Star Trek is, even when things are going badly, a basically optimistic series, in my experience. Maybe Deep Space 9 will be a little less so than the original series and Next Generation, but the core idea is still that there is this huge, voluntary body devoted to fostering peace and exploring the galaxy available to anybody who wants to be a part of it, and that’s something that almost any nerdy kid, or adult who used to be a nerdy kid, can get behind.

Not to get too bloggy here (on, um, my blog), but I have not been feeling too terribly optimistic myself lately. I’ve been out of work and have had some upsets in my family, and for the last several months I have just not felt like I could get into Star Trek. Things have turned around a bit lately, or maybe I’m just looking at them differently, but either way, I am going to be slowly getting back to it. So here’s some Trekbloggin’, about a pretty middle-of-the-road episode of DS9.

Oh, and by the way, though it took about the same amount of time to complete, I would say this is about the fastest entry on the entire site, having an average speed of 75-ish miles per hour - it was written entirely on Route 95 North in North Carolina and Virginia, with only some minor edits and formatting done while stationary at home.

==================================================

Invasive Procedures at Memory Alpha

The opening log entry tells us that a “plasma disturbance” has necessitated a partial evacuation of DS9, leaving only the main cast on the station. Quark’s presence seems a little forced - “not enough room on the shuttle,” we are told. Despite plasa storms being relatively rare, this evacuation is played off as a rather routine event, the kind of thing Starfleet knows how to deal with, so no big deal. Plus, it saves a packet on extras, costumes, makeup, craft services, etc.

I’m not sure if it’s a trick of memory or if there’ve just been some major advances since season 1, but the special effects are looking particularly crispy this episode. Or maybe, since it’s such a talky episode, they just had a bit of extra money in the budget for this one.

The title refers to a crew of space pirate-types invading the station while it is conveniently understaffed, using the old fake distress call routine, and with help from Quark, who they betray almost immediately.

The most hilarious thing that will happen in this episode occurs really early on, when the raiders force Odo into a sort of jar situation and shove him in the freezer. This is exactly what I would do first if I were invading DS9, because a clever writer can use Odo to solve pretty much any problem with enemy personnel all by himself. Which, of course, he will in this very episode, after Quark redeems himself for betraying the crew by helping Bashir get Odo out of the fridge.

The pirates work for this sad-sack mumblybum trill who wants to steal Dax’s symbiont, Dax. I guess I should say Jadzia’s symbiont? They always call her Dax, though, like maybe Dax is really the one in charge? I kind of wish they got into this a little more in the episode.

They prove that they’re serious by shooting Miles, so I hate the hell out of them pretty much from jump, but it’s not so much because of the raider characters themselves as it is because I am so flower units for dear Miles.

Odo and Sisko do the hero thing and put Dax back where he (she?) belongs, but we never really get any followup with the whole Quark-compromising-station-security thing.

One of the reasons I like Sisko so much is that he can be such a bastard sometimes, like when he shoots Weepy McTrillpants, even though it could hurt Dax, and that he makes a slightly pithy comment before doing so. It reminds me of Kirk’s more cowboyish antics, only played less as brash posturing and more as an assurance that, no matter what, Sisko will Get the Job Done.

* Sisko asks Dax if she knows the trill in the pirate crew. Is this some sort of space racism? How would he feel if Dax was always asking him if he knew every human they ran across? Honestly.
* The nervious, stammering bad guy is tough to pull off, and it doesn’t exactly work here.
* Jadzia’s fake stomach looks just super fake.
* Holy crap, so does Dax itself. Like a stress ball covered in latex vomit.
* Avery Brooks gets all smirky with the alien pirate lady, even though Ben Sisko is supposed to be all mad at her. Does somebody have a cruuuush?
* Sisko’s main weapon is friendship, both his own and others’. And a potent weapon it is!
* Quark is a hacker.

This episode is all about what I’d call “Concept Aliens.” There’s no work to make the other species relatable; the focus is almost entirely on how foreign they are. In this case, it’s the Binars. They travel in pairs and are so integrated into their computer systems (and each other) that they finish each other’s sentences and communicate in short bursts of what is apparently binary. They store anything they can’t process right this second in hard drives worn like fanny packs (which has its own plot holes, like how are they engaging in back and forth dialogue if they aren’t processing it in the moment?) and they wear the spangley metallic clothes that are apparently the dress code of the future.

Concept Aliens annoy me. Unless they’re a long established race like Klingons or Vulcans, aliens in this show have to have some kind of gimmick. Star Trek seems to like to illustrate how CRAZY and DIFFERENT other species can be, with humans of the future tending to come out as all enlightened and shit. It’s annoying and sanctimonious. I compare it to Doctor Who, which tends to show different species as just people, trying to get along with their lives. There’s a little bit of crazy and different, but there’s more focus on similarities than differences. And in Doctor Who, humans usually come out looking like vicious assholes. Somehow, this is a lot more tolerable than the smugness of the Federation. Maybe it’s because LOTS of species come out looking like assholes in Doctor Who, and no one is as smug as Riker, who seems to be the usual mouthpiece for how enlightened the future is.

Maybe I just don’t like Riker so far! (This is sacrelige, isn’t it?) I spent a good portion of this episode creeped out by Riker falling in love with conniving-but-not-murderous holodeck creation, Minuet. And by he and Picard having dueling flirtation with the holographic lady. There’s a scene in original Trek, I think it’s in “The Naked Time,” that I like to call “The Birth of Slash Fiction.” Kirk and Spock are both intoxicated by this weird “heavy water” or something, and they’re both in states of emotional turmoil, vulnerable, and in my head, I heard my squeeing, slash-happy dorm neighbors from college shouting “KISS! KISS!” when I saw it. In this episode, Riker and Picard are talking about Minuet as if she isn’t there, and both kind of flirting with her at the same time, and it’s like an uncomfortable prelude to someone’s intense erotic fiction. I would lay money on a fanfiction existing somewhere that starts with this scene and ends places I don’t want to imagine.

I can see some really good angles that could be taken with realistic holopeople. They almost but not quite touched on the notion of someone falling in love with a simulation of a real person but having Riker be unable to find Minuet again after desperately trying. There could be a good, sad SF/F romance novel in that. I’m sure they must use that later on, right?

Bits and pieces:

• Hey, it’s 1958 in the holodeck in a jazz club because cool dudes love jazz, right? And yet Minuet has like three cans of aquanet in her hair and looks like a character from Matlock, not Perry Mason. But hey, it’s Star Trek. Who needs a semblance of realism, anyway?
• “…and a ‘bone for me.”
• Seriously, what is up with the eighties and purple? Why is everything purple
• Geordi advising Data on his painting. Data’s starting to develop more, but what I really like is Geordi’s “Fuck you, man” look when Riker smirkingly says that academics would be interested in a blind man teaching an android to paint.
• How much work is it going to take to restore the computers after the Binars filled every bit of space with their vital data from their planet? And how is the computer of the Enterprise anywhere near big enough to hold all the data of a planet whose premise is that it’s people are inextricably entwined in their computers? It defies logic. Not that this series has been real keen on the whole “logic” thing up to this point.

Ultimate verdict: Not terrible, but kind of squicky in parts. I don’t like Leering Riker, and yet he keeps popping up.

The Enterprise has stumbled upon a wrecked freighter that never made its destination seven years earlier. No survivors, of course, but evidence of some jettisoned escape pods, and Angel I is the closest planet. Data helpfully notes that it would have taken 5 months. I guess Star Trek escape pods are a lot more substantial than the things that came off the Tantive IV. Anyway, Angel I is a sparsely populated, matriarchal oligarchy with apparently human inhabitants (c’mon guys, where is your makeup department? Are hideous costumes made of shiny material and felted purple angora taking up all of your budget?), but I’m going to take a wild stab and guess that none of these writers actually looked into any real matriarchal societies. Research? Ha ha ha, who needs that? This is space! We can make it up as we go!

Mistress Beata, the head of this little oligarchy, curtly allows an away team to come down to the planet to look for survivors. Worf also manages to sneak in an interjection that Klingons appreciate strong women. (Where is Geordi to express disgust at Worf’s sexual preferences again?) Yar, Data and Riker prepare to beam down. Troi goes as well, because women, you gotta be a mind reader to understand them, amirite? *rimshot* No, really, it’s because she’s a high ranking woman, and, as we’ll soon discover, these women will respect that because they’re chauvinist assholes that I want to stab in the face almost every time they speak. (That’s women for you, eh? Eh? Okay, okay, I’ll stop.)

Side storyline set up: Wesley is going skiing while wrapped in tinfoil and wearing a hideous eighties headband and there is a weird smell. Picard also gets pegged with a snowball from the holodeck (oh that wacky Wesley Crusher) and I decide that this better pay off somewhere later in the episode. It does. Sort of.

In some voiceover it’s noted that the women here are as dominant and aggressive as men used to be in Earth society. God forbid we miss an opportunity to note how goddamn enlightened the Federation is. It’s also probably worth noting that the last Federation contact with the people of Angel I was more than sixty years earlier. So the fact that Beata is incredibly defensive is either really interesting (ah ha, she has something to hide) or it’s how some jerk-ass writer thinks feminists act. There is a bit of “WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW BETTER BECAUSE YOU’RE A MAN, HUH?” attitude directed at Riker. Also, if this was so normal for this planet, why is everyone making such a huge production of the fact that women are dominant in this society? You don’t have to constantly remark on something that’s normal.

