Apocalypse Rising

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Captain Sisko and Dax limp home from their runabout mission into the raging Klingon-Federation War. As if that wasn't a foolish way to spend a weekend, Starfleet is sending Sisko behind enemy lines, posing as a Klingon, to expose a Changeling posing as a Klingon. Pot. Kettle. Black.

Sure, why not.  Weeks travel to Earth and back, weeks into Klingon space. Did they not have anyone A) Closer? B) More expendable?

Odo The Solid is depressed, taking solace in food and drink, contemplating a new career as a rolling cop. Over his objections that he is now too ordinary to be of use, Sisko orders Odo to come with him to Ty'Gokor deep in Klingon space. Worf suggests assassinating the Gowron changeling, but Starfleet wants to use the new polaron emitters to expose the impostor instead.

Privateer Dukat delivers them in his Bird of Prey. Worf tries to drill Sisko, Odo, and O'Brien in etiquette and protocol. Backhanding is a challenge to duel to the death. Ordinary belligerence should just be a punch. Do not turn your back while talking, whisper, or apologize. Also, dessert forks on the inside left.

Sisko cold-cocks a braggart after hearing that the man has killed an Academy friend of his named Captain Laporin. Laporin had breathing tubes like a Benzite, but was either a Benzenite or his killer was drunk. Or both.

Speaking of people the Klingons have killed lately, there were Vulcan children on Archanis. I'm not sure who was on Vrax, but the Klingons have "liberated" it, too. Losses have been heavy on both sides.

Martok recognizes and imprisons them. But he aids their escape and sics them on the Chancellor. As Worf fights Gowron, Odo detects that Martok is the infiltrator. Partly because it is strangling him with a tentacle. The crowd quickly draws disruptors and Tarrantinos its jelly ass.

"Apocalypse Rising" was probably more fun to make that it is to re-watch. Yay! Klingons! Funny teeth! A valise shaped like a fish! Well, not the valise. Anyway, good effects, sneaky-peaky spying, and barrels of blood wine. Although I've never spotted it, the statues in the hall of heroes include likenesses of Kahless and Chang (Christopher Plummer to the folks at home. Only he's not singing 'Edelweiss' and snapping Nazi necks.)

The Swarm

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Tom Paris teases Torres about a good-looking ensign who's crushing on her. This is actually a veiled attempt by Paris to ask her out himself. B'Elanna doesn't get the chance to refuse, because along come a pair of hideous cock-blockers. Giant face-challenged insectoids who look like burnt meat.

The gabbling alien meanies have a language the Universal Translator can't figure out. Neelix doesn't know their name, numbers, or culture, but they do kill trespassers. And they're probably not just screaming "RAID!?!" Bypassing their space would cost Voyager 15 months... but Janeway's been looking for somebody new to antagonize now that the Kazon are behind them. Time to blunder blindly through someone's home and see if they mind! Also maybe poke them if they're peacefully asleep.

They hear the dying words of a guy from Mislen slain along with his crew by the bugs Janeway has insisted they fly through. Dozens of tiny rampaging trilobite ships latch onto Voyager and leech it. So they swat them with phasers. Done and done!

Meanwhile, over in a much more fascinating story, the Emergency Medical Hologram argues with a diva soprano from the 22nd Century recreated as his opera singing partner on the holodeck... until he forgets the lyrics to Puccini. Soon the holo-physician is forgetting where he left his instrument. And he doesn't mean his voice.

Kes has to take over healing Tom as the Doctor continues to lose his faculties. It's a cascading overload breaking down his circuits. His program was never meant for continuous use: it was only supposed to be needed for 1500 hours, tops. He needs rebooting... but it will cost him two years worth of memories. Everything he's become will vanish. The  EMH is willing to do that for the sake of the crew, but Kes insists they explore other options. Janeway feels they owe their sick doctor nothing less.

"Doctor" B'Elanna seeks out a second opinion: a holographic engineer. A re-creation of Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, the EMH's creator. The surly Diagnostic hologram points out that the EMH has loaded its personality with irrelevancies like friendships, relationships, and hobbies.
"It was only during my off hours." the Doctor explains.
"You're supposed to be OFF during your off hours!" snaps the engineer.

