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Honor Among Thieves "Thieves" Takes Time to Build, but Delivers Airdate: Week of February 23rd, 1998
Written by: Rene Echevarria (Teleplay); Philip Kim (Story)
Directed by: Allan Eastman
In short:Not a terribly original premise and hampered by a weak
setup... but "Honor" - or Colm Meaney - delivers, and in spades
Brief Summary:O'Brien finds himself too close for comfort to the
man he is
spying on
Review: It's February, which means O'Brien is due for his annual
torture by now. It's hard to do a powerful story for a man who wasn't a
former terrorist, hasn't betrayed his people, and isn't Emissary to the
Prophets. So you make him suffer.
It's also February, which means we should be getting a shoot 'em up show
for sweeps. It doesn't appear we're going to get one for once. "Honor,"
despite all the grit and grime used in showing the backwaters of the Alpha
Quadrant, is a surprisingly tender show about two men, partly out of fate
and partly out of their own chosing, who have come together and become
friends, only to have that friendship result in the death of one of them.
Yes, that whole sentence sounded pretentious, but it was all true. "Honor"
is the very sad story of two decent men who would like to think themselves
honest, doing the dirty work for others and finding a bond in that. Yet at
the same time, they are separated by the fact that one has chosen to live
his life as a criminal, and the other has not, and in end not even
friendship can overcome that. A very moving story.
Not a lot of people saw that in "Honor," and that surprised me. As I
point out below, "Honor" is in many ways similar to "Rocks and Shoals," a
fan favorite this year, in its level of emotion, but that's been overlooked
due to one thing, summed up in two words: "Donnie Brasco." "Brasco" was a
film starring Johnny Depp about a Fed who infiltrated the mob, and like
O'Brien with Bilby, became attached to guy who supported him. Folks, that
doesn't make the episode a ripoff. Echevarria should have been more careful
to avoid similarities to film, of course, such as dropping the "witnessing"
gimmick, which wasn't necessary anyway since if O'Brien did rat, Bilby would
get killed on principle for letting the Chief infiltrate. But the
similarities end there. O'Brien, for instance, isn't wowed over by the
Syndicate as Brasco was with the mob, and Brasco didn't do anything to get
the Al Pacino character killed in the end. Furthermore, if I recall
correctly, Brasco never revealed who he truly was to the Pacino character
(sorry, been awhile), or at least he wasn't believed like Bilby believed
O'Brien. Saying "Honor" is plagiarizing "Brasco" is like saying "Star Wars"
ripped off "Star Trek" and vice versa - in other words, hardly at all, since
having similar backdrops doesn't make either one a ripoff.
No, this story's problem was that it was simply too true to a more
standard tale that "Brasco" was a part of as well - the infilitrator gets
sympathetic with the infilitrated story. That story is as old as time.
There's Chadwick, the unsympathetic contact who only wants to save lives.
There's Raimus, the fatherly boss, and the mustached dude, the sleazy guy
who gets killed because he's, well, sleazy. Within the story itself, we
have the decent man in over his head, the infiltrator punching out the
contact because the contact has lied to him, etc. It's all been done
before, and Echevarria certainly didn't feel compelled to leave out any
cliches. It's the main thing in the final analysis that hurts this very
powerful show.
The only other problem is, that type of story can't work with Chief
O'Brien. Yes, the Orion Syndicate had infiltrated Starfleet, meaning only
someone like O'Brien, without an intelligence background, could be used.
But he is an *engineer* fighting a war, and him leaving the station for
weeks upon weeks makes no sense. The only thing keeping this aspect of the
story at least a little tolerable was the arrival of Gelnon, the Vorta from
last week. This was actually a bit of a surprise to see the Dominion
involved, helped when Gelnon revealed their very sneaky plan, even if
killing an ambassador really wouldn't mean the Klingons would withdraw from
fighting. This worked to give the show a relevance it lacked had it just
been a random tale of Spy Vs Spy - a tale a little too random for a show
like DS9 that at least pretends to have good continuity.
Echevarria's script, along with Eastman's direction, crackled in spots
despite the cliches. I love snappy dialogue, and it was particularly going
here. Dataport boy tells Bilby, "It's not our problem - it's your problem."
Then, when his dataport gets spiked, Bilby tells him the exact same thing.
I loved how Bilby played with the weapons dealer before he shot him, how
dataport boy goaded Bilby about his heartburn, etc. In a way, it's sad, for
we only get such good dialogue with the *bad* guys, leaving the good guys to
talk about, well, lilacs. If you're reading this, writers (and I seriously
doubt that), could we at least have someone on the station telling a joke
that could be just a teensy bit dirty? Or give someone a zinger of an
insult? Please....
Good dialogue has always been important in my book since it leads
directly to good characterization. And "Honor" was full of both. O'Brien
had the unusual task of trying to play both sides at the same time, and it
was great seeing him deal with a side of the tracks he hadn't had much
experience with. He was certainly helped by how Colm Meaney portrayed him.
The man is so good an actor, you tend to forget that it takes real talent to
do what he is doing. He's remarkably methodical in how he does his face,
for instance, as he works through a lie to Bilby. Nick Tate, as Bilby,
worked great as well, giving the character a lot of life coupled with a lot
of sadness. When O'Brien told Bilby he wasn't even important enough to be
infiltrated, it hurt, because we knew Bilby wanted his life to have some
meaning as he was about to die.
Up to that point, the story had been rather standard, with good scenes
but nothing extraordinary. It had been well done, with some nice interplay
between Bilby and O'Brien that made it all so nicely morally ambiguous, but
it was nothing to wow over. Then it came together, much in the same way
"Rocks and Shoals" did. (It even ended similar to shows, with a shot
focusing on the face of a troubled man.) "Shoals" had its betrayal too,
with the person betrayed knowing it like Bilby did here. Here, it may have
worked even better, since it wasn't just that Bilby felt committed to die as
the Jem'Hadar did, but that he had no choice but to do so. Had he ran, his
family would have been killed, as he pointed out. And it was O'Brien who
did it to him, a supposed friend. As the Chief said, it was just as if he
had shot Bilby himself, something we knew hurt him because he realized that
Bilby was a decent man who may or may not have deserved to die. That's the
trick - Bilby was bad, but yet he wasn't, and that's what made the ending so
strong. Echevarria avoided having O'Brien fall in love with the gangster
world and made "Honor" a simple story of a friendship destiny wouldn't
allow, and despite the implausibilities, it worked wonders.
"Honor Among Theives," just as a story, was not overwhelmingly
compelling. Yet, as a character piece, it worked beautifully. Bilby as a
character is one of the most memorable one-shot wonders DS9 has done, and
O'Brien, thanks to an interesting dilemma and Meaney's acting, was simply
superb. After "One Little Ship," I was a little worried about the second
half of the season. After this, and with positive reviews of "Change of
Heart" coming in, things are looking much better for the season's second
half.
Some short takes:
- Is it just me, or was the matte beautiful, in a sickly urban sort of
way?
- It was nice to see those dataports again... the other time we saw them
was in "A Simple Investigation," another Echevarria script.
- Interestingly enough, Bilby's question to O'Brien about whether or not
he liked girls was Trek's first actual acknowledgement of homosexuality!
- The Bank of Bolius - was that the same one robbed in "Who Mourns for
Morn?" It really *doesn't* have good security then...
- It's good to know it was the bad guys behind that awful script "Let He
Who Is Withouht Sin."
Rating: B+
Quote: Bilby: "Why would I want my money back? They work now."
(Fire!)
Bilby, acting like Reservoir Dog he is
Next week: Don't worry, Dax won't die... at least not yet.
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