“Rules of Engagement”
Written by Bradley Thompson & David Weddle and Ronald D. Moore
Directed by LeVar Burton
Season 4, Episode 17
Production episode 40514-490
Original air date: April 8, 1996
Stardate: 49665.3
Station log: Worf has a nightmare in which he’s walking the corridors of the Defiant surrounded by corpses—of both Starfleet personnel and Klingon children—while wielding a bat’leth. He also sees several Klingons cheering and holding their bat’leths aloft.
When he wakes up, we see that he’s in one of Odo’s cells, awaiting a hearing. The Klingon Empire has requested that Worf be extradited on the charge of murder. He is accused of firing on a civilian ship and murdering the 441 people on board, and an advocate named Ch’Pok is making the empire’s request before a Vulcan admiral named T’Lara. Sisko is defending Worf, pointing out that it was a combat situation. The ship decloaked right in front of the Defiant while it was fighting two other Klingon ships.
Ch’Pok’s argument is not so much the facts of the case, but what was in Worf’s heart in battle. His first witness is Dax, whom he calls as an expert in Klingon behavior, trying to get her to admit that he can be overcome by Klingon bloodlust. Dax testifies that she knows he can restrain himself as needs be, based on their holosuite workouts. Ch’Pok comes back with one of Worf’s recreational programs: the Battle of Tong Vey, which ends with Emperor Sompek conquering the city and ordering all the inhabitants killed and the city burned to the ground. Worf last used the program the day before he left on the Defiant.
Sisko’s next on the stand to explain the mission Worf went on. Seven convoys were being sent by the Cardassians to a system that has had an outbreak, and each is being protected by a Starfleet vessel against possible Klingon attack. Sisko assigns Worf to command the Defiant to be one of those escort ships.
Quark testifies that Worf declared in the bar that he hoped that the Klingons would attack the convoy. O’Brien then testifies about the battle itself: one ship engages the Defiant while another goes after the Cardassian relief ships. They’d been doing a cloak-and-run tactic, where they’d cloak and reappear elsewhere. Worf figured out the pattern they were using and, after a ship cloaked, he came about to where it was likely to decloak, and as soon as there was a decloaking detected, he fired. Except it turned out to be a third ship, the civilian transport. Ch’Pok asks O’Brien what he would’ve done if he was in command, and he admits that he wouldn’t have fired on the ship.
During a recess, Ch’Pok approaches Sisko in the replimat. If Sisko concedes, Ch’Pok promises that Worf won’t be put to death, and that he’ll even defend Worf—it’s the battle that thrills him, not which side he’s on. To Sisko, this means he doesn’t want Worf on the stand and, of course, he doesn’t take the offer.
Worf testifies to the battle from his perspective. In his judgment, the chances of a civilian ship appearing in the midst of the battle were remote, and if he had hesitated he would have been negligent in his duty as the convoy’s escort. Ch’Pok then asks how Worf feels about being discommendated a second time, about the House of Mogh being dismantled, about his son living with the shame of being the son of a traitor, and he admits to being angry about it, but that it doesn’t affect his duty. He also says he would never deliberately attack an unarmed opponent. Ch’Pok then tries to provoke Worf by accusing him of not being Klingon, of betraying his son, of killing children to make himself a better warrior. Eventually he gets Worf to attack Ch’Pok in anger, which Ch’Pok says belies Worf’s claims that he would never attack an unarmed opponent. (My first thought was, “He has fists.”)
During a recess, Odo reports to Sisko with good news, as he’s been investigating the civilian ship, and he’s finally found something. Sisko calls Ch’Pok to the stand as an expert on the Klingon Empire. The first thing he testifies to is that there are no formal agreements between the Federation and the empire at present—which, of course, raises the question of what the basis is for the extradition request. Sisko then presents him with a list of people, which Ch’Pok identifies as the casualties from Worf’s attack. He recognizes them right away because their names and faces are seared onto his heart as heroes who were murdered by a coward. Sisko then provides a second list with the exact same names on it: the passengers on another transport that crashed on Galora Prime. They were believed lost, but miracle of miracles, according to the records, they all survived! And then they all got on another transport and got blown up by Worf. In truth, the event was staged, using existing civilian corpses, so that the empire could frame the only Klingon in Starfleet for a massacre.
The extradition request, obviously, is denied. Sisko then has to talk Worf into going to a party in Quark’s that Bashir and O’Brien are throwing in his honor. Worf doesn’t particularly want to go, because the truth is he accepted the mission in the hopes that he would be able to wreak vengeance on the empire for what they did to him. Sisko also upbraids him for firing on a ship without checking it first, but then says he should go to the party even though he doesn’t want to, because part of being in command is smiling for the troops to make them feel better, because your job is to take care of them.
The Sisko is of Bajor: Sisko gets to defend Worf for reasons the script never makes clear. “The Measure of a Man” made it clear that starbases have Judge Advocate General offices, and the only reason nobody was available to serve as counsel (forcing Picard and Riker into the roles) in the TNG episode was because it was a new JAG office. You can even use that same excuse for why Sisko was pressed into service as a lawyer in “Dax,” as the station hadn’t been up and running as a Federation starbase for very long. But DS9 has been operational for more than four years now, so there’s really no reason for Worf to be defended by a non-lawyer…
Don’t ask my opinion next time: It’s completely unclear why Kira is on the Defiant for Worf’s mission.
