Quark and Odo huggingS2E19, “Blood Oath” (story: Peter Allan Fields)

This one’s about Klingons getting old. When they get old they still have that same bloodlust and honor-seeking drive, but I guess one can’t fight off time with a bat’leth either. An old gang of them appears on the station looking for Dax, who in a previous incarnation was a comrade, and had shared a vow with them to settle an old debt against a common enemy if they ever found him. Retired Klingons have nothing to do, one imagines, but settle old debts or find a good last glorious battle to go out with, and this is a chance to do both.

I always like me a good Klingon episode and this one doesn’t disappoint. I think they always work well in stories because they always have some ethical crisis that eventually gets resolved with the most efficient distribution of honor all around. Tell me that’s not satisfying. DS9 also seems to be continuing TNG’s trend (and really started with Star Trek VI and the end of TOS) of exploring postmodern Klingonism, a term which I have just made up, though certainly the concept isn’t new. What happens when an aggressive, battle- and conquest-crazed society starts experiencing a decline? Its influence lessens, its empire shrinks, the old ways aren’t solving all your problems anymore, and everyone slowly realizes—like it or not—that in a position of weakness, negotiation and peace is just a lot more effective. But the old guard is still around. And they seem sorta pathetic, really.

The other interesting bit here concerns Dax’s role in all of this. Sisko initially won’t grant her leave to go do a vengeance murder (possibly because it is not a Federation HR-approved leave category, and also, there’s an idea for the next time your union is settling a new CBA). But she has to honor Curzon Dax’s oath whether Sisko and other crewmates approve of the murder-mission or not. It makes it pretty awkward when she gets back to the station at the end. Dear Ask A Manager….

Tidbit: I thought all the Klingon names sounded familiar but I didn’t connect the dots until I read a review of this episode on AV Club. They are all holdover characters from TOS! It’s not really relevant to the plot since the TOS Klingons didn’t really have backstories, and none of what they did in those episodes matters here, but it’s a super fun batch of easter eggs.

Overall: A really good one, covering new ground for both Dax and the Klingons. All the Klingon guys were great, too. 5 out of 5.

S2E20/21, “The Maquis” parts I & II (story: a whole bunch of people)

“The Maquis” is an pivotal (two-part) episode that sets up some new directions and thematic territory for the series. I think it’s more successful as a setup for what’s to come than super engaging on its own. Which is to say, it’s been several weeks since I actually watched it and I’m absolutely forgetting stuff already. Here is what happens that we need to remember:

  • A new order surfaces in prominence, called the Maquis. Some people pronounce this “MOCK-kee”. Some pronounce it “muh-KEE”. Memory Alpha says “mah-KEE”. I picture fictional grouchy out-of-touch conservative Federation admirals in dim Earth conference rooms saying things like “We oughta just photon torpedo these here Mackeys” amongst friendly company.
  • The Maquis are symbolic of any group adversely affected by territorial decisions made by larger forces. See: most Earth situations where large empires divide up their holdings but cut arbitrary borders through native peoples’ lands. This gives rise to isolated ethnic groups immediately at the mercy of whomever is still around and might have better resources. It’s a natural consequence of war and imperialism and pretty much about the worst thing people do to each other on a macro scale. People are the worst.
  • Their cause has turned a few Federationers and affected Trek notables personally:
    • We first met the Maquis in TNG when Ro betrayed the Federation, and specifically Picard, to join them, pissing off Picard very, very much.
    • One of Sisko’s old pals from the Federation (played here by a wooden Bernie Casey cashing in a paycheck) turns and joins the Maquis.
  • Longer term, betrayals may continue to happen. Everyone sympathizes with the Maquis, but they are also de-stabilizing an already uneasy peace. Sisko may be doing a lot less bureaucratic shuffling and a lot more preventing all out war.

A couple other notes to call out. DS9 has had its moments as an examination of management styles and “The Maquis” has some important additions:

  1. Sisko and Dukat’s relationship is really evolving from hostility to grudging respect. I’m starting to appreciate Dukat’s stark and brutal efficiency. He just wants to blow stuff up and kill bad guys sometimes, and he’s not even wrong. Luckily Sisko has earned his respect and can always provide an effective alternative.
  2. Speaking of seemingly bad management styles that actually do make some sense sometimes: let’s talk Quark. I’m leaving out plenty about the thread with him and the Vulcan Sakonna engaging in some illegal arms deals but the meta-story is how a Ferengi and a Vulcan work together. It’s weirdly, surprisingly effective. Ferengi are certainly passionate, but about the coldly logical bottom line. Ultimately, economic arguments are pretty compelling to Vulcans. Not something I’d thought about before but it’s explored here to great effect.

Overall: Very successful. I expect things that happened here will echo for the rest of the series. Though I have to admit I found Part I a little unengaging, and the overall plot a bit cluttered, so I’ll come in at 4 out of 5.

S2E22, “The Wire” (story: Robert Hewitt Wolfe)

I think I like all the Garak episodes so far, but I’m cautious about getting too involved with him. Obviously he’s written to be tantalizingly mysterious, having had some influence among the Cardassians but is now viciously hates/is hated by Dukat and lives seemingly as an outcast, dispensing men’s fashion on DS9. He simultaneously helps the Federation whenever he can, occasionally demonstrating definitive insider knowledge of Cardassia, but he also regularly drops hints about how much everyone on DS9 hates him and the feeling is mutual. Bashir constantly badgers him about being a spy and he always says something that is somehow neither an acknowledgment nor a denial. Anyway when TV does this kind of thing it means either (A) they have a distinct vision for what’s going on and all will be made known as it best serves the story or (B) they are making it up as they go along and hoping they’ll figure something out, but they usually don’t to any real satisfaction. I have some confidence it’ll be Situation A with Garak but I’ve been disappointed by a lot of Bs.

“The Wire” keeps this going to some degree, but also lets us in on a lot of Garak background, as well as introducing the Obsidian Order. It’s sort of like a cross between the KGB and secret police of the Cardassians (and we have definitely not heard the end of them). The plot is relatively straightforward: Garak develops some medical issues he can’t hide from Bashir, which reveals that he’s got some kind of brain implant typical of members of the Obsidian Order. It’s meant to release endorphins to make him immune from pain in the event of capture, but he’s been depressed and miserable in his DS9 exile and has been gradually using it more and more like a drug. Not designed for continued use, it has burned out and he’s essentially suffering from withdrawals. But it’s less medical drama (Garak is fine in the end) than a chance to delve into his past. In particular, Garak talks about an old aide of his named Elim, and as his condition gets increasingly worse, his story leaks more and more truth about Elim. Bashir ultimately gets the final word from the head of the Obsidian Order, Enabran Tain, who clears up the Elim business but also makes it clear he wants Garak to live a long life suffering as a hated exile, a fate considered worse than death.

