“Change of Heart”
Written by Ronald D. Moore
Directed by David Livingston
Season 6, Episode 16
Production episode 40510-540
Original air date: February 28, 1998
Stardate: 51597.2
Station log: Worf and O’Brien are watching Quark, Dax, and some other Ferengi play tongo. They bet a bottle of booze (bloodwine versus Scotch) over whether or not Dax or Quark will win. Quark winds up winning (his 207th game in a row), but Worf tells Dax that he’d rather lose on her than win on someone else, which is very goopy, and leads to a night of happy fun times for the two of them.
Unfortunately, their cohabitational bliss is interrupted by Kira, who has a mission for them. A Cardassian named Lasaran has been feeding info to Starfleet Intelligence and has requested a face-to-face meet. SI has repeatedly emphasized the importance of this operative, and assigns DS9 to arrange the meet, which starts with coordinates being sent to the Badlands. Only one runabout is available, the Shenandoah, so Worf and Dax take it to the Badlands.
En route, they discuss honeymoon options. Dax nixes Vulcan’s Forge and anything else involving suffering or pain. Instead, she goes for Casperia Prime, which is even more hedonistic than Risa. Worf actually agrees to it, which leads to an amusing discussion of how much Worf has changed since he married her, with Worf dinging her on how routine-based she is.
They arrive at the Badlands, and Lasaran contacts them. He has information about how many Founders there are in the Alpha Quadrant and where they are—but he requires extraction. He’s being sent from Cardassia Prime to the Dominion base on Soukara in three days, and he’ll rendezvous with the pair of them in the jungles there. They just have to get the Shenandoah behind enemy lines…
Back on the station, O’Brien has decided that he wants to be the one who breaks Quark’s winning streak. But he’s only played tongo once, so he needs to brush up, for which he enlists Bashir. Of course, the genetically enhanced Bashir is already better at it having just learned it than O’Brien could ever be, so O’Brien hits on the notion of Bashir being the one to break the streak. Bashir actually plays very well until Quark starts getting in Bashir’s head on the subject of Dax and how they both missed their chance at her, losing her to “Commander Boring.” It distracts Bashir enough that he loses (though between them, Quark and Bashir drove all the other Ferengi out of the game).
The Shenandoah arrives at Soukara, coming in through an asteroid field that masks them from Dominion sensors, then lands in the jungle a couple of days’ hike from the rendezvous point. They spend a difficult several days hacking through foliage and avoiding snakes and other fun stuff, with Dax hating the hot days and Worf hating the cold nights.
Worf then notices someone coming (gotta love those hunter’s instincts) and they quickly hide, just as a trio of Jem’Hadar show up. Worf and Dax ambush them, and they’re successful—but Dax is badly wounded. No vital organs were hit, but the blast had an anti-coagulant, which means she’ll keep bleeding. But they have to keep moving, as staying still will just leave them sitting ducks for whoever comes looking for the three dead Jem’Hadar.
They keep going, but after a while, Dax’s blood pressure gets too low and she can’t continue. Dax insists that he leave her behind, and Worf agrees to at first—but after a certain point, he finds that he can’t continue, and goes back for her. He finds her unconscious, and so carries her all the way back to the runabout.
Back at the station, Sisko comes to see Worf, who is waiting in the infirmary for Dax to get out of surgery, telling Worf that Lasaran is dead, his valuable intelligence that could have saved millions of lives lost forever.
Dax wakes up to find out that he didn’t make the rendezvous, and she apologizes—but Worf won’t accept it. All that matters is her. They declare their love for each other, and all’s right with the galaxy.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Worf and Dax link the Dominion sensors to their tricorders so that their life signs will be masked. The bad news is that the tricorders are then useless, which is one reason why three Jem’Hadar almost get the drop on them.
The Sisko is of Bajor: As a captain, Sisko says that Worf made the wrong decision to save Dax, and while no charges will be filed (the mission was too covert), it will go in Worf’s service record and he likely won’t receive a command of his own after this. As a person who had a wife, Sisko adds that if it was Jennifer, he would’ve done the exact same thing.
The slug in your belly: Dax apparently brushes her hair with exactly fifty strokes before going to bed each night. She always sleeps on the same side of the bed, and she always has the same breakfast.
There is no honor in being pummeled: Worf tells Dax about going camping the Ural Mountains with his father and his brother Nikolai when he was a boy, which awakened his nascent Klingon hunting instinct.
Rules of Acquisition: Quark insists that his tongo game is Ferengi only, with Dax being the only exception, but Bashir and O’Brien talk their way into it. After Quark beats Bashir, the former says that the doctor is welcome to play any time. (He did help Quark clean out the other Ferengi.)
What happens on the holosuite, stays on the holosuite: Bashir is all set to do the secret-agent program with O’Brien—he’s even wearing a tux—but O’Brien would rather brush up on tongo.
For Cardassia! Lasaran is not at all thrilled with entrusting his well being to a Klingon—I’m guessing he holds a grudge after the Klingon-Cardassian war.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: Dax starts to mention that the Sutherland will be coming to the station. That’s the ship that has the fire-twirling Lieutenant Atoa on board. However, Dax thinks better of finishing the thought, belatedly remembering that Worf probably wouldn’t go for a threesome. Then she jumps him. Wah-HEY!
Also Quark gets Bashir to admit that he’s still carrying a torch for Dax.
Keep your ears open: “Worf, you’re practically easygoing. What’s next, a sense of humor?”
“I have a sense of humor! On the Enterprise, I was considered to be quite amusing.”
“That must have been one dull ship.”
“That is a joke! I get it! It is not funny, but I get it.”
Dax and Worf on Worf’s post-marriage mellowing.
