“Homefront”
Written by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
Directed by David Livingston
Season 4, Episode 10
Production episode 40514-483
Original air date: January 1, 1996
Stardate: unknown
Station log: Dax and Sisko observe the wormhole opening and closing at random. No one has any idea why, though many Bajorans think it a message from the Prophets. (Sisko dryly notes that the Prophets didn’t tell him, and Dax jokes that maybe they don’t recognize him with the beard.)
Worf summons Sisko to Ops, who then summons Odo. Starfleet Security forwarded footage from a secret conference at Antwerp on Earth between the Federation and the Romulans (there was also a Tholian observer), which was destroyed by a bomb, killing 27 people. The footage they sent DS9 includes indications of a changeling disguised as a piece of pottery in the conference room—but the examination of the debris indicated no trace of changeling biological matter, so it likely escaped.
Sisko and Odo are going to Earth on the Lakota to consult with Starfleet Command about this new changeling threat. Jake is going with them so he can visit Sisko’s father, Joseph, at his restaurant in New Orleans, and also visit the Pennington School in New Zealand. Joseph insists that, even though it’s a business trip and Sisko will be spending most of his time in San Francsico, he’d better be in New Orleans at the restaurant for dinner.
Jake enters right after Joseph signs off, and the boy is devastated to learn that Sisko didn’t say they’d be staying in San Francisco, because Jake knows he’ll be put to work peeling potatoes if they stay in New Orleans. Sisko’s insistence that Jake’s too old for that sort of thing is less than reassuring when he adds that Joseph will instead make Jake wait tables.
The Lakota departs with the Siskos and Odo, the latter being asked by O’Brien to check in on his folks in Dublin when he’s on Earth. They arrive to be greeted by Admiral Leyton and his adjutant, Commander Benteen. The former was Sisko’s CO on the Okinawa, and he’s the one who recommended Sisko for the post on DS9. Leyton brought them there not just for a debrief but to make Sisko the acting head of Starfleet Security on Earth, as he knows more about the Dominion than anyone in Starfleet.
That night, Sisko and Jake go to Sisko’s Creole Kitchen in New Orleans. After a happy reunion among grandfather, father, and son, the three of them sit down to dinner. Joseph gets cranky when Sisko and Jake fuss over his health. They’re then joined by Cadet Nog, who regularly eats dinner at Sisko’s because it’s the only place he can get live tube grubs.
The next day, Leyton and Sisko meet with President Jaresh-Inyo in Paris. The president thinks blood screenings and phaser sweeps are excessive and that Starfleet is being paranoid. To prove they’re not, Sisko’s briefcase changes shape into Odo, scaring the crap out of Jaresh-Inyo. If Odo was a Founder, he could have assassinated and/or replaced the president. Sisko is only proposing that these measures be taken in official installations connected to the Federation government and Starfleet. The average citizen won’t even notice the difference. The president reluctantly agrees. Sisko and Odo supervise the installation of phaser emplacements in every room under Federation and Starfleet control, and then test the settings on Odo to see how high to set them so that a changeling would be forced back into a gelantinous state.
Nog goes to Sisko and asks for his recommendation to join Red Squad, an elite class of cadets—which Sisko is reluctantly willing to do, though he’s never heard of Red Squad before.
Sisko visits his father for the first time in many days, which Joseph rebukes him for, especially since Jake is off checking out Pennington. Sisko again harps on Joseph’s health, as he hasn’t visited his doctor in eight months, and he needs therapy on his cardiovascular system. Despite the argument, they agree to go for a walk.
Back in San Francisco, Odo changes from a seagull back into his usual humanoid form, which impresses Benteen, who is walking the grounds with Leyton. Except it isn’t Leyton, it’s a changeling, who is very hostile to Odo—that hostility is what allows Odo to recognize a fellow changeling. The Founder turns into a bird and flies off. The real Leyton is devastated at the security breach and Benteen realizes that the security measures they’re taking are insufficient.
Joseph is put under arrest at the restaurant for refusing to undergo a blood screening. He points out that any smart changeling would be able to get past the blood screening with little difficulty. Joseph also tells Sisko that the two security officers need to either grab a menu and sit down or leave his restaurant. So Sisko tells Jake to get them menus and recommends the shrimp creole while he and his father continue the argument. But Joseph won’t allow his rights to be violated.
While they argue, Joseph cuts himself while slicing shrimp, and Sisko can’t help but check the knife to make sure the blood stays blood. Joseph is outraged that his son wasn’t even sure if his own father was a shapechanger—and then he has a mild stroke.
Once Joseph is safely in the hospital recovering, Sisko returns to San Francisco, and tells Odo what happened, expressing annoyance at his own lack of faith in his own father. Odo points out that that’s exactly the kind of chaos the Founders are trying to foment.
After he’s released, Joseph goes right back to work, refusing to rest, as he says you should only be in bed when you’re sleeping, when you’re dying, or when you’re making love, and he’s neither tired nor dying, and he’s too old for sex at this point.
And then the power goes out—all over the planet. Someone knocked out Earth’s entire power grid. Leyton, Sisko, Odo, Benteen, and a couple of security guards use the Lakota to beam into the president’s office. (Everyone behaves as if the Lakota is the only Starfleet facility or ship in the area, which strains credulity well past the breaking point.) Sisko recommends that Jaresh-Inyo declare a state of emergency, mentioning that the wormhole’s been opening and closing, which may have been due to cloaked Jem’Hadar ships coming through—the hypothesis being that the Dominion got cloaking technology from the joint Cardassian-Romulan fleet they trashed in “The Die is Cast.” Jaresh-Inyo calls this what it is truly: martial law. But they convince the president that it’s necessary, especially since it will take days to re-set the power grid, and they’re vulnerable to Dominion attack until then.
Back in Sisko’s Creole Kitchen, lit by candles, Jake wakes up Joseph (who insists he wasn’t asleep, he was checking his eyelids for holes) so he can see the rather unpleasant sight of armed Starfleet security personnel beaming onto the streets of New Orleans.
To be continued…
The Sisko is of Bajor: We finally get to meet Sisko’s father and see the famous restaurant that Sisko grew up in. It looks, I gotta say, like a great place to eat.
The slug in your belly: Dax has been pranking Odo, moving his furniture just slightly while he’s regenerating, which throws his whole shapeshifting routine off. Odo makes her put everything back exactly where it was.
There is no honor in being pummeled: Worf informs Kira and O’Brien that the Klingons killed their gods a thousand years ago because they were more trouble than they were worth.
Preservation of mass and energy is for wimps: Odo gets to be Starfleet’s guinea pig, demonstrating shapeshifter capabilities by being Sisko’s briefcase in Jaresh-Inyo’s office, allowing himself to be the test subject for the phaser sweeps, and urging the president to take harsher security measures.
Rules of Acquisition: Quark expresses sympathy for what O’Brien and Bashir are suffering regarding being so far from Earth when it was attacked by telling them about how he was stuck in his post as a cook on a freighter during the Great Monetary Collapse on Ferenginar. This inexplicably does not make O’Brien or Bashir feel better.
Victory is life: There’s a Founder on Earth, who sets off an explosive at the Antwerp conference and poses as Leyton long enough to have the run of Starfleet Headquarters.
What happens on the holosuite stays on the holosuite: Bashir and O’Brien are now playing at being World War II Royal Air Force fighter pilots. Quark even plays along as their barkeep commiserating about fighting the “jerrys,” but he draws the line at letting them throw their glasses after they drink. O’Brien also puts on a Cockney accent for no compellingly good reason.
Keep your ears open: “This business has got you so twisted around, you can’t think straight. You’re seeing shapeshifters everywhere! Maybe you want to think about something for a minute. If I was a smart shapeshifter, a really good one, the first thing I would do would be to grab some poor soul off the street, absorb every ounce of his blood, and let it out on cue whenever someone like you tried to test me. Don’t you see? There isn’t a test that’s been created that a smart man can’t find his way around. You’re not going to catch shapeshifters using some gadget!”
