In the ninth episode of the fourth season of Deep Space Nine, Worf is asked to join an expedition lead by Kor and Jadzia to attain a mystical Klingon sword. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.
I liked this episode. It’s not stellar – some of the pacing in the middle of it is odd – but it’s a great chance to see where Deep Space Nine can take Worf. After eight episodes where he was slowly added to the crew, I was ecstatic about a Worf-centric tale that was ALSO about finding treasure. YES. THANK YOU. PERFECT.
But let’s put aside my love of treasure-hunting tropes and heists. (Except let’s NOT because I LOVE THEM SO MUCH.) I want Worf to get the same treatment as the other characters on Deep Space Nine. I love how gritty this show often feels, and I adore that the writers are willing to stick the characters in relentlessly complicated situations without giving them easy answers. I think you can see the start of that here in “The Sword of Kahless.†The episode starts off as an infectiously joyous adventure between Jadzia, Kor, and Worf, especially since all three of them know how important the Sword of Kahless is to the Klingons. After the season opener, it’s clear that there’s a new meaning behind this sword: perhaps it can be used to repair relations between the Klingons and the Federation.
This excitement doesn’t let up once they travel to the Vulcan excavation site, or when they’re faced with a puzzle inside the museum chamber, and when they actually find the sword of Kahless? Oh, it’s a magnificent scene, y’all. You truly get the sense of how huge this discovery is. (It also helps that it looked like no other bat’leth we’ve ever seen.) Unsurprisingly, the Lethean from the cold open appears IMMEDIATELY after this, and Toral is there, too, and it’s a mess. I didn’t find the struggle between the trio and the Duras house all that interesting. The Star Trek universe is full of Klingon in-fighting like this, so I was pleased that “The Sword of Kahless†went in a drastically different direction.
That being said, the direction the writers take is… a little muddy, I suppose. I think that they tried to do two things at once: a story where Worf must cope with disappointment he feels towards his idol, and a story where the mythological power of the Sword of Kahless makes these two Klingons act horribly towards each other. Both are fascinating ideas that are touched on in far less time than they deserve. I wonder, though, if I felt this way because the sets for this episode are so repetitious and homogenous. I feel like we’ve seen those caves a million times, you know?
Regardless, I think there are seeds of a greater idea here. I was entertained by Worf’s realizing his boyhood hero was not exactly the person he thought he was. Kor’s a lot to handle, given his drunkenness and his penchant for hyperbole and exaggeration. But in this specific context, those flaws are exacerbated. It doesn’t help that Kor begins to imagine himself as the true leader of the Klingons. Yet once Worf starts to fall under the spell of the Sword of Kahless, this episode becomes something else. That’s great! But there’s not much of it because that transition happens so late in the episode.
I don’t want to deny how bizarre it was to watch a scene where Worf very much appeared to be entertaining the idea of DROPPING KOR OFF OF A CLIFF. I mean… HOLY SHIT. THAT’S FUCKED UP. Extremely fucked up! And the Kor and Worf fight viciously over the Sword, and I also can’t deny how shocking that felt to me. Worf was getting dirty already. Truthfully, though, my favorite part of this episode was Jadzia, who turns into a babysitter for two adult men who can’t keep their delusions of grandeur or their hands to themselves. BLESS HER HEART FOR LITERALLY STUNNING BOTH OF THEM WHEN THEY WON’T STOP. It’s like a metaphorical rolled-up newspaper to the head, and both of them deserved it. Without Jadzia, this whole journey would have ended in disaster. JADZIA FOR PRESIDENT.
So floating the Sword in space is probably a good idea. I think it would have been easier to portray it as an object with a literal magical power, but I found the imagined power way more meaningful. The misguided hope they felt for themselves overpowered their senses, and it made Worf and Kor do awful things. I look forward to further Worf storylines, but I definitely hope the scripts are a little tighter than this one.
The video for “The Sword of Kahless†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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