Deep Space Nine Season Seven Episode Four

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Take Me Out to the Holosuite

Season 7 Episode 4

Plot Summary: Vulcan Captain Solok and his crew arrive at DS9. Apparently Sisko and he hate each other for some reason. After a brief chat, it is determined that Sisko will be pitting his crew against Soloks in a match of... Baseball!? The senior staff relentlessly read through the rules and regulations. Sisko chooses Odo as umpire. Eventually practice begins. And Everyone makes the team except Rom, who Sisko rudely ejects from practice. Cassidy Yates talks to Sisko and discovers why he hates Solok so much. In his academy days, Sisko and Solok got into a debate about whether Vulcans were better than Humans or Vice verse. Sisko, having been drunk at the time, made a fool of himself. Wanting to prove his point Sisko challenged Solok to a wrestling match. Obviously since Vulcans are three times stronger than humans, he lost horribly. And Solok has a taken every opportunity since to rub it in his face. He even included Sisko in his psychology reports on humans. And now Solok is doing it again, but this time with Sisko's game. Cassidy retells this tale to the crew and they agree that Solok must be beat. Eventually the game begins, and Sisko's team is still pretty darn bad. At one point Sisko fights a call made by Odo the Umpire and gets kicked out of the game. It is here as he watches his team losing, yet still trying that he starts to realize that he was missing something. Then he sees Rom in the stands next to him, and another realization comes to him: He was taking this all wrong. It wasn't whether he won or lost, it was the people around him, and the fun that was to be had. With that revelation, he sends Rom down to the dug out, and puts him up to bat. It didn't matter whether Rom succeeded or not, it just mattered that they all had a good time. Due to lucky timing Rom bunts the ball, and Nog races into home from third base giving the Niners their first and only run. The game ends 10 to 1 Vulcans. After the game Sisko and Co. party in Quarks. Solak goes up to Sisko and accuses him of manufacturing a triumph where none exists. Sisko turns to the others and they all give a toast to manufactured triumph. Solak can not bear the illogicalness of this and leaves, knowing that Sisko is finally free of the hold he had on him. Despite the loss Sisko and Co. did win. They had a great time, and now Solak is off Sisko' s back.

Sub-Plot: Zilch.

My Opinion: Ok, first off, the premise to this episode was awful. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'm happy to admit the episode was actually quite good and enjoyable. What made the episode worthwhile was all the great moments and lines surrounding the baseball gimmick, and all the pre-game learning. All the actual baseball playing was rather dull. Some examples of these moments are Odo practicing his moves, all of Worf's lines, O'Brien's gum, and he cast reading baseball information from pads. These combined with many more good lines and an intriguing plot about Sisko and Solok made the episode about 2 1/2 stars. Then the Niners lost. Avoiding the Stereo-type of the under-dogs winning, and creating the manufactured triumph scenes was an excellent move that made the episode more than worthwhile: It made it good!

Wrap-Up: "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" was example of an awful premise that was made good by character interaction, and good plot twists. I give it three stars

Review by -William Phillips

Back to Season Seven Index Back to DS9