Weekend Trek “Tacking Into The Wind”

There’s a lot going on in this episode.  Bashir and O’Brien make some momentous decisions to try and find a cure for Odo.  Sisko trusts Worf to fix the Gowron problem.  But for the second episode in a row, it seems like the real character moves come from Worf and Damar.

Damar, at least, is an interesting case.  It’s not even that Worf isn’t interesting or something.  He is.  Worf is just a character who has been in so many episodes of different Star Trek series by this point that he’s become, if not predictable, but at least a guy that I, as the viewer, expect to do the right thing.

Damar is, well, not that.  This is a guy who started off as Dukat’s sidekick.  He’s kinda bland, all told.  He fell into the top job on Cardassia, not because he was trying for it but because someone had to have it.  He was a patriot, but he quickly saw that the Dominion wasn’t exactly good for his people.  He clashed with different Weyouns, and finally, he started a rebellion.  And then, this proud Cardassian patriot actually listened to Kira on how to run a resistance.

Would he side with Kira or to Rusot, his own Damar?  Rusot wants to take a captured Breen weapon back to Cardassia.  Kira wants to take it to the Federation to figure out how it works.  Damar is in a bad place.  Weyoun had Damar’s innocent family killed.  Kira was quick to rub some salt in the wound by pointing out how Bajorans had to deal with that thanks to men like Damar, something Damar had never considered, and something Garek thought was a good idea for a very simple reason:  Damar never realized what it was like for the Bajorans, and fortunately, he learned the right lesson by siding with Kira.

By the by, I should have known Rusot was up to no good since the actor also played the aggressive Minbari warrior Neroon  over on Babylon 5.

Yup.  Damar, ever the pragmatist, sided with Kira.  And I gotta say, the moment when Damar and his team sneak onto the Dominion ship and one of the Cardiassians there recognizes him and wishes him luck, that was a nice moment.

Also nice was Odo’s instructions to Garek not to tell Kira how sick he was while, at the same time, Kira’s instructions to Garek not to tell Odo that she is well aware how sick he is has this “Gift of the Magi” vibe going for it.

As for Worf, he knows Gowron is a terrible leader for a war, and he wants him gone.  There may be a way to challenge Gowron for his position, and Ezri of all people, after being told she is still an honorary member of the House of Martok, just asks Worf why he, the most honorable Klingon any Dax has ever met, puts up with such inferior leadership.  It’s the kind of question Ezri, a counselor, would ask but that Jadzia, a scientist, probably wouldn’t have.

But these are Klingons, so of course a fight to the death can pick a leader, and when Martok won’t do it because honor, Worf will, and when he wins, he will give up the chancelorship in favor of Martok.

That seems much better.  But man, Gowron certainly was a colorful character.  Starting off in Next Generation, he was an ally, but not much of a friend.  He was the most competent possible chancelor.  But like so many other characters on DS9, he grew and changed over time.  The politician Gowron needed to be brought down for the good of the very Empire he was running.

He did, mostly because of Worf, the Klingon outsider who only knew Klingon customs as someone who didn’t grow up in it but wanted it to be true could.

Or maybe Ezri was the most responsible.  I mean, it did take an even bigger outsider to point out how messed up the Klingon system was.  She just had to phrase it the right way for Worf to figure it out.  Then again, Kira did the same for Damar, and it looks like both the Cardassians and the Klingons are better off for it.