DS9 - Valiant

Plot – I’m desperate to know what exactly the diplomatic message is from the Federation Council to the Ferengi Alliance. Wouldn’t it be taking it one step further into giving the finger to Roddenberry for the DS9 writers to suggest that the Ferengi (who Roddenberry wanted to introduce as the new big bad of TNG) might be the most well organised military power in the Quadrant and could ultimately be responsible for saving the Federation? 

It strikes me that Ron Moore wants to have his cake and eat it, and he succeeds. He’s been told he has to write an episode featuring a ton of kids and so he does so, and he makes them as realistically irritating as you would imagine them to be. But at every turn he is subverting what would in another show just be annoying adolescents getting to play spaceship; Jake tries to sound like a cool dude and a console explodes in his face, Shepperd tries to play adult and is seen popping pills to try and keep it together, the First Officer is the most precocious young woman imaginable and at the climax is seen thrown across the bridge as a bloody corpse. Even the helm Officer, who was just as smug and unbearable in Paradise Lost (a really nice piece of casting to have him appear in both episodes) gets to smirk his way through the episode and then gets the close up when the Dominion ship survives their assault and looks like he is going to shit his pants.

Character – DS9 has episodes in its latter run that simply would not have worked in the early days because of the ways in which the characters developed. This is the ultimate ‘Nog loves Starfleet’ piece, a character who began this show as a criminal and a troublemaker in the first two seasons but thanks to the desire to step out of his father (and Uncles) shadow chose a career in Starfleet. He’s been well and truly indoctrinated and favours discipline, honour and the romanticism of the organisation that he works for these days. He’s a determined fighter, adept pilot and bright enough of a engineer to take over the Valiant in that post. Valiant asks you to take a good look at Nog and question whether he is right to follow orders blindly, and to be so in love with an ideal (that the Federation’s way is the only way) that it is worth risking your life for. I’m not sure that he is entirely likable in this episode because he becomes a mouthpiece for the Federation (he sounds a bit like Picard in season one of TNG) to the exclusion of anything else, but he is the Roddenberry ideal and that is the point. He’s fighting for Utopia and is willing to do anything to maintain it. Once he is surrounded by corpses on the bridge of the Valiant, the look on his face says everything. Is this really worth it?

Shepperd is a fascinating character because he is caught somewhere between being a proto-Kirk (a man of action who thinks bravado can see him through anything) and still being a child who lacks the sophistication and experience to see the wood for the trees. At one point he lets slip a racial slur about Cardassians so casually that it’s clear from the outset that his priorities are all wrong. A child would swear and kick against an enemy. An adult would try and understand and outsmart them.

Tired, emotional, depressed; this is a crew of children who are falling to pieces but thanks to the ideals that have pumped into them are continuing to pretend they are the best of the best. It’s discomforting viewing. Jake is the voice of reason trying to convince these kiddiewinks that going up against a Dominion battleship is suicide but they are so convinced of their superiority that they feel they can do anything. As they chant the Red Squad mantra, they are both terrifying and annoying, and also completely sympathetic. If you are told often enough that you are the best of the best then eventually you start to believe it. It’s cult mentality writ large. No wonder Jake looks horrified. ‘We’re Red Squad! And we can do anything!’

Performance – They have deliberately cast the crew of the Valiant so they look old enough to be at the Academy but still far too young to be in command of a Starship. It means the whole time we are on this ship there is a feeling of wrongness that permeates.

Great Dialogue – ‘You’re Starfleet. You’re Red Squad. And you’re the best’ is one of the most terrifying lines in all of Trek. Because they are about to learn that at the end of a Dominion torpedo those things mean nothing.

Production – The music is far, far too soft in the final battle. Which is a shame because technically it is one of the most realistic depictions of a ship being torn to pieces in battle that you will ever see in Star Trek. The torpedos batter the hull, the rooms are being ripped apart, bodies are flying across the bridge and flames are raging. The Dominion have the upper hand and they aren’t like your standard Trek villains; they will keep firing until you are dust. There are a number of close ups of the children looking around as everything has gone to hell and you can’t help but empathise with them. They are all going to die because of their idealism. The final shot of the escape pods leaving the ship (and the Dominion are savage enough that they will even burst them like balloons) and ship finally giving up and tearing itself apart under the might of all those torpedos is extraordinary. I was stunned the first time I watched this. This isn’t how Star Trek episodes are supposed to end.

Best moment – The phenomenal moment when Jake and Nog, once the best of friends and partners in crime, are on opposing sides of the argument of whether to attack the Dominion ship or not. Superbly written and acted, this sequence throws a light on the ideological differences between these two men like no other. ‘I don’t even know who you are anymore…’ Jake pleads as Nog orders him out of Engineering. They’ve come a long way.

I’ve overlooked the last scene for a long time in favour of the fireworks that come before but it’s the crux of the entire episode. The three survivors of the massacre sit in sickbay and try and decide who make the bad choices. Was Watters a good man? Was he a hero? Was he a misplaced idealised? Was he the villain of the piece? Did the crew let him down? In a few lines of dialogue all of those approaches are considered, and it is left to the audience to decide. That’s great writing and should leave you pondering this episode for some time afterwards.

Worst moment – I don’t think I ever met a montage that I enjoyed but Mike Vejar goes all out to show the brave crew of the Valiant getting everything ready and truly believing in themselves…before slaughtering the lot of them just five minuties later. It makes the montage feel like a very sick joke.

I wish they hadn’t done that – I do object to these random scenes they throw into stories to force the regulars to make an appearance when they have nothing to do with the main story themselves, or a subplot. However, at least the cutaway sequence at the beginning of Valiant is setting up important character work to come. Quark is appalled that Dax is poking about in a grungy replicator and Odo realises he is in love with her. This in turn is brought up again in Tears of the Prophets when he realises that she is going to have a baby with Worf, and then bleeds into the fabric of season seven when Quark tries to woo Ezri. As far as Valiant is concerned, this is entirely superfluous.

A reason to watch this episode again – Valiant is DS9 at its most subversive. It’s a story that invites you to take the side of either Jake (who thinks the members of Red Squad are delusional fanatics) or Nog (who thinks they are heroes) and probes the questions of what it takes to be a Starfleet Officer and looks hard at what happens if you’re not cut out for it but still idealistic enough to think that you are. If this was a TNG, VOY or ENT episode it would probably end with the cadets completing the mission safely and the Federation ideals that they spout being justified. Because this is a Ron Moore scripted DS9 episode, they are all slaughtered in what is one of the most violent and uncomfortable action sequences in the franchises entire run. This is after Moore has allowed us close to these kids and made us really hate them. We’re stuck in the very awkward position between really not enjoying spending time with these children who think they have the experience to behave like adults and then watching them die horribly and feeling sorry that a military organisation that poured their heads full of idealism let them down. It’s deeply uncomfortable viewing and a deconstruction of the Roddenberry ideal perhaps even more than In the Pale Moonlight. Some dodgy performances aside, it’s also a very handsome looking episode with excellent turns from Aron Eisenberg and Cirroc Lofton and a final ten minutes that will quite take your breath away in terms of making you feel sick to your stomach in fear as everything goes wrong. This could have gone down as the DS9 episode with the kids…but by having the nuts to massacre the lot of them it becomes so much more than that. I’m not sure this is a particularly agreeable episode but it is very necessary to show that when the violence becomes nasty enough in war, idealism isn’t enough to see you through. War is an ugly business and standing there waving a flag is going to see you get your head blown off.

****1/2 out of *****

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