[DS9] Lynch's Spoiler Review: "Rules of Engagement"
Timothy W. Lynch
spoilers below for DS9's "Rules of Engagement" without identifying
them.
In brief: A nice teaser and a killer last scene -- unfortunately,
everything else is really, really dull.
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Written by: Ronald D. Moore (teleplay); Bradley Thompson & David
Weddle (story)
Directed by: LeVar Burton
Brief summary: Worf is faced with an extradition hearing after being
accused of massacring a transport filled with hundreds of Klingon
civilians.
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Sigh. That could have been better.
Trek has done a lot of excellent courtroom dramas in its day, from
TOS's "Court-Martial" to TNG's "The Measure of a Man" and "The
Drumhead", and even DS9's "Dax". Unfortunately, "Rules of
Engagement" utterly lacked the spark of passion that made those
shows work -- and while not exactly a bad show as a result, it's a
show that has you looking at your watch waiting for something
interesting or unexpected to happen.
I mean, come on. After a nice hallucination sequence and _in media
res_ introduction in a very brief teaser, things go downhill fast. We
find out in very short order what Worf's accused of, which is all well
and good -- but when we also find out that the consequences of being
found guilty are severe both for Worf and for the future of
Federation/Klingon relations, it's not like the eventual outcome is of
even the slightest doubt for a moment. And, when one considers the
improbability of the "judge" actually refusing to extradite Worf if she
considers him guilty, the obvious response is that the entire accident
was some kind of Klingon frame of Worf. Ten minutes in, we'd
predicted virtually the rest of the show: evidence mounts that looks
worse and worse, Worf is goaded into doing something stupid, and
then at the last minute Odo finds something out which lets Sisko save
the day.
I've seen this before many times, and usually better done -- I don't
need to see it here.
On top of that, the histrionics during the hearing were also
unwelcome. Trek's past courtroom dramas have had their
melodramatic moments, to be sure, but they feel different -- perhaps
because the stories underlying them were stronger, or perhaps because
I found Ron Canada's performance more than a bit wanting. (It didn't
help that the last time we saw Klingons acting in a legal capacity was
"Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country", and that Ron Canada isn't
even in the same *state* as Christopher Plummer when it comes to
getting a reaction.) In any case, the scenes felt extremely off. I live in
Los Angeles, currently the Cheesy Show Trial capital of the world,
and much of what happened in that courtroom felt over-the-top even
by LA standards.
About the only tactic G'Pok used in the courtroom that *didn't* seem
out of line to me was his entire line of questioning to O'Brien about
whether he would have given the same order to fire in those
circumstances. O'Brien was quite right in that the question wasn't
entirely "fair" in that it was asking him to evaluate a decision in
hindsight, but it was a "fair" question in most other senses of the
word, I think. Everything else ranged from the irrelevant to the way
out-of-bounds: G'Pok's illegal search of Worf's private data files
should have gotten things dismissed more or less immediately (not to
mention that the entire holosuite debate was more than a bit irrelevant),
and his haranguing of Worf, rather than creating any particular
tension, only made me think that Admiral T'Lara was a truly miserable
example of a judge. (G'Pok's late claim that Worf said he would
never "attack an unarmed man" is also totally false; Worf said he'd
never attack "a defenseless opponent", which is different.)
Some of that ground was made up for, however, by the final scene.
Despite all the jumping through hoops we had to watch earlier to make
the episode play out to its predictable conclusion, it was extremely
impressive afterwards to have Worf realize that some of his motives
may not have been so pure as he'd hoped, and to have Sisko lay into
Worf for it. Is Sisko being hypocritical for defending Worf so
strongly during the hearing, then treating him as guilty of that same
negligence later on? Perhaps to some extent -- but I'd say it's more a
case of being human. I think most people, to take a slightly different
tack, would yell at a friend far more quickly in private than they'd
tolerate some mutual enemy harping on the same issue in public -- and
to see Sisko fall prey to the same tendency feels real to me. Worf's
realization that life in the "red uniform" of a command position is more
complex than he'd thought was an excellent one -- not worth the entire
hour of tedium it came packaged in, perhaps, but it certainly helped.
