Plot Summary: A Klingon vessel comes through the wormhole and explodes just as one of its officers beams himself to Deep Space Nine, proclaims victory, and dies of his injuries. Sisko, who is already perturbed because of Kira’s protests that Valerian ships should not be allowed to dock at the station until Bajor can investigate whether the Valerians are providing weapons material to the Cardassians, orders Dax and O’Brien to find out what happened to the Klingons. Quark tells Odo he heard that the Klingon scientists had discovered something to make enemies of the Empire tremble, but before Odo can report on this, his head appears to split in two and he screams in pain. Bashir is able to revive him but Odo finds that the doctor has suddenly become obsessed with tensions between Starfleet officers and Bajorans, particularly between Sisko and Kira. Meanwhile, O’Brien tells a distracted, nostalgic Dax that she had better remember her loyalties to Starfleet. They find the Klingon log recordings, which suggest that there was a mutiny aboard the ship. Meanwhile Kira approaches first Odo, then Dax, behaving in an unusually seductive manner, telling them she expects their support when she displaces Sisko over the Valerian situation. Quark overhears and, despite Kira’s threats, goes to warn Odo, who in turn seeks out Sisko. But the commander is hiding in his quarters, building a clock. Kira prevents the Valerian ship from leaving the station and cuts off all contact with Starfleet; O’Brien in turn cuts off contact with Bajor and sets out to sabotage Kira’s plans. In the Klingon logs, Odo learns that an ancient telepathic race left energy spheres discovered by the now-destroyed ship. He asks Bashir for help controlling the energy from the spheres brought to the station by the dead Klingon, convincing Bashir that this is the key to dominating whoever wins the station’s power struggle. Kira launches her plan against Sisko but Odo helps him and O’Brien to escape, convincing Kira all the while that they are heading into a trap. When he has the entire command crew in a cargo bay, Odo activates Bashir’s field to drive out the telepathic energy, restoring the crew to normal. Sisko agrees to overlook Kira’s attempted mutiny.

Analysis: I’ve never been much of a fan of “aliens alter the crew’s brains” episodes unless they’re played for humor – you know, the sort like “The Naked Now” where everyone wants to have sex with everybody else, which every sci-fi series does at least once, a cliche so memorable that it gets parodied in Galaxy Quest. Sadly, “Dramatis Personae” is not only deadly earnest, it’s also painfully reminiscent of The Next Generation‘s “Power Play.” (Is O’Brien always such a crankypants when he gets possessed? Couldn’t he be more like flirty Kira or dreamy Dax?) Yet again we see a story that could have happened on any Star Trek series – indeed, that has happened on other Star Trek series – and since it’s so early in the show’s run, it looks like the writers have so little confidence in the personalities they’ve created for the main cast that they’re already looking for excuses to warp them. We’ve already suffered through the aphasia virus with the crew, another instance in which Odo had to save the station. Admittedly “Dramatis Personae” is more fun than “Babel” because personality upheavals are more entertaining to watch than communication failures, but it feels like cheap, unoriginal gimmickry in place of storytelling and parodies of characters instead of characterization. Flaky Sisko, angry O’Brien, ditzy Dax, and let-me-try-your-drink-lieutenant Kira might be a refreshing break two seasons in, not when we’re getting to know the real things.

What’s fun about watching “Dramatis Personae” after the series’ run is the realization that the writers became so infatuated with some of these characters, they created an entire alternate universe for them. The ambitious Bashir and emotional Dax who will turn up over there make appearances here, and we see shades of the Intendant – a woman not afraid to use her charm and sexuality to get what she wants – in mutineer Kira. I love how she tests her charm on Odo, whom she already considers an ally, before prancing into the Promenade and hitting on Dax. There’s really no other word for it: she swipes a sip of Dax’s drink, finds excuses to touch Dax, gives Dax personal reasons for supporting her rebellion even as Dax is saying she thinks of Sisko as a son or a nephew or some other close relative, and only then does Kira get around to making threats. (Apparently it works, since Dax calls to warn Kira from Ops when Sisko is attacked and plans to kill Kira in retaliation.) It’s curious that Dax indeed is so easily swayed by Kira given that long history with Sisko, much less surprising that O’Brien becomes a jingoistic Starfleet defender through and through, and Bashir’s calculated refusal to commit until he can see which side will win makes me think he’s been studying Garak quite closely already.

It’s no surprise whatsoever that Odo can convince Kira she’s won him over even as he’s manipulating her and Sisko so he can remove the alien influence. When I first saw this episode, I was writing occasional reviews for Nana Visitor’s fan club newsletter, and I noted that I thought Odo had a bit of a crush on Kira. That turned out to be the understatement of the decade, but at the time I had little hope that the DS9 writers would do any better with potential series relationships than had TNG’s writers. Who knew that by the finale there would be four committed couples among the major crewmembers? It’s a pity we’re led to believe that the personality changes are random, rather than emphasizing either polar opposites in everyone or consistently bringing out traits that people have tried to suppress. I have no trouble believing that Dax could spend hours wallowing in nostalgia for her past lives and that Sisko wishes he could chuck all his responsibility and go build a clock while someone else runs the station (he keeps the clock, it appears throughout the rest of the series). But we’re not supposed to believe that Kira really wants violent insurrection, even though the source of her anger at Sisko exists before the Klingon arrives and apparently other Bajorans on the station are affected by the same concerns.

Kira’s personality changes the most dramatically, apparently to clue us in to the fact that while the source of the conflict may be the same, this is not the Kira we know. But how much more interesting if it were the Kira we know, just without filters! What if the writers had had the courage not to split her into Good Kira and Bad Kira the Intendant, but to let her embody all those elements as a single person. And what a cop-out that the Klingons are absolved of all responsibility since they supposedly found the telepathic energy spheres by accident, even though Quark has heard rumors that they tracked down and intend to use a powerful weapon. If this had been a test of the Klingon discovery – or better yet, if the Cardassians had found the spheres – it would add a far more interesting layer of conflict to what ends up being a meaningless crisis from a Gamma Quadrant species we will never get to know. On a first viewing I thought they’d be connected somehow to the Valerians and the weapons trade with the Cardassians, a situation that it never resolved, which I suppose means Sisko gets his way and Kira does not get to bring up the Bajoran concerns even though we get evidence that the aliens truly are providing materials for Cardassian weapons. The fun of watching Sisko call for Kira’s head and Kira hit on Dax can’t make up for the weaknesses in the story.

