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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 5 Episode 4

...Nor the Battle to the Strong

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8.1

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AIRED: 10/21/96

Stardate: Unknown Jake Sisko and Julian Bashir are caught in the middle of a battle between a Federation colony and a Klingon army.

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Fan Episode Reviews (2)

Coming of age for Jake.

8.0

By pharoahsdance, May 14, 2010

Unlike the other reviewer, I *do* like Jake but was not bowled over by this episode. As with "The Ship" a few episodes earlier, it's about the harsh realities of war and combat - realities that were frequently glossed over in earlier Star Trek episodes. Not only do people die - not always in glorious battle but also painfully and pointlessly in a ditch - but sometimes they live with the scars forever.

Cirroc Lofton and the writers do an excellent job portraying Jake in a very human, realistic way - like us, he's probably had a very naive view of war in the Star Trek world. But this episode does not have the compelling whatever-it-is that the best ST usually has. Worth watching but not a personal favorite of mine.moreless
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Riveting stuff.

9.6

By Hyweledig, Apr 29, 2010

When I heard the premise for this episode, I was worried. A Jake Sisko centric episode? Uh-oh. I'm not too fond of Jake. But I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. It was gritty and realistic - and that's what DS9 does best.

At first I thought that Jake's voiceover was a horribly cheesy moce - but without it, the viewer would have been lost, as so much of the episode's storyline focused around what was going on in his head.

All the one-off characters were well played - the two contrasting Starfleet officers (one who shot himself, one who died of wounds inflicted by Klingons) were instrumental in making Jake's development throughout the episode believeable. Bashir's joke while eating his food was totally understandable, as was Jake's reaction.

All in all, an exemplary episode, despite the fact that it focused on only two members of the regular cast.moreless
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Cast & Crew: STARS

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Armin Shimerman	Quark
Terry Farrell	Lt./Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax (Season 1-6)
Michael Dorn	Lt. Commander Worf (Season 4-7)
Rene Auberjonois	Constable Odo
Nana Visitor	Major/Colonel/Commander Kira Nerys
Avery Brooks	Commander/Captain Benjamin Sisko

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Cast & Crew: RECURRING AND GUESTS

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Andrew Kavovit	Kirby	Guest Star
Karen Austin	Dr. Kalandra	Guest Star
Mark Holton	Bolian	Guest Star

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Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions

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TRIVIA (0)
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QUOTES (7)
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- Dax (talking about the pregnancy): It's not up to you to tell Kira what to do.
  Worf: She is carrying his child. He should have some say.
  Quark: As the lessee he does have certain rights. Back home, pregnancy is considered a rental.
  Kira: Rental?
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- Jake (thinking): I keep turning it over in my head. The shell. Losing sight of Bashir. Running. And I keep trying to make sense of it all. To justify what I did. But when it comes down to it, there's only one explanation: I'm a coward. Part of me wishes Bashir had seen me run away and told everyone the truth. They deserve to know what I am. To know they can't count on me. That if the Klingons attack, I'll run and hide, just like I did before.
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- Jake (thinking): Surgery under fire! Now we're talking.
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- Sisko: (to Jake) It takes courage to look inside yourself, and even more courage to write it for others to see.
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- O'Brien: (giving Quark back his latest invention: decaffeinated raktajino) I'm not paying for this.
  Odo: So much for 'Quark-tajino'...
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- Jake: The battle of Ajilon Prime will probably be remembered as a pointless skirmish, but I'll always remember it as something more - a place I learned that the line between courage and cowardice is a lot thinner than most people believe...
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- Jake: Who cares about anomalies? People want stories about something they can relate to.
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NOTES (4)
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- Danny Goldring (Burke) also played the role of Legate Kell in the DS9 episode "Civil Defense". On Enterprise he played Nausicaan Captain on "Fortunate Son" and Alien Captain on "The Catwalk". On Voyager he played Alpha Hirogen in the episode "Killing Game (Part 1 and 2)".
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- Karen Austin (Dr. Kalandra) also played the role of Miral on the Voyager episode "Barge Of The Dead".
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- Jake's writes on a padd with the numbers "4747" in the corner. Writer Joe Menosky began including references to the number 47 in almost every episode of Star Trek since season four of The Next Generation. It is an in-joke, referring to The 47 Society at Pomona College in California, a college which Menosky attended.
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- The U.S.S. Farragut, last seen in Star Trek: Generations, was destroyed offscreen in this episode. It does return as an Excelsior class starship in the season seven episode "Chrysalis".
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ALLUSIONS (1)
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- Ecclesiastes
  
  The title of the episode is taken from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, in a section which is about making the best with what you have: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." (Eccl. 9:11)
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