“The Ascent”
Written by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
Directed by Allan Kroeker
Season 5, Episode 9
Production episode 40510-507
Original air date: November 25, 1996
Stardate: unknown
Station log: Jake is moving out of the Sisko quarters into his own cabin, way the heck on the other side of the habitat ring. Sisko is dealing with it as best he can, which is mostly badly, and he puts the parental curse on Jake (wait until your son moves out on you).
Jake is actually sharing the new digs with Nog, who is back on the station to do his sophomore year field study. Rom is very excited to see his son home and Quark, despite his disapproval, has brought by a case of root beer for the prodigal cadet (Rom snags a bottle for himself, to Quark’s disgust). However, Quark doesn’t get to see Nog’s arrival, as he’s arrested by Odo, who will be escorting him in a runabout to Inferna Prime to bring him before a Federation grand jury. When Quark demands to know what it’s about, Odo cagily says, “I think you know.” Quark insists he’s ignorant, and Odo says he has eight days on a runabout with Odo to think about it.
Quark tries to pass the time by playing cards, which Odo refuses. Quark is amused to discover that Odo’s reading a romance novel. Odo insists it’s research, since homicides are often motivated by romantic obsession of some sort, but Quark isn’t buying it. Odo doesn’t care, though, because after ten years, he’s finally won: after this trip, Odo’s going back to DS9 and Quark is going to prison. Quark gleefully points out that he’s not there yet. Odo also refuses to tell Quark what the charges are, as it’s high security, and he can’t discuss it.
Nog reports to Sisko. He’s become quite the spit-and-polish cadet, and he assures Sisko that he won’t let him down—and that he’ll take care of Jake. That proves more entertaining than expected, since Nog insists that the room be cleaned every day, that they go to bed at 2200 (Jake says he hasn’t gone to bed that early since he was twelve) and get up at 0430 to go to the gym. Jake is less than thrilled with these notions.
After four days, Quark is getting fed up with being stuck on a runabout. There’s a buzzing noise, Odo smacks his lips when he eats, and the temperature’s too cold. But then the buzzing changes pitch and gets louder, to the point where even Odo can hear it. Quark traces the noise to a hatch, where they find a bomb. Odo transports the bomb away, but that causes it to detonate. It doesn’t destroy the runabout, but it’s badly enough damaged that they have to crash land on a nearby Class-L planet. It’s barely habitable, but more so than the runabout will be once life support fails from the explosion damage.
As they’re crashing, Odo promises to make whoever planted the bomb regret it if they survive, and Quark says Odo doesn’t want any part of the Orion Syndicate. Only then does Quark realize that Odo had no idea what Quark was talking to the grand jury about. Odo was pretending to know more than he did in the hopes that Quark would say something incriminating.
After the crash, they’re well and truly screwed. The communications and environmental systems were trashed by the explosion, as were all but two packs of field rations. They’ll either freeze to death or starve to death, since the world has no animal life and the plant life is all poisonous.
Jake wakes up and stumbles into the main room of his and Nog’s cabin to find Nog already done with his workout. Jake has not exactly been on board with the morning exercise program, and he’s also pissed that Nog edited his latest story without Jake’s permission.
Quark tries to fix the subspace transmitter, but while he can fix most of it, the booster is shot to hell. The only chance they have is to carry the transmitter to higher ground. There’s a mountain nearby that they’ll have to climb. Only one survival suit wasn’t destroyed in the explosion, so they trade it back and forth, with the other one carrying the transmitter, the exertion providing warmth.
Nog comes home from a day working with O’Brien to find their cabin a mess. Fed up, Nog decides to leave—which makes Jake happy, as he’s fed up with Nog barking orders.
Quark and Odo’s journey has taken four days, and will likely take six more. While they walk and snipe at each other, Quark reveals that he’s not a suspect in the grand jury case, he’s a witness. Members of the Orion Syndicate don’t need to kill each other, as they’d rather die than testify. Odo realizes that Quark tried to join the syndicate, but he couldn’t afford the considerable membership fee, especially now that he’s been blacklisted by the FCA. He’s too small-time for the syndicate. Quark points out that, if he’s a nobody, what does that make Odo, who’s failed to capture him for a decade?
