SDS9 – S4E23: "To the Death" (Patreon)

This episode was recorded on September 12, 2024.

Sam and Scott recap "To the Death" and discuss how culture, drugs, and disassociation have been used as means of control.

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Transcript

[Note: Transcripts are autogenerated and may contain errors.]

We are back with Southpaw Deep Space Nine Season 4. If you don't know what SDS9 is, it's Southpaw's completionist DS9 watch-along show, where we watch every episode, recap it, and analyze it. We are your hosts, Scott and Sam. Today, we are discussing To The Death.

Scott, can you recap this episode? Yes.

Jadzia and Miles are aboard the USS Defiant in the mess hall. They're talking about Molly, who's been sleeping in the new bed, and perhaps her feeling away about the new child coming in. Bashir comes through, sits in Worf's favorite chair. Jadzia and Miles are like, you sure we want to do that?

You don't want Worf to get mad. But Bashir is defiant. Pun intended. Worf comes through, sips on his prune juice, and looks at the chair, looks at Bashir, looks at the chair, looks at Bashir. Bashir plays playful and gives Worf a seat. Ben calls the staff to the bridge.

Oh no, Deep Space Nine has been attacked and the pylon is wrecked. Upon Deep Space Nine, everyone is scared, panicked. Quark is doing the Quark thing. Ben arrives and wants to know what is going on. And Odo explains that Jem'Hadar beamed in from a civilian ship. put up a bomb, stole some things, left in the wormhole.

The attack left a bunch of people dead, a bunch of people missing, a bunch of people hurt. And the Jem'Hadar left not that long before Ben has arrived, so he decides to go on pursuit, and Bashir stays to help the hurt, and Odo joins the Defiant crew. So, the Jem'Hadar have been hiding their trail in magnetons, but

trying to find some stuff. The Defiant finds a Jem'Hadar ship that has been damaged, but Worf is like, the people that attacked came in civilian ships, so this isn't them. But Ben beams aboard, and a bunch of Jem'Hadar come on, plus our favorite Vorta leader, Weyoun, who asks to talk. And Weyoun reveals that

The civilian ship is some renegade Jambadar. Attack Deep Space Nine. They also attack them. They are rebels. They control a gateway from Vandross IV, not to be confused with Luther Vandross. The stolen weapons and equipment could repair their... Iconian gateway, which would allow them essentially to teleport and do whatever they want in the galaxy.

Weiyun is like, we don't want the rebellion to spread. This could cause the Dominion to collapse, and you don't want that because that would be worse. They'll come back and declare war on the Federation if you're not careful. The enemy is the enemy, whatever. Ben is skeptical.

And Ben is dubious as to why the Founders can't control the Rebels because he's under the idea that the Jamadar are these by a lot, you know, created in a laboratory that they can do whatever they want. And Weyoun admits that They have power, but their influence isn't total. And Ben understands the threat, reluctantly agrees,

and for some reason decides to help stopping the renegades. On the bridge, Ben tells the crew about what's going to go on. Worf has an experience with the Iconian Gateway, with the USS Enterprise, and he's like, this is bad. That's exactly what Worf said. He said, this is bad. Just kidding.

Jadzia and Miles are very hesitant to work with Weyoun and hesitant to work with the Jem'Hadar and worries that they might rebel if they learn about the Gateway's potential to free their race. And Ben insists that they won't talk about that. Ben then meets Ometiclon, who is the commander of the Jem'Hadar, and he hates the Federation.

But Ometiclon is going to do what he needs to do. He will follow Ben's orders. But he hints that afterwards, there could be trouble. So as they brief, they learn of the Renegade's base that can't be destroyed from orbit, so that means for plot points, they're going to have to go on the ground.

So when Metaclon reports a bunch of people, like 150 enemies, Worf talks about the issue of getting all the guards without making the alarms go off, and Tamantorax taunts him, who's the second-in-command, and makes fun of the Klingons and mocks Klingon culture. Worf and Tamantorax start fighting, but Ben and Metaclon stop them. And we then see Jadzia,

Miles, Odo, Worf, Storm Engineering neutralizing some Jem'Hatar, but are waiting to find more people, and then You realize it's a simulation. The lights ought to blink. They would have died. Ometiclon reveals that there was no extra plan because quick decisions need to happen. And in battle, you just got to do what you got to do.

And he chides Ben for Federation values, that to choose life over success is futile. Well, the Borg says that. And that because they value their lives over the end result, the mission will end. But Ben argues that to fear death keeps people sharp, keeps people smart, keeps people in the game. And Emetoklon...

insists that his Gemini already know about the gateway, but Ben agrees to do mixed teams, but insists that this won't be a mission that ends in everybody dying. Later, Jadzia is chilling out and notices that this Jem'Hadar dude is kind of just like watching her. And he's like, I'm studying.

