The title for this episode is taken from one of my favorite verses in the Bible:"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happened to them all."-- Ecclesiastes 9:11Nothing explains fate quite like that verse.
“Nor the Battle to the Strong’ is also one of my favorite episodes of DS9. It continues the trend of turning war from a the sanitized, distant act it had previously been in Trek to the dark, harsh reality. To do so, the episode features themes and direct lifts of scenes from such literary works as Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage and Erich Maria Reargues All Quiet on the Western Front, both novels that left a strong impression on my young adult life.
“Nor the Battle to the Strong” is one of the few episodes to center around Jake and rarer still, one that takes him seriously as a character. I exclude much of ’The Visitor” in saying this because of how much that episode depended upon Tony Todd as older Jake. Up until this point, Jake has bounced from mischievous scamp to whiny teenager mostly for comic relief. He finally grows up here after a long absence from the series altogether.
Jake is traveling with Bashir to a medical conference on his first journalist assignment. He is supposed to write a profile of Bashir, but has little enthusiasm for it. He catches what he thinks is a lucky break when a group of Klingons violate the ceasefire by attacking a federation colony. The heat of battle would make for afar more interesting article. Bashir is reluctant to divert their trip, but Jake convinces him the colonists will need a good doctor like him.
Jake is immediately overwhelmed by the carnage he witnesses in a makeshift hospital set up in a cave and the cold demeanor the medical staff have to maintain in order to to handle the masses of wounded and dying. Jake has to abandon his writing when he is drafted as an orderly.
Thecentral theme is Jake’s struggle to differentiate between fear and cowardice. He watches bashir treat a soldier who claims to have been shot by a klingon, but in fact wounded himself to avoid fighting. Jake remarks how disgusted his colleagues are by his cowardice. Later, Bashir and Jake come under fire when Klingons attack. Jake abandons Bashir is stark terror. When they are later reunited, Bashir does not blame him, but jake is tearing at himself inside.
Amid all the death, Jake deteriorates until the moment the Klingons enter the cave. Everyone is evacuating I a mad panic, but Jake is frozen with fear under a table. He grabs a phasor and begins firing wildly, causing a cave in.
Later, he awakens to learn he had inadvertently blocked the Klingon invasion party and bought enough time for everyone to escape. He is hailed as a hero, but does not feel it himself. He writes in his article about his true feelings and allows Bashir and his father to read it. Sisko assures him that everyone who faces combat feels that way. No one blames him for it. Yet, he still feels as though he did not measure up to the others’ sense of duty.
This is a powerful episode because it makes the mai character a flawed person, which is rare in Trek. The heroes are the ones that are always right. Ut here, it is left up to the audience to decide whether Jake was placed in way over his head by Bashir or if he truly was coward. I am inclined to think more the former. I do not think poorly of Jake after watching. On the contrary, I think he is more of a man now than ever before. I have never been in a situation like his and hopefully never will, but I certainly cannot judge his actions when I would likely do the same thing under the risk of death in a war of which I am not even supposed to be a part.
The only drawback I see--and I cannot blame the episode for it--is the bonding between Bashir and Jake never goes anywhere beyond “Nor the Battle to the Strong.’ I am disappointed by that. Certainly, these events were a life altering experience for Jake. You would think he would have connected with Bashir far more than he apparently did.
Rating: ***** (out of 5)
