SDS9 – S3E20: Improbable Cause (Audio + Transcript) (Patreon)

Southpaw: Deep Space Nine is back from hiatus! This episode was recorded on January 21, 2024.

On this episode, Sam and Scott delve into "Improbable Cause," where Odo investigates a bombing at the clothing shop of Cardassian spy-turned-tailor Elim Garak, leading him to discover secret Cardassian maneuvering against the Dominion.

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Transcript

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

SAM

This episode was recorded January 21st, 2024.

We are back with Southpaw Deep Space Nine Season 3.

If you don't know what SDS9 is, it's Southpaws's completest DS9 watch-along show where we watch every episode, recap it, and analyze it.

We are your hosts, Scott and Sam.

Scott is someone who's watched DS9 more than once, whereas I'm someone who's casually watched some episodes when it first aired.

But this is my first time watching each episode in earnest.

I've casually watched a lot of Star Trek, some of the movies.

I've probably watched all of The Next Generation.

I just don't remember all of the episodes because I didn't watch it multiple times and I watched it when it first aired.

Now, with this show, after we watch each episode, we come together and talk about it with today's eyes, but also with a historical and political lens, but also with our own tastes as people who consume and enjoy and have thoughts about entertainment and fiction and writing.

And sometimes it can be difficult and painful.

Especially with the middle episodes, even if they're not even at the middle, sometimes they're towards the end.

But we are discussing this episode, episode 20, Improbable Cause.

Scott, can you tell us about this episode?

SCOTT

Yes, I would love to.

Bashir and Garrick are having a chat about William Shakespeare, or as I like to call him, Billy Shakes.

They're talking about Julius Caesar while having lunch at Quark's.

Garak finds it odd that Caesar, being a leader, didn't see his murder coming, and sees it more as a farce, that he should have seen the duplicity coming.

Garak thinks humans eat too fast, suspecting a mysterious reason behind it.

He says that Bashir never savors food, that humans don't savor food, that he'll see other cultures having lunch and they'll be halfway through their meal, and humans will just be

And that even though they have more than enough food, they're still acting like they will starve.

That there's, like, you know, not enough.

Garrick has a lot of time on his hands because the tailoring business has not been going so great.

But also when Garrick's like, hey, I need some pants, he's like, I'll get to it.

Kira informs Bashir that there are some issues preparing quarters for some Yelassi and Ambassador.

Bashir made a chemical mix for their breathing, but it ruined the carpet.

And then there's an explosion on the promenade.

It is Garak's shop.

It has been attacked.

And Garak laments the trousers may not be ready in time.

LOL.

Odo and Miles are doing a report.

The explosion was due to a power conduit overload juncture rupture blah blah blah sciencing.

Science stuff happened.

Odo finds it odd that a rupture would happen just behind Garrick's shop because everyone suspects that Garrick has a shadow past.

O'Brien finds nitralin which is likely a possible micro-explosive device.

Odo thinks it was intentional to make the explosion seem like a whoopsie.

Cisco temporarily delays all ship departures.

At the sickbay, Odo asks Garak some questions.

Garak, though, says, he's just a tailor, though it's been suggested that he was a high-ranking member of the Obsidian Order.

The Obsidian Order are like the Cardassian secret police, but they're largely getting more and more power in Cardassia and becoming more like the regular law.

Garrick says that he was exiled from Cardassia for tax fraud.

No one believes it.

As it is Garrick, he is not really being helpful.

Garrick is assigned a security detail.

Bashir points out that

You know, Garrick is just, he lies so much, and he tells a story about the boy who cried wolf.

And Garrick, he says that Garrick is the boy.

And Garrick finds the story interesting and believes that the actual moral and point of the boy who cried wolf is that you should never get caught making the same lie twice.

It's delicious.

It's great.

It's fun writing.

Garrick is just, what a character.

Garrick sees Odo.

They look over the visitor logs to see if there is anyone dubious.

Odo is reticent to have Garak look through his security files.

No dice.

Garak even suggests to cure a possible culprit, but she has an airtight alibi.

Miles does find some strange residue.

An agent that would cause explosion when a certain species was near it.

A pheromone device.

