The Storyteller at Memory Alpha

• Despite his having taken Kai Opaka on her first and last trip away from home, the Bajorans still want Sisko to help them with their problems.  Or maybe they just want him to accidentally get all their problems killed.

• Nobody has anything to say about the tetrarch of the Paqu being a high-school sophmore except for Quark, Nog, and Jake.  Sisko, for example, doesn’t even bat an eye for the first three quarters of the episode.

• In between maintaining law and order on DS9 and dispensing Important Life Lessons, Odo makes damn sure those damn kids keep off his lawn from dangling their damn legs over those damn railings on the damn promenade.

• Bajoran chicks totally have a thing for mystical, prophet-sent messianic figures.  Or Irishmen.  It’s one of the two.  Good thing Miles is such a loyal husband!

• Replicator oatmeal looks almost exactly like wet papier-mâché.  Gross!

• Baby bajorans have tiny baby nose ridges that are pretty much completely adorable.

Sisko is asked by two bajoran factions to do some informal diplomatting.  Meanwhile, he sends Miles and Dr. Bashir down to Bajor to solve some medical emergency or other that will only require the skills of a single Starfleet doctor who treats a fractured spine with CPR.  This tells me that it is not a very serious emergency. Miles tries to beg off.  I am getting the idea that it is maybe because he does not want to hang out with Dr. Bashir, space conversationalist, but it’s not really clear.

The shuttle ride down to bajor does more to imply that O’Brien does not want to deal with Bashir, but it’s in a sort of ambiguous way that leads me to believe that it’s something else.  Oh, and the medical emergency is one old dude who is sick.  Bashir will probably try to kill him with chest compressions or something.

The groups Sisko is to be diplomatting at are the Navot and the Paqu, represented by a tacky fat guy and a 15-year-old girl, respectively.  A 15-year-old girl who does not want a glass of bubble juice (?) and is furious that Quark would imply that she is a little lady.  Their despute is over thier border, which is listed in their treaty as being a river.  The river has shifted course, and now they are tussling over who gets the land in between its old position and its new position.  They’ve had enough time to have stupid, arcane land disputes in just the last few years since the Cardassian occupation, apparently.  Also, Nog be crushin’ on Little Miss Paqu Tetrarch.

Down on the planet, Sick Old Man McSickoldman declares that O’Brien was sent by the prophets.  Outside his house, Mayor McMayor tells the Starfleeters that only Sicks (the Sirah) is strong enough to defeat the mythical monster, the Dal’Rok that comes to their villiage for five days.  I am still not clear on how they’ve already got this long-held tradition going on.  Weren’t the Cardassians in control of Bajor like, 20 minutes ago?  Did this Dal’Rok show up right after they left and just sort of explain the rules to the village?  Or maybe this was an ancient tradition that just had to take a break while the Cardassians were working the Bajorans to death in the mines?  So many questions.

The Dal’Rok, incidentally, looks like a color-shifted blot of ink in water and does not show up on tricorders even a little bit, which means it is important.  It also opens up with CLOUD LASERS and starts trashing the town after the sirah has a really, really short-term bout of heart failure.  Fortunately, he has time to stand up and teach Miles O’Saviors O’Brien the magic words to help focus the villagers’ magic mind beams and drive it away.

The awkward competitive courtship that Nog and Jake are both trying to engage in with the Paqu tetrarch is making me think less of Star Trek and more of a one-act play put on by a reasonably talented and very enthusiastic high school drama club.

Down on the planet, we have a FORBODING MOMENT with one of the sirah’s old staff that quickly escalates to an ATTEMPTED MURDERODING MOMENT.  Jealousy is an ugly thing!  The old sirah’s apprentice claims that he, not dear Miles, is the true sirah, despite what the old sirah said.  Then we learn that the magical monster and the magical monster-fighting-abilities are both technological illusions controlled by a magic bracelet.  The old sirah’s apprentice wants the job, which seems like it would be an out for Miles, except that the mayor will have none of this not-being-saved-by-Miles-O’Brien business.