Plot Summary: A group of Federation ambassadors comes to Deep Space Nine to see the wormhole for themselves, but they all have complaints, ranging from the uncomfortable Cardassian beds on the station to the fact that Sisko has asked Bashir to look after the guests while he is busy in Ops. When Odo recovers Lwaxana Troi’s latinum brooch from a thief, the Betazoid ambassador becomes intrigued with the shapeshifter, whom she says is the first man she doesn’t have to mold and shape herself. Odo tries to avoid her. The ambassadors watch as the wormhole opens and an alien probe passes near the station, but when O’Brien and Dax try to download its data, the series of minor computer malfunctions that has been plaguing the station grows exponentially worse. Lights fail on the Promenade, the transporters refuse to work though there is no apparent malfunction, and Odo is trapped in a turbolift with Lwaxana shortly before he needs to regenerate. O’Brien finds that the computer is now more cooperative when he gives it orders yet it refuses to accept commands that would allow him to leave it running on its own, as if it had developed the personality of an eager-to-please child. He and Dax theorize that they may have downloaded an intelligent entity from the probe. Though Odo is at first annoyed to have to listen to Lwaxana’s nonstop chatter, he is relieved to find her sympathetic when he can no longer hold his shape. O’Brien tries to return the entity to the probe, but it resists, causing explosions and trapping Bashir with several ambassadors in a burning corridor. Guessing that the entity wishes to stay, O’Brien designs a subroutine to contain it and restores power to the station. The ambassadors consider Bashir a hero for protecting them during the fire and Lwaxana accepts Odo’s thanks for her discretion about his change of form, suggesting that she would like to see him again. Sisko is a bit alarmed to learn that O’Brien has adopted the alien entity in the computer but O’Brien assures him that it will be busy with his subroutines from now on.

Analysis: I’m of an entirely split mind about “The Forsaken.” It’s really not a good episode: the stories are disjointed and never really mesh, the Bashir plot feels entirely contrived to improve our opinion of him and smells a bit like a Wesley Crusher drama, and Sisko and Kira seem to have little to do despite the fact that there are ambassadors visiting their station and an alien entity controlling the computer. It’s rather boring and not very memorable. On the other hand, as far as I’m concerned, the final scenes with Lwaxana and Odo make up for pretty much all the rest – not only in this installment, in fact, but for a number of misdeeds committed by the writers against Lwaxana Troi, both before and after. The writers (of both DS9 and TNG) seem to believe that there is something innately hilarious about a middle-aged woman who believes that she’s attractive, has no inhibitions about expressing her sexuality, and expects men to be as interested in her as she is in them. They set Lwaxana up as the butt of jokes over and over, and the only saving grace is that Majel Barrett plays her as utterly unconcerned with what anyone thinks of her. As far as Lwaxana is concerned, the fact that she’s the Daughter of the Fifth House, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed – oh, and apparently an accomplished Federation ambassador, though it’s all too rare that we actually get to see her in that capacity – should far outweigh anyone’s prejudices about her age and flamboyant behavior. I keep expecting her to burst out singing “I Am What I Am” from Jerry Herman’s musical version of La Cage Aux Folles.

As Lwaxana demonstrates when she pulls off her wig to show Odo, she isn’t afraid of her age, being perceived as outrageous in her manner of dress (which Deanna has suggested is extreme for a Betazoid), nor the fact that even colleagues are put off by her pushiness. She loves being different. She doesn’t care if most of the people she encounters would find it absurd for a woman of her stature to be girlishly flirting with a security professional and she doesn’t seem to consider that for someone as different from herself as Odo, her behavior might border on harassment, which I might find more troubling if we didn’t have so many examples in Trek of male aliens assuming their advances will be welcomed by every physically compatible female in the galaxy. She claims that her interest in Odo is based on the erotic possibilities of being with a shapeshifter, along with a misguided guess that a man who can change his form must have a perspective on life’s joys that’s as flexible as her own, but she often seems as lonely as he does – her ongoing efforts to find a mate, whether it be Jean-Luc Picard or Minister Campio or the scientist Timicin, make it obvious that she’s not as self-sufficient as she likes to claim. We’ve seen her pull stunts that aren’t that different from the rambunctiousness of the alien who gets into the station’s computer, creating inadvertent jeopardy when all she wants is a little attention and fun.

It’s not a strong enough connection to make the episode gel – I suppose “The Forsaken” is supposed to refer to Odo, Lwaxana, and the probe entity, though it doesn’t really apply to any of the above – but it keeps the episode from being entirely forgettable or annoying. I like what character development we get for Odo; we already knew that he protested too much about humanoid romantic connections, though he’s quite funny he doesn’t get what cut flowers and bad poetry have to do with procreation, but to see how different and self-conscious he feels about his need to revert to a vulnerable liquid form is very moving (and it’s rather erotic when he literally melts into Lwaxana’s lap). Sisko seems a bit amused at first that Odo won’t even try humanoid romance, laughing about the fact that Odo is more comfortable around thieves and killers than a woman, but when Odo uses the phrase “diplomatic incident” it brings Sisko to his senses. Interesting that Lwaxana has such calm recollections of being kidnapped with Deanna aboard a Ferengi cargo ship and that Sisko can recall wryly how he once hit an ambassador who was annoying him…I guess diplomacy isn’t what I thought it was. No wonder humanoid behavior confounds Odo. I’m also surprised that he goes to Sisko rather than Kira for help with Lwaxana, both because Kira is a better friend and because, since Sisko’s preoccupation is the reason the Federation ambassadors have been dropped onto the rest of the senior officers, I would think she’d be in a better position to get Odo off Lwaxana Watch. My personal theory is that, whatever he may claim, Odo already knows that he has romantic feelings for Kira and is therefore already buying into humanoid binary gender expectations, though sadly we will never really learn how reproduction works for the Founders, let alone sexual desire. Again, no wonder Odo is confused.

Plot Summary: While Bashir flirts with Dax and Odo warns Quark not to let Jake spend too much time in the holosuites, Sisko and Kira discover unusually high thoron emissions. A bit later, O’Brien tells Molly the story of Rumpelstiltskin, and shortly afterward the fairy tale creature takes solid form in her bedroom. O’Brien tries to summon Sisko, but just then Jake tells his father that the baseball player Buck Bokai somehow escaped from a holosuite program and is now in their quarters. Elsewhere on the station, Bashir is awoken by an amorous Dax, but when the two are called to Ops to analyze the strange events, a second Dax appears, revealing the first to be a fantasy of Bashir’s. The real Dax discovers that the thoron emissions are coming from a subspace rupture, and Odo’s warning of a snowstorm on the Promenade alerts Sisko that their visitors – whose bioscans reveal them to be alive, even the “holographic” Bokai – may not be as benign as they seem. Dax finds that the rupture is being amplified by the wormhole and warns that it could encompass Bajor if it doesn’t stop growing. Rumpelstiltskin offers to rescue everyone in exchange for Molly O’Brien, but Sisko realizes that the reluctance of himself, Bashir, and O’Brien to embrace fully the Bokai, Dax, and dwarf from their imaginations is confusing the entities and tells Miles to refuse. The command crew prepares a torpedo to try to seal the rupture, which is expanding at an alarming rate. The torpedo is unsuccessful and the station begins to shake apart, but from watching Rumpelstiltskin, Sisko guesses that the rift itself is a product of their imaginations and orders the crew to stop believing in it. The rift disappears and Bokai explains that they are members of a species traveling through space who are fascinated by the concept of imagination. Before disappearing along with “Rumpelstiltskin” and “Dax,” he suggests that they may return again.

