"Empok Nor"

[TroiFan4ever]

Caught this episode last night (8/20) on H&I. First let me begin by saying i like horror movies, so this being a horror episode, I already like it!

Another thing I like about "Empok Nor" (the episode) is the fact that Empok Nor (the station) LOOKS and is designed EXACTLY like Terok Nor/Deep Space Nine! But that station is dark and abandoned... like going into a rundown abandoned building night... creepy from the start.

One of my favorite scenes: So... O'Brien, Nog, Garak, and four other crewmen came in a runabout. Later, O'Brien and Nog are working to repair a conduit on Empok Nor... O'Brien asks Nog for a tool that he doesn't have so Nog goes back to the runabout to get it. But by the time he gets to the airlock, unfortunately the runabout is undocked and is emptily flying across space, then it blows up to a million pieces! KABOOM! I actually found it interesting how when Nog was standing there watching the whole thing he's like "That's not right!" I'm sure it's not, Nog!

Here's the OTHER scene I like (If you haven't seen "Empok Nor" DO NOT read this part!): So (Amaro?) is causally walking down the dark Promenade. I think it was something at what would've been Quark's bar caught his attention? Anyway, he's checking it out all interested... I'm literately close to my TV screen staring at him... and out of nowhere... something crashes through the glass and grabs Amaro!

It scared the absolute hell out of me.

I literally screamed, "WOAH!" My heart jumped! My aunt in the next room was like "what happened?" I'm like "nah... something on TV..." should've told her i was watching a Star Trek Deep Space Nine horror episode...
I've actually seen "Empok Nor" before and didn't remember that scene until last night! Shortly after that, the female engineer got tossed off the promenade balcony, from the upper level. Later, Garak murdered one male engineer (forgot his name) and then stabbed Amaro in the gut with a flux coupler. I forget how the other guy ended up getting killed. But i found it creepy yet interesting and very horror-movie-like that after capturing Nog and holding him hostage, Garak had the corpses of the four dead engineers from the Away Team dangling from the promenade and Garak taunts O'Brien saying they came to admire O'Brien and see how he does during the O'Brien vs. Garak showdown or something like that? But i like the way O'Brien ended up blowing Garak off his feet by using his combadge as a detonation device to blow up the phaser and tricorder.

Also, earlier in the episode after the runabout they came in got destroyed, i remember O'Brien and Nog were trying to send out a distress signal to Deep Space Nine to tell them to fetch them another runabout but Garak wasn't having any of it. I found it interesting that after O'Brien defeated evil Garak, there;s the last commercial break, and then Garak in the Infirmary being treated by Bashir, expressing his remorse for killing Amaro and the others. I would've liked to at least seen the other runabout come to pick up O'Brien, Nog, and Garak to bring them back to DS9.

Before that though, I actually laughed at the one scene when one Cardassian is looking out for somebody, phaser in hand... but Garak, who'd been lying in a stasis tube with his own phaser taunts "looking for me?" and blasts the hell out of him with that thing! Lighting him up like a Christmas Tree and whatnot!

I remember when i first opened my "I'm starting to dig DS9" thread and i listed this as one of my favorites, people were saying they didn't like this episode. What did you not like about "Empok Nor?" I mean, sure, yes, there was room for improvements but i thought this was very-well put-together horror episode, a scary one at that... well maybe not that scary but did any of you find "Empok Nor" scary?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

My problem with the episode is the same as my problem with a lot of horror films, the characters deaths are a result of their own extreme stupidity, and it bothers me when movies or TV treat characters like murder fodder and devalue their lives.

After all the redshirts were redshirted off I did like the "You're no soldier." "No, I'm an engineer!" bit. But I can't get past the way they brought eight characters along just to be murder fodder.

 

[Armus]

Ready to watch this episode in HD...

 

[Terok Nor]

It wasn't the horror aspect of this episode that pulled me in but the psychological aspect. Garak taunted and threatened O'Brien to the point where it was really no choice but kill or be killed. I think this episode showed O'Brien the soldier and Garak the sadistic spy at their horrible strengths.

I must say I also enjoyed the fact almost the entire main cast got a Garak episode to themselves throughout the series. This was O'Brien's turn and the dynamic between them was interesting to watch. Nog also.

I didn't know this episode was disliked but I can see how it might pale next to some of the episodes surrounding it.

 

[Tosk]

But I can't get past the way they brought eight characters along just to be murder fodder.

Four. But I'm curious how you do a story where people get murdered without using redshirts.

 

[Timo]

Curiously, half the murder fodder were brought along explicitly because the heroes feared they would become murder fodder. Anticipation of hostilities prompted the exceptional addition of security folks to the engineer team.