Welcome aboard: The only guest is Todd Waring, who is gleefully obnoxious as Lasaran.
Trivial matters: By the time this episode was written, Terry Farrell had already decided to leave the show after the sixth season, and she lobbied for Jadzia to die in this episode, but with Worf succeeding in the mission to extract Lasaran. Instead, Jadzia will be killed in “Tears of the Prophets.”
This episode was partly inspired by the movie The Green Berets which starred John Wayne, as well as George “Sulu” Takei.
The original B-story was to involve Rom, Nog, Leeta, and Prinadora, Rom’s first wife, with the latter trying to win Rom back, but it’s eventually revealed that she’s trying to fleece him again. Max Grodénchik, Aron Eisenberg, Chase Masterson, and script coordinator Loita Fatjo (playing Prinadora) have acted out this B-plot on stage at conventions.
Worf’s brother Nikolai is mentioned for only the third time on screen, besides his first reference in “Heart of Glory” and his appearance in “Homeward.” Your humble rewatcher made use of Worf’s trips to the Ural Mountains during a mind-meld between Spock and Worf in The Brave and the Bold Book 2.
The Sutherland last docked at the station in “You Are Cordially Invited…”
Because of Sisko’s declaration that Worf will never receive a command, he’s initially reluctant to take on the post of first officer of the Enterprise (following Riker’s promotion and Data’s death in Star Trek Nemesis) in the novel Resistance by J.M. Dillard. However, he changes his mind by the novel’s end, and he has remained in that role in all of the post-Nemesis TNG fiction, even being offered a command in the Cold Equations trilogy by David Mack (which takes place ten years after this episode, a period that includes being a war hero and four years of diplomatic service on Worf’s part, mitigating what happened in this episode) and turning it down.
Casperia Prime will be mentioned again in “Inquisition,” as well as in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers novellas The Future Begins by Steve Mollmann & Michael Schuster and Ghost by Ilsa J. Bick, the DS9 novel This Gray Spirit by Heather Jarman, and Star Trek Online.
Walk with the Prophets: “You could say, ‘Thank you for saving my life’.” It’s “Rules of Engagement” all over again!
Just like “RoE,” this episode provides us with a situation that never ever ever would have happened. The minute that Dax and Worf got married—well, honestly, they should’ve been assigned to different posts, but even if we suspend our disbelief and let them serve at the same post, there’s no way they would ever be assigned to any mission together for reasons that this episode amply demonstrates. (Dax shouldn’t have been assigned to the Defiant in “Waltz,” either.)
So why did they get the assignment in the first place? It makes no sense, none, for them to be given this assignment except that the script said it had to be them so Worf should have to make a difficult choice. But he shouldn’t have had to make it!
Because of the abject stupidity of the episode’s entire premise, I’d never actually watched the episode since its initial airing, because it actively pissed me off so much. As a result, I’d forgotten how absolutely magnificent Michael Dorn and Terry Farrell are here. Their banter is relaxed and funny and believable and fun. Dorn in particular does an excellent job of showing us a Worf who still has many of the aspects of the “Klingon glacier” (as one of his previous par’Mach’kai called him), but is actually mellowing and compromising, and trying to be a better husband to Dax.
Of course, that doesn’t stop his overdeveloped sense of duty from taking over after Dax is hurt. He blames his indulging in witty banter as they gather around a blanket for not noticing the Jem’Hadar coming soon enough, but he heard them a lot sooner than Dax did, and surviving a couple of Jem’Hadar who outnumber you 3-2 is nothing to sneeze at.
But then we come back to the absurdity of the whole thing when Sisko decides now that Worf and Dax shouldn’t go on missions together. This is the sort of things that military organizations have to deal with now, and have rules and regulations in place for, and it’s hilariously absurd that the writers of this show believe that those will be forgotten in four hundred years. Hell, forget four centuries, how about a couple of years since Picard went through this exact same thing?
On top of that, they had a much better tale to tell if they’d gone with Farrell’s recommendation, and have this be the episode in which Jadzia is killed. Then the one justification for putting Worf on a mission with Dax—that of all people, Worf would put duty ahead of what he desires—would work, and he’d have to pay the worst possible price for it. That, to my mind, would’ve made for a stronger story.
I went into this expecting to give it a 1—it pissed me off that much, seriously—but the performances of Farrell and Dorn were sufficiently strong that I’m willing to bump it up a bit. But it really makes you sad for what might have been if Farrell had stayed for the final season…
Warp factor rating: 3
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s newest novel is Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution, based on the FOX show that just started its second season. The book is one sale now, and you can order from Sleepy Reads or find in your local bookstore. Read a review of the book right here on Tor.com.
I just want to reiterate how much I now despise DS9. Star Trek was always a great concept. TNG, DS9, and Voyager just never lived up to the potential of TOS.
You were more forgiving than I. While the performances were good, They were far from enough to make up for the stupid premise. And, even giving some slack to the premise, the outcome was absurd.
This was a man who in essence, abandoned his first love, his son, his brother, and his family name for honor and duty. How does this become believable? It’s a nice story, but unbelievable. And even giving some slack to the outcome, the denounement was absurd.
This was a SF officer who intentionally made a choice, which would get a reliable informant (with information that could have crippled the Dominion and saved countless Federation, allied, and even Cardassian lives) killed. Moreover, his responses to Sisko suggest not only did he either know or suspect that the informant would die as a result of his actions, but he left the planet without even trying to go back for him. Maybe not a court martial now, but he should have been put in the brig and court martialed at the end of the war. Even that would have (like the Farrell proposal) have given some sense of weight to the episode.
This string with One Little Ship and Honor Amond Theives….ugh.