Analysis: My family can’t be the only one that quotes Ghostbusters throughout this episode – “Don’t think about anything!” “It’s the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man!” Though, in fairness, we could just as easily be quoting the original series thoughts-are-real dramas “Shore Leave” and “Spectre of the Gun,” one of The Next Generation‘s fantasies-gone-wrong episodes, or the original holodeck story from the animated series, “The Practical Joker.” There are a couple of entertaining bits of ongoing canon in “If Wishes Were Horses” regarding Sisko’s love of baseball and Bashir’s not-so-secret desire to date Dax, but otherwise it’s one of the most derivative, least memorable episodes of Deep Space Nine. There’s not much to make it DS9-specific; the crisis could easily have happened on Picard’s Enterprise, with O’Brien’s concerns about Molly being exactly the same and Riker’s long-simmering feelings for Troi substituting for Bashir’s for Dax. Though Bajor appears to be threatened, Kira is more worried about evacuating the space station than warning her home planet; if she has so little faith that the scientists there could be of use in solving the crisis, wouldn’t this be a good moment to think about alerting the Prophets that their Celestial Temple may be contributing to the subspace rupture? It all feels very slapdash and poorly integrated into the series as a whole, even granting that this is the first season and we don’t know all that much about Quark except that he’d wish for more Dabo girls and more profit.

I’ve been trying to keep my rants about sexism in Star Trek to a minimum, mostly because this series has some of the best female characters in the history of television and the moments of misogyny are few and far between. But “If Wishes Were Horses” is one of the more egregious offenders. Dax is indignant to realize that what Bashir really wants is a version of herself who’s more submissive and needy, but she doesn’t nail him for the really unforgivable characteristic of the fantasy, which is that Duplicate Dax is stupid – that’s how everyone in Ops realizes she’s not the real thing just before the real thing arrives, because she can’t answer a technical question they’re all certain the real Dax would know. Yes, it’s delightful that we all take Dax’s intelligence for granted, but what does it say about educated 24th century men that they still feel safer around bimbos, or at least want versions of their women who aren’t very bright? Then there’s Quark, who in real life has Dabo girls depending on him for jobs, dreaming of…more Dabo girls! More appreciative Dabo girls! More erotically demonstrative Dabo girls! I understand that respecting the cultures of others might stop Sisko and Kira from telling Quark off about this on a regular basis, but the fact that scantily clothed women in service professions remain a staple of his bar’s environment – and we never see the male equivalent, though we know from Dax’s holosuite programs that she’s quite capable of enjoying a hunky male masseur – suggests that it’s still acceptable for humanoid males to demand female eye candy, whether they’re human or Ferengi or Bajoran or whatever.

The moral of most wish-fulfillment stories is that you don’t really want whatever it is you think you’d give anything to have, anyway, and “If Wishes Were Horses” fits that theme fairly well, though I’m not clear why the first fantasy creature to appear is one who’s intimidating to both O’Brien and his young daughter – Sisko is much luckier getting to meet a longtime sports hero, and Bashir, though embarrassed, finally gets the closest thing to a passionate kiss from Jadzia that he’ll ever receive. If only someone had had a truly unexpected fantasy, rather than things right out of the series bible that we already knew about them…if Odo really had wanted the encounter with a female shapeshifter that Quark offered in a holosuite, if Kira dreamed up an invading force of Cardassians just so she could break their necks one by one, if Dax realized that her Inner Curzon always wanted to grab command from Sisko, if Quark pictured himself being a hero and saving lives instead of making money, if Bashir’s forbidden fantasies were not about Dax but about Garak. I can’t even imagine what Garak’s naughtiest fantasy might be but it would by definition be more creative than anything we got to see in “If Wishes Were Horses,” even if the spy really wishes he’d moved into his mother’s basement and watched the Cardassian equivalent of television through the entire war instead of being involved in espionage and winding up in exile. Odo’s pathetic order, “Please refrain from using your imaginations” – and Sisko’s follow-up, which, absurdly, works though Spock had to use a mind-meld to get the same results – might as well have been directed at the writers of this episode.

Kira is ordered to evacuate an old man from his lunar home so the Bajorans can use the moon for an energy transfer to fuel their planet.

Plot Summary: The Bajoran government has decided to tap energy from the molten core of its inhabited moon Jeraddo, which will produce energy to fuel all of Bajor but will destroy Jeraddo’s atmosphere. While confirming that all residents have been evacuated, Kira discovers an elderly farmer and two middle-aged workers who are in no hurry to leave the surface. Insisting that Kira help make dinner, the older man, Mullibok, explains that he and his friends escaped to Jeraddo during the Occupation and they have no intention of letting the Bajoran government bully him the way the Cardassians did. Kira tries to explain that Bajor is now peaceful and the energy from Jeraddo’s core will make it prosperous, but Mullibok will not leave his home. When Kira suggests to Minister Toran that perhaps the destruction of Jeraddo is too hasty, the Minister refuses to hold back Bajoran progress for a few backward people and orders Kira to evacuate Mullibok. Returning to Jeraddo with a security team, Kira is able to take the two younger workers, but a furious Mullibok attacks the guards and is shot with a phaser. Kira summons Bashir for medical assistance and goes to work repairing Mullibok’s farm, but after Sisko visits and reminds her that the moon’s fate has already been decided – all that she can control is her own fate – she destroys Mullibok’s cottage so that he will have nothing left on Jeraddo. Meanwhile, on the station, Nog makes a deal to trade Quark’s massive supply of Cardassian yamok sauce for an equally massive supply of self-sealing stem bolts, which Jake then convinces him to trade for land on Bajor. Nog is angry that Jake didn’t hold out for latinum, but soon the pair overhear Odo telling Quark that the Bajoran government wants to buy their land, so Nog decides to let Quark make a deal with the Bajorans for the land in exchange for five bars of gold pressed latinum.

Analysis: One of several terrific Kira episodes from Deep Space Nine‘s first season, “Progress” picks up the themes from “Past Prologue” of Kira’s difficulties in being part of the establishment rather than a rebel and having trouble punishing fellow Bajorans when the stubbornness that enabled them to survive the Occupation now threatens Bajor’s wider interests. Kira very much wants to do what’s right for Bajor as a whole, but she has little confidence that the provisional government can make the best decisions and she loathes the way individuals who have fought their whole lives for what peace they could snatch from the Cardassians are now forced to bend to a Bajoran bureaucracy that can call in Starfleet’s firepower when necessary. I’m sorry that so much of the episode is taken up with the Jake-and-Nog storyline, which while cute has much in common with the one in “The Storyteller” and takes valuable time away from the Bajoran situation, particularly since the two plots never converge; when Jake made the deal for the Bajoran land and the government then expressed an interest, I felt certain that somehow the land was going to end up being farmed by the people evacuated from Jeraddo, but instead it seems to be yet another mysterious project of the government. Had there been more time, I would have expected to hear environmental arguments against tapping the moon’s core – isn’t that just what the Klingons were doing at the start of The Undiscovered Country that led to the pollution of the Klingon homeworld, which inspired the Khitomer Conference? Mullibok may not need a larger social reason to stop the moon’s destruction, but I’m a bit shocked that Kira didn’t use such an argument with Toran.

