The Overriding Arc: Deep Space Nine Season Six

Season Five ended about as darkly as it possibly could. 

The station was in Dominion hands, Kira, Odo and Jake had stayed behind and Sisko was joining the fleet to take on the Gamma Quadrant's greatest power. So not much to resolve then.

Sensibly this isn't all wrapped up in 44 minutes and the first six episodes create a mini-arc never before seen on the show. It certainly set Deep Space Nine apart to not only conclude the previous season's cliffhanger as always at the beginning of the following year but not to completely resolve it for several weeks. It also meant I was shelling out for the videos every two weeks.

Time to Stand, Rocks and Shoals, Sons and Daughters, Behind the Lines, Favor the Bold and Sacrifice of Angels isn't without its faults or the sense of dragging out time to fill but it achieves much given the extended development time. The opening pairing do focus more on the activities of Sisko and the Starfleet officers from the station (accompanied by Garak in place of Worf who is bunking with Martok on the Rotarran) and having them confined to either a tiny starbase, Defiant or the Jem'Hadar ship they captured in The Ship precisely a season before. The fish-out-of-water element was a master-stroke but the six-parter fell a bit flat in it's mid-section with the focus shifting from the Defiant crew to the beginnings of a resistance cell on Terok Nor and the return of Worf's rapidly aging son, Alexander. Seeing his speedy maturation makes me wonder if he might have dropped by Genesis. 

There's a lot of backstory in there as well as the sprinkling of Sisko being removed from the front lines which lasts for all of two episodes before he's back in the command chair of the Defiant preparing to take back the station. Favor the Bold is all about set up, maneuvering the players into their cliffhanger positions ready for the retaking of Deep Space Nine. The sections which do take place on the station I found dragged when highlighting the actions of the Founder and Odo gelling around but Dukat, Weyoun and Dumar were always watchable and the sparring between them here and through the remaining two seasons of episodes were some of the best bits worth waiting for.  The final battle sequence in Sacrifice of Angels and the recapture of the station are some of the show's best space pieces by far - so good that they were reused extensively in What You Leave Behind.  The conclusion is satisfying and I know that it's rated amongst the series best - however I prefer the standoff and double-dealing that takes place in Rocks and Shoals between Sisko and the injured Vorta overseer, Keevan.

Wrapping up the arc almost as a bow on the box is You are Cordially Invited. Notable for the wedding of Worf and Jadzia. And that's it. It's one of those necessary episodes but I never caught the excitement. They got married. Great. Let's move on - which would usually be a good thing to say but we slam straight into one of my all time least liked episodes; Resurrection. Jeez this is awful. I dislike Bareil in the Prime Universe so giving us the mirror version was like pouring salt into a wound. The problem is that Bareil was a drippy character and by this point the originally well-realised Mirror Universe was growing tired and a little too full of character co-incidence. Note - I love Deep Space Nine but this and The Emperor's New Cloak are dire. No argument. Close the case.

The season is abruptly pulled up and returned to form with Statistical Probabilities and the Jack Pack. I once believed these guys to be super-annoying but I loved it this time and the dynamic of the more vocal three members of the group is fantastic. It's easy to see why a season seven sequel happened because they're so good with Jack himself one of Deep Space Nine's most memorable returning characters.

In line with this, Bashir does get some serious meat this season with his next top role coming in the overlooked Inquisition. I say overlooked purely because it's not one that would leap into a "Best of..." list but should be recognised as a classic of the show and I mean for more than the arrival of Sloane and Section 31 an organisation that would reappear in both Enterprise and Star Trek into Darkness. They are the perfect foil for the enhanced physician and coupled with Statistical Probabilities is another episode to create a memorable returning character in the final year. Bashir's story turn might not be to Siddig's liking but it did provide a lot more intrigue and depth to the doctor that I for one welcomed. 

While Bashir got some great moments, season six also carries the best Ferengi episode Deep Space Nine ever did and I regret it took me 20 years to realise that it was such a moment of excellence. Finally they got the balance of comedy and adventure spot on with The Magnificent Ferengi enhanced by a surprise turn by Iggy Pop as a Vorta. There's even death by misdemeanour as Moogi is part of a prisoner exchange on the off-kilter Empok Nor. The script sparkles, Quark and Rom have never been better and dropping in extended family and the ever-magnificent Jeffrey Combs makes this ever watchable. Tragically the other Ferengi episode in season six, Profit and Lace is total bilge of the worst kind. A sex change Quark is not something I ever need to see again - well, at least until the next full run-through in about four years time. 