Plausible or not Keith, to me, you don’t ever remove potential conflict from your setting. If you can’t explore the fear of loss, why do an episode like this at all, just because real life military follows some arbitrary 20-21st century rule?
Couples may not be posted together today, but why should the same outdated standards apply in 2374? Hell, Moore’s first script The Bonding was built around the concept of humans outgrowing the need for such rules and living together despite any problems that might cause issues along the way.
Should people avoid being together because they can’t marry duty to their personal life? That’s a limiting worldview. This is Star Trek, not The Hurt Locker.
And honestly, it’s not as if the story had no consequences. Worf’s career is permanently stained with this failure. He’ll never have a command of his own.
I’ll concede this could have been a brilliant farewell episode to Jadzia, had Worf followed through with the mission, instead of the contrived Dukat plot.
But it really makes you sad for what might have been if Farrell had stayed for the final season…
Losing Farrell, despite its issues, did lead to a more interesting character in the long run. Nicole’s Ezri Dax was a welcoming, fresh character in every aspect, with plenty of room for growth, conflict and evolution.
I’d never considered the issues of married people serving together, but, well, it did seem to be pretty common in the 24th century, as we see with the families on the Enterprise, with Miles and Keiko, with Nurse Ogawa and her fiancee/husband, and with Ben and Jennifer on the Saratoga — and later on with Riker and Troi on Titan. Heck, even back in TOS we had Angela Martine and Robert Tomlinson getting married in “Balance of Terror.” I can see how not sending them on the same mission makes sense, but clearly having couples serve on the same ship has been an allowable Starfleet practice for well over a century.
I do like the Jadzia-Worf interplay here, but the story didn’t entirely work for me. Maybe it would’ve worked better if Worf had fulfilled his duty and let Jadzia die. I mean, wouldn’t his Klingon values tell him that he’d dishonor her by depriving her of the chance to die in the line of duty? Not that I would’ve been in any hurry to see the last of Jadzia, but it would’ve been more in character that way.
Also, how the hell does a beam from an energy weapon include an anticoagulant drug? If they used projectile weapons, that would make sense, but for a beam weapon it’s just a silly bit of contrived technobabble. If anything, a beam weapon should cauterize the wound it makes and prevent bleeding.
(By the way, is anyone else having problems with Tor.com loading glacially slowly or being intermittently unresponsive? It’s been acting up for me for days now.)
#1
You must like DS9 more than you think. You keep coming back here! In the words of the good android:
“I HATE THIS!”
“More?”
“Please.”
This is another episode so bad I barely remember it. I could’ve sworn Worf got in trouble for saving Dax when they were captured by the Breen, not in some completely superfluous mid-season episode.
I see no problem with the premise. For 99% of the time in the 24thC there is precisely 0 problems with couples serving together. The only reason this is a problem is because they are in a full on war, something that is virtually unprecedented (even the Cardassian conflict with O’Brien and Maxwell was not a full on war) for about 100 odd years for Starfleet. The only reason Picard had a problem was, well Picard had certain issues about opening up emotionally and so apparently did his science crush. Other officers manage it fine. Which is pretty much the reason many militaries have problems with it these days, the rules for couples serving were drafted (depending on the country) between the 50s and early 1970s, and were drafted by men who were in their 50s to 70s, and only revisited occasionally by mostly men still over 50. With military personalities tending to be socially conservative and lagging the rest of society by 20 odd years even at the best of times, its not surprising that current militaries have problems with people in relationships serving.
As far as Sisko’s growling about Worf never getting a command, that speaks more to Sisko. Given how the war is going, I’m sure Starfleet wouldn’t have been picky about promoting experienced officers if Worf pushed for it, even is Sisko was opposed, but Worf is a dutiful Klingon-Ideal and doesn’t push. I’m betting once the war wrapped, and Starfleet purged itself of the folks who enjoyed the war a little too much and reasserted the scientific, exploratory and diplomatic wings of the service over the pew-pew-pew-boomboys Worf’s choosing his wife over mission would be seen as a feature and not a bug.
After your review of Rules of Engagement, I had a feeling you’d have a similar take on this story. It’s as if the writers keep saying, “Hey, let’s put Worf in an unfair, no-win situation and get pissed when he reacts the way any normal person would!”
I too figured that the military standard of not letting married officers serve together had long been forgotten as was shown countless other times (after all, technically Starfleet isn’t the military, it’s for “exploration and research”). But it’s a no-brainer that these two should not go on a mission alone.
I won’t overstate the obvious- that this story should have been were Jadzia died- that point has been made every since this aired. Place this episode towards the end of the season after Time’s Orphan, let Worf’s ‘duty above all’ nature kick in and you would have had angst galore for Worf in season 7.
But here’s an interesting spin that just occured to me… What if Dax was the one who had to make the choice? Granted, she probably couldn’t carry him back to the runabout, but aside from that detail how would she have handled it? How would he have felt knowning she blew a mission to save his life?
Oh and no comments about the B story- O’Brien’s completely out of left field desire to beat Quark in Tongo?
Oh and no comments about the B story- O’Brien’s completely out of left field desire to beat Quark in Tongo?
@8
Supposedly, that was Ron Moore’s half-assed attempt at filling the hour. Originally, this episode wasn’t meant to have a B-story at all. Sort of a knee-jerk reaction to the Jake/Nog B-plot that conflicted with the Bareil story on season 3’s Life Support.
When Moore realized the A-plot wasn’t deep enough to fill 45 minutes, he put that in, and then decided to resolve it early in the episode, in order not to have the same oddball contrast Life Support had, with Bareil hospital scenes alternating with an awkward Ferengi dinner date.