I suppose any sort of politics or real-world allegory isn’t the point here, but I think it would have strengthened Kira’s position to give her a practical as well as emotional reason to become invested in Mullibok’s situation. As it is, we’re getting a sense that she craves a strong parental figure in her life; her deep attachment first to the much older Kai Opaka and now to this stranger, not to mention the way she responds to Sisko’s gently paternal warning, all hint that while she may have had to be self-reliant for many years, she never learned to prefer it. Despite the prickliness to which Sisko alludes, telling her that he thought she was hostile and arrogant at first, Kira has shown real pride in being a team player and in working with the Starfleet officers she initially claimed to resent. It’s interesting therefore that she feels kinship with this man who has for all practical purposes rejected Bajor and the Bajorans; his scars may have been left by the Cardassians, but arguments that removing a few settlers from Jeraddo for the greater good of Bajor merely make him roll his eyes. We know from recent episodes that Bajor still has agrarian societies, so this isn’t a situation like Voyager‘s “Remember” where those who prefer the old way of life are being shipped off to their extermination. It truly is about the wishes of these three Bajorans against what their planet’s presumably democratic government has chosen for the good of thousands.

Up against these complex conflicts with no easy solutions, the Jake and Nog story feels entirely trivial, like a waste of time since it never hooks in to the crisis of the episode. We already know that the two boys work well together and are becoming fast friends as they teach each other about their different cultural values, we already know that Nog is as clever as his uncle, we aren’t learning anything important from their trading, and the triumphant conclusion seems to support the idea that latinum is a prize in itself – something that Star Trek has always seemed to oppose, given that we never really learn how goods are exchanged in the Federation and we’re told several times that there is no money on Earth. The first time I saw this episode, I thought Kira was going to learn that Jake and Nog had acquired land on Bajor and persuade them to give it to Mullibok, teaching them that some things have greater value than latinum and showing Mullibok that not only Bajorans but even strangers from space can be welcoming and generous. Would that have seemed awfully simple and reductive? Perhaps, but it would be more in fitting with the values of the show as a whole and with the emphasis of “Progress” in particular. Maybe it’s better that there’s no happy ending for Mullibok or for Kira, who beams away from Jeraddo feeling guilty and unforgiven, but Jake and Nog deserve to be more than the comic relief.

As for Sisko, it’s touching to see him protecting his second in command, but I’d love to have heard his personal take on the situation, perhaps in a conversation with Jake. Kira’s split loyalties to Mullibok and to Bajor aren’t so much about technological progress as they are about the treatment of veterans, but Sisko could look back on centuries of “progress” on Earth in which people were forced from their homes, their rights trampled in the name of a projected greater good that often didn’t work out that way. There’s a lovely moment when Sisko asks Bashir to lie about the reasons for Kira remaining on Jeraddo with Mullibok, when Bashir first cites his obligation to the truth then allows himself to be persuaded that the integrity of the command team is more important. Clearly Sisko does understand all the moral uncertainties with which Kira is faced. He’s already seen her face breaking points with the Kohn-Ma and with Opaka’s death, and those are less personal than the crises she will face with Bareil and later Shakaar. As sorry as he may have felt for himself when he arrived on Deep Space Nine, he must see by now how lucky he’s been compared to so many of the Bajorans who consider him their Emissary.

O’Brien visits a Bajoran village where he is mistaken for a raconteur who can keep a monster from attacking the population.

Plot Summary: While Sisko and Kira prepare to host the leaders of two warring Bajoran factions, O’Brien ferries Bashir to Bajor to assist a village with a medical emergency. Sisko is shocked to find that the Tetrarch of the Paqu is a girl not much older than Jake, and Bashir is equally surprised to find that although he had been told the entire village was in danger of extinction, only one old man is seriously ill. The aged Sirah, who is dying, is tended by his assistant Hovath and a frightened leader who says that if the Sirah dies, so will everyone in the village – a creature called the Dal’Rok appears every year for five nights, and without the Sirah, no one can fight it off. The Sirah announces that the Prophets have sent O’Brien to be his successor, so O’Brien is treated like a holy man, but when night falls and he tries to take over the Sirah’s role as poet-priest, he is unable to drive the creature off. The Sirah saves the village but dies, and O’Brien is attacked by a jealous Hovath, who was training to be the next Sirah before the engineer arrived. Meanwhile, the young Tetrarch is holding up negotiations because she does not trust that Sisko will represent her people’s best interests, but when Jake and Nog flirt with her, she learns from the Ferengi how to make demands and from the human that his father is a fair leader. O’Brien discovers from Hovath that the Sirah controlled the Dal’Rok by using a fragment of an Orb of the Prophets, channeling the emotions of the villagers first to create the monster, then to drive it away with thoughts of unity and peace. He agrees to try to tell the story, but when he fails to control the Dal’Rok, Hovath saves the village, taking over O’Brien’s unwanted burden of being the Sirah. Things work out for the Paqu and Navot as well when the Tetrarch agrees to let Sisko propose concessions on her part in exchange for peace.

Analysis: The only part of “The Storyteller” that I really appreciate is the development of the relationship between Bashir and O’Brien, which is so strained at this point that O’Brien can’t even make himself call Bashir by his first name without cringing. The rest of the episode makes ME cringe. It’s understandable that after decades of brutal occupation by the Cardassians, Bajor and its people would have reverted to beliefs and behaviors that seem backward for a people who have achieved spaceflight and to a large extent global unity, but this glimpse at the most primitive cultures on the planet seems primarily condescending and embarrassing. I love the idea of a culture whose leader is a teenage girl, but the Tetrarch is no Queen Amidala; she’s an unmoored orphan with no adult advisers she can trust, who’d rather giggle about Nog throwing oatmeal all over Jake than consider the ramifications of the war she’s willing to start. And I love the idea of Bajoran spirituality as a force for physical change in Bajor’s people, since we know that their gods are real beings who have intervened at several points in their history, but an unchanging society based on a fake menace that can cause real death and destruction is just silly. Picard (or Troi or whoever was on an Enterprise away team) would have gently suggested to Hovath that perhaps it’s time the people learned the truth and came together with a mature understanding of how the Prophets want them to live, while Kirk would simply have violated the Prime Directive – which may or may not apply, since Bajorans as a whole are a sophisticated race and this village merely seems to be under the spell of a tyrannical patriarch – and shown the Dal’Rok for what it is.