And she learns a whole lot about the Jem'Hadar. So they're bread and chambers. They're all dudes. They don't sleep. They don't eat. They have short lifespans. And again, as you remember from previous episodes, our Addicted to a drug that will kill them if they don't have it.

So they're also given drugs and promised drugs and kept on drugs to be loyal to the Dominion. And when Jadzia shares this information with Worf and Miles, they are distraught. And then they see Weyoun distributing the white to the Jem'Hadar. And the way that he gives them the drugs is a very strange, disturbing, loyalty-fealty ceremony.

Then later, Temontorax provokes Miles. They start a fight. Worf gets in. It turns into a brawl. And when Ben and Metaclon intervene for punishment, Metaclon kills Temontorax, breaks his neck, is very upsetting, and is like, Ben, it's your turn now. And Ben just sends Worf to his quarters. They are not the same.

And then Metaclon is like, I'm going to kill you. You coward. I killed my guy. You didn't kill your guy. Weiyun meets with Odo and tells him how much the founders and the other changelings miss him and want him to come back.

And Odo strongly tells him that he has no intention of coming back and he doesn't miss them and all that. But it's intimated and felt that this may not be true. Odo's a lonely cop. What can we say? As the Defiant approaches Luther Vandross IV, just kidding, Vandross IV,

Miles records a farewell message to his family and talks about how he's had to do this a number of times, 11 times. And it's just really intense. And every time he fears this is the one that they're going to hear. And Jazia is like, you're going to be okay. You're going to die surrounded by your loved ones.

And But I will keep a copy of your message just in case. Before heading to Ben's quarters, Worf advises that he should stay on the ship, that a Metaclon is going to kill him, that he could just accidentally get him. And Ben's like, thanks, no thanks.

And Worf's like, look, if a Metaclon kills you, I'm going to kill him. I got your back. Ben's like, thanks, buddy. As the Defiant News Planet, Miles gives everybody phasers. The Jem'Hadar insist on ramping their phasers to kill, where the Defiant Crew stun, when the, you know, Ometiclon then does a battle chant, like a haka,

about basically that to win is to live. And on the planet, Everyone realizes their weapons have been sabotaged. The phasers are inoperative, so they have to fight classic style with weapons that don't blast. And Jadzia posits that it's a dampening field. So then the renegade Jem'Hadars attack, and they fight.

The team defeats the Rebels, losing a couple red shirts. Ometta Klon's thinking that Ben's going to abort the mission because they don't have energy weapons, but Ben grabs a Jamadar weapon. It's clobbering time, and the Jamadar are impressed. They fight their way to the gateway where Miles sets explosives that They expose the chemical detonator.

Ben saves Emeticlon from a decloaked Jem'Hadar. Emeticlon is surprised by Ben and his bravery, and they get to safety. The phasers work again. Weyoun beams down to congratulate them all, but Emeticlon kills Weyoun. How many Weyouns are there? Well, there's one less for even questioning the Jem'Hadar's loyalty,

and the Defiant crew and the Jem'Hadar are about to go on, but a Metaclon tells everybody to stand down, said there's been enough killing for today, and he's going to go on a tour of hunting down Jem'Hadar renegades, but it's like, The next time we meet, we might be enemies.

This episode was also heavy. It really drove home how the Jem'Hadar are chow soldiers and how opiates are used to control them. And you also learn how they have a very short life expectancy because they are considered expendable fodder. Their whole culture is based on being expendable fodder. The culture itself is used as a form of control.

This goes back to conversations about cultural hegemony and white supremacy as a form of cultural hegemony. It's not just dudes in white pointy hats.

No.

It's the cultural push to always serve, obey, and be in the good graces of white society. Going back to drugs, the U.S. regularly uses drugs and disassociation tactics to control its soldiers. The U.S. also has a history of introducing drugs to control resistance. You had a whole project called MKUltra designed to figure out ways to use chemicals,

drugs, and other tactics to harm and control, which we'll discuss more in the next episode.

I was about to talk about MKUltra. We have good brains. But yes, the manipulation of people using substances is a tale as old as time. It's a large impetus of the child soldiers that we read about. I mean, truth be told, there are children in war as long as war is time,

but a lot of them were given amphetamines and given stuff. Well, they're... I was reading somewhere that amphetamines loosen morals. That's one of the reasons why amphetamines were very popular amongst Hitler and the Nazis. I guess I could have given a content warning that we're going there, but that's true, that they were given amphetamines.

