We’re back with season 3 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and things are starting to look up as the series moves further toward developing its characters and its longer-term plots. Here’s our episode ratings:
- “The Search, Part I” – 4
- “The Search, Part II” – 5.5
- “The House of Quark” – 8
- “Equilibrium” – 4.5
- “Second Skin” – 5.5
- “The Abandoned” – 2
- “Civil Defense” – 6.5
- “Meridian” – 3.5
- “Defiant” – 4.5
- “Fascination” – 4.5
- “Past Tense, Part I” – 3
- “Past Tense, Part II” – 3
- “Life Support” – 4
- “Heart of Stone” – 7
- “Destiny” – 6
- “Prophet Motive” – 6.5
- “Visionary” – 6
- “Distant Voices” – 3.5
- “Through the Looking Glass” – 4
- “Improbable Cause” – 6
- “The Die is Cast” – 5
- “Explorers” – 6
- “Family Business” – 5
- “Shakaar” – 4
- “Facets” – 5
- “The Adversary” – 4.5
The average rating for this season is 4.9, a good step up from last season’s 3.9. There are few particularly good episodes this season, but also few particularly bad ones. Most sit comfortably in the okay-but-not-great 4 to 6 range.
You can tell that both the writers and the actors are more at ease with the characters and ready to push them in interesting directions. This season Kira has to reckon with the consequences of her violent past as a freedom fighter, Jake takes his first faltering steps as an adult, while Sisko the elder gets a promotion to captain, a new ship, and a handsome bald head. Even minor characters such as Nog, Garak, and Kai Winn experience substantial changes. No one faces as much of a challenge this season, though, as Odo, who discovers his people only to learn the horrible truth about them.
Our lowest rating this season goes to “The Abandoned,” at 2, in which Odo tries to show a young Jem’Hadar an alternative to violence. Despite a strong performance by Rene Auberjonois, this episode falls flat. There is little development and no payoff in this story. Other episodes do a much better job of both exploring the Jem’Hadar and showing us how Odo deals with the atrocities committed by the Founders. It also hews uncomfortably close to the racist 90s discourse of “superpredators.”
At the other end, we have the delightful “House of Quark,” at 8, as our highest-rated episode. This episode is a violent but entertaining comedy of manners as the bloody, honor-bound world of Klingon dynastic politics collides with the cowardly but cunning financial chicanery of the Ferengi. Armin Shimerman and guest star Mary Kay Adams play marvelously off one another as the lovable Ferengi rogue Quark and the imperious Klingon grande dame Grilka, while Robert O’Reilly, who plays the normally intense and calculating Chancellor Gowron gets to do a bit of slapstick comedy. Also worth noting is “Heart of Stone,” at 7, in which Odo confesses his love to what he thinks is a dying Kira, and Nog seeks Sisko’s support for joining Starfleet Academy; both stories give us some excellent acting and interesting character development.
This season sees some significant shifts toward the long-term storytelling that would define DS9‘s later seasons. Although most episodes remain standalone (or self-contained two-parters), many of them bring important changes to characters or plotlines which are picked up by later episodes. The politics of both Bajor and Cardassia, as well as the relationship between them, see major upheavals this season, while the threat of the Dominion becomes more sharply defined and its relationship with the Alpha Quadrant more complicated.
Got any favorites of your own from season 3? Let us know!
Image: Grilka and Quark in a marriage of (in)convenience, from “House of Quark” via IMDb
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