Wanderlust

2.8 — “Necessary Evil”

2.8 — “Necessary Evil”

Plot: When Quark is commissioned to retrieve a box hidden on the station, it revives a five-year old murder investigation. Flashbacks reveal how Odo was appointed constable and his first meetings with Quark, Kira, and Gul Dukat.

Thoughts: Rumor had it that DS9 is the dark sheep of Star Trek family, an off-kilter alternative to the flagship series TNG and Voyager.

Rumor said that to the extent DS9 has virtue, it takes several seasons to ripen, coming into its own in later seasons after the arrival of talent like Ronald D. Moore and Michael Dorn.

Rumor is a bawd. This is a great episode, with great production value. It’s interesting to visit DS9 during the Cardassian rule, and to explore questions about how Odo’s history. It’s even better to see DS9 energized and innovating and digging ever deeper into its characterizations and backstory.

I love that Sisko is a completely peripheral character in the story, as are the other Federation officers. O’Brien doesn’t even appear.

I love the humor in Odo’s personal log narration which, besides being laugh out loud funny, invests us further in the idea of Odo as holding an alien perspective. “Humans have a compulsion to keep records and lists and files. So many, in fact, that they have to invent new ways to store them microscopically.” All of the TNG characters come from basically the same frame of reference, except maybe Data and Worf?

Nana Visitor is awesome and looks great in long hair. Odo’s Columbo routine, and the extended riff on detective noir that begins with the dark and stormy night at the top of the episode, are nice touches. So much more dextrous than “Dixon Hill.”

Odo makes a great secret softie. I look forward to seeing where his relationship with Kira goes in the future.

Gul Dukat’s dialogue suggests the presence of some scruples, but as in all DS9’s best episodes, we are aware none of the characters say what they mean.

Has anyone else noticed that the Cardassian military uniform is similar to a Sontaran’s?

This detail bothers me: Kira feels bad after all this time for deceiving Odo about Vaatrek’s murder. Yet she is still deceiving him! She knows what the list is for before Odo figures it out, and presumably Ches’sarro’s was killed after she knowingly passed his name on to the remnants of the Bajoran resistance. Is she still collaborating in executions? This doesn’t quite fit.

4.5 of 5 pulsatel lockseals.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Necessary_Evil

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5 responses to “2.8 — “Necessary Evil””

  1. Randi Cohen Avatar
    Randi Cohen

    I thought that Chessar’o was killed by the wife because she didn’t want her blackmail scheme to be exposed? I don’t think that Kira would kill these people… it’s a native government now and presumably she would hand them over to the authorities. I don’t think she set out to kill Vantrik in the first place, nor do I feel she would probably have done it if asked by the Resistance at the time… maybe I’m wrong. But she made a point of “having no choice” in her account to Odo. I presume it was the widow who killed him to avoid her blackmail coming to light.

    Yes, this is a great episode. I love Kira and Odo, by far my favorite characters on the series, and their moment at the end is so touching.

    Another favorite line of mine is when Odo is offered an alcoholic then a non-alcoholic beverage by Quark and continues to repeat “I don’t drink!” until his meaning is clear. Haha.

    Possibly this is my favorite episode of the series so far, but it’s already had some great ones. The contrast with TNG is stark, in my mind… by comparison, TNG seems to be “phoning it in”. I don’t know who these mysterious detractors are, but clearly they are not watching with the same eyes as I am.

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  2. Kevin Black Avatar
    Kevin Black

    I could be wrong, but when these shows were first on (and I wasn’t watching them) I had the impression there was a general consensus that DS9 was the lesser show, with smaller viewership, and people would mutter darkly about how it isn’t “real” Star Trek. Kind of like how the received wisdom at the time was everyone loved Crusher and hated Pulaski. I know people today who passionately defend DS9 as the best Trek series (to which I say hold your horses, what about TOS).

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  3. Kevin Black Avatar
    Kevin Black

    Odo’s theory when he hears about Ches’saro’s death is that it must have been because he mentioned the name to Pallra, but that was before he knew the nature of the list or about Kira’s involvement. The people were paying blackmail to hide themselves from the retribution of the Bajoran resistance, and Kira says that she shared the name with her resistance contacts, who tracked him down. Meanwhile, killing him doesn’t do Pallra much good, since it seems trivially easy for Odo to trace her financial transactions (and phone calls). This is something that could have been tidied up better.

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  4. Kevin Black Avatar
    Kevin Black

    It may be that Kira wouldn’t have been chosen for the mission if the purpose was assassination, but what do we think the Resistance was going to do with the names on the list? The reason to not take out Mr. Vaatrick is that the list is more valuable and his sudden disappearance would tip off the network their cover is blown and send them all underground. (It’s possible I’ve been reading John le Carre recently.)

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  5. Randi Cohen Avatar
    Randi Cohen

    Hmmm. I guess I thought that they were paying blackmail to hide themselves from the embarrassment and damages of a trial for crimes against Bajor (and maybe execution at the end of it?). I wasn’t thinking that former members of the resistance felt able to execute others at will for past crimes. I could be naive!

    Regarding Pallra, it seems like she did think that killing people would help, since she hired the hitman to kill Quark. I still think she did the same for Chessaro.

    Maybe the Resistance would have killed the traitors…or maybe they would have fed them misinformation in order to mislead the Cardassians? The latter might have wound up being more to their advantage in the end.

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