Ethnicity weapons.

Weapons that could sense someone's ethnicity.

The Flaxian assassins used this pheromone device to do a little hate crime based murder for hire.

And a Flaxian was on board earlier in the day.

Odo interrogates the flaxseed named Rattaya, pretending that he wants to buy some perfumes and cologne.

Rattaya has an alibi.

He says he has several colognes.

But Odo realizes that when all three of one of these fragrances are combined, they produce a poison.

Of course, Rattaya feigns ignorance.

He's free.

For now.

Miles puts a tracker on Rattaya's ship, and Odo goes to follow him and then finds Garak is on his ship.

They argue, but ultimately Odo allows Garak to stay on the mission.

And as the Flaxian ship goes into warp, it explodes.

Womp.

The team posits that the warp device combustion would likely be Romulan technology.

And what did Garak do to get in trouble with the Romulans?

When they speak to the Romulans, they admit that they did attack Rattaya, and so they talk to the Tal Shiar, which is like the Romulan intelligence community, and they explain that they had a legit hit out for him for crimes against Romulanity.

Yeah, that's a pun I just came up with.

For crimes against Romulans.

And they don't express any issue with Garak, although Odo finds it very curious, and Ben is getting frustrated.

So the investigation is pretty much at a standstill.

Ben and Odo try to hypothesize.

They talk Garak's mysterious past and agree that Odo will visit Cardassia or visit with someone from Cardassia to gather information from his contacts.

He still has connections as he is, let's never forget that he is a space cop and was a space cop during the occupation.

Remember the thin goo line.

Odo is a cop.

On a barren moon, Odo meets his informant, a cloaked Cardassian.

They both agree that the Romulans probably did try to kill Garak, but they believe it to be a small piece of a larger issue.

Five other Obsidian Order ops were unalive the day before.

Three by natural causes.

Two by accidents.

Coincidence?

There are murky indications that it was by Romulans.

Odo's contact indicates that this info was in exchange for a debt and is encouraged to show the names of the unalived Cardassians to Garak and that if Odo has more information to share, they could continue to have a relationship where they share information.

It can be noted that this contact does insist that Garak was in the Obsidian Order, again, which is something that Garak will continue to say is not true.

When shown the list, Garrick knows all the operatives.

He even suggests that he would celebrate.

Odo then deduces that Garrick blew up his own shop.

Garrick sensed that Rattaya was there to poison him and preemptively attacked, and that there was joy in Garrick seeing his business burn, because he doesn't want to be a tailor.

He is a Cardassian in exile who seemingly loves everything about Cardassia.

They're complex characters.

Garrick tells Odo that he and the other five Cardassians who are unalive were tight with Enebren Tain, the retired boss of the Obsidian Order, a rarity because most Obsidian bosses do not retire.

Garrick attempts to hit up Tain and gets Micah, Tain's housekeeper and confidant who's on the line, and is emotional to see Garrick and talk with them.

Tain is gone, split the day before.

Myla asks Garak to help Tain, and he's okay with it.

They acknowledge that there is a relationship and an ending of a relationship.

And if you see Season 2, Episode 22, The Wire, you can hear a little bit more about this dyad.

And we obviously covered it on the show together.

Before getting on the runabout, Garak asks Bashir to find secrets in his lair, but it seems to be a joke.

Bashir gives Garak some Delavian chocolate, a treat they talked about earlier.

Their relationship should have gone deeper.

On the runabout, Odo and Garak discuss matters, and how both of them

Use duplicity and lies and control.

Garrick does admit that Tain means something to him and that he believes that he owes him something.

They verbally spar.

It is delicious.

Garrick is in exile, so to go to Gartassian space to find Tain suggests a deeper connection.

Odo posits Tain was training Garrick to be his successor.

And Garrick also says that Odo is unfeeling, that he follows the law but doesn't have strong emotions or reasons, that he is a cop for a code but lacks love in his life.

Garrick finds it curious that Odo projects emotions on him that Odo does not show.

Garrick accuses Odo of treating people like puzzles, like things.

And Garrick asks Odo if he cares about anyone.

We know that he has at least one unrequited love, and that is for Kira.

