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

[Inchhighguy]

I find it interesting that the episode does dance a bit around the question of whether Mora's research of Odo was somewhat abusive. I believe one of the later seasons has another episode that more or less picks up where this one ends, and that one gets much more explicit about it, but I haven't seen that one in ages. Will be interesting to see when we get to that.

It does, in a season or two when Odo finds the baby changling

Spoiler: future stuff

Show

After Odo is made human for killing a Changeling and the little baby Changeling makes Odo a Changeling again

We had to mentions of the Dominion this season, and two moments of foreshadowing about Odo's instincts related to his specie's culture. This episode Mora mentions at one point that he's not at all surprised that Odo got into police work and doing work as an investigator, as that's just the way he remembered him. They clearly already had plans to do something with both the Dominion and the Changelings in the next season, but I wonder if they already knew that the two would be connected?

The Worm Hole, Dominion as the 'Big Bad' and Odo being a chanceling/founder and the Founders being in charge of the Dominion, along with Sisko being ''half alien"(the Prophets even say this to Sisko: "you are the Sisko" : we created you to do the things you are doing. ) were the basic show ideas from day one. The vague plan from the start was to make DS9 a much more serelized novel like show. This was a big thing for a Star Trek show. Star Trek, like The Next Generation, had always been a ''random show, just watch in any order" type show. The ''top" people only really cared about TNG, and the thought of making that BIG TNG movie (aka Generations), and cared little about the ''other Star Trek " show. Once The Next Generation was gone and off the air, DS9 was ''free" to do what they wanted.

Though they had few details worked out. Odo had a 'bad family', but not much else.

[Seppl]

The Worm Hole, Dominion as the 'Big Bad' and Odo being a chanceling/founder and the Founders being in charge of the Dominion, along with Sisko being ''half alien"(the Prophets even say this to Sisko: "you are the Sisko" : we created you to do the things you are doing. ) were the basic show ideas from day one.

Do you have any sources on that? For everything I know (and that I can find after doubting your statement), the concept of the Dominion was invented for season 2 and beyond. The Odo-Changelings-Founder-connection could also have only been invented after the Dominion was fleshed out. Hence the odd disparity between the events in this episode (the Dominion was only a vague idea at this point) and what we learn later about Changelings as a species. Same with Sisko. The Emissary thing being important was obviously planned from even before the first episode, but Sisko's mother being literally a Prophet is something made up when they planned the end of the show. That is why there is never any hint of this before the last one or two seasons (I think the Prophets first start talking like you say around Sacrifice of Angels) despite this being a major thing.

[Cikomyr]

Do you have any sources on that? For everything I know (and that I can find after doubting your statement), the concept of the Dominion was invented for season 2 and beyond. The Odo-Changelings-Founder-connection could also have only been invented after the Dominion was fleshed out. Hence the odd disparity between the events in this episode (the Dominion was only a vague idea at this point) and what we learn later about Changelings as a species. Same with Sisko. The Emissary thing being important was obviously planned from even before the first episode, but Sisko's mother being literally a Prophet is something made up when they planned the end of the show. That is why there is never any hint of this before the last one or two seasons (I think the Prophets first start talking like you say around Sacrifice of Angels) despite this being a major thing.

Everything I've read support this post

[Inchhighguy]

Do you have any sources on that?.

Sure, read the issues of Starlog from '90 to '98 or so. You can also find plenty in the big book: The next 25 years (of Star Trek).


They knew they wanted a 'big bad' and a long war arc....but they did not have the whole Dominion Idea and story arc made at epsiode one. The idea was to drop tiny hints about a big bad....and make it up later.

Odo was always ment to be from beyond the worm hole....and have a bad family (you know for conflict) as part of the Big Bad. But again it was left open with just hints...to be made up later.

Sisko was always made to be 'somethning', but again they did not have the whole story arc made at epsiode one.

[Kantaki]

Sure, read the issues of Starlog from '90 to '98 or so. You can also find plenty in the big book: The next 25 years (of Star Trek).


They knew they wanted a 'big bad' and a long war arc....but they did not have the whole Dominion Idea and story arc made at epsiode one. The idea was to drop tiny hints about a big bad....and make it up later.

Odo was always ment to be from beyond the worm hole....and have a bad family (you know for conflict) as part of the Big Bad. But again it was left open with just hints...to be made up later.

Sisko was always made to be 'somethning', but again they did not have the whole story arc made at epsiode one.

So pretty much what Seppl said?

They had a few rough concepts* and made the details up as they went along.
That's hardly „They had the basics worked out from day one.”

*I mean, „There's a portal thingy, with a big bad empire behind it and one of the heroes is related to them. Also the hero is part god(like being).”- that's so vague it could be the basis for almost anything.
Like Star Gate.

[Cikomyr]

I know for a fact that the reporting made all indicates that Rene Auberjonois was against him finding his people, he believed it would ruin his character.

Only when they came up with the idea that Odo's people would then be the Big Bad did he relent.

Edit: Memory Alpha :

Rene Auberjonois initially felt that the decision to have Odo find his people was a bad idea; "I thought if we solved that mystery about Odo's character, I didn't know where we'd go with him." Auberjonois felt it would be the dramatic death of the character and that fans would lose interest in him.

However, after being told that Odo would find his people, but would almost immediately alienate himself from them, Auberjonois came to see the potential; "What it did was make the character more complex. It just added to Odo's angst and to his depth, and it made him more challenging and interesting to play. And the fact that he ultimately comes to understand that he can't go back to his people, that he can't go home again. They opened up more avenues for me to travel as an actor."

[Yora]

S2E13: Armageddon Game

O'Brien and Bashir are on a mission to provide technical assistance with a project aimed to permanently destroying bioweapons from a war between two systems that have recently made peace. After many attempts they finally find a procedure that can completely neutralize all stocks. As they are putting the last container into the machines, soldiers come into the lab and shot everyone, but O'Brien manages to overpower one, take his weapons, and kill the others. They can't get to their ships with all communications blocked, but use the transporter on the science ship to beam down to the planet that was completely destroyed during the war. They hide in one of the ruins where they find a broken communicator and O'Brien starts working on it.

