The Orb 174: Good Luck and Bad Luck Run Amuck

ChrisWelcome, Niners, to another episode of The Orb, our dedicated Deep Space Nine podcast. I'm Christopher Jones, and with me, as he always is, is my esteemed co-host, Matthew Rushing. And Matthew, I know you want to loosen up a little bit before recording, but I think that exercise routine you're doing there is a bit much. Did you learn that from Dr. Bashir?

MatthewOh, no, actually, this is … I learned this at a Vulcan monastery on P'Jem.

ChrisOh, okay. Uh-huh.

MatthewAnd actually, strangely enough, though, I learned it from some Andorians.

ChrisOh. Well, that explains the ice cleavers in your hands.

MatthewYes, but it is actually the ancient art of Orion tai chi. So, yeah, it's crazy, man.

ChrisOrion tai chi. Alright. Yeah, Orion tai chi is where you end up getting pickpocketed while you're doing tai chi, right?

MatthewYeah, pretty much.

ChrisYeah, that's what I thought.

MatthewMm-hmm. Yeah.

ChrisAlright, everyone, we're going to continue our 30th-anniversary rewatch of Deep Space Nine today with episode 11 of season 2, "Rivals." And here is a quick rundown of the story.

War isn't always fought with phasers. Sometimes the weapons of choice are drinks, dabo tables, and an extra dose of charm. That's how El-Aurian Martus Mazur sees it. Being a listener also helps. As a rival to Quark, Martus gives DS9 residents and visitors an alternative way to be bamboozled. But this isn't the only rivalry brewing on the station; Miles O'Brien and Julian Bashir have their own battle going on the space racquetball court. With strange things happening all around, the outcome of it all may just come down to the laws of probability. Let's just hope no sperm whales or bowls of petunias are harmed in the process.

ChrisAll right, Matthew. So, yeah, I mean, once you get deep into this episode and Jadzia starts talking about spins and probabilities and all that, you know, as a huge Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan ever since I was probably 9 or 10 years old and I picked up that first book in the bookstore—you remember they used to have stores where they sold paper books?

MatthewYeah, exactly.

ChrisYeah. So ever since then, I've just loved The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And I just thought it sounds like the station, like the infinite improbability drive has been brought onto the station and it's just wreaking havoc.

MatthewWell, I mean, you know, Chris, if you can't be bothered to keep up with galactic politics on Alpha Centauri, I mean, this has been in the planning for the last 50 years. So that's not our fault.

ChrisYeah.

MatthewSo, yes.

ChrisYeah, I know. It's in the neighborhood, but I'm busy.

MatthewBut, you know, so long and thanks for all the fish.

ChrisYeah.

MatthewAll the references we can put into this episode. No, I mean, yes, I guess we'll start with the highly improbable nature of this episode, right?

ChrisYeah. Yeah.

MatthewThis is one of those episodes of Deep Space Nine which is very lighthearted and, in lots of ways, very much filler. And what it is going to do is really mostly serve a relationship between two characters.

Everything else about this episode—you know, look, there are not tons of Deep Space Nine episodes that feel like this. But this is one of the most frivolous of all time. Really. Other than something like "Profit and Lace," which should never have existed—and I will continue to my dying day with my referencing it every time I want to mention the worst episodes of Deep Space Nine …

ChrisWe have a whole discussion about that episode, by the way, everyone, which you can go back and find in the back catalog. I forget the number right now, but yeah.

MatthewAbsolutely you can do that, and I hope you'll enjoy it, but this is not like that, right? And mainly because it does something incredibly well with a relationship. But the technobabble idea of good luck or bad luck running amok—I don't know if that's the episode title, but it probably is—it's kind of silly and ridiculous, but it is also something very Star Trek.

ChrisIt might be.

MatthewRight. And in fact, I would ask you this, Chris. Do you think this idea of running into the highly improbable, good luck and bad luck running amok, is that the most like TNG, early TNG type of episode, that you could ever think of?

ChrisYeah, yeah. The basic premise of it. Yeah. I mean, I can even see them doing this on The Original Series. They could definitely do it on The Animated Series. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I don't think this particular story would have worked on The Next Generation because you need the kind of open community of the Promenade and Quark's and all that for these conversations to be taking place.

MatthewAbsolutely. Absolutely.

ChrisYou're not going to have random women conning people on the Enterprise-D or something like that.

MatthewThis is true.

ChrisBut just as a basic premise, yeah, I get what you're saying.

