455. Strange BedfellowsFORMULA: Covenant + Afterimage + Return to Grace
WHY WE LIKE IT: Damar turns. Weyoun's death. Winn admits it.
WHY WE DON'T: Still some soap bubbles.
REVIEW: What's most incredible about this episode (and the entire arc, really) is how long we can stay with the villains without ever wondering where the heroes are at. On Cardassia, Damar has pretty much been taken out of the equation, with mysterious territorial concessions being made to the Breen and the latter getting full access to all things Cardassian. His one spot of joy (or at least, jolity) comes when Weyoun 7's neck is snapped by Worf (at once shocking and morbidly amusing by the sheer simplicity of the move). Weyoun 8 is easier to anger, but also tortures Damar with mind games, laughing it up with his new Breen friends. No wonder Damar turns, and when he does, it's a great moment.
Back on the station, we're following the seduction of Winn at Dukat's hands. This couple makes your skin crawl because their relationship is a kind of rape. If Winn only knew who shared her bed! But it's a fight for her soul as well as her body, and it may seem like a bad idea for the pah-wraiths to show their hand so early, but it leads Winn to ask advice from the Prophets and then from Kira, all of which further pushes her on the path of evil. HAS she been foresaken by the Prophets? Or have the wraiths been interfering with her communion all along, preparing her for this moment? Even her epiphany before Kira, that ambition has led her astray, cannot make her abandon that ambition. And written off once too many times, she turns to that ambition and lets it control her destiny.
There's still a lot of attention paid to Ezri and Worf as their soap opera goes on, but at least there's closure for them here. And it's more a character study than melodrama in this one, with Worf's giant ego keeping him from admitting the truth, while Ezri is ever the psychologist. Her gentle sense of humor (waiting for an execution seems like "a lazy day" to her) lightens up the scenes, and the two make up in a reasoned way. This new status quo ("friends and more") is perfect for them.
And despite moving the plots moving along well, the episode finds time for character moments. Martok presents marriage as a grand war, one Sisko aims to fight with hot sauce. The guys are missing Ezri, but Bashir perhaps more than normal. Again, gentle humor and unself-conscious acting win the day.
LESSON: Be really really careful who you sleep with.
REWATCHABILITY - High: When your villains are as interesting as your heroes, it's going great. Strange Bedfellows is a lot of fun despite the serious subject matter.
Comments
I'm almost scared to ask... does, does... this mean you're going to proceed on to the dreaded "V-word" show?
(Shudder)
But I can see the missed opportunities mounting.
Yes, I know this seems to conflict with the sentiment of my comment of a few days ago, but I hope that if people do have something negative to say, it's about whatever the episode in question is, rather than just griping about the series as a whole.
(And yes, before you ask, I do consider myself a Voyager fan.)
And no, I won't come by every post just to gratuitously slag the show, though I may not be able to keep mum if something that particularly annoyed me in an episode is roused from my memory, but I promise to remain civil. I'll even try to mention the things I did like (though that may be rather sparse during the first 2 seasons).
As for general bitches about the show, I'll get some of them off my chest now:
1. The comedown after DS9. There was a time there during the first season of Voyager when each week I'd be thinking "wow, this is the worst episode of Star Trek I've ever seen". Mind you, at the time I had rediscovered DS9 and totally fallen in love with it, having fallen away during _its_ somewhat drab first season, so Voyager's ropey early period suffered in comparison.
2. The Kazon. All this hyping-up as the big menace and they deliver bargain basement Klingon ripoffs. I remember reading an interview with the producers about all the work they'd done working out a unique social structure for their new big bad. After all that work, they should have been outraged when the design people delivered Klingons who'd fallen asleep with mousse in their hair, and demanded a rethink before any episodes were shot. The effectiveness of the early seasons was really hobbled by this, for me at least.
3. Janeway often seemed to me to run the ship like a middle-manager in a present-day corporate environment. I was happy to see a woman in the captain's chair, not so happy to see her run the ship like she'd just taken a management effectiveness seminar. Nor was I too happy to be reminded of work so much when I was supposed to be watching Star Trek. Maybe this counts as an overly personal reaction.
BTW, have you guys ever read Ron Moore's account of his horrible experiences when he moved to Voyager after DS9 ended? He had some really cool ideas, too bad he wasn't listened to.
Positive things: Tim Russ is the first actor in a 24th-century-set Trek show to really "get" how to play a Vulcan properly.