2x13 Armageddon Game

[7.7/10] I don’t think it’s any great spoiler to tell you that the budding friendship between Chief O’Brien and Dr. Bashir will be one of the key relationships in the series. Their odd couple routine is endearing for the same reason most (including Spock and Bones’) are. We like seeing two people who seem so different on the surface finding common ground and camaraderie with one another.

We’ve already seen a few glimpses of that in the past, whether it’s fending off local boogeymen together or just playing racquetball. But this is where you see it in earnest for the first time, the way these two men get on one another’s nerves a bit, but also get through to one another in a way few others can. Something about Miles’ grumbly everyman and Julian’s effete showoff personas fits together, in ways the writers of Deep Space Nine would come to recognize more and more as the show went on.

The setup isn’t bad either. I’m a sucker for the old T.V. trope where two people who have issues are effectively trapped with one another and have to hash them out. (See: “Fly” from Breaking Bad for a polarizing but outstanding example.) Here, Chief O’Brien and Dr. Bashir are on the run from local aliens who seem to be upset that the Federation assisted their government in destroying a stock of biological weapons. The officers’ only hope is to hole up in a random building and try to contact their allies for a rescue it.

It works on multiple levels. You have the tension that comes from multiple ticking clocks. The aliens are after our heroes and could catch them at any moment, which raises the stakes for the duo to figure out how to repair communication equipment that they find in their temporary shelter. This is a talky episode, so throwing in that peril helps keep the tension up.

If that weren’t enough, Chief O’Brien gets infected with the chemical agent he and Bashir were working to destroy (a consequence of his famously rolled-up sleeves, in an amusing touch), which only adds to the urgency of their task. The choice works, because it makes the toughened up Miles more vulnerable, forcing him to rely on the fussy Bashir for help, and rendering him more likely to open up to his compadre given his semi-delirious state. There’s a nice sync between the needs of the plot and the needs of the characters here.

The subplot back on the station works too. It turns out the aliens of the week faked security footage to make it look like Julian and Miles died in an accident while helping them, leading the rest of the crew to mourn their compatriots. It’s a clever way for the show to dramatize the impact losing a main cast member would have on the others (something the show wouldn’t do for real until years later), without insulting the audience’s intelligence.

There’s been scads of times in Star Trek when our heroes mourn their “fallen” comrade after some terrible transporter accident/away mission mishap/trombone malady, only for them to pop up halfway through the runtime, obviously alive. The grief scenes tend to lack force since it feels like the show’s trying to pull the wool over the viewer’s eyes despite the fact we can be reasonably sure the show won’t kill off a main character randomly in the first act. (Give or take Tasha Yar.)
Here though, we know from the jump that O’Brien and Bashir are still among the living, which makes the rest of the DS9 crew’s reactions doubly intriguing. We get to see their grief, with the added layer of tragedy that we know they’re being lied to. The reactions here, from Odo and Kira’s anger, to Jadzia’s sense of regret, to Quark’s tribute to the two of them as patrons all speak to who these characters are and what their relationship to Miles and Julian was.

The most poignant response though, comes when Commander Sisko breaks the news to Keiko. It features some great underplaying from both Avery Brooks and Rosalind Chao. Sisko is steady but clearly shattered by the loss and the burden to deliver the news. Keiko holds firm, having implicitly braced for this sort of news for ages, while still plainly being rocked when it arrives. The show goes small rather than big here, and it pays real dividends. The whole approach does, selling what O’Brien and Bashir mean to their loved ones and colleagues in a piercing way.

Those colleagues don’t just sit idly by though. When Keiko points out that Miles never drinks coffee in the afternoon, it sets Sisko and the team on a mission to discover if the aliens altered the tape. More discrepancies follow, and one clever rescue and ruse later, they’ve not only figured out the aliens’ deception, but included some high energy razzle dazzle to the mix. The fakeout with the runabouts here is especially fun, since it’s always nice to see the good guys succeed with cleverness and not just a technobabble solution. The plot on DS9 strikes the right balance between giving the mourning its due and doing a creditable mystery-solving caper.

But the heart of the episode is with Miles and Julian back on the planet. Julian has to treat Miles given his condition, and due to his debilitation, Miles has to walk Julian through fixing the comms equipment, given the limits of Dr. Bashir’s “engineering extension courses” at Starfleet Medical. As with the pair effectively being trapped, it’s a nice way to make them see one another’s value and work together.

More to the point, they have to recognize one another for what they are and connect on a different level, including their romantic lives. Dr. Bashir continues to feel a bit like Tertius Lydgate from Middlemarch adding a lost love from France to his desire to enjoy the thrills and freedom of “frontier medicine.” What’s noteworthy, though, is the way he made a different sort of choice than Miles. He refused to give up Starfleet, even to be with a woman he loved. He speaks to a reluctance to have a committed relationship because of the difficulties it imposes on a partner and the hardships of balancing career and family in this service.

Miles is the exact opposite. He acknowledges the difficulties of dragging Keiko from the Enterprise to DS9, but also speaks eloquently about the adventure of marriage, about how squabbles pale in comparison to being with someone you love. Miles can’t imagine life without his family, as hard as it is for Julian to imagine himself with one, and yet in opening up to one another, they understand each other’s positions, even try to encourage one another, in a way that brings them together despite their different stances.

There’s an element of class to it. The episode is reasonably subtle about it, but there’s a distance between O’Brien and Bashir that comes from the fact Miles is an enlisted man and Bashir came from the academy. They’ve spoken about rank before, but “Armageddon Game” plays with the sense that their backgrounds are different, one of rank and professionalization, and another of hard work and blue collar achievement. It’s another bridge for them to build. But they do, or at least start here, and O’Brien telling Dr. Bashir it was an honor to serve with him, while the good doctor helps Miles “die on in his feet” when it looks as though all is lost is heartening to the hilt.

Of course, they don’t kick the bucket. The rescue comes, and they escape with newfound respect and attachment to one another (even if Miles is still grumpy about it). Plus, it comes with a couple of good twists! I like the idea that while it seems one of the alien species who enlisted the Federation’s help doublecrossed the other, it’s actually a mutual effort to not only destroy the biological weapons that have led to so much killing between their peoples, but also anyone with the knowledge of how to create them, including these Starfleet officers. It’s doctrinaire and insane, but there’s a strangely comprehensible logic to it which makes the rationale satisfying.

More to the point, I love the closing irony that what started Sisko’s whole crusade was Keiko noting something wrong with the footage thanks to Miles’ coffee-drinking habits. It seems like a cliche but acceptable “I know my spouse!” sort of motivation for our heroes’ new mission to unravel the truth. The closing line from Miles revealing that he does, in fact, drink coffee in the afternoon, to his wife’s chagrin, is an amusing coda for both the mystery plot, which was only solved thanks to a mistake, and to the themes of romance and connection with the partner. It gives the whole thing a wry edge that works.

The writers would turn to that sort of wry edge again and again with Dr. Bashir and Chief O’Brien. The two don’t naturally fit together, given their conflicting personalities and backgrounds. And yet, that’s what makes them so great together, their interactions filled with such spark, and the moments where they overcome their differences and bond with one another so stirring. Thankfully, there would be much more of each to come.