We’ll also note here that the costumes continue to be incredibly awful. I guess maybe they weren’t back then, but the predilection for lamé fabrics and purples continues unabated. There’s one fey little man running around in an open shirt (I think the only man from Angel I we see) and tight pants wrapped in ribbons, while Beata is wearing this weird, dark purple mohair dress. If it were me, I’d probably put the women in something more businesslike and less… furry. It’s like they skinned a muppet.

Beata prevaricates a bit on whether or not there are survivors of the Odin and sends the away team to their quarters to talk amongst themselves while she decides what she wants to tell them. Troi senses they’re hiding something, which, really, doesn’t take an empath. Riker declares them paranoid. We also find out that Data, despite being able to explain random bits of history like Yankee privateers, doesn’t know what an aphrodisiac is. I guess he never read any basic human sexuality texts despite his fascination with humanity.

MEANWHILE, ON THE ENTERPRISE: Sickness runs rampant! Oh no! Picard is grumpy and Geordi gets to take command.

Beata finally admits that there are four survivors, but they’re in hiding for “going against the natural order.” I don’t remember who has the idea to scan for elements that don’t occur naturally on Angel I, but Data is only grudgingly allowed access to their libraries, which are too sophisticated for men when it’s pointed out that as an android, he’s not really male. Pretty sassy for a pre-warp society. Somehow, they decide on doing a scan for platinum, and oh, what luck, these four men happen to have some platinum on hand. Everyone is off to go find the men and “rescue” them, except Riker, who needs to engage in some diplomatic relations, if you know what I’m saying. In native dress, no less.

And this is a nice little break from some of the silly, stilted acting, because Yar and Troi collapse into absolute giggles at Riker boy-toy outfit. I have to wonder how I would feel about this scene if it was, say, Janeway expected to make some kind of diplomatic contact in scanty clothing. And maybe that’s on purpose, to MAKE ME THINK about the EVILS OF SEXISM, but… well, there’s a deeper problem here.

See, part of the side story is that the refugees know the away team is coming because Beata’s second-in-command, Ariel, is secretly married to one of the survivors. So there’s an underlying message that no matter how big and tough a woman is, every woman really wants a big slice of Federation beefcake who will stand up to her, rather than some preening ladyman. You know, all those feminists just need a real man to stick them back in the kitchen where they belong.

And Ramsey, the leader of the refugees, wants to stay on planet not just because he and the others have made families, but because it’s “not right” that the men be treated as they are, and men aren’t supposed to act like they do here. And arguably, it’s an equality speech (remember, LOL ADVANCED), but it comes off as “We gotta teach these men to stop being pussy-whipped and take their proper place in society.”

To top it off, Riker and Beata’s diplomatic conversation has resulted in the following dialogue (slightly paraphrased, but not by much): “It’s nice to be with a man that knows what he wants.” “And doesn’t have to be told by a woman?” And then my notes degenerate into angry, capslocked cursing.

Up on the Enterprise, pressure and a race-against-the-clock element are hamhandedly placed on the main story by the continuing illness and Romulans in the Neutral Zone. Oh, yay. Data’s sent up to take command because he can’t get sick. Except for in “The Naked Now” but haha who needs continuity, right?

Beata threatens to kill the refugees, and Riker prepares to violate the Prime Directive by whisking them away with the transporter, which has to wait until the last possible minute while Crusher works on coming up with a cure for the mystery plague. Anyway, there’s a whole speech about not making martyrs and evolution of a culture and everyone lives happily ever after exiled to an unpopulated part of the planet. Wheee, let’s all go home and look threatening in front of the Romulans.

And mysterious they are.  Data was apparently found lying on a slab near a beacon at the bottom of some stone stairs on this planet of endless, endless death.  That is, there is zero life on the planet, up to and including bacterial life, which I guess explains why all the dead trees haven’t decayed even though it’s been years and years.  I doubt anyone actually thought it through that much, but it works.  And here’s a thing that bugs me.  The away team seems surprised that there isn’t any sign of life on Omicron Theta, but wouldn’t that have been in the report by the men of the Tripoli, back when they found Data?  Wouldn’t a good away team (let alone a curious person with access to the Federation computer library), you know, read that report first?  It’s not like the mass death happened between then and now.  Oh, yeah, and Data is a walking bank of memories of the dead colonists, though no one has ever mentioned that before (and part of me doubts it will ever come up again or be relevant in any way.)  And despite having these “memories,” every human experience is foreign to him, so I guess these colonists didn’t get out much.

This episode doesn’t bear much digging beneath the surface of the plot for things like, I don’t know, logic.  Geordi marvels at the skill of the colonists in hiding the entrance to their underground burrow, but finds the door switch in under two minutes.  Data doesn’t remember anything before being discovered by the away team from the Tripoli, except when he remembers the man who created him.  And for some reason there are multiple children’s drawings of the terrifying Crystalline Entity that killed them all posted up in the lab.  As if the children lived long enough to draw them, and that those were the only drawings anyone felt worthy of posting on the wall.  What.  Oh, and all Lore’s parts are kept in a glass-doored storage area full of smoke, and stored ass-outward.  Actually, I thought that was really funny.  That, and the absurdly ominous music when Riker assured Data that they could take the pieces back up to the Enterprise for reassembly.

I hadn’t thought of it myself, but my roommate, who watched this with me, noted that Crusher is actually pretty unnecessary for the reassembly of Lore.  She’s a doctor, damn it, not an engineer.  (I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist.)  Later, of course, I realized that she had to be there as a plot point so that she could help WESLEY SAVE THE DAY at the end.

A lot actually happens in this episode, and I don’t really want to go over everything in detail.  It’s nice to see Spiner play kind of an asshole in Lore, and some of the Data/Lore interactions are fantastic, and some of them are such bullshit.  And credit where credit is due, most of the fantasticness comes from Spiner’s acting and most of the bullshit comes from the dialogue.  Seriously?  I was kind of touched by Data and all he innocently yearns for when Lore was throwing his “humanity” in Data’s face.  “I can talk in contractions and you can’t, nyah nyah” is some of the idiotic part.  That, and some of Wesley’s “I’m suspicious!” lines are just so terrible.  Also, Lore can apparently take away his weird facial tick and give it to Data through judicious use of Doctor Who’s sonic screwdriver.  And then there’s all the bridge crew yelling at Wesley (including Picard just outright shouting “SHUT UP, WESLEY!”) for daring to suspect that Data is actually Lore in disguise (which he is, as a matter of fact - “This is what you get when you put teenagers on your bridge crew,” I remarked to my roommate as Wesley threw a little hissy fit,) which is also badly written.  Has Wesley Crusher even had a good line so far in this show?

But the real shouting-at-the-TV is something from the middle that I saved until the end.  At some point, Lore had to incapacitate Data and take over his position.  And he couldn’t just sneak up behind his brother and hit the off switch he earlier swore the doctor to secrecy over.  Ha ha, that would make too much sense!  No.  Lore had to drug Data.  Yeah.  Drugs.  In an android.  Delivered in a glass of champagne.

Allow me to quote my roommate here:

Did it get absorbed into his bloodstream?  Did it poison his circuits?

Not only that, but it works INSTANTANEOUSLY.  I’m sure there’s some in-universe logic to this somewhere, but who writes a science fiction story where a ROBOT poisons another ROBOT?  (Yeah, yeah, android, not exactly the same thing, but he’s still inorganic and doesn’t digest food.)

Some other WTFery before I end for the night: Lore in Data disguise suggests beaming out a tree to the Crystalline Entity and then blowing it up with the phasers to scare it (?!) and Picard agrees that this is a good idea (!!?!?!!); Lore wants to lure it in to kill everyone on the ship because…. uh…. yeah, I don’t think they explained that at all; Lore speaks to the Crystalline Entity in English; and lastly, when Lore is beamed off the ship, this horrible thing that will kill them all just leaves.  And no one seems to  think that it’s odd for it to just… go.  Oh, yeah, and another thing no one asks about - where Wes beamed Lore to.  But hey, it’s just an insane, murderous android.  It doesn’t really matter where that goes.

Second, I’d like to thank Number One for pointing out that today is Captain Picard Day!  Happy Captain Picard Day, everyone!

So!  Down to business.  There’s a frame story about a high pressure situation in which Picard has to make contact with a species that is really damn picky about its etiquette.  A single mispronounced syllable may lead to 20 years of the cold shoulder from this race.  Picard is freaking out and Troi actually acts the part of counsellor and instead of saying “augh the pain” or “I can’t sense anything!”, she says, “Hey, why don’t you take a break and try out the awesome new holodeck upgrades?”  Good idea, Counsellor Troi!  And off the captain goes to be a thinly veiled analog of Philip Marlowe or maybe Sam Spade named Dixon Hill.

I find it interesting that the holodeck is introduced here as NEW!  and EXCITING! but not so new and exciting that there isn’t one already built into the Enterprise.  So far we’ve seen it twice; Wesley found Data in there once in a lush forest, and Tasha Yar showed off her mad judo skillz to the Ligonians in That One Racist Episode.  I have to extrapolate here that until now, it’s been capable of producing environments and programs for training, and the upgrade gives it capability to sustain a narrative and realistic human personalities.  I guess.