Rom joins Sisko for a drink in the replimat. Rom is concerned at how much Nog has changed. Sisko says that a year at the Academy will do that to someone, which relieves Rom, as he was worried that Nog was a changeling. (Rom even took some blood to be sure. Eight hours later, it’s still blood, so he probably figures it’s okay.) Nog even put Rom on report for his toolkit being untidy. Rom wishes that Nog could relax and enjoy himself the way Jake does, and Sisko wishes that Jake would show some of Nog’s discipline.
As Quark and Odo continue to climb up the mountain, the tensions between them boil over and they both declare their undying hatred for each other. Then they rather lamely fight, resulting in one of Odo’s legs being broken. Quark manages to splint the leg (after fainting more than once when he looks at the broken limb), and construct a pallet to rest Odo on. Quark insists on dragging Odo with him up the mountain while carrying the transmitter—not out of any altruism, but because if Odo dies, Quark can eat him.
As he goes higher, Quark keeps trying the transmitter, which keeps not working, so he keeps dragging Odo farther up the mountain. But eventually, Quark collapses, unable to go on. He plans to just lie there and die with dignity. So Odo decides to crawl up the mountain, pushing the transmitter ahead of himself. Embarrassed—and also appalled at the notion of Rom getting the bar and his bones lying frozen and unsold—Quark gets up and carries the transmitter farther up the mountain, leaving an exhausted and spent Odo behind.
Sisko goes to Jake’s quarters and informs him that regulations state that this size cabin has to have two people, and there are no smaller quarters, so he has to have a roommate: Nog. Sisko orders them to work out their differences—and since he’s Nog’s CO and Jake’s father, this order carries a certain weight. Jake admits that the room is a pigsty, and Nog suggests they play a game of dom-jot.
Odo records what he assumes to be a final log entry, but then is beamed to the Defiant. Worf and Dax tracked them via the subspace transmitter, and they tell Odo that Quark saved both their lives. “I was afraid you were going to say that,” Odo says before he falls unconscious.
As they lie in the Defiant sickbay, Quark says that when he told Odo he hated him, he meant every word. Odo says he did, too, and then they both laugh.
The Sisko is of Bajor: Sisko’s sophomore year field study was on Starbase 137. He said it was one of the best experiences of his life. He’s also handling Jake’s moving out very poorly, though he handles Jake and Nog’s rift expertly (and successfully) by virtue of his being both the captain and the dad.
Preservation of mass and energy is for wimps: Odo gets an object lesson in the joys of being stuck with a fragile human body, as he has multiple contusions and a broken leg, and also comes close to starving and/or freezing to death.
Rules of Acquisition: Quark is testifying against the Orion Syndicate, which is spectacularly dangerous, but the only thing he can do given that the syndicate won’t actually let him in.
Keep your ears open: “Healthy body, healthy mind.”
“Please, Nog, no clichés before breakfast.”
Nog trying to get Jake to exercise, and Jake being less than impressed.
Welcome aboard: The only “guests” are recurring regulars Max Grodénchik and Aron Eisenberg as Rom and Nog.
Trivial matters: A primary inspiration for this episode was Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, with Odo and Quark as Vladimir and Estragon, something Ira Steven Behr had been thinking about doing practically since the beginning. It finally came together here (and needed some kind of plot, since that’s something the Beckett play doesn’t actually have…)
Nog’s time at the Academy was seen in the Starfleet Academy comic book series published by Marvel, written by Chris Cooper.
Fizzbin was first seen being pulled right out of Jim Kirk’s ass in “A Piece of the Action,” and I adore the notion of it catching on among the Ferengi a hundred years later.
Having Nog assigned to do field work on Deep Space 9 was done to keep the character around without having to contrive another trip to Earth like “Homefront” and “Paradise Lost,” or to the Mirror Universe (where Nog is dead in any case).