Kes badgers The Diagnostic Tool to find a way to save the EMH. Kes suggests grafting their adaptive heuristic matrices together. It will leave them without a diagnostic program, but give the Doctor more memory.

"The Swarm" is a personal favorite, despite the so-so battle with the space bugs of the week, because double your Bob Picardo is double your fun. Another noble suicide, if you're still counting, from the Diagnostic Tool. He's a tool. A tool. A tool, tool, tool. But he gave his life for the welfare of others, and that's not nothing.

The Chute

** (2 stars out of 5)

Akritiri is not where you'd like to go unless HBO's "Oz" is your idea of a televised vacation brochure.

Tom and Harry are convicted of a terrorist bombing that killed 47 cops at a rec centre, mainly because they were there, they survived, and they've heard of bombs. They are thrown into an oubliette with "The Clamp" embedded in their heads. It's a torture device to stimulate aggression and keep the prison from getting crowded. There are no guards, no cells, no early release for wrongful conviction, no RELEASE at all: only starvation, stabbings and WAY too occasional drops of sustenance blocks down the same tube new prisoners drop in.

A horrible game of chutes and ladders, only there's only one chute and no ladders to speak of.

Believing they are underground, the boys manage to keep from getting killed or killing each other long enough to climb up the Chute: only to discover there's no THERE there. They are on a space station. Take that, the ending of THX 1138!

Janeway easily catches the true bombers (the Open Sky freedom fighters), and she leads a strike team to the rescue in Neelix' ship (which they found under some old coats in the shuttle bay, having forgotten it existed.)

Guilt-ridden, Harry asks Tom whether he remembers that point when he was ready to strike his delirious, infected friend down dead. Tom tells him he only remembers Harry's words to the slavering convicts: "This man is my friend. Nobody touches him."

"The Chute" is well regarded and well performed. But I don't enjoy it. The vast majority of modern television seems like this to me: people reduced to animals on their last raw nerves, capable only of cruelty. Star Trek being what it is, there's still a glimmer of heroism and friendship overcoming adversity. But I have to look elsewhere for any sense of triumph of the human spirit. Or something. Anyway, don't listen to me. I have no stomach for watching others suffer.

Flashback

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Tuvok encounters an azure nebula which reminds him of THE Azure Nebula, which is a gaseous anomaly on the Federation/Klingon border.

This triggers a memory of an adventure Ensign Tuvok had when he was 29 years old. Eighty years ago, he was a junior officer under Commander Janice Rand and Captain Hikaru Sulu of the Excelsior. Remember them? Remember?

This triggers Tuvok's memory of losing his grip on some little girl who drops off a precipice.

Which is an excuse to revisit Star Trek The Undiscovered Country for Trek's 30th Anniversary and because it's so darn cool.

A t'lokan schism is a uniquely Vulcan reaction to a repressed memory that can result in an internally generated lobotomy. Good Lord, but Evolution is a capricious bitch, isn't it? What sort of beneficial result could come from evolving a brain like that?! Do Vulcans also have bile sacs that can spew arsenic into their own duodenums, killing them instantly so their corpses will taste nasty to possible predators?

The only cure for the schism is a mind meld with a trusted family member to act as a "pyllora" or observer/guide. Janeway takes this role, tagging along in a form that only Tuvok can see and hear. Despite the parallels, she does not smoke a cigar and can thus not be mistaken for Al from Quantum Leap.

Impetuous Young Tuvok formally protested Sulu's loyalty to his friends above his loyalty to orders. The Excelsior's Captain is going to help Kirk and McCoy: "Let The Regulations Be Damned".

Sulu trades pleasantries with Kang (sporting a new forehead for the 2290's!). Then he disables the Klingon vessel by igniting some nearby sirillium gas. "Like tossing a match in a pool of gasoline."

If this isn't enough for the fans, Tuvok nerve pinches Rand and he and Janeway steal her clothes (!) Say, this is already turning into 'slash' fiction!

Precipice Girl is a dead herring: a parasite masquerading as a memory. Tuvok caught it from his bunkmate Dmitri Valtane when the guy died in battle. It's been dormant for eight decades because Tuvok has NEVER seen a blue nebula again in his thirty plus years of space travel or in Vulcan's Big Book of Space.

