See Also: 'Defiant' Episode Guide

Will Riker's clone Tom comes aboard the station and steals the Defiant to run a top secret mission for the Maquis, who want to expose a secret Cardassian military buildup. While Sisko and Dukat work to stop the ship from succeeding, Kira - taken hostage by Riker - tries to talk him into returning to the station before he starts a war.

Analysis:

I'm just going to come right out and say that I think Jonathan Frakes is one of the hottest men alive, and if I were Kira and I'd been surviving on a diet of Vedek Bareil, I'd jump at the chance to "talk" to him for three hours! I really liked this episode, which is not to say that I thought it was good; it had plot holes as big as Will Riker's ego, but who cares. I didn't really believe the chemistry between Kira and Riker, but they sure looked good together. I also liked getting to watch him work his smarmy charm on Dax and Sisko. I don't understand why O'Brien didn't say, "What the hell are you talking about?" when Riker brushed him off, but I did think it was a clever tactic for avoiding warm reminiscent discussion about the Enterprise.

Ironic that O'Brien was missing because the plot of this episode reminded me of "The Wounded" -- that terrific TNG episode about O'Brien's former commander who thought the Cardassians were smuggling weapons into the demilitarized zone, where Picard had to work with the Cardassians to stop a war from starting even though it turned out that the renegade commander was right all along. And I figured this one would end the same way, with someone coming out with, "Oh my god! The Obsidian Order is massing a fleet in that system!" Instead, the ending was rushed and stupid, but so obviously set up for a sequel that I didn't worry too much about it. After all, someone from Cardassia is going to have to do something about the renegades, and Kira has to rescue Riker -- she promised!

I accepted the dorky stuff between them at the end because I had fun watching her take him down earlier -- something no woman has really done since Commander Shelby, although Kira's psychoanalysis of Riker left something to be desired -- they should have called in Deanna to talk to him! Funny how much Kira sounded like a Starfleet officer in this one. Either she's been paying close attention to Sisko when he makes those speeches to her, or the dialogue writers are less creative than I thought.

But I'm a little bit confused: if this woman was willing to blow up DS9 a couple of weeks ago to stop the Cardassians from having a presence there, don't we think it's more than likely she'd go along with a Maquis plan to reveal a hidden fleet once she found out they were right about its existence? And does anyone else think Sisko might have suspected that she was involved from the beginning? And don't we think that if Kira really wanted to blow up the Defiant, she could have? Well, we'll find out in the sequel when they need a ratings boost!

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