Morn watch: He’s seen closing down Quark’s. It seems our friend is back off the wagon again.

Overall: I thought this was a fantastic episode for Garak and Bashir with extremely strong writing and performances from both of them. I like Garak as a character, but also digging the portrayal by Andrew Robinson, who seems to relish the ambiguity of the role. He’s got oodles of secrets that he loves holding over everyone. Who wouldn’t like that? 5 out of 5.

Quark and Odo huggingS2E15, “Paradise” (story: Jim Trombetta and James Crocker)

What is the archetypical first-world problem? Here are some possible runners-up:

  • Starbucks barista misspells your name on your coffee cup
  • It’s not eligible for Prime shipping
  • It’s not on Netflix/Spotify
  • Cash only

But I don’t think the Number One answer is much of a discussion: it’s when the wi-fi goes down. Of course there’s always something else to do..for a while. Even if you were just about to go do yardwork all afternoon, you peek at the router every time you come back in. Even if you were just headed out to dinner, someone eventually broaches the topic: what are we gonna do if it’s still down when we get back? Did you restart the modem? Naturally. Did you check for area outages? Of course. What can we do? The ISP basically controls our lives. Maybe we should ditch them for satellite. Or maybe we should get off the grid entirely, take back control of these absurd modern lives. This isn’t how people were meant to live. Oh, hey, it’s back on! All good again.

“Paradise” is a story of the wi-fi never coming back on. Sisko and O’Brien are doing some surveying and come across a planet with a peaceful idyllic village. We’ve been around the block with Trek enough times to learn to fear all peaceful idyllic villages. Everyone is under the influence of spores or there’s a giant stone snake head that you have to constantly feed and worship. Or it’s some kind of cult. But this bunch just has no technology. No electronic gadgets work, in theory because of some weird interference from local ore deposits generating a weird EM-disabling field. Sure, that sounds like a thing that can happen. But they’ve adjusted and flourished. The village boss, Alixus, actually turns out to have written philosophical tomes about humanity’s overreliance on technology, and haha wow what a coincidence that she ended up being stranded on a planet without it!

Well, O’Brien and Sisko aren’t all that interested in staying on full-time, eventually someone will come looking for them. I asked myself at that point how rescue was even going to work, because naturally they’d beam down and then be stranded. Then someone else would come, and they’d beam down and be stranded. Stranded landing parties all the way down. It’d be like the Monty Python gag about the fatal joke. But in the meantime, O’Brien’s in “maybe the wi-fi is back?” mode and restlessly investigating the cause, while Sisko is not working or playing well with the boss. One way to look at this is that they break down the slim facade of the false paradise both technologically and socially, making everyone self-aware, so they were free to choose what sort of life to have with full information. Another way is to say that they broke everything, and obliterated the Prime Directive doing it. But I’m not sure anyone has even mentioned the Prime Directive this entire series, so I guess we are all good.

Overall: Pretty familiar territory for Trek, but well done. Part of postmodern life is wondering, basically daily, if we’d be better off with a significant technological pullback. Maybe let’s keep Prime Shipping though. 4 out of 5.

S2E16, “Shadowplay” (story: Robert Hewitt Wolfe)

At this point I’m writing several weeks behind viewing and my memory is not always great about how I felt about each episode. But I remember this one: it was great. I keep watching more Star Trek shows because they have an ability to kick out a purely great SF episode at any time, but they also never fail to emphasize characters. As an excellent example of Trek at its best, I’d like to welcome “Shadowplay” to my 5-star club.

Three threads here. Primarily it’s a story about a small village that presents an interesting SF mystery: the mystery of why aren’t these people wanting to ever leave some dumpy village in the middle of nowhere, where the best available toy is a top. Plus a bunch of people are missing but like, where would they even go? Weirdly it never occurs to any of the locals that they might leave this place for somewhere with, I dunno, Xboxes. The writing is very strong, the crew works through the problem in an interesting way, and eventually we learn there is sort of a portable holodeck problem happening. Of course, all holodecks break eventually and need to get turned off and turned back on. I just realized I got tricked into liking a holodeck episode!

While the SF story is interesting, Odo’s friendship with one of the villagers, a young girl named Taya, ends up being the bigger character takeaway. He assumes she will either be scared of him or expect him to do tricks like any other jerk kid, but she doesn’t judge him at all. So, the perpetually lonely Odo’s best new friend ends up being a holographic young girl. He likes her enough that he does a cool spinning top trick for her after all. (Luckily she’s easily impressed.) It was all very sweet but also extremely sad for Odo. I kind of thought he should get a copy of Taya so they could keep being friends back on DS9, but that’s probably even more sad.

What else is going on:

  • Sisko puts a little light pressure on Jake to start thinking about his future with Starfleet by making him intern with O’Brien. Jake already feels like Starfleet isn’t for him, and a baffling day sorting out problems with isolinear rods with O’Brien somehow doesn’t sway him. We learn that O’Brien was similarly almost steered into a nightmarish career as a cello player by his father, where he would probably never get to work with isolinear rods. But he had a heart-to-heart with his father, who eventually came around, and he tells Jake that Benjamin probably would be more supportive than disappointed. Later Jake talks to him, and he’s fine with it. I mean, of course he would be. He’s a good dude. Jake and Benjamin are so nice I sometimes think they are there just to have one conflict-free relationship in the show.
  • Quark is engaged in some kind of smuggling scheme and Kira’s onto him. Quark gets out of it by setting her up with Vedek Bareil. It seems like an un-Kira thing to forget about dealing with a serious problem because she’s feeling all mushy, but Quark is an expert at getting out of trouble, so there we go.
  • We get a very disappointing tease that Bashir has been learning about surveillance techniques from Garak, and Kira wants him to use them on Quark, but then she forgets all about it when Bareil shows up. Ugh, that guy. Got a party you want to make awkward fast? This is your dude. He’s the opposite of charisma. He’s watered-down 7-Up. He’s a beige ball of boring. Luckily his relationship with Kira is more of a setup here that will be more relevant later.

Overall: 5 out of 5. Lots happening and a great story. Really liked this one.

