“Let He Who is Without Sin…”
Written by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
Directed by Rene Auberjonois
Season 5, Episode 7
Production episode 40510-505
Original air date: November 11, 1996
Stardate: unknown
Station log: Dax joins Odo and Sisko for a drink. Dax and Worf are planning a trip to Risa. Their relationship is developing in fits and starts, and Worf isn’t thrilled with Dax having lunch with Captain Boday—nor with her telling everyone on the station about their personal lives. Worf’s mood is not improved by Bashir and Leeta asking to come along, though he can’t see any objection to sharing a runabout with them—however his mood gets downright foul when Quark announces that he’s joining them. He wouldn’t give Leeta the time off unless he got to come along, and he’s always wanted to go to Risa.
Quark gives everyone, except Worf, a hor’gahn. Worf, because he’s twelve, refuses to even speak to Quark, instead telling Dax to “tell the Ferengi” to stay in the aft cabin.
They arrive. Bashir and Leeta go off on their own, and Quark pootles off with two hor’gahns. They meet up with Arandis, who was an old friend of Curzon’s. In fact, Arandis was with Curzon when he died—of jamarahon. Dax insists that he died happy.
Worf is visited by Pascal Fullerton of the New Essentialist Movement—basically a 24th-century moral majority that wants to shut Risa down because it embodies the decadent values that are destroying the Federation. Worf insists on attending a rally he holds, despite Dax’s skepticism. Fullerton believes that if the Federation doesn’t change their ways, it’ll be destroyed by the Borg or the Dominion or the Klingons or the Romulans. It’s classic paranoia bullshit.
Bashir and Dax and Arandis are unimpressed. Worf, however, thinks Fullerton has a point. Leeta arrives and she and Bashir explain that they’re there for the Rite of Separation, a Bajoran custom whereby a couple spends one last few days together to remember the good times and have one last fling before going their separate ways.
The Essentialists stage a pretend attack on a dining hall, complete with phaser rifles, albeit powerless ones. It was to prove a point, although it was a dumb one.
Worf is having trouble dealing with Dax’s free spirit and he’s concerned that she doesn’t take the relationship as seriously as he does. But then nobody takes things as seriously as he does…
Leeta and Bashir share a drink out of a bowl, which they then shatter, while reciting a ritual, thus completing the Rite of Separation. Leeta then admits that she’s been thinking about another man for several months: Rom. Both Quark (who witnessed the breakup and was very disappointed in how civilized it was) and Bashir are appalled that she’s attracted to Rom, and Quark hands him a hor’gahn. “You need this more than I do.”
Worf walks in on Dax and Arandis sculpting together. He assumes she’s cheating on him with her, because he’s an idiot, and goes back to their quarters. He shatters the hor’gahn that Quark gave Dax, and then meets with Fullerton. Worf suggests that Fullerton up his game by destroying the weather control systems.
Dax, Quark, and Bashir are talking, wondering where Worf disappeared to, when it starts raining. Fullerton and Worf take credit for the sabotage. Fullerton says that the Federation has to stop playing with toys, and Worf says that if Federation citizens can’t handle rain, they won’t be able to handle an invasion.
Dax confronts Worf about what he’s done. Worf tries to point out Dax’s deficiencies by saying she isn’t like a Klingon woman, but Dax points out that Curzon spent more time with Klingons than he has. Worf is a paragon of Klingon honor and virtue, but he doesn’t have the passion for life that most Klingons have. But growing up surrounded by fragile humans, Worf had to force himself to show restraint. He’s so concerned about losing control that he’s afraid someone he cares about will get hurt.
Fullerton has taken Worf’s uplink and used it to disable the tectonic regulators, so now there are earthquakes. Worf and Dax confront Fullerton and take the uplink. Fullerton tries to convince Worf that he’s turning his back on the Federation. When Worf tries to leave, Fullerton grabs him and backhands him, further proof—if the entire plot wasn’t already proof of that—that he’s an idiot. Worf throws him across the room, announces he’s on vacation, and leaves with Dax and the uplink.
The weather is restored on the day they’re leaving. Leeta goes to pack, Quark goes to find Bashir (last seen at breakfast with a hor’gahn), and Dax convinces Worf to go skinny dipping.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Risa’s perfect weather is an illusion created by technology—not only does the weather grid keep the rains away, it also stops the earthquakes. At least until some moron sabotages it…
The slug in your belly: Curzon looooooooooooooooooved Risa. He loved it so much that he died of jamaharon. Because of course he did.
There is no honor in being pummeled: When Worf was a child on Gault, he was the biggest, the baddest, the toughest kid. On a world of 20,000, it seemed like everyone knew everyone else, and everyone definitely knew “the Klingon boy.” But then, during a soccer game, he accidentally caused the death of one of his teammates, Mikel. After that, he was forced to restrain himself of his passions, to the point where it’s second nature now.
Rules of Acquisition: The Ferengi language has 178 words for rain. The weather after the grid is sabotaged is glebbening. There is also no word for crisp.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: The Bajoran Rite of Separation is delightfully mature. Meanwhile, Worf at one point compares Dax’s beauty to that of a particularly spectacular stellar phenomenon he encountered on the Defiant. Bashir also admits that the real reason why he stopped pursuing Dax is that she’s too much work.
Keep your ears open: “Do not hug me.”
Worf to Bashir after Leeta surprises him with a hug, thus setting the tone for the episode.
Welcome aboard: Chase Masterson is back as Leeta. Monte Markham plays Fullerton, Frank Kopyc plays the Bolian, and, of course, the big guest (who was advertised heavily in the previews for the episode) is Vanessa Williams as Arandis.
Trivial matters: Risa’s weather-control system was established back in TNG’s “The Mind’s Eye.”
Captain Boday was previously referenced in “The Maquis, Part I.”
The references to a Borg threat foreshadows the Borg cube that invades the Alpha Quadrant in the movie First Contact, which would be released a couple of weeks after this episode aired.
Your humble rewatcher had a dramatization of Worf’s accidental killing of Mikel in the comic book Perchance to Dream, and it was also seen during a mind-meld between Worf and Spock in The Brave and the Bold Book 2. I also showed Curzon spending time on Risa in The Art of the Impossible.
Leeta’s interest in Rom was first hinted at in “Bar Association.”
Walk with the Prophets: “I have got to take you on vacation more often.” There is precisely one thing I like about this episode, and I don’t just like it, I love it unreservedly: Worf’s confession to Dax of his accidentally causing the death of a fellow child.