Orion pirates were seen in “The Menagerie, Part 2” and “Journey to Babel” on the original series and “The Pirates of Orion” on the animated series. This episode is the first reference to the Orion Syndicate, which will next be seen in “A Simple Investigation,” and which will continue to recur in the 24th century on DS9 and also be seen in the 22nd century in the Enterprise episodes “Borderland” and “Bound.”
The Syndicate is also seen in several novels, notably Well of Souls by Ilsa J. Bick, A Time to Heal by David Mack, The Good that Men Do by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin, Homecoming by Christie Golden, Full Circle by Kirsten Beyer, Christopher L. Bennett’s Rise of the Federation series, and your humble rewatcher’s Demons of Air and Darkness and Articles of the Federation. In addition, the various Star Trek role-playing games from FASA, Last Unicorn, and Decipher have made tremendous use of the Orions.
Jake’s latest story shares a title, “Past Prologue,” with the second episode of DS9.
While it’s possible that the Bashir we see in this episode is the one we know and love, the Bashir we see moving forward is a changeling, as this is the last episode featuring the gray turtleneck/colored jumpsuit uniforms that were created for DS9. Between this episode and “Rapture,” Starfleet will switch to gray jumpsuits and colored turtlenecks, new uniforms created for the movie First Contact. (Your humble rewatcher’s eBook Enterprises of Great Pitch and Moment, part of the Slings and Arrows miniseries, explained the uniform switch as a policy made by newly elected Federation president Min Zife.) “In Purgatory’s Shadow” will establish that some time prior to the uniform switch, Bashir was captured and imprisoned in Internment Camp 371 in the Gamma Quadrant, replaced on DS9 with a changeling.
Walk with the Prophets: “Fascist!” “Failure!” This episode has all the elements of a strong one, especially since it plays on two of DS9’s strongest elements. The double act of Odo and Quark has never failed to be anything other than magnificent, even when the material hasn’t entirely been up to it (cf. “Civil Defense”), and the Jake/Nog friendship has been one of the more quietly impressive elements of the show, giving us two childhood friends growing up together. And all four actors in question are mostly at the top of their game here, particularly Cirroc Lofton and Aron Eisenberg, who have enough of their first-season childhood selves intact, yet they’ve both obviously turned into adults.
But still, the entire episode has a sense of perfunctory inevitableness about it. Quark and Odo are always at each other’s throats, so an episode like this was pretty much expected, with the only surprise being that it took until the fifth season to do it. Yet when we got to it, every beat was meticulously hit without any surprises or twists—or, most depressingly, any new insights into the characters. Yes, it’s a chance for them both to snark at each other, but we get that most every week already. Aside from showing how frustrating Odo’s punishment is, since his humanoid form gets the crap kicked out of it, there’s nothing all that interesting here. The damage to the runabout is all tiresomely specific, just enough to keep the plot moving—not bad enough to be hopeless, but not good enough to be entirely useful—and the fight the pair of them have is so tiresomely predictable that even these two actors have trouble with it. The “mostly” caveat above was mainly because of the scene where Odo and Quark start yelling at each other because it’s just so completely unconvincing. It’s the only time you can tell that the two of them are acting rather than inhabiting their characters.
The Jake-and-Nog plot is also a cliché, but doing the pair of them as The Odd Couple is actually entertaining, especially given how they started. The son of the captain is the one you’d expect to be all spit-and-polish and the Ferengi is the one you’d expect to be an irresponsible slob, so inverting the expectations is tremendous fun. Adding to the fun for me is that I’ve got a little bit of both of them in me—both Jake’s focus-on-writing-and-ignore-everything-else mentality (not to mention playing computer games as a way of resetting the brain, though I usually do it with FreeCell, Solitaire, Scrabble, or Frozen Bubble), and as a martial artist, I get Nog’s focus on healthy body and healthy mind (going to the dojo to train always makes me feel better).
The episode is fun to watch, but it never quite rises above the bog-standard nature of its storyline to be anything more than that.
