I just finished watching DS9 Season 5 Episode 5 ‘The Assignment’ and as much as I loved it, I couldn’t believe the treatment they gave Keiko. It was a tense episode and I enjoyed seeing O’Brien getting psychologically tortured and I laughed at first at the treatment of Keiko but by the end of the episode I felt really bad about how she was portrayed.
The whole dragon lady dynamic is fun for a while but it gets old fast and you start feeling bad for the character.
I also loved the part in the episode where it’s O’Brien’s birthday and everyone instead sings ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow’ … it’s a whole musical rights issue where someone has to be paid for the performance of the song ‘Happy Birthday’ which is why they didn’t use it … yet another torturous addition to the life of O’Brien.
The cold shouldered wife bit had already started in TNG, but got dragged out rather painfully into DS9. By season 5, her role was reduced and she sorta fades into the background. A shame, as she’s a solid actor.
The music issue has since been dropped, but only more recently.
I am too lazy to look it up a the moment, but I know I have seen a video where someone breaks down their relationship and proves that Keiko makes more positive/affirming statements to O’Brien than negative ones over the course of TNG and DS9.
I’m not sure how meme-before-meme-was-a-word started exactly… maybe because the actor was really good at it when it came to being more negative? I’m not sure.
Certainly, the two never seemed to have much on screen chemistry despite both being great actors in their own right.
Their relationship dynamic doesn’t get enough credit. The married couple that isn’t Brady Bunch perfect, shown warts and all. Just too bad they weren’t very believable together.
I disagree, I found their relationship to be very realistic in the sense that they seemed like they were staying together just because they were always together.
Not every hero character gets the happy ending, sometimes there’s just a mildly unpleasant home life and a person who just lives for work.
I’m saying it was a good portrayal, but the actors didn’t mesh.
Maybe, but I feel like that actually made it work better. Like, in the obrien-must-suffer-metaverse, even the actors chemistry didn’t gel, let alone the characters.
Certainly, the two never seemed to have much on screen chemistry despite both being great actors in their own right.
It seems like Star Trek of the era had a real blind spot for directing actors. If you weren’t an extremely self-assured performer coming in, you would have to be a regular to cobble together enough takes and screen time to develop (or maybe just get the audience to accept your quirks/limits), especially with a setting that requires a little imagination to inhabit. Even then sometimes people never did quite sell their roles, and much like the Star Wars prequels, I think the direction had a lot to do with it. I think some actors just need a type of direction that was not forthcoming at the time, though I put it on the entire braintrust and the expectations of the era, rather than individual directors.
Rosalind Chao never made me believe she was doing anything other than reading lines, and it made it that much easier to dismiss the relationship or focus on the shriller scripts.
They are extremely supportive of each other. I think the memes and the overall feeling comes only from the lack of chemistry.
Now compare this episode to the one in TNG where the roles are flipped and O’Brien is the one possessed by an alien. How does Keiko react? Does she show concern and try to figure out how to save her husband? No, all she does is scream at him to get away from her. Even when a bit of Miles manages to break through when he paused and looks at her going “Wait… I know her…” she doesn’t tell him to fight it, she just continues to scream in terror.
They really went out of their way to make Keiko as unlikeable as possible.
Time’s Orphan will be another episode where the O’Briens get a nice dose of traumatizing and life changing ordeal handed to them.
You are watching for the first time, right?
Godspeed!
Yes I am. It’s a series I always wanted to see but I just never had the time, the money or the luxury to see it. I’ve been watching it on and off over the past year and I’m taking my time with it. But since it’s winter now and I’m spending more time indoors I’ll be binge watching a whole lot more.
Thoroughly loving every minute of it. The first couple of seasons made me question whether or not I really wanted to watch it all but after season two I don’t want it to stop. Really enjoying how every character is just building an entire community I’m getting to know and love.
Oh wow! You are in for some real treats! The next episode especially!
I’ve been busy with work all day … now you got me all excited to watch the next episode.
You honestly should be. You’ll see.
I didn’t realize it was this episode … I had always wondered which episode it was that had the crew of DS9 end up in the same timeline as the original enterprise with Kirk and his crew … and I had always wanted to see this episode because of it.
Definitely a lot of fun and a great episode. I was also amazed at the quality of the production to be able to reproduce the scenes with the old footage and inserting the new characters in there. We take for granted the modern CGI today but this was done back in 1996, when CGI and special effects were becoming easier but not routine. They did an amazing job.
Man that was a great watch!
Now you see why this season holds such a special place for me. The writing and characterization nods to TOS are very on point.
The team essentially used the same tech from Forrest Gump to insert the crew into the old footage. It could probably be cleaned up a bit now, but overall, holds up quite well.
Thoroughly loving every minute of it. The first couple of seasons made me question whether or not I really wanted to watch it all but after season two I don’t want it to stop. Really enjoying how every character is just building an entire community I’m getting to know and love.
Some of that- particularly the first season- was probably from the fact that Paramount stole the idea from JMS’s show bible for Babylon 5. JMS had pitched bab5 to Paramount as one of the first groups to go with and they more or less kept his early-edition show bible.
not saying DS9 is a bad show or ragging on it, but the idea for running a show on the station and being… politically “intriguing”, as well as a fair amount of the darker themes came from that bible. Bab 5 later got reworked into a slightly different direction. but that’s why the first seasons of the two shows were so similar.
fortunately, JMS kept it isolated to speculation rather than legal action and we got two great shows. (he didn’t blame the writers for DS9, but rather Paramount.)
that said… if you haven’t watched babylon 5… you should probably check that out at some point.
The more I watch, the more I learn and the more I’ll probably watch Babylon 5 … thanks!
I love the cliff notes of B5, but, good gods, the acting and writing was horrific.
Cut to: O’Brien and Bashir singing jolly WWII songs in pilot uniforms on the way to the Holosuite.
Cut to: Keiko dead on the floor.
