Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Jem Hadar Rewatch

September 30, 2015 12:09 PM - Season 2, Episode 26

Sisko, Jake, Nog and Quark go on a camping trip, and make some new friends.

Humble and embarrassed apologies for the late posting! Mea maxima culpa.

Is there any interest in anyone else taking over the baton of posting the weekly threads?

posted by Solomon (10 comments total)

I could do that. What's the usual date/time?

Also: S2 started to pick up steam earlier in the back end of the season, but this episode is the real beginning of the show's major arc. In particular, what happens to the Odyssey lets us know that This Is Not Your Father'sOlder Brother's OldsmobileTrek.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:51 PM on September 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Not to mention those poor bastards on New Bajor.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:11 PM on September 30, 2015

Somewhere between the Maquis and this episode is where I remember falling in love with the show. For my money, the Jem Hadar have the saddest storyline in the entire series. There's just no hope for those guys.
posted by thetortoise at 2:55 PM on September 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

What's the usual date/time?

Usually, I'd be posting on a Sunday, generally late in the evening. This week has gone a little askew.
posted by Solomon at 3:22 PM on September 30, 2015

I really liked the early DS9 season finale format: not a cliff-hanger, but hinting at intriguing new storylines in the future. (I am not opposed to cliff-hangers on a general principle, it's just nice to see an alternative storytelling method executed well).

I love how unimpressed the Jem'Hadar are with Our Heroes:

TALAK'TALAN: A Ferengi and a human. I was hoping the first race I'd meet from the other side of the anomaly would be the Klingons.
and later:
TALAK'TALAN: I was really hoping to meet a Klingon.

I also loved Jake's anti-Wesley Crusher moments, where his attempts to save the day just make a mess of the runabout.

I remember reading on Memory Alpha that the producers wanted to bring back Molly Hagan for a couple of other episodes that had Vortas, but she wasn't available. I don't really have any complaints about her performance, but I'm glad they finally settled on Jeffrey Combs/Weyoun as their go-to-Vorta.
posted by creepygirl at 5:54 PM on September 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

I was so in the mood for more Trek this weekend after watching the nest TOS and this DS9 that I started my own private TNG binge re-watch to keep myself from getting ahead of the DS9 threads. (Angel One is next, god help me.)

I think my favorite moment of this episode was Sisco's little "Woo-hoo" laugh after Quark joined the camping trip. It was so unexpectedly goofy.
posted by oh yeah! at 6:49 PM on September 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Back in the early 90s, when the local network that aired Trek in Australia was showing Next Gen and DS9 years later than it aired in the US, and before I had friends that could send VHS tapes (!!!), after seeing the Deep Space Nine pilot, this was the second episode I ever saw - at a convention. Or maybe a fanclub meeting.

I loved DS9 from the start, but I think this is the episode where they really start breaking away from Trek expectations (Trekspectations?) - and then they jump in with both feet in the season three opening two-parter. So much has changed on the show in its first two years, which is not something that was true of the earlier series. Characters have grown and the dynamic of the series is turned over in the very next episode. But this episode points the way.
posted by crossoverman at 8:56 PM on September 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Glad to see you, Solomon. Thanks for posting.

I held off posting yesterday because I figured you were just a little delayed. Will post within the next couple of hours.

Halloween Jack, Solomon was posting on Sundays and I post on Wednesdays. So if you'd like to pick up Sundays, please feel free!
posted by zarq at 11:35 AM on October 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

I liked the episode okay... Quark's speech to Sisko was a nice reversal of the usual portrayal of Ferengi, as was his saving-of-the-day at the end with regard to revealing the duplicity of the Vorta. Honestly, this was a "weird Sisko" episode. Maybe it's because my own father was very low-key in his emotional displays, but I felt nervous for Jake when Sisko was looming over him by the campfire.

As I was thinking about what I wanted to comment on with this episode, it occurred to me that the visual design of the Jem Hadar was pretty conservative. It's a bit too much of an overlap with the Cardassians who strike a nice balance between skeletal and reptilian so that they look menacing and alien without really trying to look menacing and alien. In fact, the Cardassian judge in the Miles' tribunal episode (from a few episodes back) wouldn't look out of place in a Brecht play. The Jem Hadar, on the other hand, look more traditionally like menacing evil aliens with similar reptilian cues to the Cardassians.
posted by Slothrop at 3:54 PM on October 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's 2020, there's a plague, and I think this is what I'm doing with my quarantine time. Watching DS9. I make sure to fall asleep in the middle of a few episodes so that there will always be some that are still new to me, when I come back to the series in the future.

It's clear they are setting up a season-spanning big bad here. Unfortunately the names "Dominion" and "founders" are pretty dumb. It sounds like some fundamentalist southern church is going to come and fight them by convincing them to give up modern medicine. Psychic powers make for an interesting enemy, though Not the omnipotence of Q, but just enough magic to thwart a science-based community.

Quark's speech about how Ferengi aren't as bad as Terrans because at least they've never sold humans... It's an interesting point to contemplate today. The moral limits of Ferengi capitalism, and if capitalism by nature can ever have moral limits. I guess it's more of a religion for Ferengi, so they are able to shorten the growth of capitalism by scripture.
posted by tofu_crouton at 5:37 PM on March 16, 2020 [2 favorites]