The question of whether Worf's actions truly *were* justified is also
an interesting one, and one I wouldn't be surprised to see debated for
a while. As a military maneuver, I think it made perfect sense:
civilians would have no particular reason to be running cloaked
through this area or to decloak in the middle of a battle, and if Worf
had good tactical reasons for expecting the Bird of Prey to be where
he fired, I'd call that justified. Sisko's statement that it wasn't will be
bit more controversial, I'd imagine: for myself, I can see it as part of
Starfleet's current "rules of engagement" given that the Federation's
mostly at peace, but would expect debate to begin in the Federation
over its continued appropriateness if a full-scale war were ever to
break out. Strange as it sounds, I tend to agree with *both* Sisko and
Worf, and it's nice that enough ambiguity is presented to make that
possible.
Now, a few short takes on the rest of the show:
-- This struck me as a classic example of a "bottle" episode. There
were only two guest stars (one of them fairly minimal), virtually the
entire episode was shot on about two sets (the Defiant bridge and the
"courtroom"), and the effects were minimal -- note that for all the talk
about the battle, we actually *saw* very little of it. There's nothing
particularly wrong with a bottle show -- "The Drumhead" was one that
worked beautifully -- but it's worth observing. I wonder what blew
DS9's budget to make one so necessary.
-- The guest stars did not particularly wow me this time around.
Deborah Strang (T'Lara) was decent but ineffectual; Ron Canada, on
the other hand, was no better than he was when I saw him in B5's "A
Voice in the Wilderness". In some of the scenes with Sisko, G'Pok
did everything but twirl his mustache and tie Kira to a railroad track;
please, this can be much better.
-- I'm not sure whether I agree with the decision (Burton's, perhaps?)
to present the testimony as someone talking to the camera in a partial-
flashback mode. I can see that it would break the monotony of yet
more scenes in the courtroom, but something about it also seemed
extremely off-putting, and in ways that I doubt were intentional.
-- I'm wondering how it is that Odo has contacts in the Klingon
Empire. Back when he might have had the opportunity to make some,
he wouldn't have had much reason to expect needing any.
That's about it. "Rules of Engagement", while not gut-churningly
bad, was lifeless in all but a very few spots, and not something that
seemed particularly worth the hour. The last scene helped a lot ... but
not enough. So, wrapping up:
Writing: The plot was Snoozer Central; the Worf/Sisko scene was
excellent, but too little too late.
Directing: Spotty; the pseudo-flashbacks were a little off, and some of
the closeups during the many courtroom scenes felt forced as
well. Burton's done much better.
Acting: Dorn was good; Brooks was a bit over the top, but mostly
had to be to compete with Ron Canada's melodrama.
OVERALL: A 4, I think. Iffy.
NEXT WEEK:
O'Brien gets memories of a prison he's never been in, as sentence for
a crime he didn't commit. I hope he doesn't put on weight for all that
food he never ate...
Tim Lynch (Harvard-Westlake School, Science Dept.)
tly...@alumni.caltech.edu
"Wait 'til you get a fourth pip on your collar. You'll wish you had
gone into *botany*."
-- Sisko
--
Copyright 1996, Timothy W. Lynch. All rights reserved, but feel free to ask...
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Commonwealth Scientific
> -- I'm not sure whether I agree with the decision (Burton's, perhaps?)
> to present the testimony as someone talking to the camera in a partial-
> flashback mode. I can see that it would break the monotony of yet
> more scenes in the courtroom, but something about it also seemed
> extremely off-putting, and in ways that I doubt were intentional.
Tim,
This episode was released to the public during the same weekend that HBO
released "Goodfellas" (to the public). Both had characters talking to the
camera in partial flashback mode, but Ray Liotta's scene in Goodfellas was
so much better timed and sequenced in the movie to make it a penetrating
directorial decision. I think LeVar Burton reaped as much as he could
from that tactic, given the limits of an hour show.
JNMZ of the DMZ