Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 4 created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller (1995-1996)
22 August 2006Wow. Let me say that again. Wow. The show really returned with a bang with the 4th season, and especially with the changes implemented with the addition of Michael Dorn as Worf from the Next Generation and his romance with Dax and Avery Brooks returning with a goatee and a new bald look that brought a serious edge to the show. Sure the dominion took a bit of a back seat in this season as the Klingons moved to the foreground which was necessitated by the return of Worf to Star Trek. Not only that but Colm Meaney really came to the fore with an amazing episode dealing with a 20 year imprisonment that almost drove him to suicide. If I had still been watching TV when this came on, I would not have been able to stop because this show was just so damn good. This became by far the best Star Trek series since the Original Series. The show is dark and real, and not so antiseptic as the next generation had become. Ron Moore did a lot to darken Next Generation at the end and Deep Space Nine started off dark and just got darker. My only complaint with this season was that there was not enough multi-episode story-lines, but the ones they had really kicked some ass.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
The season starts with a band with THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR. Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) is having major problems because the Klingons are changing their ways and becoming warriors again, and being very hostile, and Sisko is getting nothing from General Martok (J.G. Hertzler), so he calls in the only Klingon in Starfleet, Lieutenant Commander Worf (Michael Dorn). Worf is able to find out that the Klingons are going after the Cardassians who have had an uprising and a civilian government has taken over, and the Klingons believe it was done by the Founders so they are going to war, and they will fight the Federation if they try and stop them, and they have withdrawn from the Kitomer Accord and the peace treaty so they are no longer allies. Supreme leader Gowron (Robert O’Rielly) comes to get Worf, but Worf will not betray his honor and go against the helpless Cardassians so he and his family are cast out and lose all their lands, and Worf becomes even more of an outcast, but he does agree to join the crew of DS9.
In THE VISITOR we see the old Jake Sisko (played by Tony Todd) telling the story to a young girl who has searched him out, trying to find out the real story of why he quite writing, and it all has to do with his father’s death many years before. It seems their was an accident in the Gamma quadrant while on the DEFIANT and Ben was blasted and disappeared into hyper space while Jake (Cirroc Lofton) looked on. Later a despondent Jake saw an apparition of his father, but no one believed him. And again years later his father showed up again, and this time Jake changes his hole life and devotes himself to saving his father, even getting the old friends of Ben back in the Defiant to try and bring his father back, and we find out he is telling the story because his father will come back one more time, and the only way to stop this is to let himself die when his father is there and it will send Benjamin back to the accident where he can dodge the beam and not end up in the loop. Wow another really enjoyable episode that gets really into the father son relationship of Jake and Ben.
HIPPOCRATIC OATH has Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) and Miles O’Brien (Colm Meaney) landing on a planet and being kidnapped by rouge JemHarar who are trying to break their addiction to the drug they have born to be addicted to, but it turns out that the one aline was born not addicted, and though Bashir almost gets a cure, O’Brien forces him to leave as he has been to war. A decent episode, but not that amazing.
INDISCRETION is an enjoyable episode that has Kira (Nana Visitor) getting information on a last prison transport ship, and goes with a Cardassian Representative, Dukat (Marc Alaimo) her enemy. Kira finds out that on the ship was a Bajoran woman that Dukat was in love with and had a child with and the child survived Tora Ziyal (Cyia Batten). They find the ship, and find the survivors who are being forced to work as mine workers. They save them and Dukat plans on killing his daughter, but once he meets her he can’t do it, and goes back to Cardassia to face ridicule and scorn for his indiscretion. A good episode and leads to other things later in this season.
REJOINED is about Jadzia Dax and a another joined trill Lenara Kahn (Susanna Thompson) whom a former male host of hers was married to a previous female host of Lenara’s and against Trill law they still love each other and want to be together. A Trill who does this will be cast out and it’s symbiote will not be allowed to join with another trill, so it’s life will end with it’s host. Jadzia is willing, but Lenara is not and she returns home.
