“Invasive Procedures” is a reasonably enjoyable hour of television, but it’s definitely not anything more than that. It’s based on some moderately promising ideas, some of the character dynamics work all right, and it’s well-acted, but there really isn’t much of a story here, and I’m left with too much of a “so what?” feeling at the end of the episode. Basically, the good ideas needed more development in order to become something worth basing an episode on. Also, there’s a serious Quark problem that the episode completely fails to follow up on.
Okay, so there’s a Trill who is frustrated enough about having been denied joining that he’s willing to go to extreme measures to acquire a symbiont of his own. That’s an interesting enough starting point for a story idea. But Verad, as a character, never comes to life in an engaging enough way to make the audience sympathize or care about him at all. Now, sure—no matter what, we would presumably not root for a guy who showed up to steal the Dax symbiont even though it would mean death for Jadzia. But that’s not my point. For there to be any meat to this story, there would need to be something more than just “but I really wanted it!” driving him to do what he does, so that we can at least understand (even if we don’t approve of) where he’s coming from. Ideally, too, his motivations would relate to some larger idea. (I’m not saying that I have any brilliant ideas for what this might have been, or anything; I just think we needed something.) Also, as the episode progresses, every single story beat plays out pretty much exactly the way one would expect, making the episode feel very by-the-numbers. Sisko tries to use his history of friendship with Dax to convince Verad Dax that what he’s done is unconscionable? So obvious that if he didn’t try it, we’d be screaming at the TV…but does his reaction to this ploy contain even the tiniest surprise, or anything particularly interesting? Nope. And by the same token: The newly joined Verad proves not to be the man whom Mareel loved, or indeed to care very much about her? Well, duh. Obviously she was eventually going to switch sides in order to get “her” Verad back. Basically, the whole story feels rote as soon as you know the starting premise, and that’s really boring.
Secondly, this is the second time that we’ve had a episode that tries to “do something” with the joined Trill concept (the first being season one’s “Dax”), and in neither case has the episode really told us much of anything about who Jadzia Dax is. This is a story that threatens the existence of the character that we know in a unique way, but that yields no insights into her composite character (such as which aspects of her are “Jadzia” vs. “Dax,” who Jadzia would be without Dax, what makes them compatible, or what made her suitable for joining). Beyond heroically agreeing to sacrifice herself to save the other characters, Jadzia Dax doesn’t even play a role in the story. The Dax symbiont, meanwhile, changes who Verad is enough to make him unrecognizable to Mareel, but at the same time fails to be Dax enough, from Sisko’s perspective, to make a positive difference…or to give the audience any reason to get invested in this “part” of who Jadzia Dax is. In the previous paragraph, I tried to point to what feels missing about Verad as a character that really harms the story; but of course, he’s just a one-off guest character. What’s even more missing here is any new information about, or character development for, the main character whose life and identity are theoretically on the line.
Finally, this episode is maybe the worst example ever of the trend wherein, even though the rest of the main characters are often shitty to Quark (though that itself doesn’t specifically happen here), the also routinely let him off the hook for really serious misdeeds. Quark took a bribe from terrorists to disable security protocols on the station, with the result that Jadzia was nearly murdered. The episode makes a show of having Kira, at least, be duly furious with him over this, even going so far as to tell him “you’re done here!”…but in the end, this is completely dropped. Yes, Quark clearly feels guilty about his role in what’s happening, and sure, he takes action to help rectify the situation. But it’s not just that this is definitely not enough, in my view, for all to be forgiven; it’s that there’s no follow-up of any kind! No one acknowledges Quark’s role in turning the tables on the bad guys at all, either to thank and forgive him or to tell him that he’s still going to fucking jail for what he did. Kira never retracts her statement to
Quark, but neither does it actually lead to any consequences. The episode just drops the matter completely, hoping that the audience will a) forgive Quark because he attacks the Klingon like a crazy person, and then b) forget about the whole matter by the end, so that there’s no need for the story threat to be resolved. This is just terrible writing.
Aside from the Quark problem, there’s nothing in the episode that’s god-awfully bad, and the core idea about the Dax symbiont being stolen from Jadzia (and the thief being undone by the very fact that joining changes him) is just interesting enough to make “Invasive Procedures” basically watchable. For these reasons, I’m giving it three stars rather than two. Still, there’s really not much substance or merit to this one.
