7x04 Take Me Out to the Holosuite

[6.7/10] Oh my friends, I just don’t know.

I want to like this episode. I really do. Even in the throes of war, your television show can't be all sturm und drang. You need moments of levity. Otherwise, things can easily devolve into a miserable slog. (Hello Walking Dead fans!) As Sokka from Avatar: The Last Airbender once put it: “This is the kind of wacky time-wasting nonsense I've been missing!”

The tone in “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” is just so broad for most of the episode’s runtime. The situation seems goofy. The station’s denizens seem out of character. Everything just feels wackier. It’s like Deep Space Nine took time out from its busy schedule of the rigors of war and the caprice of the gods to become an ABC family sitcom for an episode.

I can see the appeal of wanting to do The Bad News Bears by way of Star Trek. Taking the ragtag sports team tropes and blending them with outer space chicanery could be a winning recipe. But the funniest episodes in the franchise retain their humanity. This doesn’t feel like Sisko and Kira and the rest of the crew. It feels like our heroes are playing a goofy sports movie for kids, and it’s hard to jibe with that.

The episode’s antagonist, the prickly Vulcan captain, Solak, is a comically outsized prick of a villain. Quark’s out there helping Sisko because...Leeta made a feeble jab at him? We get a cheesy scene where everyone on the team is in the infirmary because Sisko’s been running them ragged. We get cornball sequences of pitches and catches and swings going wildly off the mark. All of it has the vibe of a Disney Channel Original Movie, with the characters more exaggerated, and the whole situation feeling off-brand.

Well, for everyone but Captain Sisko I guess. If there’s one part of this that rings true, it’s Benjamin being so obsessed with baseball that he all but makes his friends play in a game with his honor at stake over it. Avery Brooks goes a little overboard himself, but by god, he’s having fun letting it hang loose a bit, and as comically over-the-top as Sisko’s enthusiasm is at times, Brooks’ performance helps win me over.

Amid the cornball comedy and hammy dialogue, there’s a few legitimate funny moments. The opening bit where Kira, Nog, and Worf try to unravel the byzantine rules of the game is great. Benjamin calling for some on-field chatter to faze their opponents, only for Worf to yell “Death to the Opposition” got me to laugh out loud. And while not “haha” funny, the montage of the crew practicing in their spare time, from Quark catching bar glasses to Odo practicing his home plate calls, has a certain charm to it.

Unfortunately, so much of the build up to the game feels miscalibrated. Despite the overtones of racism and humanity-bashing, Sisko’s rivalry with Solok has the loony feel of Homer Simpson’s resentment toward Ned Flanders. They need somewhere to go with Rom and Sisko, so I get why it happens, but the Captain throwing Rom off the team for a bad at-bat in front of Solok feels out of character. The script goes to the “the rest of the crew doesn’t know baseball’s rules or terminology” again and again. I trust in writer Ronald D. Moore and his long track record of Star Trek success, but at the risk of vagary, the vibes are all wrong here. The characters feel wrong. The tone feels wrong. The attempts at exaggerated comedy feel wrong.

And for chrissake, they bring Kassidy Yates back for this! I like Kassidy. I’m glad to see her. I wish she’d been a more regular presence on the show up to this point. But yanking her back into the series, not to give Benjamin a confidante to process everything he’s been through since they were last together, but rather to help him beat the big bully in a cheesy 1980s high school sports movie, is absurd. The fact that it’s implied he pulls strings to mess with her courrier job so that she’ll be free to help him show up an old rival is the rotten cherry on top.

And yet, once we get to the actual game, business picks up. All of the table-setting and efforts at what I’ll generously call “comedy” fall flat. But once we’re in it, and the game we’ve been building to for half an hour is actually up and running, suddenly “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” shakes off the dust and becomes a good episode.

There is setup and payoff! After a barside chat with Julian about being a “fancy dan”, Ezri catches a fly ball with a backflip, earning the moniker. Kira gets testy with the “Logicians’” (ugh) second baseman in a characteristic bit of gutsy gamesmanship. Nog gets a delightful chance to throw a careless Vulcan out in a wonderful little sequence. Worf strikes out with a full count and a dicey call, leading to an amusing argument with the ump that involves the disbelieving Klingon, his all-in skipper, and a characteristically by-the-book Odo who goes so far as to throw Sisko out of the game.

Where the hell was this the rest of the episode? Suddenly, each sequence is not only entertaining, but full of winning little character moments that feel on point for our heroes. You have to suspend your disbelief a little bit. Rene Auberjonois lets a little New York accent slip in that feels a skosh too much for Odo. Brooks goes a little ham here and there. But it’s fun, in the way that the rest of the hour is desperately trying and failing to be.

The peak of this transformation is Rom. His bumbling clown routine is too much for most of the runtime. But by god, despite this being one of Ronald D. Moore’s lesser lights, he still has an emotional and thematic throughline here, and by god, he’s going to pay it off! Rom isn’t in this for baseball glory; he’s in it to be closer to his son. And Sisko is in it for baseball glory, but ultimately takes his own advice and realizes the game isn’t about winning; it’s about heart. That's what his Vulcan rival lacks, and Benjamin proves it in his actions.

His choice to toss out any chance to win the game, but give Rom his moment in the spotlight, is sweet as hell. Rom bunting by accident when trying to understand his teammates’ signs is admittedly a little broad , but still a charming way to give him his win. And the bumbling Ferengi inadvertently getting the hit that allows his son to score, earning a “That’s my dad” from Nog is as triumphant as anything.

In an episode about a cartoonish vulcan doubter of humanity (hello Enterprise fans), one who thinks that the downfall of non-Vulcans is their emotion, Sisko shows how they can thrive on their sentimentality. There’s a greater triumph in giving a friend a moment to shine than in pure cold strategy. There is a brighter glory in being lifted up by and having a good time with your friends than any competitive outcome. And the camaraderie and commiseration that Solok decries lead to a bar full of amped up patrons giving him a taste of his own medicine and accusing him of getting emotional over their having too good a time in defeat.

The Niners don’t win the game. Sisko doesn’t get his blazing on-field triumph against his longtime rival. But his friends do him one better. They free him of that burden. They say the best revenge is living well. If there’s a better alternative to beating your skeptics, it’s getting to a place where you no longer care about them. This is the gift that Sisko’s friends and family give him on the diamond. He may have lost the game, but he won at life, and Solok can't take that away from him.

I cannot call “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” a good episode. It feels more like a zany extended comedy sketch for a charity show than a legitimate episode of the series. Much of the humor falls flat, and too much of the characterization and tone feel off. But once you get to that last fifteen minutes or so, you’re made of sterner stuff than yours truly if you’re not grinning from ear to ear.

I still want to like this episode. And with the genuine heart and unique form of no less valuable victory we get for Ben Sisko by the end of the hour, by god, maybe I do.