The slug in your belly: Ch’Pok calls Dax as an expert in Klingons, but she demurs, saying her previous host was an expert, she’s just someone who knows a lot.
There is no honor in being pummeled: Worf admits to Sisko at the end that he shouldn’t have taken the assignment to escort the convoy because he wanted to engage Klingons in battle after his discommendation in “The Way of the Warrior.”
Preservation of mass and energy is for wimps: Odo saves the day, as his dogged investigatory skills turn up the fact that the civilians whom Worf allegedly killed were actually already three months dead.
Rules of Acquisition: Quark testifies to Worf’s state of mind before the mission, though his reliability as a witness is called into question, when he can’t remember which dabo girl Bashir was talking to, and then recalls that it was Morn, not Bashir, who was chatting up a dabo girl.
For Cardassia! The Cardassian military is stretched thin defending themselves against the Klingons, which is why the medical convoys are protected by Starfleet ships.
What happens on the holosuite stays on the holosuite: Dax and Worf are still working out on the holodeck, bat’leth vs. mek’leth, and it’s still probably not foreplay. She says that they’ve both injured each other, and she broke a finger once. Worf also brought a holographic re-creation of the Battle of Tong Vey over from the Enterprise.
Keep your ears open: “Life is a great deal more complicated in this red uniform.”
“Wait till you get four pips on that collar—you’ll wish you had gone into botany.”
Worf musing on the vicissitudes of command, and Sisko assuring him that it’s only going to get worse.
Welcome aboard: Longtime character actor Ron Canada, last seen on Trek as the hardass security chief in TNG’s “The Masterpiece Society,” plays Ch’Pok; he’ll next show up on Voyager as a Malon in “Juggernaut.” Deborah Strang creates no impression whatsoever as T’Lara.
Trivial matters: Ira Steven Behr invited David Weddle to tour the set after Behr read Weddle’s If They Move…Kill ’Em!: The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah, and during the tour Weddle asked if he could pitch to the show. Along with his writing partner Bradley Thompson, they pitched this story, which led to a position on the staff, with the duo writing or co-writing a dozen episodes all together. Thompson and Weddle have gone on to work on Battlestar Galactica, CSI, Alphas, Falling Skies, and Defiance. So basically, Weddle and Thompson have become major players in the SF TV world and they owe it all to Behr being a huge Peckinpah fan.
The story—which originally had Sisko on the hot seat instead of Worf—was inspired by the 1988 incident in which the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian passenger flight.
In the first hearing scene, Worf is wearing his baldric, but he doesn’t wear it for any of the other scenes. In a bit of dialogue that was cut, Ch’Pok requests that Worf not wear it in the hearing as it offends him, echoing Duras’s words when Worf challenged the High Council’s ruling against Mogh in TNG’s “Sins of the Father” (also co-written by Ronald D. Moore).
Morn almost gets a line of dialogue as part of Quark’s testimony, but Ch’Pok interrupts him.
The character of T’Lara appears twice as a younger person in fiction by Christopher L. Bennett, once as an ensign serving on the Enterprise in the time of Kirk and Spock in The Darkness Drops Again, part of the Mere Anarchy storyline, and again as a JAG officer during Picard’s court-martial following the destruction of the Stargazer in The Buried Age. Your humble rewatcher had her appear nine years after this episode retired and consulting for a cultural exchange program in A Singular Destiny.
Ron Canada was one of the finalists for the role of Martok, but he lost out to J.G. Hertzler.
Walk with the Prophets: “I’ll see you on the battlefield.” What an unholy mess. Absolutely nothing in this episode works.
We start with the very premise, which can’t actually have happened. The Klingons withdrew from the Khitomer Accords in “The Way of the Warrior,” which means the treaty between the Federation and the empire that would be the basis of the extradition has been abrogated. To make matters worse, Ch’Pok himself testifies to this fact in the hearing, so the script itself comes out and says that there’s no legal basis for the extradition request. And why would the Federation even entertain such a request, much less call for a hearing and put one of their decorated officers in a holding cell?
Next we have Ch’Pok, who’s actually well played by Ron Canada. It’s fun in the abstract to see a Klingon lawyer (the second we’ve seen, after Michael Dorn playing Worf’s ancestor in Star Trek VI; we’ll see two more great ones played by J.G. Hertzler and John Vickery in Enterprise’s “Judgment”), but Ch’Pok comes across as spectacularly incompetent. He is making a case before a Vulcan admiral, and so chooses an emotional argument. He seems to be trying to get a rise out of Worf, but Worf isn’t the one making the decision, T’Lara is, and not a single point Ch’Pok makes speaks to logic or rule of law. Of course, as we just established, there is no real rule of law here, so there’s no basis for a logical argument, either. He uses Worf’s engaging in a recreational holosuite program with a predetermined end as (incredibly flimsy) evidence of his bloodlust, and then tries to use O’Brien—a noncommissioned officer who may have been involved in more than two hundred combat operations, but was never in command for any of them—as a viable alternative to Worf—a career officer who has been in command of Starfleet’s flagship on multiple occasions. The only testimony that really helps Ch’Pok’s cause is Quark’s, speaking to Worf’s state of mind before the mission—but Quark can’t even remember who was in the bar that day, so his testimony is less than reliable.
And finally we have the cherry on top of the whole thing: Worf didn’t do a single thing wrong. Sisko’s upbraiding of him at the end is total nonsense. While this isn’t necessarily a representative sample, every single person I know who a) served in the military and b) saw this episode said that the episode was ridiculous because there was no question that Worf did the right thing, given the situation.