Ambassadors from the two alien species fly to the station to inform Sisko that the whole science team was accidentally killed by a high security containment system in the lab that vaporized every living thing inside it. They have a video recording of if, in case Sisko wants to see it for himself. When O'Brien's wife is watching the video, she notices that it shows him with a cup of coffee and she knows that he never drinks coffee in the afternoon and think that the recording is a forgery. Sisko takes a ship to go visit the lab on the science vessel himself.

O'Brien keeps working on the communicator but Bashir notices that his health is turning very badly and realizes that he must have come into contact with the bioweapon when the decontamination machine was destroyed during the shooting. But since he can't fix the broken machine, O'Brien keeps working on it. They are eventually found by soldiers searching for them, but as they are about to be shot, they get beamed up by Sisko. The ambassadors tell him that they are very sorry, but to make sure that the bioweapon won't be produced again they have to destroy all samples and all records, and kill everyone who ever worked on it. If he doesn't turn Bashir and O'Brien over to them, they will destroy his ship. They set their ship on autopilot to make a run but beam over to the ship Bashir and O'Brien came on and when the alien ship realizes that they have been chasing the wrong shuttle, the other one has already escaped.

Back on the station, Bashir cures O'Brien, who is quickly back to full health. But he would like to have a cup of coffee, because he's always drinking coffee in the afternoon.

--
(Destroyed Shuttle #2)

Among the okay episodes, I think this is even one of the better ones. Just not really a great one. This is the third time that O'Brien and Bashir are doing something together, which does become a more regular thing in the future. With O'Brien being fatally poisoned, his rude and agrresive behavior on the planet seems like it's more of a side effect that any specific complaints about Bashir.

On the downside, everything that has to do with technobabble seems to be opening a new plot hole, that could easily have been fixed with writing better technobabble. If the aliens want to destroy all stockpiles of the bioweapon, they don't need a machine for that. They have warp travel and at least the federation can provide technical help with transporters. They can beam all stocks to a ship and then throw it into a star to safely be rid of it. What they seem to have really needed is a way to reliable decontaminate areas that have been made uninhabitable by the bioweapon. Though when Bashir was in the ruins of a city wiped out by the stuff, he didn't seem to get infected by it.
Next, killing all the scientists in the lab with guns seems weird. They are on a space ship. They could have just filled the room with deadly gas or something. Anything that doesn't require soldiers with guns shooting everyone at close range. And if they are so super committed to killing everyone who ever worked with the bioweapon, they really shouldn't have any reservations to go all out and just blow up the entire ship and destroy all evidence.
Then there is the thing that O'Brien can't call the shuttle to beam them over so they use the transporter on the ship they are on to beam down to the planet. Why not beam over to their shuttle? Are the shields up? These are not big things, they don't terribly harm the story, but they would be very easy to avoid with just a little bit of attention to detail. This is just half-arsed and all around shoddy.

It's a decent episode, but without any real highlights or great performances, so I don't have much more to say about it.

[Lord Vukodlak]

The only explanation I've manage to come up with for the methods used to destroy the bioweapon as opposed to sending it into a star or simply dematerializing it and not rematerializing it. Is to you have proof of the weapons destruction. If you know how many weapons were made and you have X dead husks then you can be certain they're gone.
If you simply beamed them away or sent them into a star you can't be sure no one stole them at the last second which you know is EXACTLY what would happen.

[Traab]

The only explanation I've manage to come up with for the methods used to destroy the bioweapon as opposed to sending it into a star or simply dematerializing it and not rematerializing it. Is to you have proof of the weapons destruction. If you know how many weapons were made and you have X dead husks then you can be certain they're gone.
If you simply beamed them away or sent them into a star you can't be sure no one stole them at the last second which you know is EXACTLY what would happen.

"Better hold onto one, just in case."

[Yora]

S2E14: Whispers

O'Brien returns to the station and discovers that everyone is acting weird around him. His wife is avoiding him, on which his daughter picks up and refuses to talk to him. When he goes to work on security systems to prepare for a peace conference, other engineers say they are already on it on order by Sisko. When he goes to talk to Sisko, he is told that other people will take care of it because he needs him to fix all the upper pylons that have just broken. While he is there, Bashir catches him and tells him he needs his regular examination now, no excuses. He says he'll come once the pylons are fixed, but Sisko insists that that can wait and he get examined now. Bashir is taking forever, making O'Brien assume for a while that he has a deadly disease. Realizing that everyone is acting super suspicious, he does some investigating and finds that he has been locked out of secure files dated to the day he came back to the station.

Odo returns from a trip to Bajor and O'Brien files him in to what he has discovered so far. Odo tells him he is on it and will inform him when he finds something new. When O'Brien next speaks to Odo in his office, Sisko and Kira come in to arrest him, but he had already prepared for his escape. He makes it to a shuttle and calls Starfleet, but the Admiral tells him to return to the station. Instead he flies through the wormhole and tries to warn the aliens that the peace conference they have been invited to has been infiltrated by someone. He is pursued by Sisko and Kira but manages to shake them off in the magnetic fields around one of the moons.

He spots Sikso and Kira beaming down to the planet and follows them to find out what is going on. He finds them talking with two aliens and tells everyone to drop their weapons, but one of the aliens shots him. From the next room come Bashir and another O'Brien and explain that the first O'Brien was a clone programmed to sabotage the peace conference. The aliens had warned them that their enemies had done something with O'Brien, but they only found out what it is just now when they found the real O'Brien in a cell on a hidden base. Once they have finished their explanation the cloned O'Brien dies.

