322. ParadiseFORMULA: The Way to Eden + Progress + Chain of Command in a box
WHY WE LIKE IT: O'Brien, the One Man Army Corps.
WHY WE DON'T: Alexis' wavering voice.
REVIEW: Paradise foreshadows The Maquis by featuring a different crowd of Federation malcontents, though Alexis' community takes its cue from the technophobic space hippies of The Way to Eden. That episode had the hippies that sing songs at peaceful protests, while this one has the hippies who live on a commune and make their own clothes. But the 60s and 90s are two different worlds, and one person's ideal community is another's cultist compound.
Alexis has many good ideas, and in the DS9 tradition, she's an ambiguous villain. But a villain she is, perhaps by necessity since we're obviously rooting for Sisko in that particular clash of wills. She really is sinister, however, because while her heart's in the right place, she's corrupted the humanism central to Star Trek by taking away a vital element of that humanism: Choice. Indeed, once the natural order is reestablished, some or all might choose to stay with the community. But it's a choice. Sisko's good here as Alexis' foil, and while some have told me they disliked his undignified suffering in "the box" with nothing to be gained, I disagree. This is a battle of wills, a fight for spiritual leadership, and he makes a point by going back to the box, a point about choice.
However, it's the unwaveringly loyal O'Brien that's great in Paradise. He's a regular MacGyver! Building a duonetic field detector/compass is technobabble in a non-technological world, but if you're going to give me technobabble, do it like this. O'Brien is less about the babble and more about the application. You just believe it. And best of all, he turns commando here. I love how they finally get him out of his uniform and how he disarms Alexis' son. He's incredibly efficient, and scenes like this one make me wonder if the Dominion War wasn't written in just for him.
For all that, Paradise doesn't quite hit the high mark. Alexis does a lot of preaching, and while Sisko counters it all (in the fewest words possible), there's still a sense of being preached at. The awkward ending with the box and the two kids born on that planet is also preachy, if a visual can be called that. And then there's the tractor beam roping of the runabout, which seems a lame obstacle without much human drama, and also features some very rough special effects.
LESSON: Everything I do, I do it for the blogosphere.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: Sisko and O'Brien are excellent, but everything surrounding them is slightly tacky. A High Medium, but a Medium nonetheless.
Comments
"Steppin' into Eden. Yeah brother!"
It's all about respect.