Kira is the character who gets a noticeable retreat from the front line in season six accounting for Nana Visitor's real-life pregnancy. Always watchable and a highlight of the show, her absence mid-year is glaring but she does have the brilliant highlight of Wrongs Darker than Death or Night. It's one that I've added to my "I totally underrated this episode back in the day" list with it's rapid removal of characters and the eventual one-on-one confrontation that takes place. Nerys and her captor are well-matched - not quite to Marritza levels from Duet but a comfortable top three I would suspect and this one is much more sinister and calculating to the end. Visitor plays her terror on the money here and I would definitely say this is a hidden gem of the year and maybe the series as a whole.

What you do notice about this year and I loved then as much as I do now is the appreciation as a character that Sisko achieves. Kicking off with the good-but-not-Duet episode, Waltz it's a year that totally encapsulated why Avery Brooks was the perfect choice as the station commander. Anything with Brooks facing off against Marc Alaimo is worth 44 minutes of your time and this one is no exception. It's a twist on that Duet formula with the main character here being in the more submissive position and placing it in neutral territory also adds a sense of dangerous loneliness.

Brooks performances in season six only get better though with Far Beyond the Stars close behind and one of the truly format-breaking episodes in Star Trek's history. With the cast fully out of makeup the story directly targets some of the darker aspects of the 20th Century but it is Sisko/Benny Russell that steals the show here and it's easy to forget that there are hints to the larger picture within this brilliant tale all based around the "issue" of a black space station captain. The beating Russell receives at the hands of the two cops played by Alaimo and Jeffrey Combs is truly shocking, more-so being intercut with Weyoun and Dukat delivering the blows. Brooks' delivery of his final speech is just as emotionally hard-hitting as the closing moments of The Visitor. Truly a classic to this day and at this point Far Beyond the Stars was my favourite on the original watch through.

That didn't last for long though since just six episodes later we hit the utterly franchise-shaking, mid-digit waving In the Pale Moonlight. Amazing to look back to years one and two and see that the writers were head-scratching as to how to deal with Sisko yet three years later his character was solidly defined, exciting to watch and brilliantly played by Brooks. 

This episode was a show-stopper with the finest, darkest ending the show ever experienced - indeed he could live with it. The unusual pairing of Sisko/Garak makes this story sparkle as we see the descent towards the point of no return loom ever closer. The added twist that the plan actually fails is quintessential Deep Space Nine proving that life is never the perfect picture that many a The Next Generation episode used to excel at on a weekly basis. There is impact here, there is a price to pay and in some respects it would have been nice to see someone work out - some way down the path - that the Romulans were tricked into believing their ambassador was assassinated by the Dominion. One of the five episodes I've watched the most ever and I never get bored.

O'Brien's annual mangle-run comes from Honor Among Thieves and the first appearance of the oft-mentioned Orion Syndicate. It's OK but the trouble is if you're expecting the levels of Hard Time you'd be disappointed. That's not to say it's bad but it's not quite hitting those heights. Miles' relationship with Bilby is great and would be explored further in season seven's Prodigal Daughter. The O'Brien family story close to the end of the season though is poor in comparison. Never been a fan of Keiko/Molly stories and fortunately this is the only one that ever got made. I'd agree with general opinion that it's one of the series weakest episodes and it isn't helped by season six being one of the strongest batches ever. In another year it might have been average but here it sits firmly below par.

In other news mind there is the shouldn't-work-but-does One Little Ship. It could well have been a terrible episode filled with shoddy effects and a story that might have made us cringe and recall Land of the Giants however by adding in some Alpha and Gamma Jem'Hadar, Sisko hatching a cunning plan and just three of the crew being miniaturised aboard a Runabout it's a concept that works and Deep Space Nine gets away with - I reckon Voyager could have attempted it but could well have failed.