--

Let's torture O'Brien #1

Hm, not sure what to make of this one. I had not seen this one in ages, but I knew that at some point there is something happening with a duplicate O'Brien, and that alone was enough to solve the mystery of the episode pretty much in the second scene. If you have no clue what is going on, it might work quite well, but when the mystery is gone, there's not a lot to enjoy here. The plan to just let O'Brien walk around the station like normal, but prevent him from doing anything important, and then "see what happens" was pretty dumb. But it really doesn't take very long until everyone should have been obvious that O'Brien knows he is being surveilled and locked out of everything. At that point, always only telling him to give himself up and everything will be fine is just stupid. At no point does anyone tell him what is going on, and the only reason for that is that they need the episode to be longer.
I give this episode an okay rating, but only barely.

[Wraith]

I kind of like the episode as, despite O'Brien's outward awkwardness and simplicity, he continues to keep alive the tradition of Starfleet engineers being able to run rings around everyone else in the crew.

In TOS, Scottie regularly left Kirk and Spock dumbfounded with his knowledge and wisdom, and completely destroyed the Kobiyashi Maru test without resorting to cheating. In TNG, Data (and, to a lesser extent, Jordi) would regularly prove that they could paralyse the entire ship on a whim if they wanted to. In DS9, it was O'Briens's turn to shine, and he even though he was "just a clone" he didn't know that and still managed to thwart Kira, Sisko, Odo and the entire security team to escape.

It shows that there's more to him than just being "the guy from the other show who wasn't very important".

[Yora]

S2E15: Paradise

Sisko and Bashir are flying around and discover human lifesigns on a remote planet. They beam down and immediately discover that no electricity is working on the planet. They run into two of the locals who take them to their village. It takes about 2 minutes to make it clear that they are a cult, with a leader holding a clearly pre-written speech that seems to be addressed more to the other locals than the visitors. They tell Sisko and O'Brien that they were flying to their new colony when they had to make an emergency landing and couldn't leave without the ship working. They are given a place to stay and Sisko takes a look at the books, some of which are written by the leader and sound exactly what you expect from the head of a cult. I already suspect that they didn't land on the planet by accident and the leader took them to the planet so that nobody would be tempted to consider leaving and nobody would ever come looking for them.

Kira and Dax realize that the two are missing and go searching for them. Somehow Siskso's shuttle was remotely auto-piloted to fly into a star but it missed. They catch it and see where it had been.

Sisko and O'Brien are working in the fields and see one of the local being released from the torture shed. Because he was breaking the rules and it's all for his own good. More cult stuff happens and Sisko starts arguing with the leader. O'Brien is caught trying to repair a tricorder, but Sisko insists that he gave him that order and so he is going into the torture shed himself. O'Brien builds a little compass to search for a magnetic anomaly and finds the machine that turned of all energy. The cultists don't take it too well that they were dumped on a planet without medical supplies, which caused a number of them to die from disease. They decide to stay, but the leader gets arrested.

--

Meh. Sisko and O'Brien knew that someone would come and rescue them in a few days. They could simply have played along for that long. It's decently well done, but I found it cringy as hell and didn't enjoy watching it at all.

[Traab]

Something you have to keep in mind is the federation has a nearly pathological NEED to solve mysteries and "fix" things. Yes they could have hung back and played along, waiting for an eventual rescue, but then they would have left knowing these people were trapped in a cult by a con man and as men of science and reason, they couldnt just let that go!

[Yora]

That's true. And the reason I really love Deep Space Nine, while I've come to rather dislike almost everything else of Star Trek. (Movies 2, 6, and 8 are cool, though.) You have four/five Starfleet officers, but most of the time they are not dealing with Federation stuff.

[Yora]

S2E16: Shadowplay

Dax is going into the Gamma Quadrant to investigate some strange sensor signals. Odo comes along, hoping to find something about his people. A bit random, but I guess they wanted to do something with Dax and Odo on a planet and this is the best they could come up with. They find a planet with a small settlement and beam down. In the town square stands some strange machine and while Dax is scanning it they are arrested for being suspiciously appearing in the middle of the night.

While Odo is gone, Kira is babysitting Quark. Sisko is telling Jake that he should get a job. Seems a bit weird to have such a 20th century American thing in the Federation, but apparently he means a work orientation internship. That actually makes a lot of sense for Federation teenagers. He suggests getting some engineering training with O'Brien, which Jake is okay with. Sisko thinks that would look great when applying for Starfleet, which Jake isn't so thrilled about.

On the planet, the locals are a bit on edge because in recent month some people have been disappearing without a trace. Dax and Odo offer to help looking into it. The last person who disappeared was the daughter of one of the village elders, and the last person who saw her was his granddaughter. Odo tries to talk with the child, and it's a bit slow to get going but he's doing pretty well. They are talking about about their families and Odo tells her he doesn't know his family and is searching for them. The child has heard of changelings but thought they don't exist. She wants him to prove that he is one, but he tells her lots of people used to ask him to shapeshift for their entertainment, but none of them were his friends.

O'Brien and Jake have a chat about career choices and Starfleet not being the only thing to do in life. Bareil is visiting the station and after he held a lecture about a prophecy, which Kira found very unconventional, they have a chat and discovering they both used to be into Bajoran sports, he asks if they could play a game before he leaves.

Odo is talking with the village elder and is frank about finding the whole colony very suspicious. Nobody every left they valley of the village, and when Odo asked about anyone searching beyond the nearby area for the missing people, nobody seems to have ever considered the possibility. Odo and Dax go searching for the missing woman and have the child show them where she disappeared. On the way, she tells him a childrens' story about a changeling and asks him again to show her some shapechanging, which he again declines. Suddenly the scanner that Dax was given by the locals disappears in her hand and they manage at the last moment to get the child to stop moving, with her outstretched arm already starting to disappear, but return to normal when she pulls is back.
Back at the village, Dax finds out that the machine in the village square is a holo generator, and proves it by making things disappear and return again. As far as she can tell, the whole village and everyone in it are holographic.

On the station, Dax and Bareil get a romance started.

