Yora reviews Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - All of it!

[russdm]

None of that is what i want to know or talk about as much as: how did Quark know how many Cardies were coming, how did Quark know what their names were, and how did Quark have Kanar, when previously it was mentioned that he had gotten rid of all of his Cardie food, and was talking about getting new stock from Cardassia to serve the prospective Cardie customers due to the new treaty.

Leading to a second note: Despite the treaty between Bajor and Cardie Home, why does the following happen:

Spoiler: Concerns

Show

We don't see a single Cardie arrival until Tora Ziyal shows up to stay, and for when the Dominion takes over Deep Space 9. Tekeny Ghemor shows up as well, but the station seems to consist of just Garak for Cardies with Quark able to smell Kanar to him. How much Kanar could Garak drink?

And for later, how exactly is Dukat running a bird of prey with what appears to be just him and Damar? how does that work. The cardies in the episode where Dukat gets the ship. Did they all jump ship?

[Yanagi]

The Carsassian spy was the worst spy ever.

She shows up later than the rest of her team, like she was last minute addition.

She antagonize everyone at every opportunity.

She acted like a Party stooge

Her antagonism is actually part of her job. She is literally there to make sure people don't get along with Cardassian civilians and no social bonds are formed, and to repeat a pre-configured "story" of who Cardassians are...especially to the two other Cardassians who aren't as loyal. Espionage is information management, which includes controlling how your organization/government is perceived externally and managing the internal messaging that your civilians are allowed to engage in.

That's why she's prodding the other two about small stuff like food: Cardassia's nationalism asserts that "our things are the best" and that wanting something different is disloyalty to the culture, and thus disloyalty to the state. Whether it's a faux pas or a transgression is deliberately unclear, because it's basically a tiny sliver of state terror: keeping every individual civilian unsure...and thus self-monitoring...about what will get them arrested or have consequences for their loved ones.

Equal and opposite, she's playing the heel with the Federation because the Cardassian state literally needs an antagonist, an external source of conflict, to create a sense of shared stakes among Cardassians that legitimizes the government (and especially its authoritarian, stupid, and corrupt elements, all of which thrive when people are frightened, unsure, and thinking reactively).

[Aeson]

Apparently also used in "The Search". It's one of the shuttles the Defiant uses. They tried to use it again in season 6, but found that the model had been stolen.

I assumed that that's essentially an implicit appearance - i.e. shuttles are used but the type isn't identifiable from what's shown within the episode - because Yora watched it about two weeks ago and didn't recognize the shuttle in Destiny as being the same type of shuttle as used in The Search Parts I and II.

[zimmerwald1915]

Spoiler: Concerns

Show

We don't see a single Cardie arrival until Tora Ziyal shows up to stay, and for when the Dominion takes over Deep Space 9. Tekeny Ghemor shows up as well, but the station seems to consist of just Garak for Cardies with Quark able to smell Kanar to him. How much Kanar could Garak drink?

And for later, how exactly is Dukat running a bird of prey with what appears to be just him and Damar? how does that work. The cardies in the episode where Dukat gets the ship. Did they all jump ship?

Spoiler

Show

It's called "we don't want to pay to put a bunch of extras in makeup to fill space. Use your imagination."

[Kitten Champion]

Spoiler

Show

It's called "we don't want to pay to put a bunch of extras in makeup to fill space. Use your imagination."

Yeah, it's a lot easier when it's just nondescript people in stock Starfleet jumpsuits.

It's a bit of an issue on Voyager though.

[Xyril]

Leading to a second note: Despite the treaty between Bajor and Cardie Home, why does the following happen:

Spoiler: Concerns

Show

We don't see a single Cardie arrival until Tora Ziyal shows up to stay, and for when the Dominion takes over Deep Space 9. Tekeny Ghemor shows up as well, but the station seems to consist of just Garak for Cardies with Quark able to smell Kanar to him. How much Kanar could Garak drink?

And for later, how exactly is Dukat running a bird of prey with what appears to be just him and Damar? how does that work. The cardies in the episode where Dukat gets the ship. Did they all jump ship?

Spoiler

Show

A treaty isn't an alliance, or friendship, or even particularly warm feelings. It's essentially a contract between states, so the actual obligations of that contract could vary wildly. It could essentially be a marriage contract, like the treaty of alliance between the Federation and the Klingons, which probably formalized obligations for mutual defense on top what was already an informally warming friendship. It could be as simple as, "we promise not to kill each other." Or for that matter, it could say "we know we're going to be killing each other, so this is how we'll handle stuff like prisoner exchanges so that the fighting doesn't get as horrible as it could." Also, since it's a contract between states, it also means that it only controls the citizens of those states to the extent it might obligate a government to control its citizens. So for something like the Cardassian-Federation treaty, the Federation was obligated to prevent the Maquis from violating the terms of the treaty. Beyond that though, it can't change the conduct or the prejudices of the citizens in question. So no matter what the treaty between Bajor and Cardassia says, you're not going to get a lot of Cardassians on DS9 if they hate Bajorans, don't care much for Starfleet either, and the station doesn't offer good enough opportunities to justify ignoring these prejudices.

Spoiler

Show

It's called "we don't want to pay to put a bunch of extras in makeup to fill space. Use your imagination."

Spoiler

Show

He had a crew when he first took that ship, and there was never any event or exposition that would imply the rest died or deserted, so it's probably as zimmerwald says. Also, just think about it logically--they have a small crew, probably smaller than the standard complement for a bird of prey. Keeping a bird of prey running probably requires work to be done beyond the bridge. With such a small crew, chances are you're not going to see everyone always in front of the view screen or off on DS9. On a meta-level, Damar is a recurring guest, as is Dukat, so it's important to show them, but even in-universe, it makes sense for Dukat to have his protege and second-in-command nearby to take command if Dukat is incapacitated and following along on visits or during communications with important allies.

[JCarter426]

Hmm, a bunch of episodes with not a lot of plot stuff, but setting up a lot of long term character stuff.