STARSHIP DOWN is a exciting episode taking place on the Defiant in the Gamma quadrant. They have Quark (Armin Shimerman) there to talk to Minister Hanok (James Cromwell) of a planet ruled by the Dominion, but while they are talking them Jem’Hadar attack and the minister’s ship goes into the atmosphere of the gas giant and followed by the Jem’Hadar, and then the Defiant goes in and is hit by a missile that goes into the room with Quark and the Minister and they hammer out a deal while they difuse the bomb, and various members of the crew are trapped all over. Worf must take over, while Kira tries to keep Sisko conscious on the bridge. A very enjoyable episode, with great character build up and great action. Damn I love the defiant.
LITTLE GREEN MEN is an awesome episode that is so much damn fun! Quark has been given a shuttle by his cousin, so he is going to ferry his nephew Nog (Aron Eidenberg) to starfleet academy with his father Rom (Max Grodénchik), but the shuttle is sabotaged, and Quark has illegal cargo. Rom saves them, but they are thrown into the past, and crash land in Roswell new mexico, and it turns out Odo was with them too, and they are very much in a 50’s science fiction film, with scientist and his plucky girlfriend and the cigar chomping general. This is so much fun to watch, and such a tongue and cheek episode. Quark is really such a great character, I remember at first he totally annoyed me, but now I love him.
THE SWORD OF KAHLESS is another enjoyable Klingon episode. When Kor (John Colicos) returns to enlist Dax to find the Sword of Kahless the first Emperor of Klingon, they take Worf with them, and while chased by other Klingons, it is the sword turning them against each other that is their biggest enemy, and that is why they beam it out into space. It is too bad they killed off the other 2 old Klingons, but it was cool to have Kor back yet again, and this time with Worf.
OUR MAN BASHIR is another fun one, this one with a holosuite error. When Sisko, Kira, Dax, and O’Brien are almost killed in a ship accident and the transporter breaks down they are put into the computer to save them, and their bodies are loaded into the Hollosuite while their brains take up all of the main computer RAM. The command officers end up in a Holosuite program that is a James Bond rip off with Julian Bashir as bond, along for the ride is the cardassian Garak (Andrew Robinson) and they can’t get killed or let anyone die or they will die in real life. Just plain fun, and cool to see Avery Brooks as Doctor Noah. Ha.
HOMEFRONT and PARADISE LOST are another 2 episode adventure and a great one that takes place on earth. This is one of the best episodes of the show so far. Sisko is called home to Starfleet Command by his old friend Admiral Leyton (Robert Foxworth) who puts him in charge of Starfleet security in anticipation of a Dominion Raid. Sisko came back with Odo who helps upgrade Starfleet security for shape shifters and helps convince Federation President Jaresh Inyo (Herschel Sparber). Of course Sisko also returns with Jake and they stay with Ben’s father Joseph (Brock Peters) in his New Orleans restaurant. They put new security measures into place including blood scans for officers and their families and Joseph fights it, though he is not a shape shifter. Then their is a massive power outage across the whole planet, and it allows Starfleet to declare martial law and put officers on every corner of the planet, and even Joseph is willing to take the blood test, and then Sisko gets visited by a shape shifter as he realizes something is wrong. And it turns out that the Admiral used a force of elite starfleet cadets to cause the power outage, and he is planning a military coup that will take over the entire federation, supposedly for it’s own good. Luckily the Admiral’s right hand Captain Erika Benteen (Susan Gibney) refuses to destroy the Defiant with it’s proof of the coup, and Sisko wins, getting the Admiral to resign and give up his martial law. DAMN THIS IS GOOD!!! A great episode, so much darker than Next Gen ever was.
CROSSFIRE is an intereting episode where Odo (Rene Auberhonois) starts losing it when Kira starts dating the new First Minister Shakaar Edon (Duncan Regehr)
RETURN TO GRACE is another Kira and Dukat episode where Dukat has lost his position in the empire because of his illegitimate daughter and is now a freighter captain, but when a Cardassian and Bajoran meeting is destroyed by Klingons, the two join up to get the Klingons, and it ends up with Dukat getting his hands on a Klingon Bird of Prey and starting a terrorist war against the Klingons and Kira takes his daughter under her care to DS9.
