A Man Alone (⭑⭑⭑)

“A Man Alone” is a pretty busy episode, weaving together a lot of disparate elements that don’t reallly cohere into a meaningful whole. I like a lot of the individual pieces (notwithstanding some criticisms, which I’ll get to), and I actually find it to be a solidly enjoyable watch—but I wind up wanting more out of two or three of its separate threads, and thus feeling a little shortchanged in the end. This episode was actually filmed prior to “Past Prologue,” even though it aired after, and you can kind of tell; it feels like a “first episode after the pilot” in some ways, and one gets the impression that the writers were trying to cram a lot of get-the-show-up-and-running ideas into a single hour: Jake and Nog becoming friends, Keiko starting a school, some background about the Trill and about Sisko and Dax’s relationship, some fleshing out of the Quark/Odo relationship, etc. I think it’s safe to say that they went a little overboard, and that there’s a bit too much going on in the episode for its various parts (especially the main plot) to get their due. At the same time, though, like I said, I definitely enjoy the episode. Putting all of that together, it ends up pretty definitively in the three-star category.

The main story, revolving around Odo being framed for a murder and the station’s Bajorans turning against him, is the element that I think suffers the most. There are some great story ideas here, and I would love to see a version of the episode that delved a bit deeper into them. After all, there’s just been a major changing of the guard aboard this space station, yet Odo has remained in place through the transition. This is bound to raise questions for some of the Bajorans who live on the station, and it makes good sense for the show to explore that. It’s a great avenue both for establishing some back story for one of the show’s main characters and for continuing the project of depicting this larger transitional moment for Bajor—and all the more so given the setup wherein the murder victim is someone whom Odo previously sent to prison for killing a Cardassian, and who is now at large because the Bajoran provisional government is disinclined to view that as a crime. Unfortunately, though, we don’t end up actually getting much that would help us to better understand Odo’s role on the station under its former Cardassian masters, nor do we learn anything about Ibudan and his animus against Odo. (I mean, obviously, he wants revenge for Odo sending him to prison, but we never even hear anything from him about his motives, and the issues around his past are not fleshed out at all.) Kira vouches for Odo, and Quark (!) declares that the constable, for all his flaws, was “no Cardassian collaborator,” and these two things tell the audience that we’re to sympathize with Odo and to understand his role under the Cardassians as at least reasonably non-problematic, but this is all tell and no show. We get some good general characterization for Odo (establishing, for example, that he’s inclined to consider his personal sense of “justice” as overriding the changeable details of the actual law, as well as the niceties of due process¹—an interesting, and somewhat, risky character flaw for the show to build into one of its main protagonists), but not much of what one might call “lore” regarding things like how he came to occupy his position, what his reputation is among the Bajorans, etc. In particular, it seems like the episode’s villain manages to gin up a considerable amount of suspicion and resentment against Odo among the station’s Bajoran population sort of out of nowhere (given that the Bajorans clearly trust him enough to have kept him on here), and that that negative sentiment evaporates equally quickly once he gets exonerated for the murder. This is disappointingly old-school episodic, and really doesn’t make a lot of sense. The mob scene outside of Odo’s office also never quite feels “real,” or as threatening/out of control as the episode wants it to. And in terms of plot, the actual murder mystery/investigation is pretty uninspired throughout, and then, in the end, the episode jumps straight from Bashir’s discovery about the clone to Odo somehow identifying the original Ibudan, without much in the way of connective tissue. To my mind, a lot of these issues indicate that this storyline really needed more time devoted to it.