By watching Tuvok's life, Janeway learns that young Tuvok resented his Starfleet career and the humans his parents made him hang out with. After becoming a parent himself he realized how satisfying travel far, far away from his own squalling brats could be. Kidding.

"Isn't this more fun than charting gaseous anomalies?" asks Valtane. If you mean the episode, Dmitri, my answer might surprise you.

I used to be really over the moon of Praxis about "Flashback", now it just seems O.K. I'm not entirely certain WHY it is wearing out its welcome with me, but rest assured it's NOT because of Captain Sulu. I love that guy. I gotta say I love the look of those movie uniforms and sets, too. It's really a marvellous recreation. Wouldn't it have been a lot more fun to have the whole crew meet Sulu, though? Or a Captain Sulu SERIES? Sadly, this never happened on screen. As Tuvok puts it: "Perhaps you can be nostalgic for both of us."

Basics, Part II

**** (4 stars out of 5)

When we left our intrepid adventurers last season, they were stranded on a primitive world while primitive jerks flew off with their ship and added rims and flames to the hull.

The castaways scrounge for food under rocks. They are actually forced to consider eating cucumbers until they thankfully find some juicy little grubs. Chakotay apologizes to Janeway: "You're stuck with the only Indian in the universe who can't start a fire by rubbing two sticks together." So they start fires using their hair for kindling. It's a technique the Kazon couldn't have used- unless it was by banging their heads together to made sparks!

Later, Chakotay proves his worth thrice over: saving Kes from cavemen, saving a cavewoman from lava, and saving crewmen from a cave creature. Well, most of them: poor Mr. Hogan and at least one other guy have the distinction of being eaten by the first all-computer generated planetary beast in Star Trek: the Hanon IV land eel. Snuggly little guy!

The Emergency Medical Hologram responds to the emergency with masterful lies and deception, hiding Lon Suder (the reformed killer Betazoid) from Seska and her 89 Kazon thug chums. He also discovers that the lure that got them here never existed: Seska's baby is Cullah's, not Chakotay's. Whoopsie!

Desperately improvising, the EMH counsels Suder through his necessary Kazon Killings, and takes the hit when Seska goes looking for the culprit.

"I won't play these games with a trick of light!" she snarls.

"Sticks and stones won't break my bones, so you can imagine how I feel about being called names." The doctor's retort is quickly followed by the Cardassian woman vengefully destroying his holo-emitter.

Suder must single-handedly kill his way back into control of engineering in time for Tom and the Talaxians to retake the ship, but at the cost of the tormented Betazoid's mental peace.. and his life. Seska also dies conveniently in the conflict (of console shock or something). Cullah takes his baby back baby back baby back. (Never. He Never says 'ribs'.)  

"Basics, Part II" is a thrilling, action-packed season opener, but with some possible missteps. Writer Michael Piller wanted Seska's baby to die and Suder to live. Jeri Taylor wanted the opposite, and Piller was leaving. Martha 'Seska' Hackett said she felt Seska's abrupt, non-climactic death, getting no just desserts, nor showdown against Janeway was 'wimpy' writing. And I agree. But I was so glad to see the back of the Kazon that I didn't sweat it. Certainly Seska deserved a more satisfying end. But throwing away the baby with the Kazon bathwater got the show back on course. From now on, Deep Space Nine is your show for consequences- Voyager is for zipping along shouting "HEY, LOOKIT THAT!"

Broken Link

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Garak plays, of all things, matchmaker. He introduces Constable Odo to cafe owner Chalan Aroya in the hopes that they will hit it off. Instead, the moment she leaves the room, Odo has horrible cramps and never sees her again. This is often the result of nerd flirting. Be warned!

Bashir's wild guesses as to the cause of this illness include changeling puberty or menopause. Stalling for time when the constable turns to liquid, the doctor pours him into a giant ice cube tray.

Gowron, officially insulted by the Federation's timid requests that the Klingons please return the Cardassian colonies and stop killing everything, also demands the Federation give back Archanis IV, ceded to the Feds 100 years ago. Gowron thinks they might have left some change under the couches... so, yeah. Give it back or die.

