David Bridges
Earlier this week, James Darren—the actor and singer finest recognized for his roles within the Gidget movies, and, to sci-fi followers, his flip because the kooky lounge singer hologram Vic Fontaine on Star Trek: Deep House 9—handed away on the age of 88. A late arrival to the Star Trek galaxy, Darren’s inescapably wry appeal and easy takes on traditional jazz have been an unlikely match for a sequence that was staring down the barrel of some its grandest, most difficult storytelling. However his enduring reputation displays that actually, a personality like Vic Fontaine was at all times simply as essential to Deep House 9‘s story of battle and compromise in utopia.
A late arrival in a longtime ongoing present is at all times a difficult place to be in for an actor. Star Trek was no stranger to this all through its half-century-plus of existence, and is crammed with as many success tales (Jeri Ryan’s arrival as Seven of 9 in Voyager‘s fourth season) as it’s controversial ones—Deep House 9 itself confronted this with the addition of Nicole de Boer’s Ezri Dax, the following host of the Dax symbiont to exchange Terri Farrell’s Jadzia after her exit. However Vic Fontaine, launched late into the sixth season of the present, confronted a very daunting entry. Star Trek had loads of recurring holodeck bits earlier than that performed with anachronistic and tonal clashes: TNG had issues like Picard’s love of ’40s noir and his detective persona Dixon Hill, or its rare brushes with a maniacal Dr. Moriarty. Voyager, operating concurrently with DS9 at this level, went by a complete bunch, from Sandrine’s, to the Paxau Resort, to Honest Haven.
However Vic Fontaine wasn’t simply one other avenue and style for a present that frequently performed with style to waltz down: he was a lovable, all-singing, all-dancing smoothie, a sendup of ’60s mobster flicks, being shoved into the center of a present at its bloodiest and darkest, as Deep House 9 reckoned with the price of complete battle in Star Trek‘s idealized future.
It was an extremely dangerous transfer, however one which paid off enormously. Quite a lot of this was resulting from Darren’s charisma: as tonally alien to DS9 as Fontaine was, Darren suffused the hologram with an affable appeal and humor that made the viewers and Deep House 9‘s war-weary heroes alike shortly fall into his orbit and really feel comfy. Nevertheless it’s additionally for what Fontaine and his lounge got here to signify because the Dominion Battle raged throughout the sequence: a slice of tradition and luxury that united our myriad heroes, a slice of dwelling that was not particularly any singular being’s dwelling. Vic Fontaine got here to signify to Deep House 9 this romanticized perfect nearly as lofty because the beliefs the Dominion Battle was being fought for, this inventive imaging of 1 society’s previous that could possibly be shared and made accessible to the numerous, and unity to be present in that cultural alternate.
This turns into express from nearly the second Vic is launched to the sequence. In “His Approach,” he’s the catalyst that brings collectively the climax of Kira and Odo’s on-again, off-again romantic arc, offering a touchstone whilst their very own baggage as a Bajoran and as one of many Changelings started to complicate their place within the battle increasingly. It’s Vic that gives a spot for Nog’s story about wartime trauma after he loses his leg in one among DS9‘s most brutal battle episodes, a spot for these characters to flee to and be in contact with a common sense of personhood. Vic and his lounge aren’t only a dwelling away from the battle, however a canvas for Deep House 9‘s private tales about love, personhood, and grief to intermingle and be given house. It’s a significant mirror to the present’s grand story, and a relentless reminder that when he reveals up, when you may be getting a break from the sorrows and motion of the Dominion Battle, so are DS9‘s characters, if just for a short time.
It’s why climaxing Vic’s arc within the splendidly foolish “Badda-Bing Badda-Bang”—the season seven episode the place Vic’s holoprogram comes beneath menace of a complete reset when a part of its storyline sees Vic ousted from his residence by the mafia—clicks even proper as DS9‘s wider wartime story is reaching its climax. Vic represented a spot the place everybody on DS9 was welcome—an concept even Sisko got here to admire, after his preliminary distancing from the lounge over its idealized view of a previous that will’ve seemed down on him. By threatening it, and by having that menace unanimously pull the entire major solid collectively to stop it (through, after all, the medium of a traditional heist story), DS9 was telling us that this was the house these disparate characters had discovered collectively, this protected haven away from the darkness encroaching additional and additional in on them, they usually have been going to do their damndest to put it aside.
It’s becoming then, that one of many final scenes in all of DS9 rightfully takes us again to Vic’s. After the battle is over and the treaty with the Dominion is signed, the crew comes collectively to listen to Vic one final time, earlier than all of them start to go their separate methods. Darren provides a surprising rendition of “The Approach You Look Tonight”—a music about appreciating the little issues individuals who love one another discover in a single different. It’s romantic, however it’s additionally a music about this snapshot of those folks collectively, buddies, lovers, survivors, earlier than the circumstances that steeled them and introduced them collectively within the first place start to fade from reminiscence. It’s a reminder that that is one they fought for—for one last time, that probability to be collectively, to attach, to really feel one thing on this shared place. Within the shadow of battle, Vic Fontaine was the intense mild that Deep House 9 wanted.
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Daniel Mercer
Ethan Carter
