DS9 Flashback: When It Rains...

There are some writers who methodically outline every moment of their story before they set out to write. There are other writers who just set out on the journey and find their way as they go along. Television rarely affords the luxury of the first category -- and even less so in the midst of filming a 26-hour season of television. When the writers of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine set out on their final arc, it was inevitable that their plans would change at some point. "When It Rains..." is the episode most impacted by this.

Damar's new Cardassian resistance movement needs molding from someone who knows guerilla tactics, and Kira Nerys is the person for the job -- despite the obvious friction her presence will cause. Odo accompanies her... only to discover soon after leaving the station that the virus infecting the Founders is in him as well. What's more, Dr. Bashir soon deduces that virus was created and deliberately given to Odo by Section 31. Martok is sidelined by an ambitious Gowron, who is looking to seize the spotlight just as the Klingons must step up their role in the war. And Dukat's attempt to unleash the Pah-wraiths without Winn's help brings him very personal consequences.

To hear the writers describe their original idea of this episode, almost every aspect of it changed before the final script. That snowball started rolling when they were thinking about Damar, who they'd originally imagined to stay undercover with the Dominion to sabotage from within. Realizing this would wall him off for the entire arc and prevent him from interacting with the main characters, the decision was made to have him break away and start a formalized resistance in which some of the regulars could participate.

Kira, of course, was the most logical and dramatically interesting choice to pair with him. Unfortunately, though, she came with story baggage that the writers hadn't set out to address: Damar's murder of Ziyal seems like an act she shouldn't easily overlook, no matter the circumstances. Even more so for Garak, who also joins this plot line. Both actors expressed their disappointment that their characters didn't confront Damar head on about it... though Nana Visitor did acknowledge in an interview that this wouldn't have served a story about reforming the villain (and about the moral compromises one makes in war). Some quick lip service to Ziyal is about all this episode can make time for.

Originally, the writers had planned a different story for Kira and Odo. Upon learning that Section 31 created the Founder virus, Odo was personally going to hunt them down with Kira's help. Not wishing to separate their romantic couple, the writers instead sent Odo along on Kira's new mission with Damar. This lets the grousing Cardassians under Damar make points about collaborating being a murky moral issue (though they're really doing it just to get under Kira's skin, of course).

This also gives Bashir (and O'Brien) a better role in the episodes to come, taking over the hunt for Section 31. Since every Section 31 story so far has been centered on Bashir, I really can't imagine this plot line ever having been planned out any other way.

But then, perhaps all that planning went into justifying exactly when and how Section 31 infected Odo with their engineered disease. That logic does hold up under scrutiny; Odo is said to have been infected while he was on Earth, and he would have passed it on to the Founders when he linked with them to be judged. The very slow incubation time seems logical, as they wouldn't have known how long it would take Odo to connect with his people, and they wouldn't want him showing signs of illness before then.

The Founders also getting sick before Odo also tracks, if you assume that the "clock" stopped running on Odo during the several months in which he'd been made humanoid. That last part would seem to be just a happy accident, though; another change in the writing is that Odo was originally planned to just be a "Typhoid Mary" who carried the disease without contracting it. Having him actually get sick is the better choice, though, raising the stakes across the board.

The Dukat/Winn story line in this episode is yet another aspect that wasn't part of the writers' original plan. In fact, everything that had happened between them up to this point was the original plan for the two characters. It had taken far fewer episodes than they'd imagined to set up Winn and Dukat for the finale, and here they were several hours to go. With plenty of other story threads that needed the time, the decision was made to "bench" these two characters somehow, finding a way to suspend their story.

It was René Echevarria who came up with the idea of blinding Dukat. Unfortunately, I think it's too interesting an idea. Mechanically speaking, the audience is not supposed to wonder what's going on with him or Kai Winn after this episode. Instead, I find myself very much wanting to watch Dukat suffer for a while, and wanting to see what exactly he has to do to get back in the Pah-wraith's good graces. I also kind of want to see what Winn does without him; does she regret casting him out, wishing she'd kept him closer? Basically, there are just too many intriguing dramatic possibilities here. If "writing Winn and Dukat out of the next few episodes" was indeed the point, it might have just been better to assume they were both just studying their evil book all that time.

The one aspect of this episode that did go according to the original plan was Gowron's return to the action. The tension between him and Martok is an interesting study in politics through a Klingon lens. Gowron is scheming here, trying to rid himself of a rival using honor and glory. There will be more to say about that in the next episode. For now, at least, it's interesting to see a smarter Martok -- not taking the bait when goaded by a Romulan senator, and recognizing the box Gowron is trying to put him in. (If Worf feels a bit marginalized here, that was no doubt done on purpose to allow actor Michael Dorn an easier time in the director's chair this episode.)

Other observations:

• They aren't even bothering with "last time on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" re-caps anymore. (They're clever about sprinkling reminders into the episode itself. And they're rightly assuming that by now, you're either in or you're out on this series.)

• The idea Bashir has to use Odo's "tissue" to create organs from undifferentiated cells is essentially one of the goals in actual stem cell research. Some day, this will be yet another real-world technology that Star Trek anticipated.
  

• Guest actor Vaughn Armstrong appears as the Cardassian Seskal, one of his record 13 characters in various incarnations of Star Trek.
  

• This is the last Deep Space Nine episode to be scored by "recurring but not regular" composer Paul Baillargeon. He uses some fairly conspicuous electronic drums during Martok's award ceremony that are quite unusual for Star Trek.

This is a jam-packed episode that goes by quickly and definitely leaves you wanting more. I give "When It Rains..." a B+.