Worf said two things when he testified that really put paid to the entire notion that he did anything wrong. The first was his statement that he would do the same thing again because to hesitate in that situation would be a danger to the very convoy ships he was there to protect. Which is important—he’s in a firefight, trying to protect a humanitarian convoy. Hesitation in battle is incredibly risky and dangerous.
The second was that he estimated the chances of a civilian ship just showing up on the field of battle as being “remote,” which, if anything, undersold it. As Douglas Adams once reminded us, space is big—really big. The chances of a ship that isn’t supposed to be somewhere randomly showing up in that exact spot in front of the Defiant when it’s in a battle situation are so infinitesimally small, so incredibly close to zero as makes no mathematical difference. The only way it makes any kind of sense for that civilian ship to be at that site was if it went there on purpose to join the battle (a line of investigation Sisko asks Odo to pursue, but the constable finds no evidence to support it). The only sensible response to a ship decloaking in the middle of that firefight was that it was a participant in that firefight. To pause to scan the ship is a hesitation that he can’t afford, and the only reason to make that hesitation is in order to account for a possibility that is so remote as to be ridiculous. (Also: why is a civilian ship travelling around cloaked, anyhow? It’s a very important question that no one asks.)
Sisko telling Worf he screwed up is absurd, a bizarre sop to the ghost of Gene Roddenberry. Later in life, Roddenberry kept trying to insist that Starfleet wasn’t a military organization, despite the fact that it has a hierarchy, a rigid rank structure, and polices its own via courts-martial, which is the textbook definition of a military organization. In his early life, Roddenberry served in the Army Air Corps (the precursor to the Air Force) and was a police officer; he should damn well have known better. (In “Peak Performance,” Picard would have been better off saying that Starfleet wasn’t a militaristic organization—but it very much is a military, and to deny that is to deny what the word military means.) Sisko’s criticism of Worf is especially hypocritical given actions that Sisko himself will take later, notably “For the Uniform.”*
*You probably thought I was going to mention “In the Pale Moonlight,” but that’s a case where the Federation is in a state of war. They aren’t at war in this episode, nor are they in “For the Uniform” when Sisko orders an inhabited planet to be bombarded with trilithium resin. We’ll talk about that more when we get to that fifth-season episode…
The episode has its good points. While it makes no sense for Sisko to be defending Worf, Avery Brooks does well in the role of defending his officer. And both scripter Ronald D. Moore and director LeVar Burton do an excellent job with the device of having the witnesses speak to the camera during the flashback reenactments of their testimony, which avoids numerous cuts back to the courtroom.
But ultimately it’s an episode with an entire plot that makes no sense and should never have happened.
Warp factor rating: 2
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be at LI-Con 1 in Rockville Center, New York this weekend, alongside fellow authors Jody Lynn Nye, C.J. Henderson, John Grant (a.k.a. Paul Barnett), T.J. Glenn, Roy Mauritsen, Paul Levinson, Anatoly Belilovsky, and Alex Shvartsman, voice actors Kristen Nelson and Amy Howard Wilson, editor/packager Bill Fawcett, science writer/editor John Rennie, game publisher Oscar Rios of Golden Goblin Press, and bunches more. His schedule can be found here.
Wow, that Vulcan really was unmemorable. I wish they could have gotten the Bajoran magistrate from “Dax” back instead.
I always kind of liked the episode, but I never really recognized the flaws you point out. I guess it does have a lot of problems. But I found it refreshing to see a Klingon civilian for a change, someone who still had the culture’s regard for strength and conflict but who pursued his challenges somewhere other than the battlefield. That was something that really added to the often one-note portrayal of Klingon culture — and a thread you elaborated on nicely, Keith, in Klingon Empire: A Burning House. As well as one ENT handled well with Hertzler’s Kolos in “Judgment.”
I also really liked the technique of blending the courtroom scenes with the flashbacks. It was a nicely theatrical technique, very imaginative.
But I guess you’re right. There are some fundamental flaws of logic here. A lot of it doesn’t make sense. But I’m a bit more tolerant of the idea that the Federation would consider a Klingon request for extradition. The Accords may be suspended, but the UFP doesn’t want them to be, and the tensions won’t really escalate into a shooting war until later. I can buy that the Federation is doing all it can to try to mend fences with the Empire at this point, and that might be why they allowed this hearing.
As for T’Lara, I depicted her at earlier points in her career in two of my works of prose fiction (though only because I forgot I’d used her the first time when the second time came around). In Mere Anarchy: The Darkness Drops Again, Ensign T’Lara appeared as the Enterprise helm officer under Captain Spock, and in The Buried Age, Captain T’Lara was Picard’s defense attorney in the Stargazer court-martial.
I’m not entirely sure what the Klingons were hoping to get out of this funky little ruse… they had no way of knowing that it would be the Defiant with Worf in Command (as opposed to Sisko in command, or the USS Hood with whomever commands it, or any other ship). If they knew what ship and captain was going to be there, Starfleet have a bigger issue than the fact that Worf doesn’t scan everything before he fires- like a really big security breach somewhere. So they’re basically doing a ruse to get a Starfleet ship to destroy a civilian freighter for whta purpose? Bad PR?