Dax explains to the villagers that the generator is starting to fail and about to break completely. She offers to try to repair it, but she can't guarantee that it will work and she'll be able to restart it. The villagers decide that she should try. She turns the generator off and the whole village disappears, except for one of the village elders. He tells them that he fled from his homeworld when the Dominion took over and recreated his village as a hologram in his hiding place. But now he wants it to end and asks that Dax doesn't turn the generator back on and take him with them. But Odo got quite attached to the child and thinks they can't just shut everyone off, and they have some philosphical ponderings about artificial intelligence. In the end, Dax turns it back on and everyone is back and well. Being holograms, they aren't bothered by the relevation too much. Dax and Odo say goodbye to everyone, and the child wishes Odo that he will find his people. Before he leaves, he shows her changing into a spinning top.

Jake talks with Sisko about not wanting to go to Starfleet, which he is fine with, but he wants to continue his apprenticeship with O'Brien anyway. Kira goes to Quark and tells him she found out that he gave the monks on the station the idea to spontaneously invite Bareil.

--

There isn't really much plot in this episode, more a collection of various small things. However, there is quite a lot of character continuity being established or moved forward, and the individual scenes are mostly really quite good. I didn't really want to watch this one after so many weak to bad episodes in a row, and there's still one more to go before it gets good again. But I was actually quite pleasantly surprised, because the stuff that is in it is really well done.

We never had Odo questioning a child, and he seems to be doing really well. I find it quite interesting that he comes across as highly adaptable when it comes to talking business with different types of people. I wonder if that happened by accident or was deliberate. Most of the time we see him dealing with Quark or the people who visit him, and presenting himself as the hard ass sheriff is always serving him very well with them. And when he's dealing with Starfleet, he's always a bit annoyed, but manages to not make anyone upset with him. But when he's talking with Kira, it's generally very casual, and when he's talking with civilians he's actually very friendly. Now that I am looking at everything in the series with a more critical eye, I find him to be more multi-layerd than I was always aware of.

[Dragonus45]

[FONT=Lucida Console]Seems a bit weird to have such a 20th century American thing in the Federation, but apparently he means a work orientation internship.

I don't imagine any amount of utopian space magic could ever make the parent of a teenager not want them to get out of the house and actually do something once in a while lol.

[Yora]

S2E17: Playing God

Basir returns home to the station and met a Trill on the transport who is a candidate for symbiosis and assigned to Dax for evaluation. Even though it's the middle of the night, Bashir thinks they should see if she's still up. They find her in the bar playing tongo with the Ferengi, giving Arjin an odd first impression of her. The next day he goes to meet her before they go to their first excursion to the Gamma Quadrant and finds her still in the shower after wrestling training with an alien punk. She introduces him to the other officers, but Kira and O'Brien are hunting space rats in the access tunnels, so she goes down to help him and throws Arjin one of the dead rats to catch.

In the Gamma Quadrant, they have some kind of space anomaly impact the ship and get stuck in one of the engines. Back at the station, they put the thing in the lab to do study it the next day. Dax is taking Arjin to the Klingon restaurant because she's friends with the owner, and they talk about why he wants to become joined and what he expects of it. His reply is that it's primarily because his father always wanted to have one of his children achieve his own life goal, and he had not really thought about what he would be doing once joined, which pretty much disqualifies him as a candidate.

During the night, the space rats destroy the containment field and the anomaly keeps growing. The next morning, Dax and Arjin keep studying the thing and Arjin tells her that Starfleet would be an excellent choice for his life with a symbiont, but she is open about thinking that he's only trying to tell her what he thinks she wants him to say. He gets quite pissed about getting lectured about Trill excellence and standards for joining from Dax, with Curzon having had a reputation for being rude and impossible to satisfy, and Jadzia lacking all the qualities that the program is looking for in candidates.

Dax has a talk with Sisko about her not wanting to be like Curzon, and he turns it back to her and asks how she wants to be as an evaluator instead. Arjin spends the rest of the day at the bar, with Quark trying to be nice and helpful, and encouraging him to not let the opportunity of his lifetime slip away that easily and try pursuing it while there's still a chance. Meanwhile Dax has been studying the anomaly and discovered that it's a tiny universe, and once it had been removed from it's original location in subspace by the impact with the shuttle, it has started to displace the space around it as it is expanding. They can destroy it if they have to, but Sisko wants them to try to contain it for further study as possible. As the thing is getting close to another surge of expansion, Dax tells Sisko that she discovered signs of intelligent life in that universe, which could quite well be possible if time is passing much smaller inside it than in their own universe. Kira wants to destroy it before it destroys the station and soon after Bajor, but eventually Sisko decides to try putting it back in its original location.

Dax goes to see Arjin at the bar and tells him that she had been trained as a candidate by Curzon and he marked her as completely unqualified, but that motivated her to keep working on her qualifications and being more confident in pursuing her own goals. She eventually made it to the final selection and when Curzon was dying, she applied for being the next Dax, and for reasons she still doesn't fully understand he actually picked her.
The anomaly is put it on a shuttle and Dax and Arjin attempt to take it back, but during the flight through the wormhole the containment field breaks. To avoid it undergoing a catastrophic reaction with energy fields in the wormhole, they go down to minimum speed and Arjin carefully flies them to the other side manually. They put the universe back where it belongs and everything is fine.

As Arjin is leaving the station, Dax tells him that he should keep working on his qualifications, because she thinks he has the potential to become suitable for the final selection for joining.