After confusing Hill’s secretary by wandering in in his Starfleet uniform (am I checking off a list of holodeck cliches already?  Because we can list confusion with Futurestuff as #1, I’m sure), Picard gets super excited and invites Crusher on a sort of date, then ruins it by inviting another crewmember who happens to know a lot about 20th century history (not Tom Paris).  Data also invites himself along after speed reading the full Dixon Hill canon.  Everyone’s got Noir Novel Fever!  It’s all COMPLETELY ADORABLE, too.  And despite the quick introduction of Holodeck Cliche #2 (Something Is Wrong With The Program/We Can’t Leave), their reactions to the past and gleeful grins in the face of things like being arrested for murder and being interrogated are really delightful.  Crusher tries to preen in imitation of a floozy and, when a charmed police officer offers her a stick of gum, she swallows it whole. Data adopts a 1940s gangster movie accent.  Everyone is really into their new toy.

And while they don’t know that anything has gone wrong yet, Riker reaaaaaaally needs the captain.  Alien Emily Post has, despite the massive demands for protocol, decided to start the party early and demands the Captain’s presence.  Geordi announces that the holodeck has sealed itself, and Wesley fucking Crusher decides that he really needs to be part of the rescue attempt.  God help me, but I’m trying to give Wes a fair chance.  However, this is the first point where I start to think, “Uh oh.”

Meanwhile, everyone in the holodeck is idiodically gleeful about being held at gunpoint by Guy Doing A Bad Peter Lorre Impression.  How exciting!  Our lives are being threatened!  Good thing this is the holodeck, so nothing can…. aaaaaaaaaaaand bang, Waylon is shot and I am kicking myself for not spotting the redshirt as soon as he was introduced.  Either the holodeck tech is so young that there aren’t safeties yet, or the probe that fritzed the exits also turned them off.  Without messing up any of the other programming.  Convenient, that.

And with this, we enter the What The Fuck territory of this episode.  Firstly, there’s a DOCTOR there and yet this man is lying on the floor with nothing covering his GUNSHOT WOUND.  And when we cut to the operations outside of the holodeck, it’s to Wesley telling us that if he doesn’t do everything juuuust right, he could “make everyone inside vanish.”  What the goddamn hell is this.  A  holodeck failure, instead of just dropping you into the empty holodeck, CAN APPARENTLY DELETE YOU FROM THE WORLD FOR SOME REASON DESPITE THAT MAKING NO SENSE AT ALL.  I beg someone to tell my why or how the holodeck could kill a real person BY DELETING THEM.  I get stabbed or shot or dropped from a height (oops!), but an unexpected program shutdown?  You crash the holodeck and you die?  I’m sorry, I think that maybe such a flaw would make this inappropriate for recreation OR training. I just…. ugh!  Seriously.  I am so angry at this nonsensical danger AND the fact that this is becoming Wes Saves The Day yet again.  (I guess transporters are also dangerous but used all the time, but really?  The holodeck?  I hope they decided this was fucking stupid, because I never heard anything like this in the many, many holodeck-related episodes of Voyager I watched.)

Oh, and also, characters from the programs should not be able to get past the door of the holodeck at all, not even out into the hallway, so FUCK YOU, THIS EPISODE.

Ahem.  Anyway, the captain gets out and gives his greeting flawlessly, and The Data & Geordi Comedy Hour puts me a little more back in charity with this show.  Good effort, team, but we are not out of the woods yet.

There is a real life Miles O’Brien, and he is a reporter who writes about space.  Fantastic!

The Enterprise is headed to a planet called Haven for no real reason, except that it’s apparently a bitchin’ place to take some R & R. Picard takes a swing with the Foreshadowing Sledgehammer and lets us know that Haven is rumored to have healing powers, both emotional and physical, and is incredibly peaceful. Data makes sure to bring us back to earth by noting that there isn’t a lick of proof. Thanks Data, Official Starfleet Killjoy.

Meanwhile, Riker is in his quarters watching a hologram of two young ladies in spangly togas playing the harp. What. Seriously, why can’t people in the future like music that isn’t unapproachably futuristic or classical? I mean, that almost made Tom Paris a satisfying character in Voyager, because he had a liking for 20th century kitsch. I digress. He’s called away because something is waiting to be beamed up from Haven.

It’s a box! A big silver box with a face cast in the side, and I suppose I could claim that it is charmingly retro that on the close shots, it was someone’s face painted silver so it could make a stilted announcement, but I actually think it would be cooler as CGI. It distracts me that the eyes and mouth are normal colored when it is supposedly something made entirely out of metal. Anyway, it makes it’s little speech about, uhhhh, time and Lwaxana Troi and the Millers and Deanna Troi as soon as Troi enters the room, and then it just basically vomits a whole bunch of jewels taken from the prop room of a bad pirate film onto the floor of the transporter room.

The jewels, Troi explains nervously, are a wedding present. Her wedding present. Ohhhhh shiiiiiiiiiiiit, says Riker’s expression. Troi, it turns out, was betrothed as a child to Wyatt Miller and hey, he and his parents are ready to beam up. And even though Troi and Riker are, like, totally broken up, he’s still all butthurt about it and will be petulant throughout the whole episode.

I missed some of the meeting between the Millers and Troi because my computer’s DVD player is a delicate princess when it comes to scratched discs and my roommate was using our real TV. I will say that Mrs. Miller’s poncho-y coat thing is one of the few costumes I’ve seen in the show that I rather like, even if her hat is atrocious. Wyatt gives Troi a Mood Rose, and then disc error disc error HERE COMES LWAXANA TROI.

I can’t decide if I think Lwaxana is horrible or fantastic. God knows I wouldn’t want her for my mother, and she is pretty brassy and rude, but she is such a magnificent breath of life into this show that I can’t be unhappy about her presence. It’s so fitting that she constantly wears red. She’s terribly rude to Picard, which he takes with good grace, and just steamrolls everyone else. She pokes and prods everyone apparently just to stir shit up. You almost wonder how she produced such a drab and useless child as Deanna Troi.

Somewhere in here the subplot shows up, which is a mysterious ship headed to Haven, which, like Alderaan before it, has no weapons. They demand protection from the Enterprise, which makes me wonder what they would have done if it WEREN’T the Enterprise’s vacation week. I know you have principles, but jeez, keep a civilian space navy or something. I mean, if you’re going to shrill that a ship failing to respond is an act of hostility, be prepared to deal. It turns out to be the last survivors of Planet Typhoid Mary, and with some patented STAR TREK MORALIZING ™, they note that it’s the result of bioweaponry, and all you need to fuck up your civilization that way is 20th century technology and a 20th century intellect, which is implied to be some serious fucking idiocy. Thanks, Star Trek! I sure see the light about the evils of bioweaponry now! [themoreyouknow.gif]

Anyway, these ships from these planets have been landing for decades, and then the refugees infect the planet they land on, and everyone dies. Super. They lock the ship with a transporter TRACTOR beam after the leader of Haven has some further hysterics at them and demands that they be fired upon.

But back to the happy couple. Wyatt is clearly disappointed that Troi isn’t the woman he’s been having dreams about all his life and carries sketches of in a big plexiglass folding frame. He can’t even hide that from the audience, and his wife-to-be is a fucking empath (but a useless one, judging by the episodes so far), so he’s pretty well screwed. He talks about how his biggest ambition is to cure illness. Picard must have loaned him the Foreshadowing Hammer.

There’s some wacky comedy where Lwaxana goes around declaring that they’ll be having a traditional Betazoid ceremony, where everyone is woooo naked to symbolize… something. The love of the couple or something. Naked = comedy, that’s the key, here. Especially Wyatt’s fat father naked, and Lwaxana, shit-stirrer supreme, noting that he’s pretty eager to see her naked, too, to the horror of Wyatt’s mother. Troi snaps in the most unnatural-feeling way (it’s just out of nowhere, no build up, just a slight pause, she stands up, “STOP BICKERING!”, flounces out, and Data, my new hero, implores everyone to keep bickering because it’s fascinating) and then has an awkward and unsatisfying heart to heart with Riker, which Wyatt interrupts.

Just as the wedding seems inevitable, they finally get in contact with the ship, and, gaaaaaaaaaasp, the girl of Wyatt’s dreams (literally) is standing there in the middle of the viewscreen. And she’s terminally ill! It’s like a fairy tale! He beams over, because it’s totally fate, you guys, and there’s no coming back because of this super-plague that apparently DESTROYS ENTIRE CIVILIZATIONS but damn if these eight survivors don’t look perfectly healthy, if scantily clad. I mean, I guess running sores or something would kind of kill the romance of it all, but come on.

Wyatt’s parents and Lwaxana leave, the latter throwing some comments to Picard about his apparently thinly concealed lust for her, which seriously pisses him off, and she’s gone. Ahh, Majel. Certainly different than Nurse Chapel, who tended toward the passive, and a welcome breath of vibrance into this season. Oh, and lest I forget, there has also been this Lurch-like valet (who has apparently been borrowing Data’s makeup) silently following Lwaxana around and guzzling down booze at parties. Here, as they leave, he offers a little parting shot and thanks them for the drinks. WAAAAHHHH-WHAAAAaaaaaaaa.

Deanna Troi suffers from what I think of as Fanny Price syndrome in this episode. Things pretty much just happen to her, and she just lets it happen. It’s almost anti-feminist. “Well, I’m a bridge officer on a Federation ship, but I guess I’ll leave all that behind because my mom says it’s time for me to marry this guy that was picked for me as a child.” She has no agency over her own life and apparently no feelings about the whole thing, and it makes me pretty angry, actually. I mean, Jesus! It’s your life! Your career! Have something, anything, invested in it! Don’t just get watery-eyed and let other people make your decisions for you! Auuugggghhhhh. Are all the female characters in this show going to be hateful? Well, everyone’s hair was nice in this one, at least. And Crusher looked really pretty.

Sigh.