In a lot of ways, “The Storyteller” feels like a generic bad Star Trek story. Bajor could be any planet and probably should be one that’s less distrustful of Starfleet meddling particularly in its more isolated regions. The provisional government couldn’t come up with a neutral negotiator who knows the terrain and has some sense of Paqu traditions? And no one thought to warn Starfleet about what it might find in the remote village that has no fears about summoning medical assistance from strangers in space, yet doesn’t have a single citizen who thinks to ask about a more permanent solution to the deadly monster menace? Bashir and O’Brien could be any two characters, too – anyone with a medical background and anyone who dislikes being the center of attention and just wants to go home. Except that in this backward village, apparently the Sirah is expected to be a man, since all the women seem devoted either to asking for blessings for their babies or offering themselves to their savior – the latter situation so repugnant that I’d have broken the Prime Directive just to tell those women that they don’t have to have sex with the man who is responsible for the arrival of the Dal’Rok as well as for its banishment – no wonder Hovath wants the job so badly. We learn nothing about why this corner of Bajor has been left untouched, not only by the Cardassians who apparently found nothing they wanted to take from it, not even slaves for the mines, but by Bajorans from other regions. Similarly, it’s hard to swallow the idea that the rest of the planet feels so remote from the brewing civil war between the Paqu and Navot. From this glimpse, Bajor seems to be decades if not centuries away from being ready for Federation membership.

The saving moments are all small, and they’re all about regular characters and their relationships, though it seems absurd to me that Kira is so uninvolved in two crises involving people from her own planet – she was once a confused Bajoran girl like the Tetrarch and she believes in the power of the Orbs, surely someone in the negotiating party or the village could have asked her for advice? It’s nice to see Jake discover that Nog isn’t always a troublemaker; not only does he treat the Tetrarch with respect, failing to make a single negative comment about women in charge, but he offers some Ferengi advice that’s entirely practical in her situation, a rare instance of Ferengi values being shown to have useful applications outside of Quark’s corner of the universe. We also get the humor of seeing Odo coping with teenagers on the loose on his station. What’s most enjoyable looking back, at least for me, are these early moments of Bashir trying to befriend a reluctant O’Brien, who will in later years confess that he wishes Keiko could be more like Julian and that although he loves his wife, he likes Julian a bit better. Much of their closeness will be based on storytelling, reliving historic scenarios in the holosuites from the Alamo to the Battle of Britain, so it’s a pity that Bashir can’t persuade O’Brien to appreciate his role as Sirah a bit more. Then again, at this stage he can’t even persuade the Chief to call him Julian, though O’Brien is polite enough not to reply in the affirmative when Bashir asks whether he annoys him.

A shuttle carrying Kai Opaka on a brief tour of the Gamma Quadrant encounters trouble and crashes on a planet where she dies, leaving Sisko to deal with the residents.

Plot Summary: Bajoran religious leader Kai Opaka visits the station and asks whether she might see the Celestial Temple up close. Sisko agrees to take her, along with Kira and Bashir, through the wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant, where Kira picks up a subspace signal that the Kai urges her to follow. The shuttle is damaged by an artificial satellite and crashes on a small moon, killing Opaka. Soon afterward the crew is captured by a group of armed people calling themselves the Ennis, led by a man named Shel-la who tells them that the Ennis are at war with the Nol-Ennis and need a doctor’s help. While Bashir tends the wounded, the Nol-Ennis attack, killing Shel-la before Kira can protect him. Then to their shock Kai Opaka appears, having been regenerated by what the Ennis describe as the curse of their world, which also revives Shel-la. Bashir discovers that Opaka and the other corpses have been biologically altered so that they cannot die; after a generations-long war on their home planet, the Ennis and the Nol-Ennis were banished to the moon, where they are condemned to fight for eternity. Sisko suggests rescuing both sides, but Bashir discovers that no one who has died on the moon can ever leave due to the artificial microbes that keep the bodies functioning. Meanwhile, O’Brien and Dax are able to trace the runabout to the moon. When Opaka is told that she cannot leave with the others, she says that she knows. The prophecies that led her to the station also revealed that she would be brought to a new world to teach its people how to live instead of how to die.

Analysis: An episode that could easily have been written for any of the other Star Trek series, “Battle Lines” offers a familiar take on the war-is-hell theme that recurs in this militaristic franchise. It bears some superficial similarities to the original series tale “A Taste of Armageddon,” in which a society has allowed a war to go on endlessly because they’ve found a way to keep their culture intact despite the deaths, but whereas those people kept fighting because they had sanitized the process, these people live in a filthy, agonizing pit from which they can never escape as individuals and thus they cannot conceive of a group exodus. The Ennis and Nol-Ennis might as well be Lokai and Bele from “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” so locked in their cycle of hatred that any alternative to fighting remains beyond their imaginations. It’s a compelling idea, though I wish we were given the backstory to appreciate the details of this conflict. Shel-la explains only that their peoples fought on their homeworld and were banished, not what percentage of the population they represented nor whether the original cause of their conflict was regional, ideological, practical; maybe the point is supposed to be that ongoing war is evil no matter the cause, but unless we believe that humanoids are inherently violent (something Star Trek has always rejected), there must be specific reasons this struggle broke out, and specific reasons that fellow residents of an apparently well-developed spacefaring planet chose eternal exile as punishment for its perpetrators.

My other complaint with “Battle Lines” is that it takes Kai Opaka away from viewers before we really understand her or her role in Bajoran spiritual life. Obviously she has been of enormous importance during both the Cardassian occupation and the tumultuous transition to independence, but we’re told this rather than shown it by a grieving Kira. Nana Visitor gives a moving performance to demonstrate Kira’s pain, yet the sobbing seems excessive, especially after the matter-of-fact conversations between herself and Opaka when the two are in the runabout. What does the Kai mean to her? I prefer Kira’s sad yet straightforward discussion with Sisko about what Opaka meant to Bajor to the Kira who clings to Opaka’s body as if she’s lost her spiritual guide and mother-figure all at once. Kira may feel that way, but it’s a lot to toss at viewers who’ve barely seen them interact and still don’t know the details of how Kira lost her own mother, let alone how she joined the resistance or precisely what role she played (we learn at the start of this episode that she resents being dismissed as a minor operative; we won’t hear a discussion until “Duet” about how many Cardassians she may have killed). In general we’ve been told very little about how Bajorans view their religious leaders, who seem to have lived in isolation during the brutal period of the Occupation. We will learn later in “The Collaborator” that Opaka was neither an expert politician nor a saint, which perhaps puts a different spin after the fact on her willingness to remain among strangers as a peacemaker. But here she remains too much of an enigma.

I wonder whether getting rid of Opaka stemmed from practical considerations, like not being able to lock Camille Saviola into a recurring role, or whether there were already ideas brewing for what became the extraordinary Bareil-Winn storyline and Kira’s growth as a character interacting with those two very different candidates to be the next Kai. I remember that when I first saw “Battle Lines” I wondered whether she had had so many people taken away from her – family, Occupation friends, Opaka – so that she would begin to feel that her Starfleet colleages were her family, since unlike on the Enterprise where home is far away for everyone, Kira has strong ties to the nearest planet and could choose to emphasize her loyalties there over her loyalties on DS9. Bajorans in general and Kira in particular are constantly warned of the dangers of repeating the same mistakes, particularly those born of anger and hatred, which is precisely what creates hell for the people on this forsaken moon – all brought to life in compelling fashion by actors who seem too young to be so scarred. I wish the show had returned to give us a glimpse of what had become of these immortal people in need of souls. I understand from a practical standpoint why Starfleet wouldn’t risk another runabout near the satellites, but somewhere in the Gamma Quadrant live those who exiled the rival factions, and it would be fascinating to hear their side of the story.