***
Invasive Procedures strikes me as a pretty clear example of a three-star episode. I think the thing that sustains my interest in it as we go is how it uses the concept behind the Trill to explore the complexity, and ephemerality, of our ideas about memory and identity. While unfortunately I’m not sure the episode has anything too profound (or even coherent or clear) to say about these ideas, the transition for Verad from being Sisko’s enemy to being someone he has a long history with is cool to watch, and it’s kinda fun to see him grapple with that and his new understanding of the station in general. I imagine as though a version of the show that had more time to play with these kinds of ideas and was willing to spend a few episodes with Dax in a new person with radically different priorities could have been a lot more interesting, but for what it is, the episode is watchable enough.
A lot of the details surrounding it, though, are kind of stock plot elements, and the episode relies on one or two rather illogical moments to get us to the interesting bits. For starters, Odo is particularly thorough in investigating Quark until he isn’t. He clearly doesn’t believe anything Quark says, but he doesn’t even offer the airlock in which he found Quark a cursory inspection. He also offers no resistance to the invaders initially when he really should have been at least a bit on guard in a situation like this (and he is a changeling, after all, and one with some skill in subduing someone without using a weapon, but he doesn’t really even make an effort here). Though I definitely appreciated that there was actually a reason the security protocols were down to make the station’s defense system seem less than completely ridiculous, energy weapons aren’t the only thing you would have to fear from people boarding in this situation. Surely there must be protocols for allowing unvetted people to board (or denying entry) that don’t involve the detection and disarming of electronic devices. In fairness, I really *don’t* want to get add yet another combat scene that the crew inevitably loses to the episode, but as is, it does strain plausibility. And of course, there’s the fact that Quark should definitely be going to prison for this. I appreciate that the episode depicts him as actually rather courageous and crafty in getting them out of the mess later, but I’m not able to believe that this lets him off the hook in the eyes of the law, much less in Kira’s eyes, given that she is very clear that he’s finished on the station after this. Will there ever be any follow up with that? I believe the answer is no.
Anyway, after the invaders board, we have some heavy initial protestations from Dax that are really just a clunky excuse for exposition, and her claim that the symbiosis commission was “only looking after [Verad’s] best interests” is more than a bit patronizing (and pretty obviously not likely to convince anyone, much less someone who has already committed to the caper this hard).
In this scene, Verad’s plan becomes clear, but it does seem a bit ill-conceived on the face of it in. He should know that once he’s Dax, he’ll feel differently about what he did in ways he can’t predict. Will he even still want to go through with it? He is essentially going to be merging with his abductee, which he should be able to predict would cause (at the very least) some real ambivalence about his behavior. And even if *Verad* wants to run away permanently to the Gamma Quadrant, that’s presumably a death sentence for the symbiont after that host’s natural life, right? Not to mention a sharp left turn from Dax’s current preference under the influence of Jadzia and probably all of her other hosts (with the possible exception of the evil one we don’t know about yet)? So you’d have to expect Dax might not love that idea. This, of course, is never addressed; it would, after all, make Verad look pretty stupid. It’s one thing to be selfish, and another to be so selfish you don’t really even take your own future desires into account! That in itself is an interesting concept to explore with a Trill, but the episode doesn’t really get into it.
We have the crew attempting to fight off their captors using violence on three separate occasions (with the second as a part of Quark’s ruse to go to the infirmary, and the final effort successfully with Odo’s help), and several attempts to persuade them to stop verbally. Their captors are remarkably tolerant of all this, and even if they are determined not to seriously harm anyone unless absolutely necessary, it really does not make much sense that they don’t put them in the brig or stun them. This would, as we will come to see, have guaranteed their victory.
Then, when Verad Dax turns out not to have all that much ambivalence about what happened (which does seem odd, but whatever; I’m willing to roll with it since if he were more ambivalent, that would mean the episode is hanging pretty hard on the idea that Verad himself is kind of an idiot), Sisko doesn’t play it as his usual skillful self. Honestly, one of the coolest things about Sisko as he’s usually depicted is that he’s a skillful communicator, and I can imagine a version of this episode where he is able to win by eventually wearing Verad Dax down his knowledge of Dax as well as Dax’s strong disposition toward liking and trusting him. That would have made for a more satisfying ending, making the episode about the Sisko/Dax relationship—something more compelling than whatever it’s about here. Instead, Sisko approaches his attempt to convince clumsily and with transparency about his motives (not that they aren’t obvious, mind you, but still—a little finesse could go a long way with someone who implicitly trusts you and has a part of himself that *wants* to believe what you’re saying). He tries to sell Verad on the idea that he should surrender the symbiont much too abruptly, and kind of gives up by somewhat petulantly declaring their friendship over when he doesn’t immediately get his way. C’mon, Sisko, you can do better than that!