The thing about the B-plot is that it is even worse than the A-plot, and makes as little sense as it all hinges on the idea that Bashir wouldn’t know immediately what Quark was up to because apparently he’s never met him before and hasn’t spent the last 6 years living in close proximity to him and going to his bar pretty much every day.
In the case of the A plot, Lasaran tells them he will walk out of the camp in 3 days, and then will have 2 days before anyone notices he is missing. They land 20km from the rendezvous point. Even in dense jungle, most people would be able to travel 4-5kph with no problems, so when Dax is shot, Worf should have no trouble getting her back to the runabout, get her in stasis, and then return and make the rendevous in plenty of time. And as an experienced military officer, he has to know that this is going to be a better option than trying to continue ahead whilst burdened by a person who clearly needs serious medical attention.
But the worst sin this episode commits isn’t the fact that neither A or B plot make sense though. It’s that they are both incredibly boring.
I never knew that Farrell had petitioned for Jadzia to die in this episode. On my own re-watch, I discovered how much I actually really like Ezri in the last season, so I don’t wonder too often about what could have been if Farrell had stayed, but now I will always wonder what would have been had her advice been taken.
Because one of my least favorite things of season six, on re-watch, is the bald-faced emotional manipulation of the writing leading up to Jadzia’s death. So many of the Dax/Worf storylines in the upcoming episodes ring completely false to me because they’re so blatantly being set up as the peak before the fall.
It’s something of a tough distinction because, well, of course this is how stories like this get written. Maximum emotion devastation is created from a death by having that death rip away the potential of a character or a relationship when that potential is at its peak but still unrealized.
The problem I have going forward here is that the strings are so visible in the setup that it ends up reading as terribly inorganic to the story.
Oh, and BTW Krad, you’re starting to make me question why I had such fond memories of Season 6. Maybe it’s because it was my senior year of HS in 97-98 and I finally had a boyfriend who liked Star Trek too.
I don’t find married officers serving at the same post to be that big a deal for Star Trek, since it’s a thing that would probably happen a lot on ships with those long, multi-year exploration missions. The whole “send two married people into a secret, possibly fatal mission” thing is dumb, but Star Trek really doesn’t care about things like practical military thinking and pragmatism. If it did, stuff like those weapon platforms at Chintoka would be the norm, not the bizarre standout in the franchise.
Also, it would’ve been nice if Dax’s death hadn’t been tied into the whole “Dukat is the anti-Christ/super obviously evil guy” arc, but we have to live with it.
Eduardo & Random22: there’s basically nothing in your posts #3 & 7 I agree with. You ask, “Why tell a story like this?” and my answer is, “Don’t tell it.” The episode right there tells us why the pair of them should not be assigned together nor be put in a position where one is in charge of the other. This was an utterly predictable problem, and it should’ve been predicted before Worf and Dax were ever sent out on a mission together. Sisko’s ruling at the end of the episode should’ve happened after “You Are Cordially Invited.”
We went down this road once before in “Lessons,” and it had nothing to do with Picard having trouble showing his emotions, it had to do with his emotions getting in the way of being able to make proper command decisions. Picard was able to make the right choice in “Lessons,” but only by the skin of his teeth and he wasn’t confident in his ability to do it again. Worf wasn’t able to make the right choice here, and yes, there are theoretical consequences, but they won’t have any actual impact on his day-to-day life on the station, since he won’t be getting any theoretical command assignments until after the show is over anyhow because of how TV works.
Finally, Sisko wasn’t “growling” that Worf wouldn’t get his own command. In fact, if you actually watch the scene, you’ll see that Sisko is sharing with Worf what his service record is likely to mean, and he sounds apologetic about it, not harsh at all.
And Worf choosing his wife over a mission is a bug and will always be a bug, because by saving Dax’s life, he condemned the life of the person they specifically went there to save.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@@@@@ 8
Switching the Jadzia and Worf roles around would be an interesting idea, wouldn’t it? Worf is usually the hero/rescuer – I’m not sure we’ve ever seen a situation where he was the helpless one who needed to be rescued.
I could see Worf having to deal with both guilt over not being able to do what was needed to make the mission succeed, as well as anger at Dax for letting the Cardassian be caught by not doing what Worf would no doubt feel she should have done — leave him behind to die.
It could have made for some interesting followup in an episode or two further on in the season.
Is it just me or does the B story seem like a watered down version of the B story from Peak Performance with Bashir in Data’s role and Quark in Kolrami’s?
…
Sigh…
Bad episode..
…
Do you think they made the Cardassian extra-douchey to make Worf’s decision to abandon him easier to swallow?
On the flip side, imagine if he had made the rendezvous only to find his wife dead and then to be stuck trekking back to the runabout with that guy for 2-3 days.
@18 I think you’re right. It was one of the things that really bugged me about this episode. I feel they made Lasaran a jerk from the beginning so the viewer would think “Oh, Worf let down that guy he promised to rescue and he got killed, but it’s okay because he wasn’t very nice. So, whatever.”
@3 – How would a rule against putting a couple in harm’s way togather be outdated? The rule would be in place to prevent Starfleet from putting a couple in a position where their duty to each other and duty to Starfleet conflict. Purposely putting your officers in a position to have to make such a choice is cruel, and will often result in them choosing each other over Starfleet. Minimizing such points of failure for an important mission is good management practice. It does not go out of date.
@21
It’so outdated, because it doesn’t respect individuality and one’s right to choose. If you’re forced to work separate from your spouse, you’ll never learn to deal with their possible demise on duty, let alone evolve yourself towards making better command decisions. People are supposed to be outgrowing their weaknesses, after all. You can’t lead, if you can’t accept a possible loss.
In the 24th Century, Starfleet trusts its officers to decide for themselves the best course of action. Worf made a mistake, but at least he wasn’t denied the right to work alongside his wife. Why serve an organization that doesn’t respect a couple’s rights?