Joseph pointing out the logical fallacy of the blood screenings.
Welcome aboard: We get a new recurring character in Brock Peters (last seen as Admiral Cartwright in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) as Joseph Sisko, as well as an old one in Aron Eisenberg as Cadet Nog. Susan Gibney, last seen as Dr. Leah Brahms in both holographic and real form on TNG, plays Benteen, while Robert Foxworth plays Leyton and Herschel Sparber plays President Jaresh-Inyo. All five will return for Part 2, “Paradise Lost.”
Trivial matters: This episode’s storyline was originally intended to be a season-spanning two-parter, but Paramount did not wish DS9 to follow TNG’s lead in doing cliffhanger season finales. (This, by the way, is proof that not all studio notes are stupid, as this was a wise decision that DS9 was better for.)
Both Joseph and Jaresh-Inyo make reference to the Borg attack on Earth in TNG’s “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II.” The latter’s comment said it was the only time in a century that Earth declared a state of emergency—presumably the last one was when the probe attacked in Star Trek IV.
Sparber is the third (and last) person to play a Federation president on screen, and the only one to be named. The other two, ironically, appeared in the two movies in which Brock Peters played Admrial Cartwright, Star Trek IV and Star Trek VI. (In an amusing bit of trivia, in addition to Peters, Rene Auberjonois and Michael Dorn appeared in both the latter film and this episode.)
Sisko’s sister Judith, who was mentioned in “Past Tense, Part I,” is mentioned, but not seen.
This episode establishes that the Federation president’s office is still in Paris, as was established in Star Trek VI. The novel A Time to Kill by David Mack established the building that houses the president’s office as being named the Palais de la Concorde. Your humble rewatcher’s Articles of the Federation established why the office seen in Star Trek VI differs from the one seen here (Jaresh-Inyo’s predecessor moved the office to a smaller space during her term).
The changeling impersonating Leyton is livid at Odo, which enables the latter to see through his disguise, because Odo killed a changeling in “The Adversary,” the first time a changeling has deliberately harmed another.
Joseph’s point about the changeling’s ability to fake blood screenings will be proven in “Apocalypse Rising” and “In Purgatory’s Shadow.” The former will establish that Martok was replaced by a changeling, and the latter will confirm that the swap happened prior to “The Way of the Warrior”—in which “Martok” insisted on a blood screening, which he “passed,” no doubt via a method similar to that postulated by Joseph here.
Walk with the Prophets: “The man knows his bread pudding.” Watching this episode when it aired at the top of 1996 it was more of an intellectual exercise. Commentary, yes, but mostly regarding fictional stuff.
Watching this episode in 2004, when I was writing Articles of the Federation, it was a punch to the gut. The closing scenes of this episode resonated with sitting on my couch on a Tuesday afternoon in the fall of 2001 after some crazy people flew planes into buildings in my city. But even more so, the calls for blood screenings and security sweeps and of troops beaming down into the streets were reminders of what was still going on three years later—just substitute the PATRIOT Act for declaring a state of emergency, and airport security for blood screenings, and this episode is eerily familiar.
Even today, we’re still forced to go through ridiculous “security” procedures that do absolutely nothing to make ourselves safer during an airline flight. (The only security measure taken in the past dozen years that actually made us safer was a cockpit door that bolts shut.) Just like the phaser sweeps and blood screenings weren’t even slowing the changeling on Earth down.
There’s a lot that makes “Homefront” a strong episode, besides its rather devastating prescience for what would happen in the United States less than ten years after it aired. There are tons of nice little character bits, from Nog being a regular at Sisko’s Creole Kitchen to O’Brien and Bashir as RAF pilots from World War II (tellingly, a war that is considered to be a lot more black and white) to Joseph’s story of the stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling (it’s allegedly in stasis, and he takes it out of stasis to guard the restaurant when it’s closed; he had to stop because he’s getting too old to wrestle it back up to the harness).
It just seems like another little character bit to enhance the episode, but Dax’s little practical joke of moving Odo’s furniture around is actually a nice prelude to what happens later. Odo rants about how important order is, but too much order can be constricting. Odo’s right at the forefront of proposing these special security measures—but he’s also the one who has more than once in the past wished for the more orderly strictures of the Cardassians. He’s the one who argues most extensively for the tighter security and who best lays out the consequences of changeling infiltration.
The tricky part—and this will get more play in “Paradise Lost”—is where the line is. Perhaps Federation freedom is inviting too much chaos, but when the alternative is Cardassian or Dominion fascism, how is that a bad thing? The trick, of course, is balance between, say, Odo’s order and Dax’s desire for chaos (which is why she messes with his stuff). But the bomb at the Antwerp conference warps everything, too much chaos and it results in an overinfusion of order.
But in truth, what makes this episode work, and what makes it a great episode instead of a good one, is Joseph Sisko. For one thing, he’s a magnificent character. Free-wheeling, fun-loving, cantankerous, charming, delightful, passionate, ornery—he’s superb, ebulliently played by the late Brock Peters with manic energy. He just lights up the screen. His rapport with Avery Brooks and Cirroc Lofton (and Aron Eisenberg, for that matter) is letter-perfect, and you can see the lineage there. This is a powerful family, and you can see why Sisko’s such a good father with this role model.
However, much more importantly, Joseph is the heart of the episode. We get so many hints that Joseph might be a changeling: he won’t see his doctor, he won’t take his meds, he doesn’t actually eat with his son and grandson when they arrive, and then, the final nail in the coffin, he refuses to subject himself to a blood screening.
We’re set up for the reveal, but it’s not the reveal we’re expecting, and that’s the genius of the episode. All too often, DS9 has been accused of not being true to Gene Roddenberry’s utopian vision of the future, but those accusations have always missed the point. DS9 didn’t reject the Roddenberry utopia, but it did challenge it, more than once. This was its biggest challenge to date, as Sisko and Leyton and Odo and even Jaresh-Inyo are so caught up in paranoia that they can’t see that they’re doing the Founders’ work for them. Sisko lectured Gowron in “The Way of the Warrior” on the subject of how the Founders wanted the Klingons and Federation at each others’ throats, but he can’t take his own advice here. One of the most chilling moments in Star Trek history is when Sisko tells Jaresh-Inyo, “Just give us the authority we need, Mr. President—we’ll take care of the rest.” That right there is a fascist talking and to hear it come from our hero is mind-blowing. But it’s what paranoia leads to, goosed on by a bomb at a conference and a downed power grid.
It’s left to Joseph to remind everyone that this is Star Trek’s future. He’s not a changeling, and everything that seemed suspicious was actually perfectly in character, but Sisko is so keyed up by what’s happening that he has to look at the knife to see if the blood will go all amber and shimmery.
But when the power grid goes down, Sisko forgets everything Joseph said, because the threat is ramped up. Martial law is declared, troops are beaming onto the streets of Earth, and it’s very likely that a cloaked Jem’Hadar fleet is on its way. The paranoia would seem to be quite justified.
Or is it?
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be co-running a writers workshop sponsored by the I-Con convention next Saturday, the 8th of March, in downtown Manhattan, alongside fellow author Laura Anne Gilman and writing professor Joan Digby. Click here for more info.
“DS9 didn’t reject the Roddenberry utopia, but it did challenge it, more than once.”
You just summed up why VOY failed for me — because it only made token attempts to honor its premise and not seriously challenge whether that utopia could survive so far out from the familiar comfort zone.
Anyway, this is one of my favorites of the series — even more so as the timeframe of this duology will be brought back in a big way come Seson 7.
Almost terrifyingly prescient. Sisko’s appeal to the president to be given the authority to do what needs to be done is even more insidious than krad suggests. As viewers we know and trust Benjamin Sisko. Of course, he wouldn’t do anything nefarious or in violation of the principle of the Federation. I don’t want to get too spoilery here for Lisa Marie, but we’ll confront all this in more depth next time.