Luckily for our heroes, Sisko’s bad day doesn’t matter; everything else works out quite conveniently. It turns out that Varad Dax is the sort of person who has no real loyalty to his partner (even though the Dax part as far as we’ve seen them has been portrayed in quite the opposite way, as in the episode “Dax” when she’s willing to throw away her career for Curzon’s former lover), opening up Mareel as a vulnerability. When Sisko talks to Mareel to exploit this, he remains quite unconvincing, though; in fact, she pretty much talks *him* into it, even though handing him the phaser probably means life in prison for her, or at least something real bad as far as consequences. And when all is said and done, it all conveniently works out that both the symbiont and Jadzia are just fine, in spite of the fact that the whole procedure is supposed to be very dangerous when you transfer them back right away, *especially* with Verad having been phased shortly before, so I’d say… procedures were not quite as invasive as advertised. It’s pretty weak.
There’s also a little collateral damage to Jadzia’s (not Dax’s) character as a result of all this. As you’ve pointed out in previous reviews, the writers take a very long time to establish Dax’s concept in this series (at least beyond the symbiont’s long-time relationship with Sisko), and you could even argue we know more about who Curzon is at this point than we do about Jadzia, which is pretty strange when you think about it. Though I’ve always found Farrell’s ability to imply confidence as a much older person convincing—her manner of casual faint amusement and unflappability—it does seem clear that it’s caused me to project back who the character became in subsequent seasons on this much-less-well-defined earlier version of her. Anyway, this is the first time as far as I can remember we’ve seen any of Jadzia sans Dax (save a very short moment in the pilot with little or no dialogue), and she’s portrayed here as merely frightened… not that it wouldn’t be normal for someone to be frightened under those circumstances, but choosing to show us *only* this about her leaves me a bit concerned that Jadzia isn’t really a very big part of “Jadzia Dax.”
I really think there’s a better episode in here somewhere that explores more about the nature of what it means to be a “joined” person—what consequences look like when only part of you is responsible, or how we feel when a person seems to change quickly in relationship for some reason. Still, I think we really would need to return to the drawing board to find it, because in the end, this is not that episode.
Little stuff:
“Treating Obrien’s phaser wound” seems more like something any lay person could do, more like putting on a bandage than performing surgery.
One wonders how the symbionts evolved, since here they don’t look capable at this point of existing independently of a host. Honestly it’d be an interesting thing to flesh out and explore, though I don’t think the writers gave it much thought. Imagine if they’d created little slug-puppets with faces for this… but they don’t seem to want to do much Trill worldbuilding.
Great points about the need to explore Dax her/himself and Verad… and for the episode to do something to establish a more complex motivation for Verad. That would have added a lot. I also think that the episode could also have focused on *Sisko* a lot more even if it wasn’t going to focus as much on Jadzia Dax or even just Dax. Anyway, between the two of us, I think we fleshed this out quite well.
Yep. Also, you brought up two points that I had though, at one point or another, about mentioning myself, but overlooked in the end: First, Odo’s idiotic failure to check into what Quark had been up to in the airlock at all, despite clearly and correctly suspecting that he WAS up to something; and second how weirdly lax the villains are about maintaining control of the main characters (even to the point of being willing to get repeatedly drawn into conversation with them and trying to justify their actions to them). Pretty silly.
You are also right in pointing more explicitly than I did to the total lack of fallout/consequences on all fronts (Jadzia and the symbiont and Verad are all fine, even though we were told that transferring the symbiont back and forth posed serious danger all around, etc.). And, yeah: Verad supposedly has “done his homework,” carefully selecting the Dax symbiont in particular because of their compatibility or whatever—but he has NOT given any thought to how he might feel about what he’s done, once the abducted and endangered symbiont becomes a component of who he is, and also brings the memories of the host whom his actions have doomed to death? A real genius, this dude.