But he says, I'm not telling you.

And Garrick says, that's for best.

In Cardassian space, a Romulan firebird shows up and tries to capture Odo and Garak.

They are taken to a Romulan ship.

We see Tain.

He makes jokes about killing him and throws shade at Garak's tailoring skills.

Garak fatchames Tain.

They just throw a bunch of hate at each other.

Garak makes an ethnic slur about the Romulans as a test to see what is going on between Tain and the Romulans because there's so much trickery in the Cardassian politic.

It's like, I'm seeing how you'll respond to this to show me what the relationship is with these people and what's going on there.

Because if you don't do this, it means this.

And if you do do this, it means this.

And one plus one equals three.

You know what I'm saying?

No one knows anything.

The Romulans and the Cardassians, or at least the Obsidian Order and the Tal Shiar, have agreed to form a fleet to attack the Dominion, the Dominion being the force on the other side of the wormhole.

But again, this is a clandestine act, and as we talked about earlier, the Obsidian Order is gaining more and more power in the Cardassian world.

Their goal is they know where the Founders are, which we recently met at the beginning of this season.

They're going to wipe out the Founders and end the war by destroying the Founder planet and the Great Link.

And they're saying this all to Odo, who is technically a Founder, a Changeling, part of all of this.

And Garak asks why Tain tried to kill him.

Tain admits that

After all of this, Tain plans to leave retirement, and he is just cleaning up all loose ends.

Garak reveals that he came to save Tain.

Garak is dismissed, but also given the offer to end his exile and help Tain.

Garak will help Tain.

Odo is caught in the ship.

To be continued.

SAM

So let's start with the fast eating observation of humans and the want to hoard and feel like you never have enough.

And it feels like a criticism of capitalism.

And I don't know what the writers were actually thinking, but let's just say that's what it was and let's just go with that.

This episode had a lot of great foreshadowing.

There was the scene where Dr. Bashir brought up the boy who cried wolf and Garrick said, maybe the point isn't about not lying or no one will believe you, but that it's about not telling the same lie twice.

If you see Garrick as a former CIA agent, or maybe he still is an agent,

That's completely in line with what a CIA agent and what the CIA would say because the CIA and the US itself has proven over and over that you can keep lying and people will keep believing it.

You can even keep telling the same lies over and over and many people will still believe you.

People will believe lies if it confirms their bias.

I like this scene because Garrick douses cold water on that whole story where we assume a lie told over and over again doesn't work.

The US constantly cries wolf about a metaphorical wolf and people keep believing it because it confirms their bias about a metaphorical wolf, the dangerous other.

Where the boy fucked up is he didn't spend time sowing fear in the people about the outsiders, about the dangerous other.

SCOTT

And creating lies, yeah.

SAM

But that's what the CIA or the Obsidian Order is good at.

The boy who cried wolf is just a failed propaganda program.

And to the CIA or State Department or the Obsidian Order, instead of the lesson being, see, so don't try it, their takeaway is, well, what can we learn from this so we can do better next time?

Power politics doesn't stop after one hurdle.

They'll keep going until they get what they want.

There was also the foreshadowing of Caesar.

Again, to a former CIA agent, it's more about how Caesar failed to gather enough intel about the assassination attempt.

The CIA is all about gathering information while spreading disinformation.

Derek said, how can the head of the state

Not know there is an assassination attempt on him.

But then again, what if it's the very people whose job is to gather intel that tries to kill you?

This can be foreshadowing of things we'll find out about DS9.

I don't know.

But it could also be a play.

It made me think about JFK because he had his own feud with the CIA, which was now starting to get its legs and gaining more and more power.

And we saw how that went.

But Scott, what did you think about the use of metaphors here and kind of flipping the script on all stories from the perspective of Garrett?

SCOTT

It was excellent.

I think early Deep Space Nine is at its best when we get to learn about our characters.

And even when you realize that like, hey,

I don't think I like Eric very much right now.

It's impossible to understand where his alliances lead.

It makes for a good story and it makes for great political writing because again, the convention of lies and double talk and code is so part of the intelligence playbook and in how

I don't want to go too deep into JFK, but he didn't die of natural causes.