Of course, Miles sucks at telling stories (poor Molly!).  Luckily, the formerly-murderous apprentice sirah is totally there to pickup the slack.  Back on the station, the Paqu tetrarch has had a heart-to-heart with Sisko and come up with a reasonable compromise to her land dispute that she is confident enough to present to her fat Navot opponent who we haven’t seen since he was introduced.  Good resolution!  Hooray!

Except we still don’t know for sure wheter Miles does not like Julian or whether he really did just have something else on his mind.

I admit to the worst kind of infidelity:  I have been putting off watching any DS9 (and hence putting off updating the DS9 blog) so that I could watch some Babylon 5.  But come on, Bruce Boxleitner - in SPACE!

Sometimes a man has gotta change up his sci-fi TV shows about the lives of the crew and political activities that occur on and around a space station.

There will be several DS9 updates over the coming days, though.  BE PREPARED.

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Battle Lines at Memory Alpha

• Miles right off the bat! I already feel back at  home.

• The Kai has a gift for Miles’ daughter, which shows us that the Kai is an old sweetiepie who can tell when someone has a child just by looking at them.  Wait, did I say sweetiepie?  I meant vaguelycreepypie.

• Dr. Bashir (space… um… doctor) treats a broken spine with… CPR?  Man, heck, what kind of low-ass standards do they have at Starfleet medical?

• Kira drops some negativity about death on Kai formerly-slightly-dead Opaka without realizing it.  What a vitalist pig!

• Miles names gadgets BEFORE he invents them.  That is how confident he is that they will do what he intends and do it well.

• I still think it’s just so great that the DS9 uniforms are designed in such a way that they look better when someone rolls up their sleeves.

• Why they didn’t call this episode WAR ZOMBIES (IN SPACE!!!) instead of lame old “Battle Lines” is beyond me.

The Commander, Dax, and sweet Miles have discovered some of the old Cardassian station commander’s files.  Kira’s file is somewhat less impressive than she would have liked.

But today is a specail day!  Kai Opaka, everyone’s favorite short, late-middle-aged, slightly doughy Bajoran spiritual leader is visiting the station.  And what better way to celebrate than a trip through the wormhole?  Taking a civilian dignitary who has never left her home planet through a rupture in spacetime that you don’t fully understand: What could possibly go wrong?

Whilst crusing the Gamma Quadrant (if you say “the GQ” they all say, “Please, don’t call it that”*), they pick up a signal containing a bunch of “statistical data” that the Kai asks them to investigate. So obviously, they get shot down.  The sattelites that were sending each other the data apparently don’t love people listening in on their conversations and can be real jerks about it.

So we have a split cast.  On DS9: Odo, Dax, and O’Brien.  On this week’s peculiar planet out beyond the wormhole we have Sisko, Bashir, Kira, and dead-ass Kai Opaka who died either from the crash or from Dr. Bashir’s ridiculous-ass medical attention.  It will split again when Dax and dear delightful Miles go looking for the Commander.

The GQ** Crew end up getting captured almost immediately by some of the planet’s crazy army-type denizens.  Said denizens (and our heroes) are set upon by another group of folk from the planet.  After some dashing heroics, the Kai approaches!  A zombie?  A vampire?  Or just the regular old Kai with some extensive but extremely vague physiological changes?  Come on, guys, it’s Star Trek.  She’s probably a vampire.

Oh, ha ha, no, wait.  It’s the regular old Kai.  Neither side of this planet’s very Trek-y unending war over a forgotten cause has any skill at all when it comes to staying dead, and apparently it rubs off on anyone else who comes by to visit, such as the little round Kai.

The crew, of course, see this as a breakthrough despite all the obvious disadvantages of immortality, many of which are spelled out explicitly by the local immortals.

The crew try to mediate a peace, but their peace talks turn into a good ol’ fashioned bloody melee right around which time the Doctor conveniently discovers that if you are resurrected on that planet, you pretty much have to stay there.  As a WAR ZOMBIE.  In SPACE.  So Count Opakula is stuck there whether she likes it or not although the show dodges this handily by having Opaka decide to stay there on her own, before being told.

And then Miles saves the day.  Because he is awesome.

* I mean I assume this is what happens.
** Please, don’t call it that