A "deeper" Jem'Hadar episode, April 2 2002
Episode title: Hippocratic OathTeleplay by: Lisa Klink Story by: Nicholas Corea and Lisa Klink Directed by: René Auberjoins The Jem'Hadar have been included in a few DS9 episodes before "Hippocratic Oath", but before this particular episode, they've only been portrayed as honorless killing machines without free will or capability to individual thought. The third season episode "The Abandoned" was a perfect example of an episode that did everything it could to make the Jem'Hadar as hard to relate to as possible, making killing them in cold blood less questionable. "Hippocratic Oath", however, shows us a totally new side of this engineered race by telling a tale about a group of Jem'Hadar who want to brake free of their slavery. Their leader is Goran'Agar, a Jem'Hadar individual who had crashlanded on a planet a few years before, with not enoug Ketracell White, a combound the Jem'Hadar need to sustain the chemical balance of their cells. This drug is a way to ensure the genetically engineered soldiers of the Dominion don't misbehave. After going through serious physical symptoms, Goran'Agar recovered however, realizing he didn't need the White anymore. Bashir and O'Brien are on their way to DS9 after a mission in the Gamma Quadrant, when they crashland on that same planet, where Goran'Agar is in charge of a group of Jem'Hadar, wishing to brake their need for the Ketracell White. Goran'Agar orderes Bashir to help to find the answer to his peculiar recovery, so that he can save the rest of his men who are still unchanged and are quickly running out of The White. Meanwhile, O'Brien plannes the two Starfleet officers' escape. The basic story of the story is challenging and thought provoking, but it doesn't really come alive. Wether it's Lisa Klink's writing or René Auberjoins's directing, "Hippocratic Oath" is left a bit raw and hollow. The dialoque is filled with clichés, and even the better than usual acting performances from Colm Meaney as O'Brien and especially the surpringly beliavable interpretation by the usually less than convincing, although developing Alexander Siddig aka Siddig El Fadij don't save the story from falling back from being a truly original story to being a traditional adventure. Sure, the issues the episodes deals with are there to be seen, and effort has been made to turn "Hippocratic Oath" into something mature, but insufficient writing has made it nothing really remarcable. The episode has also a sub-plot about Worf's adaptation to the life on the space station as a non-security officer, a story that had to be told at some point, the sooner the better. It isn't a total failure, but not a particularly succesful piece of writing eather. "Hippocratic Oath" does a good job of making the Jem'Hadar a bit deeper, even if the execution of that attempt lacks considerably.
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