Actually season six did have it's fair share of oddments - Who Mourns for Morn? was a Quark story at heart with some neat double-crossing and a nice selling ploy that it focused on the ever-present (and apparently super-talkative) barfly. Valiant too was a little out of the norm, relying on Jake and Nog to carry the story while also reintroducing us to Red Squad last seen in season four's Paradise Lost. It's a good outing for the pair and I have found that their episodes have been a lot stronger than I remember. That and a lot more enjoyable; Cirroc was underrated I think and that might be because Jake just isn't your typical Star Trek main character and the show is better for this. He offers the other side, the non-establishment opinion and with Valiant it's his perfect soapbox in what is an utterly futile and mindless mission.

However, it is a year best documented for the death of Jadzia Dax.

The Worf/Dax relationship had been gestating since he arrived in The Way of the Warrior with their wedding earlier in season six then followed some time later by the ill-fated away mission in Change of Heart. I wouldn't say it's a standout story of the year, again because of the calibre of episodes that surround it, but it is important in relation to the Worf/Dax dynamic and also to see Sisko take him down a peg or three for his choice of wife over mission.

Tears of the Prophets was highly anticipated but just misses the mark that Call to Arms hit in season five. Marking the turning point in the war with the Dominion and a major victory with some top notch battle sequences, the events on the station do tend to make Sisko's success take a back seat. His choice to take his baseball to Earth and that the season ends on a very downbeat captain peeling potatoes in a back alley is one of the most understated closes of any batch of episodes produced.

Jadzia's death isn't as senseless as Tasha Yar's although being at the hands of Dukat makes it ever so poignant and adds another layer to the structure of the series and the tensions between Sisko and the former Cardassian despot. Also having two episodes back to back involving the death of a Starfleet officer is a little much. I still love it as an episode and it's a fantastic 45 minutes but the element of danger, the unknown is missing which filled every word of Call to Arms. Sisko might be gone but knowing that there was a year left ensured there was no doubt he would be back. Removing the wormhole and reintroducing the Pah-Wraiths meant they were still a force to be reckoned with and certainly one that meant the Dominion weren't the only problem to be solved in the final year.

What were your memories of season six? Was this the best of times for Deep Space Nine? What were the highlights?

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Trekollections VI: The First Rule of Star Trek Club

Dorn to DS9.

I read the headline in Dreamwatch one more time to see if it would sink in any more. Only a year previous Deep Space Nine, the unloved child of the Star Trek universe, had been provided a lifeline and a revamp with the arrival of the USS Defiant and the introduction of the domineering Dominion. It hadn't quite worked. They were 99.9% there and this was the solution to get the elusive 0.01%.

Problem was that I'd really enjoyed season three and everything that the new improved series had introduced. In all fairness I was both excited and disappointed to read that Worf would be taking up a position on the station from the beginning of the fourth season. Did Deep Space Nine really need him? Was he going to fit in seeing as he'd been on The Next Generation for all seven seasons plus the recent Star Trek: Generations feature? Surely this was too small for Michael Dorn? I had no say in the matter and so would be have to wait until February of the following year (1996) to see The Way of the Warrior.

However I couldn't wait that long and my gran bought me the novelisation of the season four premiere for Christmas. At this time I was revising for my GCSE mock exams over the Christmas holidays (I was that dedicated) but Christmas Day was certainly not going to be the time to have my head in the books. That was until I got ill and stayed clear of everyone else for the day - the perfect chance to read The Way of the Warrior. It changed my thoughts on the coming series completely and I couldn't wait.

At this time it was always Deep Space Nine over Voyager which was entering its second season at the same time and the fourth year of the space station drama blew everything else out of the water. Worf was a great addition and it felt like the show had taken yet another massive leap forward and a considerable risk at the same time. It was one great episode after another but 1996 was also a great year for another reason. The Star Trek Experience made it to the UK and I got the chance to see it in Birmingham.

I've still not managed to get to a convention to this day so this was quite a big thing. Walking in you were presented with a replica of the TV series Enterprise bridge and of course its one of those things you have to have a photo of whether original or not. Before I could get into an adequate pose the guide who was overseeing the set asked a fateful question; "Do you want to sit on the set?"

Now that was a silly question as the answer was undoubtedly, "Yes."

So now the only picture which still exists in my possession from that day is of me on the mock up of the original USS Enterprise bridge apparently under guard by a Vulcan-salute waving The Next Generation uniform wearing exhibition guide.

That five minutes is actually something of a blur as I hadn't expected it to happen and it did so at a fair speed - in, photo, off and done. I wish now I'd taken more of a chance to look around the replica and get a few more pics. Oh well, the wonders of hindsight.

