Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Storyteller   Rewatch 
June 7, 2015 1:14 PM - Season 1, Episode 14 - Subscribe

Nog, Jake and Chief O'Brien find they all have some unexpected skills.
posted by Solomon (6 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
I remember liking this one when it was new, but then I saw it in reruns years later and it struck me as kind of an odd duck for this show. The whole deal with the smoke monster held at bay by having stories shouted at it, that seemed rather fanciful and fable-like for this show, and the fact that the little village was on Bajor seemed even weirder. Bajor comes to seem like a real, troubled place over the course of the series, and not the kind of magical place where villagers huddle in fear because of a smoke monster demanding stories. The previous episode, Battle Lines, similarly struck me as a little fanciful for DS9, but I think this one works a little better just as an hour of TV.

That being said, I do remember liking this one and it only suffers when you put it in the context of what the show later came to be. It's a fun, very Star Trek-y idea, and the Jake and Nog stuff is really cute. These are the early days when Jake and Nog had some fun, Tom and Huck comic adventures, before they started growing up and their plots got as bittersweet as everybody else's. It also shows us the prickly beginnings of O'Brien and Bashir's friendship, and it's fun to see that when you know how close they'll become later. It's actually kind of a testament to how good the show got, that a pretty good episode like this maybe doesn't seem so good when you put it in the context of what came later.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:09 PM on June 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


I have to admit, I've sat down several times to watch this episode. Seeing it for the first time was a very different experience to seeing it for the fifth or sixth.

Bajor seemed to be being set up as a mysterious and strange place where villagers shouting at smoke monsters that zapped the village was a thing, but in later times, nothing odd seemed to happen. Apart from in Rekantha, where the quadrant's unluckiest people seem to reside. Bashir and O'Brien were sort of distant acquaintances, rather than the good friends that they later came to be.

There's a lot of interesting scenes in this episode, though. Odo chasing away Nog and Jake gets mentioned in series 7, the scene with Nog saying that it wasn't helpful to ask his father, etc. It sets up a lot for the coming seasons, but a lot of it isn't followed through on.
posted by Solomon at 7:13 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


"I Think You've Got The Wrong Guy: The Miles O'Brien Story"
posted by drezdn at 6:15 AM on June 10, 2015 [7 favorites]


Marking this as the official beginning of the Miles/Julian friendship.
posted by drezdn at 6:59 AM on June 10, 2015


And also the beginning of so much slashfic.
posted by Solomon at 12:28 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


Disclaimer: I’m on my first watch-through.

I thought the acting in this one (from the main cast) was surprisingly good. Somehow, Bashir acting like a prick towards O’Brien towards the middle of the episode made him somehow more endearing.

Also, “sent by the prophet” seems a little on the nose. They’re talking about Sisko, aren’t they?
posted by schmod at 4:25 PM on June 7, 2020


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