Conspiracy theories because I think there's enough stories where you're like, wait, there's no conspiracy.

Governments and similarly like bodies have done some wild things and it's not even a secret.

It's just like, what did he really do to tick off his own country where he may have been... It's just complicated.

I don't know exactly what happened and I'm not trying to go too deep into it.

Nor do I want to get flagged for talking about JFK, but I'm just saying that the Obsidian Order would definitely get a guy like JFK out of here.

That's all I'm saying, and I don't think that's a totally wild thing to say.

The book Chaos came out a couple of years ago and tries to look at the Manson murders and not that it was a psy-op, but that maybe Manson was trained how to do that sort of stuff from intelligence agencies, that he was an op.

I just always find it interesting what you can do and what you can do with the truth.

In the previous episode, we were talking about

I mean, if you want to talk about

SAM

Obsidian Order and going back to even Manson, right?

We do know for sure he was in the MKUltra program.

Exactly.

They were experimenting on him.

And so there's such a direct parallel to the Obsidian Order double talk because the US did such a good job even to this day of talking about other governments and communism just brainwashing people all the time.

If anybody from the U.S.

leaks stuff about the anti-communist atrocities, genocides the U.S.

were doing, the U.S.

simply just said, oh, that person was being brainwashed by the communists.

They did a whole McCarthyism red scare within the U.S.

with the loyalty oath and everything because those lies, that disinformation about brainwashing programs was so strong.

People really believed they were just these

Sleeper agents were completely brainwashed where they're completely like pro-American until you say a trigger word and all of a sudden like something happens right people still to this day believe this stuff yet the double talk the city in order lies to hide the truth and lies on top of lies is that no country and no government spent more money on brainwashing and mind control and spent more time on this than the US

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It's wild how they did it, then they convinced everybody here that it was everybody else doing it.

And nobody even had the resources to do what the US did.

And on top of that, if you think about the ability to control

No country has the network to control public opinion and news, information media like the U.S.

as well.

Again, this is so much like Obsidian Order.

I'm pretty sure the writers didn't think about that.

But in that type of Garrick-esque kind of annoying, like, what's the real truth?

What are you saying?

Why do you keep deflecting to all this other stuff?

That has been the U.S., and that has been how, like Garrick's example of the boy who cried wolf, they keep lying and lying, but maybe the boy wasn't that good, but you could actually keep telling a lie and get people to believe it.

SCOTT

Exactly.

Now, this is a four-star episode.

This is four out of five.

It's veering on a 4.5.

It's just that the show hasn't even gotten great yet.

I love it, but it isn't what I love about it yet.

Right now, if we're just a little Scott, I'm 13, 14 years old, I'm like, this show's cool.

But if I missed it, I wouldn't run home to watch every single episode.

SAM

You weren't the diehard yet?

SCOTT

No.

The only thing I would run home for was The Simpsons or In Living Color because I did not want to be at school not knowing about it.

SAM

I really enjoyed the scenes with Odo and Garrick.

They're the same but different.

It also shows how not all enforcement agents act the same, and how different departments can act differently, all for the same interests.

People only recognize a cop when they act like Odo, but not when they act like Garrick or even like Sisko.

Undercover cops act different from the sheriff.

Administrative cops act differently from the sheriff also, but it's all the same.

It's all rules-based order enforcement, which is what Garrick likes about both Odo and Cisco.

He even says Odo would have been a great fit for the Obsidian Order.

Scott, what did you think about the contrast in different enforcers of the rules-based order, Odo and Garrick?

SCOTT

I think it's just like very interesting seeing two sides of the same coin.

Except Odo has this almost fetishistic need to be part of the truth and the righteous, and we don't know what is pulling Derek.

But yeah, Odo would have been great in the Obsidian Order because the Odo that we know now just is a law fetishist.

SAM

You know, what's interesting is his principles, his personality is unchanging, but he is a changeling.

So he has the physical ability to change and be whatever lie you want it to be, be whoever you want it to be, right?

Which is such a powerful tool for an organization like the Obsidian Order.

They would love to have an agent like that, right?

So it's also a contrast, if you think about it, where he's the changeling.