The exhibition featured a lot of costumes and sets, particularly from Generations. There was the original Enterprise-D transporter room, Picard's desk and chair from his Ready Room and his command chair from the bridge set. Alongside them were Soran's missile and his handgun as well as a few uniforms including Kirk's The Motion Picture admiral's uniform, and Troi's blue dress. At the time Deep Space Nine and Voyager were in their early years so there were only a few bits of makeup as well as the monolith from The Alternate and the holo-generator from Shadowplay. I just wish I could find the photos as I had quite a number!

These were the first real Star Trek items I ever came into contact with and I made sure that I went over the exhibition a few times before we went into the gift shop. One thing I do still have  is the half-size combadge I bought from the shop and the set of Star Trek First Contact collectors cards (four pictured left). Even back then I thought they were expensive for the mid-1990's! which is why I didn't buy a lot - most of it had probably been ploughed into the VHS collection.

The memory of that day has stayed with me very strongly and is one of the few moments where I have managed to come face to face with the objects directly linked to my favourite show. In fact it would only be in 2010 when I would finally meet someone who appeared in Star Trek.

First Contact was my film of the year and tragically the high point of The Next Generation's movie career by some distance. As an experience it was far more satisfying than Generations and one of the best movies of the whole series. When it came out on video it was an essential purchase and came with a holographic card which switched between Picard, Data and the Borg Queen to Locutus, the damaged Data and the Borg Queen in a slightly different pose. Admittedly Generations on VHS was a better and more expensive package as I spent a bit more and bought the limited edition numbered widescreen version complete with booklet and postcards. It was a lovely set however the DVD version obliterates it for quality with ease.

Now 1996 would be a year more focused on exams than it would be on the world of Deep Space Nine or Voyager which in turn reminds me that Star Trek was a part of my English GCSE. We had to do a presentation on something we were interested in, or at least some part of topic we had an interest in. While Star Trek itself would have been too easy and obvious I went for a little more of a curve ball and produced a five minute, prompt-card remembered talk on the career of William Shatner. It might have been due to my having recently read one of the two Memories books he wrote around that time!

While it was an education-heavy twelve months I would still buy some of the videos including The Visitor/Hippocratic Oath and Body Parts/Broken Link but there are two volumes which stick in my mind for other reasons apart from their episodic content. One was the Voyager Volume 2.7 which contained Dreadnought and Death Wish. Two great episodes but the reason I remember them so well is because this is the video my parents bought me when I got my GCSE results in August of that year. When asked what I wanted as a "well done" for my work it was only ever going to be Star Trek related and this Q appearance was top of my "Must See" list that year. It didn't disappoint and whether or not I view it through rose-tinted spectacles it's in my top five Voyager episodes and one of the best Q episodes ever made. 

The other volume was 4.12 from Deep Space Nine. Again, it's not the episodes that are on the cassette that make it significant in my life story but rather the sequence it kicked off over the next few years. We'll roll back a little bit actually here because there's more to it than a single volume. I might have said that 1996 was significant because of GCSE exams but it was also the year I would get my first girlfriend.

Kate was from the high school and we met while I was on a family holiday to Paris which was intended to help me with my French linguistic abilities in preparation for the upcoming exams (as you'll see I had quite an "educational" direction forced on me). Kate also liked Star Trek which certainly helped and I introduced her to Deep Space Nine. I was even nice enough to lend her my TV recording of Emissary. A week later however Kate returned the tape however she'd left it in the VHS player and her dad had recorded over it with something totally NOT Star Trek. Possibly One Man and His Dog or World Athletics. I was, as you can understand a tiny bit gutted however what I didn't expect was that my girlfriend would buy a replacement - the collector's edition - and give it to me. 

OK, that sets the scene and for my birthday in 1996 Kate bought me another video - the aforementioned 4.12 so that I would have seen all the episodes of that year as I had already purchased 4.13. I was very grateful and we watched it together. However about a week later she split up with me. It wasn't the end of the world but I got concerned when I bought Deep Space Nine volume 5.3 the following year and my girlfriend at that time split up with me on the same day. I was starting to see links between purchasing Star Trek and the end of relationships. Not a good sign really as In the Pale Moonlight was the video I purchased shortly before my next relationship also crashed and burned. The other thing I learned was that dating someone with an interest in Star Trek was more of a curse than a blessing.

