Television Review: Move Along Home (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, S1x10, 1993)

Move Along Home (S01E10)

Airdate: 14 March 1993

Written by: Frederick Rappaport, Lisa Rich and Jeanne Carrigan-Fauci
Directed by: David Carson

Running Time: 46 minutes

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is rightly celebrated as the pinnacle of the franchise’s golden age, a series that dared to trade the sterile corridors of starships for the gritty, morally ambiguous promenade of a space station, weaving complex serialised narratives long before such storytelling became commonplace. Yet, even the most revered programmes are not immune to the occasional creative misfire—episodes that garner infamy rather than fame. A prime and painful example of this phenomenon can be found in the first season’s tenth instalment, Move Along Home. This episode stands as a stark anomaly, a bewildering lapse in judgement that has secured its place not merely as a weak entry, but as a strong contender for the title of worst episode in the entire Deep Space Nine canon.

The plot revolves around a moment of potential historic significance for the station: the arrival of the first official delegation from the Gamma Quadrant, the humanoid Wadi. Commander Sisko, prepared for a formal diplomatic exchange and clad in ceremonial dress, finds his protocols immediately disregarded. The Wadi, led by the mischievous Falow (Joel Brooks), bypass diplomacy entirely and head straight to Quark’s bar, eager for games of chance. The avaricious Ferengi, seeing what he perceives as easy marks, attempts to fleece the newcomers but is swiftly caught cheating. In response, Falow insists on playing what he terms “an honest game,” introducing the Wadi’s own mysterious pastime. As Quark begins to play, a bizarre crisis unfolds: Sisko, Dr. Bashir, Dax, and Major Kira vanish from the station without a trace, materialising in a strange, nonsensical labyrinth. Their disappearance is noted by Jake Sisko and the station crew, prompting Constable Odo to launch an investigation.

The episode’s central mechanic is then revealed. As Quark manipulates the game’s pieces, he slowly realises—with dawning horror—that each piece corresponds to one of his missing officers. The game becomes a matter of life and death; when a piece is eliminated, the corresponding officer might die. This premise reaches a tense peak when Dr. Bashir’s piece is removed, and the doctor subsequently disappears from the labyrinth. Faced with an ultimatum to sacrifice one piece to save the others, Quark, in a rare moment of moral fortitude, refuses. The consequence is that all three remaining officers fall into a symbolic abyss. Yet, in a final, frustrating twist, they all simply rematerialise on the station, unharmed. Falow reveals the entire harrowing experience was merely a game, a lesson designed to teach Quark not to cheat his customers. The profound existential threat is dismissed with a glib, “It’s only a game.”

This denouement is the core of the episode’s failure, transforming genuine peril into a pointless exercise. Move Along Home is not just poorly regarded; it is actively loathed by a significant portion of the fanbase and has been diplomatically disowned by much of the cast and crew in subsequent years. Its infamy is well-deserved. The foundational idea, credited to writer Michael Piller, drew inspiration from Checkmate, an episode of the seminal 1960s series The Prisoner. That episode features a human chess game in the Village square, a visually iconic and thematically rich set-piece where the protagonist is a pawn in a literal game of control. The concept of protagonists being trapped in a surreal, game-like reality is, however, far from original within Star Trek itself. The Original Series experimented with this trope in Spectre of the Gun, where Kirk and his crew are forced to re-enact the O.K. Corral shootout by telepathic aliens. That episode, while a product of severe budget constraints, leveraged its artificial, stage-like sets to create a disquieting, dreamlike atmosphere—a “near-sabotage aesthetic” that, as the review notes, turned limitation into a surreal virtue. The Next Generation later revisited the idea with The Royale, an episode almost universally panned for trapping the crew in a cheap casino simulation based on a bad novel. It was a significant low point and conceptually and executionally inferior to its predecessors, noting that the writer himself disowned the final product.

Move Along Home unfortunately learns none of the lessons from these earlier attempts. While the general idea of a high-stakes alien game had potential, it is utterly ruined by poor execution. Director David Carson, otherwise a respected Star Trek veteran, delivers uncharacteristically flat and lethargic work here. The labyrinth sequences, which should be fraught with tension and disorientation, are instead overlong, plodding, and devoid of any genuine suspense. The actors, usually reliable, seem adrift, with some performances verging on the awkwardly pantomime. The final scenes, culminating in the anti-climactic “it’s only a game” revelation, feel like a spectacularly cheap cop-out. It renders the crew’s peril, Quark’s anguish, and the audience’s investment entirely pointless, a narrative cheat that undermines any emotional or dramatic weight the episode might have accumulated. It commits the same cardinal sin as The Royale: creating high stakes only to reveal they were illusory, without the narrative cleverness to make that revelation meaningful or insightful.

The episode’s few saving graces are insufficient to salvage it. The initial foray into surrealism, with its singing children, shows a flicker of ambition, but it quickly becomes annoying, leaning too heavily on obvious Alice in Wonderland references rather than developing a coherent, internally logical dream logic. The sole consistent bright spot is Armin Shimmerman’s performance as Quark. Shimmerman commits fully to the role, convincingly portraying the Ferengi’s greed, panic, and eventual moral conflict. His performance is a masterclass in making the most of weak material, but it is a lone pillar in a crumbling structure.

In the end, Move Along Home remains a glaring blemish on Deep Space Nine’s otherwise impressive record. It suffers from a derivative concept executed with a stunning lack of imagination, pace, or dramatic payoff. When compared to the surreal psychological tension of Spectre of the Gun or even the iconic imagery of Checkmate, it feels embarrassingly shallow. It shows how a promising premise can be gutted by a weak script, uninspired direction, and a conclusion that insults the audience’s intelligence. Its place in Star Trek history is secure, but only as a textbook example of how not to construct a science-fiction morality tale.

RATING: 3/10 (+)

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