DS9 Reviews: "The Assignment"

Ok, so I've been toiling away with a couple of my very favorite phylogenetics programs for hours now, and when I put in a command, it takes them a good few minutes to process. It's been very start-and-stop, a frustrating way to work. If I were better at multi-tasking I'd be reading papers, but I will try this instead. So this review itself may come out a little disjointed, but no one will grade me for it (let alone read it).

So...according to the excellent Star Trek Wiki "Memory Alpha," about once a year the writers liked to do an "O'Brien Must Suffer" episode. This is the entry for season 5. The basic story of the episode is that a malign presence has taken over O'Brien's wife, Keiko, and is coercing O'Brien into doing its bidding under the threat of murdering Keiko.

I think Star Trek badly overuses fantasy cliches (overlaid with obnoxious technobabble) like possession. Hell, there was already an episode back in NextGen where O'Brien was possessed but Keiko wasn't! Nonetheless, this episode somehow manages to transcend its premise to become perhaps the most solid episode of this early part of season 5.

So anyway, the episode picks up as Keiko returns from a trip to Bajor and her apologetic husband has killed her precious bonsai trees out of semi-comical ineptitude. Keiko, a botanist, uncharacteristically brushes it off with "They're just plants, Miles." She then very matter-of-factly states that she's actually an incorporeal being, possessing his wife, and that she can kill her in a split second. O'Brien isn't quite sure how to take this, but as he finds out, treating it like a joke was not the best idea. In this setting, that's just a dangerous lack of genre savvy.

So the possessing creature (later revealed as a "Pah-wraith," so henceforth, "the wraith") gets this close to killing Keiko, stands back up, and thus establishes the rules. This scene is very creepy and it works because Colm Meaney and Rosalind Chao had been playing husband and wife for over six years at this point, even if only semi-frequently. Chao really seems to relish getting to order Meaney around in, not in a "comically nagging wife" way, but a life or death kind of way. She, as the wraith, also plays the part of Keiko perfectly when anyone else is around, even throwing the awkwardest birthday party ever for Miles. "It would arouse suspicion if we canceled it, dear." She even insists that they share the bed, though this being Star Trek that's as far as it goes (and it's quite creepy enough!) She tells him to make a large number of seemingly minor modifications to the station, with a strict time limit, and to do so without arousing suspicion.

The wraith is a brutally effective villain because there's seemingly no stopping it. O'Brien runs down a list with the computer of ways he could render her unconscious, but none of them are faster than the split second it would take the wraith to burst a blood vessel in his wife's head. The wraith has relatively little to lose, since it won't be harmed by this...if O'Brien forces the issue, the wraith gets a setback but O'Brien loses his wife. She can also threaten their young daughter Molly. The deadline she has him working under is too harsh for him to get much time to consider alternatives. When he does try to get help from the other crew members on the Promenade, the wraith has Keiko jump off the balcony--she knows everything Keiko knows and can predict his movements. Sure that part's a little contrived, but it certainly keeps the tension boiling.

This episode also does some very neat dovetailing of it's A- and B-plots. When last we saw Rom (Quark's brother and Nog's father), he had lent his considerable engineering talents to the service of the station, quitting his job at Quark's and working as a maintenance technician. We see in this episode that he's not very popular initially, both because he's a Ferengi and because he's a bit of an idiot savant, with absolutely no sense of social graces. Sometimes Rom is painful to watch, but in this episode he's more entertaining, joyfully trying to fit in by eating Earth-style breakfasts as his disgusted brother looks on.

Rom's position as a social pariah on the night shift, his dedicated work ethic, and his incredible engineering skills make him the perfect tool for O'Brien as he frantically tries to complete the modifications. It's a little sad how he takes advantage of Rom, telling him that he's on a secret Starfleet mission and not to say anything to the senior staff even if he is asked (as they are testing his loyalty, see). This even extends to setting him up for the fall when the senior officers notice the modifications and catch Rom in the act. This is an awfully shitty thing for a guy to do, and yet...who among us would not, for the sake of their wife or husband? The characters have been married in the show for so long that there's no "establishing" how much O'Brien cares for her, it just IS.