1996 was also the 30th anniversary of the franchise marked out with two special episodes - Deep Space Nine's Trials and Tribble-ations and  Voyager's Flashback. The former excellent, the latter not so good. With the video releases being somewhat behind the US, I was still relying on magazines to get my info on upcoming episodes and these two were getting some major column inches. Trials and Tribble-ations was clearly the bigger featuring the space station crew alongside Kirk and co. It was all "Wow". The episode looked amazing and marked the 30th anniversary as more impressive than the 25th. We can only hope that the 50th in just three years time is honoured in style. I even forked out a few quid for the (very) thin novelisation that accompanied the episode.

Deep Space Nine by this point had firmly cemented itself as my favourite series with season five. Worf had turned out to be a brilliant addition and the show felt complete. The year also included some of the very best of the show including Children of Time and Call to Arms which concluded the year. As usual I'd already "looked ahead" to find out what would be happening and seeing that Sisko lost the station to the Dominion was groundbreaking. While Voyager saw the namesake ship taken over by the Kazon for a two-parter, Deep Space Nine stayed in enemy hands for six episodes and a never-before-attempted six part story arc. The series was doing Star Trek like never before and yet the following sixth season would push the envelope even more.

But what of my collection? What about all the other things that made up my Star Trek world?

I had a couple of posters up of The Next Generation crew in my room but I also had a few more models by this time. The USS Enterprise from The Original Series and the movie refit from The Final Frontier were now joined by three more vessels.

The first addition was the USS Excelsior from Star Trek VI. Smaller than the Enterprise-A it was a great little piece only let down by a cup-like stand that meant it kept slipping every time you walked near the shelf. The second and third were both Klingon ships; a Bird of Prey from Star Trek: Generations and the Vor'Cha cruiser introduced in The Next Generation. For many years these craft adorned the top shelf of my unit in my room but now, due to space restrictions they are currently all in storage in the loft waiting for the day when they can once again get their own place. The two Klingon ships are currently with me while the Excelsior is foam-chip packed at my parents' house.

There would be another addition to the collection shortly after however I'll keep you guessing for the moment. At this time modelmaking wasn't my forte and it's only recently that I've tried my hand at the plastic arts, namely the JJ Abrams-verse USS Enterprise which progressed slowly but is now finished and I'm very proud of the result.

I'd added some novels to the collection as well as Larry Nemecek's The Next Generation Companion, William Shatner's superb Star Trek Memories and Star Trek Movie Memories. They were read in a flash and added a lot to my knowledge of the series and the films through to Kirk's final appearance in Generations. Sadly other autobiographies from the crew such as Takei, Doohan and even biographies on Roddenberry have never lived up to the quality of these books in my opinion. A shame but Shatner appears to have cornered the market!

If you remember from previous editions of Trekollections Bondy and I were showing episodes of Star Trek in the library over lunchtimes and the audience had gradually increased towards the end of my GCSE exam year. When we came back to start A-Levels it turned out that there had been such a demand that one of our teachers, Miss Hurton, had started a lunchtime club to watch episodes and talk about the show. Bondy and I were installed to help run it and this would be my first attempt at writing a newsletter using early versions of Word and a rather temperamental printer. 

Each week I would produce the newsletter as well as quizzes and there would be showings of new episodes from both Voyager and Deep Space Nine. I've included this edition from early in 1997. I crammed a lot on from the looks of things including episode airtimes and dates, video reviews, news snippets and an episode of the month which in this case is the already mentioned Children of Time. I also used my 365 day Star Trek quotes calendar  for the script down the side.

It was great to produce this as my interest in English and journalism had already helped get me a work experience placement over the summer which eventually led to a five year holiday and eventually full time job with a local newspaper. Having a passion for writing had continued to drive me towards the creative aspect however not with Star Trek after I'd attempted and failed to write something distinctively different based in that universe. Apparently when Bondy and I left the club folded the following year as some of the kids attending wanted to expand to other sci-fi material which went against why it was originally set up - I'd have kept them in line of course!

So where are we now? About 1998? Was that all just a year's worth of Star Trek and me? Apparently so but what's left for us? Deep Space Nine's finale; Voyager returns to the Alpha Quadrant and some serious changes take effect on my time with Star Trek. Aside from that, I would be entering the leanest Star Trek period of my life...and it wasn't good.

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