“Tribunal”
Written by Bill Dial
Directed by Avery Brooks
Season 2, Episode 25
Production episode 40512-445
Original air date: June 5, 1994
Stardate: 47944.2
Station log: O’Brien is going on vacation, although Sisko, Kira, and Dax practically have to kick him out of Ops as he keeps remembering things he needs them to keep an eye on. On the Promenade, he bumps into Boone, one of his former shipmates on the Rutledge, who’s now running a shipping business in the DMZ. They reminisce for a bit, then O’Brien runs off to meet Keiko and start his vacation, while Boone checks over the recording he made of their conversation while being shrouded in sinister dark light, just to make it clear that he’s a bad guy.
The O’Briens are off in a runabout to their overdue vacation. O’Brien forgot to pack a holocam, but he did remember to pack several technical updates. Realizing he’s made a bit of a faux pas, he puts on some traditional Japanese music and starts making smoochy faces with Keiko to make up for his bringing along work.
Their sweet passionate nookie-nookie is interrupted by a small Cardassian ship on approach. Gul Evek beams on board and arrests O’Brien for crimes they refuse to name. He’s stunned and taken to Cardassia Prime, while Keiko is escorted back to DS9. O’Brien is stripped, interrogated (his only answer is to give his name and rank and remind them that he’s a Federation citizen), scanned, injected, inspected, infected, neglected, and selected. He also has a lock of hair and a molar removed (the latter is for the Bureau of Identification; all Cardassian citizens have their first molar removed at the age of ten). Once he’s processed, Chief Archon Makbar enters the room. She apologizes for how he’s been treated and escorts him into a cell. His trial will be in two days and he’s been assigned Kovat as his conservator—but she won’t tell him what he’s accused of.
Back on the station, Sisko tries to reassure Keiko, but it doesn’t work very well, as she’s heard stories from O’Brien himself about how Cardassians treat prisoners. (Odo’s blunt truths don’t help matters.) Makbar then contacts the station, assuring Sisko that O’Brien’s being treated well—but won’t let him be seen, nor will she provide the charges. As his wife, Keiko is allowed to attend the trial, but only her—however, Odo gets himself assigned as nestor, the advisor to the offender. He’s still an officer of the Cardassian court from his time as security chief under Dukat. Sisko orders Kira to investigate on their end, find out how this happened.
On Cardassia, Kovat visits O’Brien. He explains that his job is to help the offender accept the inevitable with equanimity. He tries to get O’Brien to confess, as it will reassure the public that they are safe from malefactors. O’Brien, though, refuses to admit to being guilty and finds the whole thing repugnant. Kovat actually likes that—his arrogant refusal to bow to the inevitable will make for a better show.
On the station, dozens of photon torpedo warheads have been stolen, and the evidence points to a transporter expert doing it—also O’Brien’s voiceprint was used to open the door. Add to that the fact that the Maquis stole torpedo launchers recently, and the evidence suggests that O’Brien stole the warheads for the Maquis and was using his vacation as a cover. Sisko orders Kira and Dax to find out who he was delivering them to—there had to be someone on the other end.
Odo visits O’Brien in his cell. Keiko can’t visit him in the cell, but she will be at the trial so the public can see the offender’s family weep. Odo questions O’Brien regarding what Kira and Dax found on the station, and O’Brien passionately assures Odo that he had nothing to do with any of this, and that he didn’t go into that cargo bay no matter what the voice ID said.
Dax proves that the voice ID was, in fact, a fake from a recording, and Kira learns that O’Brien talked to Boone before leaving the station, and he lives in the DMZ. However, he insists that he’s just an old shipmate of O’Brien’s whom he was reminiscing with on the Promenade. Meanwhile, Bashir gets a visit from a Maquis member who assures him that Boone is not with the Maquis and they know nothing about the theft.