Brock Peters was a terrific actor and sadly underutilized for most of his career (in spite of his excellent early work in To Kill a Mockingbird). He also did a lot of voiceover work (no wonder with those pipes) including a Trek video game and an associated machinima movie as General Mi’Qoch (his last role).
I absolutely love this two parter.
Bobby
I’m surprised KRAD didn’t mention the controversy around Robert Foxworth’s casting. He was already playing a recurring role on Babylon 5 as General Hague, an officer who was set up to be the leader of the opposition during the Earth Civil War, but when it came time to do the episode where the Civil War actually starts, Foxworth was booked on DS9 playing what is essentially a villainous version of General Hague.
I remember at the time on rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.mod, JMS was livid. He already thought Paramount had stolen his pitch for B5 and remolded it for the Star Trek universe, but now they were stealing actors to play equivalent roles on DS9. It’s probably nonsense, but back then it did a lot to exaserbate the divide between B5 and DS9 fans.
When I saw this episode for the rewatch, I immediately googled to check the year it was filmed, in the back of my mind, I was convinced it had to be early 2002. But no, it was the nineties. And upon reflection, it makes sense, I doubt an episode actually filmed after 9/11 would have taken such a strong stance against increased security.
I had forgotten about Worf’s comment about the gods. That’s hilarious.
“He also did a lot of voiceover work (no wonder with those pipes) including a Trek video game and an associated machinima movie as General Mi’Qoch (his last role).”
Don’t forget his role as Darth Vader in all three Star Wars Radio Dramas.
“O’Brien also puts on a Cockney accent for no compellingly good reason.”
He’s probably a fan of Michael Caine’s performance in… Battle of Britain. And Michael Caine in every other movie he’s done.
This episode is eerie and prescient. Funny though, how it went virtually unnoticed back then. But put something like this on TV now and they’ll probably throw a load of Emmy nominations at you. The difference a real war makes.
@3, I’ve seen the next episode too, but your comment does make me think that it would be kind of neat to see an episode where it turns out the main character is actually a changeling, DUN! (I am trying to think if there were episodes of DS9/TNG that had a similar twist, where the main character you were following wasn’t actually the real one…but I’m kind of exhausted right now).
I am definitely an order oriented (and very risk-averse) person, as well as one who feels the need to be DOING something, so emotionally all the security measures make perfect sense to me and I wouldn’t mind them. Intellectually I understand all the reasons that we are intended to view it as a Bad Thing, especially when you start to consider the actual efficacy of such things. I don’t know, I’m way too wiped out right now to really think about it, but I’ve been looking forward to the discussion.
Oh yeah, and as for Benteen, man, the ENTIRE TIME it was bugging me that she looked SO familiar. And I even thought her mole reminded me of Leah Brahms but I didn’t think it was actually her. Her face actually looks quite a bit thinner.
There was an O’Brien episode like that. The one we follow all along is actually a clone and a saboteur(?). Can’t remember exactly.
YES! Thank you, that’s probably what was tickling at my brain.
And I definitely remember kind of wishing they’d gone with Kira actually being a Cardassian sleeper agent, heh.
Probably was because I didn’t see this until after 2001, but it never struck me as ‘intellectual exercise’ and definitely struck a chord (hell, multiple chords) the first time I saw it.
“However, much more importantly, Joseph is the heart of the episode. We get so many hints that Joseph might be a changeling: he won’t see his doctor, he won’t take his meds, he doesn’t actually eat with his son and grandson when they arrive, and then, the final nail in the coffin, he refuses to subject himself to a blood screening.”
Jesus! I never realized how subtle these hints were. I, for one, never suspected Joseph to be a changeling, and always considered Ben’s blood-screening stance to be overly irrational. But, you’re absolutely right on the money.
This was one of the very first DS9 episodes I watched, along with Paradise Lost. And still one of Trek’s finest.
And it began because of a single line that Ira Behr wrote in The Maquis two parter: “It’s easy to be a saint in Paradise”.
Also noteworthy, Robert Foxworth was dropped from a major Babylon 5 story arc he was deeply involved in because of his commitment to these two episodes. And that character was also challenging the ruling government.
@5 I had no idea it went that far. But I guess if I were running a series, and losing actors to a competing show, I’d be angry too.
A few weeks ago we were referring to the B5 episode The Coming of Shadows, and in the comments I mentioned it as being the moment when everything changed. For me, this is the DS9 equivalent. An excellent two parter, it actually addressed many of the things that had often annoyed me about the ST universe. It was the moment when the Federation lost its innocence, and as a viewer it was the moment you realised that this could not go back to the traditional episodic “everything wrapped up in a bow by the end” series.
I remember finding this episode chilling at the time. I grew up in the UK in the 70s, so I was already used to being under that “threat of terrorism”, it wasn’t an intellectual exercise it was all too real. It’s always the little stuff that shows how your civil liberties are being eroded. When I’m with people from the US who have come over here, one of the things I get asked most often is why we have hardly any litter bins. It’s because they took them away back then so that the IRA couldn’t put bombs in them. It’s subtle, but almost two decades after the IRA threat ended, it’s still affecting the way we live.
And it’s insidious. Like you said with the airplanes, we all know that not taking containers of liquid on board is not making us even a tiny margin safer, that if someone is determined and committed and prepared to die in the attempt, not being allowed a jumbo sized bottle of shower gel in his hand luggage isn’t going to stop him. That speech by Sisko’s father is spot on, one of the high spots which made this series so great.
Rodenberry’s utopian future was a nice idea for dreamers in the 60s. DS9 was a hard slap in the face of 90s realism. And it made the Star Trek universe all the better for it.
Bear in mind that the Changlings proveably can replace Starfleet personnel with their agents. They can kill the head of state and replace him. So what do you suggest doing about that?
Hope that they would never dream of doing something so unchivalrous to something as utopian as the Federation?
This is a good episode, and I should like it, but it bothers me so much. Along with the followup, it just made me very uncomfortable. I watched DS9 for the first time last year, and there are just too many things that feel parallel to 9/11 and the aftermath. I am rewatching it tonight, and once again, it bothers me – how much of a price are we willing to pay for security? What kind of lies and misdirections are used to make us follow the plans that are for our “security”. I have never been a fan of the Patriot Act, or of many of the “security” measures implemented since 20o1. I guess the question is how much are we willing to pay to protect our culture and society when the measures taken reduce how we enjoy our culture and society. How much “security” does it take to permanently alter a society?
These episodes, along with the 2 Past Tense episodes have ended up being just too real. Great DS9 shows, but .. uncomfortable given the future they foretold.
Sean and Eduardo: I was going to talk about the Foxworth thing regarding B5 in the “Paradise Lost” rewatch, as, for plot reasons, it’s more relevant there.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Why does Sisko switch to wearing the TNG Red-with-Black-shoulders uniform instead of his usual DS9 Black-with-Red-Shoulders uniform? And what was the purpose of having two different styles of uniform in the same era, anyway? (Both from a Production viewpoint, and In-Universe?)
When Sisko and Odo suggested the increased measures, I actually supported them. The problem was their application – when Sisko said that the “families of Starfleet personnel” had to be tested, you could tell they went too far. Their justification, that you have to test families on starships, so you have to test all families, was just too much to swallow. If Joseph isn’t coming onto Starfleet property, there is no reason for the military to have any authority over him. With where they were dragging Eartg, I’d have been happier on Ferenginar, where at least you buy back some of you civil liberties for just a few strips of latinum.
O’Brien also puts on a Cockney accent for no compellingly good reason.
I assumed this was because his natural accent is Irish, both as a character and as an actor, but the republic of Ireland was neutral during WWII. The character O’Brien assumes for the holosuite war games is an Englishman, not an Irishman. (This also comes across in singing “Jerusalem” at some point, very much an English song, not an Irish one.)
