DS9’s quality remains high, and I’ve liked almost every episode this season, but it’s definitely weird that Vic Fontaine has had the most screen time behind only Ezri this season. Vic Fontaine! I’m sure they’re wishing they’d have thought of a more in-universe hologram character, because they seem genuinely inspired by the concept, only they accidentally struck gold in the form of a 1960s Vegas lounge singer. What are they going to do, have an episode about a casino heist on DS9? Where are our regulars? Sisko is just milling around his office being grouchy, waiting either for the war to end or for baseball season to start. Kira and Odo have disappeared into domestic bliss. Is Jake even on the show anymore? As a viewer I sort of feel like Bashir did a few episodes back when he was like, “Hey what are you guys doing tonight? I’m up for whatever!” and everyone blew him off on the way to their own lives.

I have my own life as well, which for better or worse is not entirely devoted to watching DS9. As such, I have fallen quite far behind in recapping the series. In my universe, baseball season has started, among other things. So I’m going to declare DS9 bankruptcy and do a Star Trek Speed Round to catch back up and clear the decks for the series’ final arc. I’m giving myself one hour to write all four of these, so they gotta be short and sweet. Here we go:

S7E13, “Field of Fire” (Robert Hewitt Wolfe)

We’re getting our money’s worth on Ezri in the short time we have left, now the featured or co-featured regular on four straight episodes. Also on Joran, Dax’s one evil personality, who gets one final go to corrupt the naive new host. Is this the first time we see Joran as Joran? I think the other times it’s been like Sisko or someone sorta getting inhabited by him. This guy hangs around as Ezri’s evil shadow and does some murders until she figures out how he’s pulling it off.

This was a pretty decent, if not super memorable, one-off mystery-style episode that TNG was better at, but DS9 manages. Joran is suitably creepy (although I don’t know that we necessarily needed another episode about him) and we meet a few extras and learn just enough about them to be sad when they are immediately murdered.

Randomly directed by Wally from Leave it to Beaver. Memory Alpha suggests most of the staff was tied up trying to figure out how to salvage “Prodigal Daughter” and prep for the next few episodes and the final arc, so this was just kind of a placeholder, but again, DS9 has enough good infrastructure to kick out something like this. 3 out of 5.

S7E14, “Chimera” (René Echevarria)

Odo hasn’t directly stated that he’s really washed his hands of the Founders and their disease-ridden Great Link, but his actions of completely not appearing to care whatsoever makes the point well enough. Yet if there were any doubts, the arrival of another rogue Changeling would probably stir up some feelings in him.

I liked this one a lot. The premise is super interesting, I wonder why Odo hadn’t thought to find more of his randomly-distributed brethren. (Not that I have any ideas for how he might go about it, especially these days when none of them are going to be that keen to be found.) Laas turns out to be sort of a proto-Odo, like what happens if a rogue Changeling never really gets adopted into any society and learns manners. So he comes across as rude and obnoxious, and not just because he thinks the solids are vastly inferior, but because he’s just sort of a jerk. Then again, he’s never really spent any time around other people. He’s basically a real-life (well, TV life) internet troll in the flesh (well, blobby stuff): he’s been sequestered away in his own realm, developing idiotic opinions of everyone else because there’s no one around to correct or disprove him. But: he’s also a solid, and Odo doesn’t know any of those that aren’t trying to kill him.

This one reminded me of a TNG episode (I can’t spare the time in my writing hour to look it up right now so I’ll be vague) where they encounter an extremely androgynous humanoid race, and Riker falls in love with one of them. The gist of the episode is that it was sort of culturally wrong to prefer to be one gender or the other. It was a strong gender-SF story but where it screwed up was that Riker’s interest clearly leaned female (mostly by being played by a human female), so it was hard to buy his interest in an androgyne. What they wanted to present as gender-challenging wasn’t that at all. Here they did it right. Laas is masculine like Odo. Previously the linking had seemed like a male-female thing highly likened to sex, so I thought they made the most interesting choice to have them both be male and rid us human viewers of our notions of Changeling genders.

Whoa, cool trivia. I just learned that Laas was played by JG Hertzler, i.e., Martok. He was credited as “Garman Hertzler” and had enough of a resemblance I thought it was JG’s son or brother or something. Well, I just really like this guy I guess. Nicely done, if aided by the makeup department.

Anyway, they find some interesting new Changeling stuff here. Laas is really good at it, he spends some time hanging out on the promenade as a fog but still can’t get the face right. Or doesn’t want to because solids are lame. But mostly this is an important one for Odo, and it’s been a while since we’ve had one of those. Our sappy blob really does love Kira, and he proves that he’ll give up anything for her. 5 out of 5.

S7E15, “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang” (Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler)

And here’s our casino heist. And like every other Vic Fontaine episode to date, it seemed like a sure disaster, but I ended up kinda liking it. It’s silly and really has no place on DS9, but dang if it isn’t fun. It’s certainly not the disaster that TOS’s visit to gangland Chicago was, because at least it’s not boring at all. Even though the utterly unoriginal “OMG the holosuite is locked and we can’t do anything about it” setup and the cartoonish crime boss are groaners.

But like Sisko, even though I don’t think holosuite hijinks are for me, you can make up for a lot with a good scheme. (Even if that scheme has the detail of someone being given ipecac and running away “at warp speed!” (haha, that means fast!!)) We have to appreciate how DS9 can do something like “Chimera” then turn around and do this kind of farce, and the characters work for us in both. A grudgingly earned 4 out of 5.

S7E16, “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges” (Ronald Moore)

I really liked the first Section 31 episode and had been anticipating another. This is a worthy followup, but isn’t quite as clever or intriguing as its very successful predecessor.

Sloan again corners Julian into assisting him on a plot against the Romulans, spurring a multi-level game of spy vs spy as Bashir and Sloan try to outwit each other. Ultimately though, I think it just didn’t quite come together. Who is manipulating who gets rather convoluted, which maybe you could say makes it intriguing, but I felt mostly confused. The twists getting revealed just made things seem muddier rather than clearer. Sloan becomes some kind of squirrelly superhero, able to beam himself to safety in an instant to avoid a phaser shot and escape all detection all the time. I think I’ve written before that I find superheroes boring. They always win because they are the best, what’s interesting about that?

I’d say this one works better as a further elaboration of Section 31’s history and capabilities, and how the Federation bosses may or may not be directing them, than a self-contained story. Still pretty good, but a bit unsatisfying. 3 out of 5.