When Kira falls for the Riker charm

3.9 Rhonda’s take on “Defiant”

In my last review of “Meridian,” I disagreed with the handling of Jadzia Dax’s romance with Deral. While some might question Kira’s immediate infatutaion with Riker in this episode, I believed it. She’s not one to fall for a legend on that status alone, but the combination of his status in Starfleet and his charm at the right moment when she needs a distraction make sense. I’ll quibble with their parting kiss when we get there, but that’s not ’til the end.

The episode opens on a clearly exhausted Kira nearly slumped at her station in Ops as Dax and O’Brien update her on requests by station visitors and a Starfleet request for a report by the following day. We then follow Kira to the infirmary where Doctor Bashir is telling her he’ll need a runabout and a number of medical supplies for a colony. Kira flips out on him and shouts that he cannot have a runabout or the supplies. She turns to stomp away only to be called back by Bashir. He diagnoses her as overworked and prescribes rest. “Follow me,” he says. There’s a brief glimpse of the station and a brief sting of the theme song is heard as we transition to Quark’s Bar. Bashir is overseeing Quark bringing Kira Karvino juice, Lorvan crackers, a holosuite program, a jumja stick, and gambling tokens. Bashir insists “At least two of these items must be used and fully enjoyed before she leaves,” or she’ll repeat it every night until she does.

After the credit sequence, we cut to Sisko and Riker in Sisko’s office. The audience might  wonder why Riker went to Quark’s the night before reporting to the commander. They discuss that Riker, like Kira, has been prescribed break time by his ship’s doctor. He says he’s only passing through on his way to Risa, but wants to try his luck again since he did so well at Quark’s Dabo tables that he left with all Quark’s money and a date with a Dabo girl the year before. Outside the office, Kira is poking at a pad and console, but distractedly glancing at the office door. Always curious, Dax asks who is in the office. When Kira reveals that it is Commander Riker, Dax can’t resist teasing her about her infatuation. Kira tries to deflect by saying, “He’s a warm, charming man, but I’m involved with someone.” However, they met at Quark’s the night before and talked for three hours. Some of you might be saying, “Of course, she can’t help it! Riker is fascinating. Vedek Bareil is boring!” I’m the rare fan who actually loves the romance between Kira and Bareil, but I will concede that the writers haven’t done enough for us to support their relationship at this point, so this little infatuation has merit. It’s the Riker charm and the reputation of Riker in the Federation that Kira is intrigued by.

When Riker emerges from the office, Dax confronts him about three strips of latinum he still owes her from the last time he was on the station. He pauses, seemingly confused, but momentarily recovers to greet her. He excuses himself and then tersely says goodbye to Kira without either making eye contact. At this point in the episode, we don’t have a reason to suspect that this isn’t Will Riker, but this possible conflict in stories—his luck at the Dabo tables as he told Sisko or his lack of funds via Dax—requires the audience to produce some head canon that Dax loaned him the money to start playing, not because he’d lost money.

My first thoughts as we arrive at the dock station for the Defiant: “Wow, look at the security!” A security guard. A hand scanner to identify boarding occupants with proper clearance.

As Kira and Riker enter, we see O’Brien under a console (Has anyone counted how many times a scene starts with O’Brien under a console, especially how many that involve him hitting his head before he emerges?). Riker immediately changes his expression from charm to disgust as he rejects O’Brien’s friendly greeting with, “There’s nothing to say to you O’Brien; I think you know why!” O’Brien’s dejected face says he obviously doesn’t know why. This is perhaps our first suspicion that things are amiss, but, like O’Brien, who pauses outside the ship, we do little more than shrug.

Kira, both infatuated with Riker and excited to brag about the Defiant’s system, begins telling him way more than she should, although she thinks this is THE Riker, so why not? However, when he excitedly wants to power up the systems, it seems like Kira should have needed the station commander’s permission. Yet, without a second thought to Sisko, she uses her codes to power it up. In the next second, Riker stuns her, beams two others aboard, and begins a warp core breach. Dax is alerted in Ops, and Sisko tells her to release the clamps and to beam them out. The clamps are released, but before the transporter can be engaged, Riker has put up the shields and taken the ship to warp.

By the next scene, our DS9 team knows that it is Thomas Riker, the transporter accident clone of Will Riker created nine years earlier. It’s suspected that Tom has Maquis sympathies.

Sisko is forced to notify Cardassia that a rebel has stolen the Defiant in order to avoid this tentative ally thinking the Federation wanted the heavily equipped military ship in Maquis hands.

For the rest of the episode, director Cliff Boles makes numerous quick cuts between Cardassia’s Central Command and the shenanigans on the Defiant that keep this episode tense and engaging.

During the Central Command scenes, Dukat spars with the Obsidian Order “observer” Korinas. She digs at him by praising Sisko’s military tactics. He fights with her when it becomes clear that the Obsidian Order is hiding military armed ships in the Orias system. Dukat and Sisko have several bonding moments, including one about being fathers. Dukat is upset that he is missing his son’s birthday, especially because he’d promised to take him to an amusement center.

They work together to bring the standoff to an end. Once they know Riker’s true mission is to the Orias system and that the Obsidian Order have ships in the system that they shouldn’t have, they make a deal to allow Riker’s crew be tried by Federation courts and for Riker’s Cardassian sentence to be life imprisonment, rather than execution, in exchange for the Defiant’s sensor logs on the ships they encountered.

Onboard the Defiant, Kira’s former terrorist skills and mindset come into play. Riker locked her in crew quarters, but, by breaking into the replicator, she is able to overload the electric system bringing down the cloaking system. After that, Riker keeps her on the bridge, which allows her to interject into the proceedings. She continually critiques his choice of tactics, and she concludes that his decisions are meant to make him stand out from Will Riker. When the ship is surrounded by Cardassian ships, he has the choice to surrender or suicide-mission plunge ahead. Kira talks him into being a Starfleet commander one last time to save his crew by surrendering.

Riker agrees to surrender and turns command of the Defiant over to Kira. They exchange a kiss that Kira receives willingly, when it seems like she should’ve punched him for having shot her at the top of the episode. Knowing how dire a Cardassian prison camp will be, Kira promises to get him out. This, however, won’t happen on screen in the coming seasons (I like to imagine this adventure occurred offscreen; maybe someone–or me–will write the novelization!).

The title of this episode directly relates to the ship, the Defiant, being central to the plot, but it also uses the meaning of the word, defiant. Riker has defied the conventions of Starfleet to fight for those he feels have been wrong. Kira’s defiance has boundaries. She defies Riker to return to Starfleet, an organization she once thought was replacing the Cardassians as oppressors to her Bajoran people.

While there are some minor issues with the plotting due to time constraints, this episode is an excellent entry in the DS9 canon, especially because it sets up storylines that will pay off before the season ends.