S2E17, “Playing God” (story: Jim Trombetta)

This one didn’t stick with me as much, so just some notes:

  • It’s most about Dax and Arjin, her Trill initiate. Like Jake from the previous episode, he’s sort of just playing out the string on what his family wants him to do, but since we don’t know his character, I’m not sure we care about him too much. It’s a better episode for Dax, who is pretty interesting when she’s not being the science officer. The problem with her actual job is that I’m actually not even totally sure what it is. In TOS they always needed a science officer to analyze stuff, but mostly she’s just waiting around for things to come to DS9. Outside of work, she gambles with Ferengi, she likes Klingon food (make mine extra squirmy!), she tries to get Arjin to loosen up by not constantly giving her his resume, and also walking around in just a towel. (Which was not actually a good way to get him to relax.)
  • Some weeks later, I’m not really sure what the heck was actually going on in this one. Definitely leaning on the technobabble: some kinda weird field, some made-up particles, a proto-universe that doesn’t seem to respond to physical laws. This is typically a proxy for “listen, we just need something to happen and move things along” and rarely works. Not sure why. Too fantastic? It’s just a hazy danger that will kill everyone.
  • Also the space voles were super gross and I’m not sure it’s that interesting to push the plot forward on account of vole hijinks like having them eat some critical wiring, although if we’re being realistic about a universe with a lot of animal life, shouldn’t this kind of thing be a constant nuisance? At present we live on one planet, and there’s no end of invasive species. My house always has bugs. DS9 is a major port! I know their decontamination technology is way ahead of ours, but they should be constantly dealing with some kind of weeds or viruses. Like tribbles! The universe must be loaded with stuff like that, except usually grosser.

Overall: Not terrible, just didn’t stick with me. 2 out of 5.

S2E18, “Profit and Loss” (story: Flip Kobler and Cindy Marcus)

When I see upcoming episode summaries, I’m probably most excited by Quark’s name. Maybe they’ll get old if he doesn’t develop any more as a character and just continues to be a semi-bungling schemer. I liked the first few holodeck episodes of TNG I saw, too. But for now, he’s easily the most lively character and I can expect something other than depressing interstellar politics. (I should make it clear DS9 is doing some fantastic stuff with depressing interstellar politics. It’s not that they aren’t good viewing, just not what one would call “fun.” As a show that can be light on laughs, Quark is a pretty vital character.)

The premise: a small group of Cardassians reluctantly board the station when their ship is damaged–“reluctant” because they are political radicals on the run from Cardassia. Which normally wouldn’t involve Quark, except that he’d try to sell them some kind of black market weapon or fake IDs or something. But he gets involved because it turns out their leader Natima is an old flame he’s still desperately in love with. So we have Quark AND interstellar politics. Which I, I don’t know. Maybe? Does that work?

It follows that it only sort of does. Most of the episode is various forms of negotiation (1) between DS9 and Cardassia about how to handle the situation, or (2) between Quark and Natima about whether they can make things work when she’s got bigger problems. The former makes for pretty typical DS9 fare. It’s tense and complex and handled well, if a bit slow-developing. The Quark part, I’m not sure. Felt a little off to me. Quark drifts fairly well outside of his usual boundaries, namely by displaying actual courage. He’s done it before–as recently as “Rules of Acquisition“–and if he’s not careful he’s going to wreck his reputation as a money-grubbing sleaze merchant. But I didn’t feel like it was out of character for him in “Rules of Acquisition.” It just made sense to keep up the ruse, it was making him money. Here he’s just a lovestruck doofus, which is fine for a human or betazoid or something but for a Ferengi? Ferengi males don’t seem to be in the habit of grand gestures.

Trivia bit: Memory Alpha tells me the writers are a wife & husband team that wrote a bunch of straight-to-video Disney sequels.

Overall: The premise is an interesting experiment, but the outcome is mixed. 3 out of 5.

Quark and Odo huggingI’m further behind than Morn in a foot race. Let’s get at it.

S2E11, “Rivals” (story: Jim Trombetta and Michael Piller)

Here is the summary from Memory Alpha: “Quark feels threatened when a con artist arrives on the station and opens up a competing bar. Meanwhile, Chief O’Brien is determined to beat Doctor Bashir at racquetball.” Now, that is a premise for a sci-fi show. Maybe not surprisingly, it’s kind of a silly distraction of an episode. But it is indeed fun, and the two threads come together in an interesting way.

The rivalry between Quark and Martus Mazur might have worked better as a smaller, more nagging thing over several episodes, where Quark and Mazur spar over customers with ever-more-elaborate less-dignified scheming (as referenced in this episode, Rule of Acquisition #109, “Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack”) but they paid for the guest star so they were going to wring everything they could out of him in one go. The foundation for Mazur’s place (the delightfully/ridiculously named “Club Martus”) is a weird little game of chance toy he takes off a dying cellmate in the brig, where he was staying after his previous scam. Intrigued by it, he has several large versions built for his bar, which are such a hit they drain clientele from Quark’s.

Meanwhile, the O’Brien/Bashir thread is another entry for the “O’Brien kinda hates Bashir” file. They discover their mutual love of racquetball (only, SPACE RACQUETBALL because the court is all weird angles). O’Brien is an old pro and thinks he can beat some young upstart, but it turns out Julian was Team Captain at the academy. More notably, Julian is a lot younger and in better shape, and trounces the oafish and increasingly sweaty O’Brien. This was easily the most relatable part of the episode to me, naturally, as an increasingly oafish and sweaty man myself. But: we are all O’Brien, remembering our youthful accomplishments with high precision, only to flail about miserably when tested years later. And yet: who among us is the absolute best or worst at anything? So: we are all also Bashir, way better at some stuff than others—maybe some game, maybe something at work—to the point that you have to make excuses to avoid the conflicts which you’ll inevitably win, just to avoid the social awkwardness of making someone else look bad.

Meanwhile, increasingly weird, inexplicable stuff is happening all over the station. It climaxes during the final racquetball grudge match (which Quark has managed to bill into some kind of major sporting event that people are actually watching and gambling on, and it must be boring as hell on DS9 sometimes) when suddenly O’Brien can’t miss a shot. Like, literally can’t miss a shot, even if he tries to avoid it, which is as oddly improbably as all the other phenomena. With something to trace, they are able to determine that the weirdness points back to Club Martus, and the gambling devices. I liked this as a general sci-fi idea, like you could have some sort of quantum generator that flipped the probabilities of everyday life. If you didn’t immediately die of the most quickly metastasizing cancer in medical history it could be a rich source of stories.

