DS9 Flashback: Starship Down

During Star Trek's "Renaissance era" of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise, publisher Pocket Books was releasing a steady stream of tie-in novels, overseen by editor John J. Ordover. But some of his work made the official "canon"; together with writing partner David Mack, he sold the idea to Deep Space Nine that became the episode "Starship Down."

The rescue of a Karemma ship leads the Defiant into a deadly cat-and-mouse chase with the Jem'Hadar, deep inside the atmosphere of a gas giant. When the Defiant takes heavy damage, people become isolated throughout the ship, each facing their own crisis. Dax and Bashir must survive behind a sealed bulkhead until rescue comes. Quark and Karemman representative Hanok must defuse an unexploded torpedo. Worf must lead a stressed team of engineers in a counterattack against the Jem'Hadar ships. And Kira must keep a concussed Sisko alive, confronting her own feelings toward her people's Emissary in the process.

Some Star Trek fans have compared this episode to The Next Generation's "Disaster," in the way it tracks multiple fish-out-of-water stories across a severely damaged ship. But really, it's much more like a submarine movie. Hulls creak under pressure in a planet's crushing atmosphere. Echo location is used to hunt for ships. Systems "run silent" to escape detection.

Mack and Ordover were most specifically inspired by Das Boot, with the former suggesting they "sink the Defiant." They literally wanted to crash the ship in an ocean, but budgetary limitations led them to revise their idea. A lot of the tropes still play, though.

Dax and Bashir become trapped together, leading to a nice commentary on how much less creepy the Doctor has become since the series began. Kira is made to confront her relationship with Sisko. It's easy to forget that for her, working for him is not unlike working side by side with Jesus. His prominence in her religion could probably be touched on even more often than the series does, but it's certainly used well here. Just as Nana Visitor gave a powerhouse performance when she watched Kai Opaka die, her emotions erupt here as the same thing nearly happens with Sisko. Though Sisko is a mostly passive figure in the story line, he does seem to gain more understanding of her situation in the end.

Worf gets another subplot (following "Hippocratic Oath") that shows him having to adjust to fit into the world of Deep Space Nine. We get a good number of minor engineer characters here, that Worf initially storms over like a bull in a china shop. (Imagine how intimidating it would be to have a Klingon's anger directed at you!) O'Brien gets to draw on his longer-running friendship with Worf, going back to The Next Generation, to guide the Klingon on how to deal with people wired for problem-solving, not crisis management. Yet also, O'Brien advises, don't let up on the reins too much.

Quark gets a fun story line, initially about how he's injected himself and the Ferengi as an intermediary between the Federation and the Karemma so he can scam both. Actor Armin Shimerman called this episode a favorite, in part for how it lays out Quark's philosophy that risk is a vital part of life, and in part that he got to play scenes with his old friend, James Cromwell. Cromwell had been on Star Trek: The Next Generation before (twice!), and had just finished filming the movie Babe when he came in for this Deep Space Nine episode. When Babe suddenly broke big, his celebrity rose to a point where, just one year later, he'd be drafted as a "bigger name" to appear in Star Trek: First Contact.

I have the oddest memory of watching Cromwell's performance the first time around -- I was convinced he might in fact be Rene Auberjonois, covered up in elaborate makeup. Odo hardly appears in this episode (presumably because his shapeshifting abilities would have been too useful in solving problems aboard the Defiant in this episode), and I was convinced the production decided to have him play this one-off character of Hanok instead. Their voices seemed similar, and the sparring relationship with Quark was very much the same. And strangely, in the final scene in Quark's bar where Odo and Hanok actually interact, the two are never together on screen in the same shot; the edit just cuts between close-ups of the two. In a world before anyone knew who James Cromwell was, it's only his atypical height and extra-lean frame that offers any clue that he's not Rene Auberjonois in makeup!

Cromwell does give a great performance, though, starting out indignant at Quark's games before ultimately getting caught in a game of his own -- selling a substandard torpedo that fails to explode. Hanok comes over to Quark's way of thinking, embracing risk as a life-affirming part of existence. He's a fun little guest character.

Other observations:

• This episode marked the most extensive use of CG to date in Star Trek. The Defiant, the Jem'Hadar ships, the atmospheric probe, and the gas giant environment itself were all rendered by computer.

• The writing staff seemed to feel that too much got lost in translating underwater submarine tropes to this setting. In particular, they felt that the "sealing the bulkhead from rushing water" moment just didn't work when trying to stop a gas leak instead. Show runner Ira Steven Behr said he even joked for the rest of the series, when a new episode idea was needed: "we could still do that submarine movie, and we could do it right this time."

• Morn "tells" Bashir he has 17 siblings, continuing to expand the wild little details we know about the non-speaking character.

• Nana Visitor is great at more than the heavy dramatic moments. Kira's ear-to-ear grin at the end of this episode, when Sisko invites her to a holosuite baseball game, feels like the most pure expression of joy I could imagine.

If you do compare this episode to The Next Generation's "Disaster," it comes off not as good. Still, it's a fun premise with some great scenes. I give "Starship Down" a B.