In today’s episode, the DS9 crew discovers a group of people who can add and remove sprite layers to space on demand. But Sisko might have a tough time taking the man who brought the Defiant over seriously, considering the wildfire blazing in his pants region. What kind of basic is Sisko? Has stress made him forget his quadrants? And what if someone has to go to the bathroom during your story? All this and more in The Mist, the book that knows it’s always time for nachos.

The Mist
Authors: Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Pages: 271
Published: July 1998
Timeline: Sisko’s story takes place during the Federation’s conflict with the Klingons, around season 4 or so; the framing story is maybe a year or two after that
Prerequisites: Not really any, other than general knowledge of what’s going on around the time of the Federation/Klingon conflict
Borrowable on Archive.org? Yes

Sisko comes to the Captain’s Table by way of Bajor, ordered to take 48 hours of shore leave by Dr. Bashir to relieve stress built up by the ongoing Dominion War. There, he settles in and tells a story of somewhat recent vintage, regarding a people of legend known as the Mist. A distress call comes from an area of space with nothing there. Too much nothing, in fact: not even space debris or dust molecules. Everyone on the Defiant is trying to figure out how that’s possible when they’re engulfed by a thin line of mist, at which point they see a ship and many (inhabited) star systems that weren’t there before. But to DS9’s and the Klingons’ sensors, they’ve completely vanished.

The Klingons pass through the Defiant’s position while looking for them, making everyone super-dizzy (especially Nog, what with his ear situation). Captain Victor uses their disorientation to beam through their shields (yes, through them) and tell them that the five star sytems they see on the screen are the homeworlds of the Mist. Many of them are populated by a melange of familiar races—people rescued (both truly and in air quotes) by the Mist themselves. They’re phased out of normal space, and as such aren’t typically concerned with its affairs. But Victor claims the latest generation of colonists is chafing against how the Mist runs things and are looking to expand—and that means stealing DS9 to wage war on the Mist homeworld.

But once Sisko meets John David Phelps Jackson, the so-called aggressor, the tune changes pretty quickly. It becomes abundantly clear that Captain Victor is a lying liar with some kind of lying-based super liar powers. First of all, there are 208 worlds in Mist jurisdiction, not five, and he, not Jackson, is the one who wants to start the war—with normal space, not the Mist homeworld. On top of that, he forgot to mention the tiny little detail that if you spend too long phased into Mist space, you’re stuck there permanently. And on top of that, the Cardassians are staking out the newly exposed wormhole, and Dukat stands poised to strike at any moment…

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The Mist is my favorite of these so far, and though it’s not always fair to conflate “favorite” and “best”, I’d also say it’s that, no doubt owing probably a good bit to the fact that Dean Wesley Smith cofounded the Captain’s Table concept with John Ordover, and thus surely had more of an advantage getting cozy with the idea. Bartending for seventeen years probably didn’t hurt either.1This fun fact about Smith is not only mentioned in Voyages of Imagination, but also dropped by a nameless character, which confirmed his identity for me after being pretty sure about it for several pages. As such, the camaraderie feels a lot more organic in this book than it does in the first two, as do the interruptions. I also think making one of the people at the table someone who was also actually a part of Sisko’s story adds an interesting dimension to the proceedings (more on that below).

But it goes beyond that even. The Mist also feels better than the previous two because it’s more of an ensemble story than those two were, though you could argue for at least the Kirk half of War Dragons. A captain is nothing without their crew, and it seems odd that a captain would waltz into a place like the Captain’s Table and tell a story that excludes nearly everyone that they serve with, like Picard did (and from how the plot synopsis for the next one reads, I suspect Janeway’s does). Not everyone has a role—Odo and Quark are, notably, completely absent—but it’s nice to see, say, Nog serving in a crew member capacity for the first time in a novel, even if he’s not contributing much. It just reinforces the fact that so much of the strength of Deep Space Nine is evenly distributed among its ensemble, not overly concentrated in any single character.