So he is the physical embodiment of lies.

Yet, he often just chooses to be the same form and his personality is rock hard.

Garrick, his form is always going to be the same, but everything that comes out of his mouth is the change.

It's always changing, right?

That contrast that I don't even know if the writers were thinking about that contrast, but also in designing Odo as a character.

We never talked about that.

The fact that he physically is a changeling whereas his personality is unchanging.

He's like a rock, right?

And I think that also makes that character so interesting and also makes Derek's contrast with them so interesting because they're the same.

They're a changeling but also stone-like but in inverse relationship with each other.

SCOTT

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's like a CIA agent and an FBI agent.

SAM

Derek is the changeling, right?

In that he's changed into or pretending to be a tailor.

So, he too is a changeling.

He just uses words rather than his body.

SCOTT

Yeah, he is a shapeshifter.

And one thing that I want to talk about, I don't know if you were going to bring it up, but basically something that frustrates the producers of

Deep Space Nine and you know Andrew Robinson who played Garak is not having Garak and Bashir have a physical affection you know in retrospect you could definitely queer code these characters at least a lot of writers have and see that there's definitely an attraction and you know

Sorry, Andrew Robinson even played the character like he was trying to have relations with Bashir.

But they weren't going to do that 30 years ago.

Jesus, Deep Space Nine had its 30-year anniversary recently.

So they weren't going to do that then.

And I wish they were less afraid to make that so subtextual.

But if you want to have fun during the pandemic,

There's a Zoom teleplay called Little Achievements where Alexander Sadiq and Andrew Robinson play if Bashir and Garrick were in a relationship.

And it's awesome.

SAM

Now, going back to Garrick and Odo, why do you think people have the most animus for the street cop when they're lowest on the power hierarchy and people have a hard time seeing those higher on that power scale as cops or top cops?

SCOTT

I can't answer that question right now.

I think about cops and copaganda and shows about cops and if I'm allowed to enjoy them all the time.

I don't know, man.

SAM

I think there is something to something you said, right?

Where we know more about where Odo stands

And with Garrick, we don't know where he's coming from, right?

When we were talking about different enforcement agents.

And I think it's the fact that we do know where Odo stands, what he's about.

He's just so much simpler.

It's easier for us to have animus towards him.

Whereas anybody above him, they're more mysterious.

We don't know what they want, right?

If it's the person at the street level, it's like, obviously it's some kind of power dynamic or racism, right?

It's very black and white.

As it goes up, it feels more complicated, right?

Because you're like, well, they can't be just motivated by that because they're not directly getting to enjoy that, right?

They don't get their hands dirty, so it's not like they get direct enjoyment from that.

So what's motivating these people?

What's driving these people, right?

And so I think that part of the answer is that the street-level person, the otos, are simpler, right?

In the hierarchy, somebody like

Derek would be much higher on the power scale, would be much more powerful, would be Odo's boss.

And the higher they go, the more indirect, the more non-directly they are affecting people.

They're not at that street level.

They're not the ones directly putting their hands on people.

And so they become, I think, for people harder to imagine, like imagine what they're about.

They're not dealing with them.

They don't ever deal with them, right?

So it's more they exist as an idea.

Whereas cops, almost everybody's had interaction with cops.

People above those cops, you don't have interactions with them.

So it almost allows them to get off the hook because we only know them through stories or in the news or just as a title from deduction.

We know they exist.

We've never talked to them.

We never had run-ins with them, but we know they're there, right?

And I think that level of abstraction makes them seem, I guess, less bad.

Or maybe if we really intellectualize it, we do know they're worse.

But when we just go by gut feeling, that's not what our gut says.

Because gut feeling is purely about what's directly engaging with you, what you're directly interacting with.

And I think that's one of the takeaways I've been constantly trying to like

It's also the difference between praxis and behavior.

That's sometimes what I find different from

SCOTT

Like people who call themselves conservatives or Republicans is that they just are feeling nothing else.

No truth, no reaction, no praxis.

It's just gut reaction and bad intuition played into by a malevolent media machine.

It's much harder to...

I almost want to get ChatGPT to rewrite Das Capital in Vibe language.