Warp factor rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido reminds everyone that The Klingon Art of War is on sale now! You can find the hardcover at your local bookstore or you can order it in hardcover or eBook form from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indie Bound, or direct from the publisher. Hear interviews with him about the book on the “Literary Treks” podcast from TrekFM, on TrekRadio, on The Chronic Rift, on The Sci-Fi Diner, and on The G & T Show.
I also love the idea that Kirk marketed Fizzbin to the galaxy at large following the Five Year mission. :)
Meh. I’d give this one a 1 or a 2.
The worst thing about this episode for me is that it is BORING. I don’t have any righteous indignation here (aside from my wasted time) but, I’m not sure what was worse:
Watching Quark and Odo trade insults (funny at first, but not enough to sustain an entire plot) while walking around (what looked like) the same freaking rocks and trees over and over and over, to the point that I was just wishing they’d hurry up and die already, or a completely cliche, predictable clean vs. neat roommate disupte that could have been a Full House B plot (and I love Full House, hah). I was so glad when this episode was over.
Pretty much agree, this was just an unmemorable episode. But I’m truly glad to hear I’m not the only Freecell addict still out there …
S
The Orion Syndicate is also one of the main antagonists in my Enterprise: Rise of the Federation books.
I agree that this episode didn’t turn out all that interesting. It has a number of contrivances. The idea that they need to climb a mountain to make the subspace transmitter work is silly, since compared to the interstellar distances the transmitter has to cover, the distance between sea level and a mountaintop would be infinitesimal. And if the signal passes through subspace rather than normal space, why would it be blocked by atmosphere?
Plus all of Odo’s “I finally got you for something” gloating just calls attention to the fact that Quark has already been caught committing numerous crimes that should’ve put him away for years but somehow didn’t.
(Also, I’m not sure a planet without animals would evolve trees, since trees evolved in response to animals feeding on the leaves of plants.)
One noteworthy thing: The runabout that crashes here is the Rio Grande, the one runabout that’s been with the station since “Emissary” — and it must have been recovered and repaired after this episode, since it’s still seen in later episodes and throughout the post-finale novels. It’s gained something of a reputation for indestructibility, and this crash is the only blot on its safety record that I’m aware of. (Ironically, the first original DS9 novel The Siege, written before the series premiered and set about a third of the way through the first season, had the Rio Grande destroyed at the end — something that seems laughable in retrospect.)
^THIS.
Not to mention that the mountain seemed to very conveniently have paths and they didn’t have to actually SCALE the darn thing.
Maybe the planet HAD life at some point but somehow, animal life, and only animal life, got wiped out (?). Oh, why am I even making excuses for this episode…
It’s a solid middle-of-the-road episode. Not a lot happens, but we get to spend some non-critical time with familiar characters. Sure, it’s predicatable, but at the least the Jake-Nog story is very true to life. A piece of advice often offered to people that age is never to live with your friends. It can bring a friendship to a very unpleasant end. What we see here is that Jake and Nog have a friendship that is able to weather that stress (with a little help from Captain Dad).
The Odo-Quark storyline does less with the arcs of its characters, but I do think there’s a subtle advancement here. Once the story is over, it’s quite clear that both of them is aware that their relationship is as much a friendship as it is a contest of wills.
My wife is not a fan of science fiction (mine is a mixed marriage) and whenever the kids and I (and the cat who would come running when he heard the DS9 theme) would watch DS9 or Voyager, she would always find something else to do. But she has wound up watching this episode on a couple of occasions by accident and she likes it. I don’t know what that tells us about the episode, if anything.
My theory for fizzbin reaching the Ferengi is that the Iotians glommed onto the game in their mimicking way and built up some rules based on what little they learned from Kirk (much as fandom did). Obviously, the Ferengi and the Iotians would wind up interacting a lot and so the Ferengi, who love complicated games, would pick it up.
I’ve always considered the relationship between Odo and Quark as less an enmity and more of a decades-long chess match between two players at the absolute pinnacle of their game. There’s an unspoken respect there, and a certain sense of honor, that can only come between two people with that much cunning and craftiness.