@20: One day back when I was in the Navy and stuck in the waiting area of the NAS Jacksonville medical clinic for a very long time, I became sufficiently bored that I started playing count the uniform styles of the various Navy personnel walking around. I ended up observing 7 different uniform styles, so Starfleet having more than one uniform style in the same era is perfectly plausible.
The TNG style uniform is probably the more formal uniform (maybe equivalent to service khakis) with the DS9 uniform being more akin to the Navy Working Uniform. Thus it would make sense for Sisko to wear the more formal uniform when visiting Starfleet HQ. (What I don’t understand though is why he and Leyton weren’t in their dress uniforms for meeting with the President.)
@21,
It’s been years since I’ve seen the episode, and forgot about the “testing of families” part…not only is that overkill, it must be logistically impossible. It’s never really said how big starfleet is, but at any given time there must be tens if not hundreds of thousands of starfleet personnel on earth (for comparison, there are almost 1.4 million active duty U.S military right now).
I do remember seeing starfleet security personnel walking around New Orleans and thinking, they cannot possibly patrol every city in the world, or even every major city, like this.
It’s just like testing everyone’s shoes and shampoo before getting on an airplane, it’s pure security theater.
I never understood why DS9 kept on treating blood screenings as a legitimate security technique, given that the very first time a blood screening was used, in “The Adversary,” it was done by a Changeling who faked the results to get the crew off their guard. That right there should’ve told Starfleet that it wouldn’t work, so it makes no sense that they adopted the practice at all. The “security theater” argument is interesting, but it doesn’t quite work for me, since the characters — the very DS9 leads who have direct experience with the inadequacy of the screenings — continue to act as if they’re actually a legitimate test. Ben Sisko shouldn’t need Joseph to point out the flaws to him because he experienced them directly last season. I wish the writers had invented some new kind of test rather than forgetting what they themselves had established about the inadequacy of blood screenings.
Another thing I didn’t like here was the precedent that starship travel from DS9 to Earth took only a few days. DS9 was supposed to be way out on the edge of Federation space, far from home. But as the series went on, the writers kept making everything closer and closer together — not just Earth and the UFP border, but Klingon and Cardassian territories (supposedly on opposite sides of the Federation), Bajor and Ferenginar, pretty much everything.
Everybody’s talking about Robert Foxworth’s B5 casting, but it should be noted that Admiral Leyton is Foxworth’s second role in a production connected to Gene Roddenberry. In 1974, he played the title character in Roddenberry’s pilot movie The Questor Tapes, opposite Mike Farrell and John Vernon. Questor was an android searching for his creator and trying to understand humanity — the prototype for TNG’s Data character 13 years later. (More on my blog.) Foxworth would later appear in Enterprise as another antagonistic authority figure, Vulcan Administrator V’Las. Which makes Questor his only heroic role in a Roddenberry universe.
Oh, by the way — Rene Auberjonois did not appear in the theatrical version of The Undiscovered Country, but only in scenes that were restored for the home video release.
Wish they’d had the gator running around just for fun.
I’m so glad you noted the importance of Joseph Sisko in this episode. He really does make it work and Brock Peters is amazing in the role. The whole Sisko family is one of my favorite things about DS9. The fact that Benjamin is in a sense the odd man out, because he’s in Starfleet: to me it’s a much more interesting critique of the “Roddenberry Utopia” than any amount of realpolitik or morally grey areas. (Which are fine and make for some great episodes, but are not interesting to me as a critique of utopia.) In TNG, especially in Wesley centric episodes, there is a sense that if you’re not in Starfleet, you’re a fuckup, you’re wasting your life. It’s a sort of subtle class system; Starfleet is kind of like the college-and-white-collar-career path of today. It’s what “good kids” do without even thinking there’s another option. Even in an episode like “Ensign Ro”, where someone critiques the comfortable condescension of the Federation, she ends up “proving her worth” by coming back to Starfleet.
With Joseph and Jake Sisko, we see the first TNG-era example I can think of where people who chose a different life treated with respect. Joseph’s not ridiculous to want to run his restaurant, and Jake is not a loser for wanting to be a writer. I love ’em! (I can think of one episode of TOS off the top of my head which took an anti-Starfleet point of view at least slightly seriously–unfortunately it is “The Way To Eden”, which has too much silly window dressing obscuring its interesting central question.)
To me it’s the best part of DS9 in comparison to all other Trek: taking other viewpoints seriously. Religion is not mocked just for being religion, Ferengis and Klingons can have dignity, even Cardassian culture has a proponent in Garak. It’s refreshing.
@27: What about “Journey’s End?” Wesley came to realize that Starfleet had never been the right path for him after all.
“Just give us the authority we need, Mr. President—we’ll take care of the rest.” That right there is a fascist talking . . .
No its not. You either don’t know what fascism is or just needed a convenient scary word to throw around.
Fascism encompasses far more than what you see presented in the episode. Think Italy in 1930.
@6: Keep in mind that Voyager ended couple of months before 9/11, so any episode of DS9 or Voyager was necessarily filmed before then.
I think the ideas behind this episode can be extended even beyond security measures taken after some extreme event. I think about in general how the actions of a few bad people affect the way we go about our lives regarding everything else–the way we use the internet, guard our homes, are distrusting of certain contractors, etc. If everyone was entirely honest and trustworthy, I feel like we could have a lot more freedoms in general; we could just live our lives.
Regarding Starfleet Utopia, I think we can see some hints in the original series that maybe humanity hadn’t changed, but society had, in general. Kirk’s speech in “A Taste of Armageddon,” for example, about how we can recognize that we are bloodthirsty savages, but we can tell ourselves that we’re not going to kill…today! I also like Khan’s line in “Space Seed”: “How little man himself has changed.” Though Khan’s point–or the aspects of humanity he was talking about–may have been entirely different, I’ve become aware that we’ve been pretty much the same people with the same behaviors for thousands of years. Sometimes I think there’s a tendency to think that people “back when” were somehow different. So in 400 years, it’s not that humanity has “evolved,” but societal factors linked to greed and crime have improved, and certain mental disorders have become cureable, etc., so a more ideal society can be achieved.
@25, the warp drive thing actually bothered me about this episode too. I remember when they contact the Defiant in the next episode that they couldn’t possibly get there in less than a few weeks. They continued this “shrinking” trend on Enterprise and made it even worse. Even in the pilot episode, they said that it would take only 4 days to get to Qo’noS, and this was at like warp 4.5 under the old scale…putting Qo’noS only about a light year from Earth, closer than Alpha Centauri, and certainly closer than Vulcan. Then Abrams came along and stopped caring completely; they make it from Earth to Vulcan at warp 3 under the old scale in something like a few hours. At that speed it should’ve been a 7 month journey.
@31
And correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Enterprise and the Vengeance in STID make the journey from the edge of Klingon space to Earth’s moon in like… a couple minutes? Help! The universe is shrinking!
#25, 31, 32 – this happened in The Fall books too! The Titan seems to return to Earth from the Gum Nebula in a week, rather than taking the weeks & months I would have assumed from prior episodes.
Lol, I remember as a kid watching The Way of the Warrior I thought something really good about it was that it seemed to take place over weeks. Ben and Kas’s conversations about missing one another suggested weeks of time to pick up Dukat’s ship, or similar. But I think when i watched it as an adult this thing I had always appreciated seemed to be an invention – it really was just days. I’m not sure, because certainly the episodes should cover weeks
Watching this episode (or any other work of fiction in general for that matter) makes me realize again my dangerous habit of thinking that everything the main protagonist is doing is right! Like Sisko asking for the means to get things done here. To some extent I still feel he was right, but again as people have mentioned, where is the line of “too much”?
Protagonists can be wrong! They can make mistakes. Rand al’Thor can not realize that he is insane, even when he is talking to a madman in his head. Even if his memories of a previous life as the Dragon was actually real, Lews Therin could not have been real because he, Rand, was the next reincarnation of that soul.