Q wants to offer a dream come true.  But he doesn’t really want to offer it to Picard, maybe because Picard gives Q a hell of a scolding.  So he offers a deadly game to Riker on the Planet of Kind of Half-Assed Set Dressing.  Picard is left in time out on an empty bridge while Q whisks Yar, Worf, Data, Geordi and Riker down to play Napoleon.  (That seems actually kind of apt for him.)

The Q think it’s pretty awesome that humans are adaptable.  Riker seems to be enjoying the mental joust, which is an interesting comparison to Picard’s apparent exasperation with Q.  You’d think that Q could maybe come up with something interesting, but the game is basically “try not to die.”  Yar is immediately stuck in a “penalty box,” and if anyone else gets sent there, she’ll be destroyed.  Yar’s penalty box is the bridge, apparently, so she can boo hoo hoo to the captain about how she’ll be destroyed and how she hates being controlled.  Points for not mentioning rape gangs, I guess.  (I’m sorry.  I can’t stand her.)

Picard isn’t chosen, Q reveals, because he’s too bound by rules.  The gift of the Q is the power of the Q imbued into Riker, and the games are meant to display human character by the process rather than the ends.  I mean, it’s a while before the episode gets to that.  There’s Geico Cavemen in French uniforms from the Napoleonic War and laser muskets to deal with, first.

Picard pisses off Q by musing on the potential of humanity, which is plot important.  See, Q is giving his gift so that he can take Riker-Q back the the Continuum to inject a little… creativity and innovation into the stagnating Q Continuum.

And here it finally starts to get good.  It becomes the kind of morality play that Star Trek is probably best known for.  The ship is released (why does Q even bother with a big flashy forcefield?  Can’t he merely freeze the ship in space?  I guess Q is big on flash and sparkle.)  Riker has to keep from letting the powers of the Q from going to his head.  Q forces him to use them by letting the French Cavemen kill Worf and Wesley (who, like an idiot, runs right into the troops shouting “Woooooooorf, noooooooo,” and is quickly bayonetted.  Dumbass.)  Picard orders him to leave the powers untouched, so of course, the mining disaster has to come back into play and tempt Riker to save a little girl who died.  He resists (NO THANKS TO DATA), but he’s all bitter about it.  And then kind of an asshole about it, all calling the captain by his first name and ordering meetings of the bridge crew.

Once he gives in, he decides he’ll be a benevolent god and that he’ll give everyone their hearts’ desires, prompted by Q.  They’re all embarrassing, awful, presumptuous gifts, too.  Crusher tries to take Wesley away, but Riker ages him by 10 years.  Data outright refuses with a nice little speech.  Geordi gets regular sight and tells Yar that she’s more beautiful than he could have imagined, but the price is too high for his tastes and he doesn’t like the source of the gift.  Yeah, suck on that, Riker.  The worst is probably Worf’s Klingon bride that he can’t relate to (fancy fishnets, I don’t see Klingons as the unitard and fishnets type) and Geordi is all horrified that this is Worf’s idea of sex.  Judgmental much, Geordi?  Wesley also refuses his gift, and Riker finally, FINALLY realizes that it was a stupid thing to do.

Q is taken by his own people for his failure to tempt Riker, which now that I write it that way feels a little Biblical.

So, overall I have to give this episode credit for not being a rewrite of The Squire of Gothos.  The show is stumbling less.  Q’s dramatics are incredibly entertaining.  There’s a point where Picard looks at Riker, laughs, and basically says, “you seriously want to join this bullshit artist?” that is fantastic.  The Morality Play aspect of it is a little on the heavy handed side, however, and Wesley seems to be wedged in at the end unnecessarily.  I bet some people are satisfied to see him with a bayonet sticking out his stomach, but seriously?  Monsters with guns just killed your friend and you run into the center of them?  Idiot.

The Siege at Memory Alpha

Instead of getting the hell out of dodge, Sisko is explaining to his crew that he’s going to pack up and evacuate as slowly as possible in order to buy them some time to show the bajorans that all the bad Circle business is a cardassian ploy.  We may be in for a standoff!

Jake Sisko and Nog have become great friends in the background, while we weren’t watching.   It seemed to me they were just a couple of no-good hoodlums, always getting up to trouble. Now it seems, though, that they are also tight homies, so obviously it is super sad that they have to split up during the evacuation.

A plan is hatched to send Kira and Dax to one of Bajor’s moons to snag an old ship to bring Li Nalas’ evidence to the surface, so that they can explain the cardassians-manipulating-Jaro’s-terrorists thing to the Provisional Government.  A signal won’t get through, so they have to go in person in a ship, and the runabouts are tied up with the evacuation.

Apparently, we won’t get an exciting space standoff - the bajorans go all BOARDING ACTION right away.  There’s nobody there to meet them, though, so they end up looking kind of silly running around and pointing their guns at nothing.

The remaining Starfleet crew on the station have decided to throw out the rules of war, ditch their uniforms, and go all guerrilla on the bajorans with sabotage and ambushes.  I’m not sure this kind of thing was covered in the Starfleet Station Operations Manual.  It’s a dark picture, there, but I assure you that the handsome gentleman on the left is none other than Miles O’Brien.

The guerrilla campaign makes for interesting television (Odo as a tripwire, a running gag about combat rations, a holosuite used as a trap) , but it’s all dark and it makes it hard to take screenshots that look like anything other than a bunch of shadows with maybe a phaser blast in them.  Come on, Star Trek, think about me!  Think about my needs!

Dax and Kira have made it to Bajor in their sub-impulse raider.  Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration.  They’ve crashed on Bajor.  The picture’s actually of another ship crashing on Bajor, but I’m sure Dax and Kira’s looked much the same on its way in.  Luckily, they crashed within walking distance of Liam Bareil’s monastery.  He helps them disguise themselves as members of his order, which involves giving Dax fake nose ridges.

In a colossal anticlimax, the evidence is presented without incident to the bajoran provisional government and control of the station is returned to Starfleet.  Li Nalas is killed by a Bajoran officer after finding out that the Circle had been exposed as an unwitting tool of the cardassians.  I guess the news made him go crazy?  It’s not really clear.

What about Minister Jaro?  Nobody knows!  But we’ve returned to status quo just in time for the credits to roll on the last episode of the longest continuous arc so far in a Star Trek TV series.

Dabo!

• Minister Jaro is played by (an uncredited) Frank Langella, who I know best from Cutthroat Island.  I feel like I should send Frank Langella an apology letter for knowing him best from Cutthroat Island.
• Rom evacuating with a Dabo girl instead of Quark is probably the best thing he’s ever done.
• Giant Bajoran spider-dog thingies on the moon?  Great!  Having Dax be scared of them?  Great!  Having her open up a service panel on the ship she and Kira are supposed to be fixing up and not having one of the spider-dog thingies jump out at her?  Opportunity: missed!
• The smoke grenades of the future are far less advanced than the smoke grenades of, oh, say, 1960.  I wonder what the story there is.
• Odo as a tripwire is a goofy gimmick that I’m happy to see.
• The old “it’s easy to die for a cause, but would you be willing to live for one?” chestnut finally gets trotted out.  It took a while, though!  This is the last of a three-part arc, after all.  And in the end, Li Nalas dies for his cause anyway.  There’s a lesson in there somewhere, maybe.  No, seriously.  There is.  What, you don’t see it?  Come on!

The Circle at Memory Alpha

Kira getting replaced turns out to be Kira getting promoted!  On her own merits?  Not really.  Bajor wants Li Nalas away from Bajor and away from The Circle, where he’ll be safe.  This sets us up, almost immediately, for a reminder that DS9 has a Circle problem of its own - sprayTERROR paint on the Siskos’ door!

Odo finds Kira packing up to go and calls her a quitter, reminding her of whom exactly it is that never wins.  Dax comes in, ostensibly to return a bottle of lotion, Dr. Bashir, space friend, comes in to offer his warmest regards, sweet Miles comes in to do the same, Quark comes in hoping for some alone time with Kira, but decides a party is just as good, and then Vedek Bareil-Neeson shows everybody how it is done by inviting Kira out to his monastery for some meditation and relaxation, bow chicka wow-ow.

At ops, we learn that Li Nalas does not want the job, and Sisko aims to get Kira back on the crew, but for now, she has to head down to Bareil’s monastery and arrange stones in a river (poorly).

Finding her stone-arranging skills are not up to par, Vedek Bareil decides it would be more productive to show her a glowy space orb.  Well, he calls it an orb, but it’s more of a low-fi hourglass shape.  Anyway, it gives Kira a Trek-style dream which amounts to the naked-in-front-of-the-whole-school dream, only somehow more meaningful (seriously), and later, Bareil-style nakeouts.  I have to wonder of the good Vedek was tweaking the orb somehow.  I mean, really.

Quark has discovered an exciting secret!  Some space florists are secretly supplying weapons to The Circle on Bajor.  Space florists!  I wonder if it is a front for the space mob.  Odo quickly blackmail-deputizes Quark to learn more.

In further Bajor adventures, Vedek Winn is at the same monastery as Bareil and Kira, and is still grasping desperately at the Most Passive-Aggressive Trek Character award.  What a wonderfully horrible character!

There is a lot going on at this point:  Kira is kidnapped by the circle, which turns out to be run by Minister Jaro, Odo stows away aboard a space florist ship and finds out that The Circle’s weapons are coming from the Cardassians, and Sisko, acting on new intelligence from Quark, is leading a rescue party to Bajor after Kira.