I enjoyed this episode more for its metaphorical lessons than in actual execution. The effect of the devices was fuzzily explained, with random, weird macro-level consequences—we are to believe that quantum mechanical mucking about can make the proximate middle-aged into racquetball supermen? The device itself was unsatisfyingly convenient, too. The dying prisoner’s entire life was ruined by it over years and years, from a life of success and luxury to croaking in a ratty cell on DS9. Then Martus picks it up and wins right away. It’s the stupidest game, too. You hold down a button and either win or lose, with no onstensible reason for the outcome. Though the one time I played Super Smash Brothers that seemed like how it worked, and people love it.

Last note: Keiko tries to be supportive of O’Brien when he comes back from the first match sweaty and depressed. [Keiko for president.] She basically just tells him, like, what did you expect, you’re 36. Which seemed a very optimistic age to peg for O’Brien’s character. I looked up Colm Meaney’s age and he would have been 40 when this aired, so it was indeed optimistic, but not as far off as I’d originally guessed. (Unlike me, Colm probably wasn’t still getting carded at 40.) Still, probably felt pretty natural to him to play a guy grappling with his initial physical decline. For his part, Julian still fits into his shiny academy racquetball outfit, which is accurate, as Siddig El Fadil was just 29.

Morn watch: He misses out on a free drink when he loses an game of chance at Quark’s. We can assume it was rigged, or Morn’s natural luck, rather than some quantum oddity, I think.

Overall: 3 out of 5. Some fun takeaways but sort of a silly one.

S2E12, “The Alternate” (story: Jim Trombetta and Bill Dial)

Mostly just DS9 doing a monster-of-the-week-style X-Files episode, and largely forgettable. At least by me, since I have largely forgotten it. But I never liked monster-of-the-week so could be just me. So anyway, I don’t have much to say about this one. There’s a creature. They chase it around and eventually figure out what it is. Some episodes like this are intriguing, but I felt like this one was a little flat. The most important question never even got answered: how does the monster’s presence affect O’Brien’s racquetball game??

Rather than the plot itself, which hints that it might explain something about Odo’s origin, but ultimately doesn’t (and how many times is that going to happen before we actually get there), the main takeaway here is an establishment of Odo’s early years with guest-of-the-week Dr. Mora. Mora is clearly an influence on proto-Odo, he was Odo’s first teacher, and Odo sports the same slicked-back hairstyle. (I certainly didn’t remember this detail, but Memory Alpha reminds me that Odo mentioned that he had his mentor’s hairstyle back in “The Forsaken” when he was talking with Lwaxana.) In fact, he seems more like a father. Odo denies that he views Mora that way, though that might be because they are a bit estranged. But by the end they agree to some future visits.

So this is best remembered as a character builder, mostly for Odo. There are some good moments between Bashir and Dax, too, as they try to figure out more about the monster. Late nights in the lab seem like a possible key to Dax’s heart, so Bashir might eventually look back on the monster’s rampage of terror as an important building block of their future relationship. (Dax: “Feel like getting a raktajino before we call it a night?” Bashir: “My replicator or yours?” Me: Nice.) We’ll see.

Odo medical notes: Odo has no respiratory system.

Morn watch: Among a group of suckers looking to buy a dubious Ferengi relic from Quark, which he claims are some remains from a famous Ferengi named Plegg. Odo happens by and shares the pertinent fact that Plegg isn’t actually dead. Unclear whether Morn bought it anyway.

Overall: 2 out of 5.

S2E13, “Armageddon Game” (story: Morgan Gendel)

The writer credit immediately caught my attention, as it did for his other DS9 credit, “The Passenger”. Seems like he’s evened out now that he’s got a great, a bad, and a good episode under is belt. This one is also good. Bashir and O’Brien are helping some aliens get rid of a stockpile of ultra-powerful bioweapons. But just as they are dealing with the last of it, some terrorists break into the lab and kill all the scientists. Bashir and O’Brien escape to a nearby planet where they hole up and wait for rescue, only they realize O’Brien got splattered with a little bioterror in the mayhem and he’s rapidly getting sick. Meanwhile, the aliens report back to DS9 and instead of reporting the terrorist incident, present a fake video of O’Brien and Bashir getting vaporized along with the rest of the scientists in a lab accident. This sets up a classic two-tracker: one plot-driven mystery on DS9 about the accident, and one character-building track about Bashir and O’Brien.

The Bashir/O’Brien thread is the meatier, and more important one for the series. They go back to the “O’Brien finds Julian irritating” well, seems their last adventure together and aborted racquetball rivalry hasn’t quite sold O’Brien. As an introverted, happily married guy, he’s a bit bewildered by Julian’s endless yammering and glorification of the bachelor lifestyle. It should be noted for all of Julian’s girl-craziness, in practice it seems like mostly idle boasting. There hasn’t exactly been a Kirk-level string of disheveled conquests awkwardly sneaking out of medical. Thought maybe that’s implied, and we should accept the lack of visual evidence as a limitation of the show, which despite being produced in the swinging ’90s, seems more PG than TNG, and certainly moreso than TOS. Anyway, their situation is a good setup to further get to understand each other. Bashir makes some good points about the difficulty of family life while serving in Starfleet, so he’s not necessarily such a selfish guy, but mostly his competent handling of both O’Brien’s health and the damaged communication console finally earns hims some genuine respect. Left for future episodes: How does this affect their racquetball rivalry??

The DS9 mystery thread is also neatly presented. It finds an interesting space to tell the story: we know the DS9 crew is being misled, but we are just as unaware as to how or why. At first they don’t even realize there is a mystery, there’s no reason for them to doubt the story, so it’s about them grieving about the loss of O’Brien and Bashir. Well, O’Brien, anyway. He’s got a family, so Keiko has to be informed, and generally everyone likes him anyway. Julian, well…we probably ought to get a new doctor. But things shift when Keiko notices a crucial detail in the video: O’Brien drinking coffee. She insists he never drinks coffee in the afternoon because the caffeine keeps him up at night.  Something is not right! [As always: Keiko for president.] This kicks off the deeper investigation that unravels the alien conspiracy, and eventually gets O’Brien and Bashir back home.

I loved that the key overlooked detail is truly as stupid as “O’Brien would never drink coffee in the afternoon.” (I nudged my wife to keep this in mind should she ever be watching a video of my vaporization, as I have the same caffeine issue.) I recently saw a Twitter gag about how the difference between American and British mysteries is that the American detective solves the crime by breaking all the rules, and the British detective solves the crime by noticing a specific type of umbrella. The coffee detail is only marginally less arbitrary. Moreover, I love the big twist at the end where actually O’Brien does drink coffee in the afternoon. But it just hard-closes after Keiko’s “You do?!” What a blown opportunity for some TOS-style endcap banter with a lighthearted music cue.

