Day 57: DS9, Past Tense (Part 2)

Show: Star Trek; Deep Space Nine

Episode Particulars: S3EP12, “Past Tense, Part 2”

 Summary: Things are heating up in the Sanctuary District. A group of violent men, led by B.C. (Frank Military) have stormed the administration building and taken six hostages. Bashir and Sisko (using the alias Gabriel Bell in an attempt to maintain the timeline) integrate themselves into the group and do what they can to keep the hostages safe. Dax does what she can to help, but it’s mostly Sisko’s show, and he demonstrates fine leadership in the face of adversity. Which at least makes this episode slightly easier to watch.

Standalone Thoughts: Part Two is definitely better than Part One, but only slightly. There’s still a fair bit of preaching, but at least Sisko and Bashir get to do more than just rant about the injustice of it all. We get some decent bits of tension during the various confrontations between Sisko, B.C., and the hostages, and the more conversational scenes between characters feel natural and relatively pleasant, given the circumstances. It’s not enough to redeem the episode, but it’s the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. And that’s honestly all I can think to say on the matter.

How it Relates to the Whole: Like I said in Part One, this episode has basically no long-term effects. Let’s just move on and try to ignore it.

Other: *One of the interesting things about watching an older show is spotting elements that date the material. When you throw sci-fi into the mix, it gets even more interesting, because you can compare the futures they show to the way things have actually been turning out. In this particular case, the characters constantly throw out references to “the web” and there’s even one mention of e-mail. Given that the internet had only just become mainstream in 1993, I’m kind of impressed that they managed to incorporate it into the show. I’m further impressed by the fact that, while they got some details wrong, the writers did kind of predict that the internet would not only be a big part of our lives, but also that something along the lines of Skype would eventually exist. Not bad, all things considered.

*While Sisko, Bashir, and Dax are dealing with the main plot, we occasionally cut back to O’Brien, Kira, and Odo trying to find and rescue them. Due to technobabble plot devices, they only have a limited number of tries to rescue their friends, and of course, it all comes down to one last attempt, and three time periods to choose from. O’Brien picks one at random, saying it’s his “best guess”, and he turns out to be right. I’m guessing the intent was to build some tension, but in reality, it just comes off as a Deus Ex Machina. I would have much preferred O’Brien to narrow it down through logic, which would have been much more clever.

*Back in Part One, Sisko and Bashir had their comm badges stolen by unknown people. They never do manage to get them back, and yet nobody ever mentions this. There is at least one person walking around in 2024 with future tech, but nobody seems concerned about it. Given that this sort of thing is often a major deal in other Star Trek episodes, it seems like an odd oversight here. Clearly, though, the loss of the badges didn’t pollute the timeline, so I’ll just have to speculate what, if anything, happened to them. Maybe they became a brief fashion trend.

Best Line/Exchange: The episode is slightly less preachy than Part One, but there’s still not a lot to choose from. So I ended up with;

(Sisko is trying to prevent B.C. from shooting a hostage)

B.C.: I thought we were on the same side here!

Sisko: We are. But you get on my nerves, and I don’t like your hat! Now put the gun down!

There is some context for this—B.C. had been asking Sisko if he thought the brim of B.C.’s fedora looked better raised or lowered—but it seems like such an innocuous insult to throw out in the midst of a crisis that it winds up adding a note of humor to the situation. Given the nature of this episode, I need all the humor I can get.

After the Fact Update: Alexander Siddig considers these episodes to be “The end of the old Bashir and the beginning of the new, more responsible Bashir […] Bashir proved to everyone and himself that he can handle very tricky situations with almost no backup and no gizmos, not even a shotgun like Sisko had. It became conceivable that Bashir would be your first or second choice on an away team if you were going on a combat mission. I think that they were a renaissance pair of shows for Bashir.” While I don’t want to question Siddig on this (after all, he understands Bashir way better than I do), I do disagree with him on two points. First, while I won’t deny that Bashir handled himself well here, that doesn’t prove that he’d be good in a combat situation except in the role of medic; sure, he can talk people down, but when fighting breaks out, will he be able to defend himself? But secondly, I think “the beginning of the new, more responsible Bashir” started a lot earlier than this episode. Sure, it’s been mixed in with awkwardness, but the groundwork was being laid long before now. Give yourself a little credit, Siddig—you were bringing Bashir’s maturity to the table long before the writers decided to make it official.