And one of the reasons believed is that it... how ketamine opens up your ability to forgive yourself. Amphetamines open up your ability to not feel bad about doing bad things. Then MKUltra is... I read a book a couple years ago about the Manson murders. Obviously, it can't be proven, but there's a lot of

reasons to believe that Charles Manson was an op and learned his ways of manipulating people through being part of the MKUltra program. It's very possible. A lot of puzzle pieces connect in a way where you're like, huh, that makes sense. And yeah, just like if you believe that the CIA invented crack, then you understand that

substances have been used to control people. It's something to do.

On top of MKUltra, if you are curious that you could look up is the Iran-Contra affair and scandal. And this is what some of the things that we're alluding to here. Now, going back to U.S. military disassociation research, this also goes back to drugs as a way to disassociate that you were talking about. Coincidentally,

this same research is often used by the fitness industry to disassociate consumers from themselves and their body and to promote loyalty or as they call it, customer retention. The fitness industry is sick. Its origins actually go back to eugenics. And it's sick because it wants people to think of themselves as soldiers willing to

kill themselves for the ideal body. The soldier mentality is prevalent in our US culture. And I'll actually talk about that more in our next episode. Sometimes though, when you hear me talk about how the US makes everything football, I refer to that a lot in the liberation martial arts curriculum.

What I really mean by that is the soldier mentality. The US turns everything into a soldier mentality that you just have to suck it up and just... destroy yourself for some kind of goal or cause and all in the name of loyalty.

And so for you to get that objective done, you have to be willing to disassociate yourself. Now, back to Weiyun. Weyoun is a Vorta, another engineered species who are controlled by the changelings, and they serve as the taskmasters for the Jem'Hadar. So it's an elevated enslave as enslaver of the Jem'Hadar, a very colonial tactic.

Colonizers don't always have to be settlers or even present. They can have their proxies do their bidding. Sometimes the proxy is a colonized subject. The U.S. always elevates the voices of its proxies to talk about how great the U.S. is and how awful it would be if the U.S. wasn't the global hegemon.

So when you talk about how great the U.S. is, they use their proxies to talk about, oh, when I moved to the U.S., blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or they use their proxies in other countries to be like, oh, the U.S. was so great, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Or you use certain minorities to be like, oh, the U.S. really empowered us, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so in this episode, I'm not thinking so much about the usual Federation, Starfleet as allegory for the US. I was really thinking about the changelings as allegories for the US and the West.

Now, colonialism and capitalism structurally also work the same. So you can also read this episode as exploited workers, which they are.

Absolutely.

And there's also a history of enslaved children as workers. Look at current Africa and Apple, but also various Western mining companies in Africa. Going back to culture, there is this culture of people as exploited workers who still defend and honor their capitalist overlords. People don't naturally become this way. There's nothing natural about it.

They're indoctrinated since they are born. They are born as child workers. We're indoctrinated to be workers. And I see this process now as I send my kid to school, to kindergarten. And then in this episode, you have this alliance to maintain the world order. Not all capitalists like each other. Same with colonizers. Same with reactionaries.

Same with liberals. But they'll work together. And this working together is imperialism. For instance, Israel as a colonizing force is hard to reckon with, but that's a much easier task than when it's supported by the West. So that alliance turns colonialism into imperialism. It makes colonialism more powerful because instead of one hand,

you got other powerful hands and alliance maintaining a chokehold on a region. And then the comparison between the two leadership styles and the two military forces in this episode. With today's eyes, it reminded me of the presidential debate, Harris versus Trump, and whose style will make a more lethal, and I'm using Harris's words here, quote unquote,

lethal imperialist force. Slay. From a story perspective, there's lots to like. You had character growth, even from the guest star. And the episode started out tense and ended tense. The whole episode, the whole thing was tense. And the long-term storytelling keeps escalating. So Scott, tell me more about what you thought of this episode.

So this episode is not very, but important to mythology. I would say that episodes that further the Dominion storyline are going to be important to the story. I think seeing the antagonistic relationship between the Jem'Hadar and Weyoun is important. I think seeing how disgusting and sadistic the use of drugs to the Jamadar existence is important.

I give it a four stars. Four stars because it... I give it 3.5. 3.5 stars. It's good. It's good, but not great. And we're starting to gear up

After seasons one through three, it's hard not to give a lot of these episodes like four and 4.5 because of the context of where we came from. But you're preparing us for the episodes that are still to come. Exactly. Can you tell us about the next episode?

Bashir.

Until then...