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There were 176 episodes of Deep Space Nine, and asking me to pick
one from each season is like asking me to pick one favorite student per
year. (I do that too, privately, and I'll never tell.) These aren't
necessarily the "best" episodes. They're the ones I would sit a newcomer
down with, one from each year, so they could see what the show became. I've
kept the plot to the first few minutes of each, because you deserve to see
the rest for yourself.
| SEASON ONE · Duet |
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A Cardassian arrives at the station with an illness that could only have come
from one of the worst labor camps of the occupation, and Kira is sure she knows
exactly who he is. Most of the hour is two people in a room. Nana Visitor and
the guest actor Harris Yulin are extraordinary. This is the episode where I
knew the show was going to be something different from the other Treks, and it
was only the first season.
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| SEASON TWO · Necessary Evil |
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Someone attacks Quark, and Odo's investigation takes us back five years, to the
occupation, when the station belonged to the Cardassians and Odo first met
Kira. Odo narrates it in his log like the detective in an old black-and-white
picture. Dark, clever, and the first time I understood how much history these
people had with each other.
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| SEASON THREE · Explorers |
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Sisko builds a working copy of an ancient Bajoran ship that sailed on light,
to prove the old Bajorans could have made a voyage nobody believes they made,
and he takes Jake along. A small episode about a father and a son in a little
ship, talking. As a science teacher I loved the premise. As a father I loved
everything else. I have shown it to my own son, who is eleven, and he asked to
build a solar sail out of aluminum foil. We are working on it.
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| SEASON FOUR · The Visitor |
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An old man, a writer, tells a young visitor the story of the day he lost his
father. The old man is Jake Sisko, played by Tony Todd, and that is all I'm
going to tell you. I have watched this episode four times and I have not
made it to the end with dry eyes once. I can't watch it with anyone else in the
room. If you only ever see one hour of Deep Space Nine, make it this one.
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| SEASON FIVE · Call to Arms |
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The season finale, and the beginning of the Dominion War. The crew has to make
some hard choices about the station, and in the middle of it all, Rom and Leeta
get married. And then there is the baseball. When Sisko leaves his office for
what might be the last time, he leaves his baseball sitting on the desk. He
doesn't say why. He doesn't have to. Everyone watching knew it meant he was
coming back.
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| SEASON SIX · Far Beyond the Stars |
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Sisko finds himself living the life of Benny Russell, a Black writer at a
science fiction magazine in New York in the 1950s, who writes a story about
a Black captain of a space station and is told that no one will ever print it.
The rest of the cast plays the people at the magazine, most of them without
their alien makeup, which is a treat in itself. Avery Brooks directed it, and
he gives the performance of his life. I have shown this episode in my classroom
during Black History Month, with the principal's blessing, and I have never had
a room of teenagers so quiet. It is the most important hour Star Trek has
made since the original series.
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| SEASON SEVEN · Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang |
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I could have picked the finale, but I want to pick this one. The crew loves
spending time in a holosuite lounge in Las Vegas in 1962, with a singer named
Vic Fontaine. Sisko won't go. When Kasidy Yates, the woman he loves, finally asks him why,
he tells her: a real Las Vegas in 1962 would not have let a man like him in the
front door, and he won't pretend otherwise for fun. She answers that the
holosuite can show the world the way it should have been. It is a light caper
episode with one scene in the middle of it that every Trek fan should see. And
yes, before it's over, the captain sings.
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And the finale
What You Leave Behind aired this June. Lynda and I had our friends
over, and I made the gumbo from my kitchen page,
and for two hours nobody spoke except to say "shh." It did right by almost
everyone. I won't tell you how it ends for the captain. I'll only say that
it was the right ending, and that it was hard to watch, and that Lynda handed
me the box of tissues without a word, which is why I married her.
Honorable mentions
The Wire and Improbable Cause, for Garak.
Trials and Tribble-ations, for pure joy.
In the Pale Moonlight, which I think about more than any other episode
and still haven't decided how I feel about.
It's Only a Paper Moon, for Nog.
The Siege of AR-558, for showing what the war cost.
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