S5E20, “Ferengi Love Songs” (story: Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler)

AND ALSO

S5E21, “Soldiers of the Empire” (story: Ronald D. Moore)

This episode’s protagonist is a series regular who has to reconcile instincts honed in his native culture with life among doughy humans. He doesn’t always view humans positively (and who could disagree with the general idea that humanity is garbage), and living among them costs him some sense of his identity, but his own society has largely dismissed him and this one hasn’t. Also he has bad teeth and likes disgusting food.

Here he finds himself temporarily back among his people, being mentored by a great leader, known for his prowess with respect to what his culture values the most. But it turns out that the leader guy has aged out of his prime effectiveness, and other people depending on him are starting to get squirmy about it. Our protagonist uses his usual brand of trademark tactics to give the boss the push he needs, and things are set right. As a reward, his honor is restored.

The old gag is that The Ramones only had one song, but it was a hell of a song. Similarly, even though this episode followed a pretty standard template for stories about this character, I can’t say as I’ve lost interest in this character’s stories, so I liked it, and it had an important resolution for him.

Overall: 4 out of 5.

S5E22, “Children of Time” (story: Gary Holland & Ethan H. Calk)

It took Kristen and I about an hour to watch this 45-ish minute show because we kept pausing to sort out the time travel mechanics. Most time travel stories happen on a single thread, because that’s the most straight-ahead fiction. Back to the Future etc. all work off the idea that you go back and change something, the ramifications extend to the present, e.g., prevent your parents from hooking up at their high school dance and you don’t exist anymore. But there are other ways it could work. Connie Willis’ universe won’t let you materially change anything because it would violate causality. In order for you to ever exist and subsequently go back in time, you logically couldn’t have ever done anything in the past to prevent it. So if you try to go back and, just spitballing here, try to push your great grandmother into the Grand Canyon, you’ll find that you can’t; you’ll just never get an opportunity. You might see her walking on the edge but a tour bus suddenly empties in front of you and you can’t get to her.

So on Dax’s bad advice to do some science when they’re all tired from gamma quadrant missioning, they get snarled in a weird planetary energy field. They’re OK, though Kira takes a plasma bolt to the chest and is briefly doubled, but she says she’s fine so, shrug, for now. They also find that there’s a small colony on the surface, noteworthy because they are humans in the gamma quadrant. The real surprise comes when the colonists are all named O’Brien or Sisko or Dax etc., because they are descendants of our heroes. As it turns out, when the Defiant tries to leave orbit, the energy field will cause them to crash for good, hurtling them back in time 200 years and stranding them. They’ll settle and 200 years later, their great great great grandchildren will meet them in Season 5, Episode 22, “Children of Time.” Now they’re faced with a dilemma: if they know what caused the crash they have the liberty of avoiding it, which means this civilization will never exist.

K and I eventually concluded that “Children of Time” doesn’t entirely make sense as a pure linear time travel story if you think about it too much. (Which we did.) It has to be multi-threaded to get stuck in these kinds of time cycles. TNG had an episode or two like this. Rather than look it up I’m going to fumble to remember details, but wasn’t there one where the ship kept exploding and they got the idea to generate some kind of energy signature that would appear in the past? Eventually one of the Enterprises was able to pick up the clues and break the cycle. In either case it gets weird there must have been a first instance. The first time the Defiant crashed it must have been a surprise. But then, unless by improbable coincidence this is precisely the second time through the loop, their descendants should have related not only crash details but stories about their ancestors meeting them. We know this because they shared literally every detail. Like how they know Sisko is trying to cut down on raktajino. “Oh how your great great grandfather used to talk about cutting down on raktajino,” mom used to say. (Great caverns, this planet must be boring as hell. I’m not sure most people even know their great grandparents’ names.)

Anyway you probably just have to accept the time travel situation to appreciate the story. And I did! I thought it set up a fascinating philosophical problem. They can ostensibly return to their lives on DS9, but it’ll break the time cycle and implies their descendants on this planet never existed. Or they accept their fate and crash and set things up as they are now. I especially liked how each of the characters worked through the ramifications of it on their own. Kira and O’Brien, in particular. Kira’s plasma zap is definitely killing her and she needs to get back to DS9, but she’s not willing to wipe out the planet to do it. O’Brien, as the only one who’s married with young children, definitely doesn’t want to abandon them for any number of strangers, but even he comes around to thinking that it’s not right to actively choose who lives and who dies. (Trolley problem alert.)

So they’re all in on keeping the loop rolling, but Old Odo secretly plots the ship to safety and destroys his own civilization so that Kira can live. The other relevant thread here being that Odo is still around and still in love with Kira and, evidently, no one else for the last two centuries. I think they did an admirable job reining this in on Kira’s end (unlike, say, “Meridian“), and Old Odo makes sense as a wiser, more mature version of himself, even if he comes across like a mid-50s parrothead who abandons the rat race to run a beach bar. Memory Alpha relates some of the fair criticisms of his actions here, but I think it’s an interesting debate, and credit the show for making it one. We really only see Old Odo as the lovelorn guy who’s been waiting for Kira for 200 years. Maybe he’d never end 8,000 people for her, but that’s a long time to sit around pining, too. Maybe the real question is whether he’s a bad guy for doing it. I mean, probably? If we’re accepting the rest of the crew’s decision that no one should get to choose, then yes.