By now O'Brien has only a few hours to go, and he's almost finished when Odo, having a devil of a time wringing any answers out of the guy, drags O'Brien down to talk with him.

Rom's character development since the early days is evident here. He keeps the chief's secret but reveals that he knows it's not a secret Starfleet operation, and he's also figured out the purpose of the modifications where O'Brien has not--the station is now set to flood the wormhole with "chroniton" particles, killing the aliens who live in it...the Bajoran Prophets.

Just to remind you all (and because I'll be dealing with them at great length in later episodes), the Prophets are the gods of Bajor, discovered to be non-corporeal aliens living in the wormhole by Sisko back in the pilot episode. Now, the reason that they are "Prophets," supposedly, is that they experience time in a "non-linear" fashion.

This is a really cool idea that makes alarmingly little sense. See, the Prophets talk to our characters from time to time (as they must, for them to have any relevance in the show) and yet they respond to them in an unmistakably "linear" fashion (i.e. the characters give them information, convince them of things, negotiate with them, etc. Heck, in "Emissary" they are surprised to meet Sisko). One can imagine that they experience the future and yet are doomed to continue to act it out, a la "Dr. Manhattan" from Watchmen (who doesn't really make sense either). Yet, they themselves rarely do interact with the physical plane and alter the course of events for seemingly arbitrary reasons. How can they experience the future even as they are causing it to change?

The wraith's nefarious plot revealed, it pays lip service to these creatures' "non-linearity" even as it highlights their "linearity." See, "chroniton particles" are Star Trek's magic time travel voodoo (See Star Trek First Contact) and the idea is that they will kill off the Prophets by "forcing them to interact with time" or something. Yet if they were not interacting with time already, it seems very strange how a plot to assassinate them could possibly be executed.

"Non-linear beings" are probably nonsensical. But from a scriptwriting point of view? They are REALLY nonsensical.

It gets better. So the Pah-wraiths turn out to be basically evil, exiled Prophets that were stuck on Bajor (in the "Fire Caves", where Keiko visited. Woops.)...so guess who's vulnerable to "chroniton particles" too?

The ending of this episode could be seen coming, but it is no less satisfying. O'Brien, on the run from the station personnel who have finally figured out his game, convinces the wraith that he's still willing to help by saying "I know what you're up to but I don't care about your damn incorporeal war. I just want my wife back." Which, frankly...wouldn't be too out of character for him. Why does he give a shit? He's never met a Prophet. So they board a runabout, open the wormhole, trigger the station's new Prophet-killing beam, but OOPS, O'Brien targeted the runabout instead. And apparently THAT kills the wraith faster than it can kill Keiko. Hell yeah!

And thus, O'Brien outfoxes the wraith, gets his wife back, avoids any consequences by simply explaining to everyone what was going on, and promotes Rom to the day shift. Which means this IS an unusual "Screw over O'Brien" episode...usually he gets insanity downloaded directly into his brain, or maimed, or copied and forced to kill himself, or something else insane like that. This one actually has a pretty happy ending!

One reason why this show is interesting is that it was clearly written to be a stand-alone show, like every other "O'Brien's Life Sucks" and "Random Ghost-Alien Possession" episode. Shows like this that use only standing sets and have cast members randomly being mean to each other are, essentially, cheap filler programs, and DS9 did plenty of 'em in the early seasons that never were referenced again.

And yet...this becomes one of the most important episodes of the show, in retrospect. Years later, the thread of the Prophets' enemies, the Pah-wraiths, is picked up and becomes key to the show. In this episode, the precise motivations and nature of the being that takes over Keiko is somewhat important to the plot, but is ultimately secondary...one could easily imagine that the relative handful of lines dealing with it were simply added at the last minute because some smart guys (according to the wiki, Rene Echevarria and Robert Wolfe) realized the potential future storyline.

This is the kind of planting and payoff that Babylon 5 excelled in, right from the pilot. It took Star Trek a good, long while to catch up to the idea. :P