The fact that it’s Rene Auberjonois and Armin Shimerman doing the move/countermove ballet just makes it that much better.
@@.-@ The point of being a tree is to shade out rival plants, and avoid being shaded out by them. This planet evolved trees before it evolved land animals of any size.
What gets me is this line:
“Members of the Orion Syndicate don’t need to kill each other, as they’d rather die than testify. Odo realizes that Quark tried to join the syndicate, but he couldn’t afford the considerable membership fee”
Quark was kicked out by the FCA because he was NOT willing to die in accordance with his principals. How could anyone expect him to be willing to die rather than testify?
I’ll always remember this episode as “The One Where Quark and Odo Climb the Paramount Logo.”
If there’s something about this episode I’ve never quite forgotten is the atrocious cinematography (and I don’t think this was shot by Jonathan West either, who was prepping Rapture by this point).
They try too hard to make the place look like a freezing mountain, when you can obviously tell it’s the same desert-mountain location they’ve used on countless Star Trek episodes. It just looks weird, and it kind of betrays the limited resources the show had. This looks like a bottle show shot on location (which is a weird combination, to say the least). After having seen the Breaking Bad episode where Walt and Jesse’s RV stalls in the middle of the desert, it’s hard to be generous with The Ascent. The show feels dated.
As for the characters, Behr and Wolfe (DS9’s Lennon and McCartney, to put it mildly) are at their best when they write Jake/Nog conflict, especially such a natural one that could only arise after years of friendship. And Lofton and Eisenberg nail every minute of it. This is the Odd Couple done right to me.
As for Quark/Odo, this could have been done better instead of relying on such a contrived plot. Shimerman and Auberjonois have great chemistry, but this wasn’t their best hour. Plus, this episode really should have been done a couple of seasons prior to 5.
And yeah, pointing out that Quark’s gotten away with plenty without being punished only highlights the fact that a TV show has to resort to excuses and contrivances to keep the character relevant on the cast. At least Worf’s non-explanation of the Klingon forehead ridges on Trials and Tribble-ations works because of the fourth wall, rather than in spite of it.
@10 Actually, as reported by Memory Alpha from the DS9 Companion, the outdoor scenes for this episode were filmed at 14,495 feet, on Mt. Whitney in central California. So very much not quite the normal desert-mountain location for Trek.
Huh, I find myself completely opposed to public opinion on this one. I like it quite a lot.
For all that Odo and Quark proclaim their mutual hatred in this episode more explicitly than anywhere else, it’s one of the top 4 episodes in the whole series for showcasing their reluctant underlying friendship. The things they DON’T say to each other, but still manage to convey through their acting, are awesome. Quark’s proclamation that he’s only bringing Odo along to eat him is the pinnacle of the arc – like much of the other dialogue, he might THINK he’s actually sincere when he says it, but underneath he’s lying about his motives. He’s really bringing Odo along because he can’t stand the thought of abandoning his frenemy to die.
Certainly the episode has its weak spots. The B-plot, while fun, didn’t ever really move me. The mountain does seem to just always be in front of them without ever getting closer (like the Monty Python scene where Lancelot runs closer to the camera over and over without making progress). And yes, the idea that an interstellar transmitter would work at the top of a mountain, but not the bottom of it, is ridiculous (unless the mountain sticks up through some particularly nasty layer of extreme atmospheric conditions). But for my part, I’m willing to mostly forgive these flaws for the priceless almost-glimpse into Quark’s and Odo’s hearts.
Having watched “The Quickening”, it dawned on me then that maybe Bashir was abducted at some point prior to returning to Deep Space Nine after trying to help the Teplans and discovering the vaccine against the Blight. Its the only time we see Bashir in the Gamma Quadrant prior to this, and he was there alone for almost a month.
As for this episode, not much to say, except its good to have Nog back, and his and Jake’s part of the episode is so true to life. As was said above, its generally a bad idea to live with your buddies.
