DS9 Flashback: Let He Who Is Without Sin...

Season five of Deep Space Nine opened with a long string of good and great episodes. But it really hit the skids with "Let He Who Is Without Sin..." -- an episode many fans rank in the bottom 5 of the entire series.

Dax and Worf are planning a romantic getaway to Risa, but their party is crashed by Doctor Bashir and Leeta (who are going to Risa to end their relationship according to Bajoran tradition), and Quark (who has always wanted to see the famous pleasure planet). Worf is in a sour mood upon arrival, in the perfect state to receive the message of a local agitator named Fullerton. His group, the New Essentialists, believes that Federation citizens have gone soft with decadence and ignorance. And Worf is willing to help them step up their demonstrations.

This script came from show runner Ira Steven Behr and staff writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe. According to Behr, it was loosely inspired by the Eugene O'Neill play A Moon for the Misbegotten, controversial in its time (the 1940s) for pushing boundaries in depicting alcoholism and sexual gratification. The hope was to push similar boundaries on Deep Space Nine, to use Risa to examine 24th century sexuality and morality. And while both writers readily admitted that the finished product was flawed (Wolfe called it "the worst episode I ever wrote"), I think their analysis of why it went wrong missed the mark all over again.

According to Wolfe, "romance is not one of our strong suits." Behr's take, in multiple interviews in the following years, was that the show was simply not allowed to be sexy enough. There was too much worrying about the children in the audience, and so the episode was too tame. He blamed executive producer Rick Berman for essentially censoring any legitimately titillating content from the episode, defanging its message. How could they offer any meaningful commentary about sex in an hour of television so borderline asexual?

The real problem, I think, is that Star Trek ventures into dangerous waters when it challenges the audience not to like Star Trek. The complaint of the antagonist Fullerton is that a world of plenty, with no want and fabulous technology, is somehow a bad thing. Deep Space Nine tried this message out once before in season two's "Paradise," to decidedly mixed results -- that episode was no better at making a fantastical future seem negative, but it at least served up some of Benjamin Sisko's most stoic moments to that point.

When Fullerton rails about defending paradise, he seems to mean it quite literally -- that any Federation citizen should be willing to pick up a weapon and fight off Borg and Jem'Hadar. But a key reason there are soldiers is that not everyone has what it takes to be one. Fighting in that way is not for everyone. Nor is physical violence the only way to fight for one's principles. Fullerton's viewpoint is flawed and indefensible right from the jump.

And that's assuming you even take it at face value. He claims that a cowed citizenry needs to be more vigilant. But he sure expresses himself like many a regressive puritan trying to turn back the clock on social morality and free will. His main beef -- and the one with which Worf finds common cause -- is that everyone is having sexytimefun on the beach, making adult decisions for themselves. Star Trek has always been, at its best, forward-thinking and progressive. (And this is why it blows my mind that a vocal minority of "fans" rail against Star Trek: Discovery for the elements that continue the franchise's never-subtle progressive push.) You can have a villain like Fullerton, but you're never going to make him be sympathetic or relatable.

To make Worf find such a creature alluring risks serious damage to his character. Now of course, Deep Space Nine is not a black-and-white area of the Star Trek universe; Quark in particular does dastardly things from time to time. But Worf is in the wrong on every level in this episode, and pays no consequences for it. He's fiercely jealous of Dax's ex-lovers, one of those insecure men who can't stand that "his woman" has any kind of history before they met. (And Dax has seven times more history than most!) He wants to dictate the terms of their relationship, demanding she change to suit him. He also behaves literally like a child, passing messages to people he refuses to speak to directly: "Tell the Ferengi that..." Dax struggles to articulate to her friends what she sees in him, and in this episode, it's no wonder. But she takes him back in the end, in a frankly unearned move.

Worf is shown to be the most incredible hypocrite in this episode. He wants to be left alone, living on the Defiant to get away from other people. He refuses to let anyone, even Dax, compromise his vision of what it is to be Klingon. Yet here he is all up in everyone else's business, judging Leeta and Bashir, being suspicious of Dax and Arandis... and worst of all, joining up with a terrorist. Fullerton is literally trying to instill terror in people to change their behavior: threatening them at gunpoint (it doesn't matter that the guns aren't loaded), sabotaging global technology, risking lives. Worf should be prosecuted for helping this man, or at least (given the Risians' stated reluctance to do such things) be formally reprimanded by Starfleet. He escapes this episode without consequence.

This troubled script had more trouble still behind the scenes. Though some on location shooting in Malibu definitely sells the paradise of Risa, filming there was a nonstop headache for director Rene Auberjonois. High winds required extensive redubbing of the dialogue after the fact. Tackburrs on the beach tore at the feet of the background extras (whose sometimes elaborate makeup also required extra care). Insufficient precautions to protect actors from the sun delayed filming.

There was also one understandably tired and distracted actor. Nana Visitor gave birth to her baby during the filming of this episode, at 11:00 at night. New father Alexander Siddig "stayed up all night with the baby and Nana," then had an early morning call to show up at Malibu to film the scene in which Bashir breaks up with Leeta. He's quite critical of his own performance, as a result -- though the comedy of the scene does at least play well, with Leeta revealing her crush on Rom.

And yet, there are a few saving graces to the episode. Getting Vanessa Williams for a Star Trek episode is quite a coup, especially at this point in time, before she'd done much television. Her character's back story with Dax is a lot of fun, and she has good rapport with Terry Farrell. And while Worf is utterly unsympathetic in the rest of the episode, the story from his childhood -- that his Superman-like strength resulted in a boy's death, does go a long way toward explaining why he is the way he is. (Forgiving the behavior, no. Explaining it, yes.) Plus, little comedy accents throughout do play well: seeing Morn succeed on a date, hearing what a traditional Irish baby name means in Bajoran, seeing how positively giddy Odo gets when gossiping, watching Leeta deliberately turn on the charm. (Hmm.... those moments are all from the first five minutes.)

Other observations:

• The matte painting of the domed city on Risa is a lot of fun, particularly the giant hor'gahn.

• A double sunset at the end! Never going to not think of Star Wars.

I don't think Star Trek should ever be giving oxygen to puritanical morality and regressive social values. But there are some very good character moments in the episode that, to me, make this more watchable than, say, "The Passenger," "The Muse," or the often-laughed-at "Move Along Home." I give "Let He Who Is Without a Sin..." a C+.