Note: Per Memory Alpha: “This episode was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Hairstyling for a Series.” There are some good hairstyles, as usual: Sharat, for one, and I also liked the E’Tyshra Vulcan-eared basket weave thing.

Overall: 4 out of 5. A very good episode. Maybe a little contrived, so I won’t go the full five, but it was certainly more memorable than the last one.

S2E14, “Whispers” (story: Paul Coyle)

I recently learned about the Simulation Hypothesis, which posits that since the universe is a big, old place, inevitably there must be some where or some time when aliens had/have/will have the capacity to simulate a universe. If they can do it once, they can do it any number of times, which implies that most universes are, in fact, simulations, which leads to the conclusion that any given universe—such as ours—is more likely to be a simulation.

It’s intriguing, but Cory Doctorow makes several good arguments against it at the link above. The most straightforward being: actually computers can never simulate the universe with any precision. The number of atoms you’d need to store sufficient information about even the smallest portion of the universe would rapidly exceed the number of atoms in the universe.

Anyway I like the style of the setup even if it’s flawed. It sort of does a reverse-logic statistical sleight of hand, implying that something statistical ought to be true because the opposite is false. Like how about: if essentially 100% of all humans who are alive or who have ever lived are not me, the math implies even I am not me. Doctorow brings up another similar example. It starts with the premise that the universe exists on an unfathomably long timescale by human standards, but yet, you are alive right now. That is an extremely unlikely occurrence given your pathetic human lifespan as a fraction of the universe’s existence, which is essentially zero. Unless you are immortal*.

*You’re not. It’s just observation bias. You weren’t around for the previous 14 billion years to notice you weren’t alive.

“Whispers” also leans on a few bits of fanciful, highly improbable sci-fi. One, that you could create a perfect replica of a person. So perfect that even their family and friends weren’t sure of the difference, and an elaborate interplanetary scheme would be required to ferret out the replica. (Couldn’t they just look for the guy with more atoms that the rest of the universe??) It also has a bit if the same reverse deductive essence—O’Brien thinks everyone is acting weird so there must be some external force at play, which he has somehow eluded, and must fight against. The actual truth just never occurs to him.

I really enjoyed this one and didn’t understand it at all while I was watching. But once the ending sunk in I appreciated all the little touches and everything fell into place. Keiko is great in the awkward position of having to pretend Replicant O’Brien is her husband, oh yeah hon it’s totally normal for me to go to work at 5:30am and also I’m bringing our daughter with me. Also liked that Quark almost inadvertently blew the scheme by telling him, “The odds are against you, O’Brien.” Which has several layers of meaning in this context, although most notable is that he’s just thinking about the next O’Brien/Bashir racquetball showdown. It always comes back to racquetball.

Overall: 5 out of 5. A mindbender with a great twist. Maybe a bit of a soft ending but super enjoyable throughout.

Quark

S2E7, “Rules of Acquisition” (writer: Hilary Bader)

On Ferengi:

Kira: “They’re greedy, misogynistic, untrustworthy little trolls, and I wouldn’t turn my back on one of them for a second.”
Dax: “Neither would I. But once you accept that, you’ll find they can be a lot of fun.”

Maybe ten minutes in, Kristen tagged this the zaniest episode in the series. It acquired some gravity along the way, but for the most part this was a straight-up Ferengi antics-fueled crowd-pleaser. Grand Nagus Zek returns with a profit scheme in the Gamma Quadrant for Quark to get in on. All Quark has to do to get a cut is perform all the work.

The scheme itself goes kinda nowhere, the Dosi people they are trying to deal with are ridiculous, and we only get a hint of the Dominion and where the real deals might come down the road. The real takeaway from this episode is a deeper look into Ferengi culture:

  • Ferengi women: Early last season I was wondering about them–we’ve never seen a female but their bottom-rung social status within the staunchly patriarchal society has been inferred. The usual expectation is that they are homebound and naked, and it’s illegal for them to be involved in business affairs. Quark and the Nagus are so dang charismatic that their brutal sexism and casual harassment comes across as pretty funny actually, but objectively, what a couple of twerps.
  • Pel: She becomes the first, but she’s undercover, dressing and acting like a male. She’s way more competent than the hapless Rom, though, and Quark takes her under his wing as an assistant. Eventually she can’t help falling for Quark, who evidently is pretty charming for a profiteering troll, although what constitutes “charming” among such a people is obviously unclear to me as a human. For his part, he does defend her talents once Zek gets wind of things, which is, in this context, as progressive as we’re going to get.
  • Rules of Acquisition: Gosh, we learn a lot of them in this episode. This episode, entitled “Rules of Acquisition”, you understand. Memory Alpha says there were seven. My favorite was #59, “Free Advice is Seldom Cheap”.

Morn watch: Odo rouses him from sleeping one off on a bench in the promenade, and it’s implied this is far from the first time. He heads right back to the bar, but it’s been closed up for the night while the Ferengi play some tongo.

Overall: Largely ridiculous. I loved it. 5 out of 5.

S2E8, “Necessary Evil” (writer: Peter Allan Fields)

S2E9, “Second Sight” (writer: Mark Gehred-O’Connell)

I’ve been thinking about these two together. They’re a pair of character-building episodes, and both good ones. But their resolutions are total opposites. One succeeds in a fascinating, unusual way, and will have ramifications for the rest of the series. One doesn’t.

Kira and Odo have the most mysterious backgrounds among the regulars (not counting Morn), so from the beginning we could anticipate there would be episodes meting out bits and pieces throughout the series. “Necessary Evil” reveals more about how long they’ve been on the station, and their relationship prior to the DS9 (the show) era. But it’s also an episode about the backstory of DS9 (the station). It manages all this while also being one of the best-plotted episodes of the series so far, even threading in flashbacks.

I won’t recap the complex mystery that spans both present day and the past, but we learn that Odo began his constabulary career during Dukat’s reign over DS9, then known as the much more Cardassian-sounding Terek Nor. It was also more Cardassian-looking: grey, poorly lit, dismal. Dukat recruits Odo to investigate a murder, knowing he has a strong, neutral, fair reputation among the various factions around the station. It’s not his job at that point—actually I’m not sure what he’s even doing on the station. But turns out he’s a natural, and this is just the beginning of a notable career in law enforcement. Score one for Dukat’s HR prowess.