But back to Trek, one of my top 10 favorites on DS9, I too never watched DS9 until after 9/11 so it had a more serious impact on me that it would have before that fateful day. And I now think that Sisko is wrong in what he does, a knee jerk reaction to something that should have been handled differently – just as the Founders planned it! But he is a good enough man to realize it later, though it might be too late by then. Too be continued in the next episode.
Oldwiz
Absurd, its patently absurd.
Mine the damn wormhole and you solve the bloody problem!
It doesn’t matter if the ships are cloaked or not, they will still go boom.
Krad’s airport security comparison is much more apt in that case.
Put Picard and the Enterprise in charge I reckon, his crew solved the equivalent problem in Redemption II and it wasn’t at a nice convenient choke point either. Or just collapse the thing. It seems DS9 may have stretched the Roddenberry utiopa, but in some ways it regressed from the TNG level in terms of basic common sense.
Even as a teenager, I was screaming this at the tv……
@35,
Ah yes, the 2-D tachyon grid in 3-D space, that the Romulans couldn’t just go around :).
@36: Well, in 3D space, the border between two territories would be a 2-D surface. Presumably the ships there were spread out across enough parsecs that going around would take a prohibitive amount of time or would entail passing through claimed space.
The problem would be if it had been a simple line, like the depiction of the Neutral Zone border stations on the map in “Balance of Terror.”
You know, I never saw Joseph Sisko not going to his doctor or any of the other stuff as clues to hmm maybe he’s a changeling. I just saw them for what they were: a stubborn old guy driving through life but forgetting he needs to stop and check under the hood now and then. Not one time did that ever occur to me, but when you put it that way KRAD, I can see it. But still, I would never suspect Joseph of being a changeling.
Speaking of Joseph, I always smile watching the reunion of the Sisko family men, with Nog dropping by too. Such great scenes in that great restaurant, always a joy to watch.
I watched this when it aired back in 1996, back when no one could conceive of lunatics hijacking airplanes and slamming them into skyscrapers. Even still, the episode forced me to think. Its remarkable of how this foreshadowed so much, and its yet another DS9 episode that’s more relevant now than it was eighteen years ago. A major event causing knee-jerk, overkill reactions in the name of “security.” Too familiar.
Looking forward to discussing “Paradise Lost”.
@36
Oh ya, I know. Picard and co solved the incredibly more difficult problem of trying to blockade just open space.(its impossible really, but they seemingly did it) At least Sisko and co had a nice convenient chokepoint. With which they ludriciously failed to grasp, how much an advantage it was. It doesn’t matter how much more risky Ds9 was then TNG in pushing the Roddenberry Utiopa, if the sacrifice was a colossol downgrading of brains. This epsiode just doen’t make sense as a result, what is the point of blood screenings at Starfleet HQ if Wormhole traffic is unrestricted? To use Krads current day example, its like not putting the locked door at the cockpit, but instead putting it to guard the bathroom or a single crew galley area.
I find it real difficult to enjoy many Dominion Arc epsiodes from season 3-season 5 as a result of this gaping hole in series logic.
I definitely suspected Joseph was a changeling – especially when he wouldn’t eat – it seemed to be a callback to when Odo talked about not eating.
Maybe ‘suspected’ is a strong word, but I was definitely thinking, “ooh, oooh, oooh – they’re not going to THERE, are they? That would be HEARTBREAKING!”
“A crime like this hasn’t happened on earth in a hundred years.” These words by Captain Sisko are the reason, why “Homefront” can be seen as a turning-point for the series, where things will never again be as they were before. Personally, I think the central theme of this episode is acceptance. Both parties are forced to realize and accept harsh truths. President Jaresh-Inyo has to accept that he has to take the threat of the dominion more serious and that hard times are coming for the federation, and that he has to prepare accordingly. Likewise, Sisko has to accept that his fears have taken the better of him and that he is alienating the people that he has sworn to protect.
@38: “I watched this when it aired back in 1996, back when no one could conceive of lunatics hijacking airplanes and slamming them into skyscrapers.”
Actually that was only three years after the first attempt by al-Qaeda-linked terrorists to destroy the World Trade Center, using a truck bomb in the underground parking garage. So Americans were definitely aware of the risk of terrorism at the time. The events of 9/11 were the largest terrorist attack on US soil by an enormous margin, to be sure, but it’s not like we were terrorism virgins before that day. Terrorism in the US has a long history, going back to before the Civil War. And we were certainly aware of terrorist incidents in other countries such as the 1972 Munich massacre or the IRA bombings in the UK.
@28 – you’re right, I pretty much forgot about that one. I guess it goes to show, with “The Way to Eden”, that these kinds of episodes could occur before DS9, as long as the episode was embarassingly silly.
@37,
If the Federation ships in the edges of the blockade have time to get there, the Romulan ships would have time to get there to go around. And they don’t seem to be concerned with going through others’ claimed space.
But they probably didn’t need to go around….given that they not only knew Data was placed in command of a ship, but which ship it was, it would seem they had pretty good intelligence on the whole plan.
Not to keep counting plot holes, but I also could have sworn that Sela went from beign on the Klingon homeworld in Part 1 to a Romulan ship on the other side of the blockade in part 2.
On the topic of a changeling not eating…
If a changeling can mimic appearance and voice (not to mention personality) well enough to avoid obvious suspicion, don’t you think they would figure out a way to pretend to eat?
Now, not going to a doctor, I could see that. And that would make them just about like every other male adult out there and probably a decent % of women.
@27: TNG is definitely too Starfleet-centric, but it’s not as unilateral as you state. Guinan is the biggest counterexample; she’s not Starfleet, but is always treated with respect. (Well, almost always.)
But yeah, aside from the occasional Klingon storyline, TNG didn’t give much ongoing respect to alien perspectives.
@45 I’m no fan of Sela or of the many inanities in “Redemption II” but I have to say that your example doesn’t really constitute a plothole. Sela is still on Qo’nos early in the episode (which, at any rate, takes place months after Part I so she may have travelled back and forth more than once) but presumably she leaves to join her fleet before Picard sets up the tachyon grid. Granted we don’t witness her departure onscreen but we do see her give her right hand man Movar orders to return to Romulus and gather all available ships just on the other side of the Klingon border.
At 35:41 (Netflix) Colm is cracking up at his own Cockney dialogue but covers it by drinking beer. Wonder how many times they had to retake that scene.
I’m specifically rethinking of this duology after the Brussels attacks this morning. These two episodes are 20 years old and MORE relevant now than they ever were in 1996. There needs to be a line between freedom and security. We could debate this until doomsday. “Just give us the authority we need–we’ll take care of the rest.” That’s not a fascist speaking but the Acting Chief of Starfleet Security on Earth operating under peace time rules when war just appears to have been declared. There are rules in war but sometimes more flexibility is needed. Not violation of fundamental laws but flexibility. Sisko was talking about being given authority to deploy troops in the streets, break out heavy weaponry in Starfleet stores, etc. It did always bug me though that they are speaking about using the Lakota as if it was the only Starfleet asset available; there should be 20 starships in the sector, not to mention Spacedock, McKinley Station, other orbiting stations and satellites, etc.
Another thing that bugs me is that in the Federation, it seems as if the President of the United Federation of Planets, commander-in-chief, is at the mercy of the advice of the head of Starfleet Operations and the acting Chief of Starfleet Security on Earth. When Leyton and Sisko beam into the President’s office in Paris, the office is dark and Jaresh-Inyo is huddled with several civilian-clad officials, clearly at a complete loss. In reality I would think the President of the Federation in a security crisis would be with his cabinet of top Federation and Starfleet officials, in the Federation’s version of the White House Situation Room or British COBRA, with their own independent backup power supply and secure communication facilities, y’know, LEADING the crisis, issuing orders and taking charge, instead of putting his thumbprint on a PADD and essentially handing over his responsibilities to the equivalent of the military. To me, essentially Jaresh-Inyo abdicated his office for a Starfleet coup, though of course we get to that in part II. It
@50: Maybe Leyton had a separate sabotage operation for the President’s office that knocked out the independent backup power and communication systems.
