DS9 Flashback: Things Past

"Necessary Evil" was one of the strongest early episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Its flashbacks of the station under Cardassian control scored big with fans, as did its examination of how Kira and Odo got by in a time of war. For years, the writers had wanted to do "another Terok Nor" episode. Three seasons later, they did it with "Things Past."

Returning to Deep Space Nine, Sisko, Dax, Garak, and Odo encounter a strange phenomenon... and awaken on the station, years in the past, before the end of the Cardassian Occupation. The four are locked inside some sort of shared dream or hallucination: perceived as Bajoran laborers, and arrested by security chief Thrax as suspects in an assassination attempt on Gul Dukat. If they're executed as scheduled, they'll perish in the real world. But perhaps they can survive if Odo, who clearly knows more than he's revealing, can admit the truth.

"Things Past" is a decent episode. There's certainly intriguing character insight about Odo at the core of it. But the episode also feels more convoluted than it needs to be. The past success of "Necessary Evil" boxed the writers in a bit. That episode had involved flashbacks, and they didn't want to do that again. They certainly didn't want to do a time travel story. Eventually, freelancer Michael Taylor (who'd pitched the exceptional "The Visitor") came up with an angle they liked: a nested dream structure in which different characters would keep waking up from a dream only to find themselves inside another dream. (Hmm. He'd invented Inception about two decades too early.) Eventually, they characters would learn that it was all a part of Odo's "master dream" about his own past.

The idea was streamlined a lot before filming, condensed into a single shared dream. But the story is still a bit at odds with itself. Those inside the dream are looking for an explanation (time travel, holodeck scenario, parallel universe?), but the audience is shown right away what's really going on. And because this obvious robs the scenario of necessary tension, the idea is then introduced that dying in the dream means you die in real life. (Director LeVar Burton even called this episode "The Nightmare on Odo Street.) This should expediently set things up so we can just focus on Odo's feelings, but there's so much technobabble explaining how this telepathic link came to be and what the rules of the dream are that it almost should have been more of a mystery than it is.

The true identity of Thrax doesn't make for all that great a surprise, either. Odo began the episode expressing regrets about his role during the Occupation. He's antsy and cagey the entire time, betraying clear knowledge of exactly when and where they've all been transported, and just as clearly withholding other information. Garak spells out for us that Odo should have been the security chief in this time frame. Thrax is not costumed like any other Cardassian. Guest star Kurtwood Smith (who's generally great) even shades his performance to mimic Rene Auberjonois' mannerisms. (Listen for the way he says "Quarrrk!")

Let go of the sci-fi trappings, though, and the story here is a strong one. According to staff writer Ronald D. Moore, they'd never really believed Odo could have kept his hands clean during the Occupation. The resulting story is sort of an echo of "Necessary Evil," which showed Kira in a darker light during that time; this story shows Odo that way. There are any number of stories in the pop culture about miscarriages of justice -- the Central Park Five, the West Memphis Three, Making a Murderer. This episode shows similar sloppy investigation: ignoring certain evidence that's been gathered, settling on "your man" and discarding anything that doesn't fit, pressure to rush to judgment from on high. In hindsight, Odo knows where he went wrong, and tries to argue with himself to be better. But this isn't an actual chance to relive history, it's only a chance to confront and accept it.

The story winds up having some interesting moments for other characters too. Garak gets a little ugly, spouting a few openly racist comments about Bajorans ("servile work is in their nature"), and getting a bit more into his feud with Dukat. Dukat, meanwhile, is very on brand: as ruthless as he is needy. He needs to be loved even as he oppresses, putting similar moves on Dax that he normally uses on Kira, desperate to win someone over so they'll recognize his "good qualities." Dax has strong moments too, actually driving the prison break -- one that would have worked had they not actually been trapped in a dream with only one escape: Odo's confession.

There's lots of fun work with lighting and cameras. All the dark and dingy work redressing the station sets that worked so great in "Necessary Evil" returns here. There are fun camera moves to disguise actor movements, a great "Vertigo zoom" on Odo's face when Thrax calls him by his real name, great smash cuts to emphasize the dreamlike logic, and more. It all looks great.

Other observations:

• To test the theory they might be on a holodeck, Sisko simply calls "computer, end program." There are times I feel like I want to try that out in real life.

• The way this delusion is shaped around Odo's thoughts right before it begins is rather similar to what happened to Beverly Crusher in "Remember Me."

• The episode ends in the same way as "Necessary Evil," with Kira and Odo standing apart from each other in the constable's office, their friendship rocked by what has been revealed.

• In an interview about this episode, Rene Auberjonois made this poignant observation about Odo: "...in the pilot he says to Dukat, 'There's one thing that you know about me – I never lie.' We've tried to be consistent with that. But that doesn't mean he doesn't lie to himself. He is this wonderfully contradictory character, in that he's made of liquid, but he's very rigid."

"Things Past" gets tangled up a bit in sci-fi trappings that don't work too well, but I think the core dramatic story does. I give it a B.