Turns out one of the prime suspects is Kira. She feeds Odo a story that explains her presence on the station, which is quickly ferreted out as a lie, only it’s a super ingenious multi-layered lie that Odo doesn’t entirely unravel until after most of the major details are sorted out and the Cardassians have closed the case.

What we’re left with is Odo knowing Kira lied to him, and a very ambiguous state of trust between them. It’s a difficult, memorable ending that you rarely get in serial TV. It shades Odo and Kira’s relationship and is bound to factor into future episodes. Justice is complicated, relationships are complicated.

What’s not complicated is the hapless Rom. I didn’t mention Quark either, who is involved mostly as a catalyst and dirty-deeds-done-dirt-cheap-doer. An illegal but highly delightful scheme goes awry and surfaces the larger mystery of the episode. Quark is nearly killed by an assassin, and Rom’s reaction is something like a 30-70 mix of concern for Quark and eager anticipation that he’ll end up owning the bar. When the assassin comes back to finish the job by smothering Quark in the infirmary with a pillow, Rom happens upon them and shrieks like a terrified possum. His futile attempt to deter the murder buys security time to get there. They save Quark, and Rom is cast as the reluctant hero, who has ironically saved his brother but lost possession of the bar. Resume shrieking.

“Necessary Evil” overall: Outstanding episode with a perfect ending. 5 out of 5.

Kirk and Picard both had their share of one-off fling episodes, and occasionally could be found brooding about someone that they especially liked, but could never make it work because of their adventuresome careers. These glimpses were always both fun and effective ways of showing the non-professional sides of the characters. Sisko’s backstory as a widower dad, on the other hand, doesn’t exactly set up these kinds of stories. It makes him sympathetic, but also hems his character in as much as his stalwart bureaucrat job does. How soon can you really try to hook him up with someone else? Plus it means they’ll need to work in an abundance of father-son time, which risks being clunky or underdeveloped in a skiffy-focused show.

Well, they couldn’t leave the poor guy grieving and filling out runabout paperwork forever, so now that we’re comfortably into the second season, the showrunners decided to take a shot. Sisko is feeling guilty that he nearly forgot about the anniversary of his wife’s death, so he’s having trouble sleeping. Rather than toss and turn he aimlessly wanders the promenade and meets a woman named Fenna. They chat quietly for a bit and things click. But then he turns his back and she disappears. If this was me, I’d be like, “Welp, it happened again” but it does seem a little odd in Sisko’s case. The next day he goes with the high school crush playbook and hangs around the same place, hoping she’ll wander by again. She does! And things pick up where they left off, they are definitely into each other and getting all cute and gross and the like, but then she pulls her Harvey the Rabbit and disappears just as suddenly as before.

Meanwhile, duty calls. Sisko attends a dinner hosted by a visiting scientist, Seyetik. The guy is brilliant genius but also an arrogant blowhard, and mostly the dinner is him talking about how great he is. Things take a turn for the weird when his much-mentioned but never-seen wife Nidell emerges, and in what was an extremely not surprising surprise, it’s Fenna. She seems to not recognize Sisko at all, and totally ignores him, like they never met. If this was me, I’d be like, “Welp, it happened again” but it does seem a little odd in Sisko’s case. After dinner, he gets a minute alone with her and is like, “Hey, uh, what the hell?” But she doesn’t seem to know what he’s talking about. When he sees Fenna again later she can’t explain it either.

After a few similarly baffling scenes they figure out what’s going on, and like many things in life, it’s resolved when a guy hurls himself into a star. Fenna turns out to be a psychoprojection from Nidall, evidently so dispirited by her loveless marriage to Seyetik that she’s subconsciously living out her dream to be single again. This requires so much energy it might kill her. But she can’t just leave Seyetik because her species mates for life. He calmly explains that he’d have to die to free her, which he’s about to do, as he’s saying this from on board a ship he’s plunging into the sun as a new experiment. He says that all of his wives eventually tire of him anyway, which he’s starting to feel bad about and this experiment makes for a pretty great death anyway, so suicide it is!

I don’t think I appreciated how truly weird the final act was when I was watching it. The premise is a good mix of sci-fi mystery elements with some Sisko character stuff. Sisko and Fenna’s love story was a properly understated widower letting this happen rather than a Kirk-style bold conquest. The scenes with him and Jake were great. But the ending is a classic “Well, someone’s gotta die” thing that reeks of one of the producers demanding some extra stakes that weren’t really there to be had. Maybe they felt like they couldn’t do two ambiguous endings in a row after “Necessary Evil.” So they cram in an arbitrary imminent death, which can only be messily resolved with extra death. What about this: Fenna continues to exist, but Sisko tells Fenna this can’t happen, she’s just a dream, so she recedes, and it ends on a pensive note as Seyetik and Nidall leave the station, with Nidall and Sisko giving each other some doleful gazes. DS9 is good with characters, I think they could have made something more subtle work. See: literally the last episode.

“Second sight” overall: Intriguing story and something that needed to happen to break the ice on Sisko a bit, even if they couldn’t develop it that well in just an hour. But the ending, I dunno. 3 out of 5.

S2E10, “Sanctuary” (writer: Gabe Essoe and Kelley Miles)

A bunch of refugees called the Skrreans find their way through the wormhole and arrive at the station. They look distractingly weird, with gross flaky skin and super tall hair. It’s just one of a bunch of odd choices in “Sanctuary” that made it perhaps the least enjoyable entry in the series so far.

It starts off with an interesting idea that their language is so bizarre the universal translator doesn’t even work. Trek doesn’t talk about the universal translator enough, really. It’s implied that it instantly parses all alien languages so the crew (and us viewers) only hear Standard (AKA English, but “Standard” because THE FUTURE) and it works so well that it’s simply a fully integrated, forgettable part of life, like the Internet or Reebok Pump technology. I’m sure I’m forgetting others, but the only time I can remember language barriers being important before is “Darmok” from TNG, which was pretty darn good. But I guess overcoming alien language is an old skiffy problem we could just get bogged down in, like O’Brien’s endless polarity reversals or questions about Odo’s mass. Mostly we’ve moved on to more complex stuff. I guess that’s what happens here, in real time, because eventually the translator just starts working, and the whole sequence is forgotten about immediately and doesn’t matter at all in the end.

So the Skrreans get a temporary home on DS9 while Sisko and Bajoran authorities sort out what to do with them. This is an excuse for some cultural conflict. Surely this will be interesting. Nog and Jake are even involved! Well, this amounts to Nog playing a prank on one of them that we don’t see and has no resolution other than that the Skrrean kid is annoyed about it. Jake tries to make peace but the kid blows him off, or more accurately, is a war refugee and has his own problems and no amount of Jake Sisko charm is going to smooth over Nog dousing him with a stink spray. Or something. I feel like it was played as funny, but fell flat, but then Jake’s peace offering should bring them together, but that flubs too. Basically the whole sequence is undercooked and overplayed.

