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 EPISODE REVIEWS | ||
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Empok Nor Airdate: Week of
May 19th to May 23rd, 1997
Written by: Hans
Beimler (Teleplay); Bryan Fuller
Directed by:
Michael Laurence Vejar
In-Short:
Involving and extremely character driven, Empok Nor
shows another side of DS9's favorite tailor.
Brief Summary:
With DS9 in disrepair Chief O'Brien leads an engineering team to
an abandoned Cardassian station, Empok Nor in search of
salvageable parts. But the team soon learns they're not the only
ones on the station.
Review
This episode is a
prime example of how Deep Space Nine is so character driven. In
contrast with this weeks' Voyager finale, Scorpion
(which rocked by the way), Empok Nor ends up relying
primarily on the relationship (or lack thereof) between O'Brien
and Garak. Voyager's Scorpion got its' strength from
plot elements (and SFX). Empok Nor gets its' strength
not from the mystery surrounding the two Cardassian assassins
hunting the Chief's team, or the affect of the psycho-tropic drug
on Garak directly. But rather from the dilemma faced by Miles in
regard to how he must stop Garak.
The plot itself
was perfectly fine, and accomplished its' goal of portraying
darkness and being scary. A good, dark, scary mystery
is always welcome in Trek, and the setting in which this mystery
was presented was exciting. I was a little disappointed by the
fact that the assassins were merely drugged-psycho Cardassians
and not some sort of alien infestation or otherwise. But that
wasn't the point of this episode, and accordingly the assassins
were done away with very quickly.
The real meaning
of this episode was touched on early by Garak, mentioning the
Massacre at Setleck III (Kudos to the writers for
continuity from TNG!) Obviously Garak was trying to get under
O'Brien's skin, the usual task of the ex-Obsidien Order
Interrogator. The way in which the theme of I'm not a
soldier, I'm an engineer was carried out through the show
was clever, especially in serving the dual purpose of developing
the O'Brien/Garak relationship and the O'Brien/Himself
relationship.
There's no point
in rehashing the plot sequences of the show, so let's just get to
the important factors to the outcome of the show. The above was
the first, and the second was the obvious change in
Garak after he killed the first assassin. O'Brien's comment,
That's not the face of a tailor was well taken, and I
finished the line in my mind: ...it's the face of a
killer. In this manner I could see at this time that Garak
would end up killing the other assassin and being the real
threat. This disappointed me slightly because the whole episode
unfolded before my eyes before it was half-way over, but this
didn't have any bearing on the overall affect.
Even knowing the
basic premise, I was still taken aback by the Chief's solution to
Garak, and felt the power that was intended to be
evoked by the Chief's history and Garak's antagonizing remarks. I
was relatively pleased when O'Brien uttered to Garak,
You're right, I'm an engineer and then blew up the
phaser. This took me enough by surprise that I came away from
this episode relatively satisfied. The other thing that I noticed
was that when Nog asked the Chief if he had killed Garak, the
Chief's response seemed almost as one of relief, stemming from
O'Brien's adamant conviction that he was not a killer. This
moment had much greater impact on me since I thought instantly of
O'Brien's conversation with the Cardassian in the episode with
renegade Captain Maxwell(?) (the title escapes me).
The relationship
between O'Brien and Garak had really been non existent up until
now (unless I'm forgetting an episode somewhere), and the end
developed it nicely. O'Brien's straightforward admission that his
plan was to kill Garak seemed fitting, and I think we'll see a
stronger relationship between the two of them in the future.
Empok
Nor was your traditional better than average episode of
DS9. A character theme revealed near the beginning, culminating
in a semi-predictable climax and resolution in which the
character theme introduced at the beginning comes full circle
cleverly justifying the character's actions. In this case it was
the O'Brien theme of no longer being a soldier, now an engineer.
Some Quicker
Takes:
- Nog's presence
didn't really have much relevance in this episode. Unlike last
week's Blaze of Glory, this episode really didn't
accomplish much for Nog.
- My favorite
scene had to be when Garak killed the second assassin, and then
stabbed the crewman... although you could tell Garak was acting
strange, you didn't quite expect that!
- The affect of
the drug on the Cardassians, and the mentioning of their
xenophobic tendencies really brought out the
lizardness in their species, the slithery
aspect of their kind.
- I enjoyed the
token sideways shots the DS9 model...
Writing:
The usual good DS9 episode, providing good character drama. Once
again demonstrating how DS9 is so character dependent.
>Directing:
No complaints here, good management of the assassin scenes.
Acting:
Colm Meany did a great job, along with Andrew Robinson.
Rating: 7
out of 10. Your usual above average DS9 show. Nice addition to
the season.
Quote
...uh.. he
told me to get a hydrospanner for him...
Ah... the
worst part about it is...THIS isn't a hydrospanner....
[runs it up into
the guy's gut]
...it's a
FLUX CA-PA-CITOR...
-Garak surprises
the security crewman much to my enjoyment.
Next Week:
The Ascent makes its' second run, and since I missed
it the first time, expect a review next week!
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