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The Dogs of War Review by Steve Perry Airdate: Week of May 24, 1999 Written by: Ron Moore and Rene Echevarria (teleplay); Peter Allan Fields (story). Directed by: Avery Brooks Short Take: Somewhat of an inconsistent mess, and certainly no setup for the finale Brief Summary: The Resistance is crushed while Quark receives a surprise Note:I am sorry for the delay in my reviews. My computer thanks to Windows 98 and EZ-BIOS is near death, and I've been busy saving it. I'm almost there. Voyager reviews are facing a massive delay, for a different reason - I have to wait for the tapes to the last four episodes, since I don't get Voyager at my home away from home... Review:I never thought I would have to play Goldilocks to do a review. It's becoming clear that the writers didn't know how to finish this story. Ironically, they probably could have used MORE episodes, despite the feeling that they didn't know how to finish it. It looks like that 9 episodes was not just right to finish the show. Instead of giving us more to chew on, the arc after "Changing Face" has mostly whimpered along. Take Quark's story, for example. On it's own, a reasonable tale, not so much funny as it is a good character piece. We always suspected that Quark cared more about his view of the Ferengi way than he even did about money. That was the real meat to this story, and Brunt giving Quark a manicure was simply icing on the cake. But it felt like a side plot. Oh, I see how, as with the Klingons, the writers wanted to end the show by moving the Ferengi in a new direction. But it felt out of the blue. You mean to tell me, after all of these episodes, horrible episodes I might add, where Zek had to struggle for power and Moogie worked behind the scenes, the entire Ferengi story is wrapped up by a messed up transmission from Ferenginar? Please. I hate thinking that I suffered through Profit and Lace for just *this.* I'd actually like to see crafty people moving behind the scenes for Zek's power. Rom getting power because Zek simply said so was more than a little underwhelming. Not only does Ferenginar derserve better, but Quark deserves better too. He deserves what he got in the original war arc - a key role in resolving matters. This was nothing, really. He's not even Nagus. Just like Nog to Jake, Rom has taken a lot of thunder from Quark over the course of the show. Nog arguably is more interesting than Jake, but Rom is not more interesting than Quark - Quark's little speech about how he sees his planet shows that. It's almost as if, despite the changes they're bringing these changes to Ferenginar, the writers forgot that the show was ending. Quark ended in a major, major whimper. That characterizes the entire episode. The fundamental problem with The Dogs of War is that it utterly failed to setup for the finale. You might say, who cares - and you might have a case. But I'd argue that the whole point of arc-TV is to build up a story. You can make the argument that Favor the Bold was better The Sacrifice of Angels because it did so well building anticipation. I mean, who would have guessed next week was the last episode? Dogs of War did such an odd job of setting things up. The Dominion decides, oh well, we'll retreat! The Federation says, oh well, we'll attack! Its seems so oddly anticlimatic. I've read the finale, and without spoiling anything I'll say that I'll likely talk more about this next week, probably giving my perscription to this week's problem with that. Suffice it to say, for now, that on the massive galactic stage, I got no feeling that the show was ending. I have no feeling that everything is about to hit the fan. Once again, Favor the Bold made me a little scared - that felt like everything was going to be decided next week. The only exception came with the Cardassian story. I'm going to prove that I'm not being crabby by pointing out that I could complain about the sudden collapse of the resistance. I won't, because I liked that sudden collapse. It really shocked me to see that happening. I daresay that this Cardassian storyline has been flawlessly executed. It gave us this week powerful moments, like Damar's speech, as well as Kira's reaction to it, showing how far she has come. It gave us also Mila, a delightful character - just as I'd expect her to be - and another example of how far Garak has come, from the favored son straight from Central Command to he soldier leading the way to a new Cardassia. This was the one thing that really did suggest big events in the finale, so not surprisingly I liked it. Oh, there was also the Bashir and Ezri story, wasn't there? This actually wasn't that bad. Someone should have seriously cut out the "accidental bumping" scene, but the rest of it was handled with the appropriate amount of clumsiness, culminating in the the funny scene in the elevator. I was worried we would not get any follow to Section 31. We did. Once again, we simple ran out of time. It would be a great story to have Odo, or maybe Sisko, get revenge on Section 31. How it was handled, given the circumstances, wasn't bad, but I can't help but think that it could have been a lot, lot more. Last week, Bashir merely used a mind control device to stop Sloane. I would have liked to have seen how Odo would have reacted to Section 31 as well. I don't know how to grade this episode. On one hand, each of the storylines did something right. But taken as a whole, the storylines all together did nothing to setup to suggest that this was the penultimate episode of DS9. Some short takes: - Maybe the weakest Weyoun scene of the arc, methinks. We really didn't need a big intro for Legate Broca. - I guess we won't be getting the big story behind Garak after all. - Sao Paulo really deserves a ship name, I mean, come on, it's got like a zillion people! - Have they given the name of the Romulan leader yet??? What exactly in this episode required a Peter Allan Fields writing credit? Rating: B-/B Next week: Payoff time. | |
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