This plot is also not typical Klingon behavior. First, they go after a medical convoy? Just a few episodes ago in “Return to Grace” a Klingon Bird of Prey decides to not attack a defenseless freighter, yet during the same war, a Klingon Bird of Prey and Attack Cruiser attack several freighters? Why the inconsistency? (For the record, I don’t buy the Klingons don’t attack defenseless freighers nonsense- it’s war and they’re Klingons- they kill the enemy regardless of what ship they’re in) Also, the combat tactics suck. I get the decloak-fire-run routine, but why bother? Have the K’Tinga get into a slugfest with the Defiant, drawing it away from the convoy. Then when Defiant is away from the convoy, have the Bird of Prey decloak in the convoy and start firing. By the time Defiant breaks away from the cruiser and gets back to the Bird of Prey, you should have done significant damage to the convoy.
So we have a Klingon plot (that seems more like a Romulan plot) for no reason and combat tactics that suck. Again- what was the point of this?
One other thing I’ve been thinking of. KRAD, you talked about why wasn’t there a JAG office on DS9 after four years of operation. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe, even though it gets contradicted a time or two, but might the reason for that be because technically, DS9 is not a Federation starbase, but rather a Bajoran starbase, which just happens to be commanded by Starfleet? I realize that might be hair splitting a bit, but it’s the best explanation I can think of. Maybe there were Bajoran lawyers there, but not Starfleet?
I figured well in advance that Krad was going to be anything but nice to this episode. This one deserves the criticism it gets.
I never understood why Paramount demanded 26 hours of Star Trek every season. If anything, Rules of Engagement is living proof there ought to be less shows per season. You’re going to get clunkers when you have to write that many.
This was written and produced late in the year, and it shows the obvious signs of fatigue. A more rested writer would have challenged the whole concept and done major rewrites. Sadly, this one suffered. Fortunately, Ron Moore’s next effort, For the Cause, would hit the mark way better.
Any time a TV show that doesn’t regularly feature courtroom scenes (e.g., LAW & ORDER, CSI, etc.) does a courtroom episode, I cringe. Almost invariably, such episodes involve a regular cast-member being on trial, so there’s usually the “defender who isn’t a regular lawyer,” the “testimony by friends/colleauges that do more harm than good,” the doubts and suspicions that “maybe he really is guilty of something or other,” and, finally, “some kind of absurdly contrived bit of evidence or made-up legal ‘technicality’ that will get him/her acquitted.”
Maybe I’m just feeling jaded and cynical today, but I get the feeling that stories like this often get picked up because they all pretty much follow that same formula and so can be easily slotted in anywhere in a season where they need a “filler” episode with any interchangeable characters or circumstances and won’t matter to the overall continuity
Despite its flaws, I like this a little better than KRAD did. I was going to defend the lack of a JAG officer to defend Worf the same way that leandar dir @@.-@. But then it occurred to me that if Starfleet sent an admiral out for the hearing, they could just as well have sent out a defender for Worf at the same time.
I will however defend the Klingons’ effort to obtain extradition despite the cancellation of the Khitomer Accords. This is, in part, their contempt for the Federation. They see them as squishy and touchy-feely, most likely more than willing to pretend that the Accords are still in force.
I will also forgive Ch’Pok relying largely on emotional evidence with a Vulcan judge. Firstly, he may not have expected a Vulcan and is therefore not properly prepared for the situation. More importantly, though, is the legal maxim:
Ch’Pok certainly doesn’t have the law or the evidence on his side. All he can really do is pound the table.
Canada does a good job here, but I’m glad that JG Hertzler won the Martok role. He simply owns over the years and I can’t imagine anybody else doing half as well.
I really enjoyed the courtroom testimony ‘breaking the 4th wall’ flashbacks, I thought that was kind of neat.
I also really liked the character of Ch’Pok in that it was interesting to see what a Klingon lawyer was like and how their warrior culture influenced that role.
But other than that, I totally agree with the analysis here that the actaul lawyer-ing was nonsensical – which Ch’Pok pretty much cops to right away when he says this is a trial of Worf’s ‘heart’, not what actually happened. Plus, first he tries to be proving that Worf really is a Klingon at heart, but then when egging him on he’s trying to say he’s NOT.
And ultimately, I do agree he made the right decision – why on earth would somebody think a civilian ship would cloak in the middle of a battle? Why would a civilian ship even fly into a battle, and then decide to decloak right in front of a warship? The whole thing just doesn’t make sense.
This epsiode actually kind of reminded me of the Picard facepalm episode, what with all the flashbacks, as well as the fact that it was this horrible crime that you know in the end the person didn’t commit.
While not my favorite episode I always love the Klingon-centric shows. Could it be that even though the Empire backed out of the Khitomer Accords that the Federation would still honor it as a gesture of reconciliation?
As for Sisko at the end, is it possible that he is a bit racist toward Klingons? I seem to remember him warning Dax about getting involved with a “Klingon” thing and how he never understood Curzon’s relationship with them. I always got the impression that Sisko came down harder on Worf than the others, though maybe that also has to do with Worf’s connection to Picard.
JAG officers are akin to circuit riding preachers in that they cover multiple military bases. If Star Fleet holds true to that, it’s highly unlikely that DS9 would have a JAG office as its relatively small affair.
Base COs can represent their staff in hearings and often do so.
I suppose you could justify the whole plot by suggesting it a Changeling trying to keep the Federation and the Empire at loggerheads, but this requires a whole lot of work by lower level officers who would have to question what the Empire gains by doing this. Or, if there was foreknowledge of Worf and the Defiant being there, that Gowron was screwing with Worf for personal reasons. None of it satisfies.