SONS OF MOGH is another good Worf episode, when Worf’s brother Noggra (Robert DoQui) comes to Worf a destroyed man, with no honor and wants Worf to kill him in a Klingon ceremony to give honor back, but Dax realizes it and saves Noggra, but all he wants is to die. He comes to work for security but wants to die, so eventually Worf has his memory wiped and him given to another Klingon family so he can have some honor again.
BAR ASSOCIATION is a Quark episode where Rom starts a trade union and gets Quark in trouble, and leads Rom to join O’Brien’s engineering team.
ACESSION is about Sisko being the Emissary of the Prophets when a famous Bajoran Poet from 200 years ago comes out of the wormhole and takes the Emissary role from Sisko, which at first makes him happy, but quickly when the Poet joins with Kai Win to enforce old Bajoron rules of religion the Bajoran chance of joining starfleet is compromised and Sisko must go with the Poet to meet the wormhole aliens and resume his position as emissary and the poet is sent back to finish his old poetry. A good and enjoyable episode.
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT is about Worf facing an extradition hearing for destroying a transport of innocent Klingon civilians in a battle with the Defiant. He is proved innocent, but he was still wrong as he knew civilians could have been in the area.
HARD TIME is one of my favorite episodes ever about Chief Miles Edward O’Brien who while on an alien planet in the gamma quadrant is thought to be a spy because of his interest in their technology and is sentenced to a 21 year prison sentence, but the rub is it is instant and all in his mind, it is implanted. When O’Brien returns he is not himself, not even to his wife, and O’Brien won’t admit to the fact that he had another person in his cell for 20 years, and he killed him over some hidden food, and lost his humanity, and was to the point of killing himself after that. WOW, what an episode, this is one of the darkest character sketches I have ever seen in Star Trek.
SHATTERED MIRROR jumps back to the mirror universe again, when the mirror of Sisco’s dead wife comes and ends up taking Jake. Jake is blind to it, but it is so that Sisco can fix their version of the Defiant that O’Brien/Smiley stole the plans from Sisko’s universe, and it works and Sisco helps defeat the new empire before he returns home with his son, but not until his wife dies. I am not a fan of this mirror, it was better having an evil federation. Oh well.
THE MUSE is about Jake who meets a strange woman Onaya (Meg Foster) who fosters his abilities to write a novel, but drains his life energy as she does it, but is stopped by Ben Sisko.
FOR THE CAUSE shows Sisko learning that his girlfriend Kasidy Danielle Yates (Penny Johnson) is in fact working for the Maquis delivering supplies and he must have her arrested. A good, though depressing episode.
TO THE DEATH is about Sisko and the crew of the Defiant having to join with a group of Jem’Hadar warriors to defeat renegade Jem’Hadar who have gained allien technology that would let them defeat the universe.
THE QUICKENING is a Bashir episode about a planet with a horrible disease manufactured by the Dominion to permanently mark them and a man who at the Hospital helps people to die, Bashir works to save them, but can only make a vaccine to save their children and not their people themselves.
BODY PARTS is another Quark episode, where he learns he has six days to live, and sells his desiccated remains on the Futures Market, but Brunt (Jeffery Combs) has tricked Quark and forces him to break his contract because he is not dieing, and lose all his assets and only his friends at the station can help him at the bar. Meanwhile Keiko O’Brien is in an accident and the child is put into Kira (Since she was pregnant).
BROKEN LINK ends the season with a bang, when Odo develops a sickness and the only one that can help him are the founders, so Sisko brings the defiant into the Gamma quadrant without it’s cloak on, sending a message to the founders. And they arrive and take the ship to the founders world and take Odo to the surface with Bashir and Sisko and take him into the great link, where he is judged and spit out as a human, though with his old face.
•••••
This show really took off with this season, and was so damn good. This show is still Star Trek, but so much more intense and dark than it has ever been. Damn this show was good.
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