Aside from all the problems of efficacy and sheer numbers with the blood screenings that others have already mentioned – how is this supposed to be a solution for any length of time? A changeling could swoop in and assume someone’s identity the day after. Will there be periodic screening (and how frequent?) or will the buddy system they employed in “The Adversary” also be required for all Starfleet personnel AND families, indefinitely?
I comment back to you from the far future of 2016, but I thinks it’s seriously rad that this tight knit group of commenters got into the habit of respectfully avoiding or warning of spoilers for LisaMarie.
Ron D. Moore?
It took me awhile to figure out why there was a comment about me, haha :)
But yeah, this is a nice place.
@42: Don’t forget, this episode aired in January 1996, which was only a few months after the terrible Oklahoma City car bombing. Terrorism was certainly on everyone’s mind during this time, and I think that incident was what convinced the American public terrorism could happen anywhere at any time.
What I don’t understand is why the Federation didn’t use Betazoid security officials to screen all entrants to all Federation planets. A telepath would be able to determine if someone was pretending to be someone they weren’t. It’s a large plot hole.
There is an irony to an Irishman playing at fighting the “jerrys.” In both WWI and WWII Ireland refused to declare war on Germany because to do so would have forced them to ally with an occupying nation-England. In fact. Ireland took advantage of WWI to declare independence. During WWII, Ireland did not declare war on Germany, but they did unofficially do things such as keep an eye out for German u-boats.
i was going to write a bit about how relevant the episode is to modern times, but Krad and a bunch of smart commenters nailed it. I had the same feeling when rewatching the TNG episode where the female Starfleet investigator was interrogating everyone on the Enterprise and ultimately (and foolishly) decided to cast aspersions on Captain Picard. I forget the name of the episode, something “drumhead” I think. Someone should have aired that episode in the W. Bush White House.
With respect to Joseph Sisko, he was well played and the character is a lot of fun. However, I couldn’t help but think about what an ass he is, always arguing, refusing to listen to, or even see, his doctor, refusing to take any advise whatsoever and just being generally disagreeable. The actor plays it so well that I found myself genuinely being annoyed by the character.
Refusing the blood screening was a dick move too, especially when he followed it up by willingly doing so after the power outage. While I agree that it is hard to know where the line is in security situations following terrorist actions, there are times, in my opinion, where one has to make small sacrifices for the community. A short drawing of blood, followed by the instant disposal of said blood, is a pretty painless thing to do to help keep society safe. Had Starfleet kept the blood (or the container into which it was drawn) I would feel much differently.
i never considered that Joseph might be a changeling; I just noted that he was an ass. His behavior just seemed to be part of his dick personality. Another thing makes him an ass is his complete refusal to visit his family anywhere but at his home. What a jackass.
Having said the above, I would eat at his restaurant everyday’ I’m getting hungry just writing about him!
@38, I’m not sure where you were in 1996, but terrorism was very much alive and thriving; it certainly didn’t start with 9/11 and was nightly news on a daily basis. And, everyone, let’s stop acting as if Islamist terrorism is, or was, our most frequent concern, right wing terrorism here in the states was in full swing at that time (and before and is still a much, much more frequent problem than Islamist terrorism here in the states).
@56, invading an individuals person in the way you have suggested is definitely going too far and I have to believe that the involuntary mind reading of all entrants to Federation planets would violate several laws, treaties, etc. and would be a huge violation of the rights of an individual. The Involuntary mind reading of an individual would never fly in the Federation (and would likely be a constitutional violation even in today’s USA). Unlike just looking at someone’s blood and then disposing of it, invading someone’s mind and could not be undone and would be a shocking violation of liberty.
Moreover, since the changelings were already on earth, the Federation would have to mind rape their own citizens. The military dictatorship proposed by Leyton would be preferable. I don’t think it would take long at all for the Federation version of the ACLU, or any private citizen, for that matter, to get an injunction from the courts to put a stop to that practice. Compared to the government mind reading all of their citizens, Leyton’s solution is much more innocuous and much less invasive.
That isn’t a plot hole, it’s common sense. I can’t imagine a worse invasion of an individual or of an individual’s privacy. Being forced to share your most intimate (and often involuntary) thoughts would make the Federation an authoritarian society of the worst order (I believe this was also addressed in the “drumhead” episode of TNG).
Wouldn’t it be a much nicer security measure to create a new tradition that whenever people meet, they must have a little meal together first? Instead of taking blood samples, Starfleet personnel could give out chocolate.
Which brings me to my next point – why use Starfleet personnel at all? Is there no police on 24th century Earth?
Does the last scene mean that there are security guards patrolling every street of every city now? Just how many security guards does Starfleet have available? Oh well, I guess the old Star Trek rule “There are only one or two cities on every planet” includes Earth.
@59/Jana: “Which brings me to my next point – why use Starfleet personnel at all? Is there no police on 24th century Earth?”
That was basically the point — that Leyton was using the crisis as an excuse to impose martial law, to supplant civilian government and law enforcement with military personnel. Authoritarians often exploit the public’s fear of outside attack in order to convince them to surrender their rights and liberties, and that’s what the 2-parter was depicting and critiquing.
@59: It’s been mentioned before that crime is virtually non-existent on Earth, so in fact there probably are almost no police on the planet.
Jana: And to add to bguy’s point, the police that are there are likely woefully ill-equipped to deal with something like this, whereas Starfleet personnel are trained in crisis management.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Hold on, though — police aren’t just for dealing with criminals. Their job is to see to public safety, so there would still be a need for them even without crime. Say, searching for missing children, or keeping people out of dangerous areas, or overseeing evacuations in case of natural disasters, or whatever other non-crime-related stuff the police do. I’d think crisis management would be their specialty — although defending against alien infiltrators would be outside their wheelhouse.
@60/Christopher: I was also thinking of the taking of blood samples, which took place before the martial law. Although that was a Starfleet-internal affair, so perhaps that explains it.
Still, I’m not convinced. Doesn’t the president have to ask anybody else before making such a decision? Doesn’t he have any advisors except Leyton? No civilian crisis committee? What kind of democracy is that?
@63/Christopher: Yep. Also, everybody has been waiting for alien infiltrators to show up for quite a while now, so there would have been enough time to give them some extra training.
@63: But the need for most of the community caretaking functions that police perform would also be greatly reduced on the 24th century Earth. Vehicular accidents/breakdowns wouldn’t be a significant issue in a society where most people travel by transporter. (And to the extent that the people on Earth are still using ground vehicles to get around in, I would expect those vehicles to be fully automated and far more mechanically reliable than modern vehicles.) Substance abuse and mental illness likewise appear to be absent from their society. And Earth won’t be suffering from any natural disasters. (It was mentioned in one of the TNG episodes that Earth has a weather modification net that prevents adverse weather.) Thus even for performing community care taking functions, 24th century Earth would need just a tiny fraction of the emergency responders that we have (and I would expect their emergency responders to primarily be trained as paramedics since medical emergencies would be the most common event where emergency responders would be needed.)
@64/Jana: “I was also thinking of the taking of blood samples, which took place before the martial law. “
Yes, I know. My point is that the groundwork for martial law has to be laid first, one step at a time. You can’t just turn a democracy into an authoritarian state overnight; you have to progressively erode the people’s freedoms and convince them bit by bit that it’s for their own good. First you scare them with a threat bad enough that they’ll grudgingly accept a temporary military presence on their streets and in their homes; then, once they’ve gotten used to accepting that, it paves the way for an outright military takeover. This was exactly Leyton’s plan.
Several steps in the actual process had to be skipped over for the sake of having only 42 minutes (well, 84 minutes, since it was a two-parter) to tell the story…………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I think what bothers me is that this is such an apolitical political story. If you want to tell a story about democratic institutions being eroded by fear and conspiracy, your story should feature some democratic institutions. For example, have the president hold an emergency meeting, or convene the Federation Council, or mention that the Federation Council has to approve his decision within two days. Have a short conversation about how there aren’t enough policemen to protect everybody in case of an invasion, and wouldn’t it be great if Starfleet could step in? (I still wonder where they found all those security guards.) All we see is one head of state and a lot of military.