@13
I don’t believe anyone needs to be on the Gamma Quadrant in order to be replaced by a shapeshifter. The Female Founder was able to slip into the Alpha Quadrant by herself back in season 3. All they need is to stow aboard any ship going through the wormhole.
And I just remembered something. This was the last episode aired before First Contact opened. I feel this almost deserves a First Contact re-rewatch. I know krad did one, a while back. Time to find that Blu-Ray.
In a way, First Contact is as close as we’ll ever get to a DS9 movie. It has Worf, it has the Defiant blazing on the big screen, and the Borg’s defeat pretty much paved the way for the following Dominion invasion. Part of me wished O’Brien had also showed up alongside Worf. He was part of the TNG family.
And part of me wishes they’d done a direct crossover with DS9. Worf and Dax had rescued Quark and Odo on the Defiant. Ending the episode with a fleet-wide alert and heading straight to the Typhon Sector, in order to defend Sector 001. That way, First Contact could have had Dax, Quark and an injured Odo as part of the Enterprise Borg shootout, giving it some extra tension.
I know Ron Moore and Brannon Braga’s earlier FC draft had quite a bit of DS9 involved, including a Quark cameo.
@14… you know, that would have been rather awesone for fans. But for non-fans I’m not sure. I think FC was one one of the best films for general sci-fi fans as well as regular moviegoers, a perfect balance of TV continuity and general movie storytelling. Throw in more TV continuity and I think it wouldn’t have worked as well. Still, I’d love if there had been some kind of director’s cut that featured the DS9 elements you suggested!
I think Insurrection was the perfect opportunity for a DS9 crossover. They should’ve ditched the small story of the fountain of youth planet, which let’s face it would have worked better as an episode in one of the series, and told a much bigger story involving the war. If they’d scheduled it right, it could’ve served as a bridge between seasons, just as the first X-Files movie did.
But… oh well, water under the bridge.
I agree that the artificial nature of the disaster Quark and Odo face is too obvious, you can see that the whole plot was written just so they could get them to snark at each other while facing death. But other than, I thought this was an excellent episode. DS9 is always better in examining the various friendships between the characters (Quark/Odo, Jake/Nog, Sisko/Dax, Bashir/O’Brien, Bashir/Garak, Kira/Sisko, etc) than the romantic pairings, which were mostly pretty dull (Worf/Dax being the only real exception), and the frenemy bromance between Quark and Odo was possibly the most interesting of these. So it doesn’t matter what excuse they had use to focus on that relationship, at this point Shimerman and Auberjonois embody those roles so well that it’s a pleasure to simply watch them interact.
And I don’t agree with the comments that this episode should’ve happened during the earlier seasons. The story makes sense only at this point in the series, when Odo is a human. Before, Odo’s shapeshifting had meant he always had the upper hand on Quark; he was in charge, and they both knew it. But now, for the first time, they are put into situation where Quark is the stronger one; Odo’s shapeshifting (which would’ve easily saved the day) is gone, and his detective skills won’t help them either in a situation like this. It’s Quark’s resilience and strength that ultimately save them, and it’s very interesting to note that, when faced with a life-or-death situation, he abandons the ultra-capitalist/individualist, “each man for himself” Ferengi creed and does all he can to save Odo too. This episode is really the culmination of the work the writers and actors put in to these two characters during the previous seasons, and we don’t get another Quark/Odo moment of this depth before the very end of the very last episode.
@17
An argument well put. I didn’t see it from the concept of Odo being this vulnerable before. It makes sense, and it’s enough for me to see this episode in a better light (as actors they definitely deliver, Behr and Wolfe know how to write most of the time, and Allan Kroeker knows how to get the best of them).
To complement my previous comment, I never really had much of a problem with this episode. It’s not the best episode ever, but it’s a decent, if inoffensive character piece. My real issue with this episode was always the cinematography, more than anything else.
That Slings & Arrows ebook is VERY expensive. It would be nice to see that series collected or reissued in an affordable format.