--

Trill episode #3

I quite liked the episode, but I think the plot is not quite strong enough to qualify it as one of the great ones. This is Dax at her weirdest yet, with plenty of weird hobbies and weird friends. And as Arjin lets us know, this is in no way normal for a joined Trill. In the past two Trill episodes, symbiosis had been a bit of a gimmick, but they didn't really go into any actual detail what it means to the Trill. Here we do get quite a lot of it. The selection process is not only to screen people for any mental incompatibilities, but the program is also actively looking for young people that have interesting things to offer to the symbionts. The symbiont isn't simply getting a new body, but is more along for the ride with another person who has access to the memories of its past lives. Not only do the Trill not want the great knowledge and skills of he symbionts to be wasted on people who won't be doing anything productive with it, the symbionts themselves have the final say in which candidates they like and the find the most interesting to live with for the next century or so. Dax also talks about how it can sometimes get a bit weird to have memories of doing things that go against how she feels about them now. There's plenty of interesting little things in this regard in the episode.
I also noticed that Sisko seems to have the most depth as a character when talking with Dax about his adventures with Curzon. Which admittedly, is a pretty weird situation. Dax used to be his old teacher who taught him many of the things that define him now, but now Dax is younger than him and goes to him for advice on how to deal with her memories from Curzon. But when they talk about it, the actors and directors seem to always pull it off to make it look and feel that this is normal for them and they can be casual about it.

Where the episode is not so great is the plot with the anomaly. It feels a bit ridiculous that Dax would be able to find civilizations in a universe from looking at it from the outside. How is that supposed to work? But not just that, it's supposed to be a huge deal, but gets glossed over in 2 minutes and has no actual relevance to the rest of the episode. I think they could have come up with something much simpler to get them on a ship through the wormhole with extremely dangerous cargo.

But overall, I quite enjoyed watching this.

[Traab]

I think the signs of intelligent life was thrown in because the writers realized they had no legit reason to NOT destroy this dangerous thing so they had to toss in something to argue for keeping it intact beyond "I would like to study it."

[Yora]

S2E18: Profit and Loss

Bashir is eating with Garak and talking about Cardassian politics. Which gives us this wonderful exchange: "Presuming you're not a spy, then maybe you're some sort of outcast." "Or I could be an outcast spy." "How could you be both?" "I never said I was either." And it's at this moment that Garak turns from a somewhat curious extra with two appearances into the best minor character on all of Star Trek.

Three Cardassians come to the station and requesting repairs to their damaged ship. The leader, Natima Leng, is a political science professor and introduces the other two as her students. While they wait for the repairs to finish, they go to the promenade. When Quark sees Leng walking by the bar, he is overjoyed that they are meeting again. She isn't. But he still manages to pester him to come to the bar for a drink and she is not quite able to shot him down. As they leave they run into Garak and Bashir, which very much concerns them.

O'Brien reports to Sisko that the damage on the ship is from Cardassian weapons. Leng comes to him to spill the beans herself and explains that she is helping two young politicans escaping from the military that is crushing down on the opposition. It's too dangerous for them in Cardassian space now, but they might be important leaders in the future when the political winds are changing.

Quark goes to Garak's store to buy a dress for Leng as a gift, but Garak warns him that her two friends are trouble and Quark should stay away from them all with a lot of euphemisms. He gets the hint, but is not going to back down to get her affection back. The repairs are coming along well but suddenly a Cardassian warship arrives ready for battle and Sisko prepares for a fight. That very moment Garak walks in and suggest they should have a talk. The two politicians with Leng are wanted as terrorists by the military and they won't back down without taking them prisoners. Sisko replies that he should return the message that he isn't going to hand them over.

Quark has his hands on a small cloaking device that he planned to sell, but he offers to give it to the Cardassians to make their escape, under the condition that Leng stays with him. The two politicians agree to consider it. Quark goes to see Leng and she tries to get him to give them the cloaking device and let her leave with the others as a favor. He says he might do it, if she really doesn't love him anymore. But he isn't buying her insistence that she doesn't, and so she threatens him with a phaser to give her the cloaking device. Quark walks up to her to take the phaser from her hand but gets shot in the chest. Leng is deeply sorry and apologizes for having accidentally zapped him, but except for the pain he is alright. In the scare of the moment, she admits that she really still does love Quark, but toppling the military from power on Cardassia is more important than her personal life. Odo arrives at the door and tells Leng that she and the other two were ordered to be detained, as much as he regrets it. Sisko explains to them that the Bajorans have decided to hand them over in exchange for five Bajoran prisoners, but he is still trying what he can to help them.

Garak is visited by the Gul of the Cardassian warship, who is one of his old enemies who completely despises him. But he's not just coming to gloat, but has an offer from his superiors that Garak would be rewarded if he makes sure that the three refugees aren't leaving the station alive. Quark goes to Odo to plead with him to let Leng go free. If Odo does this for him, he offers to "tell him every illegal plan, every shady deal, and all criminal secrets on the station ...that Rom is involved with". When that doesn't work, he resorts to begging Odo. And to his great surprise, Odo agrees to let them escape, but not for Quark but for justice. And of course he knew that Quark was having a cloaking device.

Quark takes them to their ship, but Garak is already waiting for them with a phaser in the airlock, taking Leng's phaser away from Quark. He's sorry about the situation, but he has his orders and work is work, and he never allowed his own feelings to get in the way with that. Quark replies that if he knows what he's doing is wrong, he should start to stand up to what he believes him. Then the Gul shows up to take over, because he never trusted Garak to do the job. He takes away his phaser and tells Garak that it was stupid of him to think he would be allowed to return to Cardassia for a simple assassination. As he is about kill the prisoners, Garak pulls out Leng's phaser and shots him first. Until the very last moment, Quark hopes that Leng will be with him, but she insists that she has to leave with the others. But once the whole thing is over, she plans to come back to him. "So I only have to wait until Cardassia is a free and democratic society?" It's clearly a long shot, but he's not giving up hope for the day.

As the ship leaves, Quark asks Garak why he helped them and Garak turns the question back on Quark, asking why he let Leng leave. Quark says he did it out of love for her, and Garak replies that he did it out of love for his homeworld.

--

Cardassian episode #3

Hooray! Finally we're getting really good episodes again. I hope there won't be such a long stretch of bad and poor episodes again.