One of the great mysteries about Worf is why he’s so stoic and restrained. He’s unlike any other Klingon we’ve met, something that was only spoken of directly in two conversations between Worf and Guinan in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and “Redemption,” but the reason for it was never really explicated. It wasn’t how the character was conceived. If you read David Gerrold’s novelization of “Encounter at Farpoint” (or, for that matter, his script for “Blood and Fire,” which was never produced as a TNG episode), you see a Worf who is much more like the other Klingons we’ve seen both before and since. (The out-of-the-box explanation was that Michael Dorn’s makeup in the first season would shift position if he changed his facial expressions too much.)
In one scene, it’s all explained, and while it’s fairly clichéd, it also snaps all of Worf’s character into focus. Dorn also delivers the explanation with the same heartbreakingly matter-of-fact tone that he told Dax of his being made fun of by other Klingons when he visited Qo’noS in “The Sword of Kahless.”
Sadly, while that one scene is magnificent, and deserves to be praised, it’s the only thing about this misbegotten disaster of an episode that deserves even a nice thing being said about it.
Well, okay, for those of us who appreciate such things, Terry Farrell, Chase Masterson, and Vanessa Williams all look really hot, and it’s incredibly fitting that Curzon died the same way that Phil Esterhaus did, and the Rite of Separation is pretty cool, but overall this episode is just dreadful. The Essentialists are straw opponents who are stupid and easily proven idiotic, and Worf is made to look far foolish than usual in order to create artificial conflict by having him side with these doofuses.
Warp factor rating: 1
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be appearing at Balticon 48 this weekend (starting today, in fact). When he isn’t doing panels or readings or autographings, he’ll be in the dealer’s room at the Dark Quest Books table, peddling his books (and he’ll have a few copies of The Klingon Art of War for sale, too!). His schedule is here.
The thing about the new essentialists is that they ought to be right. The Federation ought by rights to be decadent as all get out. It just…isn’t. In fact it’s the most badass thing in four quadrants. It’s a lot like the Culture in that respect (or perhaps the Culture is a lot like the Federation in that respect).
Yeah, other than finally explaining a key part of Worf’s character, I don’t remember much about this episode.
Incidentally, speaking of Curzon and Risa, I always crack up in your book at the point when Dax makes fun of Vaughn’s beard (“It looks like a sehlat died on your face.”)
I never minded this episode that much — although that is largely because an episode that features Terry Farrell, Chase Masterson, and Vanessa Williams in bathing suits for most of the hour can’t be all bad. I also liked how mature the Bajoran breakup ritual was, and in principle I liked the attempt to address Worf’s difference from other Klingons.
But I can’t say I like the way it was explained. It was a very cliched, hokey, afterschool-special kind of explanation. Few people’s entire personalities are defined by a single incident. I did find the Fullerton subplot and Worf’s sudden puritanical turn to be labored, but the soccer-death backstory was the one thing I found really annoying about the episode. The one good thing about it is that the producers finally remembered the bit about Gault from “Heart of Glory.” Back in TNG: “Family” they seemed to have forgotten that altogether and thought Worf grew up on Earth. This tried to reconcile that, which I appreciated.
The problem with Risa episodes is that Trek is supposed to be family viewing, so any attempt to actually show Risa, rather than just drop suggestive hints about it, must necessarily be tamer than it should, and thus stories about the sexiest place in the galaxy tend to end up rather bland. Enterprise‘s “Two Days and Two Nights” in particular is so boring and sedate that it makes Risa look like Pascal Fullerton’s dream vacation spot.
The New Essentialists are pretty on the ball with their assessments of the Federation (which gets proven when the Dominion invades Betazed and the Breen manage to hit Earth), but they get to be stick in the mud “no fun robots” for the sake of this episode. If they had been in any other episode, there might have been a chance for them to not be total jerks and for their opinions to be given proper consideration.
Anyway, I totally agree with KRAD’s assessment of the episode. It would be nice if everything but the Worf scene got tossed into the Marianas Trench if/when Paramount does DS9 blu-rays, but I doubt we’ll be granted that mercy.
Seems sort of odd that there are no consequences when a serving Starfleet officer sabotages a civilian weather control system.
I dont know, i find this episode fun, a guilty pleasure if you will. My only issue is when they arrive on Risa amd Arandis spots them and says “Dax?”
She has not seen this new host. So does she just wander around Risa asking, “Dax?” To every Trill she sees?
@6: Jadzia Dax is an officer on one of the most important posts in the Federation, where a lot of big, newsworthy stuff has happened. And since Arandis was close to Curzon Dax, she’s probably made some effort to keep up on what’s become of Dax since they last, err, met. So it’s not impossible that she’d seen a picture of Jadzia.
So can these rewatches score as low as zero out of ten then? It was a terrible episode but it did have a few redeeming features, one of which was a very powerful one, yet it did not manage to scrape by with a 2. Surely only a terrible episode with no redeeming features should score as low as 1.
@8
Oh my yes… If you can stomach it, go check the rewatch for the TNG episode Shades of Grey
I’m not sure its paranoid to prepare for an invasion by one or more of that lot. But its stupid to prepare for an invasion by sabotaging the Federation equivalent of Las Vegas when you should be building shipyards and training Starfleet reservists.
Qo’noS is a whole planet, so I’m sure there are Klingons just like Worf. I’m sure there are Klingons just like the Essentialists, complaining that drinking bloodwine, singing opera, headbutting, and having bed-breaking sex show a fundamentally unserious approach to the Warrior’s Way.
I’m not sure there’s ever been a Risa episode that rose as high as mediocre. About the best thing that can be said about this one is that it doesn’t have Vash in it. Even the one good thing in the script is a horrible cliche. I also felt like Worf was really out of character here. Sure, he’s a stick in the mud and terribly repressed, but he’s never shown signs of being one to impose his attitudes on those around him. It’s all as contrived as Risa’s weather and tectonic stability. If they were on the “Shore Leave” planet, I’d say the whole thing was cobbled up just so Worf could have a good time.
@10 – I think you hit the nail on the head there. Fullerton’s not an idiot because he thinks the Federation should be shoring up its defenses, he’s an idiot because he thinks that sabotaging the equivalent of Las Vegas will prove his point. People go on holiday even in times of war. Even if the rest of the Federation were primed for battle, Risa would still be Risa, because that’s the only purpose it serves.
I had to rush to get this posted before heading out to Balticon, so I totally forgot to mention Worf’s gold lame bathing suit. Thanks to the mighty Chris Lough for making up for my horrible horrible oversight by making Worf holding them the main picture for this episode.