Plot Summary: Croden, who arrives at Deep Space Nine from the Gamma Quadrant, kills half of a pair of Miradorn twins during a robbery as they try to sell a collectible to Quark. Odo arrests Croden and must protect him from the surviving twin. While Sisko tracks down the authorities on Croden’s home planet, who declare that Croden is a dangerous criminal, Croden tells Odo that he knows of other changelings in the Gamma Quadrant. Croden has a locket containing a stone that morphs into a crystalline shape which he says he got from a colony of changelings. Bashir’s analysis reveals that the organic material in the crystal is similar to that of Odo, who tells Sisko that he will ferry Croden back to his home planet, sneaking him past the angry Miradorn whose ship then chases Odo’s runabout. As the runabout flees into a vortex where ionized gas hides it from Miradorn sensors, Croden explains that he was persecuted, his family killed. Odo allows Croden to pilot the runabout through the vortex, surprised when Croden lands on an asteroid where Croden claims the colony of changelings lives. But when Odo becomes suspicious, Croden confesses that the stone in his locket is really the key to a stasis chamber lock there. Inside is Croden’s daughter, the only survivor of his family’s slaughter. When the Miradorn attack, Odo is injured and Croden rescues him, agreeing to be returned to his own planet if Odo will care for the girl. They use the gases in the vortex to make the Miradorn weapons backfire, destroying the Miradorn vessel. When a passing Vulcan ship hails to inquire whether Odo needs assistance, Odo asks the Vulcan captain to take Croden and his daughter to safety. Croden leaves Odo with the shape-shifting key and the knowledge that there are legends of changelings in the Gamma Quadrant.

Analysis: “Vortex” finally offers us a glimpse into Odo’s biology and background, though it raises as many questions as it answers. What it does reveal are Odo’s two vulnerabilities, which will affect his life deeply over the next several years and affect the entire Alpha Quadrant: the fact that Odo doesn’t know his origins and the fact that Odo wishes for a family, a species…some sense of belonging to a place or to someone, not to remain a man alone. I remember being shocked the first time I saw “Vortex” that Odo had set aside his strict sense of justice to save Croden, whom he knew to be a killer even if the charges on Croden’s own planet were wrongful. In the absence of loved ones and fellows, Odo’s self-definition is wrapped up entirely in his sense of duty and justice, yet here we get the first glimmers that he can be swayed emotionally – just not by wine, women, and wealth, as Quark assumes will work on every other man. He has verbally disparaged relationships in favor of absolutes, both romantic ties and family loyalties, though we’ve already had some glimpses that he might make exceptions where Kira is concerned. No matter how terrible the justice to which Croden might be returning (something Sisko has already considered and decided isn’t ultimately his, or Starfleet’s, business), and no matter how much Odo fears taking on responsibility even temporarily for Croden’s daughter, the fact that he sends the murderer off to the Vulcans without so much as warning them is more than a bit disturbing.

Who is Croden? The episode never gives us a solid answer, which perhaps is part of its strategy. Cliff DeYoung gives a subtle, slippery performance, playing the character at first in broad strokes and then with very deep, specific emotions. His panic during the killing of the Miradorn proves to be feigned, but its odd that he expresses so little remorse, never for a moment considering the suffering of the dead man’s twin, which makes it hard to swallow his grief over his own family. If it’s all a show to get Odo’s attention, why not at least try to play the victim? With so many enemies on both sides of the wormhole, he never explains how he managed to hide his daughter so well, how he attracted the attention of the Klingons without attracting his own pursuers, or why he would risk angering the brutal Miradorn when what he really needs is an ally. Ironically, if he’d gone straight to Sisko pleading that he had an innocent child hidden from his enemies, Sisko would probably have taken the risk of checking out his story. I have ongoing concerns about how much Sisko lets Quark get away with at this stage – he’s pretty obviously a threat to station security, it’s strongly suggested that he engineered the robbery that got the Miradorn killed and Croden arrested – as well as Sisko’s inconsistent approach to various new neighbors in the Gamma Quadrant.

Quark, at least, has been reliable in his criminal dealings and probably does have a ship lined up for Croden before the killing gets Odo and Sisko involved. The fact that Croden allies with the bartender instead of the Bajorans or Starfleet suggests either a deep distrust of anyone in charge or more sins to hide than he ever confesses. Of course I’m glad the girl gets away safely, and I suppose she’s better off with her father than with no one, and the Vulcans will keep an eye on an impulsive newcomer among them, but it’s impossible to root for someone so shamelessly manipulative and casually brutal. Still, I find it odd that while Dax has concerns about a first contact with a Gamma Quadrant race being centered on the fate of a criminal, Kira thinks Croden should be handed to his planet’s authorities who will probably be grateful since someone like that has likely committed more crimes. I’d expect that someone from the Bajoran resistance, a criminal in the eyes of the Cardassians, might be the first to wonder precisely what sort of background drove a man to come through a wormhole on a ship full of strangers and immediately fall in with thieves and thugs.

I have quibbles about things like the fact that a rock can knock Odo out when a bullet can pass right through him, and the plot is overly busy with loose ends that don’t get tied up – the stolen item that Quark is trying to sell, the aliens expecting an escaped criminal to be returned to their planet, the changelings and the legends about them in the Gamma Quadrant. I’d think Odo would want to know as much as possible – when Croden first learned that name for shapeshifters, whether the stories tell of heroes or mischief-makers or villains, what sorts of families are they rumored to have – but he’s too focused on unraveling the basic question of what Croden was doing on Deep Space Nine and what sort of treatment he deserves after his crimes. The sometimes mocking, distrustful banter on the runabout is reminiscent of Odo’s banter with Quark, and the same sort of trust-via-necessity is forged when Odo realizes that Croden may be his only hope of navigating through the vortex to escape the Miradorn ship, though we’ve seen enough of Quark to know that he deserves a certain level of respect; not so this new alien. In all these early episodes, it’s impossible for the audience (and, indeed, for the writers) to know which of these new characters and species will turn up regularly and which will be forgotten, so while this episode might be a powerful jumping-off point for a conflict with Croden’s planet and a search for changelings, only the latter thread will be picked up and not for quite some time.