This is a really good episode. Not one of the great classics, but still above average for an already good show. It has a solid plot with a clear logical path without unnecessary side elements thrown in. A serious subject, but being primarily about Quark and to a lesser extend about Garak, it's also pretty funny. And it has Garak established as the character he's going to be for the rest of the series. He absolutely is the contact of Cardassian intelligence on the station and an experienced professional in the spying business, but he is still an outcast who is treated as a useful pawn who doesn't seem to have any real allies left. And while he's tempted to get back what he lost, he is also aware that the military is not good for his home.

In previous episodes, we had it established that some Cardassians are horrified by the military leadership, and that there's also a parliament struggling with them for power. Here we also get the additional information that the Cardassians also have a democratic opposition that is serious enough to get cracked down on by the military. Only three episodes in, and I feel the Cardassians are already more humanized that the Klingons ever did. Though they also get some more variety in the later seasons.

Quark and Leng work very well together. Even though they are completely different, the episodes pulls it of to get it across that they are both completely infatuated with with other. We previously had established that single episode romance plots never work, but I think here we have to amend that that single episode romances with mysterious strangers never work. Since the two are shown to have a long history with each other, everything that follows feels much more relevant and not coming out of total nowhere.

The one weakness with the episode is that it ignores the legal consequences. The Bajorans wanted to trade the fugitives for Bajoran prisoners and Sisko and Odo had orders to detain them until the transfer is made. What happens now with that? And then there's the other ship that there is a Cardassian warship next to the station, it's commander came over, and now he's disappeared without any trace. Are they just going to shrug and go back home?
The former issue would easily have been avoidable if the whole prisoner exchange had not been introduced. It wasn't really necessary to have the three being detained for something like 5 minutes. There could have been something better to fill the spot in that script. If instead of a Gul, some other plaincloths intelligent officer had been dealing with Garak, it would not have been such a stretch that the warship would leave without him. But those are things that aren't really relevant to the topic and theme of the episode, so I can let that slip.

[The New Bruceski]

I also noticed that Sisko seems to have the most depth as a character when talking with Dax about his adventures with Curzon. Which admittedly, is a pretty weird situation. Dax used to be his old teacher who taught him many of the things that define him now, but now Dax is younger than him and goes to him for advice on how to deal with her memories from Curzon. But when they talk about it, the actors and directors seem to always pull it off to make it look and feel that this is normal for them and they can be casual about it.

I really like how he interacts with the Daxes. Even in that one-off where Dax was in a new trill and Sisko was playing the guy, there was some camaraderie there. But it's still different interactions with the different characters. He doesn't act around Jadzia the way he sounds like he used to with Curzon, but they can share old memories and there's still a friendship, just a different one.

[Gnoman]

The one weakness with the episode is that it ignores the legal consequences. The Bajorans wanted to trade the fugitives for Bajoran prisoners and Sisko and Odo had orders to detain them until the transfer is made. What happens now with that? And then there's the other ship that there is a Cardassian warship next to the station, it's commander came over, and now he's disappeared without any trace. Are they just going to shrug and go back home?
The former issue would easily have been avoidable if the whole prisoner exchange had not been introduced. It wasn't really necessary to have the three being detained for something like 5 minutes. There could have been something better to fill the spot in that script. If instead of a Gul, some other plaincloths intelligent officer had been dealing with Garak, it would not have been such a stretch that the warship would leave without him. But those are things that aren't really relevant to the topic and theme of the episode, so I can let that slip.

Look at it from a different angle, and it makes a little bit more sense. A warship commander entered the territory of a sovereign nation under the protection of a superpower and assaulted citizens of both the sovereign nation and the superpower backing it. This was done in order to carry out an extradition by force. There is no simple term for this kind of behavior, but "act of war" comes very close. Simply put, any protest the Cardassian government made would come with a very real risk of restarting the Federation-Cardassian war, and any action by the ship itself would guarantee that war - particularly given that station security footage would reveal that the Gul was negotiating with the Bajorans in bad faith.


The Cardassians, in this case, would have to choose (off camera) between "Fighting a war that is not only disadvantageous to us (the impression I got from this series and TNG is that Cardassia was losing the war, and the Federation agreed to a very fair peace to avoid extending the conflict), but which we very obviously started - alienating any potential allies that might improve our position" and "This incident was the result of an officer acting without authorization. Had he not been killed in the course of his actions, he would have been brought up on charges." They probably went with the latter and cut a face-saving deal.

[Lord Vukodlak]

I do wonder if Garak was intentionally trying to piss Sisko off to ensure the commander would want to reject whatever the Central Command wanted.

One thing this episode brings to mind is what a 8*)*)@ *#)@$ Kira is towards Quark throughout the show. We learn in this episode that Quark at risk of execution sold food to Bajorans. And we know from a previous episode that he'd provide alibis for Resistance members one of whom was Kira. And of course Quark wanted to LEAVE in the first episode but Sisko blackmailed him into staying so as to maintain the Stations economy.

Back in Shadowplay she called out Quark for being a Collaborator yet in that same episode she was perfectly happy to collaborate with the Cardassians to have Quark arrested.

The one weakness with the episode is that it ignores the legal consequences. The Bajorans wanted to trade the fugitives for Bajoran prisoners and Sisko and Odo had orders to detain them until the transfer is made. What happens now with that?

Well if you recall this exchange
GARAK: But I suggested a prisoner exchange and the Central Command agreed.
TORAN: I convinced them otherwise.

The prisoner exchange was canceled, and since the dissidents escaped they likely assumed their commander was killed by the dissidents.
and probably don't want to bring up the fact they were intending to assassinate three people on DS9.

