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| "So alone..." Jadzia, without her symbiote. |
THE PLOT
A plasma storm has led to an evacuation on Deep Space 9, leaving Sisko to run the station with only a skeleton crew. While the storm is raging, the station receives a distress call from a ship requesting emergency docking clearance. But the emergency is a ruse. When O'Brien and Odo go to greet their guests, they find themselves victims of an ambush by two Klingon mercenaries and their employer, a Trill named Verad (John Glover).
The Klingons quickly gain control of the station, thanks to inside information provided by Quark. Once everyone has been taken hostage, the Trill reveals what he is there for. He has come to take what he sees as something rightfully his: Jadzia's symbiote!
CHARACTERS
Commander Sisko: Remains calm as he tries to find a way to return the symbiote to Jadzia before it is too late. When the procedure has been done and Verad comes back to Ops, Sisko plays on his friendship with Dax to try to convince him to voluntarily return to Jadzia. When that fails, he plants doubts in the mind of Verad's girlfriend (Megan Gallagher), which proves effective in making her doubt her relationship with this changed Verad. He also displays an icy anger when Verad/Dax disappoints him. Avery Brooks plays the scene in which he promises that he will see Verad again with steel. Watching, you know that you do not want to be Sisko's enemy. It would be... unhealthy.
Dax: Resigns herself to Verad's procedure in order to prevent her friends and colleagues from being harmed, and urges Julian to accede to his demands as well. Once the symbiote is removed, Jadzia is left more vulnerable than we have ever seen her, weakly crying to Bashir that she has "never felt so alone" and that she's "empty inside." Verad Dax's refusal to risk returning to Jadzia after the procedure again raises the question of how much of the personality we see is Jadzia and how much is Dax. Certainly, Dax without Jadzia seems to lack the courage and self-sacrifice that we have seen, which gravely disappoints Sisko.
Dr. Bashir: Though he performs the procedure, under protest, he does everything in his considerable powers to stabilize Jadzia afterwards. When his Klingon guard sneers at him for wasting his time on someone who "will be dead in a few hours," Bashir snaps back, earning a modicum of respect from the warrior for his display of will.
Quark: I'm not sure I entirely believe that Quark wouldn't be prepared for the Klingon mercenaries to try to take his "merchandise" by force. With the unsavory types Quark deals with almost daily, he would surely be ready for those who would prefer to rob him than pay him. It would make the scene in which Quark is captured more interesting if some attempt to defend himself is thwarted, rather than having him simply mewl about his poor treatment. He fares better in the second half of the episode, in which he feigns an escape attempt in order to be taken to the infirmary, where his quick thinking helps to turn the tables - and redeem him enough for him not to be blown out an airlock for his part in getting Verad and the Klingons aboard!
THOUGHTS
Invasive Procedures falls well short of the 3-parter that opened the season, and also of the last Trill-focused episode, but it's still a solid and enjoyable piece.
As with Season One's Dax, the episode takes a well-worn story type and uses it to develop the intriguing Trill/symbiote relationship. The Season One episode was a courtroom drama. This episode is the requisite hostage episode. Dax was a well-executed courtroom episode, and this is a reasonably well-executed hostage story. But once again, the real interest comes from the development of Trill society, of the thin line that separates Jadzia from Dax, and of the friendship between Sisko and Dax.
The earlier episode dealt with Sisko's uncertainty at maintaining a friendship with a Dax so different than the one he knew. Since then, he has formed a friendship with Jadzia that is very much its own relationship. A lot of that comes from Jadzia's own qualities, including a strong amount of empathy and a quality of self-sacrifice. "Verad Dax" is still Dax, but lacks the traits Sisko valued in Curzon and in Jadzia. He lacks empathy, and it is probably as much the Dax symbiote as Verad speaking when he says, "What is the life of one girl to the knowledge of eight lifetimes?" Sisko has a typically direct, almost wordless response that recalls what he said to Q when he announced: "I'm not Picard."
I do wish we had seen more of Jadzia without Dax, to get some sense of her unique personality. To me, it's a missed opportunity not to have a big scene or two in which we see her interacting with the others as just her, a chance to see how Jadzia alone is different than Jadzia Dax.
A good episode in any case. Season Two is off to an excellent start so far!
Overall Rating: 7/10
Review Index
It was interesting to find out some more of the background of the Trill and how they choose hosts. I would have been more interested to find out why Verad was "unsuitable" to be a host. Was it physical, psychological, or something else?
ReplyDeleteI thought Quark was rather out of character in this episode. Firstly, why did he remain at the "scene of the crime" in the airlock which would have made him the obvious guilty party once the security bypass had been found? Secondly, if his motivation was only to sell his wares to the Klingon, there must have been a safer way and time to do it. How much of the bad guys' mission did he know, and would the profit have been great enough to offset the punishment for his crime? He also came up with the scheme to get him into the infirmary by jumping a Klingon (dangerous at best!) and then clueing in Bashir to do his part to disable the captor. That was a pretty selfless thing to do - not one of Quark's more remarkable character traits.
In previous episodes, I've seen this bridge crew overpower enemies who outnumbered them 2, 5, or even 10 to 1. Here there were only 4 captors, some of whom made silly tactical errors like Mareel holding a phaser at Sisko's neck. I'm not trained, but even I could have disarmed her, grabbed her phaser and taken out half the bad guys.
Starfleet officers, when faced with adversarial situations are generally at least one step nicer than the bad guys. Just for once, I'd like to see them say, "Yeah, I know they were under orders not to hurt us unless necessary, but they were threatening my goram crew for Pete's sake, so I took them out!"
I really did like the change in Verad once he joined with Dax. It was hardly the same person, going from a stuttering almost submissive personality to one who was strong, decisive and almost cold. I agree with you about seeing more of Jadzia without Dax. It would have been nice to see more of her as a single personality.
Familiar faces: The Klingon T'Kar played by Tim Russ, who was the Vulcan chief of security Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager.
All in all, in my opinion this was a pretty weak episode, and though there was some good acting, the direction and writing weren't so great. I think I'd have to give it a 6/10