Another flaw is that Earth is apparently governed by the Federation President (or, hopefully, the Federation Council) instead of having a government of its own like any other planet. I know that this was established in TVH, so this episode isn’t to blame, but it still feels wrong. Specifically, Earth and the Federation come across as the same thing – the Federation President declares a state of emergency on Earth and is supposedly worried about not upsetting the human population. The other planets are never even mentioned.
I’ve never needed to see an election or the actual Federation Council to know that the UFP is a democracy. However, you do have a point in that we don’t see a local Earth government… someone has to choose the representative of the planet (or community of planets, Earth Planets, Vulcan Planets, Andorian Planets, etc) to the Federation Council, and someone has to govern the planet itself… like a planetary governor.
@69/MaGnUs: I agree that we don’t need to see the Federation Council to know that the UFP is a democracy. After all, it is mentioned a lot. Even in this episode, when Jaresh-Inyo talks about his past. But not when he makes decisions in the present, and I think that hurts the story.
The thing is, when I watch a story like this, I automatically start questioning the political system. Can the president declare a state of emergency all on his own, without parliamentary backing? For how long? With the experience of centuries, and hundreds of worlds, wouldn’t the Federation have a more robust political system? And so on.
Actually, I believe many countries have laws that allow the executive branch to declare a state of emergency. Usually, however, it requires legislative branch approval to extend it past a certain amount of time.
@71/MaGnUs: Yep, for example twelve days in France. That’s why I asked “For how long?” in my previous comment.
So, it’s probably like that in the Federation. The point is that if misused, this kind of measures can get out of hand, giving an opportunity for guys like Leyton to take advantage of.
@68: I don’t think you can conclude from this episode that Earth doesn’t have its own planetary government separate from the Federation government. Yes, the president declared a state of emergency only for Earth instead of for the Federation as a whole, but wasn’t that be because it was Earth specifically that appeared to be the target of an imminent invasion? The president was clearly uneasy with invoking emergency powers, so it makes sense he would limit the state of emergency decree to just the one planet that appeared to be in imminent danger rather than having it apply Federation-wide.
@73/MaGnUs: But not all democratic systems are equally prone to misuse. I’m a bit disappointed that despite the added experience of several centuries and hundreds of different species, the Federation is portrayed as having such a fragile (and authoritarian) democracy.
@74/bguy: Well, shouldn’t the planetary government be in charge of handling the crisis, from declaring “a planet-wide day of mourning” to letting Starfleet patrol the streets?
@75 – Jana: But it’s not about the the system or the society, it’s about a certain kind of people, like Leyton. If every single citizen of the Federation is an exemplary human being with no flaws, and villains can only come from outside the Federation, then this’d be a pretty boring show.
@76/MaGnUs: I don’t want to see exemplary human beings with no flaws, I want to see a political system that isn’t dependent on exemplary human beings with no flaws. I understand that the story isn’t concerned with the system or the society. I just think that it should be, because political structures matter. That’s what I meant when I called it an apolitical political story.
The system is created by sentient beings that are flawed. Ergo, it can hardly be perfect.
@78/MaGnUs: Of course it can’t be perfect. But it can be better than what we see in this episode. Because flawed sentient beings can learn from experience. For example, the current German political system isn’t perfect, but it is better than the political system of the Weimar Republic.
@75: Why would the planetary government be in charge of responding to an invasion by a foreign power? Even in federal systems national defense is typically the responsibility of the national government. (i.e. if a Chinese invasion fleet was believed to be heading towards Hawaii, it would be the United States government that would take primary responsibility for preparing the defense of Hawaii not the Hawaiian state government.) Thus while the Earth planetary government might assist the Federation government in preparing Earth for possible invasion, I would expect all the real decisions to be made by the Federation President and/or Starfleet rather than the Earth government.
@80/bguy: That’s true about the invasion. But at first, there is no invasion, just one case of terrorism. This should be the Earth government’s job, or, since there’s a changeling involved, perhaps they should work together. Declaring a day of mourning? Earth government. Sending the military to do police work? Hard to say, but at the very least it would be advisable to involve them.
This is all guesswork – we have no idea about the division of tasks in an interstellar federation. Since space is large and it takes a long time to go from one place to another, planetary governments are probably more self-sufficient than the states making up a contemporary federation. But in the episode the planetary government isn’t even mentioned once.
@81: Why would the Earth government be involved in investigating a terrorist bombing that targeted high level Federation government officials? It seems logical that the Federation government would take charge of investigating an attack on its own officials.
I agree with you about the Day of Mourning though. If that was coming from the Federation President then it should have been a Federation wide proclamation.
@82/bguy: Hmm, I figured that crime fighting would probably fall within planetary jurisdiction, but perhaps you’re right. As I said, it’s guesswork. My point is that the writers don’t differentiate between Earth and the Federation, and I still think that’s true.
Street crime, if it existed on Earth, would be the purview of local law enforcement. A terrorist bombing targeting Federation officials is definitely something Federation law enforcement would take care of.
@84/MaGnUs: As I said before, I don’t think that we know all that much about the division of tasks in the Federation beyond the basic fact that it exists (because that’s what “federation” means). We know that the UFP unites many planets with diverse cultures, histories, species, and languages, that it places importance on shared values, and that it is always open to new applicants – more European Union than United States of America, or something in between, but even more diverse than the EU. And much larger distances.
We know furthermore that in the 23rd century, membership in the Federation didn’t even imply Federation officials on a planet, so planetary governments had to be in charge of a lot of tasks. Counterexample: Ardana in “The Cloud Minders”. What happened there to Kirk and Spock surely counts as a terrorist attack, and it seems that the planet council or city council (which is, of course, the same thing :)) was responsible for dealing with it. Of course, this may have changed in the 24th century. Or perhaps there are different degrees of membership, again similar to the European Union, where e.g. some member states have a common currency and others do not.
Please don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that this is a bad episode. It has an interesting premise, a good message, and great characters and locations. Using shapeshifters to address the fear of infiltration and the ensuing paranoia is a perfect metaphor. Very star-trekky. But IMO it suffers from shoddy worldbuilding. I’d probably give it a rating of 6.
Rewatching DS9 for probably the 5th time since I got the DVD boxsets several years ago. I love noticing new things that you would think one would have noticed before.
When Odo is flying around Starfleet HQ as a seagull, Leah Brahms, err i mean Erika Benteen comments excitedly that she’s never seen Odo imitate a lifeform before. Umm, yes she has. A few scenes before, Odo was imitating a potted plant as part of the phaser sweep testing.
Obviously the observation was meant to refer to an animal lifeform, but it’s still kinda funny nonetheless, haha.
@86/Thierafhal: Yeah, that’s always bugged me, the way some people sloppily use “life” to refer only to animals. There was this commercial on kids’ TV when I was younger — I think it was for Tang — where a couple of kids were on an alien planet and the local giant flowers revealed vicious faces and anthropomorphic stem-bodies and started to chase after them, and one of the kids yelled, “The flowers are alive!” As if flowers were normally not alive. Drove me crazy every single time.
Also, doesn’t Odo’s normal humanoid shape count as “imitating a lifeform,” even if you use it to mean animal life?
@@@@@87/ChristopherLBennett: I had a thought about that too. I suppose you could just chalk it up to Benteen blurting it out in surprise, but it still comes across as unnecessarily lazy writing.
@75. JanaJansen: Is it not possible that, like Washington DC, Earth was obliged to give up a certain level of local autonomy in order to act as a properly neutral capital for the United Federation of Planets? (the fact that Earth was a relative newcomer on the Astro-political scene and under-developed as a one-world polity might have helped in this respect; their native institutions were new enough that they could be converted into Federation institutions without the same sort of fight more entrenched polities like Vulcan or Andoria might have put up).
