The Star Trek Episode So Bad Its Own Writer Agrees With Haters
While Deep Space Nine remains the best Star Trek show, it had its fair share of truly awful episodes. Many fans generally consider “Move Along Home” as one of the worst–the kind of episode always worth skipping when you go for a series rewatch. What is notable about this episode is that even its writer Frederick Rappaport agrees that the episode is bad, especially thanks to its ending which reveals that none of the crew was ever in any danger.
Aliens Obsessed With Games
To understand the writer’s disappointment, you need to know a bit more about “Move Along Home,” including its bizarre story and how this tale developed. This is an episode where visiting aliens love to play games and get annoyed by Quark trying to cheat them.
They then make the Ferengi play a game of their own design, one which snatches various crew members from Deep Space Nine and forces them into a mysterious game with seemingly deadly consequences for its players.
No One Was In Danger
Most of “Move Along Home” is baffling–it’s deliberately difficult for audiences to understand the rules of the game even though it’s nothing more than live-action Chutes and Ladders (no, really). The episode also lacks any real character development, but that is not its greatest problem.
By far, the biggest issue with the story is that it ends with everyone finding out their lives were never in any danger despite everyone falling off a cliff at the end and Bashir apparently being sacrificed earlier in the story.
The Writer Agrees
Fans have hated this ending from the beginning, and “Move Along Home” writer Frederick Rappaport agrees with them. “The ending, where we learn it was just a game, undercut everything that went down for the previous four acts,” he said. “It all seems pointless if there wasn’t any jeopardy after all.”
He’s right, of course–it’s basically Storytelling 101 that any good drama requires stakes, and revealing at the end that the episode that there were never any stakes makes “Move Along Home” feel superfluous.
Rappaport claimed “I’ve heard from some fans who felt cheated that the characters were never in any kind of threat” and explicitly said, “I agree with those fans.”
Quark Would Have To Pay For Bashir’s Life
If the writer had his way, then how would “Move Along Home” have ended? Rappaport claims that his ending had the crew winning the game (after a cool Indiana Jones-style sequence involving Sisko nearly falling into a chasm), but they then discover that Bashir hadn’t been returned to Deep Space Nine.
At this point, the aliens behind this strange game force Quark to return his ill-gotten winnings in order to get the doctor back.
Too Many Cooks
The writer of “Move Along Home” clearly hates the ending that we saw onscreen, but how did we get that terrible ending? The short answer is that, like many Star Trek episodes, this strange adventure had many writers bringing it to life.
The story was crafted by showrunner Michael Piller and the actual script was written by Rappaort as well as two other writers: Lisa Rich and Jeanne Carrigan-Fauci.
Nothing is inherently wrong with having multiple writers, but in the case of “Move Along Home,” it seems there were too many cooks in this particular kitchen, and the final result was worse than anything Neelix ever served to the Voyager crew.
Fortunately, this was the low point for Deep Space Nine, and the show only got better from here. But longtime fans are still dealing with the Dominion War-style PTSD that comes from having that stupid “allamaraine” song stuck in our heads for the last three decades.