And yes, the point is that targeting Risa is a spectacular example of getting it completely wrong.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The thing is the Essentialists are full of paranoid guano. The Federation and by extension Starfleet are not weak pathetic organizations that haven’t been able to defend their turf. To point out that the Dominion invaded Betazed and the Breen strike Earth ignores the failures by “stronger” governments. The militaristic Cardassians and Romulans are so agressive that they fall hook, line, and sinker for a threat they cannot conceive and lose their military intel forces disrupting both governments. However the Cardassians are shattered to the point they ally with their enemies to gain some advantage, with costs. The Klingon Defence Forces don’t fare better against the Borg than Starfleet and they get tossed out of their Cardassian conquests fairly easily. And let’s not forget that the Federation fools the Romulans into fighting the Dominion.
All in all none of the “strong” governments prove to be better than the “weak” Federation.
I think the point is that Fullerton’s fearmongering rhetoric is really just an excuse for intolerance of lifestyles different from his own. He’s basically the 24th-century equivalent of people today who say that birth control and gay marriage and family planning will weaken the nation and lead to its destruction. His bunch targeting Risa is no different from back when my county’s former sheriff seemed to devote more effort to going after adult video stores and homoerotic art exhibits than he did to getting gangs and drugs off the streets or purging the racists from the police department.
@16 – It’s convenient how they spend their resources going after a group they don’t approve of instead of allocating those resources to solving problems, then blame the marginalized group for wasting resources when they rightfully demand to be left alone. Also, that sounds like a hell of a place to live if the sherriff’s department cared more about adult bookstores than violent crimes.
This comment just makes me want to cry, given the present reality.
@17: I’m probably exaggerating. Cincinnati’s not a bad place to live at all. I just meant it seemed like a waste of effort they could’ve directed more usefully.
Isn’t this the episode that the writers said later on that they wish they could have been able to do a little more work on the script before filming and that if they could, they would go back and redo this episode with a more polished script even to this day?
@19: I know Robert Hewitt Wolfe said so in the past few months.
@18 As a former Cincinnatian, I always say it’s a nice place to be from.
@19: I think that would be true of most TV episodes, or most creative works in general. As the saying goes, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” Especially when it’s under the time constraints of a regular series.
The problem with Risa episodes is that Trek is supposed to be family viewing, so any attempt to actually show Risa, rather than just drop suggestive hints about it, must necessarily be tamer than it should, and thus stories about the sexiest place in the galaxy tend to end up rather bland.Enterprise’s “Two Days and Two Nights” in particular is so boring and sedate that it makes Risa look like Pascal Fullerton’s dream vacation spot.
@3
That’s the problem a Trek ended up having thanks to its mass market popularity. Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica was able to offer more risky material, at times, because it was a cult hit with a small devoted audience. Babylon 5 was able imply a lesbian relationship between two main characters.
Sadly, something as mainstream as Trek has to resort to special episodes like The Outcast and Rejoined in order to portray any kind of risky content. It shouldn’t be deemed risky. It should be deemed natural. Alas, there’s still the need to please the more conservative viewers out there. That’s not a Trek problem, exclusively. That’s a movie industry problem as a whole, and it opens up the whole can of worms regarding sexuality with american audiences.
Despite that, I still enjoyed Enterprise’s Risa episode more than this one, despite its own faults.
I know I would have enjoyed a Risa episode with actual nudity and sex. I don’t think the episode itself is that bad. Only tame (and it really attacked Worf’s credibility as a Starfleet officer). Profit and Lace would end up much worse.
@23: I think the word you want is risqué, meaning daring, suggestive, or bordering on impropriety.
Should be at least a warp factor of 2. One for each of Vanessa Williams ah…em… *whats that over there?
What bugs me about this one is that, when you read the Memory Alpha entry, it is full of the makers talking about what they wanted the show to be and how they were hamstrung by the television censorship rules. But these people are television professionals. They must have known that they would never be allowed to show half-naked bacchanalean orgies on a show that was considered tea-time viewing. So in other words, they set out to make the show anyway, knowing from the start that it could only be a half-assed attempt at what they really wanted to do. Sometimes when someone sets out to do something a bit brave and fails, you can applaud the effort. Other times, as with this case, you just have to marvel at the stupidity.
Having said that, it did have a few amusing moments, so I would maybe have upped the score by one for that.
I think they really missed a chance here by not having Worf actually wear his golden speedos on Risa. That sight alone would’ve raised the episode’s score by an extra point.
@26: Actually that’s pretty much par for the course with making TV: You begin by imagining what you’d like to do if you were free of any constraints (whether from budget, FX technology, logistics, running time, censorship, or anything else), and then you pare it down to what you can actually achieve within the existing limits. For instance, you write a scene with a huge crowd of extras and then pare it down to three, or you write a scene set in a vast alien ruin with giant statues and then pare it down to a glowing stone doughnut with a few fallen columns around it. If you start out working within an assumed set of limits, then you may end up limiting yourself more than you needed to and miss an opportunity. But if you try to push the envelope, then you can sometimes manage to stretch it.
TOS did this with sexual content and skin all the time. For instance, they’d send the network censors an edit that showed more skin than they really intended, and the censors would say, “No, dial it back,” and they’d cut out just enough to end up with the shot they’d wanted in the first place, still pushing the boundaries of what you could show on TV at the time while making the censors feel they’d succeeded in imposing restraint.
I’ve always thought that the Federation is just so square that what we’re seeing with Risa is the wild stuff.
Blech. I was disappointed to see this episode after “Trials and Tribble-ations” in the Hulu list, as the bad memories of it came rushing back. Having rewatched it, I hate it even more.
Worf was written as a buffoon in this, siding with those Essentialists idiots. I could never forgive the writing. The backstory of Worf as a kid finally clarified things, but its sooooo cliched, its more blech. The only, and I mean only, redeemable part of the episode is seeing Vanessa Williams, Terry Farrell, and Chase Masterson in bathing suits. Rawr. Beyond that, just awful
Good points from everyone so far about why this is such an unfortunate episode. I also wondered how the heck Worf & co. gained control of the weather grid. As a Starfleet officer, does Worf just have access to its schematics, which he shared with an engineer associate of Fullerton? Is it a Starfleet-run weather control center? Did he storm the building and knock out everyone who worked there? I guess this question just doesn’t really merit much thought in such a lousy episode.
-Andy
I would still rather watch this episode than “Profit and Lace” (which was borderline offensive) or “Move Along Home” (which is also Avery Brooks’ least-favourite episode).
At least this episode attempted to make a statement about something, even if it lost a lot in the execution. And it had some good moments (I’ve used the word “glebbening” on occasion to describe some particularly inclement weather.)
That reminds me — why would Ferengi verbs end in “-ing”? That always bugged me. It makes them sound more like Lewis Carroll nonsense words than vocabulary from another language.
