Empok Nor #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 24) Horror-themed visit to derelict Cardassian station

Rewatching ST:DS9

Dax, Worf and Kira arrive at an otherwise empty bar. Before Quark can take their order, a mechanical noise drives them away.

In a service tunnel (the source of the noise), Nog is expertly assisting O’Brien, but something goes boom, critically flabbergasting all the station’s jimberjams. The only way to unflabbergast them is for O’Brien to collect plot macguffins from the abandoned Cardsassian station Empak Nor.

Is Garak kidding when he says he’s surprised people trust him enough to want him on the mission? Is O’Brien kidding when he promises never to invite Garak over for dinner? The banter seems a bit sharper than usual.

I was pleasantly surprised when the series regulars walk out of frame, and the camera lingers on banter between two engineers and two security crew. We see longer than usual tracking shots as crew stow gear and move about in ways that make the familiar runabout set look grounded and physical.

While the mission is underway, Garak chides Nog for protecting rather than attacking in a Cardassian board game. In a bit of dialogue that will certainly have nothing at all to do with the main plot, Garak says he’d like to play O’Brien, citing the chief’s past military victories against Cardassians.   

Once the runabout arrives at Empok Nor, Nog overeagerly volunteers to defuse the boobytraps that Garak warns them to expect.

While we’ve seen all these sets before many times, low light levels and moving cameras make the familiar DS9 sets feel fresh. Seeing Garak in a spacesuit talking about restoring the lights and artificial gravity, and establishing shots of Empok Nor having drifted about 90 degrees out of synch with the camera are generally successful attempts to all  makes the same old spaces look fresh.

O’Brien has the team split up, because hasn’t yet seen what we’ve seen — powered stasis chambers with Cardassian occupants. As the threat level rises, we see O’Brien keeping his cool and Garak seeming strangely exhilarated, but when one of the less-experienced teams decides to split up, the result is predictable.

Garak decides to go hunting, and seems to enjoy it way too much. Eventually we get an infodump scene where O’Brien informs Nog that Garak has been affected by an experimental Cardassian drug, enhancing his killer instincts.

Garak sends his voice over the PA system, goading O’Brien into a direct confrontation –just like he was goading Nog earlier while playing the board game! Thank the Prophets for the expository dialogue, or someone in TV Land might have missed the connection!

I do appreciate that the producers wanted to try something different, and I did find the episode suspenseful and enjoyable, but once it’s clear that we’re watching survival horror, there’s not much point getting attached to any of the pawns. For the script to work, Nog had to regress a bit in order to need O’Brien’s protection. The story didn’t require Nog to choose between idolizing Garak or O’Brien, and the story structure would not have changed if the landing party were just O’Brien, Garak, and any five valuable objects (or DeConnick would put it, the “sexy lamp” test).

Sisko has only five lines, all of which are expositional questions or suggestions that drive the plot.

This is a reminder that TV shows used to have about 26 episodes per season. Not a great episode, but I’d say the producers got what they set out to make.