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Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Civil Defense

Review by An Honest Fangirl

"You know, I've been here nearly three years. I was just finally starting to think of this place as home."
"Your 'home' was built by Cardassians, Doctor. Don't ever forget that."

You'd think that at some point, people would just go through and defuse all of the traps and safety measures that are on this station. Sure, it might be a rough few weeks, but the long term benefits would be fantastic.

I'm mostly joking. This was a neat, tightly constructed episode that is essentially a textbook example of continuously raising the stakes in a story. No matter what the characters did to combat the counterinsurgency protocols, they only made things worse. What started as three people trapped in a room ended up a station wide threat that was only stopped at the last minute.

The best part was that no one made a stupid decision. They acted calmly and rationally to try and stop things, which made their failed attempts a lot more fun than if I was yelling at characters not to do the very obvious Bad Thing. Honestly, from a writing standpoint, there really wasn't anything that I would change.

Still, I had some trouble emotionally engaging with the episode. I never really felt any sense of meaningful stakes or sense of danger. There was a brief spark of that when Dukat appeared and demanded to have a Cardassian garrison on the station, but that quickly disappeared when he couldn't teleport out. Granted, that may have been my favorite moment, and it did make me giggle, but the episode also lost the one ounce of tension that it had for me. I think that's just a side effect of watching an episode of an already completed show. No one besides that poor, random crewman was never actually in danger.

But that's okay. I still enjoyed all of the small character beats that we got. Odo and Quark were slightly underused, but their bickering is always a treat to watch. (Did you know that Quark's cousin has a moon? A moon!) Sisko, O'Brien and Jake were also fairly isolated from the rest of the cast, but demonstrated great problem-solving skills in terms of escaping the gas.

But mostly, I just loved everything that was happening in Ops. Garak is probably my favorite character, so any appearance by him is a welcomed one. I liked the constant bickering that occurred between him and Dukat once Dukat arrived, particularly when he called Dukat out for flirting with Kira.

Random Thoughts

I love Garak.

I swear, I hear "Kardashians" as opposed to "Cardassians" every time. Every time!

I really loved Dukat just casually standing in Ops while the replicator continuously fired at everything that moved.

Quotes:

Quark: You're telling me that I'm stuck in here? With you?
Odo: No. I'm stuck here with you. Believe me, a far worse fate.

Quark: Home is where the heart is, but the stars are made of latinum.

Sisko: You know, I never knew how much this man's voice annoyed me.

A very fun, if emotionally disengaging episode. That makes it what? Three out of four access codes?
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An Honest Fangirl loves superheroes, science fiction, fantasy, and really bad horror movies.

2 comments:

  1. A really enjoyable episode! Thanks for the review.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good episode all around. I loved when Gul Dukat came on board. he just knew he was going to have the last laugh, and when he didn't I chuckled. As for Garak he brings nothing to the show for me. I'm not impressed by his sly wink am I or am I not a bad guy. He's boring.

    ReplyDelete

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