I’ve long suspected that this episode was the one which cost me my story sale to DS9. I pitched “Omission”, a Sisko court-martial story in which the diplomat father of a Saratoga victim at Wolf 359 calls Sisko up on a technical charge of desertion. (In the pilot we never actually hear acting Captain Sisko give the order to “abandon ship” in the chaos of the battle).
It was to be produced in the 1995-96, season. The producer I pitched to was a little stunned and pleased because he said they were just talking about doing a Sisko court-martial story a few hours before my pitch. He called me a few days later with their decision to buy the story.
But I was never told they decided not to produce it. I found out from an assistant when setting up my next pitch.
Many elements were the same (multiple perspectives of the incident during the trial proceedings, etc.), and one of the writers was the one I had pitched it to.
But it’s just another of the millions of “close, but no cigar” stories in the wonderful world of TV writing.
And you move on.
Christopher: Thanks for the reminder of T’Lara’s use in the tie-in fiction — not just in your two stories, but I used her in A Singular Destiny as well. Yay for the edit function!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This episode always reminds me of the Vincennes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
Probably because, as krad points out in his review, “The story—which originally had Sisko on the hot seat instead of Worf—was inspired by the 1988 incident in which the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian passenger flight.”
If you are doing a Top 10 list of the worst DS-9 episodes; this one should be on it for the plot & dialogue.
Brian: I’m not sure if this would make the bottom 10 — the dialogue isn’t actually that bad, it’s the story that’s dumber than a box of hammers — but you never know. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This is the first episode this season less than 6. I was wondering when it would happen. lol
I really like when they break the 4th wall during flashbacks in that way. They did it pretty effectively in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where Spike teaches Buffy how he killed 2 previous slayers, and I remember it being incredibly effective then and upon rewatch. It gives you the sense that the teller of the tale is really remembering it, feeling everything that they remember from the tale they are telling. As a storytelling device I like it.
As for this story, on the other hand, there isn’t much here, it doesn’t make much sense. But I do agree that I like seeing a Klingon civillian as opposed to the depiction of an entire society joining the KDF.
I’ve always thought it was awkward for a Klingon, civilian or not, to engage in a court battle like this, but other than that I don’t mind the episode.
As for specific criticisms in the rewatch:
“It’s completely unclear why Kira is on the Defiant for Worf’s mission.”
Well, she *does* pop up there on a lot of missions that don’t require a Bajoran presence, and off the top of my head I don’t remember ever seeing any other Bajoran officers on the ship. Maybe she’s secretly a 24th century rapper and wants to bolster her street cred by being on a pimp ride.
“Deborah Strang creates no impression whatsoever as T’Lara.”
T’Lara is a Vulcan. I feel like this gives her a free pass to be robotic background noise.
As others have mentioned, the Federation would probably be willing to extradite someone as a show of good faith. After all, the Klingons are the ones who withdrew from the accords. A request like this suggests someone on their side is still open to diplomacy with the Federation, so even a token move that could reopen diplomatic ties would be jumped at. Ch’Pok also says something along the lines of ‘you’ll be seeing a lot more of us’ if Worf is found guilty; Klingons looking for vengeance are something the Federation would prefer to avoid, and the Federation certainly doesn’t want to look like it’s trying to hide something if civilians were indeed killed.
I’m not convinced Ch’Pok is incompetent. Given the situation was fabricated I don’t think the Klingons expected to win the case. Someone higher up, presumably for political reasons, wanted to try this out and see if they could embarrass the Federation. Duplicity and political maneuvering have been seen from Klingons before, so this is not out of character.
As is rightly pointed out, Worf didn’t really do anything wrong. For a civilian ship to just wander into this battle makes no logical sense. As such, Ch’Pok has to go for the emotional argument. T’Lara may not be emotional, but Klingons certainly are. If they determine a Federation officer wantonly killed their civilians, many Klingons would use this as justification for revenge and satisfying honor or whatever. It doesn’t even have to be Worf who was in command that day – presumably they would build a case regardless of who was in command. That it happened to be Worf is just icing on the cake because the ultimate goal is embarrassing the Federation, not retrieving Worf.
Remember that in Way of the Warrior Worf notes many of his people believe Klingons need to return to the old ways and that peace with the Federation has made them soft. It’s no stretch of the imagination to assume that someone higher up put a plot like this in place to see if they could use it as momentum for war.
I like this episode. It’s not the best, but when I think of bad DS9 episodes this one does not come to my mind as one of the worst.
MikeKelm @3:
It definitely feels as if the Klingons have hired Sela to mastermind this plot.
This episode really didn’t work for me, either. If the Klingons did somehow know for sure that Worf would be in charge of the Defiant that day (which, as previously said, means Starfleet has a big leak somewhere), why set up this elaborate ruse to embarass him when you could just send a few extra cloaked Birds of Prey and try to destroy the Defiant instead? I echo the sentiment that it doesn’t seem like a very Klingon type of plot. (I totally buy that there’d be Klingons willing to engage in it, but not the idea that it would necessarily be a great PR victory among the Klingon citizenry.)
My other big beef with this episode is that for long stretches it’s about Worf, but only from other characters’ points of view while Worf himself sits there during the trial looking uncomfortable and not knowing what to do with himself. Courtroom episodes can run the risk of being a better showcase for the character acting as the prosecutor or defence than the character actually on trial, and I think that at points in this episode, it’s definitely more Sisko’s episode than Worf’s. (Not unlike DS9‘s last trial episode, “Dax,” as I recall.)
