Customer Reviews

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 59: Life Support [VHS]

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Episode title: Life Support

Teleplay by: Ronald D. Moore

Story by: Christian Ford & Roger Soffer

Directed by: Reza Badiyi

After jumping apparently aimlessly around, the third season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine finally returns to the series' roots with an episode centered around the rebuilding of Bajor, and the forming of peace with it's longtime opressor, Cardassia.

The story is executed poorly, making the whole step of forming a peace between Bajor and Cardassia an insignificant one, not a tide-turning political event it, with all sence, should be.

In the episode, Commander Sisko finds out about the previously mentioned negotiations as a Bajoran ship carrying the negotiators (our old friends Kai Winn and Vedek Bareil) gets into trouble near the station.

Bareil dies for the injuries he aquires, but Doctor Bashir is able to bring him back alive by ridiculously fantastic methods. Soon it is discovered however, that the good condition of Bareil is only temporary and his body starts falling apart due to the use of a highly unstable medication that only prolongs his life.

So begins the overly simplitic and unprofound conflict between Winn, Kira and Bashir, as the only person able to fully conduct the negotiations refuses stasis as his internal organs shut down one by one.

The ultimate loss of credibility occurs when the other half of Bareils' brain is replaced by a mechanical positronic matrix.

The subject of the episode had lots of potential to it, but the way the issues were treated was probably one of the worst ways imaginable.

Nevertheless, the episode did lead to something, but the progress seemed forced, as the whole episode seemed to have been written as an oblication to the series, fullfilled lazily by the way of a naivé and badly constructed plot. This feeling wasn't eraticated one bid by a horrible subplot about Jake's first date, wich was taken straight from a teenage soap opera.

It truly is a shame that an episode changing the direction of the series so noticably had to be so bad.

The story of Bareil's gradual slipping away, coupled with a political backstory, is shoddily handled throughout, leaving the end result nothing more than an episode wherein it might appear that a great cameo actor asked to written out of the Trek continuity. While Nana Visitor's performance is outstanding, it's not enough to lift this single-hanky story out of the doldrums to stand with integrity alongside the far superior TNG's THE INNER LIGHT, TOS's CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER, or DS9's THE VISITOR. Close, but no cigar.