As it turns out, The Circle doesn’t know that the Cardassians are supplying them.  The Cardassians just want The Circle to drive out the Federation, so the Cardassians can move back in and take over Bajor again.  Li Nalas wants to turn public opinion against Jaro and his Circle, but the station cannot communicate with Bajor, so it is looking like he has to go down there in person.

Down on the surface, Jaro is trying to win Winn (hee hee hee) over to his side with all the diplomacy and tact of a thirteen-year-old boy asking his crush out on a date.

As we leave off with another TO BE CONTINUED, Bajoran assault ships are demanding that the Federation evacuate DS9 and Sisko is hitting a Prime Directive wall with Starfleet command.  He decides to follow the order to evacuate, but decides to take everything Federation-y with him, which Miles says could take days, which is far longer than the seven hours that the Bajorans have given them.  I smell an exciting standoff coming, but it’ll have to wait for next time!

• It’s funny how the ops turbolifts are either fast or slow, depending on whether the scene calls for a dramatic slow descent or a curt quick one.

• Odo disguises himself as a rat again.  It’s still great that rats are acceptable disguises, even in space.

• The Prime Directive is one of Star Trek’s main plot devices, but the  more times it gets violated, the more it telegraphs exactly what the characters faced with it will do (ie violate it)

Since TNG is the only other series I have watched all the way through, I don’t know what to expect from season changes.  With TNG, there is the whole mysterious “lost year” between seasons one and two, where the galaxy decided to be way less boring and Starfleet issued a wide-reaching “stop sucking so much” order to all personnel, and I’m wondering if I will see the same thing with DS9.  DS9 didn’t really stumble off the blocks the same way as TNG, though, and the people behind the show were also largely the people involved in TNG, so they already knew how to run a series.  We’ll see what happens.

The Homecoming at Memory Alpha

We start our WHOLE NEW SEASON with Odo chewing out Quark for giving him a good tip.   This seems to me like a rather counter-intuitive policing strategy.  Quark’s charming idiot brother Rom is also confused, but Quark is just following the 76th Rule of Acquisition.  Following this delightful exchange, Quark is accosted by David Bowie’s Klingonesque cousin, who asks him to sort out a Bajoran earring she was supposed to deliver to Bajor from a Cardassian.  She says any Bajoran would know what do to with it.

Quark brings the earring to Kira, who just takes it and storms off.  Women!  Put a piece of jewelry in their hands and they just go crazy, am I right fellas?

Speaking of women, Jake has a date with a pretty bajoran girl!  The commander thinks his son’s too young to take her to a holosuite and Ben won’t let him take her back to their quarters, but before the conversation can really get going, Kira is all up Ben’s face about jewelry.  Women!

Kira wants to take a runabout to Cardassia 4 to rescue the owner of the earring, who is supposed to be a great Bajoran war hero, Li Nalas.  Bajor doesn’t want to help, so she’s come to Sisko.

And, more trouble, there is a Bajoran group called The Circle who don’t want any non-bajorans on or around Bajor and they are spray painting their tag on the walls of the station, probably while wearing rollerblades or riding skateboards with their pants cut too big and their music turned up too loud, those damn kids.

After deciding that the return of Li Nalas could help the volatile political situation in Bajor, Sisko decides to let Kira take the runabout, but Chief O’Brien is part of the package.  Kira puts up some token resistance, as if anybody would not want to spend all the time ever with Miles, but that doesn’t last long.

On their way, they bluff themselves past a Cardassian scanning post, but it is way less hilarious than the Enterprise bluffing their way past the Klingon scanning post by leafing desperately through Klingon phrasebooks and just hoping for the best.  And what do they find?  A populated labor camp!  Bajoran prisoners!  CARDASSIANS BEING VERY BAD!

They can’t beam everyone out since the runabout transporters can only handle two at a time and there’s no way to know which bajoran is which, so they have to land and try to sneak in.  Their ruse?  Miles the pimp!  When a Cardassian tries to examine the “merchandise” (Kira), she punches him in the head and then the shooting starts.  This is a longer battle, ground or space, than any I recall happening before in the show!  This is the excitement of a new season.

I’m noticing that Star Trek seems to be of two minds about what makes for awesome shooting action.  In TNG, just about everybody’s weapons shot crazy beams that were where they needed to be instantly, but here the Cardassians are shooting bolts of energy that move slow enough to see (but fast enough to be exciting).  You’d think that kind of, you know, dodgeable weapons technology would have fallen by the wayside in the days when even the relatively low-tech Klingons have insta-beam weapons at their disposal.  But I digress.

Aside from four bajorans who stay behind to fight off the pursuing Cardassians and a handful who get excitingly shot, they manage to get away.  The fallout?  So far it seems like things went pretty well.  Mean ole Gul Dukat even calls to say he’s sorry!

But all isn’t well in DS9-town.  Despite the jubilation over Li Nalas’ return, a pack of Circle members jump Quark and brand their sigil into his head.  It’s kind of hilarious, but also pretty cruel.  Luckily, Dr. Bashir, space dermatologist, can make the scar disappear with his FUTURE SPACE TECHNOLOGY.

The Circle’s brand of anti-non-bajoran racism hits home - cute bajoran girl’s dad won’t let her go out with Jake because he’s not bajoran!  It’s hard to be a human on a largely bajoran space station, even though your government basically runs the place and your dad is their warrior-philosopher god-emperor.

And the bad news keeps coming!  Li Nalas doesn’t want to deal with the problems on Bajor, so he’s trying to stow away on a ship bound for the GQ (please don’t call it that).  Poor guy is overwhelmed by his heroic reputation, even though his deeds were exaggerated.  I smell a lesson about not running away from your problems coming up.  Oh, and here’s that lesson!  Right on time.

Sisko gives him a pep talk that is so successful that he not only gets himself promoted to a WHOLE NEW RANK that the bajorans make up just for him, but he is also getting thrust into Kira’s job!  This was one “TO BE CONTINUED…” that I absolutely did not see coming, no sarcasm - it didn’t say “Part 1″ in the title or anything!  WELL PLAYED, STAR TREK.  Tune in next time for the exciting continuation of this exciting episode/blog post!

• It’s season 2 and this is the first time I can recall that we really get to see the replimat in action

• We now know that Rom makes exactly 1/6 what Quark makes.  How depressing!  Poor Rom.

• Memory Alpha tells me this is the chapter in Star Trek’s first-ever three-part episode!  How crazy is that?  The better part of Trek fans’ whole month was taken up finding out what was going to happen next when this first aired.

• The only real change between the first and second season seems to be in the show’s ambition - the cast is still right where we left them, the uniforms are the same, the interior sets are largely the same (although I think there’s more than a few new pieces), but here we are in a three-part episode, right off the bat!

So that you know you can trust me, and I will not break your hearts like Vash, let me present my credentials.  Here are some things that make me very happy:

Most things George-Takei-related.  Just think of it this way…

Drew:O’Brien::Jess:Sulu

(The colons are flower units.)

Yes, I admit it, I read Wil Wheaton’s blog.  Here is the thing, it is not awful!  You get videos of him playing Rock Band, stories about his kids, D&D commentary from a dude who is probably too old to be playing D&D, occasional rants about being seen only as Wesley Crusher, and in general a portrait of a gentleman who is simultaneously incredibly normal and incredibly not.  It’s a semi-uncomfortable thrill ride!  Also, I always liked Wesley, shut up Ellen.

and lastly, the sweetest face one could ask to look upon…

You thought I was kidding about the Facebook lurking, didn’t you.

Please don’t sue me, Mr. DeLancie, I love you just a little too much.

To further build my impeccable (I’m sure) Trek cred, here is something that makes me very unhappy:

Are they confused about something?  Doesn’t everyone know that Bones is the third cat?  He doesn’t belong there on the side sandwiched between Takes Her Shirt Off-hura and Cheerful Wet Guy-otty!  Oh Bones, the hip young crowd will never understand your salty, unpleasant charm, but you will always have my heart.

All right, that’s all for now, kiddies.  I’ll be back once a week to bring you the Trek cream of the internet, and a bit of the sludge too. Next time, maybe I’ll tell you who the Ancient Enemy in Star Trek Online will be.  Ooooooh, creepy.

Til then, friends…

SPOCK SMASH

Between planets that give me happy memories of Morrowind, new uniforms with a tiny hint of Phantasy Star Online, and just a straight-up awesome new Miranda design, I am hoping so much that this is the game that breaks Star Trek’s long marriage with video game mediocrity.

Go have a look!

Dr. Crusher, however, opts to freak the hell out.  (Women, amirite?)   Amongst our Space Advancements (so far, I think we have “Elimination of Capital Punishment” and “Vegetarianism” as new innovations since TOS - we were not getting preachy speeches when there were societies practicing capital punishment from Kirk, let’s face it, and you know he’s the kind of man who enjoys a good steak), we’ve eliminated the headache because we understand pain now. The common cold is also a laughable antiquity. Guess what else we’ve eliminated in the future? Subtlety. Seriously, I did not need the significance of Picard’s headache pounded home with a Space Sledgehammer. I can pick out foreshadowing without the writers erecting a neon sign over it that reads “THIS WILL BE SIGNIFICANT TO THE PLOT, PAY ATTENTION NOW.” Even Crusher’s worry could have gone more smoothly. All she had to do was not find a cause for the pain and be concerned, not go “OMG, WE DON’T HAVE HEADACHES ANY MORE, THIS IS IMPORTANT.”

