DS9 Flashback: His Way

The sixth season Deep Space Nine episode "His Way" asks a lot of fans: you have to accept the answer to the series' long "will they / won't they" between Odo and Kira (they will), and you have to welcome to the show the character of old Las Vegas crooner Vic Fontaine. If you're into all that, though, it's a lot of fun.

Julian Bashir shares an interesting new holosuite program with his friends that features Vic Fontaine, a worldly and friendly lounge singer with keen insight and awareness of his own nature as a hologram. A casual observation about Kira and Odo captures the latter's attention, and soon Odo is visiting the holosuite regularly for advice from Vic on how to open up to her for a romantic relationship.

This episode was a long time coming for Deep Space Nine. The idea that Odo had feelings for Kira had been inspired by Rene Auberjonois' performance in a single scene, then grew into a major element of multiple entire episodes. According to show runner Ira Steven Behr, he felt by this point in the series that time was running out to actually play a potential relationship. Moreover, he claims, he already knew at this point that the end of the entire show would see Odo leaving his friends behind. He wanted there to be a real sacrifice in that, and felt that Kira could represent that.

The actors were less sure, having both maintained for years that their characters should remain friends only. (Nana Visitor even plays that well in this very episode. Watch in the opening scene as Odo enjoys the music; you can see that Kira's enjoyment is in watching that Odo enjoys it.) Rene Auberjonois thought this script was "silly" the first time he read it, though said that on a second reading, after letting go of his own attachment to the emotionally painful aspects of his character, he was convinced this was the right way to go. Visitor apparently never quite came around, though she noted that it did all at least "make sense," and that she always wanted to "pick [her] fights." (My translation: as long as the writers never compromised in Kira's attitudes toward Dukat, a relationship with Odo was something she could find a way to play convincingly.)

You'd never detect any reluctance from the actors from their performances in the final episode. (Of course not; they're acting!) Auberjonois gets to do a lot of non-verbal work, from a meaningful cutaway to his face when Shakaar is first mentioned, to the scene in which he first fakes playing the piano -- a long scene in which you actually see Odo move from discomfort to joy. The character really does change in this episode: early on, he's mortified at the thought that anyone might see him relaxing on the holodeck; later, he's not at all embarrassed when Sisko catches him singing and then joins in.

Visitor turns a similar corner in the episode. You can really see the moment in the episode (during the dinner) where Kira really looks at Odo and realizes she's seeing a new side of him. When she speaks later to Dax about having had a moment of pure clarity, you sense how much it has rattled her. Plus, of course, Visitor delivers a wonderfully sultry version of the song "Fever" (her own suggestion to replace a different song originally selected, and inspired by a real-life childhood encounter with Doris Duke).

The two actors are equally great together. That dinner scene really makes the episode, each character being vulnerable with the other. The betrayal they both express when they realize Vic has tricked them is bottled up just enough, in a way that makes it more potent. Then there's the kiss in the end. Sure, the argument-leading-to-a-kiss is such a cliché... but it works well here because the two actors play it well.

This episode marked another culmination in the introduction of Vic Fontaine. For seasons, Ira Steven Behr had long wanted a lounge singer hologram to dispense advice. He'd written a sample scene two years earlier to pitch to Frank Sinatra Jr. (Sinatra turned it down; he apparently loved Star Trek, but wanted to play an alien and not a version of his famous father.) A year later, Behr even put a scene into an episode script, but Steve Lawrence, Robert Goulet, and other choices also passed on the role. (That script ran long and the scene was cut anyway.)

Knowing there wasn't that much time left in the series, Behr decided it was time to do every idea he'd ever wanted -- so he expanded that lounge singer from a single scene to an entire episode. Not every Trek fan responded to the character, particularly those who maybe saw him as a retread of Guinan's wise confidant from The Next Generation, or who didn't appreciate hearing "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You," "Come Fly With Me," and "I've Got You Under My Skin" performed almost in their entirety during an hour of sci-fi television. (The music rights to this episode must have been a lot of work to nail down!)

For me, the juxtaposition is what I like about the character. On the one hand, Vic Fontaine is throwing around Rat Pack era slang in an episode with tuxedos, a hideous (and appropriate) "throwback Vegas" color palette, and references to Victor Borge. On the other, he's a self-aware character who calls himself a light bulb, hacks other holosuites and communications channels (okay -- maybe that's a little creepy), and can modify his own program on the fly. He's not really one simple thing.

I also quite like the performance from actor James Darren -- quite a casting coup in the end, considering all the people they reached out to first. Darren not only sings the songs wonderfully (enough so that Star Trek fans drove the recording of two albums of classic songs in the years to follow), he's also marvelously at ease in the acting. My sense is that fans who don't like Vic Fontaine don't like the idea of him; the performance itself is nothing but charismatic.

Other observations:

• The two other characters who knew about Odo's feelings prior to this -- Quark and Dax -- get some nice scenes. Quark regards Kira as a deal Odo waited too long to close, and quips how he himself is far more lovable than the uptight constable. Dax is there at the key moment to say, with seven lifetimes of experience, how rare a true moment of clarity is. We see the reactions of both characters to the momentous kiss.

• The musical score adopts a jazzy tone at times to better blend in with the world of Vic Fontaine.

• A "Warp Core Breach" is a great name for a cocktail. Greater still that it comes in a glass of such ridiculous size.

• Odo's morph into a tuxedo is one visual effect that doesn't really hold up today. A fun idea, though.

"His Way" is an unconventional episode -- a light romantic comedy playing an almost Cyrano de Bergerac story and loaded with songs. But for me, it works. I give it a B+.