If Jadzia had died here and Worf had gone on to complete the mission, there’s a good chance Dax would have died too. And the plan for season 7 already involved a Dax character (as I understand it that’s the whole reason we get Ezri). By having Jadzia die on the station, Dax’s survival is entirely plausible. It makes sense from a planning perspective, but at the cost of a better story for this episode.
I’m in the middle as far as married personnel serving together. I don’t think it’s implausible to have a married couple serve on the same space station. The senior staff on DS9 aren’t there for a deployment measured in months, they’re there for years. And Worf and Dax are at least nominally in different departments, so I don’t see the big deal there. But having them serve on the same space station is a far cry from sending them and only them on a very sensitive and dangerous mission.
@21 – Why serve an orgasnization that would put you in a situation that demands you make a sadistic choice? I strongly object to characterizing prioritizing your compassion for your severely injured, likely dying spouse over most everything else as a “weakness”. A society that considers such a weakness is not much better than the Borg. Starfleet’s goal is to win the war at this point, not respect Worf’s and Jadzia’s individuality. Minimizing the latter’s negative effect on the former is the organization’s duty to its member
@22: My thoughts exactly. Having Jadzia and Worf serve on DS9 together is one thing; sending the two of them alone on a dangerous and highly important mission is most definitely something else. That could possibly be forgiven if there was some explanation why it HAS to be these two, but that isn’t there. It ends up feeling very contrived for the plot and straining disbelief.
I liked this episode a lot more than most of you. Mostly becuase I liked how the relationship between Worf and Dax was portrayed/their banter etc. It really added some depth to both of their characters IMHO. But now you all have talked me into the lower score..LOL Ugh, I have to say I was not a big fan of the Dax replacement character. I still wish they had convinced Terry Ferrel to stay… guess it probably all came down to money.
I also generally find this episode aggravating and implausible. First, you’d think that there’d be a couple ensigns or lieutenants or security officers to handle this instead of two of the most senior officers on the station. But, ok, we need a show where the main characters do things. So even if you buy that the strategic operations officer would go on a mission like this, why would you send the science officer? Second, if this is really such a high priority assignment, can we really not spare the Defiant, or another ship with a cloak, such as a Klingon ship, maybe?
Lastly, like others have said, the episode is boring and predictable. If they did end up having Jadzia die in this episode, it would have been surprising, and a punch to the gut. But as it is, the episode has to resort to a montage of Worf silently trudging through the jungle before making the decision we know he’ll make.
As for the issue of Jadzia and the Dax symbiont dying, I think it actually would have been better to not have not had a new Dax in season 7. It just highlighted the fact that this new character is here to replace the old character, and opened her up for unfair comparisons to the [far more awesome, IMO] previous Dax. Save the new Dax for just a single episode guest appearance where Worf and new-Dax have to come to terms with losing each other and leave it at that.
-Andy
Oh, and CLB, the site seems to be working fine for me, at least.
Married people are not only stationed together now, but deploy to places like Iraq and Afghanistan. How do I know? I did it. I was on convoys in Iraq where a husband was in one vehicle in the wife in another. Now, a mission like this? No, I don’t think so…plus, wouldn’t (if someone from DS9 HAD to go) Kira or Miles have been a better choice? Kira for her resistance experience or Miles for his mad soldier skills?
@27: So far it’s working for me today, but it’s been intermittent this past week. I just wondered if anyone else was having that problem or had any idea what was causing it. If it’s just me, then maybe there’s something wrong with my laptop, but it works okay on other sites (except for certain video streaming sites).
“I’d never actually watched the episode since its initial airing, because it actively pissed me off so much.”
I can top that. The spoilers from one of the online forums where Ron Moore was a regular pissed me off so much I’ve never watched this episode even once. It’s the only DS9 episode I’ve never seen. I see no reason to change that now.
When I was in the military there were definite rules about couples serving in the same chain of command. Even in the civilian company where I work now there are rules about that. It’s not “outdated”, it’s human nature. (Even if the “human” in this case is Klingon and Trill.) Human nature, as the saying goes, has no history. We aren’t inherently better people now than the people living in the 17th century, and the people in the 24th century won’t be inherently better than us. You can’t expect someone to put the needs of others over the needs of their spouse, especially in a life or death situation. Worf shouldn’t be punished for his decision, because the fault lies entirely with the morons in Starfleet that assigned the two of them to this mission.
I didn’t like that Terry Farrell left the show, but I’ll admit to having had a bit* of a crush on Nicole DeBoer after she took on the Ezri Dax role. So in the end I think it worked out just fine.
*A bit. You know, like water is a bit wet or the sun is a bit hot.
I loved this episode when I was a kid for the banter. Y’all do make a convincing argument for why it sucks.
The military just isn’t the right organization to compare to Starfleet. It’s more like… researchers at the South Pole. Would someone say a married husband and wife team of scientists couldn’t go to Antarctica together? We’ve had at least one husband and wife astronaut pair on a mission together. I like that Starfleet lets the Worfs go on the mission together… it shows a level of trust in individual judgement that fits in with what the Federation is supposed to be about.
If they pick Worf for the mission, who is he going to choose to watch his back? Jadzia. Same for the other way around. I mean, we’re not exactly highly trained or anything, but I’d trust my wife over anyone else, barring some unique skill requirement she doesn’t have. If she doesn’t have it, I probably don’t either…
It’s a plot point that this is really the first time they have thought about the other one dying. That’s believable… after all they have each been through, they must feel fairly invincible. Maybe they had noticed they were in the opening credits.