Unlike many, I found the Odo/Quark plot to be serviceable. It wasn’t their best, but it wasn’t bad.
Unlike many, I was annoyed with the Jake/Nog plot. I enjoyed it until the end, when it resolved without resolution. I don’t think my parents or my former roommates’ parents were ever involved with our disagreements, but I do remember getting in fights with my siblings and my parents intervening. Telling us to get along meant grudging apologies (and things getting better in a few hours/days), but resolution was never as swift as this. If they had sulkily lived together and fixed the friendship at the beginning or early next episode, it would have felt more natural.
LOL, I still think this episode was boring and didn’t necessarily bring anything new to the table about Odo/Quark’s personalities (although Quark calling Odo a fascist did make me laugh) but I love the term ‘frenemy bromance’.
Watching Odo and Quark bicker for hours, or watching Jake and Nog bicker for hours? Not much of a choice.
This is the first episode in quite awhile that I found to be completely lacking in any original premise or execution. I’ve never been a fan of tv episodes or movies that are about “the desperate journey” through the desert, or up the mountain, or over the sea, or into outer space. They usually become an exercise in endurance more excruciating for the viewer than the characters on screen. Nor did the Odd Couple reboot between Nog and Jake do anything for me either. As Rancho Unicorno noted above, the resolution happens without any plausible reason. So Sisko brings them back together and tells them to get along, and within 3 lines of dialogue lazy slob Jake’s willing to spend the entire day cleaning but dutiful Nog suggests domjot instead? Right. …. apparently no one bothered to listen to Jake when he said “no cliches before breakfast.” Meh
I’m glad this experience didn’t bring Quark and Odo together unlike other stories of this ilk where a danger shared will make them friends at the end. By the final scene, the two have learned absolutely nothing, and that’s as it should be. Think of the opportunities that would have closed off to the writers if they had gone the other way.
The one thing that gets me about this episode–and about half of the other episodes of any Trek set on a runabout–is that the correct time to send out a distress beacon is when you get in distress. For example, you’re on a runabout and you find a bomb aboard. You are now in distress! Send out a signal so at least someone will find the wreckage and have an episode about it, like every other ship that isn’t called Enterprise or Defiant. Don’t wait until you’re crashed on a planet, because planets have atmosphere, which is something the Federation has never quite learned to handle
Ha! Best line on a very bad episode. Did Quark make his statement after all? Did he recieve a medal? And why did they put a key witness (someone important enough to kill with a bomb) on a simple runabout anyway? Security is just a mess in Starfleet.
I’m here to make a ridiculous confession: after all the business DS9 does with the Orion Syndicate, it took me watching Enterprise to understand that the Syndicate was actually started and run by Orions. Like, the green aliens. I completely just assumed it was a mafia organizationnamed after the constellation or maybe a star system or something.
I am ashamed.
KYS: It’s an easy mistake to make, especially if you forget the green folks from TOS and TAS were Orions….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
It’s at least possible that DS9’s writers didn’t intend the Syndicate to have anything to do with the TOS/TAS Orions, since they didn’t make any explicit connection. It wasn’t until ENT that they were overtly identified as the same thing.
The Ascent was the worst episode of Deep Space Nine, if not of the whole franchise. The lame fight scene, the nonexistent theme and plot, the complete lack of any idea what it’s like to ascend a mountain or even go up in elevation…….. it was not just laughable. It was an embarrassment to the name Star Trek. On the good side though; at least it wasn’t Voyager.
Seems strange that Odo can just arrest Quark and drag him off the station without even telling him the charges. That doesn’t say much for legal rights on DS9. The list of stuff “lost” in the crash started to sound a lot like the Enterprise B and all the stuff that was going to be installed “on Tuesday”.
Jake and Nog both seem really exaggerated – especially Nog.
I skipped a couple others in my re-watch like “Let He Who is Without Sin …” to get to this one. Meh …
Was wondering if it has ever been mentioned what odo was going to say before he got beamed up. He said to send his remains through the wormhole but then he said better yet…. but never gets a chance to finish the sentence.