The trial starts. Makbar gives O’Brien a chance to confess and save the hassle of the trial. She then asks if Keiko wishes to disassociate from his disgrace by testifying against him, which she testily refuses. Odo then tries to convince Kovat to submit the new evidence he has that the voice ID was faked, then tries to convince Makbar to change the venue, since the crime happened on a Bajoran station, not in Cardassian space. Makbar refuses, dismissing it as Federation trickery to try to save their citizen from Cardassian justice.
Evek is the first witness, and he uses this as an excuse to rail against the Maquis. He quotes “reliable sources” which led him to the warheads they found in O’Brien’s runabout, but can’t name them for reasons of national security, which Makbar accepts without question. (Odo doesn’t, but he’s shouted down.) Finally, O’Brien must testify, as the offender is compelled to do. Kovat asks if he was abused as a child or is abused by his wife, by way of trying to find out how he was led to this life of crime, and then Makbar asks how many Cardassians he’s killed, and if he’s prejudiced against Cardassians. She also throws his own words at him: “The bloody Cardies can’t be trusted.”
Further investigation of Boone reveals that right after Setlik III, he left his wife of fifteen years, was discharged from Starfleet after multiple poor performance reviews, and stopped speaking to his parents, with whom he had an excellent relationship. Bashir does a quickie exam to reveal that he’s missing a molar, and a further exam shows that he’s a surgically altered Cardassian agent, having replaced the real Boone, who died in a Cardassian prison.
Sisko shows up at the trial with Boone. This causes a quick heel-turn by Makbar, who sets aside the verdict and releases O’Brien to Sisko’s custody. She never actually says he’s innocent, but she goes on about how he’s a strong family man and about how it’s important to maintain good relations with the Federation, and other nonsense. The alternative is to let Sisko expose Boone as a Cardassian agent in front of everyone. They drop the O’Briens off at their vacation, as Sisko was able to extend their accommodation.
The Sisko is of Bajor: Makbar tells Sisko that Dukat told her about him, and he makes sure she knows that he will not screw around.
Don’t ask my opinion next time: Kira is the first one to point out that, given O’Brien’s history, it’s not that much of a stretch that he might get involved with the Maquis.
Preservation of mass and energy is for wimps: Odo’s time working for the Cardassians works in his favor, as he’s able to be assigned to the trial. He then delays things as much as possible, which gives his crewmates time to assemble necessary evidence. (Makbar at one point refers to the trial as the longest in Cardassian history when it reaches its second day.)
For Cardassia! Cardassian trials are meant purely as propaganda theatre. They never try an innocent person, only people who are found guilty, and the sentence is read before the trial even starts. The offenders also don’t get to find out what they’re accused of until the trial starts. Cardassia Prime is littered with viewscreens that play propaganda all the live-long day, and they also broadcast the trials so that the people can see justice at work. (I find myself reminded of Yakov Smirnov’s old joke about television in the Soviet Union. There were only two channels; Channel 1 was propaganda, and Channel 2 was a KGB agent saying, “Turn back to Channel 1!”)
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: Keiko at one point complains that the seats on the runabout are too small for nookie, and she figures O’Brien, as an engineer, should get right on that.
Keep your ears open: “Wh—what happened?”
“You won.”
“They’ll kill me!”
Kovat being given the worst possible news from Odo.
Welcome aboard: Rosalind Chao is back as Keiko. Richard Poe returns for yet another appearance as Gul Evek, having been in “Playing God” and “The Maquis, Part I,” as well as TNG’s “Journey’s End” and “Preemptive Strike.” This is his final DS9 appearance, though he will show up in Voyager’s pilot episode.
Caroline Lagerfelt plays Makbar, John Beck plays Boone, and the great Fritz Weaver plays Kovat. And then we have kind of a Robert Knepper moment, as the Cardassian who processes O’Brien is played by Julian Christopher, who was credited as James Louis Watkins when he played Hagon, the Ligonian who was constantly knocked to the floor in TNG’s “Code of Honor.”