Jadzia’s actual death is so crappy, she should have died here (or on the station as a result of her wounds, via some stasisy technobabble thing). Tripping on Cardassian architechture and dying would have been better than how she goes, man I hate that death scene.
@30. I agree. It’s not Worf’s fault that he blew the mission, it’s his commanding officers’ for sending him on it with his wife in the first place. Now, upon careful watching it does seem like they were only going out there to intercept a transmission and come back. That they ended up actually going to get Lasaran didn’t seem like part of the initial plan. But, still.
And when Sisko asks Worf why he chose to go back and save Jadzia… That’s the dumbest question ever. He probably didn’t want to court martial Worf because it would bring to light that what a crappy position they put them in from the start.
@31: If we were talking about Starfleet’s research work in peacetime, then your Antarctic metaphor would be fine. But we’re talking about a Starfleet on a wartime footing sending its officers on a dangerous, unambiguously military mission. So in that context, it would make more sense for them to follow more military-like policies.
I’m not seeing how under anything vaguely resembling a reasonable standard for dereliction of duty and consquences of mission failure would Worf face charges for not completing the rescue. He’s on a two-person team to extract an informant from hostile territory, and one of the people is incapacitated. “I did not feel the mission was achievable with only one person and decided to abort the attempt and develop an alternate course of action.” His orders were not “come back with the informant or not come back at all”.
People call other episodes forgettable … but I think this is the first episode in this rewatch that I started reading and thought, “Wait, did I just completely skip this episode when I watched DS9?” (I didn’t. I remember it after reading further into the synopsis.)
No problem with Worf and Jadzia serving on the same senior staff. Big, big problem sending them on a mission like this.
As @28 says, this would have been an IDEAL mission for Kira’s skills. And that could have even made for an interesting character development plot, with Kira having to interact with a particularly obnoxious Cardassian informant. Actually, it would have been a great mission for Odo too. Heck, if we had to turn this mission into a romantic conflict-of-interest plot, it could have been Kira AND Odo.
I didn’t really even enjoy Worf & Jadzia’s marital banter. Too sappy? Not a believable development for their characters? I’m not sure why.
I think the only parts of this episode I did like were Sisko’s demeanor at the end (his torn feelings, empathizing with Worf’s decision while formally repremanding him, were very well acted) and Quark’s verbal taking apart of Bashir during the Tongo game.
Man, this one pissed me off. I’ve been waiting to read the review of this but I went on vacation (happy to be back!).
Obviously it makes sense given what we know of human nature that it’s going to be incredibly hard to put somebody’s needs over that of a spouse – even though I’d like to think I could still make that decision, especially as I view marriage as more of an outward focused thing – we’re both seeking an ideal and goal, and for them, that would be loyalty to the Federation and its ideals and it’s something they both knowingly chose. Of course I don’t know what I’d do in that situation. But I still can’t help but feel really angry that Worf did so, especially when nobody really considers Lasaran. This was a person who put his life at risk and his life in the hands of the Federation. He trusted them. Presumably he had loved ones and family too. And they let him down. And that really bothers me.
I personally think Worf got off way too easily, especially with how they handwaved away any charges because the mission was ‘too secret’. And seeing what the original plot was…honestly, that would have been better!
Slowly catching up to the actual conversation here…
Frankly, the relentelessly negative appraisal of this episode seems a bit overboard to me. Whenever there’s an episode where the setup is annoyingly obvious from the get-go (and there are plenty of them, “Honor Among Thieves” being the most recent example), I tend to tune out the logic and try to focus on whatever else the story might have to offer: characters, emotions on display, mood, etc.
Whatever contrived “strings” were in action here, I simply adored the way Jadzia and Worf became a real, believable couple onscreen for the first time. The slice of everyday life, the jokes, and the warmth—even under duress— made the connection between these two strong enough to keep me interested to the very end.
It also revealed an interesting aspect to Klingon culture, where personal honor and loyalty become secondary to the maintenance of “two hearts.” A bit sentimental, perhaps, and arguably not the most sensible policy for a warrior culture, but I bought it. More than that: I felt it.
And anyway, the Cardassian defector could have been blowing smoke up Starfleet’s plasma vents, for all we knew.
Given the abysmal track record of Trek portraying actual loving relationships, this one becomes even more exceptional in my eyes. Nothing prudish or caddish here, just two strange people we’ve grown to know and love (flaws and all), behaving like a real couple.
Not an episode worth rating a 7 or 8, but I’d give it a solid 6. I get why the setup could make so many of you want to throw up your hands, but I hope I’ve made a decent case for the other joys this story offers.
Lunardamage: I see your point, and for what it’s worth, I knocked the episode up to a 3 because of the reasons you cite — it would’ve been a 1 otherwise. But I just couldn’t get past the inanity of the premise….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@@@@@ 25 and 37. I agree with you two. The premise of the plot may have been flawed, but for me the episode was redeemed by the chemistry between Dax and Worf here. I know a lot of people don’t care for this romance, but I thought it was beautiful. Terry Farrell does a great job, sometimes even just with her eyes, of expressing a true love and affection for her husband, who is so unlike her in so many ways, yet she just can’t quit him. And this is the first episode where I think Worf Let’s his guard down for us to watch him reciprocate.
As an aside, it’s interesting how, one by one, the main characters in the series are put in situations where they willingly take or sacrifice lives, or change the past for millions of people, for selfish reasons. Jake in the Visitor, Kira’s a terrorist who killed women and children, Odo in the episode where they discovered 200 years of their descendants…., Sisko freaks out to get at Eddington;… there may be more I just can’t think of them right now.
Late to this party, and on my first viewing of DS9.
I’ve been watching too much Game of Thrones, and totally expected this to be Jadzia’s last episode. (That she dies isn’t a spoiler for me; I’ve read both Imzadi books.)