The Ferengi continue to cringe and be awful and Wesley is wearing a shirt that I’m pretty sure is stitched together from scraps of proper uniforms.  He’s also (unsurprisingly) a bit of a snot here, coming up to the bridge to tell them that a ship is approaching instead of calling, and also that he was dicking around with the long range sensors apparently without permission.  Wouldn’t another officer be reprimanded for such shenanigans?  Hearts to Data, though, for the intrigued “Really?  How?” moment.  It’s like the only good piece of dialogue in the episode.  (Maybe I am being too harsh, but I did watch this two days ago and now I’m banging this out on my lunch at work, away from my notes.)

So!  The Ferengi are here to give the Captain a gift as a goodwill gesture or something equally implausible (but implausible on purpose, so okay, we’ll go with it), and that gift is a big hulking derelict  that the Captain used to… uh, captain.  It happens to be the historic ship where Picard invented the Picard Maneuver, which makes Geordi all excited because this apparently happened long enough ago that it’s in Starfleet Academy textbooks now.  The ship was badly damaged and abandoned after a skirmish with an unidentified ship, which we find out here was Ferengi.  DaiMon Bok is allegedly giving it to Picard to show no hard feelings and all that.

I’m going to apologize for my cheesiness in advance, but I’m still going to say “Beware of Ferengi bearing gifts.”  And because the Ferengi are actually pretty new to the whole Trek mythos at this point, I can also forgive the hammy freakouts of the 1st and 2nd officers from the Ferengi ship over the fact that they weren’t going to charge Picard anything for anything.

PS- Big help, there, Troi, sensing “deception.”  I bet the Captain wouldn’t have suspected they were up to anything without you!  Please go back to freaking out with Crusher in sick bay, kthnx.

The Ferengi leave and the Enterprise starts towing the burnt out ship with their tractor beam until they can meet up with a tug.  And by leave, I mean the Ferengi go to their own ship but keep pacing the Enterprise.  HMM, I WONDER IF THAT’S SUSPICIOUS.  Points to the crew for not loudly pointing it out like every other piece of foreshadowing so far.

Picard gets some PTSD, courtesy of a big, red, glowing, suspicious orb in his trunk in the old ship’s stateroom.   Welcome to the second episode in rather short order wherein Picard is driven to dangerous, erratic behavior by thought control!  You would expect Professor X to have some better natural defenses.  Picard’s flashbacks are intercut with Bok cackling madly over his own orb.  I guess Bok’s son was the captain of the ship that Picard done exploded and now he’s out for some blood revenge.  Oh, and Memory Alpha reminds me that there was a falsified log suggesting that Picard attacked without provocation, which also contributes to his little journey into Crazytown, specifically the neighborhood of Flashbackville.

At some point in here, Wesley saunters into sickbay, where his mother and Troi are fretting over the Captain’s brainwaves and casually notes that there are transmissions matching those patterns coming from the other ship.  WESLEY EX MACHINA saves the day after appearing only one other time in the episodes.  He can be annoying, even when he’s barely there!  Ending with a snarky, scoffing little, “You’e welcome, ladies… Adults!”  It’s like the writers WANT me to hate Wesley, hate him so bad.

In fact, Picard becomes such a happy resident of Flashbackville that he beams over to the other ship.  Riker invokes some bond-of-first-officers with the Ferengi Number One, and he tells Riker that the glowy ball is a forbidden thought control device and removes his captain from command.  Meanwhile, Picard is deep in the past and starts attacking the Enterprise (boy, I didn’t see that one coming, what with the multiple instances of Picard reliving the past over the last ten minutes!) in delusion.  Data is order to do what has never been done before, mainly come up with a defense against the Picard maneuver, which of course he does within minutes.  I’d make another deus ex machina joke (probably more appropriately) but I’m so fond of the Wesley one further up.

Once Data’s managed to stop Picard from killing them all (including the children, I’m not sure I’ll ever stop harping on why it is STUPID TO HAVE CHILDREN ON A WORKING EXPLORATORY SHIP), Riker gets through to Picard by speaking in a commanding voice, mostly, and convinces him to phaser the thought control device, which breaks him out of his flashback/hallucination.  Hooray!

Enjoy.

A strange be-robed Bajoran lady is totally pushing her Bajoran religious claptrap in Keiko O’Brien’s classroom and Keiko is not having it.  Is this the new Kai?  Because if she is, she is terrible.  Also she looks more like a person in makeup than any Bajoran so far - come on, makeup department!  This is why Babylon 5 won your Emmy in ‘93.

Elsewhere on the station, Miles is working with his new Bajoran assistant who apparently knows her business.  She is his prize pupil!  But his security tool is missing, so he can’t show her how to use it.

Keiko’s taken her beef with the Bajoran church all the way to Siskotown.  Turns out this lady, Vedek Winn, is not the Kai, but she wants to be.  She doesn’t have a lot of support on Bajor, but Kira’s in her camp. It doesn’t seem characteristically Kiratastic to have her come down on the side of orthodoxy, but I guess that is the role she is playing this episode.

I don’t remember there being a big kerfluffle about creationism in schools in the early 90s, but the Prophets vs. verteron particles debate is a transparent allegory.  Sisko just wants everybody to get along, but the Bajoran is dropping thinly-veiled threats about what might happen if Keiko doesn’t stop teaching wormhole science instead of Bajoran Prophetic Celestial Templeism.

Meanwhile, Miles and his assistant have found his missing security tool all melted up in a plasma conduit with a little bit of the previously-missing Ensign Aquino mixed up inside.  A tragic mystery! While he’s telling his wife about it, a Bajoran refuses to sell him a candy stick - a grave insult! - because Miles’ lady wife won’t capitulate to Vedek Winn’s demands.  Good thing Odo was around, or that vendor might have gotten a surprise visit from Knuckles O’Brien who, after Captive Pursuit, has developed a taste for alien chins.  Dabo!

The Kai wanna-be is throwing down about her religion to Mrs. O’Brien’s students right out on the promenade.  Why the other races’ children even give enough of a rat’s ass to be at this little throwdown is uncertain, but I guess it’ll save us having to see a scene later where the five non-Bajoran kids show up to a mostly-empty classroom.  The Kai stomps off with all the Bajoran kids, which leaves Keiko only a handful of students.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I am right there on the same side as Mrs. O’Brien, who feels that religion has no place in the classroom.  This kind of religion-encroaching-on-secular-institutions thing happens in the US pretty regularly.  Every year, it seems, some group or other throws up the smokescreen of “Intelligent Design” “theory” to try to sneak religious beliefs into the classroom.

Sisko has a little father-son chat with Jake and sets a conciliatory tone, namely that just because Jake doesn’t believe a thing doesn’t make it dumb (which I agree with), and that in this specific case, it isn’t that ridiculous to interpret aliens who can see all points in time simultaneously as prophets.  He also says that just because you disagree with something doesn’t make it wrong, which I agree with… somewhat less.

On the face of it, it’s true - we can’t make something not be so simply by saying it isn’t.  But we also cannot make something so just by saying that it is (although when Captain Picard tells us to make it so, we are at least obligated to try), and when you have observable, verifiable facts and data on one side and unsubstantiated superstition on the other, it would be silly to teach the latter in a science lesson.

Sisko and the writers are giving us Star Trek’s can’t-we-all-just-get-along, wouldn’t-it-be-nice-if-everyone-was-nice take on the debate, which I would be right behind if this were about nothing more than peaceful coexistence in a community or about freedom of conscience.

But it isn’t a matter of whether people should be allowed to believe what they wish.  Believe up is down, for all I care.  Believe the sky is green, it doesn’t affect me at all.  Believe a talking snake got a dude in so much trouble with a god that he had to go father a fiercely inbred family in a desert, you’re welcome to it.  This is about what to teach in what amounts to a public school - it’s not really pushing your worldview on someone if that “worldview” is literally a view of the world.  If the Bajorans get to have their religious beliefs inserted into the curriculum as an alternative to science, why don’t the Klingons or Ferengi get to object to what is being taught as ethics?  Why don’t the Cardassians get a say in what is being taught in a Bajoran history lesson?

After dispensing his fatherly lesson to poor older-than-his-classmates Jake, Sisko goes down to speak to a Bajoran spiritual leader, Vedek Bareil, to try find a way to work out the problems at the station.  Bareil, who looks a little like Liam Neeson, seems to sympathize, but he will not help.

Back at Ops, Sisko runs up against a Bajoran plague of not wanting to go to work.  He also runs up against DNA evidence that the missing ensign who got all melty in the plasma conduit was actually killed by a phaser.  How that shows up in an analysis of Ensign Aquino’s DNA is unclear, but Dr. Bashir has FUTURE SPACE TECHNOLOGY at his disposal, so we’ll just go with him on this.

Miles has problems of his own - namely the concern that his assistant might be a little flower units for our dear chief!  Get in line, sister!

And his day only gets worse - while he is discussing some new evidence in the slagged ensign’s murder investigation with Odo, the school blows up!  Luckily, nobody was there, but, following an inspiring speech by Sisko, Miles’ apprentice and Vedek Winn share an ominous glance.

She continues looking suspicious while Miles explains the current murder plot theory to Miles.  While she’s doing that, a message from Vedek Bareil comes in - looks like he’ll be coming to the station just in time to probably get murdered!

I mean, that’s how it sounds, anyway, from the little chitty-chat about sacrifice (and the possibility of getting executed) that the Bajoran Apprentice has with Vedek Winn immediately after Bareil’s message.  But her tracks were not covered well enough - Miles finds a suspicious file in the computer and hacks into it with Dax.  It’s an escape route!  The computer can’t find anything super unusual at the escape route’s start, but Miles goes to investigate anyway since it found some sort of subspace phlebotinum.

