I just finished watching DS9 Season 5 Episode 5 ‘The Assignment’ and as much as I loved it, I couldn’t believe the treatment they gave Keiko. It was a tense episode and I enjoyed seeing O’Brien getting psychologically tortured and I laughed at first at the treatment of Keiko but by the end of the episode I felt really bad about how she was portrayed.
The whole dragon lady dynamic is fun for a while but it gets old fast and you start feeling bad for the character.
I also loved the part in the episode where it’s O’Brien’s birthday and everyone instead sings ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow’ … it’s a whole musical rights issue where someone has to be paid for the performance of the song ‘Happy Birthday’ which is why they didn’t use it … yet another torturous addition to the life of O’Brien.
I didn’t realize it was this episode … I had always wondered which episode it was that had the crew of DS9 end up in the same timeline as the original enterprise with Kirk and his crew … and I had always wanted to see this episode because of it.
Definitely a lot of fun and a great episode. I was also amazed at the quality of the production to be able to reproduce the scenes with the old footage and inserting the new characters in there. We take for granted the modern CGI today but this was done back in 1996, when CGI and special effects were becoming easier but not routine. They did an amazing job.
Man that was a great watch!
Now you see why this season holds such a special place for me. The writing and characterization nods to TOS are very on point.
The team essentially used the same tech from Forrest Gump to insert the crew into the old footage. It could probably be cleaned up a bit now, but overall, holds up quite well.