@32 – That is another slight problem I have with this review, it still rankles with me that krad gave “Move Along Home” – in my opinion not merely the worst episode of the DS9 franchise, but the worst of any ST franchise (even worse than the Janeway and Paris have wild lizard sex one in VOY) – a rating of 4, much lower ratings to episodes since which have been nothing like as bad.
@33 – I would assume that the original Ferengi word was onomatopoiec, and that the universal translator had taken that part of the word and rendered it into English syntax by adding the “ing”.
I absolutely hated this episode, and I’m not one to hate much. Terry Farrell, Chase Masterson, and Vanessa Williams in swimsuits is an automatic +6 to any episode, so without that this one rates at a -5 on a ten point scale. I didn’t like anything else about it, including the backstory for Worf. Perhaps if I had watched it on mute …
@24
You’re absolutely right. I meant to say risqué.
Never write elaborate sentences in a hurry. Always make the time to get it right.
Because of the Memorial Day holiday, and because I was late getting home from Balticon 48, the rewatch of “Things Past” won’t go up until Wednesday.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
OMG, krad, I vehemently disagree with this rating, it should not be a positive number at all! That implies that (if it were a warp engine) it actually goes somewhat forward. It’s not even a 0 (like Shades of Grey, which, by the way, I would absolutely watch over this one!), it GOES BACKWARDS. It HARMS the way I view the franchise and the characters. OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE I JUST WATCHED THIS.
I remember thinking, “Oh, this one is supposed to be bad! But I kind of like the bad episodes, sometimes they are kind of cheesy and weird but fun. How bad can it be? Maybe it’s Ferengi hijinks or something.”. But no, it is offensive dreck.
And here’s the thing: I don’t particularly care for Dax (and especially not for Curzon). I would probably be very irritated by her in real life. I’m not one of those free spirt types and sometimes I find her a bit pushy (like that stupid prank she plays on Odo, moving his stuff around). In fact, I would probably never go to Risa, as I have fairly stodgy Catholic morals. I’m not a huge fan of the Dax/Worf relationship as it just seems a bit out of left field for me (why on earth would Dax want to take him to Risa, anyway??).
But I don’t care, I still find this episode so beyond ridiculous. Not even for the Fundamentalists – ooops, I mean Essentialists (and look, I’m no Fundamentalist, that has a very specific meaning in religion, but I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at this and wondered if it’s meant to point a finger at Christians in general, especially given the title which is an oft taken out of context verse used pretty much any time any Christian has an opinion somebody doesn’t agree with – and I’m NOT trying justify the kinds of actions/attitudes Worf exhibits in this episode, by the way). That could almost be an interesting episode – the idea that having so much luxury and ease could dull our abilities and make us vulnerable. That said, using a VACATION PLANET is hardly a rational gauge for the state of the Federation and their work ethic. And how on earth was Worf not convicted of EFFING TERRORISM?????
But no, my big beef is the whole relationship dynamic here. As I stated before, I always found the violent part of their sexual relationship a bit distrubing; equating excitement with violence (also, does HIPAA not exist in the Federation??? Why are people always sitting around discussing other crewmembers’ visits to the Infirmary like it’s public knowledge, and why does Bashir divulge this information?). The fact that Dax is willing to stay with somebody who is violent and ubercontrolling and spouts all this bull**** about trust and loyalty blah blah blah because he has the heart of a poet or some such CRAP. And I’m sorry, but I hate that it turns Worf into this kind of character! At one point I just turned to my husband and said, “is that really what this episode is going to be? About Dax and Worf’s relationship troubles”? And to make it worse, they portray it as so dysfunctional and gross (in my opinion).
Also, while I sympathize with Worf accidetnally killing somebody and that causing him to be a very disciplined, self controlled person in terms of his emotions, his views on women/relationships go way further than that. And I found it really hard to believe that one conversation with Dax is then just going to ‘cure’ him of this.
This episode is dead to me.
By the way, did anybody finish Quark’s hor’gahn distribution speech with, “and none for Gretchen Wieners!”
In reading your review, you just reminded me of another reason I hated this episode: Bashir saying Dax is ‘too much work’.
AAARGH BASHIR YOU ARE SUCH A ‘NICE GUY TM’. I really, really, really hate the concept of ‘high maintanence’, etc as used to describe women, because more often than not, it’s used to describe women who just want basic respect, emotional connection, and to dismiss any greievance or upset as ‘hysteria’. No, Bashir, she’s not too much work, you’re just not compatible and/or she’s just not into you, end of story. So sorry your work of ‘being nice’ was all wasted.
Also, I didn’t really like the soccer story for about the reasons CLB mentioned – I don’t think it explains his deep rooted misogyny. Or maybe the show writers think it does and don’t even realize how troubling his ideas are? Plus, as a mother it just makes me sad because then of course I think of my own son getting his neck snapped on a soccer field.
@38/39 – I’m not sure I find Wolf violent or ubercontrolling. From a violence perspective (if we take the premise that as a Klingon, physically he could snap Dax’s neck without thinking twice), it appears he restrains his Klingon lovemaking to a safe level with Dax and only as an indulgence to her desires. From a point of control, I think he expresses his disapproval, repeatedly, but at no point does he appear to force her to agree with him. I also don’t see him as misogynistic, but misanthropic.
As far as Bashir, I don’t think he was referring to Dax as being too much work because she wanted respect or emotional connection. I think Dax is just too frustrating. She’s like the anti-Worf. He takes everything too seriously, except for the few moments where he doesn’t. She takes nothing seriously, except for the few moments where she does. Trying to engage someone like that seriously is a lot of work, especially when they appear to prefer the pursuit more than the relationship. At some point, you have to decide if the joy from a relationship would be worth the expenditure of effort in procuring/maintaining it. If it isn’t, it’s “too much work.”
Everything else, I pretty much agree (well, except the distribution scene, but that’s because I don’t get the reference).
@38: Consensual, mutual rough sex is not sexual violence. There are many couples who are into S&M and it’s perfectly healthy when done in the context of mutual respect and responsible practice. A violent situation is one in which participants have no control and are made victims, either of circumstance or of other people. In S&M or rough sex play, there is total mutual consent and concern for the participants’ safety, just as there would be in a sporting event like wrestling or football. It’s rough, and it needs to be done with care, but it’s not violence.
It’s essential to be alert to abusive relationships, yes, but it doesn’t help when you don’t know how to distinguish the real thing from a consensual fetish.