MatthewIt feels like maybe an episode that could have happened at a starbase, right?

ChrisYeah, maybe.

MatthewSo that's the way you would have had to do it on TNG or even, I think, The Original Series.

ChrisYeah. Yeah. Yeah.

MatthewI mean, actually, with The Original Series, you could see this happening on K7, right?

ChrisYeah. Yeah. Or you could go in TNG, you could go to Risa, you know, it could be something that happens like "Captain's Holiday" or something like that. But yeah. So you could do something like that.

MatthewThere you go. Yeah, absolutely. No, that's a great point. Great point.

ChrisBut yeah, the idea that it's filler, I have different thoughts on that. In a sense, this feels like where, as season 2 goes on, you feel like the writers are getting, they're kind of finding their bearing about what the series is going to be.

ChrisAnd, you know, we've talked about Dominion breadcrumbs and that kind of stuff. But they're not yet to the point where the show has its own complete identity and it isn't still influenced in some ways by ideas from The Next Generation.

And one of those ideas here is that this character of Martus was originally conceived as being the wayward son of Guinan. So that's why he is a listener. And so the idea was that he had this family relationship with Guinan. And so he was going to be the listener the way Guinan is the listener on the Enterprise.

MatthewAh, interesting. Right. Yup. Yup.

ChrisNow, what happened kind of in between is we get the comment in here from Odo about, oh, yeah, you're a refugee from the El-Aurian system. And then we come to know Guinan as being an El-Aurian. But unless I'm forgetting something, the fact that Guinan is an El-Aurian is first revealed in the film Generations, is it not? Because that was the tie-in to Soran, and it was an El-Aurian transport. And, oh, Guinan's an El-Aurian. She's on the transport. So, at the moment that they were coming up with this, I don't remember El-Aurian as being established as her species yet.

MatthewMm-hmm. Well, this comes out in January of 1994, is that right? This is almost a year before Generations.

ChrisYeah. Yeah.

MatthewSo, you know, Generations won't come out until December, right, of this year.

But that means that this is the first time that the idea of El-Aurian comes into existence. So they're actually setting up Generations because they would have already been working on Generations at this point.

ChrisYeah. Yeah.

MatthewThey would have already been in production on Generations.

ChrisYeah. Yeah. And what's really interesting about that is it's completely different writer's rooms, right? So it makes you wonder about what was the cross-pollination, if any, or maybe this came first. Yeah, right. Yeah. So it's interesting. But from what I understand, they wanted Whoopi to be in the episode even, but she wasn't available.

MatthewOh, interesting. That would have been really interesting.

ChrisYeah, and she wasn't available, and so they changed that relationship between the two characters. So there's no Guinan reference to it, but you are left with the fact that they're from the same species.

MatthewYeah, just for you, though, you know, I said that the episode in some ways is just kind of highly frivolous, except for one main part: the idea of this kind of crazy technobabble thing causing mayhem all over the station.

I mean, that might be one of the most classic Star Trek things ever, which is to have some weird unknown phenomena.

ChrisYeah. Yeah.

MatthewPhenomena. I'm so sorry. But right. It's going to be stuck in all the listeners' heads now. And I'm not going to apologize for it. Yes. So I guess, is it enough for you with the more important side of this episode?

ChrisYeah. And the visual of the dancing Muppets. Yeah.

MatthewDoes it make it an enjoyable enough rewatch for you that when, if you're doing a rewatch of Deep Space Nine with just yourself—you weren't showing somebody this for the first time—that you're not like, I can just skip this one?

ChrisYeah. Oh, well, I can't skip this one, though. I think that, well, first of all, what you're describing, they've done that before. "Playing God" is a great example, from season 1, where it's the same kind of thing, right?

MatthewYeah.

ChrisSo I think at this point, especially the first time watching it, it didn't stand out as being unusual because we're still early enough in the series where they kind of do this kind of thing sometimes, where they have this weird thing happening on the station.

Now, I said, no, I can't skip this episode because for me, this episode is the space racquetball episode. Like until I go back, especially if you go back to when we first started doing The Orb together, which was how many years ago now, 14 years or something like that?

MatthewYeah. It's been a long time.