I didn’t even mention the bit where some of the descendants have become Klingon cultists and worship Worf. There’s not too much to say really, it’s a fun remainder on the arithmetic of the Defiant’s crew reproducing for 200 years. But he never did give them their requested honorable death. Though given the logic of his ridiculous “you should help with the distinctly non-warrior activity of planting by pretending that time is an enemy to be defeated by helping everyone do it” he’ll probably find some excuse for them.

Odo’s biology corner: Odo lives 200+ years. It takes him that long to learn to make a face. But also by then he’s good enough at it to add wrinkles and such to appear older. When he told young Odo stuff, I guess he felt that tips about face-making weren’t appropriate. His past self has to learn to do it on his own. Also I wonder if this was just a great work week for Rene Auberjonois, getting a few days off from the makeup chair.

Overall: Despite all the time travel haggling, I thought it was a brilliant SF setup and payoff. I get the criticism of Odo’s actions but I think it can make sense for him. 5 out of 5.

S5E23, “Blaze of Glory” (story: Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe)

The Eddington arc is the Carolina Panthers of Trek stories. This requires explanation.

For better or worse my wife and I, having both lived in The NC for at least a decade now, have grown into Panthers fans during their recent era with Ron Rivera coaching and Cam Newton at quarterback. In some ways this fandom is hard to explain. Most of their games are clunkers of low scoring, unimaginative offense, inconsistent defense, brutally-timed turnovers, and drive-killing penalties. When I watch other teams they look amazing by comparison: passes not flying over receivers’ heads, professional blocking, effective tackling. And yet…and yet…the Panthers are one of the most successful franchises of the last seven years. They won their division three times, made the playoffs four times, they had a 15-1 season with Cam as league MVP and made the Super Bowl, and have had one of the best defenses year in and year out. Somehow it all looks like a mess and doesn’t make sense, but they still get there. How the hell are they doing it? Man, I wish I could tell you.

Similarly, the evolution of Eddington from dutiful lieutenant commander to supervillain mastermind of the Maquis has been an often inexplicable mess, and yet…and yet…I gotta say, it has ultimately worked. The Maquis have always been sympathetic. As refugees caught under the boots of more powerful enemies, they have unfortunately been part of the human cost of arriving at a greater good. But DS9 isn’t really about them either, it’s about the Federation, one of those more powerful enemies. So from our protagonists’ perspective, the Maquis are a real tragedy that should be addressed, only they have the nerve to keep blowing stuff up for some reason. So the boss bureaucrats just want to write them off and take an approach more akin to dealing with terrorists than refugees. Some Federation do-gooders want to help them, but, hey look at the time. As viewers it’s easy to forget about their plight, too. But I think the Eddington arc has finally put a face on them. (They tried to do this with Ensign Ro in TNG, but didn’t really develop it enough, so that thread was a dead end.)

“Blaze of Glory” ends up being a sensible wrap-up to the Sisko/Eddington arc, dampening the absurdity of “For the Uniform” into a more believable story of Eddington using his supervillain powers simply to get back to his wife. He never once tries to call Sisko “Jayvert” either. Actually I thought it was a pretty brilliant psychological battle between the two, as circumstances conspire to get them to cooperate to the point where, despite their early threats to kill each other, by the end they are so sure nothing’s going to happen they can hand each other phaser rifles without a thought.

Kristen called the ending early (confirmed once we reviewed the name of the episode), that Eddington would make some kind of self-sacrifice to ensure everyone else’s safety. And yep, he reunites with his wife just long enough to understand the Maquis movement is doomed, before the pursuing Jem’Hadar flush them out into a ragged escape. It was probably the only possible ending for him, and I agreed with the call to wrap up his thread here. Though I don’t know that he necessarily needed to die–maybe Sisko could have come to a “Leave town, never come back” style agreement instead? But with him going, this might be the end of the Maquis too. It’s tough to see it peter out into nothing, but it always felt like a tacked-on problem they couldn’t find room for in the series.

Meanwhile, back on DS9, Nog is fretting over his duty as a tiny security officer charged with keeping rowdy Klingons from being a public nuisance. I’m not sure what the lesson of this story is exactly, other than than Klingons respect anyone who respects themselves. And also Nog is short. By coincidence we recently happened to learn that the entire main cast of DS9 is notably tall. Even Kira is like 5’8″. Maybe Nog isn’t even that short, he’s just surrounded by giants.

Morn watch: We find Quark being treated for head wounds in the infirmary, which he relays are on account of Morn bashing him with a barstool in a panic after Quark overstated the imminent threat of war with the Dominion. In his further panic, Morn shed his clothes and tore through the promenade yelling “We’re all doomed!” Fortunately or not, this did not appear on screen.

Overall: 4 out of 5. Good night, sweet Eddington, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

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.

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.