@41 – I do totally agree with you on that, and mentioned that on another thread wehre I mentioned that it wasn’t my thing and was a bit disconcerting to see to see her come in all bruised up, but that I understood that in-universe it’s meant to be consensual so I can accept it. It’s just that, in light of all the other stuff in the way this relationship is portrayed in this episode, it just…I don’t know, doesn’t sit will with me. Especially because she talks about how exciting or whatever it is. I don’t know, I just know of too many people who get into ‘exciting’ relationships that are flat out harmful, so I don’t think this does a good job making the distinction (and I do have some friends in the kink community who have also struggled with abuse so I know how fraught this can all be).
@40 – Oh, I agree with you about Dax being frustrating. If I were male, I would not want to be in a relationship with her either. I just really dislike the phrase because of the way it is often used in a dismissive/derogatory way and I guess that’s just my projection. Plus, it also implies Bashir gave up the chase for his reasons, and not out of respect for Dax’s reasons that she just wasn’t interested (again, readnig too much into it). Like, if it WASN’T too much work, he’d STILL be pursing her. I know some women do enjoy being pursued (and Dax may be one of them), but I never have so…that’s the bias I come at it with.
For somebody that is compatible with her, it wouldn’t be too much work at all. Well, except as all relationships are work, since they really do require a lot of work!
Heh, you’re right, Worf may better be classifed as misanthropic in general…he may very well get all bent out of shape if he saw a male talking to a former lover too.
Oh, also, I did think his jealousy regarding Arandis was kind of funny (even if it was unfounded) in that we know Dax has already had some issues with former flames…heh.
Actually, I think that this episode was so poorly written that the “high-maintenence” thing was meant to be an inside joke at Bashir’s expense.
As far as I’m concerned, the only episode of DS9 worse than this is “Meridian.” Compared to those nuggets of joy, “Move Along Home” and “Profit and Lace” seem like masterpieces.
I actually kind of liked Move Along Home. It was weird enough to appeal to my ‘so bad it’s good’ sensibilities. I would watch it again.
Do NOT hug me.
That line alone makes this episode at least a 2.
Worst. Episode. Ever. It manages to make two characters I really like come off as terrible people, acting in insane ways, for no good reason whatsoever. Worf behaves like a sullen child the entire episode and then we’re supposed to forgive because of some event that happened when he was a kid? He’s been in plenty of relationships. We’ve even seen some them! Ugh.
Meanwhile Dax has forced him to come to the single place in the whole galaxy he would probably least like to vacation and is willfully, blindingly unwilling to acknowledge this fact. Ugh.
Worf commits a massive act of economic terrorism and everyone is just like…[shrug]? There are no consequences whatsoever? Vanessa Williams is still hanging out with them at the end? Ugh.
The Puritan guy has a stupid ideology but suddenly turns into a destructive genocidal maniac? Like: he’s going to destroy the planet, or at least a portion of it? And kill everyone there? Um, what? Then, Worf comes and tells him to stop and he’s like ‘oh, okay, sure. But really I’m upset that you (person who I just met) have betrayed me. So mad that I’m going to backhand you?’ Ugh.
Ugh ugh ugh ugh. This episode made me embarrassed for everyone who had to appear on it, embarrassed for everyone involved in writing and producing it, and embarrassed for myself for liking this show.
Continuity question: There’s an episode where we see the Trill symbiont being moved from Curzon to Jadzia on a sort of operating table. In fact, I think it’s the only time we ever see what Curzon looked like, and of course he’s quite old at that point. But how does that square with dying of jamarahon on Risa?
@48: Presumably he didn’t die immediately, but had heart failure (most likely) as a result of his, err, exertions on Risa and then lingered long enough for the transplantation to occur.
What this episode has going for it: Terry Farrell, Chase Masterston and Vanessa Williams in bathing suits. Nice Southern Cal. beaches and sunsets. Nothing else. NOTHING else. Why does Worf join with the “New Essentialists” three seconds after hearing about who they are? Why has this key character been around for a decade but a key formative part of his life (accidentally killing someone) has NEVER been mentioned before. I also find Jadzia Dax very, very annoying. She always seemed to be the character with all the answers when it came to science scenes (based on her “I’m 300+ years old in a 30-year-old body”) which was very annoying and then elsewhere she seemed like @38 said, she’s too free spirited and pushy for me. I don’t mean to be insulting but there may have been a bit of truth to Sirella’s statement about Jadzia in “You Are Cordially Invited” that she behaves like a Risian slut.
I dissent. This episode may have some weak villains or premises. In the end, the episode elucidates much about Worf and why he is a proverbial tight-ass (if not an outright prude) through his involvement with the New Essentialists (who indirectly smack of 20th/21st Century prudes). Furthermore, Jadzia brought Worf to Risa to unwind (rather than change or superimpose personality traits) him-and she succeeds masterfully by thoughtfully rebutting each premise Worf proceeds on. In the end, Jadzia helps Worf through the accumulated misery he has-and makes Worf realize that he has no right to superimpose his misery on everyone else-which the New Essentialists have given him a chance to do. I enjoy this episode immensely. Yes, I may be prejudiced at the premise of Risa. But, it’s fun. And its thoughtful. And it is good commentary on relationships-and what to (not) do. I respectfully dissent.
I dissent as well.
Re-watching this episode now, almost all of Jadzia’s dialog with Worf is laced with tragic irony–this episode, more than any of the others so far, really sells the relationship between the two. I also find the “essentialists” to be too stupid to be taken seriously–because I’ve met with people who are exactly that stupid pushing similar ideologies, and in real life these people *are* dangerous. These misguided, hateful people are more threatening than any alien of the week… because they very well may end up killing people .
And it’s silly to dismiss World’s story as hokey or unrealistic. Traumas can deeply affect our personalities, especially those recieved in childhood–most people don’t have traumas, though, so in a sense they aren’t common… and neither are dramatic characters.
@52/Arsene Lupin: It’s not that it’s unrealistic for people to have childhood traumas. I lost my mother when I was seven and was bullied throughout grade school, so you don’t have to tell me that. I just think it’s a bit facile to say that all of Worf’s adult personality was shaped by a single extreme incident in his childhood. Being a Klingon orphan raised among humans should’ve created an ongoing pattern of challenges to his self-control, a constant factor in his life throughout his formative years, so it’s overly simplistic to attribute all his humorless, self-regimented behavior to a single event. And I feel that having him actually kill the boy rather than just hurting him was, well, overkill. It was trying too hard to sell a point that could’ve been made more subtly.
I will join in the dissent. Yes, some of the characters’ actions are stilted and maybe a bit out of character, but I watched the whole thing and enjoyed most of it, which means it’s a lot higher than a 1 in my ranking system. And has been noted, seeing three very different and very beautiful women costumed that way was a nice diversion. And I also have to reiterate the response to the suggestion that Worf is somehow abusive. As others have noted, some people are into rough sex, and so long as it is consensual, what is the problem? besides, it seems to me that Dax gives as good as she gets in that department. as for the plot contrivances, the most glaring thing to me is Worf ruining the well earned vacations of thousands of people, with no consequences. who does he think he is?