Finally Sisko finds a perfectly suitable planet for them. Space is great because there’s a lot of it. We got a whole mess of totally safe, habitable planets that no one lives on. But…the Skrreans reject it, in what I guess is a bold attempt by the show producers to make a bunch of refugees as unsympathetic as possible. Giving only a hint of reason about some kind of prophecy or something, they want to live on Bajor. Kira tells them that (1) Bajor is recovering from a war itself and can’t support millions of additional refugees, so you will probably just die, and (2) anyway the area they want to live is uninhabitable and like, why are we even talking about this, just go to the good planet. (I actually sort of wondered why Bajorans didn’t just go to the good planet themselves. Obviously it’s their home and origin, but if it’s so easy to just up and move to a new good planet, wouldn’t cultures do that all the time?) Well, this makes the Skrreans take a baffling turn to the snotty, they insist they are such awesome farmers that they’ll overcome and help Bajor, fulfilling their prophecy. There is some stupid haggling at this point (Kira: “Don’t go, you will die” Skrreans: “But we are FARMERS!”), but the solution comes down to: No, that is stupid, just go to the perfectly good planet please, because that is a way, way better idea you knuckleheads. So it ends on a downer when they leave in a huff, like, fine, we’ll go to this great planet and not just die out if that’s the way you want it. But we’re not friends anymore. Good day.

Morn watch: Huge news: Morn apparently has a girlfriend. The opening sequence takes place in Quark’s, where patrons are listening to a Bajoran musician. We see Morn at the bar, enthralled, with a woman hanging on his arm. Good for him. Maybe after the last time he woke up on the promenade and found he couldn’t get back into the bar, he trundled back to his quarters, looked in a mirror, and was just like, “Morn, you’ve got to get it together, man.”

Overall: I see what they were trying to get at here. There is no question that dealing with refugees is a major worldwide social problem today, and this episode attempts to address some of the issues. But what a mess. Every single part of this one is underdeveloped. 1 out of 5.

Quark

S2E4, “Invasive Procedures” (writer: John Whelpley)

Sisko was always going to be a shift in the role of the Trek Captain, whether that was the intention of the showrunners or not. The nature of the role means there would be no boldly going where no one has gone before, mostly you’ll be doing some boldly staying. (They don’t have any “boldly” preambles in this one at all, I just realized.) Plus you have to follow William Shatner and Patrick Stewart, so I mean, good luck. Kristen observed that Sisko is really more of a bureaucrat than the bold captain type anyway. His job is like 50% diplomacy and 50% administrivia like signing off on everyone’s ideas and letting people check out runabouts.

After the station is cleared down to a skeleton crew due to an impending plasma storm, a group of rogues manage to dock and take over the station. They are able to circumvent the usual security with an assist from Quark. He just hides during the evacuation and disables security screens, as he has been tricked into thinking this is all a ruse so he can sell the pirates some fenced liquid data chains. (I guess, data clouds don’t exist in interstellar space, so the “cloud” metaphor checks out.) Instead, the real ruse has nothing to do with him. The leader of the gang, Verad, is a Trill who is bent on hijacking Dax’s symbiant for himself. This episode balances three tracks:

  1. Lots of insight into Trill society and psychology. Verad is sort of a meek weasel by nature, and bitter about not being bonded with a symbiant. We learn that this isn’t a thing that all Trills have, actually only 1 in 10 people make good matches. But this is determined by some Trill administrative process, and he didn’t match up. He was devastated, and specifically wants to bond with Dax. I think this episode has finally helped me internalize the identity of the Trill person, Jadzia, as a separate entity from the symbiant, Dax. The symbiant goes from host to host, and is known as “Jadzia Dax” or “Verad Dax” or “Lester Dax”, what have you. Also that the bonding experience makes a Trill feel like a more complete person, with sort of like a super partner, complete with multiple lifetimes of memories and experiences. Verad can’t get over missing out, and Jadzia tells him it’s totally normal, and plenty of Trill are fine without, even though it totally does rule to have one.
  2. Really strong episode for both the character of Sisko, and the performance by Avery Brooks. Since he’s been friends with Dax through multiple incarnations, he knows how much things will change for Verad once he’s bonded. So he immediately starts working on Verad’s partner and girlfriend Mareel, knowing that helping Verad accomplish his goal is the same as helping him be a different person. Of course as soon as he becomes Verad Dax, he becomes an overconfident brash jerkbag [this is probably why the Trill didn’t give him a symbiant in the first place?]. Sisko picks up on it immediately and is back to work on Mareel, eventually making a compelling case for her to switch sides.
  3. All the gross medical stuff. Symbiants are just big gross worms that are just as horrifyingly invasive as the ear slugs in Star Trek II, only these are nice slugs. Symbiant surgery looks pretty straightforward…disgustingly straightforward, frankly.

Endnotes:

  • The gang is prepared for Odo, they have a nifty little security box to contain him. It was curious to me that once they got him in there they could just pick it up. So he weighs, like, next to nothing? I guess he’d have to, he also was able to pool into Lwaxana’s dress just a few episodes ago. I don’t want to go all Trek nerd and wonder how he could have this near-weightless property and also wail on bad guys or disturb a chair he sits on, etc., so I’m going to let this go now.
    • Wait, one thing. Maybe you could argue this containment box has some kind of antigrav technology otherwise it’d be sort of impractical. One could also argue Troi’s dress had the same, for fashion and flattery reasons. Let’s go with that.
  • Quark is outed as a co-conspirator here and should absolutely be prosecuted, right? He does help straighten things out, including hacking Odo’s security box. But he’s only fixing a situation he created. Anyway I think he’s up to 2 or 3 legitimate on-screen crimes that are forgotten once the episode runs its course.

Morn watch: No appearance. Since the station has been cleared, presumably he’s left. But we never do see the bar, so we can’t rule out Morn isn’t just sitting in there wondering where everyone went.

Overall: An important episode for Trill stuff but maybe a little contrived in the setup and payoff, and some of the symbiant stuff was a bit hokey and convenient. They kept saying how dangerous it was to swap a symbiant or use a phaser on someone with one, but then whey went ahead and did it anyway. 3 out of 5.