And what does he find out about this phlebotinum?  It’s integrated into the weapon-detecting technobabble thingy he and his assistant fixed just the other day, when he discovered his missing security tool thing!  SUSPENSE!  He warns Sisko, who spots the assistant moving through the crowd right before everything gets all slow-motion-y.  Mood-building or spacetime anomaly?  They never say.  She sloooowly pulls a gun and sloooowly tries to assassinate Vedek Bareil.

Sisko foils the plot with the most graceless tackle I’ve ever seen on Star Trek, which is saying something.

• Keiko faking suspicion of infidelity just to screw with her husband is one of the things that makes her rad

• Jake is easily 5 years older than any of the other kids in his class

• Miles O’Brien does not misplace his tools

• I’m going to call this type of O’Brien-intensive episde a “high-Milesage” episode, and this is my blog so nobody can stop me.

• Favorite exchange of the episode:

Miles: What was he doing in a runabout at four in the morning?

Odo: Apparently, he was getting murdered.

• Those spiritual types love those Dabo girls.

DS9 has a special visitor today!  A sick person, with a disease called Kalla-Nohra Syndrome, which Kira remembers from her time as a laborer in Cardassian mining camps.  Suspecting it’s one of her filthy fellow travelers, she makes a sojourn to sickbay only to learn the horrible truth:  It’s a Cardassian!  Who could change the channel after a teaser like that?  BUM BA DA BUMMM…  DAAA DA DA DAAA…

Kira says he’s a war criminal, although Aamin Marritza is not on any list of war criminals that Odo has seen and he has seen them all.  Her evidence?  The only way he could have gotten his exciting disease was by working at a horrible prison camp where horrible things were done to Bajorans (who may or may not have been horrible themselves, but that’s no justification either way).

The Cardassian claims he has Pottrik Syndrome, which has similar symptoms to Kalla-Nohra Syndrome and is treated the same way, but is somehow different.  Dr. Bashir, however, won’t back that up.

The Bajoran Minister of State wants the Cardassian, but Sisko is not so sure it is a good idea to give him up.  He gives Odo the investigation and has a lovely little “I’m taking you off the case” conversation with Kira.  I wish Sisko would take this opportunity to call her a loose cannon, but no dice.  In fact, he goes so far as to let Kira appeal to his better half and puts her back charge of the investigation.  Did not see that one coming, actually.  Usually, it seems like asking Sisko to do something is the surest way to get him not to do it.

Under interrogation, the Cardassian admits to being a file clerk at the camp in question.  In fact, if he’s telling the truth, he’s the best filing clerk to ever clerk files.  He even got a special prize from Gul Darhe’el, the Cardassian in charge of the camp, for being such an excellent clerk.  And further, he claims that all the horrible things that happened at the camp were rumors started by Cardassians in order to scare the bejezus out of the Bajorans.

Chief O’Brien is recalibrating something or other.  It’s not important, but I can’t let what might be his only appearance in the episode slide right by.  Here’s where we get to see Star Trek go all “isolate and magnify” on a still photograph and then enhance it.  I’m not willing to buy it on CSI, but I’ll buy it on Star Trek.  In fact, I’ll buy that they can zoom in past someone in the foreground and look at someone behind them because of FUTURE SPACE TECHNOLOGY.

What do they learn?  Their prisoner is (may be) Gul Darhe’el himself!  The butcher of Gallitep (gasp!)  - and he admits it (double gasp!) - and brags about it (rarely-seen triple-gasp!)!  He also belittles Kira’s resistance cell.  Either he’s got some game he’s playing at or he’s just trying to make Kira as miserable as possible.  Or both.  Either way, he’s succeeded at the latter.  Kira’s down in the dumps, drinking blue… liquid and having a little heart-to-heart with Odo.

It’s a good talk, though, because it comes out that there’s no way the prisoner could have known that Kira fought in the resistance.  Even mean ole Gul Dukat, bad guy extraordinaire, doesn’t seem to know what the story is, but it seems the prisoner is not Gul Darhe’el.  In fact, with Bashir’s new evidence from his medical records, it seems like he could be the clerk he says he is, but who for some reason is masquerading around as Gul Darhe’el.

As it turns out, it is Marritza.  He’s pretending to be Gul Darhe’el to force the Cardassians to admit to Darhe’el’s crimes following his inevitable trial and execution on Bajor, but the Major will have none of that dishonest racket.  Unfortunately, while she’s letting him go, he gets stabbed by his crazy Bajoran former fellow prisoner.

Did I mention that?  There was a Bajoran locked up with him for a while early on.  And he’s crazy.  So he kills Marritza with a knife.  Seems like a ploy for cheap tragedy - the story had a tidy ending already.  I guess it’s meant to illustrate lingering Bajoran hatred for Cardassians, but it seems tacked-on to me.  Who’s to say?

• The prisoner wants yamok sauce for his stew.  Where are Jake and Nog when you need them?  I hear they have an inside hookup on that stuff.

• Oh, Gul Dukat.  You’re so rad.

Kira doesn’t want to let a Valerian transport dock at DS9 because they used to run weapons-grade Dolemite to the Cardassians when they were occupying Bajor.  I would submit that any Dolemite is weapons-grade.  Kira agrees - she wants that ship outta here in twenty-four hours, an’ twenty-three of ‘em are already gone.

Oh wait, it’s “dolamide.” Way to let me down, Dramatis Personae. Did they want to call it “Dolemite” and run up against licensing issues, I wonder? “Dolamide” sounds like a copout (which is something Dolemite would never do, by the way).

Anyway, since dolamide has a bunch of other uses (though cleaning up the streets with an army of kung-fu prostitutes is, unfortunately, not one of them), Sisko won’t let Kira search the ship without evidence.

Kira’s got Odo looking for evidence of gun-running with the Valerians, Dr. Bashir at Ops for some reason, perhaps to flirt with Dax, and dear sweet Miles is glad he’s not on a boring grain-silo-viewing field trip with his wife and her students.  Am I missing anyone?  Quark is probably at work.  We haven’t heard from Garak in a while, now that I think of it.  I miss that dude.

Our real adventure begins with a Klingon ship returning from the Gamma quadrant way ahead of schedule, and then exploding. It’s together just long enough to beam one lonely Klingon to DS9, who survives long enough to say “Victory!”  Typical Klingon.  I always wonder how they expect me to believe that a species so eager to be dead could have survived so long, but then I guess Klingons are probably full of surprises.

It is quickly established that the dead Klingon (well the one that made it as far as DS9) was the Klingon ship’s first officer, and that the Klingons were on a routine bio-survey.  Routine missions are just about the most dangerous things in all of Trek, so that it exploded is no surprise. Also, something’s got Dax giggly about going to search for the Klingons’ black box and I suspect that it may be the plot.

Odo hits up Quark for some information about the Klingons.  Turns out they were going to bring home something that would make the enemies of the Klingon empire tremble.  Odo is so surprised by this news that he has a shapeshifter freakout and falls down.  Or, again, the plot might involve people acting a little weird.  Also, despite his loss of consciousness, he does not lose his shape.  Nobody comments on this, but I’m relatively certain that we, the viewers, are supposed to notice.  On the other side, maybe the special effects budget ran a little shy and we weren’t supposed to notice.  Time will tell!

Everyone’s talking about the Kira/Sisko friction and siding off.  Could what the Klingons found be something that turns people against each other?  Time will tell!

It might also just make people wacky.  Dax is all giggly and telling boring stories that nobody wants to hear.  Odo and Quark seem mostly unchanged - pehaps it’s similar to the aphasia virus incident where Quark and Odo’s brains (or, anyway, Quark’s brain and Odo’s… thinking jam I guess) are immune to some of the weird though-twisting things that happen in Star Trek.

So Kira’s trying to recruit everyone to her side against Sisko and Miles in the Valerian debate, Dax is circling sanity in a comfortable low orbit, Bashir is practicing politics, the Chief is fanatically protecting Sisko, and Sisko is just totally laid back.  Just chillin’ old school. Drawing weird clocks.

Odo learns from the Klingon logs that they found some telepathic spheres that had a record of a power struggle that destroyed an ancient race.  The Klingons, obviously, don’t care.  Joke’s on them!  Or on the tiny little pieces of them that are floating gently through space right now, anyway.

Sisko is apparently not so laid back as all that now that he’s actually BUILDING his clock.  He’d be happy to, if necessary, fight off as many of his enemies as possible by himself and it takes all of Miles’ considerable persuasive skills to talk him down.

There’s been a bit too much crazy time and not nearly enough resolution time.  It seems like they came out to do this episode and got all the way to the studio before they realized that they hadn’t packed enough script.

Odo convinces Bashir that it’d be a good idea to help stop everybody’s brains from going crazy, but the fight that breaks out at Ops (which I keep thinking of as the bridge, even though the station isn’t a ship at all) makes it look like it might be too late!  But more clever maneuvering by Odo gets everybody trapped in Carbo Bay 4 just in time for Bashir’s technobabble field to knock the crazy out of the crew so Odo can flush it into space.

This is the second time in Star Trek that I’ve seen someone intentionally decompress a cargo bay to be a hero (the first was in TNG, to put out a plasma fire), and it seems like just as bad an idea now as it did then.

Apparently Quark was fine because he was never exposed in the first place, since the crazytimes infection took place when the Klingon beamed in at Ops.

The only lingering questions from this episode are these:

Why didn’t Odo get all goopy when he passed out?

And who sends Klingons on a science mission?

Final thoughts:

• I’m happy Sisko was napping at his desk early in the episode, even if it was because of a telepathic space disease.

