DS9 Reviews: "Nor the Battle to the Strong"

It's taken me awhile to get around to this review. Partly because I'm busy; partly because I'm lazy; but largely because it's a relatively hard episode to watch, at least in the context of Star Trek. There's not really any sense of fun or adventure, it's just a very dark character study.

The context is important...this episode's content is extremely mild by the standards of any decent war movie. But in the Star Trek universe thus far, the worst thing that had ever happened to any of our characters on the screen was Picard getting Borgified for an episode and a half. You'll see why this episode is a slight adjustment.

So the episode starts as Jake, the captain's son who is just settling into his great ambition: writing. A brief aside on Jake: he's technically a lead character, but he's one of those characters who the writers often just can't figure out what to do with. The easy thing to do would have been to have him go into Starfleet when the character grew old enough, but to the writers' credit they don't do so, giving this role to Jake's former delinquent friend, Nog. They finally hit on a role for Jake to play in the impending chaos by making him into a journalist, which finally gets him into some unique situations.

Here, he's writing a cover story on the station's doctor, Bashir, and so the two of them are on a runabout flying back to DS9 from a medical conference (a frequent plot device with Bashir, but to be fair, scientists do this stuff all the time). However, Jake is, quite obnoxiously, bored to tears by Bashir's earnest "medicobabble." They get a distress call from a Federation system that's under attack by the Klingons. Wait, what?

See, despite the events of "Apocalypse Rising," the Klingons are still mindlessly attacking the Federation. Worse, this takes place right after the lighthearted fuckery of "Looking for par'mach..." What has been done is to follow a lighthearted, jokey Klingon episode with a "grim'n'gritty" episode in which the Klingons are basically bloodthirsty Orcs. Despite the fact that each episode stands up well by itself, their juxtaposition is ridiculous. This episode might have benefited from coming much later in the season and starring the Jem'Hadar, although open war doesn't quite break out until the very end of the season so it would have taken some creative writing.

Anyway, Jake cajoles Bashir into flying in and helping the besieged doctors. As his voiceover tells us, he does this so that he can write a "real story" about battlefield medicine.

Jake, you're an idiot. But that's the whole point.

So they land on the planet and go into the Generic Star Trek Cave Set, to be confronted with a few doctors and nurses scattering around dealing with redshirts (actually some sort of black military uniform in this ep) who haven't quite died yet. The first person Bashir runs across to treat has a burned foot that he claims was caused by a Klingon gun, but the tricorder says different...he shot himself in the foot with his own phaser.

Star Trek's never shown us that side of war before. Of course, the subtext is that the Federation isn't prepared for war, not having fought one in years. But even though they are relatively soft and spoiled right now, this poor schmo can still kiss his career good bye thanks to one moment of weakness.

Anyway, the medics don't let Jake sit around writing on his iPADD. They put his ass to work hauling bodies out of the OR. The roots of later scenes in Battlestar Galactica (which employed many DS9 writers) are here. There is obviously a limit on what they can show, so none of the screaming, thrashing, and brutal calculus of triage that was depicted in BSG. But seeing the captain's son haul bodies around and get covered in blood is pretty jarring. All the while, the medics talk about how bad the Klingons are. Most of this stuff is either silly or inconsistent, though.

"When the Klingons are really on the offensive, they pull out their bat'leths (like swords, but impractical), charge at us, and that's why we see all these horrible wounds."

YOU'RE IN THE 24TH CENTURY AND THEY ARE CHARGING YOU WITH SWORDS? Fuck me, you guys should be cheering when that happens cause it means you can kill them all with your phasers.

"When the Klingons get to the wounded, they kill them to give them an honorable death."

What? The Klingons are many things, but killing the defenseless is usually a sure way for them to lose their "honor." If this custom had ever been referenced before (or after!) it might be put into some kind of context, but this just makes them into mad dogs. They know damn well that the Feds have awesome medical technology because they've been allies for years and years.

Pop quiz: after this episode, in which the Klingons are basically the Imperial Japanese Army, will we have many future episodes in which their culture is presented as intrinsically admirable, or even amusing?

You bet your ass!

So anyway, the Klingon artillery starts making some noise and power goes out, which will cause a lot of the patients to, uh, die. So Bashir and Jake volunteer to bolt for their landed runabout and grab its generator.

This scene is notable for two reasons, one of which is an important event in the plot and in characterization, and the other of which is fail. So Bashir and Jake are running across the surface of the planet and shells are bursting all around them...like, right next to them, or between them when they are only running a few feet apart. The Klingon "mortars" are just horrible little smoke bombs that could probably be purchased legally in all fifty states (and in Florida you'd get a free stick of dynamite). For reference, real life mortars are designed to cut you in half with shrapnel from fifty feet away. Jake is terrified out of his wits by these...mortars, and sees Bashir get knocked down (!) by one and call out for Jake. Jake, however, just runs.

This scene had great potential. Countless people have broken and run under shelling. It brings the character to a place he's never experienced before. But the awful smoke bombs, the locked-off camera, and the "generic Star Trek danger music" leech a lot of the drama away.

We do get to some of the real meat of the episode here though. Jake stumbles into a crater with a mortally wounded human soldier. He provides companionship during the soldier's last moments. "Turn me over. If I'm going out, I want to be looking at the sky!" It comes out that this man sacrificed himself, willingly staying behind to provide covering fire as his unit boarded a ship and flew to safety. Jake is ashamed by this and starts babbling about how if he can bring this man back to the doctors and save him, it will make up for leaving Bashir to die. The soldier dies with the sardonic words, "That's not how it works, kid..."

Jake returns, only to see that Bashir not only survived, but saved everybody's lives, bringing back the generator from the wreckage of the runabout. And this whole time, he's just been worried and guilty that Jake was in danger! Jake, no longer the boy of early seasons but a young man, seethes with self-hatred and loathing. Concealing his shame, he lashes out at the doctors. He meets the guy with the self-inflicted wound again and they bond in mutual understanding..."You're the only one here who treats me like a person," says the "coward." Jake urges him to fight his probable court-martial, but the man will have none of it...he knows what he did and that the service is not for him.

The Klingons close in on the caves and everyone pitches in to frantically evacuate the wounded. A gun battle ensues in the OR and Jake finds himself the last man between the wounded and the Klingons. He snatches up a phaser rifle and fires wildly in the air, causing them to hesitate as well as the ceiling to collapse. Jake is KOed, but the Klingon advance stops long enough for the Defiant to swoop in and rescue everybody. Jake is hailed as a hero.

In his own account, however, he is truthful, which earns the admiration of his father all the same. "Sometimes, the line between heroism and cowardice is a lot thinner than any of us would like to admit."

This episode isn't flawless, but as I described, it is remarkable in many ways. Like "The Ship," it set the tone of the remainder of the series, and prepared us to explore the theme: "If a utopia must go to war to defend itself against evil, can it still remain a utopia?"

Runabout tally: One destroyed off screen by Klingon smoke bombs. Those dastardly Klingons! They can destroy a small Federation ship if it's not moving or shooting back!