The Quickening

*** (3 stars out of 5)

The planet Zeist boasts a populace unique in the universe. Composed primarily of hover-boarding punk rockers, they are also sword-wielding immortals. Because there can be only one, they must fight to the death to earn ultimate power known as the Quickening... wait, that's Highlander II: The Quickening. Deep Space Nine The Quickening is much less silly. And much less entertaining.

Because A) We haven't had enough episodes about euthanasia and suicide this season and 2) We didn't have enough evidence that the Dominion are rat bastards, this is the result.

Having long ago defied the Dominion, the people of Teplan were cursed forever with the incurable disease called The Blight. Everyone is born with it, virtually everyone dies from it. They have long enough lives to breed, more or less, and pass along the misery as an object lesson to any other planet that wants to try getting uppity.

This is such an unhappy world that the most revered man is Trevean, a local poisoner. He kevorkians those whose lesions turn red, indicating the Quickening has come, to spare them an agonizing death.

Enter arrogant young Doctor Julian Bashir, from a culture that heals broken arms in seconds, convinced the plague can be eradicated within a week. Horrifically, Bashir didn't anticipate that the Blight runs wild in the presence of his healing purple rays. THIS plague isn't going anywhere, thank you very much, and you can put that in your Halloween pumpkin and smoke it. (I've been living in a condo without a porch for too long: pumpkins are for smoking, right?)

"The Quickening" is another bursting of the bubble that is Bashir's ego. But we WANT him to succeed. No one wants the Federation to end up like this. Any more than Western culture wants to see Africa die of AIDS. Or indeed ANYONE to die of ANYTHING. Unless they're assholes. Or zombies. Or zombie assholes.

Hard Time

**** (4 stars out of 5)

This episode is a misery. But that's what it wanted to be, so... VICTORY!

The Argrathi are arseholes. Their system of justice works remarkably swiftly, and it stinks. Looking too closely at the wrong thing gets Miles O'Brien sentenced to 20 years in a horrible dungeon for espionage.

Once released, he learns no time has passed: it was instead a very realistic, time-compressed simulation of the prison experience. It wasn't technically happening to his body, but it's permanently etched on his mind.

His cellmate Ee'Char learned to laugh and draw rather than go insane, although it's fair to say there was a little of both. They were subject to beatings, periods of starvation, and living in a yellow-brown dust that must mainly be composed of their own filth.

Miles avoids mandatory head-shrinking with Counselor Telnorri. As he's seeing Ee'Char everywhere he goes, this is not the best idea anyone ever had.

After accosting Quark and blowing up at his co-workers and daughter, Miles in final desperation goes for the weapons locker. He puts a phaser to his throat. Bashir coaxes out the truth: at the end, Miles, like a starving animal, killed Ee'Char for a morsel of food.

Miles weeps. "When we were growing up they used to tell us humanity had evolved, that mankind had outgrown hate and rage. But when it came down to it, when I had the chance to show that no matter what anyone did to me I was still an evolved human being... I failed."

"You can't let that brief moment define your life... you cannot let that happen, my friend." Bashir has a course of hyposprays to remove hallucinations and depression. But the feelings will require more work.

"Hard Time" came, for me, after 7 months that felt like 7 years. It was a profound and painful period of my life. I made choices that hurt people and I suffered a great deal. I took the medicine and I saw the counsellors. There's no such thing as an Agrathi prison, but depression is as real as it gets. If you've got patient, forgiving friends like Ee'Char or Bashir, however, it gets better.

Death Wish

**** (4 stars out of 5)

You know when you dig all the way to the back of the freezer and find something unexpected? This is like that when Voyager finds a Q in the crunchy centre of a comet.

This Q, for today's purposes known as Quinn, has been locked up for attempted suicide. By the 2070's, the immortal gadabout had been, seen, and done everything he ever wanted and his society, the Continuum, refused to allow him to die because it would be the first time any Q had died... and it could throw their stable eternal existence into chaos.

