S5E12, “The Begotten” (story: René Echevarria)

Odo gets two new experiences. One, in the continuing story of him learning that being a solid sorta sucks, he gets to experience back pain. But this is a minor incident which leads to the more significant one for him, raising a baby changeling. “Raising” in the changeling sense isn’t about teaching them not to stick their fingers in outlets or micromanaging screen time, it is about teaching the young blob how to become other stuff. We are repeatedly informed that without constant love and electrical prodding, they will just sit there inertly for an indefinite period. We are not told how changelings ever managed to evolve with this strategy. My guess is that they generally do not find themselves outside of their homeworld and the great blob ocean, where they’d pick up these lessons naturally.

“The Begotten” also serves as a platform to fill in Odo’s background with Dr. Mora. Odo has a lot of lingering anger about how his foster dad nurtured him into maturity. He thought he was treated as a science experiment and wants a better life for his adopted progeny. But no amount of supportive cooing or differently-shaped glass containers is going to motivate it. In the end I think both Odo and Dr. Mora win. They each compromise a bit to find the right balance that will get the changeling moving. Their relationship evolves into something decidedly less hostile as Odo learns that Dr. Mora cared about him just as much as he cares about the new changeling.

There are really two endings here to parallel the two beginnings. One is the gut punch of the young changeling’s mortal illness, discovered just as Odo and Mora were really getting on solid footing (er, liquid, uh, still footing?) with it, and with each other. This was just brutal. I think I wanted Odo to make this emotional connection so badly. The show keeps almost letting the poor guy finally find one, then yanking it away. This is probably the more realistic ending. But then what ends up happening is that the dying changeling merges with Odo, restoring his transmogrifying powers and curing him of a bad back forever. Honestly, I don’t know about it. Pretty damn convenient. He’s still sad about losing the changeling of course, but he’s back to normal and has established a connection with Dr. Mora, so it’s at least hopefully a net zero for him.

Odo’s story is counterbalanced by Kira having the O’Briens’ baby. We get to watch a very long and rigidly ritualistic Bajoran birth ritual where I surmise the objective is to bore the baby into attempting an escape from its mother. This thread is played for laffs mostly. O’Brien, as dad, and Shakaar, as boyfriend, squabble over their roles in the ritual, and disrupt Kira enough that she has to make a few attempts at it. This part is fine, pretty funny, puts an end to the continually weird solution to Nana Visitor’s pregnancy, and does its job in giving us occasional breaks from the Odo story. It also dovetails well with the Odo story by giving Kira a chance to openly admit sadness about having to give up the baby. Hopefully she and Odo could go make each other some raktajinos and watch some movies or go through crime reports together for a while.

Overall: Very emotional. The deep dramas don’t always totally work in DS9 but this one did. Sniffle. 4 out of 5.

S5E13, “For the Uniform” (story: Peter Allan Fields)

Our traitorous Eddington is back. Last time we saw him he turned Maquis and betrayed his crew. Now we find him evolved into some sort of super villain and tactical mastermind, playing chess while the Federation locks their keys in the car on the way to the checkers tournament.

I definitely enjoyed this absurd episode but also felt like they were really, really asking a lot of the audience. It wanted to be a lot of things without entirely earning them:

• Before, Eddington was well-respected occasional employee of the month Starfleet Commander Eddington. Now he’s a Bond Villain. Or like, his anger has made him powerful. I dunno. It feels like a stretch. He outwits Sisko & crew multiple times before they force him into a trap, which they can only do when they fight dirty.
• Before, Sisko was even-tempered and honorable. Now he’s whaling on a punching bag vowing revenge. Now he’s chemical-bombing a whole planet.
• Sisko also pulls another I BELIEVE IN THIS SHIP thing and endangers everyone, which provides lots of convenient story outs when things don’t work just to provide some arbitrary plot obstacles. Though I did kind of like the Nog relaying orders thing for some reason. (I just read that it was meant to be a submarine movie homage, which is probably why it felt familiar. Too bad Riker wasn’t around for some order belaying.)
• I appreciated the Les Misérables homage (not that I can profess to know much about the story, but any classic lit shout out is probably a good thing). But maybe it’s a little on the nose to have Eddington wafting in on their new full body communications kiosk thing and insisting on calling Sisko “Jayvert.” And Sisko letting him do it! K and I were joking about how the funniest thing Sisko could have done when Eddington sent him the book was to just not care about it at all. I guess he blew it early by saying he read it, but he could have still salvaged it by saying he didn’t remember it or just didn’t respond to the “Jayvert” thing. This would have driven Eddington nuts. He wanted this encounter to be Les Misérables so much! Sisko’s all “Who is this ‘Jayvert’? Oh, yeah, that book you like…” Would’ve totally disarmed him.