Lockdown rewatch. I know casting guest stars as different characters has been a thing on Trek throughout its many incarnations but I had a real problem with them using Susan Gibney in her role in this story much more than Brock Peters. Leah Brahms was a big character in the life of one the main cast of TNG and it was strongly implied in All Good Things she would marry Geordi at some point in the future, she was far too much ingrained in my mind in that role, if they wanted to use her why not call her character commander Brahms and say it was Leah’s sister. I don’t so much mind Brock Peters here as it is many decades from Star Trek iv and vi and Admiral Cartwright in the Timeline. Minor quibble I know in a good episode but this sort of thing really bugs me.
@90/chadefallstar:
I totally can understand where you’re coming from, although I don’t necessarily share that aversion. In this case, I thought Susan Gibney did a fantastic job of playing the character much differently than how she played Leah Brahms. I vaguely found Captain Benteen familiar, but I didn’t put two and two together during the original airing of this two-parter and only realized when I saw it in reruns. Even after I knew that, I still was able to separate the characters easily. Of course, they also did a great makeup job and Gibney’s trademark mole was not as noticeable as when she played Dr. Brahms.
@90 That does seem like a minor quibble, considering how many of the main cast did likewise. Majel Barrett, Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes, Denise Crosby and Robert Duncan McNeill, to name a few.
@92Beegee The Robert Duncan MaNeill casting bugged me in the same way especially as he’s playing basically the same character as he did in the first duty. The others you mention, with the exception of Majel Barrett, are playing variations of the same cannon character as part of the plot, Relatives, Ancestors, decedents etc so that works for me. And Lwaxana Troi Being played by the same actress as Nurse Chappel is the least of that characters issues to be honest.
@93/chadefallstar:
Robbie McNeill was originally supposed to be the same character, but I read that they changed the name to Tom Paris when they realized they’d have to pay the writer of “The First Duty” for the use of the name. If it’s true, it feels like skulduggery to me, on Paramount’s part, but alas.
@94/Thierafhal: Other way around — using someone else’s character without paying for it would be skullduggery. Creating an equivalent character so you don’t have to pay for it is just business as usual, and not at all uncommon. (Enterprise‘s T’Pol was originally going to be T’Pau until it was changed for the same reason.) Nobody can own a generic idea, only a specific iteration of it.
@95/CLB
Well I didn’t say it was skulduggery, I said I feel like it is. If they intended Tom Paris to be Nick Locarno, realized they had to pay the writer, then slapped a different name on him and kept the same plans for the character… Well there you have it. It feels a little underhanded to me, but it’s just my opinion.
I’m surprised no one challenged @25 CLB on the blood screen thing – in The Adversary, BashirChangling does beat the blood test, he just uses some slight of hand to swap his sample for Eddington’s, right? So I didn’t think the blood screen was shown to be obsolete just yet.
Several posters brought up mining the wormhole – presumably the Federation has some laws against mining a space lane, as well the Bajorans are also likely not cool with the Celestial Temple being treated that way. And it doesn’t seem like that would stop a changling very well to get the info to defeat it.
People also talked about how this is where the Federation lost some innocence – I was thinking about that in relation to Undiscovered Country, where you have a slightly similar story of Federation elites sowing fear (and assassinating the Fed Prez!). I guess the difference here is that initially, our lead characters went along with it, while in UD, Kirk would never have agreed to be involved
@97/kaylarn: “I’m surprised no one challenged @25 CLB on the blood screen thing – in The Adversary, BashirChangling does beat the blood test, he just uses some slight of hand to swap his sample for Eddington’s, right? So I didn’t think the blood screen was shown to be obsolete just yet.”
That does not refute my point — that is my point. The point is that the Changelings had no trouble finding a way to fool the blood test the very first time it was used, which means it’s naive to assume they couldn’t find other ways to fool it. The goal of the test was to detect deception, and it failed at that from the start. Therefore, the test never worked. It just didn’t have enough safeguards built in for its results to be trustworthy.
@100/Christopher: Safeguards can be added.
@101/Jana: Yes, safeguards could be added, but they weren’t. That’s the problem. The writers continued to present the basic, unmodified blood screenings as a reliable Changeling test despite the fact that those selfsame screenings had failed utterly the very first time. It was a contradiction in how the writers presented the concept, undermining it at the start yet then uncritically presenting it as valid, without ever justifying the change.
Yes, you can always speculate in your own mind about how something might have been fixed between episodes. But if you have to resolve an inconsistency by inventing your own hypotheticals, that just means the writers failed to fix the inconsistency themselves.
@102/Christopher: Yes, that’s true. This episode is full of inconsistencies and sloppy concepts anyway, like lack of visible democratic institutions, mixing up Earth and the Federation, etc. Perhaps they would have needed more than one episode to allow the story to unfold in a plausible manner.
At least Sisko’s father’s restaurant is lovely.
@102/103
Actually, didn’t the blood test fail the first TWO times? In “The Way of the Warrior,” Martok had already been replaced with a Changeling I believe. He didn’t remember Worf in “In Purgatory’s Shadow/By Inferno’s Light,” even though their interactions before had been quite heated. He mearly said that he had heard of Worf.
Although when the blood test is initiated by the Changeling, as in Martok’s case, faking it is trivial. Not that the Bashir Changeling seemed to have any difficulty in Doctoring it in “The Adversary,” anyway.
Pun intended.
Regardless, “Homefront/Paradise Lost,” certainly had its flaws, more so than I realized. But I still think it was an effective two-parter. Appropriately shocking that a coup could be fathomable in the Federation. (I’m not sure TNG‘s “Conspiracy” counts as a legitimate coup considering the extenuating circumstances
)
And yes, I agree Sisko’s was a lovely restaurant
. Grandpa Joe’s alligator story was amusing too!
I’m really baffled – the Bashir Changeling didn’t beat the test – do we actually see him tested? He just used the test for his own ends. We get an almost comical close up of terrible slight of hand (I thought for a minute it was bad enough that we would see someone notice it). The blood screen was still sound after that point, based on what the Federation knew. If the point is that it failed because a Changeling could ever be the one administering the test, then that meant literally no protocols were ever worth trying because a Changeling could always potentially be the one carrying it out. Until they learned that the test itself could be fooled, the Federation would have no reason to discount it.
@105/kaylarn: “If the point is that it failed because a Changeling could ever be the one administering the test, then that meant literally no protocols were ever worth trying because a Changeling could always potentially be the one carrying it out. Until they learned that the test itself could be fooled, the Federation would have no reason to discount it.”
That’s a contradictory statement. Whether the test is reliable or not is beside the point if it’s that easy to falsify the report. If there is any step in the process where deceit can go undetected, whether it’s in the test itself, its administration, its reporting, or anywhere along the way, then the overall effort to expose deceit is unsuccessful. That is exactly why it is so foolish to show characters uncritically trusting the test. Even if the test is reliable when used honestly, that doesn’t matter when it can be misused or misreported. By itself, it’s not an adequate safeguard.
What I’m talking about here is not the reliability of the test itself when used as intended. What I’m talking about is sleight of hand, misdirection. It used to be that scientists believed the claims of fraudulent psychics because the psychics passed the tests that they designed — tests based on the assumption that observations could be trusted. Then magicians came along and showed the scientists how the fraudulent psychics were fooling the tests by using magic tricks and misdirection, fooling the perceptions of the observer, so that tests built on the assumption that observations were accurate to begin with were doomed to fail. What you need is a test designed to safeguard specifically against the spoofing of the test.
O’Brien changes his accent because neither Miles O’Brien nor Colm Meaney would be caught dead serving the British crown. They’re both pointedly playing an English fighter pilot, not an Irish one.
There were actually quite a few Irish members of the RAF in WW2, probably most famous being the “Shamrock Spitfire” Brendan Finucane, who was a famous flying ace.