DS9 – Nor the Battle, To the Strong…

Plot – Can you imagine anything drearier than a paper on Dr Bashir’s latest medical breakthrough? I’m still astonished that they managed to dramatize some of those into actual episodes…and that they turn out to be some of the best of the entire run (The Quickening, Inter Arma). Hearing about his dry and dusty conference on prion replication sounds thoroughly tedious and it would take all of Jake’s prowess as a journalist to turn it into a suspenseful documentary. How wonderful then that the Klingons have invaded a medical outpost on the border and they are near enough to attend and help out. Surgery Under Fire sounds so much more dramatic…

Character – Every year (except the last one, strangely) I feel like there is a breakout episode for Jake. Anybody who cringed at the though of DS9 going down the route of having a kid on board probably had a bit of egg on their face at this point. Episodes like The Visitor, Shattered Mirror, Nor the Battle and Valiant really go to show the benefit of allowing a child character to grow up in a hostile environment and find his own path in life. Jake thankfully chose not to pursue a career in Starfleet, which makes him pretty damn sensible in my book and given his mother died precisely for that reason it is far more than just cowardice and laziness on his part. Writing is his bag, and specifically journalism is career and it is exploited a couple of times a year to dramatic and sometimes comedic effect. Nor the Battle is probably the best Jake episode as played by Cirroc Lofton. I would say The Visitor, of course, but the plaudits there belong to Tony Todd. This is a chance to see exactly what this character is made of, throwing him into a genuinely horrific situation and making him face up to his own fearfulness and bravery. Lofton is more than up to the task and shows himself to be an actor of some skill in some very difficult scenes. I think the moment Jake realises he is in a completely new environment is when his shirt is grabbed by a man who is taking his painful last breath and he steps back, his shirt saturated in fresh blood. The look on his face when he steps into the makeshift mortuary of fresh bodies is one of numbness and disbelief. Jake running away from Bashir in trouble seems like a very sensible thing to do in the circumstances (there are literally explosions going off all around him) and this isn’t an act of cowardice but self-preservation. I guess the line between those two things is pretty thin. I really like how Jake has the guts to write up his experiences at the hospital honestly, including admitting how frightened he was and how saving the day was a complete fluke. That’s real bravery. Facing up to what you might consider the uglier side of your personality and admitting openly that you’re not perfect. As a character in the Roddenberry universe, that is real courage.

I’d like to highlight some of the characters who aren’t the regulars this week because there are some really interesting things happening. There’s the Bolian orderly who has been at this game for so long now that he has developed a sick sense of humour to see him through. Kirby is a sweet nurse who develops quite an affection for Jake and tries to see him through. It would have been nice had this been a little romantic subplot, but it’s there unrequited in the subtext if you want to see it. The best scenes belong to the two characters who behave in a distinctly un-Starfleet way. The unnamed Ensign (he isn’t given a name despite his importance to the story, and that almost feels deliberate on the part of the writers to punish a man who turned from his duty) who shoots himself in the foot just to escape the front lines is the perfect encapsulation of what is essentially a young man with his whole life ahead of him being forced into a combat situation for some obscure reason. There’s a good chance that had he not blown his foot away that he would be dead. Which is the better option? Cowardice or death? The episode doesn’t comment on that directly, it just states how he will be professionally punished. He strikes me as one of the most realistic characters that Star Trek has ever presented, and he doesn’t even have a name.

Performance – I’ve heard complaints that the character of Burke is crazy over the top, which is an interesting angle to take given he has had his stomach sliced open and he is holding his guts in place. Let’s see how calm those same critics would be in the same situation.

Great Dialogue – ‘Back home, pregnancy is considered a rental’ ‘Rental?’‘Decapitation has its virtues. A nice clean blow with a sharp bat’leth’ ‘The brain lives on for five, ten seconds at least. In theory, your headless corpse could be the las thing you see’  ‘You’re so negative.’

Production – In order for this episode to work the hospital sequences needed to be as realistic as possible and so director Kim Friedman goes for a messy, unco-ordinated, handheld approach with activity going on everywhere, people being carried, operated on, dying and screaming in every direction. It’s extremely well done, more like an episode ER underground and they have the skill of doing this every week behind them. In the middle of all this madness you have Jake, a centre of still panic, out of his depth and unsure what to do with himself.

Seeing bloody, savaged bodies strewn about on the misty battlefield in the brilliant sunlight really is new territory for Trek. I’m surprised they managed to get this sequence through. It perfectly encapsulates why war is hell. And utterly pointless. And terrifying.

Best moment – But DS9 didn’t have the chemistry and the good humour that the other Trek shows had, I hear you say. Check out the ‘Quark-tajino’ sequence after the credits. ‘Why does pregnancy always make men hysterical?’ It’s that exact same delicate thread of humour that you have TNG and VOY, albeit with a little more bite. And the scene where Odo talks about attempting to change into a hawk, forgetting that he doesn’t have ability to shapeshift anymore. And the scene where Dax talks about being a parent countless times. God, I love these characters. How the episode stresses the relationship between Sisko and Jake despite the fact that they only share a single scene together, is impressive.

The moment Jake finally loses his composure at all the nurses who are joking about how they are going to die…surrounded by bodies still gives me goosebumps. You can see perfectly why they have developed this twisted sense of humour, because it helps them get through this hell. But from Jake’s point of view, who is suffering trauma and guilt, it looks like they taking the piss out of all the pain and suffering that is haunting him. There are some complex things going on in that scene. That’s followed up with a sequence of Jake, traumatised and terrified, bursting into tears. I wish Trek would venture into real trauma like this more often, because it shows up the franchise’s usual reset on feelings when characters face ghastly situations that would genuinely test them.

A reason to watch this episode again – The really interesting thing about this episode is what happens when you take an idealistic Star Trek character and place them in a situation that is distinctly un-Star Trek. It’s a hospital full of the dead and dying, cowards and psychopaths, blood and guts and Klingons banging on the door and ready to slice open anybody who gets in their way. It’s claustrophobic, gusty and terrifying and simply not the sort of thing that TNG or VOY would dip their toes into. In walks Jake full of bluster and he’s put through trials of anxiety and terror and facing up to his own fear. That alone is enough of a pitch to get excited about but with some terrific direction, top notch performances and moments where I genuinely questioned whether they would get out of this alive and you have a classic episode of DS9 (let’s not call it Trek). I love the dirtiness of it; the moral dubiousness of some of the characters, the graphic nature of the surgery scenes and the claustrophobic horror, even when the episode goes outside in the blistering sunshine. This isn’t the episode that makes Jake a man (who knows what that even means) but it’s the episode that shows him just how brave the people are who chose the path he didn’t, and that his chosen profession may lead to some frightening experiences. Lofton is superb and has fantastic chemistry with Siddig – I wish the writers had returned to that well more often. Trek can’t be like this all the time otherwise it starts becoming something a little twisted and nasty, but a handful of times each season DS9 took the punt and tried something quite different from the norm. Here they really hit gold.

***** out of *****