“Odo and Quark are climbing a mountain.
Why are they climbing a mountain?”
After The Final Frontier and this episode, there should be agreement to make mountain climbing off limits.
BeeGee: You just had to give us the earworm, didn’tcha?
https://youtu.be/HU2ftCitvyQ
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Lockdown rewatch. I only had vague memories of this episode from the first time of watching, I’ve never gone back and watched it again until now. It’s not that great despite the pairing of Odo and Quark, I almost get the feeling this was shoe horned in as their double act had become rather overshadowed by others,.. Bashir/O’Brien. Worf/Dax and they wanted to remind the audience that this pairing was still a thing. Surprisingly I remember Armin Shimerman saying this was one of his favourite episode, which is puzzling as there are far better Quark episodes out there than this one. 4 out of 10 from me.
31: “On the good side though, at least it wasn’t Voyager”. It’s funny you should say that because The Ascent reminds me of VGR’s S3 episode Rise. Both have nominal similarities, and further reinforces to me that VGR’s third season was a pallid rehash of DS9’s much superior fifth season (both were shown concurrently).
Pandemic rewatch. This is one of my favorite DS9 episodes. To me, there’s two ways to watch/review Star Trek episodes. You can either:
A) Look at it objectively as a tv episode, in which case you’d give this episode low marks for everything from contrived by-the-numbers plot and weird cinematography; or
B) Let all of those concerns fall by the wayside and accept the mediocre quality, which frees you to see the wonder that is this episode.
Yes, the plot’s contrived, yes, the style choices are odd, and yes the Jake/Nog plot’s annoying, but there’s the primal joy of watching two actors at the top of their game bicker for 20 minutes. Quark and Odo are some of the best characters and pairings Trek has ever invented. You have the orderly cop and the rascal playing chess against each other the whole series, both of them hating the other publicly while developing a weird, twisted friendship.
Then their runabout crashes and, faced with death, their elaborate game is shorn away to reveal the beating heart of their relationship.You have moments where Quark falls and Odo rushes over to help, but then catches himself and cloaks his concern by claiming to worry about the transmitter; or Quark dragging his friend up the mountain, claiming it’s only so he can eat Odo.
And after they’re rescued, neither is willing to give up their little game. When Quark tells Odo that when he had said he hated him he meant every word of it, they laugh. Balance is restored, they don’t need to change, and their game — and secret — can go on.
Shimmerman and Auberjonois kill it here, and make this a fantastic episode.
One of my favorite parts in this episode is the conversation between Sisko and Rom. It’s not a conversation between a Starfleet captain and a Bajoran technician at the very bottom of the chain of command. It’s not a conversation between a Ferengi caricature and an “evolved” human. It’s a conversation between two fathers, two equals. Max Grodénchik is wonderful portraying his concern for his son without losing his innate Romness. And Avery Brooks is his usual acerbic father figure and perennial “Dad of the Year” candidate. Just great stuff!
I know this is a ten year old feature to a twenty year old TV show, but you need to assume a CONSIDERABLE portion of people are reading this rewatch while doing their first watch.
I first found these while my wife and I were doing a TNG rewatch last year. It became a fun tradition to read the Reactor (then Tor) rewatch of the episodes we’d watched that evening. It was a fun way to get fan perspective and interesting trivia on something I’d just seen. If I liked the episode, was I in the majority, or the minority? Did other people notice the same things I noticed. It was a way to connect with a fandom on an older show as if the episode had just come out that night.
We moved onto DS9 this year, and I kept the tradition alive of reading the rewatches after watching the episodes. So imagine how much fun it was to stumble on this passage buried in the middle of a paragraph:
“While it’s possible that the Bashir we see in this episode is the one we know and love, the Bashir we see moving forward is a changeling, as this is the last episode featuring the gray turtleneck/colored jumpsuit uniforms that were created for DS9.”
Jesus Christ. Was it REALLY worth spoiling a huge plotline for every reader watching this show for the first time just to make a point about turtlenecks?