In Blood Oath, didn’t Jadzia tell Kang that Curzon died of an illness and the doctors were trying to keep him alive for just one more day? 31: I imagine Risa is a Federation world and the Risians are Federation members. We’ve always known that Worf has to be careful around women who are non-Klingons; he said as much in the TNG episode Justice and the Edo world reminds me of Risa. 40: Worf admitted in You Are Cordially Invited that he takes everything seriously while Jadzia seems more frivolous; O’Brien observed that was an accurate assessment of both.
David: my interpretation is that it was in the midst of jamaharon that he had the attack that eventually killed him. He was hospitalized, there was nothing to be done (despite his bitching to be kept alive), and finally his symbiont was removed and implanted in Jadzia (as we saw in “Emissary”).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Back on this ep on my own rewatch again. I keep thinking “DS9: The 700 Club vs. Hedonism II, aka The Swimsuit Issue.” Is this the same Worf who once said “Nice planet” when a scantily-clad Edo blonde embraced him in TNG’s “Justice?” Definitely could’ve been run through a few more drafts. And I just noticed: When Worf says “…he died the next day.” *HUGE LIGHTNING FLASH*. Come on, seriously?!
Also, about Dax’s swimwear: not only does she look stunning, but that gradient colour spectrum design is amazing!
Worf was barely a character in TNG S1. Barely more than an extra, I mean, no real personality, character development, etc.
Is a great line. It’s the only good thing about this episode. It’s really bad.
Can we talk about the title? I’m always saying “why do people get ‘who’ and ‘whom’ wrong so often, nobody gets ‘he’ and ‘him’ mixed up.” But this paraphrase of the Authorised Version does!
The confusion is that the AV quite rightly, in English grammar terms, has it “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone” In the attempt to shorten it, abbreviators slip up and write the equivalent of “let he first cast a stone”
Hm…I suppose it depends where we are thinking the sentence breaks. Is the unit ‘He Who Is Without Sin’, which makes He the subject? Or does He belong to ‘Let’, which makes it the object of the verb? Is it more like Let Him, Who Is Without Sin?
Now I’m gonna go down the rabbit hole on this :)
I did find this though, which seems to agree with you :)
https://www.grammarbook.com/homonyms/let-he-who-is-without-sin.asp
The original line wasn’t actually written in English anyhow, so it’s hard to “get it right” when every use of it in English is a translation…..
Kind of like how TNG‘s “Who Watches the Watchers?” and Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen are both accurate translations of a Latin phrase….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@62/krad: I don’t think the complaint is about the fidelity to the original line, just that the formation “Let he” is ungrammatical in English.
krad, you’re doing that thing where some Americans claim it’s fine to write “al Queeda” because there’s no such thing as one right transliteration from the Arabic. It’s true, but there are plenty of wrong ones, and “Queeda” is definitely one of them.
I would accept any number of translations into English, just not the ones that aren’t grammatical in English. There are an infinite number of rational numbers, but that doesn’t mean any number is rational.
I wonder how it would be to film this episode nowadays. Part of the reason it’s a mess is as the writers say: Risa’s supposed to be this planet of hedonistic pleasure and maybe even debauchery. Instead, the depictions were always very tame because of the time slot and because it was the 1990s, which was much more restrictive in terms of what could be shown on screen compared to today. Even if it was a network show, they could push the envelope a lot farther, just as they pushed the envelope in TOS by showing skin and TNG with same-sex relationships and even DS9 with the so-called lesbian kiss in the last season. What was considered daring or risque 50 years ago is part of our everyday life today and what was risque 20 years ago or even 10, would barely cause a ripple except among the very prudish (which is fine if they want to be that way, that’s up to them).
@65/SethC: The time slot had nothing to do with it, since DS9 was a first-run syndicated show (as was TNG) and different local stations showed it at different times on different days of the week. It could be in any time slot from weeknight prime time to late night to Sunday afternoon.
And I think you have it backward — first-run syndicated shows were often subject to less censorship than network shows, because the lack of a network meant that there was one less layer of executives imposing rules and restrictions on a show. Certainly the most risque thing I ever remember seeing in ’80s TV was on a first-run syndicated show, TNG’s sister show War of the Worlds: The Series. It was a second-season episode about the aliens putting subliminal messages in a perfume commercial (the third subliminal-message plot they’d done in two years), and the commercial, shown several times during the episode, featured a fully nude couple whose naughty bits were hidden only by their strategic limb placement. It was so racy that my local station wouldn’t even air it and I had to watch it on a station from a neighboring city 50 miles away.
I’ve seen this episode a bunch of times, including when it originally aired, and yeah I never much cared for it.
But I watched it again this week (August 2020) as part of yet another DS9 rewatch and I was struck by how relevant it is.
You say “The Essentialists are straw opponents who are stupid and easily proven idiotic”, yet they’re literally the “Make Federation Great Again” crowd. We’re literally seeing this now, stupid and easily proven idiocy, but MILLIONS OF REAL PEOPLE ARE FALLING FOR IT! All Worf is missing is a dumb red hat.
Anyway, it’s still a terrible episode, but there’s some new stuff to chew on now.
Lockdown Rewatch… ah well we all make mistakes… best to imagine the one great Worf scene took place in another episode and remove all memories of the rest of this.. apart as the main review says from what Terry Farrell, Chase Masterson and Vanessa Williams were wearing…
You know you’re in for a bad time when the villain of the episode is just some guy ranting against the evils of taking vacations.
I think some of the comments have hit the nail on the head as to why the villain of this episode makes no sense. You can’t judge a society’s ability to cope by how it behaves on vacation. Everything we’ve seen up to this point of the Federation displays a mature and highly competent civilization. The essentialist leader talks about Starfleet as if it were some separate entity the Federation calls upon for help in times of crisis, when actually it is the product of the Federation, composed of Federation citizens doing their best to make the galaxy a better place. And if those citizens want to let loose on a pleasure planet every once in a while, where’s the harm in that?
@70/David Pirtle: The fact that Fullerton’s rhetoric makes no sense is the point. He’s no different from today’s culture warriors who make nonsensical straw-man moral arguments as an excuse for what’s really just the pursuit of power. It’s not about really standing for something, it’s about giving people scapegoats to resent and fear and blame their problems on, and claiming that they alone can fix it so that people need to submit to their authority. Often, the incoherence of what they claim to stand for is intentional, because it selects for the most gullible, most easily fooled and manipulated followers.