There is, though, a lot of good Odo, and Odo/Quark, character stuff in the episode. I love, for instance, the scene to which I’ve already referred, in which Quark interjects himself into a conversation among some patrons in his bar to defend Odo, with his line about how he, as Odo’s “worst enemy,” amounts to the closest thing that the security chief has to a friend. The later scene between Quark and Odo (“turned you into a better crook”) is great, too. The scene near the beginning of the episode, in which the two of them shoot the shit while sitting in Quark’s bar, is more of a mixed bag, though. I appreciate the general thrust of the scene, but Odo’s little diatribe about all the compromises that “coupling” requires is just a string of grating late-twentieth-century gender cliches, and also doesn’t feel remotely right for the character (what personal experiences is this coming from, exactly?). The thing that gets him on the subject, too—Miles and Keiko, in the background of the scene, having a marital spat—kicks off what will unfortunately be the show’s predominant mode of characterizing the O’Briens’ relationship, and to some extent, marriage in general. I already called this out once or twice in my TNG reviews, but on DS9, with the elevation of Miles O’Brien to main character status, it will become irritatingly prominent in an ongoing way. Getting back to good Odo character stuff, though: In the main storyline, I appreciate how Odo is the first to point out that he himself would appear to be the only one who could have committed the murder, based on the initial evidence, and I also like the scene in which Sisko informs Odo that he’s temporarily relieving him of duty. Odo neither reacts with immediate indignance/anger (as a tough-minded investigator, he recognizes the soundness of the decision), nor with good grace and decorum; instead, he pushes back against Sisko’s olive-branch assurance that he doesn’t actually believe Odo to be guilty of the murder—questioning, in effect, whether this is the truth, or just the sort of polite thing that humanoids say to each other to preserve harmony and dodge hard questions. That, in particular, tells us a lot about who Odo is.

Turning to the episode’s secondary story thread (revolving around Keiko): Honestly, this one’s kind of all over the place. I like where it ends up; the idea of establishing a school on the station plays into the idea of forging a new kind of community here in place of the oppressive order that prevailed on the station under the Cardassians, and highlighting the challenges involved in making sure that the school serves all of the station’s various constituencies (Starfleet, Bajorans, Ferengi) resonates with the show’s overarching narrative/themes. It also provides a venue for stories involving Jake (though I don’t recall if future episodes ever really do much with this). And, of course, putting a character whom we already know in the position of the school’s teacher makes good sense, whatever my general reservations about Keiko as a character. The narrative elements that the episode uses to get us to this outcome, though, leave something to be desired. On one hand, we have the premise of Keiko being less than thrilled with the O’Briens’ move from the Enterprise to DS9, and the conflict that this introduces into their marriage; on the other, we have the little mini-story involving Jake befriending Nog, and the two of them immediately getting up to mischief. The latter is fine as far as it goes, but I would have liked to see a little bit more from it (again, a symptom of the episode being overstuffed). We don’t, for example, see Jake feeling lonely and at loose ends, so that his befriending Nog presents as a solution to a character issue, that in turn leads to new character issues, or anything like that—nor do we see anything, beyond the two of them pulling one prank, to indicate that there’s a problem that needs to be solved with regard to the structure/opportunities/education available to young people on the station. We don’t even really get to see Jake and Nog “become” friends; it’s pretty much just Jake introducing himself and being like “let’s be friends,” and then they are…and that feels like a missed opportunity to me. Meanwhile, the episode presents Keiko’s dissatisfaction is an unappealing way. Half the time it seems like she’s lashing out at Miles and blaming him for the situation, but when he goes as far as to offer to request a transfer, she backs off, declaring that this would be unfair to him. We don’t, of course, have any firsthand knowledge of what sorts of conversations/negotiations went on between them that led to them agreeing to relocate to DS9 in the first place, so we’re not in much of a position to evaluate who is or isn’t being fair to whom, in general—but my preference would have been for the show not to make this an issue between the two of them at all (because either she’s being unreasonable in blaming him, or we infer that he’s dragged his family here without giving them much say in it, and these are both deeply unappealing). The fact of the show treating Keiko as a character in her own right rather than just an appendage of Miles, and the idea of her feeling at loose ends, unsure what to do with herself in this new setting, are both great; I just wish that the writers wouldn’t have turned this into a conflict between them (just like they do with practically everything). And then, Keiko seems to shift from “I don’t want to be here, where my professional skills aren’t relevant or needed” to “look at how these children are running around unsupervised!” in a way that I’m not sure I fully buy, all so that “hey, what if I started a school!” can be presented as the solution to her problem. So, sure, it gives her something to do—but it’s still a big swerve for her career-wise, and apart from her single line about how she’s thought about teaching in the past, I don’t know that the episode really puts in the character work necessary to make this believable. And finally, the story element of parents on the station being hesitant about sending their children to the new school could have stood to be developed a bit more. We get Keiko persuading Rom (whose personality has definitely not been settled upon yet at this point), but nothing about Bajoran parents’ attitudes…and then, for a beat, it seems like the episode is even calling into doubt whether any of the Starfleet personnel other than Sisko are buying in (but this is mainly just to manufacture a moment of low spirits for Keiko, before students actually do start showing up). So…yeah; some good ideas here, but I feel like they could have been executed much more skillfully. I do, however, appreciate the fact that Keiko chooses to begin, on her school’s first day, by having her students begin to explore Bajoran history; that feels just right.

