A longtime rival of Sisko's, Vulcan Captain Solok, visits the station for repairs to his starship, and challenges Sisko to a competition between their crews: a holosuite baseball game. Sisko is determined to win, though his team doesn't have nearly as much talent as heart.
Some of the negative reactions to this episode may stem from its utter lack of stakes, amid a run of taut and serious episodes. Some of it may be a backlash to doing comedy in general on the more often serious Deep Space Nine. But I'd only be speculating about what people who don't like this episode think; I myself find it a lot of fun. Quirky, for sure, and not perfect -- but fun.
The production of this episode was more difficult than you might expect. It filmed a day longer than was typical for the show, with most of that time on location. (It takes lots of camera setups to cover a baseball game; more if you're trying to script what happens.) There were several stunts to capture, from common slides to Dax's "fancy Dan" flip. Makeup presented challenges -- helmets and caps big enough to accommodate Ferengi ears and Klingon foreheads, and keeping it all looking right as actors exerted themselves.
The story is straight from the underdog-sports-movie book of tropes, complete with motivational speeches and training montages. Notably, our heroes don't pull off an upset win as would often (but not always) happen in this kind of story; instead it's a story about heart and unity. It's a work team-building exercise that everyone gets invested in.
The jokes land pretty well for me, from the sight gag of using the Ops tactical table to strategize baseball, to O'Brien conjuring up Scotch-flavored gum, to Kira's amusement at seeing Odo practice his umpire calls. There's good material in baseball cliches butting up against Star Trek: playing what I assume is the Federation anthem before the game, Sisko giving Odo grief over a bad call ("What were you doing, regenerating?"), Worf's over-the-top chatter ("Death to the opposition!")
A lot of the humor revolves around Rom's ineptitude, which turns out to be a bit of meta-humor: actor Max Grodénchik was by far the most skilled player of the cast. He'd played semi-professionally in his youth before he chose acting as a career path, and ultimately plays left-handed in the episode (even though he's right-handed) in order to look "bad enough" on camera.
Someone who looks bad in an entirely different way is the character of Solok. The intent was probably that he be more playfully antagonistic as Spock was with McCoy -- and that, like Spock, he'd feel a lot more emotions than he lets on. But really, Solok is an unabashed racist, publishing academic papers on his supremacy, and going out of the way to put those he sees as lesser in their place. It's a truly ugly streak running through an otherwise light-hearted episode (and very much the antithesis of the IDIC logo on his team's baseball cap supporting "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations").
Other observations:
- There's a fair amount here for real-world baseball fans to chew on. The Siskos each have an MLB team on their practice caps. Getting Odo to ump instead of using the computer is akin to actual questions of technological assistance in monitoring a game. Odo cites the real rule number (at the time) regarding contact with an umpire. And the takeout slide used against Kira was indeed legal at the time, but is not today.
- The fact that most of the game is played without a crowd is so unintentionally 2020. ("Computer, replace the crowd with cardboard cut-outs?") For the couple of scenes where there is a crowd? That feels like that would have been a fun thing to say you'd been an extra for.
- The signed baseball we see in the final dissolve is a great bit of prop work, with fun thought put into all the characters' signatures.
The Solok rivalry on which this whole story is premised is a sour note to be sure, but mostly, "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" is a fun bit of escapism. I give it a B+.
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