• Sisko continues to have a more nuanced opinion of the Ferengi. He's memorized the Rules of Acquisition, tells Jake he was wrong about what he said before and convinces him to reconcile with Nog, and of course gives Nog a fair chance.
• Nog and Rom's personalities have solidified into something beyond generic Ferengi side characters.
• Bashir and O'Brien have started hanging out.
• Odo realizes his feelings for Kira, which have been foreshadowed for a while now.
• O'Brien's manages to get an episode in which his only torture is that a Cardassian lady is attracted to him, and his past prejudice doesn't even come up.
• We finally deal with Sisko being the Emissary. Kira realizes she believes in him and Sisko realizes maybe he has to start believing it too.

Past Tense

I heard many people like this. I don't. Maybe it's well done, I don't know. Why is this episode in this show? What does this have to do with Star Trek, othern than being forced insufferable preaching? I think it's dreadful.

It does turn into somewhat of an after school special at times, but I like it.

Star Trek usually presents an optimistic future, but there is always the implication that things have to get better before they get worse - the Eugenics Wars, World War III, that post-apocalyptic era that Q conjures up in TNG. So I think these episodes do have a place in the mythology. They explore a part of it we don't usually see, and while it may make for an atypical DS9 show, it's somewhat appropriate that it's atypical DS9 doing the exploring.

Life Support

I guess this episode is okay.

[...]

The premise of the episode is a bold one, and I think certainly would have had the potential to be a classic like Duet and The Wire. But it does not really commit to it's premise and instead meanders through various trivialities.

...yeah. Bareil basically killing himself to make sure the treaty is signed should be a dramatic episode, but it's undercut by him lying in the medbay, whipspering, for the entire episode and how the Ship of Theseus subplot undermines its own concept with typically unscientific TV/movie dialogue.

Heart of Stone

On this re-watch, the tension of the Kira plot was undercut a fair bit because the episode was so memorable that I remembered the entire thing from when I was a kid. This made Nog's plot a lot more interesting

I felt the same way. It was hard to get involved in the Odo/Kira plot knowing that nothing they discuss is of any consequence, since obviously Kira isn't going to remember any of the anecdotes Odo tells her. It's a good story, but somewhat anticlimactic. They just stand there talking until Odo figures it all out.

So I paid attention to the Nog story more too, and found it pretty good. Nog's interest in Starfleet comes out of nowhere, but by the end of the episode it's understandable. It surprises the other characters so they question it too, and so we get a decent answer.

Destiny

I think this was pretty good. Not one of the outstanding gems, but I very much enjoyed watching it, which I think should be the baseline for what I give a good rating.

I didn't remember this episode much. I remembered the wormhole being jammed open, but I forgot it was the plot twist in this and thought it had always been the plan. But I think it's a decent episode, too.

It's about time we address the Emissary issue, and addressing it by having the characters realize they were avoiding it and in denial about how it was affecting their decisions made a lot of sense. It was nice that it was Odo helped Sisko get self-reflective, too, what with him being the expert on observing humanoid behavior.

The Kira and Sisko scenes are the centerpiece, though. The Original Series and TNG dealt with fake gods a lot and were always eager to disprove them with science, but it's not so easy to dismiss the prophecy here as superstition from a primitive planet, as Kira argues. We know there are beings who exist outside of linear time that created the wormhole. We know the Orbs they sent to Bajor have effects beyond our understanding of science. Whether we believe the Prophets are of a mystical nature or not, we can't deny their existence. And that's how Kira's been rationalizing everything - so she she can deal with everything the Starfleet way without thinking about Sisko as the Emissary. On the other hand, Sisko was right to trust his instincts and Starfleet training over what turned out to be a misinterpretation of the prophecy, but he was doing so for the wrong reason - because he didn't want to face the consequence that it might be true. Just as the premise wasn't as simple as superstition vs science, no character was totally in the right or totally in the wrong, and everybody learned something.

And I'm sure whatever Vedek Erick Avari was saying before the credits cut him off will be of no consequence.

[Rodin]

So I paid attention to the Nog story more too, and found it pretty good. Nog's interest in Starfleet comes out of nowhere, but by the end of the episode it's understandable. It surprises the other characters so they question it too, and so we get a decent answer.

What stuck me most about it is that Nog's interest in Starfleet makes a lot of sense when you think about it. He grew up on a Cardassian station under Quark and Rom, so he's never had a positive role model in his life. Along come the Siskos, and Nog sees how much happier and well-adjusted Jake is. He starts looking up to Sisko as a father figure, and that fuels his interest in joining Starfleet as a way to become more like Sisko.

[Yora]

He also assumes that becoming a Starfleet officer means becoming an apprentice on the station. It's probably not so much the reputation and philosophy of Starfleet that attracts him, but it's probably the most promising looking employer he knows of. Sisko looks like a good boss to him, and that's his motivation.
When he learns that it doesn't work that way, it's still the best career opportunity he knows about. The point that Sisko doesn't bring up is that Starfleet doesn't pay wages. Inside the Federation, pretty much all expenses are probably covered. And I would assume that they pay some sort of pension to officers who retire outside the Federation. But you wouldn't get a wage. Nog's assumption is that in business he'd probably end up broke anyway, but to a Ferengi that should still feel like an extreme sacrifice.

[zimmerwald1915]

The point that Sisko doesn't bring up is that Starfleet doesn't pay wages.

Neither would Quark, if he could get away with it

Wages are conceptually distinct from profits in any event. Nor is it terribly likely for wages to become capital, although living on a Federation station may allow for wages that would ordinarily go to consumption to instead go to savings, and thence to capital.

[Yora]

S3E16: Prophet Motive

Bashir gets nominated for an award after Dax recommended him, but he thinks it's nonsensical and he has no chance of winning what he considers to be basically a lifetime achievement award.

The Grand Nagus comes to visit Quark to prevent the New Rules of Acquisition. Quark and Rom take a look at it, and the book is full of advice to act selfless and compassionate.

O'Brien and Bashir are playing dart in a storage room. O'Brien keeps taunting him about the award to make him miss.