[Yora]

S2E19: Blood Oath

Quark calls Odo because an old drunken Klingon is raging in the holosuite and refuses to leave. Odo overrides the door lock, tells the Klingon that the battle is won, and to come with him to the victory celebration. Another Klingon comes to the security station to get him, but seeing him out drunk calls him a disgrace and stay in his cell. When Odo tells Kira about the Klingons, Dax recognizes them as Kor and Koloth and goes to the security station to get her old friend out. He expected to meet Curzon, but is still overjoyed to see her. They go to find Koloth who isn't so happy about the news. With the two coming to her station at the same time, she correctly guesses that Kang is also coming, which he has, and that can only mean that he has found the Albino, and the time has come to fulfil their blood oath. But since Curzon swore the oath and he is dead, Dax is not bound by it.

Later Kira asks Dax what's on her mind and she brings up the question of how many people Kira had killed during the occupation. Kira finds it a difficult topic but jokes if Dax is planning to kill someone, and her reaction is a "...maybe?" When Curzon was the Federation ambassador to the Klingons, he gained the trust and friendship of a Klingon general and was taken into his family as a very great honor. The three Klingon captains fought against a warlord and defeated him, but he escaped and swore to get his revenge by killing their eldest sons. He later killed them with an artificial virus and the three captains and Dax swore an oath to avenge the death of the children. And after 80 years, they finally got another chance to kill him.

Dax can't get over the memories of Kang's murdered son and Curzon's oath to avenge him, and so she goes to the bar to get Kor to help her convince the others that she can come along. He completely agrees that she should come along for the thrill of blood and carnage, but thinks there is nothing he can say to Kang to change his mind. Dax doesn't believe that a great warrior like him would give up so easily, which shames and quite disturbs him. She then goes to the holosuite where Koloth is practiceing with his blade and challenges him to a match. He still beats her, but is very impressed by her fighting skills and more than happy to fight at her side. But Kang still insists that she is not allowed to come with them. Trill culture dictates that they don't inherit any obligations from their symbionts' past lives, and Curzon probably didn't really understand the oath he was making anyway. Dax tells him very clearly to his face that he is insulting her honor and disgracing himself by denying a companion her right of vengeance. He doesn't want her to come with them and die, but she has no intention of dying and keeps insisting and so he eventually gives in.

As Dax is getting ready to leave, Sisko is furious and denies her permission to go on leave. She understands his anger but pleads with him to not make her disobey his orders, but she has to go through with her oath. Sisko says going to murder someone is against her oath to obey Federation law, but she says that this falls under Klingon law, and Klingon law is very clear on this matter. He lets her leave, but tells her to think very carefully about how this is going to change her future life.

They leave on Kang's ship and he tells them his plan how to get into the Albino's base. Dax thinks the plan is terrible and the whole thing is obviously a trap. Kor and Koloth only care about adding another glorious battle to their list before they die, but Kang must know that there is no way they could ever hope to get their Vengence and she has no intention to throw her life away. Kang admits that he did check out the Albino's location where he got a clue to his whereabouts and he was already waiting for him, challenging him to a final battle of three Klingons against 40 of his own men. He knows it's a trap, but this is going to be their last chance before they all die of old age and he rather dies in battle than giving up his quest for vengaence. But Dax does have a way to disable all energy weapons in the area of the base, which means everyone would be fighting with blades only, which gives them a huge advantage.

As they beam down to the planet, Dax does some scouting with a tricorder and discovers that the path to the main gate has been mined and the Albino has no intention of meeting them in battle. They can't even be sure that he's actually inside, and so Koloth decides to go and find out. They ask him how, and he says "I am going to ask somebody." He returns shortly after with new information and they make a plan to attack the barracks and blow up the power station at the same time, and then meet up in the main building. They start their distractions and with the guards not able to shot their weapons they disappear in the trees and then all charge into the Albino's hall. In the sword fight, Kor is wounded and Koloth killed, and Kang fights the Albino one on one, but his blade breaks and the Albino stabs him. Dax charges in to save Kang, but he taunts her that she isn't going to murder and old man, But Kang gets up and stabs him in the back before dying.

Dax returns back to work and Sisko is still pissed and Kira is sympathetic, and Dax quite uncomfortable about the whole experience.

--

Klingon episode #1
Trill episode #4

Yay! I think this is the point where Deep Space Nine turns from an okay show back in the 90s to a great show for the ages. I believe that is the first episode in the series that makes it into my favorites. Technically it still feels a little bit low budget compared to the later seasons, but otherwise it's an awesome episode.

We get the three old Klingons, all of which previously had had run ins with Kirk. They all have their own very distinctive personalities and there is no way you could ever mistake one of them for another, which is in complete contrast to how Klingon character's where in TNG. (Except for Gowron, of course.) This is where Klingons start to be more than Space Biker-Vikings and their talk about honor is having some substance to it. Yes, their quest is for revenge, and It's A God Day To Die, but for these three the whole undertaking is for more than just the body count. If Klingons ever had a good cause for killing people, avenging their murdered children is one. Kor is a historian-bard who has dedicated himself to the collection and telling of great stories of heroism. Koloth is a martial arts master whose interest lies in swordsmanship and perfecting his skills. And Kang is the wise leader who listens to reason and shows awareness and introspection about his situation. For now it's a one-off thing, but I think we have this episode alone to thank for Klingons eventually reaching their prime in the later half of the series. In TNG, Klingons were a bit silly and nutty, but here they are fun.

This episode also establishes Dax' character for the rest of the series. We had her being friends with Ferengi in Rules of Acquisition and reveals about Curzon being a bit of a weirdo in Playing God, but otherwise so far she's been a by the book Starfleet science officer with the occasional tendency about getting a bit too chatty with people not looking for a conversation. If I recall correctly, there had not been any mention of Curzon having had dealings with Klingons before, and the only sign of interest in Klingon culture had been the Klingon chef just two episodes back, which almost certainly was being written at the same time as this one. I think it's probably quite likely that this background detail was added into Playing God in response to this one already existing as a draft. But being dual-cultured basically becomes this character's storyline for the rest of the series, which is the main thing that I find compelling about Dax.

