Day 93: DS9, To the Death

Show: Star Trek; Deep Space Nine

Episode Particulars: S4EP22, “To the Death”

Note: This is another case where the episodes got switched around. I’ll let you know the reason for it when I read the relevant bit in the DS9 Companion.

 Summary: After a Jem’Hadar attack on Deep Space Nine, Sisko takes the Defiant to track them down. While doing this, they come across a badly injured Jem’Hadar warship, and beam the survivors on board. Some discussions soon reveal that the Jem’Hadar who attacked the station are a rogue group who have found an ancient device called a gateway that allows people to teleport between worlds. Anybody who gets their hands on one would be practically unstoppable, and for the sake of the Dominion in the short term and the Federation in the long term, it would be in everyone’s best interests if the two groups combined forces to destroy the gateway. As you can imagine, this leads to a very uneasy alliance.

Standalone Thoughts: While it’s always an interesting concept to see two enemies working together towards a common goal, the execution here is adequate but mostly unexciting. It follows all the beats you’d expect; both sides butting heads with each other, disagreement on proper methods and techniques, people on opposite sides striking up semi-friendships, veiled and not so veiled threats, all culminating in a big action scene. Sure, there are some nice character moments (I haven’t talked about it much, but Sisko is really coming into his own at this point), but on the whole, it’s just ok. Even the action scene isn’t overly tense or adrenaline pumping, because it’s mostly people running around and hitting each other with blades. Really, other than reminding us that the Dominion are still a threat, the episode could probably be skipped if you were only focusing on the essential episodes. Though given that the very concept of the gateways seems to have been ripped off from Stargate, perhaps I shouldn’t be all that surprised.

How it Relates to the Whole: When it comes to connecting to the rest of the 24^th century Star Trek universe, there’s evidence to suggest that these gateways appeared in TNG, though my memory is fuzzy enough that I can’t confirm. As for future DS9 events, we learn more about the Jem’Hadar, though I don’t think any of that information is ever used to the Federation’s advantage. More importantly, one of the characters we meet in this episode will be returning, but I don’t want to say who because of spoilers. Suffice it to say it will be a recurring character, and a very entertaining one that I’m looking forward to seeing on a more regular basis.

Other: *Not a lot of unusual material popped up in this episode, other than one conversation that was shot with a lot of closeups that zoomed in way too close on the characters faces. I’m sure there are good reasons to use this technique, but it’s a style that just doesn’t work for me.

Best Line/Exchange: This was another day when nothing really jumped out at me. The best I could come up with was this;

Weyoun: There’s something to be said for soldiers who aren’t afraid to die.

Sisko: Oh, I don’t know. I’ve found that nothing keeps me alert quite like a healthy fear of death.

It’s punchy, humorous, and sums up the difference between the Dominion and the Federation in three sentences. Now that’s economy of storytelling.