To Boldly Stay...

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE
SEASON THREE

by Matt Brown
June 3rd, 2003

The Next Generation fan in me was rather pleased with the first two seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, so when I heard the producers' contention that there would be some major changes to the format of the show for Season Three, I was apprehensive.

The first half of Season Three was the only time that Deep Space Nine was on the airwaves on its own, with neither TNG or Voyager to steal its thunder. (Of course, the pre-Voyager hype was gigantic and all eyes were focused on Star Trek: Generations' feature debut, but wa-hey.)

The producers called this a "crucial development phase" for the show, but that was bull. If they really had any faith in the fledgling series, they would have given it a longer period to be in the spotlight on its own. As such, DS9 was always doomed to be Trek's "middle child," and the adolescent hell of Season Three was, therefore, largely understandable.

Season Three is the series' weakest year, dragging along with the residue of the first two years' efforts to be "like Next Generation," and laying only the preliminary groundwork for the greatness of the following seasons. Fortunately, it all turns around by years' end, when the drums truly begin to roll. The instability passes, the series finds its new voice, and things really start to cook.

The biggest change made at the beginning of Season Three shouldn't come as much of a surprise. From the beginning, the concept of doing a Star Trek series set on a space station was a dangerous one - "to boldly stay where no one has stayed before" and all that - and even with the use of the Runabouts in the first two years, the producers obviously felt the crew wasn't being given enough chance to stretch their legs. So, here's the Defiant, the crew's own personal ass-kicking starship, which seems to have been built with a completely different design philosophy from any other ship in the fleet. This little bitch was made to fight.

Now, the Defiant's presence would become absolutely instrumental to the series, as much of what happened after Season Three simply couldn't have happened if the series had remained confined to the station. But still, it was a change, and a change I did not initially take kindly to. My problem is that I'm a real avenging angel when it comes to "retooling": nothing puts me off a series more than an apparent producerial lack of confidence in the existing format. (Witness Voyager, which got retooled for almost every season, and Enterprise, which is about to suffer its first major reorganization in a few months.)

It also didn't help that the two-part "The Search" episode, which opened Season Three, was pretty terrible. The first part is just an extended advertisement for the new starship, and the second part makes the grievous "it's all a dream" sin.

(Of note: I almost never let Trek get away with the "it's all a dream" scenario, or any story where everything that happens is made to un-happen by the end of the show. Notable exceptions include "The Visitor," "Yesterday's Enterprise" and other similar alterna-time plotlines.)

Having spent two years wondering where Odo came from, I did not expect the answers to come in "The Search." On Next Gen, the story would have been handled over the length of the series, à la Data's origins, making the plot point an ongoing question mark to be continuously exploited. The fact that Odo's affairs get tied up at the beginning of Season Three jarred me tremendously. But of course, this ain't Next Gen, and Odo's discovery of the Founders is only a stepping-stone on the way to very important events later on, both for the man himself, and the Federation. It establishes the fundamental conflict of the series, and lays the groundwork for the Dominion War.

Season Three also sees the beginning of Odo's (initially) unrequited feelings for Major Kira, a plot point which I was never happy with. I am extremely short-tempered with the automated heterosexual pairings of any television ensemble. (If you've got three male Friends, and three female Friends, how long before they've all had sex with each other at least once?)

A strong, intimate, platonic relationship between a man and a woman (or, a woman and a male puddle of goo) is a rarity on television, and it was a tremendous shame to lose such a strong one on Deep Space Nine. (Wait a minute: you've got a male X Files agent and a female X Files agent.... well, they can't not get together, can they?) Grr. Argh.

Rene Auberjonois and Nana Visitor weren't any happier with the situation than I was, and it does tend to show. The third-season episode in question, "Heart of Stone," is just bloody awful - who on earth came up with imprisoning Kira in a giant rock?

The season is not without its goodies, such as "Civil Defence," which is a little like TNG's "Disaster" in its Irwin Allen-style multiple plotlines, exploring a crisis on the station. It also features one of Marc Alaimo's all-time great performances as Dukat. "Visionary" is a fun time-travel romp and showcases our favourite gearhead, Chief O'Brien. (It was also a notable episode in the ongoing "torture O'Brien" sub-genre, of which there was at least one entry per season.)

"Defiant" gets a nice guest performance out of Jonathan Frakes as Riker's evil twin. "Explorers" and "Facets" are both surprisingly touching, and surprisingly different, takes on how to tell a Star Trek story, both hallmarks of the type of storytelling in which DS9 would excel in the coming years. And I have a sick fondness for the love story in "Meridian," even though I know the episode itself isn't very good.

Other episodes are less successful. The "Past Tense" two-parter is slow and ridiculously heavy-handed, a real missed opportunity to do a neat time travel show that sends the crew back to the 21st century. Too much moralizing and not enough plot make this the worst kind of soap-box preaching. Later in the year, "Life Support" veers wildly into pathos and melodrama. "Inner Voices" is just plain insane.

Two of Quark's episodes this year are also on death's door. "Family Business," which introduces Ishka (played, one time only, by Andrea Martin), is a failure, and as for "Prophet Motive," three words: "Casablanca with Ferengi." I like "The House of Quark" a little bit more, just because it was a damn good idea to mix up the Ferengi and the Klingons and see what happens. It also brings Robert O'Reilly into the DS9 fold for the first time.

The season finale is lacklustre. "The Adversary" finally bumps Sisko up to Captain, and sees him sporting the goatee he would wear for the rest of the series, but otherwise it's a pretty dull run-and-jump-and-be-suspicious episode set on the Defiant, and not a terribly strong close to the season.

The season's true standouts are the second Mirror episode, "Through the Looking Glass," which turns Sisko into an honest-to-god swashbuckler, and the "Improbable Cause" / "The Die is Cast" duology, which actually does the impossible and makes the battle at Wolf 359 seem like a bad day at the zoo. And it contains a great line, "You blew up your own shop, Garak!"

Ah, and Garak. Of Deep Space Nine's innumerable recurring characters, Garak is king - as much fun as Q had been on TNG, but a character who, by series' end, was popping up almost as frequently as the principal cast.

Everybody loves a good mystery, and Garak is a mystery with legs and a bumpy face. Unlike the various moles on The X Files, however, he never becomes tiresome. Andy Robinson's deliciously serpentine portrayal of the former Cardassian inquisitor is rife with humour and drama, and a lovely touch of nobility that make his final scene in DS9's very last episode, where he is standing amidst the ruins of his homeworld, one of the entire series' best notes.

And fortunately, by Season Three, Garak is becoming nicely prominent. The "Improbable Cause" / "The Die is Cast" pair is the moment when he finally steps into center stage, after which, he never really leaves. He's the series' secret weapon, and his torture scene with Odo in "Die" is extraordinary.

"Die" itself is extraordinary, as we reach that pivotal moment, where the battle fields are before us, and with the snap of a finger, it starts. Deep Space Nine sheds its former self and becomes what it would ultimately be: the chronicle of a war, and its warriors.

"To Boldly Stay..." has been an ongoing review of all seven seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The complete series is now available on DVD.

You can access the complete series of reviews on the left.