DS9 Flashback: The Abandoned

After directing one of the stronger episodes of Deep Space Nine's second season, star Avery Brooks was given several more chances to direct in the third season. The first of those was "The Abandoned."

Quark buys the wreckage of an unknown ship and winds up with more than he bargained for, finding a baby inside a stasis pod. But the magnitude of this discovery escalates in short order -- it's a Jem'Hadar infant who rapidly matures to adolescence. Driven by sympathy for the isolated youth, Odo tries to build a rapport using the Jem'Hadar's innate deference to the shapeshifter. But nurture may not be able to overcome nature. Meanwhile, Sisko finally gets to have dinner with his son's girlfriend -- a worldly dabo girl several years older than Jake.

I didn't necessarily have the strongest feelings about this episode when I watched it during the series' original run. It struck me as something of a rehash of The Next Generation's "I Borg": the heroes find an isolated member of an enemy species and must learn to recognize its inherent "humanity." This seemed a less compelling rehash, too; compared to Picard's intensely personal stakes where the Borg are concerned, Odo's interest here doesn't seem as important. Yes, he sympathizes with being an "orphan" raised in a lab. Yes, he wants to prove this Jem'Hadar can be raised differently, as a way of demonstrating that he himself is different from his own people. But it's a more intellectual, less visceral source of emotion than the one woven into "I Borg."

Avery Brooks saw more in the story, however, and brought that perspective to the way he directed it. It's an angle I was able to notice and appreciate more, watching it again more recently. "For me," said Brooks in one interview, "it was very much a story about young brown men, and, to some extent, a story about a society that is responsible for the creation of a generation of young men who are feared, who are addicted, who are potential killers." He saw a metaphor here for racism, for a lack of upward mobility, and this infuses the story with some of the more personal stakes I didn't see when I was just comparing it to "I Borg."

Odo really tries to turn this Jem'Hadar youth away from violence. He tries being an adoptive father to the boy. They smile creepily together. It means so much to Odo that he's willing to abandon everything and run away with the boy. But unlike "I Borg," which ends by showing that a Borg can be turned from its nature, here we see that this Jem'Hadar cannot be. It's an outcome fixed from the moment Odo allows the youth to fight in a holosuite -- an error in judgment Kira identifies immediately (and for which Odo must later admit she was right). In the metaphor Avery Brooks was building as a director, this youth may have had an advocate, but no true way out of the violence destined for him before he was even born.

Not coincidentally, the B plot of this episode focuses on an opposite relationship -- the very healthy one between Ben and Jake Sisko. Ben shows his love of family throughout, playing with the Jem'Hadar infant with a huge smile on his face, pining for when Jake was younger and it was so easy to make him happy, and looking to protect his son from a relationship he suspects might not be appropriate.

The age gap between Mardah and Jake doesn't seem as big as the script makes it out to be. For one thing, actor Cirroc Lofton shot up like a weed in his adolescence, and carries himself with adult confidence on screen. For another thing, Jake is written here to be incredibly smooth for a teenager, never getting tongue-tied, and seemingly brought out of his shell by his older girlfriend. Sisko goes into dinner admitting "I don't want to like her," but by the end of a very fun scene, he wants her to tell him all about "my poet hustler son." It's really a good arc, and Mardah is quite a fun character. (It's a shame that, after she was talked up for half a season before this, this is actually the only time she ever appears in an episode.)

Other observations:

• Odo gets quarters for the first time in this episode, and Kira brings him a housewarming gift in a fun scene. It's a great example of the Deep Space Nine writers allowing their characters to change and grow more than the characters of past Star Trek series.

• This episode establishes the Jem'Hadar dependence on ketracel-white -- though the substance isn't actually given a name here. The genetically engineered addiction is a "cold blooded" move by the Founders, according to O'Brien. Odo wryly notes that his people don't have blood.

• It might have been interesting to see this particular Jem'Hadar return in some later episode, to see the consequences of letting him go free. On the other hand, ever bringing back any Jem'Hadar for a repeat appearance would have compromised their narrative function as faceless shock troops. 

I liked this episode better this time around than I had before. I'd give "The Abandoned" a B. I still don't think it's among the best of season three, but it's a fairly solid installment of the series.