Plot Summary: While Quark is berating Rom for returning a lost purse without stealing the contents, a Ferengi named Krax approaches and introduces his father, Grand Nagus Zek. Quark scrambles to impress the Ferengi leader while fearing that the Nagus has arrived to buy the bar from Quark and make his own profits with it. Meanwhile, Sisko can’t convince Jake to accompany him to a festival on Bajor and is told by Miles O’Brien that Jake has been covering for Nog at school; he tries to talk to his son about differences between human and Ferengi values, but Jake is annoyed at the interference. That evening Quark serves the Nagus a grand dinner, but Zek is disgusted that Rom lets a woman teach his son, causing Rom to tell Nog to leave school for good. Zek assures Quark that he only wants to borrow the bar for one day to host a conference about Ferengi trade in the Gamma Quadrant, at which he makes the shocking announcement that he wishes to retire and make Quark the Grand Nagus in his stead. Quark soon discovers that many people want to kill him to take over the job and becomes even more fearful when Zek dies unexpectedly of what seems to be natural causes, though Odo is suspicious and wants a Starfleet autopsy. A Ferengi bomb nearly kills Quark but he refuses all Federation assistance, feeling it would be a show of weakness. When Rom asks to take over the bar to ease Quark’s burdens, Quark becomes suspicious of his brother and “bodyguard” and soon discovers that Rom and Krax have a plot to eject him into space instead of escorting him to a ship to the Gamma Quadrant. Odo rescues Quark with the help of Zek, who faked his own death to test Krax’s worthiness to succeed him – something Zek now knows Krax does not deserve. Quark, however, is impressed that Rom tried to murder him for profit and makes him assistant manager of the bar. And Sisko discovers that the reason Jake is often with Nog is that Jake is teaching the Ferengi to read.

Analysis: I was never a fan of the Ferengi on The Next Generation – they had prominent roles in several terrible episodes and they often seemed like vaguely anti-Semitic stereotypes coupled with a deep misogynistic streak – so for many years I was not happy to see them in large numbers on Deep Space Nine, even though I liked Quark, Rom, and Nog as individual characters. Knowing how Ferengi society will be turned on its head by the end of the series, however, and how much heroism we will witness from the ones most closely associated with DS9 (including Quark and Rom’s as-yet-unseen mother, Ishka), I can enjoy the Ferengi stories with a new appreciation, even this introduction to their stuffy patriarch who has much in common with many of the conceited elder male leaders of other societies we’ve seen in the Star Trek universe. The humor of this episode is mostly based on misunderstood intentions – Quark thinks Zek is his enemy with plans to take over his bar when in fact Zek thinks more highly of Quark than of Krax, Sisko thinks Jake is up to no good with Nog when in fact Jake is epitomizing the values of the Federation – but we don’t know most of the characters well enough yet to have a full sense of what they might or might not do. Yet again we’re faced with the odd situation of the leader of an entire culture visiting the station while Sisko, apparently, has better things to do – even plans to visit Bajor while Zek is holding his conference about infiltrating the Gamma Quadrant – so we’re not encouraged as viewers to take any of the dealings all that seriously.

I can’t really blame Sisko for being concerned that if Jake hangs out with Nog, he’ll become a greedy, unscrupulous, self-centered womanizer like every other Ferengi we’ve ever seen. Rom doesn’t quite fit that mold – he does think of the good of others, he’s initially willing to let his son be educated by a female – but he’s quick to bend to Quark’s wishes and later to Krax’s, so it’s hard to believe that he could represent any sort of hope for reform. Yet I can’t help wondering whether Jake’s breaking Rom’s rules for his son could be interpreted as interference in a more serious storyline. Sisko tries to talk to Jake about how he’ll meet people from backgrounds that make real friendship possible, but he doesn’t address the fact that even when aliens choose Starfleet values over those they grew up with, they often find themselves nearly alone among their species, like Spock and Worf and increasingly like Kira. Of course, that’s not a conversation or a concept that can be wrapped up in a single episode, and later on it becomes a prominent issue of the series, which is one of the things that makes DS9 so exceptional. But the haphazard blending of comic Ferengi storyline with the beginnings of Jake and Nog’s development here doesn’t suggest that the writers have any plans to cultivate such a rich and powerful theme.

Let’s face it: the writing in “The Nagus” is pretty mediocre. Come on, writers, how many fake alien deaths do you think you can get away with in a single season of a series? How much father-son bonding with heavy-handed parallels to other duos can an audience be expected to take? Is learning that the Ferengi leader is even more unscrupulous than Quark supposed to give us new appreciation for Quark’s restraint, or to think that maybe he’s a loser among his own people, which is why he’s so happy running a bar in what was essentially the middle of nowhere until the discovery of the wormhole made the place important? Are we really supposed to get a giggle out of Rom’s attempted murder of Quark and Quark’s surprising reaction, being impressed rather than furious? There just doesn’t seem to be a great deal of thought put into the storyline and the laughs are cheap, even if “Vulcans stole my homework” may be the best excuse of all time, and “No studying!” the best parental admonition concerning school. Okay, and the visual references to The Godfather and the casting of Wallace Shawn – the latter in particular being a choice that will do well for the series in subsequent seasons. And I got a tiny chill hearing Sisko’s offhand reference to wanting to visit Bajor’s “fire caverns” which I assume must be the Fire Caves where he will meet his fate with the Pah-wraiths. But the first season writers get no props for that; it’s one of the many threads picked up by the geniuses who scripted the show’s final seasons and wove everything together as though it had been planned all along.

Plot Summary: A first contact with the Wadi from the Gamma Quadrant surprises Sisko when instead of diplomacy, the aliens are only interested in Alpha Quadrant games. Quark agrees to let the leader, Falow, bid gems at the Dabo table while the bored station officers head off to bed. When the aliens quickly learn the rules of Dabo and start beating the house, Quark instructs one of his employees to cheat. The Wadi realize that they have been duped and insist that now Quark must play one of their games, which he activates on the Promenade. At the same time, Sisko wakes not in his quarters but on the floor of an alien room. The commander quickly discovers that Kira, Bashir, and Dax have all been brought to the same alien structure, which puts them through a series of puzzles and tests, while Odo discovers that the four officers are missing and Quark slowly realizes that the four playing pieces he is using in the game represent his four associates. Falow tells Quark that his winnings will be greater if he uses a shortcut, though that will also increase the risk to his game pieces. At first Quark chooses the safer route, but realizes that a quick end to the game may be wiser and agrees to skip a level. Though Bashir disappears and Dax is injured in the game, they reappear along with Sisko and Kira when Quark loses the game. Odo reveals to Sisko that Quark’s cheating was likely responsible for the perceived peril, but Quark is too concerned with franchising this new game to atone.

Analysis: This episode is generally considered a stinker, with reason – it’s plodding, it’s more like a kid’s fantasy story than science fiction, and it requires the senior crew to behave in a very silly manner without the humorous payoffs of such Next Generation episodes as “Qpid” (there is no “I am not a merry man!” moment, nor even “A cellular peptide cake…with mint frosting”). It’s hard to avoid comparisons with TNG’s “The Game” and at least Sisko’s crew is not addicted, though they look no less ridiculous playing hopscotch than Picard’s crew did staring at miniature game boards projected before their eyes. For better or worse, the aliens look just as goofy as any crewmember and unlike in “The Game” there isn’t some clever, sinister takeover plan behind the form of recreation they introduce. But considering we’re only a few episodes away from “Captive Pursuit” and its lethal sport, one has to wonder why the spacefaring races of the Gamma Quadrant have so much time on their hands to devote to not-very-benign pursuits of pleasure. The first time I watched, I expected the game in “Move Along Home” to have a diplomatic or political point, like the aliens who restructured the Enterprise in “Masks”; apparently, however, the only moral is not to cheat someone whose more adept at gambling.