I did enjoy the book, but there’s one thing about it that doesn’t really jell at all for me, which is that I don’t really buy much of anything about Captain Victor’s character. For someone who sits on a throne of lies, he’s not very good at telling them believably; he has villain written all over him from the very start. It’s also unclear what there is for him to have against normal space, not having ever grown up in it and not even having the ability to go to it. Say he successfully brings DS9 to the Mist permanently—then what? Sure, it’s scary being an invisible enemy that can shift ships out of their own space and make people dizzy, but what does he stand to gain? It would have been more believable if he just wanted to assert dominance over his own territory, but wanting to wage war against normal space throws him completely off the rails. He’s a complete mess, gold yachting cap and all.

There’s also the fact that the need to inject the questions, opinions, and arguments of the people listening to the story in the bar means that the actual stories being told don’t get to use all of the usual 270-some-odd pages to incubate. For the purposes of the Captain’s Table, they have to be pretty mean ‘n’ lean, over and done without too much fuss or muss, and that’s caused them all to feel pretty slight to some degree. But none of it was too much to damper this one too badly. The idea with The Captain’s Table is let yourself get carried along with the current of a story like you would if you were catching up with a friend, and for me personally, The Mist is the one that has succeeded the most in that regard so far.

MVP & LVP

• My MVP for this one is Sotugh. He was a really fun character, and it’s a neat wrinkle that he’s also part of Sisko’s story and thus can interject from experience rather than merely the usual Klingon bluster. Plus, if you ever wanted to explain Klingon attitudes to someone, his remarks are practically a clinic in how their mindset causes them to understand an event differently than others.
• I’d say the LVP is Nog, but it’s a really mild one. He isn’t a burden, but he’s not here to do much more than man the phone lines.

Stray Bits

• I don’t have anywhere else to say it, but by golly, that’s what the Stray Bits section is for: “Captain Victor” is such a Love Boat-sounding-ass name, and yet somehow, it works, probably because it captures his unctuousness so well.
• Among the non-Mist races living in the phased-out space are, rather amusingly, some TOS-style Klingons. Sotugh, like Worf, refuses to discuss the matter with outsiders.
• There are an unnamed “middle-aged man [and] woman” that comprise part of Sisko’s audience, and it took me a little bit to realize they’re supposed to be Dean and Kathryn themselves. But then that raised another question: how did they get into the Captain’s Table if they aren’t captains? Authors’ privilege, I suppose. Or maybe they are captains of ships that they just never talk about? Again, their prerogative. As long as Cap is cool with ’em, so am I.
• The Quilli captain’s name is Zzthwthwp. Does he have some homunculus ancestry?
• “We are the guardians of the wormhole between the Alpha and Delta Quadrants” — I genuinely can’t believe no one caught this before it went to press, but I’ll be charitable and choose to interpret it as the Dominion War stressing Sisko out so much that he simply misspoke. (14)
• Really disappointing to learn Sisko is one of those “don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee” people. Janeway established her coffee love early enough to get a pass, but this one doesn’t feel great. What’s next, a “Live Laugh Love” decoration in his office? (ibid.)
• Everyone stops for a bathroom break shortly into the story. That’s a nice touch; even though time is suspended in the Captain’s Table, it’s nice to see that Smith & Rusch remembered that other functions aren’t. (52)
• Chapter 6 ends with the reveal that John David Phelps Jackson (supposedly) wants to use DS9 to take over the Mist’s homeworld. Then you turn the page and Sisko immediately asks if the kitchen serves nachos. The tonal whiplash was so bonkers, I laughed myself into a coughing fit. Legitimately the funniest thing I can remember in a Trek novel in recent memory. (69, 70)
• Cute little Lord of the Rings nod toward the end. Sisko mentions the Cardassian fleet scattering like ants, and a few pages later, Zzthwthwp backtracks a little bit: “I thought you said that the Cardassians ran like—ents?—whatever those are.” (211)

Final Assessment

Good. No doubt because Dean Wesley Smith had a hand in creating the Captain’s Table concept, this is the most successful execution of it so far, the one that seems to have the best grasp of the fine details. The assemblage of bar patrons is the most lively, Sisko’s story is one that highlights the talents of his crew and not just himself, and it’s got some interesting basic details undergirding its premise. Though nothing about its primary antagonist makes much sense, that wasn’t enough to keep this from being the first of the Captain’s Table books to leave me smiling at the end.

NEXT TIME: Janeway serves aboard a Fire Ship