Trivial matters: This episode was inspired by a line of dialogue by Dukat in “The Maquis, Part II” when he described a Cardassian trial, so the writers room decided it would be cool to have a Cardassian trial be the basis of an episode.
There are multiple references to O’Brien’s time serving on the Rutledge and the Setlik III massacre, both established in TNG’s “The Wounded.”
When Evek first contacts O’Brien he mentions that “We’ve spoken before,” which happened in “Playing God” when the chief asked for Evek’s help with the vole infestation.
Sisko mentions to Keiko that three ships have been sent to the DMZ to show the flag after O’Brien’s capture, and one of them is the Enterprise. This was the first Trek episode to air following TNG’s finale, “All Good Things…”
Boone is the first Cardassian agent we see altered to look like a different type of humanoid. We’ll see it again with Seska on Voyager, with Iliana Ghemor in “Second Skin,” and with Dukat in the final story arc of the series.
This is the first DS9 episode to be directed by a cast member, though it’s far from the last. It follows the trend from TNG, where Jonathan Frakes and Sir Patrick Stewart became regular directors, and both Gates McFadden and LeVar Burton took their turns behind the camera as well. Moving forward, Rene Auberjonois, Michael Dorn, Siddig el-Fadil, and Andrew J. Robinson, as well as Frakes and Burton, will direct episodes.
Walk with the Prophets: “I regret that I have no teeth to offer your Bureau of Identification.” This is almost a great episode. It’s an excellent view into a totalitarian state, through the propaganda-laced ramblings of both Kovat and Makbar, showing us a system that is ruthless and efficient and awful. Fritz Weaver in particular really makes this episode shine through his smiling histrionics, clichés and platitudes rolling off his tongue with oily ease.
Courtroom dramas are always fun, and this one’s more fun than usual. Most TV shows trample all over proper courtroom procedure in order to provide better drama, and in this instance that’s a feature rather than a bug—the point of this trial isn’t to determine the truth, because the government already knows the truth (it’s whatever the government says is the truth). What TV writers do for ratings, Cardassian law does to reinforce their power.
Unfortunately, other parts of this episode are seriously problematic. For starters, a lot of the procedural stuff back on the station doesn’t work. The evidence against Boone is pretty flimsy, based entirely on the word of a guy who broke into Bashir’s infirmary and a lot of speculation, and only confirmed because he was stupid enough to try to run away (why? he had no reason to, except the script needed him to look guilty). In addition, all Dax had to go on was a voiceprint—you’re going to tell me that the cargo bay where they store photon warheads aren’t under some kind of video or sophisticated sensor surveillance? Really? Kira mentioned a scattering field, but that didn’t go up until after the door opened—aren’t the corridors also under surveillance? (In fact, they are, as we’ve seen Odo look at video of various corridors, and I would think that the corridor leading to the cargo bay where they store photon warheads would be one such surveilled corridor, especially on a station built by people who have propaganda television on every street corner on their homeworld.)
And then there’s the ending, where Sisko just walks into the courtroom with Boone and everything is magically better. How did Sisko get into the courtroom? Why wasn’t he stopped at the border? Or the front door? And why did Makbar allow this intrusion? (Even Kovat asked that, but it was never answered.)
Still a strong episode for what it establishes about Cardassia, and a very good use of O’Brien (his past makes him perfect for this, something Makbar very effectively throws in his face at one point) and Odo. It just needed a proper ending, instead of a deus ex Sisko.
Warp factor rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be at the Collingswood Book Festival tomorrow, Saturday 5 October 2013, in Collingswood, New Jersey. Look for him at the Dark Quest Books table (publishers of his “Precinct” series of fantasy police procedurals, including the recent short story collection Tales from Dragon Precinct).
Oh, so they did retroactively establish that Poe’s “Playing God” character was Evek. That answers that question.
