Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Season 5

The previous season had seen the introduction of Worf, and his entry onto the station opened up a large potential for Klingon stories. Season four had devoted a fair amount of time to tales of the Klingon Empire. That trend continued through to the fifth year culminating in "Soldiers of the Empire" which takes place almost entirely on board a Klingon Bird Of Prey with Dax as the only character not buried underneath heavy prosthetics. To my surprise, I really enjoyed this gradual inclination towards more episodes dealing with loud actors shouting at each other about honor. I had been fairly bored during The Next Generation's attempts at building up the Klingons, so I was very happy that the Deep Space Nine people managed to not only hold my interest, but kept me wanting to see more.

My enthusiasm for this season is caught between a desire to talk about the various ongoing plot stands and the need to highlight the great standalone episodes. Deep Space Nine did an almost perfect job of balancing the two, making my job even more difficult. The Star Trek universe underwent many changes during this year with all sorts of allegiances forming and/or falling apart. On a more personal level, a few characters had to face demons from their past, but those stories were generally better than one might expect (in Star Trek, "demons from the past" usually involve someone's parent showing up unexpectedly and a Large Argument From Childhood finally being cleared up -- thankfully the show mostly steered away from this). Sisko's role as Emissary of Bajor was given more than just a cursory examination, while Quark and Odo continued to develop their snide arguments.

The extras in this release revolve around the fifth season (surprise, surprise). This means that there's not one but two mini-documentaries focused on the "Trials and Tribble-ations" episode (where Sisko and company go back in time and interact with the original 60s Star Trek episode, "The Trouble With Tribbles"). And, to be fair, there's a lot of stuff from and about that episode worthy of discussion. The first documentary involves a lot of talking heads discussing how the premise developed and what kinds of difficulties the production crew encountered getting it to the screen. The second documentary (and the one I found the most interesting, geek that I am) is more about the technical side of the episode -- how they managed to actually get the modern day actors and actresses to appear as if they were standing alongside their TOS counterparts. The "Forrest Gump" technology is expounded upon at length as well as the troubles that the model designers had in recreating the old ships and starbase models.

We also have a mini-documentary featuring the character of Miles O'Brien, one of the series' more entertaining and realistic characters. Also, Mike Okuda gives a guided tour of the space-station sets, pointing out little in-jokes that were too small to be seen on-camera. Michael Westmore (as he has in previous seasons) takes a look back at the various alien baddies and their makeup.

There were a few clunkers this year ("Let He Who Is Without Sin" - argh! Run away! Run away!), but overall I found this to be an excellent season of television. The storyline continually gets beefed up until one can't figure out exactly how they are going to keep outdoing themselves. The season ender is a great bit of storytelling and gives one a great sense of anticipation for the following year.

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"Apocalypse Rising" brought about an end to the Klingon "problem" and opened the door for the return of the Changelings.

Season five also had other things going for it. Star Trek was celebrating its 30 anniversary that year, and both DS9 and Voyager were going to do special episodes to commemorate that fact. Voyager brought back George Takei and Grace Lee Whitney as Sulu and Rand in a so-so tale adventure that brought Janeway to the bridge of the Excelsior during the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. DS9 would go the distance and bring everyone back from TOS. Of sorts, anyway. Thanks to the breakthrough technology used in the Oscar winning film Forest Gump, the crew of DS9 travels back into the events of TOS episode "The Trouble with Tribbles." In the humorous and slightly goofy "Trials and Tribble-ations", Sisko and his crew have to stop a plot to kill Kirk before all of time is destroyed. The writers worked a miracle, by placing the crew into a 30 year-old episode.

The 100th episode, "The Ship" also aired, along with "Looking for Par'Mach in all the Wrong Places", "Nor Battle to the Strong" (a special episode for Cirroc Lofton, a birthday present for the actor from the producers, as he was now 18 and no longer had to have a teacher on the set), "Things Past", "The Ascent", "Rapture", "The Darkness and the Light", "The Begotten" (where Odo gets his shapeshifting abilities returned),"For the Uniform", the two-part "In Purgatory's Shadow/By Inferno's Light", "Doctor Bashir, I Persume?"(which featured a performance from Voyager's Robert Picardo as the real Dr. Zimmerman), Business as Usual", "Ties of Blood and Water" (a sequel of sorts to season three's "Second Skin"), "Ferengi Love Songs", the brilliant "Children of Time", the darkly humorous "In the Cards" and the shattering finale "A Call to Arms".

As I've mentioned before, there are always stinkers (the less said about "A Simple Investigation" the better), but overall, the series was in its stride. The fifth season would also see a magnificent visual effect of all of Starfleet heading towards DS9 -now overtaken by the Dominion and the Cardassians. It was an awe inspiring, jaw dropping effect.

And as the ships head towards DS9, Gul Dukat -now back in his office -discovers a message that Sisko left him.

A baseball.

Dukat, as he holds the ball, tells a puzzled Weyoun that Sisko intends to return.

And the war begins...

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