Day 54: DS9, Defiant

Show: Star Trek; Deep Space Nine

Episode Particulars: S3EP9, “Defiant”

 Summary: Kira has a run-in with William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) in Quark’s, and the two of them hit it off. Kira offers to take him on a tour of the station, including a trip to the Defiant. Once on board, Riker stuns Kira and manages to trick the station into releasing the docking clamps before flying away with the ship. It turns out that this is Thomas Riker, Riker’s semi-clone that was last seen in the TNG episode “Second Chances”, who has now joined the Maquis and is flying into Cardassian space. Wanting to recover his ship, Sisko reluctantly teams up with Gul Dukat and the Cardassians to try to bring Riker down as peacefully as possible. Which isn’t going to be easy…at least in theory.

Standalone Thoughts: What we have here, I think, is a combination of banking on nostalgia and trying to set things up for a different project. TNG had ended earlier that year, so bringing a familiar face to DS9 might draw in more people to the sister show. Even better, throwing in some continuity with TNG by making it Thomas Riker would probably make the hardcore fans very happy. At the same time, Voyager was in the wings, and the studio probably wanted to remind the audience that the Maquis existed, since we’d barely heard anything about them since the events of, well, “The Maquis”, six months previously. So when you factor all that in, this episode isn’t all that bad. Not particularly good, but not bad either. To be honest, the word that most springs to mind when I think of it is “dull”.

There’s material here that could have led to a good episode. An uneasy alliance between Cardassia and the Federation as they search for the Defiant. A game of cat and mouse between the cloaked Defiant and the ships searching for it. Kira and Riker discussing why he’s doing this and the risks associated with it. With some tweaking, this could have been a fairly tense episode. Instead, we get shots of Sisko and Dukat looking at little figures moving on a screen and making suggestions, and the people in the Defiant using technobabble to avoid getting into fights. Obviously, there’s a little more than that—there’s a few scattered action scenes, and Sisko and Dukat have a well-handled moment where they negotiate a plan—but it never really feels like there’s any sense of stakes. And it absolutely does not help that the episode just kind of ends without even a little exposition to tell us if anything’s going to come of this, even offscreen. In the end, all we’re left with is a lot of talking about things we only kind of understand, and some fanservice for the TNG crowd. It could have been a lot worse, but it’s certainly not the best that DS9 can offer.

How it Relates to the Whole: I am ninety percent sure that absolutely nothing comes of this episode, even though nothing really gets answered here. Given the serious nature of the episode, I’d have appreciated a little follow-up.

Other: *I do appreciate the fact that Starfleet has added extra security around the Defiant—a guard at the docking bay, voice and hand identification, and the bridge stations being locked out unless given the right code. That said, most of these seem fairly easy to circumvent, even if you aren’t basically a clone. But that’s Starfleet Security for you; mostly there to get fooled by the bad guys.

*After it’s revealed that we’re dealing with Thomas Riker instead of William Riker, Odo and Sisko explain the events of “Second Chances” to Dukat. It’s a decent scene for two reasons. One, it gets the information out to people who haven’t seen that episode in a way that doesn’t just feel like clunky exposition. And two, Dukat responds to  the briefing by basically saying “Very interesting, but what does that have to do with me?” Given that Dukat has just suddenly shown up from the audiences perspective, he’s kind of saying what we’re thinking, which adds a touch of humor to the moment. Well-played, writers.

*We learn in this episode that Sisko was actually involved in the design of the Defiant. I’m a little surprised this wasn’t mentioned in “The Search”. It actually would have explained how he got permission from Starfleet to use it; he’d have some right to it, in a way. And we might have gotten some character building out of it. Dropping it in casually like this seems a little weird.

*Sisko claims that he knows the Defiant’s “vulnerabilities [and] weaknesses”. Um, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t those practically the same thing, at least in this context? “Quirks” might have been a better word here.

*I couldn’t find a place for it in Standalone Thoughts, but I will give credit to Avery Brooks for turning in a good performance for most of the episode. He really does seem to be at his strongest when the script calls for Sisko to be either angry, making plans, or doing anything that requires him to talk in a lower register. So at least you can get some enjoyment out of that, if nothing else.

Best Line/Exchange: I couldn’t find a lot to work with in this episode either. So I guess I’ll go with the bit that, tragically, is even more relevant today than it was back in 1994;

Riker: I guess we’re different kinds of terrorists.

Kira: No…You’re trying to be a hero. Terrorists don’t get to be heroes.

Given that a few seconds prior to this line, Kira called herself a terrorist (in the context of the Cardassian occupation), it shows she’s aware of the consequences of her actions and that she’s not always proud of them. It’s a fairly dark conversation, all things considered, and one that sounds even darker given the way things have been playing out over the past two decades. Obviously, the writers had no idea where things were going, but it’s a little chilling nonetheless.

After the Fact Update: My ninety percent certainty was in error; it seems that there will be some follow-up to this episode later this season. However, it wasn’t planned—while developing the script for the later episodes, they realized they could tie it in to the events shown here. I will report to you how successful that tie-in is when we get to that point.