Or, You're Looking a Little Pale
"You are not at all what I expected." -Odo
Ugh. Lwaxana.
DS9's 16th episode is supposed to be another callback to the TNG glory days, and yet, its three story arcs almost immediately tear apart at its spaghetti-weak seams. Lwaxana Troi, the oft-appearing meddling mother of the Enterprise's Deanna Troi, arrives on Deep Space 9 under the guise of some Federation diplomatic glad-handing. A flimsy premise to be sure, but at least it's believable.
If an hour-long episode is going to successfully juggle three story arcs, though, (Bashir and the diplomats, Odo and Lwaxana, and the station's encounter with the software life form), there has to be juxtaposition or similarity that weaves the three together. One episode just does not offer enough time to give all three proper attention unless they can share (or directly oppose) thematic ground.
The immediate threat of the probe that comes through the Wormhole and affects the station's computer is wildly unconvincing. At this point in the series, the writers seemed to be approximating the Enterprise-D's ability to "run into stuff" by simply pumping it out of the Wormhole. The problem with this approach is that Picard and co. typically had a reason to run into these supernatural one-offs, and the balance between how that crew handled unexpected obstacles as well as their original missions allowed us to judge their priorities.
The problem with bringing these encounters to Sisko's crew is that it is much more difficult to read into how they juggle the unknown with their stated duties because lining the two up requires far more serendipity. While the probe poses a threat to station by affecting key systems, it only matters because Odo and Lwaxana are in the turbolift and Bashir takes the ambassadors to a particular corridor that happens to catch fire. O'Brien, Dax, and Sisko's awkward puppy analogies are cringe-worthy and uncomfortable, and it makes the whole pretense seem unnecessary. There has to be a limit to the number of "out of the Wormhole" episodes the writers can fill with, and in this case, it seems like they wasted one of those cards.
Meanwhile, we see more ego punishment for Bashir. To be fair, even at this point, DS9 has delved further into the less-than-ideal traits of its characters than TNG ever did. But the continued embarrassment the doctor is forced to endure starts to come off as hateration. Data works as the butt of jokes in TNG because he (mostly) does not possess a full range of emotions, so his victimization is limited. But Bashir, arrogant or not, is a person and the "tough shit" speech Sisko gives him seems less educational than probably intended. Sure, Bashir gets to play hero in the end, but who didn't see that coming?
The episode's main action between Odo and Lwaxana is bizarre and highly confusing. The discomfort her cougar-love engenders in the franchise's older men is a tired joke, but fine, it's what she does. The lengths the plot goes to trap the two in the turbolift are extreme, but my biggest problem is that once they are there, I never bought that there was imminent danger. Yes, Odo starts to get a little gooey, and maybe that's embarrassing, but why do we really care? Odo is more curiosity than lovable character at this point in the series, and frankly his disinterest in Lwaxana's attempts to pass the time through conversation come off as rude. Similarly, I find Lwaxana's "unremarkable" hair to be little incentive for Odo to willingly go to sleep. There's some kind of ill-conceived takeover of the station computer going on, but I'm supposed to be sweating this nonsense? The only redeeming part of the episode is that we learn a few more nuggets about Odo's back story and why he looks the way he does.
Maybe I was cranky watching this, but even my other thoughts are picky:
- Early in the turbolift ordeal, Lwaxana refers to being kidnapped by DaiMon Tog in the TNG episode "Menage a Troi." I have a feeling some people love this kind of canonical cross-series reference, but I hate it. It's fine to refer to what we have already seen in the series, even if it comes from several seasons back (e.g., TNG's "All Good Things"). But the Star Trek universe is too large to assume this kind of background, and I really think viewing of this episode after the reference would be different whether you had seen that episode or not. Good writers can generate emotions on their own; lazy ones use callbacks.
- I really thought O'Brien interpreting the computer's tone of voice was going to be some kind of joke. It wasn't.
- As the Ops staff discusses the probe, Dax throws out the always popular "What is life anyway?" theme. Star Trek writers tend to get super-preachy about this topic, but Dax's reference was as if they wanted it to be on the table just for the audience to look at. I have no idea why it was in there.
- So Ops hears there is a fire in one of the station's living areas, and the two highest-ranking officers on the station respond with fire extinguishers?
- Lastly, this isn't really specific to this episode, but who decided on the cornflower blue turtlenecks on these uniforms. The costume folks somehow found a color that doesn't look right with any of Starfleet's departmental colors.
1.5 bars of gold-pressed latinum out of 5
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