DS9 Flashback: The Sword of Kahless

When Star Trek producer Rick Berman suggested that Worf be added to the regular cast of Deep Space Nine, many of the fourth season's episodes were already in development. Consequently, after the initial two-hour premiere, Worf appeared only in small doses and B-plots -- things that could be easily added to scripts already in progress. "The Sword of Kahless" was the first episode developed in full after his presence on the show was known, and the first to feature him in a major role.

Venerable Klingon Kor has found a clue to the location of a near-mythic artifact, the Sword of Kahless, and he wants Dax and Worf to accompany him on the adventure to retrieve it. Rivals to their quest are only the beginning of their problems, however. The prospect of wielding the Sword and its symbolic power to rule the Klingon Empire soon has Kor and Worf at odds with each other.

Writer Hans Beimler developed the screenplay to this episode. He'd been part of the writing staff on The Next Generation during season three, and remained close with some of the writers even though he left the show. He envisioned a brash adventure, part The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, part Indiana Jones -- including elaborate traps protecting the Sword from plunderers. All that was written out of the script in later drafts, reportedly not so much for cost as for the time it would have taken to film the multiple action gags.

Unfortunately, you really feel what's missing when you watch the episode -- if not exactly what's missing, then at least the fact that something is. The adventure is hardly adventurous, and feels particularly un-Klingon-like in its need to overcome force fields and holograms rather than life-threatening danger.

Likewise, the ostensible nemesis of this tale, Toral, falls flat. Calling back Duras' son from The Next Generation seems like an intriguing way to leverage Worf's history to heighten this story, but he's a threat too easily dispatched here. Sure, that's because the episode is more interested in the drama between Worf and Kor -- but then, why mention Toral at all? Why not just make it some random Klingon? Why suggest Worf's past might suddenly be a going concern on Deep Space Nine, only to never show Toral again?

Other callbacks to past Star Trek are handled more skillfully. They mention that a clone of Kahless is now the Emperor of the Klingon Empire, while somehow managing not to let that detail bog down the story. The original series gets a shoutout when Kor's confrontation with Kirk (from "Errand of Mercy") is referenced. A mind-reading Lethean is important to the story, calling back earlier Deep Space Nine. And of course, there are several nods to Dax's previous quest with Kang, Kor, and Koloth.

If only one of those three Klingons was to survived "Blood Oath," it perhaps worked out for the best that it was Kor. His gregarious personality is a nice part of this episode -- regaling our characters with tall tales, instantly becoming friends with Worf ("Any enemy of Gowron and the High Council is a friend of mine."), and building the story of their own quest even as they're on it. He's not all fun and games, though. As the story turns, he and Worf squabble over who's the bigger disgrace to Klingons -- Worf for failing to kill Toral years ago when given the chance, or Kor for drunkenly fabricating tales of glory that never was.

Worf and Kor's argument goes perhaps a bit too far, though, when they come to blows and literally try to kill each other. Their lust for power and visions of commanding the Empire with Sword of Kahless get a bit "One Ring-like" in the level of pure obsession, so much so that many fans thought that some supernatural power of the Sword had gone unexplained in the episode. The writers were reportedly disappointed that anyone read the situation this way. While I do agree that a non-technobabbly answer is the more dramatically compelling one here, the fact that so many people thought this episode was hinting otherwise shows how over-the-top, almost cartoonish, the behavior here gets before the end.

Other observations:

• This episode is directed by LeVar Burton. It's especially fitting for Worf's first big episode on Deep Space Nine (premiere notwithstanding) to be directed by his former Next Generation castmate.

• Worf has been a character for seven years before arriving here, but because Deep Space Nine is more interested in fleshing out its characters' histories than Next Generation usually was, we get to learn more about him. We get a story of Worf seeing a vision of Kahless as a child, promising he'd do something no Klingon had done before. He feels he fulfilled that vision by joining Starfleet.

Before it's pushed too far, the interplay between Worf, Dax, and Kor is engaging. But the action-adventure elements of this story are lacking, and its climax is so muddled that different sections of the audience reached different conclusions about what it meant -- when ambiguity was not the intention. I give "The Sword of Kahless" a C+.