Quark takes the Nagus to the infirmary to have his brain examined, but Bashir can't find anything wrong with him. Quark and Rom try to break into the Nagus' ship to find out what the big present is that he wants to present to the Bajorans. His servants finds them and lets them inside, and they discover an Orb of the Prophets. Quark opens the box and gets a vision of being in the bar with the Nagus who is taunting him. He sees the box and the Nagus tells him to open it, and inside is the book with the new Rules of Acquisitions. "Consider it a gift." Quark figures that the new rules where given to the Nagus by the Prophets.

Odo sees Bashir writing something and goes over, and it looks like he is pranking him with supposed news about the award selection.

Quark and Rom kidnap the Nagus with the help of his servant. They take his ship to fly into the wormhole. While they are inside, Quark opens the box with the orb to try talking witht the Prophets. The Prophets seem mostly anoyed by another one coming to bother them. The Nagus came to them to get information about the future to make a profit from it, and the Prophets decided to make him into a more friendly and compassionate person. Quark argues with them that greed is the driving force behind ambition and improvement, and that it is vital for the survival and wellbeing of humanoids. The Prophets just want to be done with it and make the same changes to Quark and send him on his way, but he warns them that if they do that, more Ferengi will come to bother them looking for answers. But if they turn the Nagus back to normal, he promises the Ferengi will never bother the Prophets again. Which they accept.

The winner of the award is announced and it's not Bashir.

Quark and Rom see the Nagus to his ship and are happy that he's gone again. Rom reminds Quark that the Nagus had put them in charge of the charity he had created with his own fortune and he had the foresight to transfer a lot of money into their own pockets. Which makes Quark very proud of his brother.

--

Hm, I am afraid I have to rate this poorly. It's not that it is doing anything terrible, it's just really boring. There isn't even anything to talk about. Nothing of interest is happening.

[Rodin]

There's a few things I enjoyed from this episode. The Grand Nagus is great as usual, and Quark's reaction to the new Rules of Acquisition is pretty funny. Other than that, I'm forced to agree.

The Bashir storyline in particular seems utterly pointless. I was waiting for the big twist about why Bashir was dismayed and uncomfortable at his name being submitted for a prestigious award, and it just...didn't materialize. And he doesn't win. So why were we subjected to all this? My only theory is that the main Ferengi plot didn't have enough substance and they couldn't come up with a decent B plot in time. I've this a few times while watching - the B-plot is sometimes so trivial and pointless (and includes no world-building or character development) that the only explanation is the showrunners filling contractual quotas.

The one point of real amusement I got out of this episode was from the end credits, where the scientist reading out the award winners is listed as "Medical Big Shot". I'm even more amused that Google knows my searching habits from this thread well enough to make his Memory Alpha page the top result when searching for him.

[zimmerwald1915]

The Grand Nagus is great as usual

Wallace Shawn belongs in "the pantheon of all mankind."

[Seppl]

Hm, I am afraid I have to rate this poorly. It's not that it is doing anything terrible, it's just really boring. There isn't even anything to talk about. Nothing of interest is happening.

Fully agree. Without your review I would not have remembered that I ever saw this episode. Completely forgettable and inconsequential.

[Yora]

S3E17: Visionary

O'Brien is woken up by Bashir after being knocked out by a failed power line. Everything seems alright with him, but he should not do anything too stressful for the next day as he was exposed to low levels of radiation.

Some Klingons have arrived at the station to have their computer repaired before they can continue their flight, and Sisko tells Odo to keep an eye on them while they have a Romulan delegation on the station. The Romulans want to keep things brief and just get the businness done quickly, which is fine with Sisko.

O'Brien has Quark put up a dart board in the bar. Suddenly he is standing outside the bar, seeing himself and Quark on the other side of the promenade. Then he's back in the bar and faints again. Bashir examines him more closely, but thinks it was just a side effect of the radiation poisoning.

The Romulans find the information that Sisko has on the Dominion very disappointing. They demand to get everything Starfleet has on the Dominion, and Sisko tells them he will check with his superiors if there is anything else he could give them.

O'Brien walks down the promenade when Quark stops him to tell him about Klingons having broken a holo suit. O'Brien recognnizes it as the conversation he watched during his hallucination and when he looks across the promenade, he sees himself watching at them. And Quark sees him to. Dax checks the sensor logs and finds two temporal disturbances at the two moments when O'Brien saw a duplicate of himself. During the conversation, O'Brien suddenly finds himself again in the bar, where the Klingons and the Romulans are having a fight. He sees a Klingon trying to stab his other self in the back and comes to his rescue, then passes out again. I the infirmary, Bashir finds that the fainting seems to get worse every time, and if it continues it would likely cause severe brain damage.

O'Brien and Bashir spend the evening in the bar playing dart, because O'Brien wants to see if things will again happen as he saw it. Bashir is bored, but if it makes O'Brien happy he will beat him another ten times more. The Klingons come out of the holosuites and see the Romulans at a table, quickly starting a fight. Like the last time, O'Brien sees another self of him coming to his resque. Odo arrives and has everyone arrested, and just that moment O'Brien has another vision of the future, where he sees himself working on a panel on the wall and getting shot by a beam coming out of it.

When he wakes up, he remembers the location of the panel and goes checking it with Sisko and Odo. They find nothing, but expect that someone will come to instal the trap in the next five hours. Dax calls them up to show them that she discovered some kind of anomaly near the station and that it probably is interacting with the radiation in O'Brien's body. Bashir thinks he can remove the ramaining particles from O'Brien's body, but it will take some time and he probably will have one or two more time jumps before that. Kira informs Sisko that she had to move the Romulans to new quarters because the replicators in their old ones are broken. And the new quarters she gave them happen to be in the same section where they just checked for the trap. Sisko thinks it's either the Romulans who will be setting the trap, or someone who wants to attack them.

Later Odo informs Sisko that the trap has just been beamed into the wall, so the camera he set up couldn't record anyone. But he assures Sisko that he's on it and investigating everyone suspicious, including Quark. "You think Quark has something to do with this?" "I always investiage Quark."