As a paragon of Continuum living (reformed), Classic Q is dispatched to argue on the state's behalf, that Quinn should be forced to live forever in shrivelled soulless emptiness AND BE HAPPY ABOUT IT, DAMN IT! Judge Janeway runs an impromptu court so kangaroo-ish that it makes the 'Squire of Gothos' look fair and dignified. Tuvok is Quinn's advocate, as a Vulcan from a culture that saw the logic in suicide for those of advanced age and infirmity.

Q's case hinges on the infinite wonder of life, the universe, and everything, with character witnesses Isaac Newton, a Filthy Hippie, and William Riker brought in to illustrate how Quinn had improved humanity. Sparking the invention of human physics, helping wacky goofballs find true love, and saving the life of Riker's Civil War ancestor, Quinn's existence was pretty good for us human types.

Quinn's case is made on a field trip to a manifestation of the Continuum that mortals might understand: a rest stop on a road in a desert where the unimaginably bored Q dwell in silent tedium. Why silent? "Because it has all been said." Quinn manages to convey how bleak that really is: the clocks have no hands and the Q have nothing approaching feelings anymore. Only "sugar" and "drunk".

Janeway turns down Q's bribe to send the ship home, and rules in favour of Quinn's right to choose. She also asks him plaintively to at least try a normal mortal life. "I like this life. You might, too."

"Death Wish" is amazingly good if you need to heap more praise on a story about the laudable side of killing yourself, which I have more than mixed feelings about. First of all: don't. Second: I don't want anyone to suffer intolerably. Thirdly: I'd like to live for billions of years, myself. So, in conclusion, Man Up, push through the pain, and live forever. Like Star Trek! Star Trek refuses to die, even when it has all been said. Each of us should ask "Have I had enough?" My answer is no.

Sons of Mogh

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Dax is sweet on Worf! Dax and Worf, sitting in a tree, H-I-T-T-I-N-G! While they play stabby stabby and stare at each other's cleavage, there's somebody with much, much worse cleavage. He's drunk off his ass out by the airlock. It's the other Son of Mogh: Kurn the Disgraced.

The only honour Kurn has left is in death. He demands Mauk-to'Vor from his brother. Since Worf is not Alexander or Riker, Kurn gets exactly what he asked for. That is to say, a knife in the chest. It doesn't look like Worf even thinks it over.

But since Dax is quick on the uptake, Kurn is saved. Bashir seems to have made the man more comfortable by turning off all the lights in the infirmary except the handy interrogation floodlights and some kind of serrated metal torture frame like a Cardassian Iron Lung. But- hooray! He's forced back to life.

Sisko has reached his limit on "cultural diversity". You'd think it'd go without saying that he's miffed when his officers stab their families.

Kurn dumps all responsibility for himself on Worf. So he gets a dead-end job as one of Odo's deputies. Which Odo demands have fewer dead ends than Kurn is used to.

His first day on the job is his last. He lets a twitchy little Boslic smuggler get the drop on him with a disruptor- and is revived from the dead by Bashir again.

Dax's scheme to save Kurn by killing him without killing him is more than a mite sketchy. How Bashir wiggled past his 'Do No Harm' oath I'll never know. But he removes Kurn's memory, features and DNA. Now there is only the amnesiac Rodek son of Noggra wandering off to a new life.

When 'Rodek' asks, Worf says "I have no family." Huh. Yup, no Russian parents. No adopted brothers. No son. No Enterprise-D chums. No family. A proud moment for self-loathing stoicism.

"Sons of Mogh" is the first overt kick off in what felt like Trek's 'YEAR OF SUICIDES'. We already had noble self-sacrfices from miserable alternate universe Jake Sisko & Tom Paris, but now we begin to be miserable in earnest. I was at an extreme low point myself in 1996, but I began to wonder why episode after episode had a death wish. Join me again tomorrow for "Death Wish"!