S5E16, “Dr. Bashir, I Presume” (story: Jimmy Diggs/Ronald D. Moore)

Julian: he is good at everything, handsome, thin, and young. Everyone naturally hated him for a while. (Exuding arrogance and lightly harassing all the women didn’t help.) Through the course of the series he’s had lots of chances to build up a repository of respect and goodwill. Because he’s so perfect, Starfleet wants to use him as a model for a medical hologram program. Doctor Lewis Zimmerman, the developer of the program, shows up to work on scanning Julian and building up his personality in the program. He wants to talk to everyone in Julian’s life, which Bashir is fine with, save for his parents FOR MYSTERIOUS REASONS.

As a jerk, Dr. Z ignores Julian’s request to omit his parents from the process, and soon enough they’ve arrived on the station. Julian is like, so embarrassed over them, oh my god. There’s some lingering resentment to tease out but the bigger issue is that their presence means there are more chances to spill HIS MYSTERIOUS SECRET.

That secret being: Julian was genetically modified as a child. Of course his genetic modifications become known all over the ship within about one day, since they insist on having loud conversations about them in public places. It’s not only a taboo, it’s illegal. They throw in a nice callback to Khan here to remind us why. So it ought to spell the end of Julian’s Starfleet career. But after some effective and efficient scenes between the family, Julian’s father assumes responsibility for the decision to employ genetic modification and takes the punishment. This neatly resolves the family tension and the need to toss someone in jail. And I guess Sisko agrees Julian’s not about to engineer a mutiny on account of his genetic superiority, and calls it good.

I liked this one. I’d like to see more discussion about what genetic modifications mean in this universe, so it’s not just the binary awesome doctor/or/violent sociopath options presented by Julian or Khan. But maybe that’s coming. I also liked Julian’s family and this manages to efficiently cover a lot of ground with them. Most everyone my age will recognize Julian’s dad as Babu from Seinfeld and it’s nice to see him in a role with some depth. Dr. Z is an interesting character too, and a useful contrast to Bashir. Zimmerman is pompous, Bashir has gotten over himself. Zimmerman is highly intelligent and would like to tell you all about it, Julian is smart enough to know it’s not worth demeaning anyone. Zimmerman is short and bald, Julian is tall and has glorious hair. Our lesson here is that there are a lot of ways to succeed in life. But Starfleet would rather the holoDoc is Bashir, not Zimmerman, and that tells us something.

Tossed in is painfully drawn out B-story about Rom working up the courage to admit to Leeta that he likes her. This was fine, if a bit juvenile and clichéd, and steered by an arbitrary deadline when Leeta thinks she might take a gig back on Dr. Z’s station. The thread is mostly for laffs and even though Rom has an extensively heroic track record at this point, he still kind of acts like an idiot. But in the end they get together and we can be happy even if it’s mostly gross.

Favorite gag: O’Brien gushes about Julian when interviewed by Dr. Z, then requests that none of it actually gets back to Bashir. Also enjoyed Morn’s vacant shrug as his interview response.

Morn watch: The ever-debonair one kisses Leeta when he wins at dabo. Good thing Rom made his move in this episode. Even though Dr. Z spends his off-duty time on DS9 trying to woo Leeta, Morn is the real charmer.

Overall: 4 out of 5.

S5E17, “A Simple Investigation” (story: René Echevarria)

With this episode I think the “O’Brien must suffer” trope may have lost its cruelty title to “Odo must have his heart broken.” Just a few episodes ago Odo got attached to a baby blob, then it died. (Even if it did make him a changeling.) He’s had hologram friends taken from him, Kira friendzoning him, whatever the Lwaxana thing was all about. Now: a real, actual girlfriend. Of course it’s Odo so we know something’s gonna go sideways. The situation is weird enough, since he’s actively investigating a crime surrounding her and isn’t especially sure who she is or how she’s involved. So we’re all pretty sure getting involved with her is going to end with Odo by himself, staring forlornly out a window somewhere.

The story itself feels like a familiar police procedural or mystery about people caught up in various intrigues, but it’s not clear who is on whose side, and with some SF elements (brain wipes and secret identities unknown even to the people involved) to give it some flair. It’s well-crafted, Odo manages to unravel it all with enough twists and turns to keep it interesting. Memory Alpha tells me it’s inspired by an old crime movie, and that sounds about right, to the point of the dame involved being real big trouble.

A minor B-story floats around in the background about the crew’s holodeck roleplaying is starting to get stale for some of the participants. O’Brien, in particular, is tired of being the bad guy Falcon. As a longtime holodeck story hater, this gives me hope they aren’t going to try to wring out any more of them.