O'Brien is talking with Bashir in the bar and Quark comes by to ask O'Brien if during his next jumps he might take a look at what numbers come up at the Darbo table. O'Brien gets angry with him but suddenly jumps into the infirmary where he finds his own corpse. Fortunately, Bashir is just walking in and tells him that he died of a stroke, but he was able to determine the cause of death during the autopsy, and he tells O'Brien what he needs to tell Bashir about it when he returns back to his time, so that the stroke can be prevented.

Odo traced the transport back to an empty quarter and found that someone modified the food replicator to turn it into a transporter. And the parts he found are connected to the Klingons. This isn't certain proof of Klingon involvement, but Odo did some further investiagting by calling a friend at Starfleet Security who has contacts on the Klingon homeworld, who could give him access to some files, but Sisko just wants to hear the result. Those Klingons on the station are really professional spies serving the Klingon High Council. "Then why didn't you just say so?" "Sometimes I have to remind you of how good I am."
Odo puts the Klingons into a cell and they swear revenge for this insult. In turn, Odo offers them a chance to be cooperative and then maybe he will let them leave without calling their superiors to tell them that they let themselves get caught.

Sisko, Dax, Bashir, and O'Brien are talking about the anomaly and Dax discovered that it seems to be orbiting the station. O'Brien has another time jump and appears on one of the shuttles that is escaping from the exploding station. Moments later the wormhole flashes and disappears. He jumps back to his time but doesn't faint and tells the other what he saw. The information he has doesn't really help them determining what destroyed the station, but O'Brien has the idea that Bashir should expose him to more radiation to make him do another time jump immediately. And by modifying the frequency they might also be able to select the amount of time he will jump. Bashir puts together a device that will expose him to the right type of radiation, but as long as it is turned on, it will cause him radiation sickness, so he better make it quick.

He turns the device on and arrives in his bedroom where he wakes his other self up. They go to ops to check the sensors. As they arrive, a Romulan ship decloaks and starts attacking the station. Past O'Brien is collapsing from the radiation poisoning and tells Future O'Brien to take the device and return to the past in his place. He jumps to the past and calls Sisko to warn him about the attack. Sisko and Kira go to the Romulan officers who are questioning Quark about the Dominion to tell them that they know about the cloaked ship and have the shields up and weapons ready (and presumedly informed Starfleet about the Romulan plan), and that they better leave now.

--

Let's torture O'Brien #2

This is a pretty decent episode. Aside from the fact that I don't like time travel as a plot device, the mystery here is actually pretty good. At least here the time travel is just at the scale of hours and not one of those cases where the crew goes sight seeing in different time periods. The torture of O'Brien is also very tame, so I don't have any real complaints. But it's just not the kind of stuff that I really enjoy, though I could fully understand if other people really love this one.

What I found a bit disappointing are the Romulans. I find Romulans to be the most interesting of the great powers in Star Trek, but they appear only very rarely and things always remain rather vague. So I am always happy when they do show up, but here absolutely nothing is done with that. These are the two most bland Romulan characters I can think of, and their presence in the episode is really very small considering that they are the villains of the story.

[JCarter426]

What stuck me most about it is that Nog's interest in Starfleet makes a lot of sense when you think about it. He grew up on a Cardassian station under Quark and Rom, so he's never had a positive role model in his life. Along come the Siskos, and Nog sees how much happier and well-adjusted Jake is. He starts looking up to Sisko as a father figure, and that fuels his interest in joining Starfleet as a way to become more like Sisko.

He also assumes that becoming a Starfleet officer means becoming an apprentice on the station. It's probably not so much the reputation and philosophy of Starfleet that attracts him, but it's probably the most promising looking employer he knows of. Sisko looks like a good boss to him, and that's his motivation.
When he learns that it doesn't work that way, it's still the best career opportunity he knows about.

Yeah, I think at first a good part of Nog's motivation was just that Sisko's the guy in charge - "It never hurts to suck up to the boss." That's certainly the part that made him offer a bribe.

But another good part of it, the part that motivates him to stick with it and do a good job, is how much he thinks of the Siskos. Jake is the guy who taught him to read, after all. They're welcoming and accept him even though he's a Ferengi. He must realize they'll be accepting of him even if he's a bad, profitless Ferengi too, which is more than he can say of his own family, until Rom turns out to be supporting by the end of the episode.

The point that Sisko doesn't bring up is that Starfleet doesn't pay wages. Inside the Federation, pretty much all expenses are probably covered. And I would assume that they pay some sort of pension to officers who retire outside the Federation. But you wouldn't get a wage. Nog's assumption is that in business he'd probably end up broke anyway, but to a Ferengi that should still feel like an extreme sacrifice.

Star Trek is always really vague about how the Federation's economy works. The DS9 crew must be getting paid something, since they regularly frequent Quark's and the Klingon restaurant and buy jumja sticks. But the Federation also doesn't just give everything away - there's a limit on some things. I remember Sisko mentioning something like transporter rations (telling Jake that he would use them up when he was at the academy to beam home for dinner) and a few episodes with scientists who had a hard time requisitioning materials that were rare or could be weaponized that they totally needed for science reasons (I think the TNG episode "A Matter of Perspective" was one). They must have some sort of credit system, with everybody getting the basic necessities for free and some process for obtaining resources beyond that situationally.

But you're right, it's a far cry from a Ferengi's profit margins. Nog must be giving up a lot.

Prophet Motive

Hm, I am afraid I have to rate this poorly. It's not that it is doing anything terrible, it's just really boring. There isn't even anything to talk about. Nothing of interest is happening.

I think it's ok. It's in a similar vein to "The House of Quark" but it just doesn't match it, maybe because there are no stakes. Friendly and benevolent Zek and Quark's reaction are kind of funny, but the one joke doesn't carry the whole episode and inconsequential if Zek stays the way he is. I don't dislike it, but what content is more of a decent B-plot than a main story.

