DS9 Flashback: In the Pale Moonlight

"In the Pale Moonlight" is arguably the biggest break from "Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek," from the morally uncompromising humans of the 24th century, in all of Deep Space Nine. It also shows up regularly on lists of the series' top episodes.

Sisko records a lengthy log entry detailing his actions of the past two weeks, actions he now realizes were an inexorable descent into moral compromise. Desperate to bring the Romulans into the Dominion War as allies, Sisko has worked with Garak to fabricate evidence of a Dominion double-cross.

I hadn't actually watched this episode in full since it originally aired, and I did remember it being a series highlight as widely claimed. Rewatching it today, while I do still think it's quite good, I felt its punch didn't land as hard as it did in its time. That punch, I believe, is the shock that Benjamin Sisko would slip down this road of lies: consorting with criminals, threatening violence, becoming an accessory to murder -- and that not only would he accept it as being for the "greater good," but we the audience would too.

Two decades later, there's been a lot more darkness in Star Trek that makes this look less like an outlier. Not just in "modern Trek" (Discovery and Picard) either, but in episodes of Voyager and Enterprise. But also, watching Deep Space Nine itself regularly, without a summer hiatus or reruns between episodes to spread the experience out over seven years, this story is not as much an outlier as you might think. Sisko has played the "bad guy" for noble intentions in increasing degrees through "Past Tense," "Through the Looking Glass," and "For the Uniform" (destroying an entire planet in that last one!). The road he walks in this episode is just a continuation of that larger journey.

Making the audience so complicit with Sisko is a fresh trick of this episode, though. The log entry framing device is not your average "two weeks earlier" flashback gimmick. Avery Brooks delivers a performance that comes right through the screen to look directly at you, challenging you to disagree with or judge anything he's saying. He drinks, he slowly sheds layers of clothes as he peels back layers of his story, and makes the audience an accomplice in a secret he says he can't even reveal to his closest friend Dax. Some of that righteous fervor Brooks displayed in "Far Beyond the Stars" is here harnessed for entirely different ends in an intense, intimate performance.

Garak, of course, figured well in many wonderful Bashir episodes. But the series has increasingly paired him with other characters -- Odo, Worf, and O'Brien -- to great effect. Pairing him here with Sisko is another win. As actor Andrew Robinson put it, his role in this episode is to teach Sisko that "you can't go to bed with the Devil without having sex." Garak knows that deep down, Sisko means what he says, that he'll do anything to bring the Romulans into the war. But he also knows that Sisko would balk at what "anything" includes if he knew it at the outset. So he masterfully weaves a patented Garak blend of lies and truth, telling Sisko a plausible version of "the plan" that he knows isn't actually The Plan.

I've noted lately that the sixth season Deep Space Nine model is to focus an episode on one character while throwing a single scene to the rest of the cast. That's still the model here, but the "single scenes" for the other characters are much more organically incorporated than the common bit of comedy at the top of the episode. Dax engages in a fun debate with Sisko, role-playing as a Romulan. Quark forces Sisko to bribe him to not press charges on a criminal vital to the plan. (Quark got stabbed while protecting a dabo girl's personal space; perhaps that's about watching his bottom line more than any objective respect for boundaries.) Bashir pushes back against Sisko's order to sell a dangerous compound to unsavory people.

Though if you're going to talk about making a big impact in just a scene or two, you have to talk about guest star Stephen McHattie in role of Vreenak. Of course, he was a meme before memes were a thing with his wild delivery of the line: "It's a faaaaake!" (Which, for me at least, does work in the moment, enormous as it is.) But his prior scenes with Sisko are really great -- withering disdain and sustained tension. The conversation about flaws in replicated Romulan spirits is especially fun, relating directly to Vreenak's ability to spot flaws in the phony hologram he's about to be given. (And even if Sisko were to learn something about how he might deceive Vreenak, it's too late; it's been established that the Cardassian data rod can only be recorded on once.)

Other observations:

• The original story idea for this episode was a sort of All the President's Men story in which Jake tries to "Watergate" First Minister Shakaar, coming into conflict with his father once it's clear he's protecting the Bajoran leader. According to staff writer Ronald Moore -- who was ultimately the uncredited writer on the script they did film -- this idea never quite clicked. The relationship between father and son was too strong, and it was too hard to believe anything coming between them. Excising Jake and bringing in the confessional log gimmick is how the story finally came together.

• To really raise the stakes on the war, we hear that the planet Betazed is taken by the Dominion. The writers considered Vulcan for this story beat, but decided that would be a little too momentous.

• "Proconsul Neral" is mentioned in dialogue, connecting back to a Next Generation episode that featured the Romulan character. Next season, he'd appear on Deep Space Nine -- with a significant promotion.

• You wouldn't really expect it from the story, but there's a lot of costume work in this episode. Garak changes outfits several times as the weeks pass. Criminal Grathon Tolar has loud clothes to match his loud alien makeup. And of course, there's that flashy new shirt Quark is sad to have lost.

• Avery Brooks' delivery of the last few lines is a really excellent display of clear choices and intentionality in acting. He repeats essentially the same line three times, each time with a different meaning. First: "So I will learn to live with it." (I really don't have any other choice.) Then: "Because I can live with it." (Fake it until you make it.) Then finally: "I can live with it." (Resolve. He can.)

There was a time I would have given "In the Pale Moonlight" an A without reservation. I think when the shock factor is gone, it drops just a touch to an A-. It's still a highlight of the season and the series.