ChrisAnd that's when I really started rewatching kind of repeatedly to really absorb everything about the series. I'd seen episodes many times before that, but when I really started digging into rewatches, I had to refresh my memory by rewatching it to even just remember the whole Martus story in the first place. Because for me, this episode is burned into my head. It's the summer of '94. I'm in Bloomington, Indiana, at Indiana University. I'm taking this like super-intense summer Russian language course where we just lived in Russian language all day. There was no English involved. And so I would get back to my dorm room at night and my brain was really tired and I wanted English.

And the local station was playing reruns of Deep Space Nine at like 10:00 p.m. and this episode came on. And the whole racquetball thing, you know, I remember the title "Rivals," the scene, the racquet, and then Miles and Jules playing racquetball together all the time. That's just all I remember about this episode for years and years and years. And so I think that the question is a complicated one, because I think that the whole storyline with Martus and the competing bar and the improbable events happening all is forgettable, and isn't something that I really care to go back and rewatch.

MatthewYeah.

ChrisBut the relationship elements with the—it's at this point, just in the early stages of this friendship building between O'Brien and Bashir—that's really important.

MatthewYeah, yeah.

ChrisAnd I think it's important to the whole series and the characters. I think Keiko is used really well in this episode also, which doesn't happen often. And so there are parts of this episode which I think are critical to the series. And that's probably the … what do you consider the A story and the B story here?

MatthewYeah, I mean, I think it's weird because the A story and the B story are so intertwined.

And so I do think that it makes it feel like maybe, even when you watch it for the first time, that the A story is almost this character, Martus. But really, I think the A story more is Julian and Miles.

ChrisYeah.

MatthewAnd then the B story very much, you know, maybe it's like, it's almost like you can't do letters. It needs to be the one and the 1.5, you know?

ChrisIt's like when I name files when I'm doing designs and I have variations, small variations.

MatthewYes, exactly.

ChrisI'll go A1, A2, B1, B2. Yeah, it's sort of like that, right?

MatthewYes. So that, yeah, I think they're both really well intertwined in that sense. And now I think, like you and I just asked that question because, you know, again, this is a very frivolous episode of the show. There's nothing really super important that happens. But like you mentioned, the whole point of this episode is to take a giant leap forward for the relationship of Miles and Julian, who we know, of course, are going to become best friends.

But this takes something that they both love and it's the first time they realize there's this thing that they both absolutely love, right? That's going to be the thing that continues them coming back together. They're going to keep finding things that they both really love and it's going to drive this friendship. And so I love that, because there's just something so real and natural about that, about that person where you weren't quite sure about them. And then you realize that you both like this thing and it becomes your person to go do that thing with. And then the more you get to know that person, the more you realize, oh, we have a lot of other things in common, too.

ChrisYeah. Mm-hmm.

MatthewAnd so the progression of this, it feels like the writers of the show are in some ways talking about their own experience in life of probably getting to know people.

ChrisMm-hmm. Yeah. And it's interesting you say they find this thing they like to do together because, originally, the racquetball was supposed to be a recurring thing that they do together, but it was going to be too expensive and too difficult to rebuild that set every time. So they decided instead to have them just go throw darts at a board in Quark's, because all they had to do is hang a dartboard on the wall.

MatthewThat's funny. That's really funny.

ChrisYeah, yeah, yeah. So the other thing that makes the Martus story forgettable for me is that I just think that Chris Sarandon, playing the role of Martus, just doesn't play the role well. He's playing the wrong character. He's not playing the character that Martus Mazur is supposed to be.

MatthewMm-hmm. Yeah.

ChrisThe character is based on the idea that he's so charming and he's a great listener, and so he's able to manipulate people. But the problem is that he's not charming. He's boring. He's so boring. I mean, if he and Vedek Bareil had like a buddy show together—I mean, you talk about, you know, the app Calm that helps you fall asleep—they could have Martus Mazur and Vedek Bareil have a show together and you'd be out in like 30 seconds. It'd be so boring. And I think that's a big problem here, because I don't think the concept of the story is flawed. I think the casting was bad.

MatthewYeah. Yeah.

ChrisAnd maybe the directing is also bad because the director didn't pull this out of Chris Sarandon, who I think is not a bad actor. He's just not playing this role the way it needs to be played. And if he could have been a compelling foil for Quark, that whole rivalry of bars on the Promenade could have been a really interesting story and could have actually done a lot for Quark's character.

MatthewYeah. Right. Yeah, I mean, I think he very much plays this in a lot of ways, like he's Humperdinck from The Princess Bride.

ChrisYeah. Yeah. Which is what people know him best from, I think, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm.

