Review of DS9 Episode 1.13 "The Storyteller"

I'm in the process of rewatching Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and reviewing/recapping each episode in detail. Join me in my in depth look at the deepest and most complex Star Trek series to date.



O'Brien and Bashir go to Bajor to assist a village where their spiritual leader, the Sirah, is dying. They discover that the Sirah must perform a nightly ritual to protect the village from a mystical creature called the Dal'Rok. However, when he dies, he names O'Brien as his successor, much to the engineer's dismay. Now he and Bashir have to find a way to save the village when the Dal'Rok returns. Meanwhile on the station, Sisko is mediating a border dispute between two hostile Bajoran factions, with the head of one of the factions being a young girl who is eager to prove that she is a strong leader—even if it means pushing their factions into an avoidable war.

The two plots of this episode are unrelated, despite both being about Bajoran society, and are ultimately inconsequential. The main reason to watch this episode is that it is jam packed with character development. We get tons of great O'Brien moments, and we see even more clearly than ever how much he dislikes Bashir. Considering that they go on to become inseparable friends, it's fun to watch O'Brien struggle (and fail) to contain his annoyance at every single thing Bashir says.

The real character development here, though, is for a different pair of inseparable friends, Jake and Nog. Unlike the last B plot they were involved in (in "The Nagus"), this time both young actors actually do a decent job and their story is fun and interesting. If not for the strength O'Brien as a character, I would argue that the B plot outshines the A plot in this particular episode. We get to see a lot of how Jake and Nog are developing as characters and people, which will be relevant for the entire show's run.

THE GOOD

• Good character development for Jake and Nog.
• Important piece in the O'Brien-Bashir friendship arc
• I love how O'Brien always says "Julian" with venom in his voice throughout the whole ep. It makes Bashir so uncomfortable that he reverses his request for O'Brien to call him that. The smirk from O'Brien when his little mind game works is amazing.
• O'Brien's distraught reactions to all the Sirah-related situations he finds himself in are so much fun to watch. I laughed quite a bit more in this ep than I expected to, mostly due to those moments. His trollish cackle when he realizes he's off the hook for being the Sirah is probably my favorite part of the ep.
• Going off the above, Bashir's amusement at O'Brien's discomfort is also fun to watch. Even though they aren't friends yet, you can definitely see the seeds of it here. And their friendship becomes one of the best parts of DS9, so it's fun to watch its genesis.

THE BAD

• Bajoran ep. Why are their outfits always so ugly?
• Inconsequential plot
• The girl who plays the Bajoran tetrarch isn't a very good actress

THE UGLY

• Rules of Acquisition quoted: 1 (9th). 3 total for the series.
• The runabout used by O'Brien and Bashir must be the Rio Grande, since the Yangtzee Kiang is gone and it lacks the Ganges' sensor module.
• It takes the runabout 2 hours to get from DS9 to Bajor. If they were travelling at warp 1 (the speed of light), that would mean that Bajor is about 14 AU (2.2 billion km) away from the station. But since the station was in orbit around Bajor before being moved on thrusters to the wormhole, it seems much more likely that they are significantly closer together and the journey between is done at impulse speeds.
• The Bajoran tetrarch is consistently referred to as being the same age as Jake and Nog (and the script apparently specifies her as being 15), but the actress who plays her, Gina Phillips, was 23 at the time. Jake is 14 and Nog is around 16, although Aron Eisenberg is actually a few months older than Phillips in real life.
• The use of the title "tetrarch" is very interesting. The historical context of that title in Earth history is pretty complex, but the meaning of the word itself implies that she is one of four joint rulers (tetra- being the Greek prefix meaning 'four'—a tetrarchy is a 'leadership of four [people]'). If so, it makes no sense that the other three rulers would send a young girl to negotiate instead of one of them going. Perhaps the rest of tetrarchy was destroyed during the occupation and they keep the title as a matter of tradition?

RATING: 7/10