EMISSARY


While Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is technically a new series, it's not only
impossible to evaluate it as such, but inappropriate, for two reasons: First,
the show is being guided by the same people who have been running Star Trek:
The Next Generation for several years.  Second, DS9's premiere episode,
"Emissary", didn't FEEL any different from the past five and a half years of
TNG.  In short, this was business as usual for Paramount's science fiction
cadre.

If this were 1987, if "Emissary" were being broadcast as the first new Star
Trek series since the 1960s, my reaction to it would probably have been, "A
good star.  There's a lot of promise here."  There IS a lot of promise here,
for plots and characterization.  However, this ISN'T 1987, and "Emissary"
ISN'T a bold new step for Star Trek.  And, Rick Berman and Michael Piller's
claims to the contrary, I don't have any faith that DS9 will truly shape up to
be a different vision of Star Trek from TNG.  "Emissary" didn't show me that
my lack of faith is in error, either.

What are the basic elements here?  There are several, centering around the
characters, the plot, and the science fiction elements.  I'll tackle each in
turn.

I was really bowled over by none of the characters.  At the moment, all are
stereotypes, entirely cardboard.  (Well, almost all.  See below.)  Sisko is
the Stolid Commander.  Kira is The Bitch.  Dr. Bashir is the Naive Young
Adventurer.  Quark is your Typical Ferengi.  Dax and O'Brien are still largely
personalityless.  Jake Sisko is a total nonentity so far.

There are two bright spots.  The first was Dr. Bashir's sudden resolve in the
midst of the crisis, commanding Odo to help him save an injured woman's life.
This is a good sign because it's hard to imagine a less palatable character
than the sniveling image Bashir had put on up 'til then.

The other bright spot is Odo, who shows strong signs of being more than Just
Another Star Trek Alien.  In his element, he is forthright, aggressive, and
even arrogant ("Who the hell are you?"), but when Bashir needed him to help
tend to the wounded, he became squeamish.  Of all the cast, he's the only one
whose faults really seemed plausible to me, because they seemed to grow
naturally out of otherwise incidental situations (rather than being harped on,
such as Sisko's were).  I also liked the fact that he's often called
"Constable". :-)

However, there is a reason why the characters came across as so skimpy in this
particular episode, and that's because the story focused to a much greater
extent on the plot than on its protagonists.  This in itself would not have
been so bad, had the plot not been so fragmented.

The purpose of the episode, it seemed, was to introduce us to the characters,
introduce the wormhole, get DS9 out to the wormhole, and resolve Sisko's
anguish over the death of his wife, Jennifer.  Unfortunately, a lot of this
was handled in a haphazard manner.  The characters I've already touched on,
but the rest I'll discuss here.

The wormhole is a fine idea, really.  What I DIDN'T like was the
aliens-inside-the-wormhole phenomenon, which was really handled amazingly
poorly.  The concept of beings which don't exist in linear time is quite good,
really.  However, there are plenty of unanswered questions about them.  Why do
they live in the wormhole?  Why do they leave it open if they don't need to?
(As they clearly don't, since they easily made it go away.)  Why did they
build it in the first place?  (Or were they not the builders?)  And then there
are smaller points which didn't make any sense: Why did they return Dax to DS9
and not Sisko?  Why did they agree to let people make use of the wormhole if
passage through it hurts them?  (Sure, it's a nice thing to do, but it seems
strangely self-sacrificing.)  I sincerely hope that we'll be seeing a LOT of
the aliens in near-future episodes, because virtually nothing about them was
explained here.  In final analysis, the aliens seemed an unnecessary
complication to the story, and one which needs to be MUCH more fully fleshed
out before it makes any sense.

(By the way, how many people, upon seeing Sisko step out of the shuttle onto
the desolate rocky plain, cried out, "V'Ger!  So that's where he went!"? :-)

I was somewhat annoyed by the term "orb" used to describe something that
looked not at all spherical.  (It looked more like a chalice, to me!)

The next plot element was moving DS9 out to the wormhole.  This was frought
with storytelling mishap as well.  So the Cardassians return.  Okay.  But if
they were going to leave Bajor, why should they come back?  Why did they leave
DS9 still standing at all if they're just participating in harassment?  The
Cardassians also seem remarkably stupid in so readily believing that the
station was responsible for destroying their ship.  The motivations here are
murky.

The "battle" (such as it was) was passable, but except for the rare bit of
combat in second-generation Star Trek, it seemed rather content-free.  (I did
like O'Brien's interactions with the computer, though.)

Lastly, we have Sisko dealing with his wife's death.  Now, the opening
sequence of "Emissary", with the Borg, was easily the high point of this
episode.  (My comment at the time was:  If that was indicative of the series
to come, it's gonna be pretty good!  Sadly, so far, it hasn't been.)  But I
didn't really find Sisko's "holding on" to the event to be very innovative or
exciting, especially as the resolution was couched mainly in exposition
involving the maddeninly vague aliens.  I also thought much of what power
there WAS was drastically undercut by the poor acting job of the actress
playing Jennifer.  (She seemed terribly wooden, to me.)

I guess it will all have been worth it if we don't hear anything about this
again for a while.  Sisko's ghosts became quite tiresome very quickly.

On the whole, I think that this story would have functioned much better with a
more subdued resolution to the claiming of the wormhole, and with the excising
of as much as possible of Sisko's catharsis.  It would have made for a leaner,
more to-the-point episode.

Finally, there are the peripheral considerations.  The acting I considered
adequate at best, with even Avery Brooks (an actor I've long admired)
strangely turning in a rather stilter performance.  Maybe they're all just
warming up to the characters, yet.  The special effects were nicely done, but
it seemed that they indulged in them too much, giving us "gosh-wow" after
"gosh-wow" with the wormhole and the orbs and such.  Special effects are nice,
but this episode needed money and effort spent in more important places.  For
instance (and lastly), the music, which was as lackluster as what we're
typically treated to in TNG.  I'd almost rather have no incidental music at
all.

(Even the main title theme is unexciting.  It sounds like a weak variation on
Copland's "Fanfare For The Common Man".  I like the sparse arrangement, but
the melody doesn't evoke ANYthing in my mind.)

And, of course, we never did find out just why the station is named "Deep
Space Nine".

On the whole, as I said, "Emissary" seemed to be business-as-usual.  Nothing
new, nothing exciting.  Just as rather pedantic "introduce everything and wow
the viewers" episode.  This might have worked under very different
circumstances, but it just left me cold.

Grade: C-