A mobster takes over Vic Fontaine's casino and lounge, in a plot twist created by the holoprogram's author to spice things up. Our heroes can't reset the program without resetting Vic and erasing all memory of his experiences with them, so they set out to pull off a heist, robbing the casino to oust the interlopers.
No, the regular characters are not themselves in jeopardy in this story, and that was a deliberate choice by the writers (who didn't want another "malfunctioning holodeck" episode). Behr thought it would be enough that they had an emotional investment in the fictional character of Vic, a sort of meta-commentary on the way Star Trek fans develop an emotional investment in fictional characters too.
Behr was also aware by this time, though, that some Trek fans didn't like Vic Fontaine very much. So he had the idea to make Sisko an initially reluctant participant too, to be a proxy for that audience segment to say "if he can just go with this too, can't you?" Sisko's objections end up offering up some valuable civil rights perspective too: 1962 Vegas was decidedly not welcoming to non-white people. Kasidy Yates and Sisko do debate some meaningful points about whether revisionism for entertainment is in fact unhealthy erasure and denial -- a rather significant conversation for two black characters to have with each other on a 1990s television show. Was there more exploration possible here? Of course! While keeping the tone of a fun and light caper episode? No. So I'll come down on the side of "glad at least this much was included."
But then, I am inclined to be forgiving here, as I almost always love a heist story. This one is rather explicitly patterned off of one I actually didn't like much, the original (glacially paced) Ocean's 11. (This episode came two years before the popular remake.) It plays all the required beats: the heroic shots of the team assembled both before and after the heist, showing us how the plan should go first so that we understand the importance of things going wrong later, giving every character in crew their own tiny duty to fulfill.
The episode is sometimes slavish to a fault in serving up these moments, because they don't necessarily hold up to scrutiny. Why does Ezri need to bring Julian the drink to be drugged -- can't Ezri just drug the drink herself? If Odo is already in the room with the safe, aren't his skills at least as useful for cracking it as Nog's?
On the other hand, the heist itself does deliver all the fun thrills you hope will be there, watching the characters improvise their way around troubles from spilled drinks to the wrong count man to an early arrival by the Big Bad. And much of the logic in this story does hold up. It makes sense than Julian, O'Brien, Kira, Odo, and Nog would all be committed to helping Vic (and that Worf wouldn't care -- though Jadzia would have forced him to help). It makes sense that Kira would be such a smooth flirtatious operator; one could imagine her doing this sort of thing with Cardassian Guls many times during the Occupation.
And the production makes sure to get all the trappings right. The guest stars are a murderer's row of recognizable faces who have often played these kinds of characters in these kinds of stories in countless movies and TV episodes -- Mike Starr as Cicci, Robert Miano as Frankie Eyes, and Marc Lawrence as Zeemo. There are extensive period costumes and hairstyles. And the set might not look like much by modern standards, but it was one of the largest ever built for the show -- all dressed and decorated to look like classic Vegas movies, and big enough to fit a crane for complex shots. Add in the huge number of background actors, and you actually get one of the most expensive episodes Deep Space Nine ever made.
And reportedly, the Paramount execs liked the results so much, they asked that the episode be bumped up earlier so that it aired at the end of February Sweeps. So while this had been written and filmed as the "last stand-alone episode" (with the song "The Best Is Yet to Come" cheekily selected to end it), the opaquely titlted "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" wound up in that slot instead. (Though, as I'll get to next time, that's not exactly stand-alone.)
Other observations:
- As is typical for a Vic Fontaine episode, there are several songs included. Most this time are instrumentals, though, like the ubiquitous "Night Train." The opening song, "Alamo," isn't an actual crooner standard, but an original creation for this episode crafted to sound like one.
- Behr had long wanted Avery Brooks to sing on the show (more than just the rare snippet of a song), which led to the duet on "The Best Is Yet to Come." The reactions of the other characters to their singing captain make it a fun scene.
- The "replacement count man" Ezri encounters is played by Robert O'Reilly, the actor who plays Gowron. They weren't 100% sure Gowron himself would return for the final story arc, and wanted O'Reilly to have a possible "final appearance" (without his makeup). He's credited under a different name to make it a little more of an Easter Egg for fans; he chose "Bobby O'Reilly" as the childhood name he actually went by in the real 1962.
A neat last bit of fluffy fun before things on Deep Space Nine turn heavy, I give "Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang" a B+.
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