Wednesday, August 01, 2018

DS9 Flashback: Armageddon Game

The pairing of Chief O'Brien and Dr. Bashir got a sort of "trial run" in the first season episode "The Storyteller." But it was in the second season episode "Armageddon Game" that they were truly put on the path to friendship.

A pair of alien races have put aside a long history of war, and are now seeking Federation help in destroying their deadly biological weapons known as Harvesters. Julian Bashir and Miles O'Brien help with this, only to be hunted by the aliens themselves. Meanwhile, the crew back on Deep Space Nine is told that Bashir and O'Brien have been killed in an accident -- a claim that at first only Keiko O'Brien is inclined to doubt.

Writer Morgan Gendel (a semi-regular contributor, though not a member of the staff) pitched the germ of this episode. Aliens seeking to destroy a weapon would encode the specs as living DNA inside Miles O'Brien, then seek to kill him to destroy the weapon. Gendel says he was unaware of another episode from Deep Space Nine that had already played with the idea of living memory, so the pitch had to be changed. (He's talking about "Dramatis Personae." On the surface, I hardly see the similarities.)

Show runner Michael Piller shaped most of the finished episode. He asked for a "chase movie," and inspired Gendel to watch films like Midnight Run and North by Northwest before delivering the next draft. Unfortunately, that led to... well... a movie -- a script with too many locations, models, and more to be produced on a television budget. Staff writer Ira Steven Behr joked that that's how the episode then became "a chase movie on one set." In a very late weekend rewrite, Bashir and O'Brien's escape just took them directly to an abandoned building where they holed up for the entire episode.

The result isn't entirely memorable overall in terms of plot. The episode really does need some of that excitement and thrill that the chase would have offered. There are also elements that just don't make much sense. Bashir is able to cure the infected O'Brien from death's door when they're ultimately rescued. But if curing the Harvester disease is this easy, why not just give that cure to the aliens to solve their problems? Is it really plausible that these rivals who distrust each other this much could hatch a plan against the Federation together? (Hmmm... maybe it is? If you have a reputation for pacifism as much as the Federation, you'd had to believe you could do a lot to provoke them without actually risking reprisal.)

On the other hand, the episode does allow room for a lot of great character material between Bashir and O'Brien. We get a fun variation on the trope of the "doctor who has to explain how to doctor to the non-doctor" -- the infected and dying engineer must explain engineering to the non-engineer. Meanwhile, the two get into deeply personal discussions about their outlooks on life. Bashir reveals a story about a true love from his past that he lost in favor of pursuing his career. It helps to humanize him a great deal, suggesting that perhaps his constant hounddoggery isn't young male aggression, but a deliberate effort to hold any new real connection at arm's length. He and O'Brien debate whether marriage and a family are truly compatible with a Starfleet career. O'Brien cares so deeply about it that even as he thinks he's going to die, he spends his dying breaths on trying to change Julian's mind.

While the episode never for a minute tries to make the audience believe these two have been killed (probably wisely), it nevertheless plays the impact of that for everyone back on the station. It makes for several more great moments. Quark pays a heartfelt (if odd to "hew-mons") tribute to the two, giving out free drinks in honor of his "good customers." Sisko delivers the news of Miles' death to Keiko in person, and the scene has weight because of the loss we know Benjamin himself experienced with his wife.

It's a good episode for guest star Rosalind Chao as Keiko. After a numb reaction to the news, she digs in and won't believe her husband is dead. There are plenty of ways to read this, and only Chao could say for certain what she had in mind. But episode director Winrich Kolbe claims that he discussed options with her, and that she is ultimately playing guilt. Keiko thinks she didn't work hard enough at the marriage, and thus isn't willing to consider that it's over. That certainly has dramatic heft, if you choose to see it that way. In any case, I think it's a bit sad that they "womp, womp" Keiko at the end by having her be wrong about the detail she latched onto, that led her to think the video of the accident had been forged.

Other observations:
  • Instead of wacky foreheads like most Star Trek aliens have, these aliens get wacky hairdos. So wacky, in fact, that writer Ira Steven Behr joked that the real conflict between the aliens must have originally started "because of the hairstyles." But the hair department had the last laugh, scoring an Emmy nomination for this episode in Outstanding Individual Achievement in Hairstyling for a Series.
  • We get a fun callback to O'Brien's love of Starfleet military rations.
  • Bashir mentions that he gave his medical school diaries to Dax to read. Given what the writers would decide (much later) to do with Bashir's character, it seems this was probably a pretty epic forgery.
  • Runabouts are starting to drop like flies now.
The story is a bit lackluster, but the episode does extremely well by the characters. So, all told, I give "Armageddon Game" a B.

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