While it’s nice to meet a species with no apparent interest in violent conquest, it’s a shame that we get no insight into their formidable technology and why they choose to devote so much of their energy to games. Is it a strategic decision, have they discovered that games keep their minds sharp and help them with engineering problems, or is this all a ploy to see what sort of people occupy the Alpha Quadrant? Clearly their transporter technology and holographic skills are far beyond anything in the Federation – the computer reports that Sisko is nowhere on the station while he’s trapped in the game, and when Odo tries to enter the Wadi ship, he is instantly transported to the Promenade – yet there’s no discussion of how these scientific wonders work, to what other uses they might be put (simulating experiments and training soldiers come immediately to mind), whether there could be any sort of exchange beyond the financial transaction Quark is planning. Even if Sisko is too disgusted to want to open the first contact negotiations that are the ostensible reason for the visit, I’m astonished that Kira does not see immediate practical reasons that the Wadi might make excellent allies for Bajor.

The fact that these issues are never even mentioned underlines the degree to which “Move Along Home” isn’t a serious episode. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t some telling character moments. After a few weeks’ absence, Jake Sisko reappears to reveal that while the O’Briens have been visiting Earth, leaving the school closed, he has been hanging out with Nog, checking out pretty Bajoran women who visit the station. Sisko realizes to his horror that he hasn’t managed to have The Talk with his son before Nog filled in all sorts of details that Sisko doesn’t care to imagine. Sisko is looking rather beleaguered this episode and doesn’t really seem to be on top of things; his eagerness to get to bed, leaving Quark in charge of a group of aliens no one knows anything about, without even calling for Odo to oversee the situation, seems like a recipe for disaster, and I don’t think it’s because Sisko senses all along that the aliens are really benevolent. He frets about small details like Bashir’s inability to track down his dress uniform – as Bashir correctly points out, the aliens have no idea what is considered formal for Starfleet, for all he knows they prefer nudity – and refuses to argue with Dax about the possibility of leaving her behind in the game to rescue himself and Kira. Yet he seems detached from his role as commander responsible for everyone on Deep Space Nine, perhaps because the writers haven’t really decided who he is yet. Allamarain!

Plot Summary: Kira and Bashir go to aid a Kobliad ship in distress but are warned by an officer named Kajada not to try to help the prisoner in the brig. Bashir insists on administering aid to the prisoner, Rao Vantika, though Kajada tells him that Vantika is responsible for the fire on the ship and that he has faked his death to escape before. Though the prisoner dies after trying to strange Bashir and is taken to Deep Space Nine’s morgue, Kajada insists that he will return to try to steal the shipment of deuridium that will soon arrive at the station. Security officer Primmin has been sent by Starfleet to guard the deuridium and he feels that Odo’s preparations are insufficient. It soon becomes obvious that there has been a security breach, but on a massive scale affecting the station’s entire computer memory. Kajada identifies this as Vantika’s work. Meanwhile, Quark is attacked by Vantika while making preparations to steal the deuridium for a private buyer. Bashir insists that Vantika is truly dead, though Dax suspects that Vantika has used new technology to transfer his consciousness into another body. She suspects Kajada, but the Kobliad is soon attacked and incapacitated. When Quark and his accomplices go to take the deuridium, they are shocked to be greeted by Vantika in the body of Bashir. Primmin discovers that the station’s defenses have been sabotaged via the waste reclamation units, allowing Sisko to prevent Bashir from escaping with the deuridium long enough for Dax to send an electromagnetic pulse that enables Bashir to regain control of his body. Back on the station, Vantika’s consciousness is extracted from Bashir and destroyed by Kajada.

Analysis: Deep Space Nine produced a number of terrific mystery episodes during its seven-year run, but “The Passenger” is not one of them. It doesn’t help that superficially it resembles a previous first-season episode, “A Man Alone,” in that it concerns an alien who has faked his own death and that it focuses on Odo and his position as an outsider among Starfleet officers. It also doesn’t help that Odo ends up looking much less competent in “The Passenger” than in previous episodes. If the point is to show us that he’s learning to be a team player, couldn’t that be demonstrated without a snotty Starfleet officer who thinks all along that Odo’s in over his head making the crucial discovery that saves Bashir and the station? It also doesn’t help that Quark, who’s been shown previously to be slightly on the wrong side of the law but not engaged in anything truly dangerous to the Federation, is revealed to be a big-time gangster planning to steal material Starfleet considers so important that special security has been dispatched to protect it. It’s always seemed amusing before when people picked on Odo for his casual chats with Quark, but here, Odo really does seem out of his depth, and he’s not getting the kind of backup from Kira and Dax that he’s had before, though Sisko defends him strongly to the hard-to-like Primmin.

I know that the writers intended all along for Deep Space Nine to be a grittier, more realistic show than the previous Star Trek episodes, but right about here I could forgive any viewer for thinking they’ve gone out of their way to emphasize the flaws of the main characters over the strengths that got them into their current positions. Though Odo is proud of not sharing human bonding rituals, he’s the most temperamental character on the show – he’s ready to resign over a single misunderstanding about his authority over a Starfleet officer – and we already know that Kira has a temper, that Dax has the memories of a drunken womanizer, that Bashir is awfully full of himself, that Sisko isn’t even sure he wants to be there. No one comes off looking particularly heroic or even clever in “The Passenger” except perhaps for Kajada, and whatever warm feelings we’ve built up for her by the end of the episode are blown up, at least for me, when she blasts the disc with Vantika’s consciousness. Maybe she has both the authority and the mandate to do so after her long hunt for him, but that’s not made clear; what is made clear is that, although she was initially transporting him presumably for trial and incarceration despite what she knew were grave risks, she now chooses summary judgment and execution. It’s hard to tell whether Sisko looks appalled or admiring of this.

Dax comes off looking best of the series regulars, but her scientific genius first in figuring out that Vantika has transferred his consciousness and then in setting up a means for Bashir to regain control over his body gets cloaked in so much technobabble that I can’t begin to summarize either how Vantika took over Bashir’s brain or why an electromagnetic pulse shot at a spaceship interfered with the possession. It was more fun when Spock simply stuck his katra in McCoy without any explanation; sometimes a scientific revelation energizes a story, but in this case all the jargon slows down the pace. “The Passenger” would have done well to incorporate B plot, maybe something witty about how Quark recruited his accomplices and how he too is often in over his head – a common theme for nearly everyone, since the episode starts with Bashir bragging about his talents and Odo insisting he doesn’t need any help from Starfleet. Apart from expecting a dead man to stay dead, Quark’s only real mistake in the episode is thinking that Dax might be romantically interested in him. We get handed some red herrings – when Odo tells Kajada that computer access is restricted to himself, Primmin, Sisko, and Kira, it sure seems to me like we’re supposed to suspect the red-shirt in that bunch – but we don’t really get any sly hints of Bashir’s brain takeover until he starts stealing runabouts and killing people. It would be nice to see him growing up and learning from his experiences instead of getting banged around and waking up the same person for so long.