And lastly, yeah, I don’t think Worf did anything wrong either.
-Andy
Oh good, I thought it was just me who was constantly irked by the way this episode made absolutely no sense in any way, shape, or form.
Nitpick: At the beginning of the article, you call T’Lara “T’Lar” the first time you mention her. (T’Lar was the one who brought Spock back to life in ST3.)
McKay: Eeep! Good catch. It’s been fixed….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
As a lawyer myself, my word, Sisko is terrible. He lets the Klingon do whatever he wants, including abuse his client, invent expertises, and run away with irrelevancies and hypotheticals. I couldn’t contain my scoffing add I watched this.
Even the first time I saw this episode I knew I liked it more than it deserved to be liked. Worf didn’t really do anything wrong, and in the episode itself he just sort of sits around. The breaking the fourth wall stuff is entertaining, but what really made the episode for me was Ron Canada as Ch’Pok. He had all the oilyness one expects from a TV lawyer without losing what made him a Klingon. I enjoy these looks into civilian life on alien worlds. Civilians on Romulus during the ‘Reunification’ episodes on TNG were bland. Klingon chef on DS9 was better, but this was great. I think I’d actually watch ‘Ch’Pok: Klingon Lawyer’ as its own show, because the courtroom drama applied to Klingons has so much to offer in the way of entertainment.
How did the Klingon Empire know Worf would be commanding this convoy? The klingons should have enough intelligence to know that Worf is on the short list of Defiant commanders. It doesn’t take a lot of work to plan a basic interception of an essentially civilian convoy – they know that SOMEONE will be coming and with its location and Starfleet stretched thin, it’s only a matter of time that Defiant would find itself playing escort. Frankly, it’s “icing on the cake” that Worf is the one who ends up in the hotseat; the empire was simply trying to manufacture ANY incident to embarras starfleet.
(However, putting anyone on trial besides worf would simply be a rehash of the O’Brian-Cardassia trial).
Totally random, months late, but – can we get someone a medal for the still at the top of this page? Best picture of Worf ever.
I thought the fourth wall breaking was fantastic, I really think Jordi nailed it on that. The rest of the episode was a travesty for the myriad of reasons presented above. But, what really broke it for me was Ch’Pok’s New Jersey accent. He was the least Klingon sounding Klingon I had ever heard.
Ron Canada’s actually from New York, not New Jersey. As a New Yorker, this is important. So there.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’m embarrassed to admit that I unconsciously assumed Ron Canada was Canadian.
I’m still confused about how the trial’s supposed to be a propaganda win for the Empire.
I mean, the plan seems to have been to publicly shame the Federation for trusting Worf…not because he himself is a bad person who clearly shouldn’t have been given command, but because he’s Klingon and according to Ch’Pok, Klingon’s are just inherently violent savages? (He even comes really close to saying that almost word for word a couple times.)
Like, I could see how that would be bad for the Federation if it worked out…but I’m not sure how it was supposed to get the Empire positive press.
Literally every actor in the whole franchise speaks with a regional accent of some kind, so that shouldn’t be character-breaking.
Though I must admit I lo e Babylon 5’s approach of keeping accents consistent with species.
Anyway, I like this episode. Like Bennet said, there are a lot of little logical flaws, but in the end it’s a nice character piece and it’s always a treat to see Klingon civilians. A big part of that is, of course, being able to appreciate what the episode tries to be as much as what it actually is.
And I completely disagree about there being no legal basis for extradition. Clearly, this episode demonstrates that there is, as does one of the movies (III, I think) where the Klingon ambassador is trying to get Kirk extradited, not to mention the events of Undiscovered Country where Kirk is extradited, both of which occur prior to the Khitomer Accords. It seems silly to me to assume that these two enormous interstellar nations would only have a single treaty between them–the would never happen.
And even if that were the case, Federation law probably provisions for extradition with states with whom they have no formal relationship, especially given Starfleets’s MO, and that o e awful Wesley episode.
Was Ch’Pok in on the plot to discredit Worf and the Federation? Or did he truly believe that Klingon civilians had died on that ship? Because if it were the latter, Ch’Pok really should have lost some respect for the Empire here for being used as a pawn in Gowron’s game of one-upmanship over the Federation (but more over Worf, one suspects).
20: “T’Lara is a Vulcan. I feel like this gives her a free pass to be robotic background noise”. Playing a Vulcan is difficult for any actor. It’s quite an acting challenge to be emotionless without coming off as bland. And quite a few have failed to be another Leonard Nimoy or Mark Lenard. Deborah Strang can sadly join the club.
@25. Have to agree with you there. As someone with experience in litigation, I generally shy away from courtroom dramas because I’m always annoyed with what counsel get away with doing in front of a judge. Don’t even get me started on John Grisham, that talentless hack. LOL Regardless, what really bugs me here is when the Klingon lawyer tries to introduce Worf’s private logs into evidence. Sisko rightly objects, and then, inexplicably, defers to Worf to make the decision as to whether or not they should be allowed. Beyond that, I have to dissent from the general consensus is that the breaking of the fourth wall technique was effective here. It must have been because so many apparently liked it. I didn’t get it. I thought it was distracting and gimmicky.