As soon as you see Monte Markham’s name in the credits, you can be sure he’ll be playing a villain. He’ll always be Allison’s rapist father on Melrose Place. He was also a cop killer in an episode of Murder, She Wrote.
@72/bgsu98: “As soon as you see Monte Markham’s name in the credits, you can be sure he’ll be playing a villain.”
He played his share of good guys, including the title role in a 1969 TV series adaptation of the film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Perry Mason in the failed 1970s reboot (opposite “The Mark of Gideon”‘s Sharon Acker as Della Street). Martin Caidin wanted him to play Steve Austin in The Six Million Dollar Man, which is how he got the guest role of “The Seven Million Dollar Man” after failing to get the lead. And he was a regular as the lifeguard captain in the first two seasons of Baywatch.
I’ve never heard of any of those, except for Baywatch, which I can’t say I remember much of. Perhaps he’s just more memorable as a villain. Kind of like when Ray Wise showed up on Voyager’s “Hope and Fear.” You just knew Leland Palmer was going to end up being a bad guy.
This episode is terrible on so many levels. Not only does Word commit sabotage without any repercussions, he spends most of the time being racist. The biggest issue with Worf, and his defining personality in DS9, is that not only does he follow Klingon tradition, but anyone else, no matter what culture they are from, must also follow Klingon culture.
Ancient Bajoran ritual of separation? Eye roll and huffiness. People not doing things as a Klingon would? They are not only wrong but bad. Worf cannot tolerate any difference or deviation from how he would personally live, even though other Klingons act very differently.
But that is because ultimately, Worf is a classic abuser. He goes through the Honeymoon phase even when complimenting Jadzia, but he also wants to control everything she does (for her own good). He behaves impulsively by shutting down the weather, but Jadzia is the one who has to learn self control. He tries to isolate her by keeping her away from friends, by controlling what she shares with them, and by ruining Risa because she won’t behave as he wants.
The biggest sin of this episode is that Jadzia stays with him, when really anyone in a similar relationship should be calling domestic abuse helplines. I won’t get into the fact that Worf is literally hurting her, as it is portrayed as consensual.
It is all about control and the episode explicitly rewards Worf’s behavior. I expect more from Star Trek than condoning spousal abuse, but after seeing some of the garbage episodes in other Trek series, it isn’t surprising.
Monte Markham also played the lead for a season in the mid-60s sitcom The Second Hundred Years. He played a turn of the century, 30 something prospector who had been frozen in an avalanche in Alaska in 1900, and then was revived and brought to live with his 67 year old son (who he may have never met) and his 30 something grandson, who I think he also played. It was a cute show, ran for 26 episodes, and I don’t think it’s available on any streaming services at the moment.
I think the episode was a lot of fun just because I’ve been on many vacations where people try to make me “have fun” and ignore every statement of mine that I was perfectly content with what I was already doing.
Jadzia in particular ignored every one of Worf’s requests and took him to a place he didn’t like with people he doesn’t like (two of which are having breakup sex). That too is an experience we all know if you’ve been forced on vacation with not especially close family (or close family).
The whole Essentialists thing was actually unnecessary and didn’t fit Worf’s personality. I could totally see Worf attending their rally but he’d have arrested them (no authority on RIsa or not) the moment they brought even unloaded phasers into someone’s house.
In other words, I actually enjoy it as a parody of vacations and how they can very often be hell in paradise.
The Bajoran parting ritual and Leeta and Bashir both being so chill are pretty interesting and pleasant. Everything else about this episode is dreadful.
Militaristic and draconian movements frequently fantasise that sexual liberation weakens nations, and while the Essentialists starting their crusade at Risa is absurd, it is about as absurd as human history often is. I think the premise could have been handled well had Fullerton been made quite a sinister and dangerous character and had Worf’s sympathies been more subtle and organic, but Fullerton is just a daft, damp goof and Worf comes uncomfortably across as a capricious, jealous child. It ends up being less Cabaret in space and more the nerd fraternity TPing a stuck up principal’s car in an awful 90s coming of age flick. Really poor.
I oddly remember this episode quite well mainly because I feel this is the final time Worf is written so terribly. This episode starts this arc very much at the bottom, but from here it finally feels like he grows, finally, into a fully realised character as his relationship with Dax – and the rest of the crew – develop, he gains an understated sense of humour, the writers stop using him for fish out of water plots, episodes about Klingon politics are handled in a more sophisticated way and his decisions and abilities (especially as a warrior!) start being treated seriously on a consistent basis. The episodes after this point made me love Worf. The chemistry between Dorn and Farrell and the playful portrayal of the Dax-Worf romance elevates both characters, they both become a huge joy to watch. This episode ain’t.
Not much for me to really say about this episode – I think I’ve only watched it once and I’m sure that was a chore. I don’t really remember the Worf backstory scene though so I would at least go back to watch that one part.
I’ve always felt though that for getting a big star like Vanessa Williams, she should have been used in a better episode and given a more memorable and juicier role.
I would really like to see Risa depicted in this current era of Kurtzman Trek where really anything goes. Whether it’s on Discovery or Picard or Strange New Worlds, maybe we can finally see all of the nudity, wild orgies, same sex lust, etc. that Gene Roddenberry truly envisioned for this planet if he had had his way with “Captain’s Holiday.”
I don’t think this episode really “worked”, it was trying to talk about something that in the 1990s they couldn’t openly talk about, which hobbled the script. The two notable things about the episode for me were seeing Terry Farrell in a bathing suit (which appealed to teenage me), and an explanation for why Worf was a lot more reserved than other Klingons. The rest is a bit lacklustre, it feels like there should be a story there, but it just didn’t work in the end.
@80/crystalline-entity: “it was trying to talk about something that in the 1990s they couldn’t openly talk about”
On the contrary — there were plenty of 1990s shows on commercial TV that were far more adult and sexually frank than this, such as NYPD Blue, as well as even more explicit shows on pay cable. It’s just that TNG wasn’t one of them. In TNG’s first season, Roddenberry tried to push the envelope on sex much further than he could on TOS, but later on, once he was no longer running the show, TNG got rather staid and reserved. Because it was such a big hit, it came to be an “establishment” show, respectable and wholesome and somewhat conservative (though not in the political sense), rather than something daring and iconoclastic. So it wasn’t “the 1990s” that hobbled their portrayal of Risa so much as TNG’s own self-imposed reserve.
Funnily enough, I remember “Hey, it’s the 90s!” being used as a way to justify being more open about sex/non traditional morals (even if said morals now seem more quaint/old fashioned now).