For me, it's the encounter with the Prophets that makes the episode a little disappointing. Quark tries to argue that greed has a purpose for a bit but they don't buy it at all, so instead instead the convincing argument is "we'll keep annoying you". I think it would've been nicer if Quark managed to convince the Prophets they were wrong to change Zek with one of his usual patriotic speeches.

I strongly disagree that nothing of interest happens, though. The dart board makes its first appearance!

The Bashir storyline in particular seems utterly pointless. I was waiting for the big twist about why Bashir was dismayed and uncomfortable at his name being submitted for a prestigious award, and it just...didn't materialize. And he doesn't win. So why were we subjected to all this?

Supposedly, it's a meta-reference to what happened when TNG was nominated for an Emmy award.

The one point of real amusement I got out of this episode was from the end credits, where the scientist reading out the award winners is listed as "Medical Big Shot".

He may be a big shot now, but I remember when Rahn was just a simple man trying to make his way in the universe.

Visionary

This is a pretty decent episode. Aside from the fact that I don't like time travel as a plot device, the mystery here is actually pretty good. At least here the time travel is just at the scale of hours and not one of those cases where the crew goes sight seeing in different time periods.

Strange. I'm more usually more forgiving of time travel, but I think this episode is one of the worst uses of it. I find it an enjoyable episode despite that, mostly, but that's down to the execution of everything else in the episode. The O'Brien/Bashir friendship continues to develop, Odo gets to investigate something, the over-the-top stereotypical Klingons turn out to be sneaky spies, and O'Brien trolls Quark. There's a lot of other good stuff to make up for it.

But the time travel is the worst.

First of all, there are loads of conveniences that stretch credulity. O'Brien always ending up near wherever his future self is, but not in the middle of a wall or out in space somehow. And of course something dramatic appears to happen every 5 hours, right on schedule, the stakes escalating at a ridiculous rate. But I'll have to put those aside as normal plot convenience.

The main thing that bothers me is that there's no continuity between the time jumps; this is apparent when we see a Past O'Brien who also experience time jumps but sees a different future than the Present O'Brien did when it was his turn, and of course Present O'Brien being replaced by Future O'Brien. But that doesn't track with Present O'Brien's interactions with Future O'Brien, who is aware of the time jumps ("it's you again") and therefore must be a continuation of our Present O'Brien. He is alive, so he has time jumped and changed things. Yet he doesn't seem to ever remember the most recent time jump - such as when Present O'Brien has to wake himself up and tell him about the station's destruction.

So does Future O'Brien not remember the latest time jump because in his timeline they all stopped for no reason, or does he remember jumping to a different future? And what happened to Past O'Brien? Does he still exist? Do all the timelines happen?

One could go mad trying to analyze this.

What I found a bit disappointing are the Romulans. I find Romulans to be the most interesting of the great powers in Star Trek, but they appear only very rarely and things always remain rather vague. So I am always happy when they do show up, but here absolutely nothing is done with that.

Isn't that what they always do? More so on TNG than DS9, but whenever they show up they barely do anything and disappear whence they came so they can remain vague next time.

On the one hand, I'm glad they don't show up on DS9 that way, but on the other hand DS9 could've done something interesting if they had kept the cloaking device lady as a recurring character. We could've had some episodes dealing with her loyalties and where they lie - like whether she's spying on DS9, or maybe she's dodging orders to spy on DS9 because the Dominion is a greater threat and she is more comfortable with the status quo.

But I guess they were too busy doing that sort of thing with Garak.

[russdm]

I am surprised that you didn't take more involvement with Prophet Motive, about how Quark and Zeck have both had encounters with the prophets, while Kira has experienced none beyond Orb visions. And how the prophets are talking about baseball to quark, refer to sisko, and leave quark with some confusion. Also, we have Quark trying to appeal to the prophets about why the values of the Ferengi are important.

As for visionary:

THe last scene has O'brien tell Quark Dabo, and then Dabo happens. What exactly is that implying? that we are in a new timeline? or the original? Because, with the warbird found out, the station doesn't blow up, but when did the dabo moment occur exactly for O'brien to know? We never see him do that ever. Based on times, he couldn't have either down that.

So, is o'brien just taunting quark here? to mess with his head?

[Yora]

He must have made one more jump to the future that wasn't shown. Or mentioned. But O'Brien also said that he watched him and Bashir playing dart at that time and that he doesn't want to go to sleep before he's back to a normal timeline with no more overlaps. The rest of the episode makes the impression that we are shown everything that happened, which makes the ending feel a bit incoherent.

[Cikomyr]

You guys misunderstood what happened at the end of Visionary.

Past O'Brian deliberately jumps 6 hours in the future. Meets Future O'Brian, and is being poisoned by radioactivity.

Together, they discover what will happen to the station by living it.

Past O'Brian dies, and asks Future O'Brian to go back instead. Future O'Brian goes back 6 hours into the past, tells everyone about the Romulans.

That means there's effectively a 6 hours or O'Brian's life that he will relive. So he knows everything that happened in that 6 hours, and that hasn't changed. Like the wheel going Dabo.

[Yora]

S3E18: Distant Voices

It's Bashir's birthday and he is starting to think about growing older. Garak gives him a Cardassian crime holo program, thinking that Bashir loves that stuff. Quark comes by with a super shifty looking alien who wants to buy a restricted biotech substance, but Bashir tells him that it is illegal to sell. When he later returns to the infirmary, he finds the alien having broken in and gets knocked out by a telepathic attack.

He wakes up and finds the station deserted and in chaos, with nothing seeming to work. He finds a scared Quark hiding in the bar who says something about someone going to kill them all before he runs away. He then meets Garak in the security station, who tells him that everyone seems to be gone. He also notices that Bashir's hair suddenly started to turn gray. Bashir hears faint voices, but Garak doesn't hear anything.

Bashir goes to look for other people of the crew and is attacked by the alien that broke into the infirmary, but escapes with a working turbolift. He finds O'Brien, Kira, Odo, and Dax in a conference room arguing, but they are all acting very strange. With their help he tries to call Bajor, but the only signal they are receiving are the voices that Bashir had been hearing. They hear Dax talking about Bashir being unconscious after a telepathic attack, and Bashir concludes that everything around him is a hallucination. And to fix the mess the alien has put into he mind, they need to repair the station he is hallucinating. Meanwhile he is getting increasingly older.