I’m also not sure I really bought the ending. I think I understood that Sisko poisoned the Maquis world in a way that affects them, but not Cardassians, opposite of what Eddington does, so they just trade planets. Oh, OK, that’s not a problem….I mean of course it is, that is ridiculous. I can’t see how Starfleet would be good with this. One can only imagine the logistics of planet trading.

Random note: Memory Alpha says the holo-communicator thing was an idea the producers had to avoid too much of people talking on screens in an episode like this, but they agreed it came across as silly and weird, and gave them plenty of extra production headaches, so we’ll only see it one more time. I’ll actually maybe miss Sisko’s dramatic whirling his chair around to talk to holo-Eddington.

Overall: Despite my mostly picking at its flaws, in the end it was pretty dang enjoyable. Let’s go 4 out of 5.

S5E14/15, “In Purgatory’s Shadow/By Inferno’s Light” (story: Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe)

I feel like we’ve been on a bad streak with the double episodes? I could look back, or, nah, it seems true enough. Either a little too thin to spread over two episodes, or a pretty good setup in the first half leading to a big battle that ends up being not that interesting. But whew, a lot happened in this pair.

–Dukat has spent his recent free time not doing rogue battle with Klingons, but secretly negotiating a Cardassian alliance with the Dominion

This is the big one. I think we have to accept a bit of fiction, that Dukat, largely on the outs with Cardassia, manages to swing this. But he’s probably got it in him. Oy, what a scoundrel. So much for my long-running theory that he was going to pivot to a genuine good guy. He’s been playing nice for a while now, such that he can wander onto DS9 without anyone really caring, and for no more reason than he needs a little work done on his ship. Now this. But anyway, this is a very bad thing. It does bring the Klingons and Romulans into a Federation alliance. So in a way, this is a heartwarming episode of friendship!

–Dukat’s daughter has developed a crush on Garak

A high-probability way to attract a mate is to be the only member of your mutual race in the quadrant. But it leads to Ziyal refusing to go with Dukat when war is about to break out. So he abandons her for his big traitor announcement. I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of this. This is bound to get messy later. He’s going to end up in a situation where he can do some damage to DS9 or something, and he’ll hesitate because she’s aboard. Or maybe not, I don’t know. He’s not a good dude.

–Changeling spy Julian!

He makes sandwiches. He plays darts. He’s doing doctor stuff. Who would suspect? We were a little mystified how he could have pulled off such a perfect impersonation. Maybe the changeling observed him for several months until he had it down really well. But still, we are led to believe real Julian has been out of commission for some weeks. It’s unclear exactly how long, but Memory Alpha points out that  real Julian is still wearing the old uniform. So we’ve had at least 4 shows now with imposter Julian, including “Rapture”—where he did brain surgery on Sisko! Ben might want to go in for a follow-up. Anyway if that wasn’t enough to sell everyone on his hidden identity, after it’s clear there was a saboteur he’s the one that suggests they do blood tests and phaser sweeps to root out the intruder. Only the tests never happen. I know everyone got busy but basically he just slacks off at work and his procrastination conceals his identity.

–Enebran Tain is alive! Also he’s Garak’s dad!

OK, sure. It does fill in a lot of weird gaps in Garak’s inexplicable loyalty.

Less important to the overall plot notes:

• Like many SF writers before them, the DS9 producers did not anticipate the cloud, nor the related decline of physical media. Odo has a bunch of books…on a bunch of PADDs. Worf has a bunch of Klingon operas…on a bunch of data chains. In particular, Worf doesn’t want this misplaced by (the evidently completely irresponsible) Dax. He can’t back them up? Make copies?
• Sisko’s habit of sometimes making absurd demands on his staff hasn’t gone away (we thought maybe he got cured of that back in “Shattered Mirror” but guess not). When they are decoded the mystery message, he just barks at them that he wants it NOW. Yelling won’t help them decode it faster, Ben.
• Worf beats up a whole lotta Jem’Hadar guards. For a human, the daily beatings would be a brutal trial. For a Klingon, another day at the office.
• What’s with the alien in their prison cell wearing an Leia’s bounty hunter mask from Return of the Jedi? You’re telling me on a DS9 shoot no one noticed it was a Star Wars prop? Somewhere on the internet there’s a crossover theory about this. (Please don’t find it for me I don’t actually care.)

Overall: 5 out of 5. One of the more successful double-EPs I think. Hugely scoped, but well-paced and covering a lot of ground. And just plain good writing for the most part. Behr and Wolfe have gotten really good.