This may have been aired after the TNG finale, but I like to assume it takes place during the second-last TNG episode “Pre-emptive Strike,” because it dovetails well with the Enterprise being near the DMZ.
I just realized there are some similarities here between Fritz Weaver’s character Kovat in this episode and J.G. Hertzler’s Klingon advocate Kolos in Enterprise: “Judgment.” But the difference is that Kovat never questions the rightness of the Cardassian justice system and thus never becomes more than just a mouthpiece of the state, no matter how much our heroes try to change his mind.
Really, I’m tempted to say that the portrayal of the injustices of the Cardassian justice system are too caricatured to be believable. But then, there have been plenty of real-world tyrannies whose justice systems were just as corrupt. This is an effectively Orwellian story, though it falls short of its full dystopian potential due to the need for the hero to come out of it intact (give or take a molar).
Let me just say, anybody who references Alice’s Restaurant in a Star Trek rewatch is ok by me.
Ah, another entry in the list of “Episodes about a bad thing that happens to Chief O’Brien.” As you mention, KRAD, there are plenty of things that don’t really make sense in this episode. Why does a high-tech, futuristic society need to take your tooth for permanent identification? Would a cheek swab or passive sensor scan be insufficient? And couldn’t people find a workaround by getting new teeth (again, in some kind of high-tech, futuristic way)? And just where were the O’Briens when the Cardassians arrested the chief? Were they in Federation space? Is this yet another instance of a hostile power invading sovereign Federation territory and kidnapping a citizen (and member of the military) and facing no consequences?
But all in all, an engaging and enlightening look at the warped Cardassian justice system. It would have been interesting to see Garak’s take on their justice system – he’s a true patriot, and yet far less militaristic in his outlook.
-Andy
I think you can make a case for the Cardassian authorities letting Sisko into their territory and into the courtroom. They know what Sisko has and now they know that he knows what it is. They can probably get away with a kangaroo court condemnation and execution of a Federation citizen with some fairly shaky evidence. Letting Sisko go to the Federation with a proven Cardassian agent who was obviously faked up solely to trump up charges against said Federation citizen to make the Federation look bad would result in a whole lot of diplomatic problems that could easily spill over into war. Sure, the Federation isn’t likely to get into a War of Jenkin’s Ear situation, but the Cardassians can’t really be sure of that given their own way of thinking.
The Cardassians have apparently learned espionage techniques from the Klingons. We saw this, of course, in “The Trouble with Tribbles”, where Arne Darvin was an altered Klingon. Though it occurs to me that the Federation did the same thing with Kirk in “The Enterprise Incident”. Also foreshadowing for the problems they’ll have in the Dominion War.
Why does a high-tech, futuristic society need to take your tooth for permanent identification? Would a cheek swab or passive sensor scan be insufficient? And couldn’t people find a workaround by getting new teeth (again, in some kind of high-tech, futuristic way)?
Of all of the problems to be had with this episode, the fact that a Kafkaesque, dystopian society has archaic, inefficient, painful, and degrading protocols is the note that rings truest. One imagines that any Cardassian who said “why would we bother with the molar capture?” would quickly find out why you don’t ask questions like that…
Fritz Weaver was in an episode of the original Twilight Zone series called “The Obsolete Man,” a courtroom drama dealing with—yep, you guessed it—totalitarianism.
Another trial episode. I’m guessing DS9 holds some kind of record for most trial-based episodes in a show not about lawyers.
This episode introduced the two greatest recurring characters of the series, known to my brother and I as “the TV guys.” They’re in the first establishing shot of Cardassia, standing near a railing watching one of the big propaganda monitors. The same shot was used as stock footage for Cardassia throughout the run of the series. I love those guys….
@3: I think the tooth-pulling isn’t a technological necessity but a symbol of the control the state has over the people, a reminder of their power over your very body.
DS9 itself is not in Federation space, so the runabout may well have been in unclaimed territory.