Finally, the episode also includes some character (and character relationship) development focused on Dax, Bashir, and Sisko—on the one hand running with the idea of the doctor’s romantic pursuit of Dax (a seed planted in the pilot), and on the other fleshing out the back story of Sisko’s friendship with Curzon Dax, and some basics about how the Trill work and what relationships (of any kind) with Trill look like. There’s a kind of suggestion (albeit really just from Bashir’s perspective) that a love triangle could be developing here, but I like that the episode makes it very clear that the show doesn’t actually intend to go down that road, and in general, I just really like the main scene between Sisko and Dax (in Quark’s), where we get a real sense of their past relationship, their persisting connection, and how weird it is for Sisko now, getting to know this new version of his old friend. Sisko comes to life (and the show begins to fill in his family background) listing the alternative ways of cooking “azna” that sound more appetizing to him than steaming it, and they genuinely feel like old friends, and then they talk about the future of that friendship, and I like Dax’s words about making themselves comfortable with the discomfort of this transitional moment (words that, arguably, apply to much more about the whole show than just the relationship between these two characters). On the other hand, I’m a little unsure what to make of whatever the episode is trying to do with Dax and Bashir. Dax’s speech about the Trill striving to be “above” romantic connections is odd, and also seems to be something of an abandoned early premise, given that (as far as I can recall, anyway) it never comes up again after this, and what we see of the Trill and romance throughout the show won’t seem particularly consistent with it. Also, I’m just not exactly clear on what Dax’s attitude toward Bashir is. Is she trying to set clear boundaries with him, or is she flirting with him a little bit while stopping short of “going there” with him, or…something else…? The opening scene of the episode is particularly weird; he seemingly barges into the holosuite in which she’s working on her brain puzzle or whatever, but she doesn’t object to this, although she does imply that she’s not interested in the kind of relationship that he clearly wants to pursue with her…yet she then proceeds to get kind of touchy with him, while gently teasing him about his inability to achieve “focus and clarity of thought” while she’s caressing his head and neck. Which is fine, but again, I’m just not sure what the episode is going for, here.

So, in summary: This is an episode with a lot of interesting story ideas (too many, in fact), a passable but lackluster main plot that falls short of realizing the potential inherent in many of those ideas, a secondary story thread that’s pretty underdeveloped but at least leads to a promising piece of setup (the school), and a bunch of new-show character bits, many of which are cool, but some of which are less cool. The good bits, and just the general contribution that the episode makes to fleshing out the characters and setting of the show, do balance out its weaknesses enough to make it an enjoyable watch, though, and thus to qualify it as a “keeper” for me.

1. There’s a moment in “Past Prologue” where you can kind of tell that that episode was originally meant to follow this one, rather than preceding it. It’s when Odo suggests to Sisko (with an air of knowing how he’s going to respond) that he could preemptively lock up the Duras sisters, and Sisko’s reaction plays like him reminding Odo of realities that they’ve gone over before. It definitely seems like this scene was written with the assumption of occurring after their early scene together in “A Man Alone,” in which Sisko tells Odo that he can’t take the law into his own hands and act arbitrarily, and Odo’s initial reply is a defiant “Watch me.” ↩︎