MatthewBut I guess maybe a less obnoxious version, slightly. But like you said, he's also just incredibly boring. And so, yeah, there's just nothing about this character that is pulling you in. If you want him to be competition for Quark, which the episode does, you need to have charisma like Quark does. And then that way, too, as he's opening his own shop and everything, and people are finding themselves hanging out more at his establishment than Quark's, part of that is because they also are attracted to him and his charisma, which you would want with him being an El-Aurian and being somebody who can listen well and has this opportunity then to utilize that instead of for good.

ChrisYeah. Mm-hmm.

MatthewBut for manipulation of people, right?

You know, when you think about the power of listening to people the way Guinan does in The Next Generation, she utilizes her powers for good.

But you could easily utilize those powers to take advantage of people, which is exactly what he does. But he just doesn't have that other almost ineffable quality that you would want in that type of character to make him interesting on screen, and kind of see how people gravitate towards him more than just, oh yeah, he's a good listener.

ChrisYeah. The better listener in this episode is Keiko, because she actually listens and she kind of jabs back at Miles a little bit, but then she supports him.

And, you know, for all that people think about that relationship and, oh, Keiko is like the nagging wife or whatever—I mean, we've talked for years on this show about how they actually have the most real relationship, certainly of marriage, that's portrayed in Star Trek—but here, she's not just there, she's not on the screen a lot, but when she is, it actually matters for the story. It's important for the outcome of the story for Miles. And it seems real. And it isn't just like … one of the problems with Keiko on the series is that they had to bring her over. Because if they're bringing Miles, they have to bring her from The Next Generation, but they don't really know what to have her do. So they're always looking for things for her to do. And that's a primary reason why she often isn't written well or doesn't come off well. But, you know, here I think it was a perfect use.

MatthewNo, I mean, I think you're absolutely right. I really do like the way in which, again, she does come off so wonderfully as kind of the every wife who has a husband who's just frustrated about this thing and part of it is that he's frustrated about getting older, which I love, you know, because I mean, both you and I, we're not getting any younger, Chris.

ChrisYeah. Yeah.

MatthewAnd I feel that.

ChrisAlthough at this point for him, he's probably like 30-something, right? And he's frustrated at getting older.

MatthewWell, yes, he's probably supposed to be 30-something, but, you know, I mean, Colm isn't 30-something. But anyway, yes, it is very much that and I love that about this episode.

ChrisYeah, supposed to be. Obviously, Colm's not. Yeah, yeah.

MatthewAnd again, the thing that takes this episode and pushes it a little bit over is the fact it's about the relationship between Miles and Julian.

ChrisYeah.

MatthewAnd then we get these wonderful little moments between Miles and Keiko. But also we're just kind of getting into the psyche a little bit of Julian and Miles as people, right?

I mean, Miles, with his struggle of getting older and the frustration that he's having that he's not as good at this thing as he used to be.

ChrisYeah. Mm-hmm.

MatthewRight. Which, again, is a frustration that we all have. For Julian, we learn how much he looks up to Miles.

We learn also how he respects him to the point where it's like, I don't want to tell him this thing because I don't want to hurt his feelings, because I'm thinking more about him actually than I am myself, which lets us get a bit of an inclination here that the doctor isn't just this self-absorbed maniac, that he really is a person who cares for other people.

And I think that that, again, that's the place where, you know, we were just recently talking about "Jetrel," and Deep Space Nine just has such a great record of being able to write character moments. But those character moments are continually building off other character moments. And so the entire series then becomes one long character arc for all of these major characters in the show in a way that feels very cohesive and real. And this, as we mentioned, is a huge stepping stone for one of the biggest parts of the series come the end.

ChrisYeah, yeah, definitely. I also love in here that Quark basically just sets up a racquetball match between them that everyone can bet on without ever even asking them to participate in it.

MatthewRight. Yeah, it's fantastic and he basically blackmails them into it because he's like, you know, you can't let down the children.

ChrisYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But even that, the idea that it was going to be blankets for the children on Bajor ties right back into the series mythology, right? It's natural what's going on.

But yeah, it would have been interesting if they had been able to have Whoopi on. The episode would have come off completely differently, obviously, if you had her on-screen dynamic.

MatthewGosh. Right. Yup. Yeah.

ChrisAnd then maybe Martus could have been more interesting. He could have done the claws, the hands back, you know, like throw a little bit of that in there.

MatthewYeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that the episode probably would have been more interesting if the Whoopi element and that whole connection would have been able to be in there. I do still think, though, that the casting issue that we mentioned would probably still play into how we felt about it, but maybe it would have been ameliorated by having Whoopi Goldberg there to kind of carry that part of the episode. So it wouldn't have been as noticeable.

ChrisMm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, the casting's interesting because, you know, on the flip side, you've got K Callan playing Alsia, and she's great. Right? So it's just, I don't know, it's an episode that had a lot of potential, and there were a few missteps.

MatthewBut yeah, I don't know. Yes, very fun.

ChrisBut anyway, do you have any final thoughts and what's your rating going to be for "Rivals"?

MatthewYeah, I mean, you know, as everybody could tell, it's not my favorite episode of the series, but it's also not a travesty either. You know, this is not one of the worst episodes of Deep Space Nine. It is just one of those episodes, especially here in the early seasons, where it doesn't quite have that full Deep Space Nine-ness that we come to know. But like we've mentioned, it's such a great stepping stone for this relationship that's going to be so pivotal to the series and one of my favorite things about the show in the end that I can't help but love it. And in all honesty, I'd say I'm going to be generous and give this three-and-a-half out of five quirks of luck, because it really is just enjoyable to watch because of the way that Alexander Siddig and Colm Meaney play back and forth with one another.

ChrisMm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I was just thinking that it reminds me of the old TV show Men Behaving Badly. It's neutrinos behaving oddly in this episode. So, yeah.

MatthewIt really is fun to watch.

ChrisYeah, I don't have any other real key final thoughts other than I described that moment in Indiana all those years ago. And just because of that, I've always had a fondness for this episode. And so it's always one that, you know, I'll throw on mainly for the racquetball stuff. But it's a pretty decent episode. It's also, as they're building the foundation of the show here at this point in season 2, maybe they could have done a little bit more with it. But I'll give it six bowls of petunias.

MatthewNice.

ChrisAll right, everyone, we would love to hear your thoughts on "Rivals." There are many ways for you to share those with us. Perhaps the best way is to go to Facebook and join the Babel Conference. That's our listeners group. It's there to extend the conversations beyond the podcasts. So if you're joining for the first time, please do answer the questions and agree to the rules of the forum so that I can let you in. You'll find a post there on the timeline for this episode, and you can share your thoughts with Matthew and me right there, and also with fellow listeners. And you can send us email, go to our website, trek.fm/contact, use the form you find there, choose a show and choose The Orb, and that will come back to us by email. And you can find us everywhere in social media. Our username is trekfm.

Now, Matthew, when you're not finding investors for your next asteroid mining project, where can people find you?

MatthewMan, Chris, it is so hard to find the right people, but hopefully it's going to happen soon. You can find me all over social media under the name mattrushing02. And if you want to hear about that asteroid mining, just hit me up. You can also find me here outside The Orb with all the other great Star Trek talk we do in The 602 Club, where we talk about all of the franchises outside of Star Trek that we love. Plus, you'll find me over on The Nerd Party Network with a completed show called Owl Post, talking about every single chapter of the Harry Potter series, and Aggressive Negotiations, talking about Star Wars with the great John Mills.

But Chris, when you're not trying to figure out why you keep tripping on that one step, where can people find you?

ChrisMatthew, you know, it's my eyesight. I can't see what's below me. That's why.

MatthewOh, that's what it is. Okay, okay.

ChrisIt's either that or the step wasn't there and that's Odo and, you know, he's just kind of creating an extra step and tripping me up.

MatthewRight, right, right. Yeah.

ChrisBut anyway, when I'm keeping my balance, you can find me elsewhere on the network doing all those shows with you, of course. I've also got The Ready Room going again a bit with Larry Nemecek. You can find me in the back catalog across many shows over the last 15 years. And you can find me on social media. My username everywhere is cbryanjones, letter C and Bryan with a Y. Bluesky is where I'm most active, but I'm all over the place. So just hit me up wherever you are. I'd love to chat with you. And if you'd like to help us keep this rewatch and everything we're doing on the network going, we could definitely use your help to find out how to get involved, how to support the network. Please visit patreon.com/trekfm. We would not be here without your support. So thank you to everyone who is helping us now.

Well, Matthew, I'm excited about next time because we're going to get to meet Odo's old teacher as we talk about "The Alternate."

MatthewWell, Chris, that sounds like it's going to be an interesting family reunion. But thank you so much for joining us, and we will see you next time as we gaze into The Orb.