I’ve said it before in regards to the Cardassians/Maquis but the Federation is very cowardly, ethnocentric and naive; in that regard, they are very similar to the U.N. They presume the adherence to the letter and spirit of a treaty or law and that because they are honest brokers, so are everyone else. Look at whose currently on the UN Human Rights Council: Egypt, Rwanda, China, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Cuba; all places with abysmal records of human rights’ abuses. Israel has been condemned in 62 separate resolutions in the last 10 years The West is far from perfect but this is another example of legalism run amok in today’s world. The Federation is the same way. They would extradite one of their own citizens, a highly decorated Starfleet officer with a distinguished career, to a system of justice where he would be almost certainly be denied his rights as a citizen. I know Gene Roddenberry wanted to make Worf “the Other” and be different but come on. He’s clearly a Federation citizen and a Starfleet commander; the Klingon Empire has no jurisdiction over him and hasn’t since he was rescued by Sergey Rozhenko after the Khitomer Massacre. Yet the Federation, to prove how “fair” and “just” they are, are prepared just willy-nilly to hand over someone to the race of their birth, simply because citizens of that race are alleged to have died at the hands of someone of the same race, to be tried and likely executed when in fulfillment of their duty to Starfleet. There may be an argument as to whether Worf should have fired during the battle or not (There’s absolutely not a question in my mind he did the exact right thing and I would have done the exact same thing). But it’s patently absurd. C’Pok even says there’s no relationship since the Klingons withdrew from the Khitomer Accords; so there’s absolutely not even a shred of a legal basis to even consider any sort of proceeding. Someone who kills someone of a different country when those two countries are not at peace, is not going to be extradited; heck, the US resists and ignores extradition treaties all the time, even when they should be enforced. But the Federation is willing to bend over backwards to protect the laws of another society. Why? Like with the Federation citizens left on the Cardassian side of the DMZ; they didn’t forfeit their Federation citizenship to become Cardassian citizens/subjects; the Federation told them they had to give up their homes. It would be like the US suddenly giving Wisconsin and Minnesota to Canada, allowing the residents to stay if they want but they would have to become Canadians; no, they were born Americans, they’re citizenship doesn’t change because the border does. And the Cardassians of course said they would protect them, when they probably started the Federation-Cardassian War to begin with and then there was shown (in “Tribunal,”) irrefutable proof that the Cardassian government was arming its citizens to force the Federation out of the DMZ; that alone should have been considered an act of war and if I were the Federation President at that time, it would have been. But the Federation essentially hand waves it because they want peace with a minor and hostile species on the edge of Federation space, who had committed wanton acts of aggression against the Federation before (the supply ships likely carrying weapons, the violation of the Seldonis IV Convention in the cases of Picard, William Samuels and Miles O’Brien at a minimum, organizing mobs to harass and assault Federation citizens,etc.). The Federation’s moral and ethical cowardice is disgusting.
#2/ChristopherLBennett takes the words right out of my mouth (or… Out of my hands?). I enjoyed this episode and didn’t notice any of the flaws pointed out in the review. Which is strange, because they are all very valid points and the contradiction between Worf’s statements (“To hesitate is to endanger my ship and the mission” and “I shouldv’ve made sure what I was firing at first”) is very obvious. I guess I was blinded by the superb directing. LeVar Burton managed to create a very entertaining court room episode, something that’s not easy to do. I really liked how the flashbacks where used here. That “talking into the camera” was very effective.
One thing that bothered me was how neither Sisko nor T’Lara did anything to stop Ch’Pok when he continued to insult Worf. Well, T’Lara did tell him he was overstepping his boundaries a few times, but she shouldv’ve called him to order when he simply ignored her. Also “attacking an unarmed man”? Is a full grown Klingon really defenseless in hand to hand combat?
Anyway, I think O’Brien said it best whe he said “I stand by that decision”.
Yeah, this is one of those episodes that simply falls apart the instant you give it more than a moment’s consideration. What is a civilian transport ship doing with a cloaking device? What was it doing in the middle of a battle in the first place, considering that space is, you know, big and all? Why the hell is the Federation even entertaining this, considering they’re at war with the Klingons? Why is Worf considered a war criminal for carrying out his duty to preserve the lives of his crew members and those aboard the convoy they’re defending? Why the hell didn’t Sisko tear into the Klingons for attacking an aid convoy in the first place? While having the various witnesses address the camera directly is a neat little directoral trick, the story itself relies on massive leaps of logic and almost Mr. Fantastic-levels of stretching, and just doesn’t work.
Though one good thing I will say about this episode is how it emphasises Worf is more Klingon than the actual Klingons. He actually holds himself to a standard of behaviour one might consider to be honourable, whereas the “real” Klingons are basically schoolyard bullies, eager to victimize those they deem beneath them, only to soil their drawers and run wailing to the teacher the instant anyone stands up for themselves.
I didn’t know about Ron Canada being a candidate for the Martok role and I have to say I’m glad J.G. Hertzler won it. I enjoyed Canada’s performance as Ch’Pok, but the actor in a reoccurring role would begin to grate on me. Maybe it’s just the roles he’s given where he always seems to play obstinate chatacters and I’m being unduly harsh.
Although this is entirely irrelevant to anything, I have to say that Ron Canada sure does have an awesome name!
@39: Of course he does, his name includes the word “Canada”, doesn’t it? :)
People need to remember what Sisko said at the end: “You made a military decision, to protect your ship and crew. But you’re a Starfleet officer, Worf. We don’t put civilians at risk or even potentially at risk to save ourselves. Sometimes that means we lose the battle, and sometimes our lives. But if you can’t make that choice, then you can’t wear that uniform.” That is why Starfleet was willing to extradite Worf. Starfleet officers have to be willing to die to even potentially protect civilians. As for O’Brien, I half-expected him to say: “I’m never in command; when do I get to be in command?” Life of a non-com.
