4.7 — “Starship Down”

4.7 — “Starship Down”

Plot: The Defiant plunges into a gas giant to save an alien ship assisting them by smuggling goods out of the Gamma quadrant, and ends up in a cat and mouse battle with two Jem’Hadar warships.

Thoughts: I enjoy this episode, although the bits and pieces do not meld perfectly. I believe this is the most extensive submarine-style starship battle in Star Trek since TOS 1.14, “Balance of Terror,” and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). Entries about these stories on the usual online sources note their debt to the film Run Silent, Run Deep (1958) and numerous later submarine thrillers, including Grey Lady Down (1978), starring Charlton Heston, which provides the basis for this episode’s title.

“Starship Down” gets mileage out of pairing off members of the cast who are stuck in difficult circumstances–Bashir and Dax, who acknowledge the transformation of their initially antagonistic relationship from the early seasons, Kira and Sisko, Worf and O’Brien, and Quark and a heavily disguised James Cromwell, playing one of his four guest characters in the Star Trek franchise (most notable: Zefram Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact (1996), a role originated in 1967 by Glenn Corbett in TOS 2.9, “Metamorphosis”).

There are just enough nitpicks to be jarring. O’Brien is so chill and lacking in urgency that he seems to be inhabiting a different episode than the rest of the crew, one in which no one’s life is in danger. The peril of Dax and Bashir is confusing. Shouldn’t there be a vacuum when the corridor vents to space? Do they seal themselves in Sickbay, or is it an airtight janitor’s closet? If it is airtight, what’s the problem?

The the perfunctory way in which the episode handles the deaths of the unfamiliar crewmembers on the bridge is so inept as to come off as disrespectful. Quark’s early dialogue scenes with the alien have such relatively low stakes that they seem discordant with everything else happening, until the hull is breached by an unexploded torpedo that forms a perfect seal with the hull, which is not how I think hull breaches work. Meanwhile, Worf’s insensitivity to the feelings of the crew does not strike me as a well-conceived subplot. Granting that he is rude, I don’t believe that anyone would take time out to address it in an active combat situation with casualties.

Most of all, the episode seems to be directed in a fashion that does not inspire the full commitment of the actors, as would be necessary to sell scenes like believing in the death of their colleagues, in the way these scenes deserve.

But a lot happens, and I was entertained! I like the ambition and choice of story. How do I rate it, though?

3.5 out of 5 lungfuls of fluorine.

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