Even later to the party, and I’m partly just reiterating that the Worf/Jadzia chemistry was spectacular, and that this should have been the standard for other Trek couples to live up to. Before marriage their relationship was insufferable, but this episode, for them, was perfect.
But my main comment is that there are so many complaints about the premise of Dax & Worf alone on a dangerous mission together (though it should be noted, it was just a jaunt into the badlands to receive a message, it was not intended to be that dangerous), but everyone seems to be giving it a pass on the other absurdity. No Cardassian, no matter how great a double agent, is going to have the information Lasaran claimed to have. No solid would. The Founders keep their own counsel, and they sure as heck aren’t chatting strategy and shapeshifter placements with even their fanatically loyal Vorta, let alone some half-trusted Cardassians. A little local instruction like “don’t blow up that ship” is one thing, but there is no conceivable situation where any non-Founder would know the location and number of Founders in the whole quadrant.
Lasaran was obviously blowing smoke, to buy his escape. He can’t be blamed for that, but we ought to know better. Worf’s decision didn’t cost millions of lives, it cost one.
It’s been five years since Lessons KRAD. 16: Armin Shimerman was also in Peak Performance, but playing a different Ferengi. 41: I hadn’t considered Lasaran was lying. It does seem unlikely he would have that kind of intelligence on the Founders. Treachery, Faith and the Great River makes more sense because it’s a clone of Weyoun that’s trying to defect.
After this episode and “Honor Among Thieves”, I’m wondering if the writers forgot to include some dialogue about Startfleet Intelligence being short-handed and making some special agreement with the station to draft their officers for missions. It still doesn’t make sense but at least it would have gone some way toward explaining it.
O’Brien’s sudden interest in Tongo makes no sense and Lasaran is awfully obnoxious for someone whose life depends on Worf’s actions. Have to wonder if he regretted being so mouthy when Worf didn’t show.
I thought Worf’s speech at the end about the two Klingon hearts was a bit overdone and talky, even for Worf. It would have been more effective as one or two lines but I guess they needed to fill the time.
I agree it would have been the right episode to kill Jadzia in although, as others noted, that might have made Ezri Dax impossible and would have left Worf with a lot of guilt if it had been followed through on.
Want two more reasons to hate this episode?
1. Dax & Worf make a HUGE tactical error by not firing at the same time. They could have taken out 2 of the 3 Jem’Hadar at once, then gotten the third in a crossfire. Instead, there’s about 2 seconds between Dax firing and Worf firing, giving the two uninjured J’H more than enough time to react. Yeah, she shoulda died. Him too.
2. Bashir & O’Brien show up to the Tongo game with a case full of latinum…or do they? When Quark tells them the buy-in is 5 strips, they open up the case to reveal a whole SIX, uh, somethings. They look like the units that have, in previous episodes, been called “bars,” but whatever. They appear to be the same sized units everyone around the table is using. The (for some reason) large case contains only six of these units (and a buttload of padding–WTF?), and Bashir removes five of them, presumably as the buy-in of five that he’s just been told. That leaves ONE bar/strip in the case. Speaking as a (ahem) poker player, entering a “high-stakes game” (Quark’s phrase) with only the minimum buy-in is pretty stupid. It’s the nature of games of chance that you may easily dip well below the minimum buy-in before beginning to get ahead. Starting a game with only the minimum buy-in makes sense if one is allowed to bring in more money after play has begun. But Bashir only had one more bar/strip left in his case, which wouldn’t be enough to make a difference if he lost his intial 5, even assuming they’d allow him to rebuy with just that one.
Also, even if he starts with that small amount and gets ahead, as we must assume when he’s later seen wagering 400, 500 or more, at that point he’s playing with someone else’s money. When he goes broke at the end, all he’s really lost is the 6 he started with. That shouldn’t be a big deal, but they try to make it seem like he has lost a fortune.
Okay, maybe #2 is only a reason for ME to hate this episode. Have I mentioned how much I hate the way poker and other gambling games are depicted on TV and in the movies?
I’m in total agreement with this review. The beginning of this episode is great, as it really shows off the chemistry between Dorn and Farrell. Getting a more fun, mellow Worf gave me all sorts of warm fuzzies.
But yes, the premise is bonkers. And while it’s probably okay for married couples to be stationed on the same ship or station, assigning them on combat missions together is beyond asinine, to say nothing of a highly sensitive, dangerous assignment with extremely high stakes. This kind of mission, and it’s two officers, a man and HIS WIFE under his command?! Yeah sure, Sisko was apologetic, they ought to have busted him back down to Commander for this colossal intercourse-ascent!
They really should’ve listened to Terry Farrell about this episode. Of course, seems the whole reason she left was BECAUSE they didn’t listen to her. Too bad. I love the Worf/Dax dynamic of this show so much.
Lockdown rewatch. Fully agree with Krads main review it annoyed me on first watching too, Another of the times when Starfleet can’t decide if it is a military organisation or a family one. Also the B plot. Ignoring the ridiculous way Quark manipulates Bashir to win the Tongo game why are the Ferengi even entertaining Bashir joining the game? with Bashir’s genetic enhancements now common knowledge would you play him at a game where he can count cards and calculate outcomes to rival a computer? I would never have played poker against Data for the same reasons.
@46/chadefallstar: I would imagine Quark feels that there’s more to the game than just intellect and calculation — which is certainly true of poker as well. Poker, as I understand it, is largely about reading people and bluffing, and those are things that Data wasn’t very good at, cancelling out his advantages in the mathematical side of the game. Quark and the other Ferengi may have felt that tongo similarly had a component that was more about intuition and “knack” than mere numerical calculation.