One by one everyone is getting killed as Bashir's mind is failing, until only Garak is left to help him get to ops as he's barely able to walk anymore. Garak praises his efforts, but thinks it's time to admit that he's done for. Bashir starts questining why Garak is still around while everyone is dead, and figures out that Garak is really the alien's presence in his mind which is trying to make him give up. He goes from ops to the infirmary, because that's the place where he's in charge and he uses the medical equipment to kill the alien.

--

Visually this episode is quite impressive. The lighting, sets, and camera work do a really good job at making the deserted station look creepy. The acting is pretty good too. The problem is that the premise just isn't very compelling, and also pretty stupid. The mystery is solved before the halfway point and barely anything actually happens in the second half. As Bashir is turning older, he is moving and talking slower, which just drags everything on. It wasn't quite a chore to watch, but there just isn't anything about the story to recommend it.

[JCarter426]

THe last scene has O'brien tell Quark Dabo, and then Dabo happens. What exactly is that implying? that we are in a new timeline? or the original? Because, with the warbird found out, the station doesn't blow up, but when did the dabo moment occur exactly for O'brien to know? We never see him do that ever. Based on times, he couldn't have either down that.

He must have made one more jump to the future that wasn't shown. Or mentioned. But O'Brien also said that he watched him and Bashir playing dart at that time and that he doesn't want to go to sleep before he's back to a normal timeline with no more overlaps.

Like I said, the time travel here is awful, but here's a rough outline of the final timelines.

There are two different O'Brien timelines, which I'll call A and B. O'Brien A jumps into the future twice. At T+5 hours, he sees the station blow up, but he doesn't see enough to prevent it. He returns to the present and works with Doctor Bashir to build a science thing that will allow him to make another, controlled jump to T+3.5 hours in the future. There, he wakes up O'Brien B and tells him what's going on. O'Brien A dies from radiation poisoning and sends O'Brien B back to take his place and save DS9.

O'Brien B does not make any time jumps until O'Brien A wakes him up at T+3.5 hours. He lives his life normally, unaware of the station's impending destruction. At some point, which we don't see, he goes to Quark's that night, plays darts with the doctor, sees who wins at Dabo, then goes to bed. O'Brien A arrives from another timeline, gets O'Brien B out of bed, and sends him to the past.

Apart from the Romulans getting kicked off DS9, timelines A and B are very similar up until T+5 hours (when the station was to be destroyed).
O'Brien B has 3 and a half hours of memories from this timeline (up until O'Brien A woke him up). We're in a new timeline, but it's similar enough that O'Brien B can remember stuff from his and make predictions.

Distant Voices

The problem is that the premise just isn't very compelling, and also pretty stupid. The mystery is solved before the halfway point and barely anything actually happens in the second half.

Yeah, it's... ok. Good execution overall, good amount of Garak, doubting Miles is kind of funny, and tennis balls, but the mystery is a bit lacking. The main two problems, I think, are that a) it's obvious from the start what has happened - Bashir gets his brain electrocuted before the opening credits, so it's not a surprise that he's in a coma and imagining this all - and b) that there's not enough buildup to the second twist to make up for the lack of impact with the first one. Fake Garak needed to be there more and there needed to be more hints that he wasn't acting like any part of Bashir at all. Some time showing how the other personalities resembled Bashir specifically rather than being generic doubt/paranoia/anger archetypes would've helped too, so we could see that something wasn't like the others.

Also, Quark's involvement here is weird. The first time we see him, he's cowering in the bar, but then when we return he has a totally different persona. One of them should've been Jake or somebody.

Really the most interesting thing here is that we get some hints that there's more to Bashir's background than we've been told. I don't think they had it all sorted out yet, but this helps it from seeming like a total retcon later.

[Yora]

There's one interesting moment where Bashir's subconsciousness accuses him of having made a dumb mistake in his graduation exam because he didn't want to come first in his class. And just previously, he was annoyed that Dax recommended him for an award because it usually goes to researchers who had spend their whole lives on their work, while he only did something on the side as a young practicing doctor. Having two such cases in a row, I suspect they already had a vague idea and it wasn't pure coincidence.

The tennis balls were pretty neat.

[Yora]

S3E19: Through the Looking Glass.

O'Brien comes to ops during his free time to talk with Sisko, then takes him hostage with a phaser, does something to the transporter console, and beams the two of them away. They arrive in the paralel universe and Mirror-O'Brien explains that Mirror-Sisko started an uprising of the human slaves against the Alliance, but was recently killed and they need Sisko to take his place. Jennifer Sisko is working as a scientist for the Alliance to create new sensors that will find the rebell bases in the Badlands, and they think Sisko has the best chances to stop her.

In the rebell base everyone is bickering over who will be the new boss when Sisko and Smiley appear. Bashir is Sisko's main rival for leadership, and Jadzia his girlfriend, which is somewhat akward.

Rom goes to Kira to tell her that Sisko is still alive, and offers to get him for her. But Sisko's plan is to go to the station and try to get back in Kira's favor. It works quite well, and Sisko gets an opportunity to talk with Jennifer. He tries to make her switch side to help the rebells instead of helping the Alliance to destroy them. She doesn't believe that he would ever do anything for anyone but himself, but he asks her if she just helping the Alliance because he is fighting against it. She remains doubtful, but agrees to come with him. They fight their way to the ship and meet up with Smiley who freed some of the slaves, but they find the ship gone and Rom's corpse pinned to the airlock. They get cornered and Jeniffer suggest they demand a getaway ship in exchange for releasing her, but instead they flee into the refinery where they let themselves get captured. Sisko demand of Kira that she let them go, because he has the code for the self destruction of the station, and he also changed the code to stop it.

They successfully escape to the rebell base and Jeniffer has figured out that Sisko is an imposter.