The Defiant tries to find the Founders to beg for Odo's cure. Bashir uses the term 'Dominion Air Space'. Shouldn't that be 'Dominion Space Space'?

Garak insists on coming along to ask the Dominion if they took any Cardassian prisoners during the Pasting at the Omarion Nebula. Sisko agrees on condition that Garak keeps Odo's mind occupied. Eagerly, Garak claims to have been an embassy gardener on Romulus. "So many Romulan dignitaries died unexpectedly that year."

Odo's illness was forced upon him as a summons. For killing one of his own kind, Odo is to enter the Great Link and be judged.

Left unattended, Garak tries to obliterate the Founder's world. Worf must beat him down to keep his fingers off the trigger. Curiously, the tailor's sentence for attempted genocide is six months in a holding cell. Imagine if he'd removed tags from mattresses. They'd still be executing his descendants.

Now to Odo. They've done far worse than kill him. They've hurt him. And they wish to go on hurting him. Indignity of indignities, Odo's been transformed into a human. With fingernails and an epiglottis and everything. Thanks to tasteful leg positioning, I can't be sure, but I think that Aroya gal may have run off too quickly!

Unrelated to Odo's new junk, the Klingons declare war. Between all the hubbub and endocrine systems it slipped Odo's mind that Gowron is a changeling.

"Broken Link" sees Odo join the lonely company of Garak, Worf and Quark as an exile. (Maybe if Kira and Dax broke a taboo they could join the alien exiles club, too!  Maybe a sexy taboo... Bajorans seem like a people with more taboos than you can shake a stick at, it's surprising they haven't already found an excuse to kick Kira out. Like for having a married man's baby!)

Body Parts

**** (4 stars out of 5)

In the words of Captain Janeway, "weird is part of the job". Runabout struck by a meteor, Keiko loses her baby. But not for long- Dr. Bashir performs the ol' quick switcheroo and now Kira's the first Bajoran to carry a baby human!

Bajoran pregnancy lasts five months, and there's multiple blood vessel links much more difficult to sever than an umbilical cord. So no take-backsies!

No take backs is the problem over in the 'A' story, too. Thanks to the malpractice of Dr. Orpax (coupled with unwillingness to get a second opinion from a hu-mon) Quark mistakenly thinks he is dying. In order to get out of debt before he goes to that great Scrooge McDuck money bin in the sky, Quark pre-sells disks of his corpse on the Futures Exchange.

Even though he was Grand Nagus for a week, Quark is not collectible enough to bid on (except by Rom, whose life-savings is a paltry sum). Salvation comes from an anonymous bid... but when it turns out Quark's NOT dying, the bidder wants his pounds upon pounds of flesh anyway.

The bidder is our old pal Brunt of the FCA. It seems that even though Quark is still clearly a monstrously greedy, venal, and self-serving troll, he's not monstrous ENOUGH to satisfy the demands of his culture. Brunt thinks Quark has become a "humanitarian" and hopes to censure him for breach of contract... or collect 52 vacuum-desiccated Quark hockey pucks.

Desperate to prove himself a true Ferengi, Quark hires Garak to kill him "by surprise". But none of the murder/death/kill methods they practice on holograms are comforting for some reason. Quark's heart just isn't in this Suicide Season.

The Vulcans had Surak. The Klingons had Kahless. The Ferengi had Gint. Gint, the First Grand Nagus, wrote those almighty Rules of Acquisition Quark can't bring himself to break. "Of course they matter. That's why they're a bestseller!" 

But in Quark's nocturnal vision, Holy Man Gint's a fraud, rule breaker and cheat. Which is probably as it should be. He looks a lot like Rom and, just like Rom, he urges Quark to live.

The assets of Quark and his family are seized, and no Ferengi may do business with him henceforth. 

With nothing but (temporarily) the shirt on his back, Quark is at a low ebb when he learns what humans have been willing to do all along.

"Body Parts" is awesome. Again, your mileage may vary with Ferengi, but I love these little orange freaks. My heart grows three sizes when I see the end of this tale, and I hope it chips a little piece of cynicism off your hearts, too.