Odo’s biology corner: Odo doesn’t have a heart. But he can have sex! And somehow, he’s a natural. This is a big breakthrough for him, even if his time with Arissa ends up being short and sweet when we learn that she’s had a memory wipe and won’t be the same person, or even remember him, once it’s restored. I’m sure we’ve all had relationships we’d like to erase from the other person’s memory, if not our own. But this isn’t one of them, and Odo is again crushed. There’s a quote from Ira Steven Behr in MA: “I think we do crappy romances. But in terms of romantic shows, this wasn’t a bad one.” That’s probably true, there have been some unearned weird ones (“Meridian” comes immediately to mind) but I thought this one never felt weird, even if it does still happen pretty dang fast.

Overall: Without getting into the intricacies of the plot–which is enjoyable enough as a standalone–the main takeaway here is that Odo managed to lose his virginity, and is probably emotionally ready to have an adult relationship, but it’s not happening for him just yet. Let the forlorn window staring-out commence. 4 out of 5.

S5E18, “Business as Usual” (story: Bradley Thompson & David Weddle)

We’ve had a few episodes so far that tried to answer the question: “What won’t Quark do for money?” The answer always ends up being: Nothing. That is, until he gets into some trouble, or his irritating conscience gets the better of him, then he usually ends up doing the right thing. (Or sorta just gets away with it.) “Business as Usual” is more of the same. This time Quark has an opportunity to become an arms dealer. The stark math of X million people will die but you’ll make Y bars of latinum doesn’t really affect Quark, because he’s a Ferengi, and a thorough scoundrel when it suits him. But Dax hates him for it, and when it comes down to it cowardice is is main motivation, so that eventually turns him in the right direction.

The idea here is a good one, but in execution, I found it a little dull. Hagath the weapons kingpin is an uninspired gangster trope, wavering wildly between generosity and threatening Quark to make him more money or he’d end him. I’m writing this a week or so later and all the scenes of Hagath menacing Quark have blended together. There’s also a convenient amount of padding to keep the obviously illegal arms dealing going. Fear keeps pushing Quark into upping the stakes until guilt overrides profit motive and he schemes a way out of it. Maybe I was just sleepy but I barely made it to the end.

The B story is cute but never really earns more than a sensible chuckle. O’Brien finds that he can’t put his new baby son down or he’ll start crying, so he ends up toting him all over the station: to work, to the bar. I feel like I remember a Bugs Bunny episode with this exact plot. There’s a nice Worf-O’Brien fatherhood bonding moment at the end, at least.

Overall: Not a bad episode, but not really anything new here either. In the end, it really was business as ssual. I might have given them another point if it ended it with someone saying that as they all chuckled, but since they didn’t, 3 out of 5.

S5E19, “Ties of Blood and Water” (story: Edmund Newton & Robbin L. Slocum)

I always wonder why they don’t mine the decades of published SF stories out in the world. Maybe they already have plenty of originals to choose from. Or it’s just a practical/legal problem getting rights. Or it just gets too gnarly to adapt them into DS9, even with its large extended cast and larger setting (that would be, uh, the universe). Sometimes I do think they get a story that’s interesting on its own but isn’t a great fit into the series, but they shoehorn it in there anyway. This might be one.

I bring it up because I thought the premise was a good one: an enemy agent has a terminal condition and before he is called to the great gig in the sky he wants to spill the beans on the boss of the new government that he hates. Intriguing premise. Does this happen in real life? Why not? Maybe if the agent had any family at all and he feared retribution. But otherwise, I dunno. As is made clear by the numerous times Ghemor says so, he has no family. The closest thing he has is Kira, whom he pretended was his daughter once back in “Second Skin” and apparently took it awfully literally. As I say, I like the concept here, but is supergluing it onto the Kira-Ghemor relationship earned at all? I feel like Kira left things to the effect of: “Boy I’m glad I’m not a Cardassian. No offense, nice old man who pretended to be my father. Have a good one.” But Ghemor was pretty serious about that bracelet he gave her, it seems. And they are now trying to tell us that these two have really bonded at some point, which is a necessary condition for him to care enough about her to do this.

Dukat is mad about this happening of course but whatever. He shows up with a Jem’Hadar battle cruiser to threaten DS9 but I guess no one really buys it because after a suspenseful commercial break he has no leverage and ends up mostly just pestering Sisko about it. He even has a dirty scheme to expose Ghemor’s shady past but it doesn’t really stick. I don’t know that ineffective scheming makes for especially effective viewing.

Probably what saves this one from being entirely ill-fitting schmaltz is the tie-in to Kira’s past, which neatly illustrates how she experienced her father’s death, and what drives her in dealing with Ghemor. I’m still not sure I buy that she should feel this close to him, but at least I can understand how she might.

Overall: I did like the episode, and it’s an important one for Kira, but I felt like I spent too much time wondering if it made sense. Let’s land on 3 out of 5.