--

This episode got a lot of bad ratings, and I can see why. The plot is very weak, and the episode is lacking the hilarity of Mirror Mirror. There's a lot of characters getting their first appearance in the other dimension, but it's generally just seconds and they don't contribute anything. They are just being checked off as having been there. As with the second season, the middle of the third season is really weak. There is so little of any consequence happening and no interesting new things added that I am really struggling to write anything about them. At least the next two are pure gold.
I rate this episode as okay, but only barely. There are no real big mistakes, but nothing really interesting either.

[Rodin]

There is one thing I found really uncomfortable with this episode, and that's the implication that Sisko slept with Mirror!Dax. She comes up and gets very friendly with him, they go back to their quarters and we see them the next morning and Dax is none the wiser. This is disconcerting on a number of levels, and it not getting brought up at all was more than a little strange to me after seeing the "alternate dimension girlfriend" trope handled far better elsewhere (in Sluggy Freelance, of all places). Jennifer at least cottons on eventually that this isn't her Sisko, but you would still think she would have figured out something was up earlier. Intendant Kira not figuring out that more parallel universe shenanigans were going on after Sisko knew all the command codes also seemed odd.

[Yora]

That one stands out the most, but it's one of many small things that makes the episode feel lazy written.

[JCarter426]

It's not an implication and it will be brought up later... make of that what you will.

I don't remember the rest of the Mirror universe episodes being particularly good, either. The last one has some moments, but once you've seen one of them you've seen them all. It was a nice idea to explore it every season or two, but none of the episodes were solid enough to justify it, as far as I recall. It was just an excuse to introduce (and often kill off) everybody's alternates.

Also, they were lucky nobody caught on to the switcheroo. They might've had a problem if the other Sisko had started shaving his head or grown a beard sooner than his counterpart would. Although, that would be an amusing way to introduce the new look.

[Kitten Champion]

I forget, did Mirror!Dax have the symbiont too? I think she was just plain Jadzia wasn't she?

Anyways, outside of watching the actors going totally ham, the mirror episodes are just forgettable. Fun, possibly, if you're in the mood, but they don't really do the thing alternative universe stories can do where you can get insight into a character by showing who they are if circumstances were different - like Yesterday's Enterprise and what the TNG characters would be like in a war-torn era - and are more like a holodeck fanfic novel someone's playing using people from DS9 for inspiration.

[Yora]

S3E20: Improbable Cause

Bashir and Garak are talking about literature and Garak hates Shakespear. Julius Caesar is not a tragedy, it's a farce. Kira comes looking for Bashir and they part ways, and while Bashir is still talking to her, there is an explosion on the promenade. Garak's store is completely destroyed, but he fortunately suffered no serious injuries.

O'Brien and Odo investigate the explosion and while it looks like an accident caused by a faulty power line, they tell Sisko that there is evidence the power line was destroyed deliberately. Which given that it hit Garak, seems even more plausible.

Sisko goes to the infirmary to talk with Garak, but he denies to have any idea who could possibly try to kill him. Sisko gives up and tells Garak to call him if he has any suspicion he wants them to investigate, but as they are alone again Bashir starts mocking him about always being so needlessly deceiving. Garak feigns to not understand why nobody ever believes him, and Bashir tells him the story of the boy who cried wolf. Garak likes it, but disagrees on the moral. "What else could it be?" "That you should never tell the same lie twice."

Some time later Odo calls Garak to his office to have him take a look at the passenger lists from the recently arrived ships. O'Brien comes by to show Odo that he found the remains of a bomb trigger that can be set to activate when a Cardassian comes close to it, and Odo recognizes it and knows who makes them. And one of those aliens just came to the station this day.

So Odo calls the man in for questioning. He claims to be a trader in luxury goods, but gets very nervous when Odo starts playing around with his perfume selection. Because Odo knows just what combination will react to turn into a deadly poisonous gas. That is no proof that he has anything to do with planting the bomb, but Odo tells him that he can't leave the station while the investigation continues.

Once O'Brien has a tracker installed on his ship, Odo gives him permission to leave. Odo takes a shuttle to follow, and Garak is already sitting in the cockpit to come along. Odo doesn't want him meddle with his investigation, but Garak persists and reminds him that the other ship is getting out of sensor range if they don't leave now. They take off from the station, but as soon as the other ship turns on its warp drive it explodes.

O'Brien checks the debris and finds remains of a Romulan detonator. Odo assumes that the Romulans killed him when he failed in his mission to assassinate Garak. They ask Garak why the Romulans would be after him, but he is as confused by that as they are. Odo believes him, because for once Garak isn't making up any silly claims to distract them from the truth. "Well, the truth is usually just an excuse for a lack of imagination."

Without any more clues, Sikso and Odo call the Tal Shiar to ask if they had anything to do with the destroyed ship. They immediately admit they killed the man since he was wanted and sentenced to death. They also claim to know nothing about him being an assassin. Odo wants to know how long the Tal Shiar had been looking for him, and they had been trying to find him for over a year. That they find him right on the day that someone tries to assassinate Garak seems very unlikely. With all trails leading to dead ends, Sisko and Odo go back to what they actually know. Garak is almost certainly a former agent of the Obsidian Order, and it's most likely that the assassination attempt is connected to that. So Odo requests a shuttle to go somewhere he won't say, to talk with someone Sisko doesn't need to know.

Odo goes to some barren planet to meet with a Cardassian in a cave, who doesn't want Odo to come too close to get a look at his new face. He expected that Odo would ask about Garak and is impressed that he knows about the Romulans. There is something much bigger going on than just someone trying to kill Garak, and there's been signs of numerous cloaked ships on the Cardassian borders. The Cardassian gives Odo a list of five agents, three of which died of natural causes and two had fatal accidents yesterday. And he thinks the Romulans had their fingers in their deaths as well. Garak might be able to get some clues out of that list. The Cardassian tells Odo that this should repay his debt, but he wouldn't mind if they exchange more favors in the future.