SAM

Summarize it for me.

SCOTT

Yeah, because that book is the truth, but it is dense, man.

It is hard to read.

SAM

I think all of us who are on the socialist spectrum, who are liberatory, when we're dealing with people in real life, it's always a challenge when we're trying to talk to them about

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Because you can't stay killed unless you're ready to accuse the murderer.

And the West doesn't ever want to accuse itself or accuse agents of the rules-based order.

Stand alone, this episode, the way it's written is strong, but just because how we can now map on so many discussion topics onto this episode also makes it so strong.

Like the theme of the rules-based order and different enforcers of that and how

If you're ever talking about things the rules-based order did, you can't ever accuse them.

You can't even acknowledge them.

That's why you got to say, died, not killed.

SCOTT

Right.

I mean, if you, sorry, if you look at people trying to, in the moment of what's going on in Gaza and other parts of the world where there is oppression, the way that the news changes the language based on the people killed, murdered, died,

You're seeing it happen in real time that certain populations are afforded kindness and generosity and description that other populations are not.

It's why language is so powerful.

That's how Noam Chomsky realized the world was so messed up.

He's on my shit list right now.

Him figuring out through being a linguist the inequities of what's going on in the world, it shows you the importance of words and language and the machine.

SAM

And that whole scene itself in the dark, you know, almost like a parking lot scene, people in the shadows, that was also just tremendous.

Because that's where we get introduced to this informant, which is a trope, the informant in the shadows, but it fits with the cloak and dagger theme of this episode.

So just, not even politics, right?

Just the way that scene was captured, the way it looked.

What did you think about that scene with Odo and the spy?

SCOTT

I loved it.

It was a great episode.

Give me more of that sort of shit.

SAM

I'm going to tell you something else that's freaky is DS9 aired the same year as X-Files and it gave me a lot of those kind of X-Files vibe with the guy in the shadows you know it's like smoking a cigarette or something oh yeah it's totally it's totally on some X-Files shit then we end this episode where the obsidian order really acts like the CIA and the US State Department acting out the western notion of self-defense

Which we see right now with Israel and the rest of the West where self-defense means strike first, kill them all, which includes invasion and war crimes.

It's not that dissimilar from Western self-defense classes, which is also influenced by cops, US military, and even the IDF and Krav Maga, where self-defense also means offense.

Self-defense becomes the excuse to be the assailant.

So as a martial artist and also a political observer, that whole ending scene has so many parallels, but also something I talk and write a lot about is this notion of self-defense.

We assume we know what that means, but then if there is a consensus to what that means, unpack it because the consensus definition of self-defense is really a problem.

SCOTT

Right.

And if Liberation Martial Arts is self-defense and Krav Maga is self-offense, it's Oppression Martial Arts.

It's the exact opposite of what the Liberation Martial Arts tries to imbue.

SAM

Did you have thoughts about the theme of self-defense in this episode, especially at the end when it made clear what the episode was about?

Because that's what they're saying.

They're defending themselves.

SCOTT

Yeah, I had strong thoughts.

I mean, I think this episode and episodes where we go into Garak and we go into Cardassian politics, we're going into the US war machine and the Western war machine and what that means.

SAM

Now, Scott, what did you think overall about this episode?

I know you already gave us some comments, but what did you think about this episode, especially in comparison to the last episode through the looking glass, which both of these episodes are about politics?

SCOTT

I mean, I just feel like when you have

Odo and Garak in the same room, just eating the furniture, you know what I mean?

Rene Aubergineau just killing it, just getting both of them in the room for the longest time they've been so far on the show.

You just are reminded that most of the cast of Star Trek are well-respected, well-regarded actors.

Doing well-respected, well-regarded acting.

I think this episode is just really tight.

My favorite scenes, and there were multiple, were, like you said, just put them in the room together.

SAM

And what happens whenever you put these two characters in the room together?

They both can't help themselves from trying to interrogate each other.

So they're both interrogating each other, but in different ways, right?

Odo is just much more direct.

It is so much more obvious that

Scott, tell us about the next episode.

SCOTT

Well, the die is cast.

More Cardassian shadow play is at stake.

SAM

Until then…