O’Brien said to Evek that they weren’t in Cardassian territory. He did not say that they were in Federation space. So he probably was in unclaimed space, which makes the jurisdictional issues a lot more murky….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Really, I’m tempted to say that the portrayal of the injustices of the Cardassian justice system are too caricatured to be believable.
Certainly, the idea that someone could be convicted based on classified evidence that can’t be shown to the defence team due to ‘national security’ is obviously laughable and could never even be suggested in a civilized country.
I’m always happy to see an O’Brien episode. The combination of Colm Meaney, Rene Auberjonois, and Fritz Weaver made this episode a fun one to watch.
Bobby
I don’t know if it’s deliberate or not, I suspect it is, but I particularly enjoy the fact that a Cardassian trial is run the way a lot of people (in their heart of hearts) think trials should be run; all those digs at lawyer’s tricks and the police wouldn’t arrest an innocent person stuff. Unfortunately, as bmac@11 has pointed out, it’s now happening in both the USA and the UK. Gul Evek citing security as the reason why he can’t show the court his evidence is an argument currently being used in England to justify secret hearings.
This episode marks the beginning of my DS9 journey, its the first one I ever saw. My mom had been watching from the start but I was a die hard TNG fan that didnt want to see a show about a stupid space station. That said, I needed a Star Trek fix after AGT. I was hooked and never missed a single DS9 ep from this point on. I think it was smart to do an O’Brien show right after All Good Things to help hook those coming over from TNG (like me)
Indeed, that’s part of the definition of a civilized country. Civilized countries also ensure that no one goes without healthcare, and certainly never allow prisons to be run for profit. And if you rank countries in order of what percentage of their citizens are incarcerated, the civilized nations will never be at the top.
Sigh. That’s me above. Thought I was logging in but apparently not.
Don’t you mean Deus Ex Sisko? Deux is the French word for “two.”
@1: If you look at the stardates for the episodes, this one indeed seems to be immediately after “Preemptive Strike,” and possibly really close given that that episode takes course over a couple of days. So it fits in nicely there. I wonder what it’s like for the crew, having Ro leave to join the Maquis and then immediately hearing that O’Brien has been accused of the same thing.
@17: Actually “Preemptive Strike” takes much more than a couple of days. Midway through the episode, just before Ro’s staged raid on the Enterprise, there’s a log entry where Picard says it’s been over a week since Ro left on her mission. And the rest of the episode has to take several more days at least, in order to accommodate all the ship travel time and Ro’s gradual shifting of loyalties. So it’s probably closer to two weeks — plenty of time for “Tribunal” (which covers about 4-5 days, I estimate) to occur during its events.
I remeber watching this episode at the time and thinking they got Fitz Weaver to play O’Brien’s lawyer just from that Twilight Zone episode . I kept waiting for someone to say “Obsolete!” and was a little disappointed when no one did. By the way what would Odo’s role be in a “real” Cardassian trial?
I’m sorry, I can’t help myself:
Shouldn’t that be v?tes ex Sisko?
Whoops, that should have been ‘vates’ I guess.
@18: Well then I guess that works too.
@13 – I kind of know what you mean. Part of me was thinking, you know, if the police/justice system could actually be trusted to always act honorably and were able to truly parse through the evidence, it would be a better way than our media driven, loophole filled system, in which even the jury you get can influence the outcome.
That said, since no system like that COULD be infallible, that’s why we have what we have.
Ah, good points, all, about the tooth-taking mostly as a symbol of power. I still think it’s a bit of an oversight to not replace it if you’re a spy, replacing a Federation citizen. ;^D I’d think that changing your teeth to match someone else’s dental profile would be a small matter in the 24th century.