Besides, being good with calculation is a basic Ferengi business skill, probably drilled into them all throughout their education. So being good at counting cards and computing odds is probably less exceptional from a Ferengi standpoint than a human one.
I’m doing a chronological-by episode-airdate rewatch of all of Trek, and I come to read krad’s reviews as I finish each episode. It’s interesting to note that this episode aired (according to syndication release date) right after Voyager’s “Retrospect,” which krad also hated with a white-hot passion, but which was also saved from a “1” rating by the actors’ performances. Since I know your DS9 rewatch was years ago, and your Voyager rewatch began last year, I wonder if Keith notices these little synchronicities?
Oh, and how can energy weapons contain anti-coagulants in their blasts?
43: I’ll bet Lasaran had plenty more to say about Worf when he failed to show for the rendezvous!
I respectfully but emphatically dissent. Yes, given how abominably Rick Berman treated Terry Farrell, this perhaps should have been Jadzia Dax’s farewell. Terry Farrell never should have been drummed out the way she was. And I really don’t get why the powers that are insisted on casting another Dax. Yes, Dax would have other hosts. But why couldn’t the powers that are let a death actually be a death? But the differences between Ezri and Jadzia are ultimately beyond the pale and collateral to my point here.
I also appreciate that this episode perhaps has a strained premise of sending Worf and Jadzia Dax off alone together. But I’d like to set that aside for a moment and strictly focus on the episode on its own.
I am a fan of Meat Loaf’s rock operas. An underrated song is “I’d Lie For You (and that’s the truth.)” Picture this episode through the lens of that song, with particular attention to this chorus:
“… I’d lie for you and that’s the truth
Do anything you asked me to
I’d even sell my soul for you, I’d do it all for you
If you just believe in me
… I’d lie for you and that’s the truth
Move mountains if you want me to
I’d walk across the fire for you
I’d walk on the wild for you
If you just believe in me….”
If one uses that song as a backdrop to this episode and pictures the episode operatically, the song beautifully analogizes to their relationship. Worf truly loves Jadzia Dax. And Worf has indeed positively evolved, modulated and developed because Jadzia Dax is in his life. That is the background for when Worf and Jadzia Dax end up on Soukara. And we see Worf’s love prominently here when Worf decides to risk everything (indeed, the entire safety of the Alpha Quadrant, Lasaran apparently has information on the locations of the Founders) just to save Jadzia Dax’s life. And Worf saves Jadzia Dax. And the scene between the two of them at the end where they reaffirm their love is beautiful. There is something beautiful about seeing that open and unbridled love. One would have to be unfeeling to not have some reaction to that.
And these operatic styled stories are what make Star Trek great. Star Trek III echoes this episode on a larger scale. Kirk loses his son, steals and deliberately destroys the Enterprise, and sacrifices everything just for the opportunity to save Spock. Captain Sisko deliberately impersonates Gabriel Bell knowing that Bell has to be a martyr to restore the timeline. And the list goes on.
And ultimately, this all correlates back to Star Trek’s fundamental strength to present the message of hope. I don’t watch hardly any television anymore because of the pervasive nihilism and hopelessness that underpins most television writing these days. I have not watched the post 2016 Star Trek, but, my life is already complicated enough that if I am watching television, I want something inspirational and hopeful.
I will happily watch this episode on a loop or make time to watch it when it airs on the Pluto TV loop because it is a beautiful love opera that we should all be so fortunate to have in our lives.
And yes indeed, this performance is because of the tour-de-force gravitas of Michael Dorn and Terry Farrell. Avery Brooks’ lessons to Terry Farrell really shone here. Not just anybody could contemplate their own death with a smile because of their sense of duty, and honor and love. But Terry Farrell does so beautifully and credibly here. It is one of her finest moments in the entire show-on per with her look of despair watching Susanna Thompson leave in “Rejoined.”
In sum, if this episode is seen as an operatic vignette on Worf and Dax, it is a beautifully compelling love story that puts Michael Dorn and Terry Farrell on pedestals. Rebuilding the episode’s narrative away from that strained narrative should suffice to venerate this story beyond the rating it received. Because it doesn’t, I respectfully dissent.
Big Joe S.: It’s fine, I don’t write these things expecting everyone to agree with me. I actually agree with everything you say about how this is a lovely portrayal of the Worf-Dax relationship, I just couldn’t get past the inanity of the premise. You, obviously, could, and that’s wonderful. I wish I could’ve, and therefore enjoyed an episode about two of my favorite Trek characters and one of my favorite Trek couples more.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Ok well yeah but/and: Here’s how I see it.
They weren’t sent to do quite this mission. They were sent to have a one-on-one conversation, someplace secret, and leave. If any two characters could be depended upon for their commitment to duty and handling tough situations, (maybe) it would be these.
(I guess Kira could have substituted for either of them, I don’t know. Maybe her commitment to duty and her skillset would be a good choice too.)
But it becomes, I think, an increasingly challenging job, and they know they’re the ones who have to do it. I think if the situation had been clear from the start, maybe they wouldn’t have been sent, or at least, more than just the two of them, and with more equipment, extra tricorders, etc.
So I was able to buy the premise, that they’re stuck there. The thing that stuck out to me is the change of heart moment, when Worf kills a tree for some reason.
Anyway, the two of them and this great material to work with make this among my favorite eps of DS9 as of now (first watch). It really helped make it more meaningful that I know she’s going to actually die and I didn’t know when. Both of them acted better or as well as I’ve ever seen. And their dialogue was believable and touching and funny.
Lasaran : Are you trying to be funny?
Jadzia : Not at all. He’s the funny one.
I lol’d. I don’t remember EVER loling for real at DS9 until that moment. her delivery, the setup. So good.