SethC: Except, as I said in the review, the notion that a civilian ship would just show up in the middle of battle like that is ridiculous.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This, I realise, is now the second DS9 re-watch where I’ve complained about the depiction of Federation extradition law (after ‘DAX’), but I must agree with @SethC and other commenters who point out the legal ridiculousness here.
We have seen Klingon ‘trials’ in The Undiscovered Country; unless there have been major juridical reforms in the Empire in the intervening time, it is readily apparent that Worf, as a Federation citizen, would have no prospect of a fair trial, and that, furthermore, he has no prospect of having his inherent dignity respected in the cruel and arbitrary Klingon penal system (he might even be executed!).
I am not aware of any country with the rule-of-law whose courts would, in a legal process (I’m ignoring extrajudicial rendition in the War on Terror that, by definition, is done outside the courts) because extradite anyone to a country where they would not have what the court system in the given country considers a fair trial, or where they would face inhuman or cruel punishment. It is absurd that the Federation would extradite someone, let alone its own citizen, to face what is plainly not justice in any meaningful sense. Then again, the Federation-Klingon alliance always seemed to gloss over the astonishingly horrific record the Klingons have on human sentient rights; that is actually quite realistic, of course, given the many alliances between democracies and unsavoury regimes. However, even in 21st century Earth, such alliances surely would not extend to disregarding totally the fundamental rights of those in your jurisdiction!
I assume that the (admittedly, very very mild in the scheme of things) annoyance I feel on the rare occassions whenever Star Trek handwaves Federation law for the sake of an expedient plotline must be how those with science/engineering backgrounds feel in every episode
@43: Because the Prime Directive means never having to stand up for yourself, call out tyrants on their shit, or generally act like a decent human being. One also has to wonder how the Federation’s willingness to allow its own citizens to be so extradited affects morale in Starfleet. The notion that the organization to which you’ve sworn your life can throw you under the bus at the whims of diplomacy can’t be particularly inspiring, especially if it’s a warlike tyranny that is the unqualified aggressor in the crisis to begin with.
And the more I think about it, given what we know about Klingon culture, why would they have a problem with civilian deaths in the first place? Isn’t dying in battle what any true Klingon wants in the first place? More to the point, they certainly haven’t had issues deliberately targeting the civilians of other species, “Nor The Battle To The Strong” touches on that as I recall.
Lockdown rewatch. I think I liked this better than the main review but mainly for the technical aspects of the filming and the Morn gag raises a smile but yes the plotting is stupid and The resolution so far fetched as to be barely credible, also how on earth do they know Worf was going to fire at that specific moment so know to decloak the transport? It’s nonsense. And it always bugged me when Worf said “I should not have accepted the mission” sorry? Since when did following orders become optional in Starfleet? Can you imagine Picard saying to Riker “Number one take an away team down to the planet and investigate the disappearance of that colony” and Riker replying “I don’t think I will accept that mission Sir there was a couple of people in that colony who I had a argument with a few years ago so I will opt out of this one, can Data go instead?”
“Starfleet wasn’t a military organization, despite the fact that it has a hierarchy, a rigid rank structure, and polices its own via courts-martial, which is the textbook definition of a military organization.”
The courts martial I’ll grant you but the uniform, hierarchy and rigid rank are not. The Police (at least in the UK) were set up with a rank and hierarchy, the uniform chosen very deliberately not a military one (blue instead of red). Some forces may have evolved to a quazi military but that doesn’t mean that everyone with a rank and uniform are also soldiers (or marines, sailors, airmen etc).
I actually agree with Sisco shooting at unidentified targets is ropey practice and I doubt a fighter pilot would get away with blowing up a bus full of civilians in one of our recent Middle Eastern follies because it where it shouldn’t have been.
A Klingon lawyer seeing himself as a representative of warrior culture through his career is a lot more interesting than the idea, found in many other episodes, that Klingons somehow denigrate and mock every career that isn’t soldiering thanks to a one-note monoculture, yet maintain a technologically advanced interstellar empire, explained by (convenient coughing fit.) That absurdity normally wouldn’t be all that much of a problem for Star Trek’s type of sci-fi, which doesn’t necessarily need to answer exacting questions about technology or societies. But in the era of Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, plots were driven more by exploration of Klingon culture and society than by that of any other fictional counterpart, including the heroes’ own Federation.
“We’re all warriors, whether or not we’re warriors” works better for verisimilitude in more than one way, too. In the United States, birthplace of Star Trek, even people entirely responsible for cost centers, or working in thankless service jobs, are encouraged to view themselves as capitalist entrepreneurs building personal brands. And when they act and talk and see themselves that way, the culture doesn’t tell them otherwise; instead, the stability of the corresponding society depends on reinforcing the idea. If only entrepreneurs truly embody “the American spirit”, then patriotism necessitates that everyone can be an entrepreneur, and a successful one, even if their society doesn’t really afford them the same material rewards. If only warriors embody what it means to be a Klingon, then the Klingon Empire would have to let everyone else in a socially required role “be” a warrior, too, if only by humoring their self-image as one.
So, yes, this episode is far more hammy than realistic with its courtroom drama, and too hammy for its own good, probably. But the Klingon lawyer? That part’s surprisingly “real,” in the way “real” matters most for this sort of show.