@81/ I didn’t realise that. DS9 was aired, if I remember correctly, on BBC2 around 6pm in the U.K. so I assumed it was similar in the U.S. and there was something in there about not mentioning sex on television during hours children could be watching. I’m now wondering “what if” Star Trek had pushed the envelope a bit more here, that feels like a real missed opportunity now :(
@83/crystalline: TNG and DS9 were syndicated in the US, meaning that local cities’ television stations bought them individually and broadcast them whenever they chose, rather than a network broadcasting them in a single time slot nationwide. Most stations showed them in prime time, though some probably ran them on weekend afternoons or even late at night.
But I admit, I forgot that we were talking about a DS9 episode, since I guess I was thinking of “Captain’s Holiday” and Worf, and it was early in the morning. So my previous comment was off-base. DS9 did push the envelope on sexuality further than TNG did, and certainly more than Enterprise would do in its extremely dull Risa episode. It was DS9: “Rejoined” that featured a same-sex kiss at a time when that was still quite controversial, and indeed there were local affiliates that cut that scene or skipped the whole episode.
So really, I don’t think the script was hobbled by any kind of censorship. DS9 was the Trek show that was willing to tackle that kind of thing. It’s just that this particular episode didn’t do it well.
Also, I suspect that even the most daring US commercial-TV shows wouldn’t have gone as far as a “post-watershed” UK show could’ve gone, at least in terms of nudity or language. For that sort of thing, you’d have had to go to pay cable.
@81: It’s worth noting that NYPD Blue was a network show with a fixed time slot: 10:00pm Tuesdays for all but one season (and the 9:00pm Tuesday time slot in that one exception). And pay cable shows weren’t subject to FCC content regulation like broadcast TV.
Because TNG/DS9 were both syndicated rather than network they didn’t have a fixed time slot… and the producers had a financial interest in producing a show that stations could air in any open time slot without worrying about angry letters from parents or (even worse) the FCC.
I remember growing up that TNG/DS9 would be on at 6pm on Saturday or Sunday… way too early for non-“family friendly” content, particularly in the ’80s/’90s. When they first aired “The Naked Now” in 1987, with a disclaimer ahead of time about the show’s more adult themes, my parents wouldn’t let 7-year-old me watch it. (And I’m pretty sure my mom sent the station an angry letter too.)
In other words: While you’re right that there was more risqué and adult content on TV in the late ’80s and ’90s, I think making TNG and DS9 more “adult” and “sexually frank,” given the economics of the show, would have made it a lot harder to sell.
@85/elcinco: “In other words: While you’re right that there was more risqué and adult content on TV in the late ’80s and ’90s, I think making TNG and DS9 more “adult” and “sexually frank,” given the economics of the show, would have made it a lot harder to sell.”
Yes, but that’s my whole point — that the limits on Trek’s portrayals of sexual themes were not about the 1990s as a whole being more prudish than today, but just about Trek itself being less racy than many of its contemporaries. If anything, I’d say TV and movies at the time were less prudish, indulging in gratuitous titillation and objectification of women a lot more than is considered appropriate these days.
You know, this is the second time in recent weeks that I’ve seen someone assuming that the mass media were far more prudish in the late 20th century than they actually were. Someone on another board expressed surprise that Return of the Jedi could “get away with” slave Leia in chains and a metal bikini without it creating a huge scandal way back in those puritanical days of the early 1980s. Which was bizarre to me as someone who lived through that era, because slave Leia was extremely tame compared to a lot of contemporary stuff, and of course the trope of scantily clad women being sexually menaced by hideous monsters had been a stock image in pulp magazine covers going back to the 1930s (since after all, everything in Star Wars was an homage to something from George Lucas’s childhood). It’s really only in more recent decades that slave Leia has become controversial, as we’ve become more sensitive about avoiding exploitative depictions of female characters.
@86 I just burst out laughing at the Return of the Jedi thing. There are so many things I remember watching as a child that I now think ‘ooh, I don’t remember THAT part’ when I show them to my kids.
FWIW I am glad we don’t just unthinkingly objectify/tittilate anymore but I think we did also kind of give kids more credit back then? Or maybe we just didn’t care, I don’t know, I was basically a kid myself.
My general memories though was that the 90s especially semeed to view itself as more progressive but in a way it was just more about the titilation aspect, not about true inclusion/respect. (Not that I think ALL of that type of content is automaticaly bad/wrong etiher, and I’m farily comfortable with nudity/sex, but I also roll my eyes a bit at the way things that are basically catering to the male gaze are seen as more enlightened and if you opposed it, it’s just because you’re a controlling/repressive prude.)
I know that it’s easy to just write this episode off as being horribly written and not think too deeply about the implications, but it’s impossible for me to credit that Jadzia could have a scintilla of self-respect and not dump Worf’s ass after this one. It kind of sours me on their whole relationship.
This is obviously a failed episode, but the Worf here is exactly the dour self righteous ass he is throughout DS9.
This is precisely the character Moore wanted, as are the characters throughout BSG. I liked BSG but that doesn’t mean I want to see every character in every show wallowing in confused self identity wangst.
This is EXACTLY the Worf that takes his “friends”/colleagues on the mission to take Jadzia to heaven.
@89/Sillyk: “This is precisely the character Moore wanted, as are the characters throughout BSG. I liked BSG but that doesn’t mean I want to see every character in every show wallowing in confused self identity wangst.”
I dunno… I always felt that the BSG episodes Moore was credited for writing had more lightness and humor to break the tension, while episodes from other writers tended to be more uniformly grim.
I was struggling to square my memory of seeing Curzon alive when the symbiont was transferred to Jadzia (evidently from “Emissary”) with the “death by jamaharon” line, so thank you for clarifying it in the comments. Would “he died happy [from] death by jamaharon” have been seen as more palatable to Kang in “Blood Oath” than Jadzia saying “He died in a hospital room yelling at doctors and friends who were trying to keep him alive for one more miserable day?
From a writer’s perspective, what was the point of showing Bashir and Leeta breaking up? I appreciate that (1) it was an existing (albeit mostly background: Leeta hasn’t been on since Season 4, I believe) relationship, (2) it showed Bajoran culture, and (3) developed characters (continuing Rom mentioning in the Assignment that Leeta taught him about pah-wraiths), but how does it fit into this episode? Was it meant to contrast with Worf-Dax? The weather guy’s morality? It just seemed kind of there/bland.
I wonder if Keiko and Miles was considered as an alterative, even if Rosalind Chao was on so recently. Kira would have been a problem, but they could have made an inside joke (again?) with Bashir telling a worried Miles “I’ll treat as if she were carrying my own child”.