Odo shows Garak the list and Garak seems actually very happy to see that the five men are all dead. If he hadn't almost become the sixth to join them, this would all be a wonderful day. But again he tries to deny that this has anything to do with the Obsidian Order and Odo finally has enough of it. He tells Garak outright that he knows he blew up his shop himself, which leaves Garak stunned. The assassin that was send to kill Garak is a specialist in poisons and wouldn't suddenly start using a bomb. Garak new that an assassin was coming for him and blew up his shop so that Odo would be hunting for the assassin and prevent him from getting to Garak. Garak spills the beans and tells Odo that they all were the top henchmen of Enebran Tain when he ran the Obsidian Order. Garak calls Tain's home but only gets his old housekeeper who tells him that Tain has disappeared yesterday. She begs Garak that even with their bad past, he must go and save Tain, and Garak promises that he will.

They take a shuttle and Garak tells Odo to take them to one of Tain's secret hideouts, one that especially he is not to know about. Odo finds it curious that Tain's housekeeper seems to know Garak so well and doubt's that Tain was simply Garak's superior and Garak must have some very serious debt to him, even after getting exiled. Garak feels offended that Odo wouldn't believe that there are other people he cares for, especially coming from Odo, and asks him if there is just one person anywhere that he cares for. "If there were, I certainly wouldn't tell you." "And that would be a very wise decision."

As they arrive near the planet, they are ambushed by a Romulan ship that decloaks and pulls them in. Garak and Odo are taken to an office where the find Tain sitting behind the desk. He's happy to see that Garak has come to him, so he won't have to go hunting after him. Tain and Garak get quite chatty, but Odo makes it clear that he won't let himself by manipulated by them. Tain explains that the Obsidian Order and the Tal Shiar have pooled together their secret fleets to invade the Dominion, without asking their governments for permission. They will bypass the Dominon's forces and instead attack the current planet of the Founders. He decides to end his retirement and lead the Obsidian Order again, and he thought it would be for the best to have all his old lieutenants killed because they know too much. "Always burn all your bridges behind you. You never knew who is following." Garak keeps making quips about the Romulan guards and says that Tain alway told him the Tal Shiar is unreliable. At least when it comes to assassinating Garak, Tain agrees. They shouldn't have send such an unskilled assassin to plant the bomb. When Garak corrects him that he planted the bomb himself, Tain finds it hilarious and praises Garak. "If you had not betrayed me, things would have been very different." "I never betrayed you!!! ...at least, not in my heart." Tain decides that he will let Garak live and allows him to go. At this point, there is no more risk of Garak alerting High Command or the Federation as they are ready to go. But Odo will stay as a prisoner. Odo tells Garak that Tain is trying to trick him into something. But Tain says he is serious. Garak can leave now, but if he wants to he also can stay and get back his old job as Tain's right hand man. Let bygones be bygones. And Garak happily accepts.

--

This is one of my favorite Star Trek episodes ever. It's just briliant in every way. This is Odo's and Garak's Bogus Adventure, so you wouldn't expect anything less, but even in that context it's an amazing episode.

Odo and Garak are fantastic as almost always, but Sisko, Bashir, and O'Brien also get very solid minor parts. Tain is just as entertaining here as he was the last time. There is actually quite a lot going on, but the story is structured in a way that follows a clear red thread of Odo interpreting a clue and following the trail to the next clues. And still there are surprising twists every 5 minutes. They have the assassin, but no prrof, and then the assassin gets assassinated. Then the Romulans openly admit that they killed him, but it actually doesn't answer anything. Odo goes investigating into a completely new direction and learns that someone is quietly killing lots of Obsidian Order agents, and then Odo drops the big bomb that the whole assassination attempt was faked. But even that gets surpassed when it turns out that Tain is the mastermind behind everything and he has the Romulans working for him.

The one aspect where I think the episode feels a bit rough is the visuals. Lighting and camera had been much more impressive in some previous episode, but this episode looks pretty flat. Which is a bit of a contrast to how intricate the story is. Though then, I do have a little bit of doubt that this was unintentional. I think perhaps the biggest stunt this episode pulls off successfully
is that even a minute before it ends, there is no indication that this is a two parter. We see that it was Tain all along and it feels like he and Garak have a final chat to explain everything and then all will be wrapped up. But no. Suprise! All of this is just the setup for the actual main story that comes next episode. Except for the 90 minute season opening episodes that get cut in two parts for reruns, multi-part episods in this show are never numbered, but usually it becomes clear that it is a bigger story than usual relatively soon. This episode has none of those typical signs and so the cliffhanher comes totally out of nowhere. And maybe they intentionally kept it visually low key to make it initially seem more pedestrian. But it might just as well simply have been a less talented lighting director.

In the first draft of the episode, this was actually supposed to be a simple single episode. It was only during further refinements that they had the idea to transition this into the next episode, and they apparently kept most of the structure and pacing intact up to the final scennes. We also now get to learn about the secret fleet the Obsidian Order had been building. When S3E9 Defiant was written, they did not yet have plans to make the fleet attack the dominion without knowledge of High Command. And apparently at some point there was also plans to connect it with S3E5 Second Skin, before they made the choice to change that to S2E22 The Wire and include Tain.

Great episode. Over the years I've sometimes thought about watching the show again but then decided to just watch three or four of my favorite episodes, and these two were always among them.

[Traab]

One of the things about garek I have always loved is how you can never be sure about him. Not only is he a spy he is a spy with a very mysterious background he enjoys muddying up further so its uncertain anything you have learned is true, but also, he genuinely seems to be a decent guy, especially for a cardassian. On the other hand, I suspect he isnt entirely sane. His personality sets him apart from his people very strongly, its almost manic at times, and I just cant believe its all an act. We learn much much much later that he does have some issues but they dont directly tie into his general behavior. He is just a fascinating character and I love it. Even episodes like this, which should be grand deep views into his past and the "truth" about him are potentially seething with misdirection. Considering lies and deception are his skill and trade, everything he says to tain could be code for something else entirely. Or just them using their cover behaviors because Odo is there.

[Kantaki]

Garak is always great.
And his interpretation of The Boy who cried Wolf is one we all should take to heart.
No one can see through your cover story if it is a utterly confusing mess.