While primarily a Klingon episode, this also is a significant Trill episode. In case there was any uncertainty left, Kang spells it out again that even he knows that Trill have clear rules about obligations not carrying over between different lives of the symbionts, and Kira mentions it as well. While the episode is a Klingon adventure at the surface, the real conflict of the story is Dax deliberately embracing the memories of Curzon as part of her new life and personality, directly against what her culture advises not to do in such situations. She knows it, but her inherited instinct tell her to go with it anyway. What is not made clear in any way is whether this is a challenge many joined Trill sometimes have to deal with, or if this is simply Dax being naturally a loose cannon. I think it would have been nice to have any indication in that regard.
I think it was a really great choice by the writer to make this hypothetical question as real and significant as possible by making the past commitment a blood oath to commit murder. There is no "well, it won't be so bad if I do it this one time". This is as bad as taking up a previous commitment can possibly get. If the Albino's base had been in the Federation, Dax would be guilty at the very least of conspiracy to commit murder. It's unclear if she personally killed or maimed any guards, but physical assault with a weapon against people who were defending themselves would possibly alone be enough to get a life sentence. Sisko's part in this episode is very short, but he makes it very clear that he is furious that Dax would even consider such a thing, and she can't really argue with him on that from a Federation perspective. But to her, this is Klingon business and that is something completely separate from the values she lives by as a Federation citizen. The mitigating factor that allows us to not lose any respect for her for her part in this is that they are going after a warlord who murdered children out of spite.
Aside from the question of Trill customs about dealing with previous lives, it also brings up the question of how much you can accept the customs of other cultures if they go directly against the cultures of your own. The episode does not go to deeply into it, but as it has been in Rules of Acquisition, Dax makes the personal choice to give her foreign friends a very great amount of leeway. When Kang mentions that he killed the traders that were supplying the Albino's base so they couldn't warn him that he was coming, Dax does look rather disturbed, but keeps her mouth shut. She won't be excusing everything and call her friends out when they cross a certain line, but she won't force Federation values and customs on them. Berating Kang about murdering bystanders probably wouldn't have done anything good at the moment, but it does show that she was still struggling with how to deal with love for Klingon culture she inherited from Curzon.

I fully admit that it's primarily the Klingons that make me dig out the DVDs every couple of years again, and Dax is a main part of that.

[Kantaki]

I always figured that Jadiza was the way she was because she is kinda unconventional herself, has the memories of the previous hosts, most of which weren't exactly conventional themself, and basically has a backseat-Driver who not only shares those memories, but lived them.
And probably isn't "normal" either.

Maybe Dax went: "Jadiza-host! Remember those guys? Friends of Curzon-host! Remember the great times we had?
We should totally go help them. Adventure! "

Basically a combination of Jadiza's personality and Dax personality, combined with and influenced by the memories and personalties of Curzon and the other previous hosts.

[Yora]

In Playing God she mentions that it's normal to occasionally react "Dude, WTF! Hell no, we're not doing this!"

[russdm]

Wondering how people will see or think about:

Spoiler: Dax Spoilers

Show

That a previous Dax host was a murderer and Pyschopath

Since Kor survived, I wonder if we will see him again.

Jadzia changed really as a result of getting rejected by Curzon, and she does say that she changed herself as a result, so how much is a result of that?

How much is also based on Dax and its personality.

[Cikomyr]

I always figured that Jadiza was the way she was because she is kinda unconventional herself, has the memories of the previous hosts, most of which weren't exactly conventional themself, and basically has a backseat-Driver who not only shares those memories, but lived them.
And probably isn't "normal" either.

Maybe Dax went: "Jadiza-host! Remember those guys? Friends of Curzon-host! Remember the great times we had?
We should totally go help them. Adventure! "

Basically a combination of Jadiza's personality and Dax personality, combined with and influenced by the memories and personalties of Curzon and the other previous hosts.

In Playing God she mentions that it's normal to occasionally react "Dude, WTF! Hell no, we're not doing this!"

Ezri was a great study of people not ready to be joined, and mentioned a lot that she often accidentally fell back in her symbiote's habits while her tastes were totally different.

[Kantaki]

Jadzia changed really as a result of getting rejected by Curzon, and she does say that she changed herself as a result, so how much is a result of that?

How much is also based on Dax and its personality.

I guess it's a mix? Kinda circle-ish? The Dax symbiote seems unsually adventurous for a Trill, so they choose predominantly similary unconentional hosts. Those hosts mostly take in traits and memories from Dax (and their precedessors) that match their personality and vice-versa.
A self-reinforcing loop more or less, where host and symbiote push each other to be more... well, more themselves.

Ezri was a great study of people not ready to be joined, and mentioned a lot that she often accidentally fell back in her symbiote's habits while her tastes were totally different.

Spoiler

Show

I think Ezri's main problem, lack of training aside, was that she was so different from Dax and their previous hosts.
So unlike Jadiza, who effectively embraced Curzon's memories, took him and Dax as a extension of her own*, Ezri can't. She isn't like that, so unlike Jadiza who took everything in and only occasionally had a "Whoah dude, maybe we should slow down a wee bit. Taking on a dozen armed nausicaan mercs with martial arts is a tad unwise." she is more "What the heck? Why am I suddenly drinking Cola? Stop doing that Dax, I hate the stuff."

*Quite possibly shaped herself after Curzon and Dax to a degree, but definitely was of a similar nature.

[Gnoman]

Spoiler

Show

You do realize that Ezri Dax being a thing means Jadzia dies, and thus any mention of her existence is a massive spoiler, don't you?

[Inchhighguy]

Blood Oath is a shining gem in the second season.

It does have the odd murder part though.......Dax stright up helps murder someone. And Starfleet, the Federation and Sisko are all just like ''eh".


I think pre joined Jadzea was a bit of a ''square", but not 100%. She was the good girl that got A's on everything, but then let her hair down a bit on the weekend. But she had firm limits and boundries.

After being joined, slowly over the first season or so, the limits and boundries were widdled away.