-Andy
Sigh, as much as I love this show, this episode didn’t sit well with me. It was a case of me never being able to get over the setup. There could be jurisdictional issues with where O’Brian was captured. But for me it was still an overt act of war against the federation. Kidnapping a citizen to put on a show trial is not something a society can let a rival civilization get away with. Sure, starting a shooting war over one citizen seems extreme. But it sends a sign that it ok to do so if you don’t at least complain. It was the way everybody treated it like a real trial that sat in my craw. If the federation nabbed a Cardassian citizen for any reason, high hell comes in the form of loads of threats.
I guess it’s my pet-peeve about instantly giving authority figures the benefit of the doubt after committing a crime that pops up in tv so much that gets me. The trail was fascinating and darkly funny. I just wish they thought of another was of capturing him instead of an act of war.
Cleggster@25–
I guess you haven’t been reading the news much in the last decade.
(Can you spell rendition, boys and girls?)
I thought this was one of O’brian’s strongest episodes. I loved his speech about integrity and loyalty to the Federation. O’Brian is the consummate company man, but a damn good one.
I agree with #4 as to krad’s question about how Sisko got into the courtroom with Boone. The verdict was about to be read, and Sisko was just about to blow the lid off a huge cardassian spy plot. Makes sense that the powers that be discreetly let Sisko into a side door where the judge could see them.
Not to get too political, but as I type this Donald Trump is getting close to sewing up the Republican nomination. I will never again consider any work of fiction that is based on the credulous nature of a people to be too far-fetched
O’Brien’s dismissal of Gul Evek in Playing God comes back to haunt him here (perhaps why Evek reminded O’Brien of their talk?). Two kangaroo courts in the same week; Q’s in All Good Things and Makbar’s on Cardassia Prime. And Tribunal is DS9’s last standalone show before The Jem’Hadar upsets the apple-cart forever.
I like this episode for the character moments, but agree that it doesn’t quite work as well as it should (I think the Enterprise episode w/ the Klingon trial shows exactly what this story would have been like, done the “right way”).
For me, though, that’s mostly because the logic behind the Cardassian trial system doesn’t hold up. Deciding you’re guilty before the trial? That’s fine. But keeping the charges secret? I dunno, but televising a trial where the defendant doesn’t know the charges he or she is accused of, and can’t see any evidence… seems very unlikely to inspire loyalty to the state.
It seems to me that Cardassian trials should be more about getting a public confession–grab a guy, dump him in front of a camera, read off a litany of charges, bombard him with tons of evidence (real or doctored, no difference), and hammer home the point that confessing will result in a much lighter sentence… and odds are he will confess. That way the criminal gets charged, the state manages to appear both highly competent (look at all the evidence!) *and* merciful.
This episode was real flimsy. This basically was an act of war against the Federation but more importantly the premise was so flimsy. That security in the future is tied to voice command only is one of the failing of imagination for all star trek series. The Federation knows that machines can mimic human voices perfectly. How can your entire security system be based on this. We have more advance security now. This episode and Brothers really bothered me in this regard.
I appreciate the fact the writers tried to give the cardassian society more depth, but the plot holes are so huge, it cannot be ignored. Of course, not telling “the offendent” what he is accused of is inspired by Kafka’s “The Process” and it makes you think how cardassian law will treat people opposed to the government. Also, when Gul Evek said he couldn’t reveal his sources “for security reasons”, it reminded me of the german Interior Minister de Maizière, when he tried to explain why a football (“soccer” for all our american friends) match between Germany and Netherlands had been cancelled, he said “parts of the answer would unsettle you” when asked about the contents of a threat they apparently recieved… Of course this lead to the wildest speculations and has widely been regarded as an awful answer.
Anyway, I too didn’t understand why everything was fine when Sisko showed up or why the voice print was “proof” of any kind. The judge said it herself: “Star Fleet will make up something”.
Also Odo’s question as to why the trial was held on Cardassia Prime when no crime against Cardassia had been commited was legitimate. Just shows how dangerous it can be to broadcast a show trial to a live audience People might ask the right (or the wrong, depending on how you look at it) questions.
