Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 5 created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller (1996-1997)
25 August 2006Damn, what a great show. Getting so good, and while not fully into the Dominion war yet, this season brings us through the dark buildup and right to it’s start with an explosive ending that I really didn’t see coming. The characters have been so well developed in this show, and then with Troubles And Tribbulations tying this show back into the TOS in such a hysterical and perfect way, that this season is even better than it’s predecessor. Wow, anyone who missed out on this show like I did should really go back and check it out, because it is really worth it!
Another really good season of Deep Space Nine, though still in the more standard single storyline format, but still a continuing story with things coming up from the past, and not just individual episodes.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
Here are few highlights WITH SPOILERS…
Once again we start off with a bang with APOCALYPSE RISING where Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) approaches Star Fleet with his suspicion that Gowron (Robert O’Reilly) is in fact a member of the Founders, so he, Constable Odo (Rene Auberjonois) and Chief Miles Edward O’Brien (Colm Meaney) are made to look like Klingons and with the help of Dukat (Marc Alaimo) infiltrate the Klingon High command. In fact they discover that the Changling is not Gowron by General Marok (J.G. Hertzler), so things calm down between the Klingons and the Federation.
…NOR THE BATTLE TO THE STRONG has Jake Sisko (Cirroc Lofton) is writing an article about Doctor Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) when they receive a distress call for more doctors at a planet engaged in a ground war against the Klingons. Jake meets a soldier who shot his own foot, and later chickens out and runs when helping Bashir get a generator, but when the final attack comes he again is scared and fires a phaser collapsing a tunnel and saving everyone. And we see the thin line between cowardice and heroism.
THE ASSIGNMENT is about Keiko O’Brien (Rosalind Chao) returning to DS9 and her husband Miles, but it is not her, she is has been taken over by an evil Pah-Wraith while in the fire caves, and she forces him to make changes to the station or she will kill his wife and his daughter. He ends up enlisting the Ferengi Rom (Max Grodénchik) when he realizes how good of a worker he is, and it is Rom that realizes the assignment is to kill the wormhole aliens, so O’Brien uses the beam to free his wife.
TRIALS AND TRIBBLE-ATIONS is hands down my favorite episode of DS9 and any trek since the Original Series. Sisko is visited by 2 Federation Temporal Security Agents about a recent incident. Sisko took the Defiant to Cardassia to pick up the Orb of Time as well as a passenger a human named Arne Darvin (Charlie Brill) who turns out to have been a Klingon agent, who in fact had a run in with Kirk (william Shatner) when he ran in with the Tribbles and exposed Darvin. Well Darvin has used the Orb to head back in time with the Defiant to plant an explosive tribble to kill Kirk, and Sisko, Dax (Terry Farrell), O’Brien, Bashir, Odo , and Worf (Michael Dorn) head into the past and interact with the old episode, showing up in the background in costume, and behind Kirk and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) using old props and costumes, and this is done perfectly. This show has the best effects and is the most fun episode of Star Trek I have ever seen. WOW! This is a must see!!
THE ASCENT is a good one when Odo is taking Quark (Armin Shimerman) as a prisoner for a trial on the Orion Syndicate, but a bomb goes off and they crash land on a type L planet, which they can barely survive on, and Odo is hurt, and only Quark’s shear determination manages to climb a frozen mountain with no food and send a signal that gets them saved.
RAPTURE is a good one as well. When Sisko uses an ancient Bajoran painting returned from Cardassia to discover an ancient city, he is wounded in a Holosuite accident and begins having visions including one that stops Bajor from joining the Federation, and from being destroyed, much to Kai Wins (Louise Fletcher). Eventually they must operate on Sisko to save his life, and stop the visions which were telling him everything.
THE DARKNESS AND THE LIGHT is about Kira (Nana Visitor) and her former resistance cell that is being targeted for death by an old enemy who was badly wounded in a terrorist attack by her during the occupation.
THE BEGOTTEN is a good about Odo when a baby Changling and Dr. Mora Pol (James Sloyan) who Odo hates for having ‘tortured’ him, but Odo realizes what they doctor had to do, and when the Changling dies it goes into Odo and makes him a changling once again.
IN PURGATORY’S SHADOW and BY INFERNO’S LIGHT are a two episode series where Garak (Andrew Robinson) and Worf are taken prisoner by the Jem’Hadar and find General Martok, Bashir and Garak’s father on the station and they must use all their ingenuity to escape.
DOCTOR BASHIR, I PRESUME? Bashir is chosen to be the template for the Emergency Medical Hologram made by Dr. Lewis Zummerman (Robert Picardo of VOYAGER), but when Bashir’s parents come Amsha (Fadwa El Guindi) and Richard (Brian George) Dr. Lewis finds out that Bashir is genetically enhanced, and he is going to lose his position, but his father takes blame and is sent to prison for 2 years.
There are two good Quark episodes BUSINESS AS USUAL when he becomes and arms dealer and FERENGI LOVE SONGS when he returns home to visit his mom Ishka (Cecily Adams) and her relationship with the Grand Nagus Zek (Walalce Shawn) which is all a plan by Brunt (Jeffrey Combs) to take over as Grand Nagus, and it all works out, including Quark getting his business licence again.
SOLDIERS OF THE EMPIRE is an episode where Worf joins General Martok along with Dax on his first mission about a Bird of Prey with a crew of losers, and Martok proves scared, and only when Worf goes against him to rescue Klingons within Cardassian space that Martok regains his courage.
CHILDREN OF TIME is about the Defiant becoming stranded on a planet, where they discover that they have crash landed and formed a colony 200 years before, and 8000 people are alive, but if they do crash Kira will die, but it is the 200 years older Odo who admits his love for Kira that does not allow them to crash, and ends the existence of the 8000 colonists.
BLAZE OF GLORY once again pits Sisko against the Maquis terrorist Michael Eddington (Ken Marshall). There is a Maquis plot to send cloacked bombs into Cardassia, but it is in fact a plot to save Eddington’s wife and his other followers who are stuck in the badlands.
EMPOK NOR sends O’Brien, Nog (Aron Eisenberg), Garak and some engineers to a sister station of DS9 that was abandoned, but there are 2 Cardassians who woke up from deep sleep and have been infected with an agression virus that also gets Garak and sends him against the Star Fleet personnel.
CALL TO ARMS is the season finale, where Sisko makes a plan to stop the Jem’Hadar convoys from going from the wormhole to the Cardassians, and they can’t get any backup from Starfleet, so they make a plan to make self replicating mines that will block the wormhole, and even if they have to lose the station. After a great fight they do abandon the station, though Jake Sisko stays as a correspondent without Ben knowing about it, and the Bajorians make a non-agression treaty with the Dominion as Gul Dukat moves in to his old office.
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Such a bad ass season. This show just got dark and so damn bad ass. The effects have become top notch. And the battles are amazing and bad ass. The characters are deep and the stories are dark. This is a high quality show, and should be checked out if possible.
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