So this isn't the standard horror story where innocent civilians fall one by one because they aren't expecting trouble, until the remaining core of hardened survivors deals with the villain (or not). It's one where the folks were supposed to be alert from the get-go. More the shame that the soldiers don't perform well? Especially as they aren't even the first to be eliminated by the enemy.

Just bringing more engineers to die would have been more satisfactory by cold plot logic. But dramatically, the overconfident guards work much better. It's not as if they ever stood a chance against, well, anything much.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SpyOne]

I get the rub: it's fine when a summer camp councelor who isn't paying attention gets impaled by a crudely built booby trap. But it's frustrating when a Starfleet Security officer who has been sent on this mission specifically because of the chance of encountering enemy forces seems to be holding the stupid-ball because the plot needs it.

But it is, of course, believable that a small team of Cardassian Special Forces could pick off a similar force of Starfleet Security one-by-one.
Its just so hard to do that right, especially since there's a sharp limit to minutes in the episode. And it's especially hard to do it if you are trying to keep the killer off screen. You can't show him rising from his masterful hiding place if you want to keep who/what he is secret. And you can't show four of them silently killing the one Starfleet guy who seperated just enough from the group if you're trying to keep secret how many there are.

I guess the best way to handle it is to never show it at all: maybe an off-camera scream, maybe just "where's Higgins?" One by one members of the team disappear, sometimes leaving signs of a struggle and some blood, sometimes not.
But I remember one scene where a security guy was guarding an engineer and wanted to investigate something, so he says something like "stay here, I'll be back" and my mind went "that's fine for the jock at the slumber party, but a trained guard takes the engineer with him or doesn't go."

 

[DS9forever]

A great episode, might have been the first or the second Bryan Fuller was involved in.

 

[picardjean-luc]

There's a related discussion thread (albeit from several year's ago) about the episode here,
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/empok-nor-is-garak-guilty-of-murder.86468/

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Four. But I'm curious how you do a story where people get murdered without using redshirts.

There's a big difference between a movie where characters are set up like bowling pins to get predictably murdered because they made ridiculously terrible decisions, and a movie where characters fight hard and intelligently to survive and end up getting killed.

It's the difference between I Know What You Did Last Summer and John Carpenter's The Thing.

In Empok Nor they even 'Split up, we'll cover more ground that way'.

This conversation is reminding me of Cabin in the Woods. Empok Nor is what Cabin in the Woods is calling out as ridiculous.

 

[Tosk]

It's the difference between I Know What You Did Last Summer and John Carpenter's The Thing.

I love JC's The Thing (top five, easily), but multiple characters wander off alone in that film too, and some of them even just stand still waiting to be killed. ...aka terrible decisions.

But I get your point.

 

[Timo]

Well, tactically speaking, what would be the point of not splitting up? The two Cardassians have the initiative. If the heroes huddle together, they die together - it's a Cardassian station, with the advantage going to the natives who have already demonstrated they can rig up big explosions, and who can activate the station's Cardassian-friendly, alien-hostile defenses at any moment.

Also, time is on the side of the Cardassians. Our heroes have to outmaneuver them as quickly as possible, and their plan for that is the SOS, which necessarily involves doing work at multiple points. Moving from point to point in one group would slow down the heroes and allow the Cardassians to figure out what they do. It's a no-brainer, after all: if the heroes are observed doing things ABCD, then undoing A when the heroes move on to C is the right way to proceed.

O'Brien, in charge here, makes the right decision, even if it assuredly costs the lives of some of his team. Stolzoff just fumbles her move, failing to down either of her opponents in what would have been an affordable loss had she been able to hurt even one of them.

What O'Brien doesn't initially realize is that he does stand a chance to do the tactically even more desirable thing, which is to preemptively attack. Garak's presence allows him to do that. Who knows, if O'Brien had thought of that earlier on, perhaps Garak wouldn't yet have been too far gone into his happy place, and victory would have been theirs?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I get the rub: it's fine when a summer camp councelor who isn't paying attention gets impaled by a crudely built booby trap. But it's frustrating when a Starfleet Security officer who has been sent on this mission specifically because of the chance of encountering enemy forces seems to be holding the stupid-ball because the plot needs it.

Most Starfleet "security" officers never seemed any more competent at fighting/defense/security than any other SF officer. This might be more about Roddenberry's utopian view of the future, that nobody from SF was really a warrior. There were exceptions of course.

Now MACO's seemed pretty bad ass and capable of hadling themselves in any situation (sure, some still got killed, but usually in a massive firefight). A shame they didn't think about Space Marines until ENT years later.

 

[Infern0]

I had this episode on VHS back in the day, Blaze of Glory was the other episode.

It was the first Trek video I convinced my dad to buy me when we were at the supermarket.

As a kid I was a bit to young to appreciate the dark story, (I preferred episodes with loads of space battles)

But as an Adult I think it's a great episode.