@31 Don’t forget we are seeing a Cardassian government on the verge of falling at this point in time. As Authoritarian regimes progress they tend towards both arrogance and stupidity, the latter coming from their own sense of self confidence in that they can do no wrong and any situation can only progress as they will it. This situation never lasts, and things tend to fall apart rapidly once they do. Cardassia is a late-stage authoritarian regime in that respect, and sure enough only a season or so later it has all fallen apart. In that context it makes perfect sense.
The Judge probably realises that it has overreached itself once Sisko is there in person, it changes the game, and a Starfleet-Federation which seemed a distant and abstract concept is suddenly very real. From an authoritarian POV, if they are confident enough to show up like that then the threat is absolute and immediate because that is what it would mean if a Cardassian military officer showed up. Sisko is running a bit of a bluff on that one, obviously, but that too is in character with Sisko.
“The Obsolete Man” might very well be my favorite Twilight Zone episode ever, so I very much appreciated Fritz Weaver’s casting in this episode. It’s kind of funny how his character’s dedication to the ultimately self defeating philosophy of a totalitarian state, ends badly for him in both episodes. I wonder if his, “they’ll kill me!” line was a direct reference to his character’s fate in The Obsolete Man, haha.
Strangely enough, Fritz Weaver was on the opposite side of the equation in another Twilight Zone episode. In “Third From the Sun,” he and his character’s family were fleeing an oppressive state, instead of supporting it.
So any kid with a portable tape recorder from the 1970s could have gotten into that weapons locker? Couldn’t Boone at least have had to steal a security code or something? And dental implants are commonplace now, so I’m skeptical that there would be so many missing molars several centuries hence, but maybe that’s a Cardassian thing. I suppose I might as well ask where all the Ferengi orthodontists are…
Lockdown rewatch. It’s another let’s put O’Brien through hell episode which are always watchable, but Odo steals this episode for me, his increasing exasperation at the ridiculous trial rules is very entertaining as is the pompous Kovat losing control of his ‘client’ (I wish they could have found a way to bring this character back) Points off though for wasting Keiko who just sits around looking anxious and John Beck as Boone is as wooden as people of a certain age will remember him being in Dallas. But all in all a good 7 from me for this one.
@35/chadefallstar:
I’m just a little shy of the Dallas days so I have nothing to compare John Beck performances, haha. However, I have zero problem with his woodeness as I call it more a form of being reserved in this case. He’s not a human, after all, he’s a disguised Cardassian. He “came back” from Setlik III a different person from his alleged torture. That was a cleverly built-in cover for his changed behavior patterns and subtly would be an asset. A much bigger asset as a Cardassian mole than trying to act like the original Raymond Boone.
Of course there’s no way to know if that “woodeness” was an acting choice, a bad casting decision, or a deceptively brilliant one, haha.
On the subject of Raymond Boone, in the scene where he is infiltrating the cargo bay, the camera pans down to his boots at one point. If I’m not mistaken, he’s wearing identical boots to those seen with Cardassian military uniforms. If they are, it’s a cleverly subtle foreshadowing.
Wow, I love DS9, but I never even registered a particular design for Cardassian boots…
Pandemic Rewatch Comment: Just noticed after watching “The Maquis” two-parter that the Boone agent was also from Volon III, the same colony from that two-parter. Watching the opening teaser in hindsight noticing that one detail just reeks like, “It’s a trap!!!!”
I’m really surprised no one ever commented on the uncharacteristically genuine moment during the nookie scene. Their laughs and then the “do these chairs recline” line from Keiko make it almost seem like the beginning of a blooper, but they play it out and it works beautifully, I think.
@MVF — I felt the same and it’s easily one of my favorite moments in all the series.
@39/MV:
I agree, it does feel like a truly genuine scene! I always thought Rosalind Chao and Colm Meaney had great chemistry together.
If Boone was a good Cardassian spy, he would’ve disappeared long before the DS9 crew had a chance to track him down.