Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 33: Armageddon Game [VHS]

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 33: Armageddon Game [VHS] Review

"Give me two good actors in a room," said frequent DS9 and Next Generation director Winrich Kolbe in Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman's book Captains' Logs Supplemental, "and I prefer that over six bad actors hanging from a rope on the Matterhorn."

Kolbe got his wish in "Armageddon Game," one of the early DS9 episodes to highlight the superb chemistry between costars Colm Meaney (who plays chief engineer Miles O'Brien) and Alexander Siddig (known as Siddig El Fadil at the time, and the actor portraying Dr. Bashir). The two Starfleet characters are assigned to a laboratory orbiting T'Lani III to implement an agreement between the feuding T'Lani and Kellerun societies, who wish to dismantle a biochemical warfare system known as the Harvester. Before the chief and the physician can finish the job, however, Kellerun soldiers overrun the lab and O'Brien is exposed to the Harvester's dangerous contents.

A number of times on DS9, Bashir and O'Brien find themselves in harm's way together, allowing the show's writers (Morgan Gendel in this case) and directors (such as Kolbe) to bring a rare sort of actorly texture to the proceedings. Meaney and Siddig simply click together with their excellent, often funny dialogue, some of it quibbling, much of it pure banter about the most human, everyday things: family, love, decisions once made, etc. A very rewarding show. --Tom Keogh