Battle at the Binary Stars

**(2 stars out of 5)

It's 2256, but we're ignoring "The Cage" (2254) so all the ships look like nothing we've ever seen. Well, the Klingon fighters look a lot like the winged Black Lectroid ships from "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension", a movie I wish I was rewatching for the 10th time instead of this for the 3rd.

Seems T'Kuvma's "Pure Klingons" aren't inbred hicks with horrible deformities. We see several dozen arrive & they all look like jack o'lanterns that never got thrown out in November. Anyway, T'Kuvma was picked on as a kid, so he's tooling around in his daddy's ship spoiling for a rumble. He's also decided the melting pot of the Federation with all its peaceniks holding hands and dancing cheek to beak is not for him. Dude, you're made of lizard claws, pine cones, & spare rib shards and you haven't gone outside in 100 years. Wasn't nobody offering to mix with you.

On the other side of this vertiginous slide into Interstellar Race War is Michael, the protagonist I find compelling but very difficult to comprehend. Just as Worf wouldn't have spit on a dehydrated Romulan, Michael's tormented, undernourished emotional side just can't see a Klingon without blasting his ass. Even though she has JUST told everyone that making a martyr of T'kuvma is the WORST thing they could possibly do. In a trice, she destroys her captain, her career, & the galactic peace. Actually, maybe screwing everything up royally is relatable after all?

The Substitute Kirk & his presumably all European male crew on USS Europa die by the prow of an anachronistically cloaked "Klingon" ship, which is in turn disabled by a booby-trapped corpse. Since "Klingons" "traditionally" revere their dead bodies & helpfully line their hull with them for the first time ever.

Mutinous Michael Burnham is imprisoned for life by a Board of Shadowy Figures. Apparently Starfleet leadership is just 100% Section 31 now.

When I watched this I posted a script fragment to social media from 'The Tholian Web' set in 2268:

CHEKOV: Has there ever been a mutiny on a starship before?
SPOCK: Absolutely no record of such an occurrence, Ensign.

So I asked- Are we in a different dimension? Or is a certain first officer defending his foster sister with semantics? After a season, my internal jury is still out.

But I very much dug this phrase from Sarek, whether he's Prime or otherwise: "No matter your shame, gather your strength. Find a way to help those who need you."

Creators, if you'd only been willing to switch the digits around and call this 2562 I wouldn't have most of my continuity complaints! But then you'd have to do without your Sarek cameos. That logical, logical voice of reason who urged his daughter to shoot first. Kind of like the way I take stupid pot shots at a show I want very badly to succeed.

In Purgatory's Shadow

 **** (4 stars out of 5)

Garak and Worf sneak into the Gamma Quadrant in response to a call from Garak's not-so-dead mentor. They soon find all the Jem'Hadar they could ask for and a free trip to death camp 371!

Conveniently, everyone of interest to them is there... in the same cell.

One-eyed Klingon General Martok has been interred there for 2 years. It's actually the first time Worf has met Martok for reals, and they quickly become BFFs. Enabran Tain has been held captive since the Unpleasantness in the Omarion Nebula. Oh... and SURPRISE: Julian Bashir. Since before the grim grey uniforms came into use, for over a month, Deep Space Nine's chief surgeon has been a changeling! Long enough to treat baby O'Briens, baby changelings, and do delicate brain surgery on Sisko, anyway.

Garak tells Bashir that sentiment is the greatest weakness of all, but he comes by such terrible ideas honestly: Tain was his father. Though they may only have had one pleasant day together, when Garak repeatedly injured himself learning to ride a hound. (Scrappy Doo is a figure of terror on Cardassia.)

Tain's heart is giving out. The crusty, hamburger-loving, spymaster gushes with pride as he dies: "I should have killed your mother before you were born. You have always been a weakness I can't afford."

Speaking of appalling fathers, Dukat does his best but cannot convince his daughter Ziyal to return home with him. She likes that terrible tailor Garak too much. So Dukat abandons her. Not for the first time. And what's WITH Ziyal? Somehow, half-Bajoran Cardassians have accelerated growth in their early teens accompanied by radical changes in their skulls and faces? (I am, of course, mocking the THIRD actress to play the role of Ziyal in as many years.)

Dax's widow Khan (no relation) invents a method to close the wormhole permanently. But for some reason it fails and "Bashir" looks like the cat that's eaten the riding hound.

The Dominion invades the Alpha Quadrant. "God help us all," intones Sisko. And might I add: YOU ASKED FOR IT! If you'd respected their territory, maybe they would have done the same. Probably not, but you could at least pretend you had the high ground.

"In Purgatory's Shadow" earns those stars. The Bashir Changeling reveal is a great blind-side. The death of Tain is powerful. Over two years building to the Dominion War and it is upon us at last. Hold on to your butts.