host” creature which is humanoid. The “symbiont” is like the brains and soul of the binary lifeform, and the humanoid is something like a lesser lifeform but does contribute some personality. It’s a little like Crang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The “gimmick” with this species is that the “symbiont” can be transplanted into another host when its current one dies, and they don’t care if the next one is male or female, so you have this whole trans-gender thing going on front-and-center in 1993, though the Next Generation episode featuring this species was from 1991. So This Trill is Jadzia Dax, Dax being the name of the “slug” and Jadzia being the name of the host. She’s a pretty actress who resembles Lynda Carter.

Ooh an anti-colonialism scene about “frontier medicine.” Bashir is completely right, though. O’Brien says goodbye to the Enterprise. The Cardassians looked cool, but I always hated them, since they were generally pretty evil. Not sure if this was at the point I really really hated them or not. Cardassians are gloating about their spy info.

Oh the wormhole, I can’t believe I forgot about it. Kind of a big part of the show.
Oh yeah they moved the station over by the wormhole so the intro makes sense now with the wormhole on their back door.

Computer fighting with O’Brien about moving the station. Cute.

So these aliens in the wormhole don’t understand the concept of time. This actually makes sense with my current understanding of physics. They must be some sort of energy beings that live at the speed of light and therefore there is no sense of time to them. That also explains how they could and/or would create an artificial wormhole. They appear to not like the idea of corporeal beings traipsing through their backyard, maybe it’s a nursery of some kind.

Sisko says “linear existence” so much it gets annoying.

Aha, baseball! I remember now that Sisko had a thing for baseball, and I have a friend who I expect likes that aspect of the show too.

The aliens make good therapists for Sisko, they show him that despite being in a linear existence, he clings to the memory of his wife’s death, as though it keeps her alive in his memory or something, and thus help him get over it.

Sisko talks to Picard again as the Enterprise was called back to the station to help out against the Cardassians, and now Sisko wants the job, because he doesn’t hate Picard and Starfleet anymore, or something.

My review feels a bit disjointed and lacking in certain details that might be important, but it’s what you get. All in all this was an okay episode, with some wooden acting, especially on the part of Sisko, but that is typical for a TV pilot, along with all the exposition, so I’m not going to knock it too much for that.

I’d rate it a B-, rather bland, somewhat boring, but it did what needed to be done to set the stage, with a little bit of action and excitement. Some of the action, like the moving of the space station, was less exciting having watched it before. At least it wasn’t as bad as Encounter at Farpoint.
1. Somehow I remembered the correct spelling of his name, I’m sure I thought it was Cisco when I first heard it, but it is spelled out in the credits and titles.
2. Wolf 359 is is named after a real-life red dwarf star located in the constellation Leo.
3. Original Star Trek through Enterprise.
4. Added 2021-03-09: I originally rated it a B, but forgot about pluses and minuses, and remember I’m cutting it some slack because there is a lot of exposition to get through.