S2E5, “Cardassians” (writers: Gene Wolande & John Wright)

I always really dug Worf episodes in TNG as a way to frame culture clashes, postwar reconciliation, or racism, and we’ve got a similar setup here. The Bajoran/Cardassian situation might still be a little raw to have an actual Cardassian crewmember aboard, but there is Garak, a Cardassian shopkeeper on the station, who apparently has continued to have coffee meetups with Bashir. This is presented like a regular thing but I couldn’t remember when he’d even shown up before (it was only once) and had to look it up. It was back in the third episode, when he got friendly with Julian, and helped the crew ferret out a Klingon/Bajoran plot (it was an early episode I waited to long to recap and skimmed some details). Bashir still vaguely suspects him of being a spy, without any reason other than that he’s a Cardassian, because I guess their coffee meetups are made more interesting with a hint of racial profiling. Garak seems to shrug it off because he seems to enjoy hiding whatever it is he’s hiding.

The story centers around a Cardassian war orphan that had been left behind on Bajor. He was adopted by Bajoran parents and has been raised to hate Cardassians. Understandably, the Cardassian kid is pretty messed up from a lifetime of hearing that Cardassians are evil criminals by nature. When Garak gives him a friendly greeting he’s rewarded with the kid up and biting a chunk out of his hand, the news of which spreads quickly and brings attention to the whole orphan abandonment issue at both Federation and Cardassian higher levels.

The episode forks in two directions, and like the best Trek, simultaneously covers both an intricate plot and more subtle cultural ground. An elaborate Cardassian scheme is unraveled by Bashir and Garak, but mostly Garak, whose detective instincts are so accurate one might suspect he knew exactly what he was looking for. Bashir can barely keep up and isn’t getting anywhere trying to figure out what Garak is really all about. The episode resolves itself but Garak’s role doesn’t. I suspect we are going to see more of him.

The victim in all this is the Cardassian boy. It’s hard to know what to make of him though. He hates Cardassians, but of course, he is one. He loves Bajor, but is spewing all this Bajoran spiritual rhetoric he’s been indoctrinated with. I mean, none of this can ultimately be good for his mental health. No matter how much his parents love him, they’ve also pretty much warped him. Keiko takes charge while he’s on the station, and one has to think he’d have a lot better off with a little more Keiko-style no-judgement authority in his life. [Keiko for president.] Sisko is set to arbitrate a hearing to determine whether it’d be better to keep him on Bajor or return him to Cardassia. Then — I was sort of shocked by this — we barely see any of the hearing. Instead the poor kid’s fate is glossed over with some Captain’s Log narration that amounts to: “Oh yeah we decided to send Rugal back to Cardassia.” That is some stone-cold resolution, Sisko. Maybe they just ran out of time in an otherwise busy show. Though I was kinda wondering if Keiko and O’Brien would somehow end up adopting him as a neutral third party. I’d have liked if they did. Pretty ripe for material and he could get in on some Jake & Nog schemes.

Endnotes:

  • Enjoyably vile scene of Keiko preparing some Cardassian food, thinking it would be a nice gesture for Rugal. It looks like some sort of blue stew. O’Brien and the Bajoran-raised Rugal both hate it.
  • Like Armin Shimerman for Ferengi, Marc Alaimo is totally owning the role of Gul Dukat, and has entrenched himself in my brain as the prototypical Cardassian. Now I have the same problem I do for poor Armin Shimerman in that I think Marc Alaimo just looks like a Cardassian. He does have an exceedingly long neck that they factor into his makeup and costume.

Overall: Felt like the resolution with Rugal was a bit cruel, but otherwise lots of good stuff here, with some rich plotting. I did get a bit confused by the rapidly shifting revelations, and it’s quite probably I didn’t even catch everything, as intriguingly hinted at by Garak. This might be one to re-watch later on. 4 out of 5.

S2E6, “Melora” (writer: Evan Carlos Somers)

Definitely not limited to Trek, there’s a standard TV trope where a character looks forward to an opportunity to meet someone they know only by reputation. Naturally they’ve built this person up into an amazing, brilliant, wonderful human whose work has demonstrated that, finally, this will be someone who GETS IT, who understands them, who represents all of their hopes. Then they meet…and their hero turns out to be a jerk.

We recently finished a watch-through of Frasier and they went to this particular well so many times I think you could build a whole season of that show solely out of episodes with this setup. As it happens, Bashir is a bit of a poor-person’s Frasier: he’s also a cultured doctor who views himself as a naturally charismatic ladies’ man, but in practice, his smarmy courtship persona ensures he will be forever trapped in a comedy-rich cycle of excruciating dating failures.

Bashir’s object of interest is the eponymous Melora Pazlar, who has been assigned some work at DS9, but is from a race that evolved on a low-gravity planet and as such, requires accommodations to work in standard Earth gravity. They have to retrofit DS9 with accessible ramps and build a wheelchair for her–apparently regular Earth accessibility needs have been completely solved with medicine or other technologies. In preparing for her arrival, Julian has become rather smitten with her through her work and ability to overcome handicaps, which brings us around to our trope & setup. The payoff pretty much follows the formula: her tough exterior is, of course, a cover for feeling vulnerable about being dependent on others, or ever being perceived as unfit for her work, but Julian sees through it and recognizes her for who she is, eventually eroding her defenses through persistence and charm.

Despite the familiar feel, as a whole, “Melora” is a success. It’s maybe the first real glimpse past Bashir’s oily surface to understand that he’s a genuinely caring and thoughtful person. Melora isn’t just a bland foil for him, either–she’s cultured, enjoying both pleasant Vulcan classical music and horrifying Klingon cuisine, and she’s complex, learning to understand how she can work and play well with others, even if that means recognizing she occasionally needs help. I really liked how they addressed the larger ambiguous question of whether or not she should accept medical treatment to improve her adaptation to Earth-strength gravity. There’s no right answer. Damned if you do, etc.

Also someone from Quark’s past is trying to revenge murder him. It’s probably unnecessary since like, that’s probably SOP for him. But it does serve as a good vehicle for some Odo editorials about Quark’s overall negative contribution to society, and it moves the plot along.

Endnotes:

  • Greatly enjoyed the Klingon chef and musician. Klingon food and music is exactly as one would expect.
  • Standard Trek ending to a romantic story: the guest character is reassigned and (probably) never seen again. Welp.

Overall: I think writing up a review made me appreciate this episode more. Watching it felt pretty familiar, I feel like I’ve seen a million stubbornly independent characters who eventually admit some variation of “no man is an island”, but it’s a quite well-crafted skiffy example with lots of good character stuff. 4 out of 5.