• The Valerians are flying the same pointy-nosed ship as every other minor race in the galaxy.  It is the gold 90s Toyota Camry of Space.

• I wonder if we’ll see more of Sisko’s clock in future episodes - will it be like Picard’s flute?

DS9 was different - new episodes were on late at night, 10pm on Sundays, I think, and the rebroadcast the following Saturday interfered with whatever youth sport I was being roped into at the time, usually swimming.  I saw episodes here and there, but I didn’t even find out the show was over until well after its final episode had aired.

I caught a few episodes when I briefly had cable from 2002-2003, but other than Emissary, everything I’ve seen up to now has been unfamiliar.

In fact, this is the first episode where I actually remember what is going to happen in each storyline.

==================================================

The Forsaken at Memory Alpha

• Poor Bashir.  Dude gets stuck with the bad jobs just because he’s an extremely junior officer.

• Considering this is an episode where the main plot involves computer trouble and one of the secondary plots involves Lwaxana trying to get into Odo’s pants (which, grossly enough, are part of his actual body), this episode could have been called HEY LOOK, IT’S MAJEL BARRETT.  I really don’t think anybody would have complained.

• Constable Odo does not have time for romantic interludes.

• In Odo’s humble opinion, most of us humanoids spend far too much time on our… respective mating rituals.

• ODO’S IMPORTANT DS9 LIFE LESSON: Procreation does not involve changing how you smell or writing bad poetry or sacrificing various plants to serve as tokens of affection.  This is good news and it will save us a lot of time!

• A bi-polar torch has its good days and its bad days, you know how it is.

• BONUS LIFE LESSON from Lwaxana: When it comes to picnics, the only thing that really matters is the company.

Federation ambassadors on DS9!  Obnoxious ones!  They’re here to go on a fact-finding mission to the wormhole.  Totally sensible!  Look how well that turned out for Count Opakula.  One of them is Lwaxana Troi, too, so sending them to the Gamma Quadrant might be considered an act of war.

Here’s a Star Trek character being uptight about sex.  Apparently it’s only some races that are comfortable with the idea of ugly-bumping.  Others consider it an extremely impolite topic of conversation!  The trick is guessing which ones are which.  The ones that think it’s a big deal are usually the ones who have been hidebound and uptight the whole episode, or, if it’s still early in the episode, it’s a sure sign that they will be. In this case, it is the lady ambassador who isn’t a proscribed weapon in the war between the sexes, i.e. not Lwaxana.  Dr. Bashir suggests they visit a holosuite (not intending anything sexual, although the holosuites on DS9 usually get put to naughty use) and she gives him a look like he just suggested she kill her own clone.

When Lwaxana’s fancy comb is stolen at Quarks, Odo finds it for her. Ambassador Troi immediately develops a crush on our dear constable.

Speaking of crushes, Miles is having trouble with the computer on the bridge - Cardassians apparently operate like Microsoft in the protecting-users-from-themselves (whether they like it or not) department.

Lwaxana Troi’s crush on Odo is completely delightful.  When I was a kid, I used to hate the crap out of Lwaxana Troi, but as an adult I find her to be more fun than a barrel of extremely fun monkeys.  I’ve heard that the set was always a party when Majel Barrett was around, and I can believe it.

The other ambassadors, meanwhile, are making a nuisance of themselves at Ops when an unexplained alien probe comes through the wormhole (like there could be another kind of probe coming through the wormhole, come on).  Uncharacteristically for a Starfleet officer, Sisko does not want to bring it immediately on board and rub his face all over it.  His caution won’t do him any good, but it’s nice to see.

Troi and Odo get stuck in a turbolift at the start of a series of system failures (system failure number two: transporters).  There seems to be no explanation for the system failures, but since the Cardassians run technobabble through their other technobabble, Odo can’t even escape by shapeshifting.

I think the turbolift breakdown plot is just a way to isolate Majel Barret from the rest of the cast (except the sacrificial shapeshifter) to allow her to happily and charmingly devour as much scenery as she would like without derailing the rest of the show.

Back at Ops, O’Brien can’t figure out the problem, but he is starting to realize that the computer doesn’t want him to leave it alone.  Computer, I know how you feel!  Miles thinks downloading data from that probe that just showed up might have something to do with it.

Trying to get rid of the data proves problematic, too.  The comms and the lights are the next victims of this attention-hungry invasive program.

Meanwhile, several hours later, Troi has finally finished talking about her and would like to hear about an oddly damp-looking Odo - damp because he’s running up against the outer edge of his 16-hour being-solid cycle.  He doesn’t want to change because, as he says, it is a personal matter.  Odo is a man’s man and does not want to display weakness in front of a known lady.

Attempting to distract the computer causes it to sound like GLaDOS from Portal and then to try to blow up part of the habitat ring where the ambassadors and doctor happen to be.  Fortunately, having compared it to a puppy, Miles is able to “build a doghouse” for it.  Most technical problems in Star Trek only exist until you find a metaphor for them that, when extended, provides a metaphor for a solution (the solution itself does not necessarily need to be found, just the metaphor).

In the turbolift, Odo and Lwaxana share a touching moment of friendship before he becomes a puddle in her dress.  That sounds a lot dirtier than it actually is.

The ambassadors, having been hidden away in a Jeffries tube (or the Cardassian equivalent) by Dr. Bashir, got sooty but were not harmed by the explosion, and have all gained a new-found respect for Julian.  Whether any of them learned a lesson or not is unclear, however.

Nobody ends up going through the wormhole and Miles, in the end, gets to keep the puppy.

Following our embarrassing failure to in any way mark the passing of Majel Barrett, Trek’s first lady, last December 18th, we have now heard more sad news and we are actually reporting it this time:  Ricardo Montalbán, also known to Trek fans as Khan Noonien Singh, passed away today at 88.  Let us all clench our fists and scream KHAAAAN in his memory.

[Via Reuters]

“Justice” was actually so bad I couldn’t bring myself to finish watching it. I had the DVD out for like six months. Then when I did feel bad because I had taken literal months to finish watching it and tried to start over from the beginning, well, that’s what did me in.

Here’s what I remember: Yar and Geordi go down to this planet of semi-clad jogging blondes. The people of this planet, the Edo, really like to have sex. A lot. Riker leers a lot. So does Yar, really. Worf makes Klingons seem like the least badass by just being uncomfortable.

But why focus on the adults on a sex-planet when we can focus on everyone’s favorite character, Wesley Crusher? Yeah, the initial away team report is that it’s a planet full of beautiful people who spend most of their time makin’ love, so the best thing Picard can order is for Wesley to go down and see if it’s appropriate for children. So he runs around throwing a ball with some scantily clad pre-teens. What fun!

Apparently, the Edo were big fans of 18th century social theorist Jeremy Bentham, because their planet is one giant panopticon. There’s no crime because every transgression is punishable by death, and the rules are enforced in randomized punishment zones, so you never know if you’re being monitored or not.

Hey, guess where Wesley is when he trips over a fence and falls through a greenhouse? Guess what is basically against the law? DING DING DING DING.

There’s a whole moral struggle about violating the Prime Directive (uh, didn’t they kind of start out doing that by visiting an obviously technologically inferior/pre-warp planet?) to rescue Wesley from a massively unjust law violated in ignorance where the Edo straight out tell Picard to just beam up and scram. There’s also another thing that I’ve totally ignored, a subplot about an invisible space station above the planet that sends out an orb that knocks out Data and scans him and is apparently the Edo god. I didn’t get to the resolution there before my stamina broke. According to Memory Alpha, there isn’t much else. There’s some speeches about what is and is not just and Wesley doesn’t die and the Enterprise skeedaddles.

I will try to do better next time.

• Constable Odo has no time for fantasies.

• Today’s Important Lesson might have come from Quark this time, in conversation with Odo rather than from Odo himself: A true entrepeneur knows how to sniff the wind!

• Dr. Bashir, space troubador, is not skilled in the arts of romancing Jadzia Dax.

• Dr. Bashir sleeps with his uniform on. What a professional

• The more times people say “Rumpelstiltskin” around Rumpelstiltskin, the happier I become.

• Seeing Sisko plexing during a stressful scene made me do the smiles

• Wouldn’t “visual scanners” just be cameras?

Oh, DS9. Opening up with a few innocuous slices of life. Who would ever suspect that they would become important during the episode proper? The secret answer is “everyone who has ever watched Star Trek, ever,” but it’s still cute anyway.

We open with Dr. Bashir flirting with Dax, Jake going to play holo-baseball, and sweet Miles telling little Molly the story of Rumpelstiltskin. Shortly after, we find Rumplestiltskin in Molly’s room, a famous baseball player following Jake home from the holosuite, and fake Dax waking Dr. Bashir up with kisses.

The fake Dax, the baseball player (Harmon Bokai), and Rumpelstiltskin all appear, to Dr. Bashir’s instruments, to be totally real.

Real Jadzia takes imaginary characters coming to life with aplomb, and as soon as Bashir gets serious about the problem, his imaginary Dax disappears. Meanwhile, snow falls on the Promenade. Snow gives way to a large flightless bird, which gives way to some serious winning streaks at Quark’s dabo table. Odo’s response is to order everyone to stop using their imaginations. This seems like a typical cop move. Oddly, when Quark gets distracted from his fantasy babes by his patrons’ dabo successes (oh yeah, Quark has fantasy babes), they fail to disappear. Maybe Bashir is better at ignoring his fantasies than Quark?

Oh, but fake Dax is back. Why? To trade insults with real Dax!

It seems like some sort of space anomaly (of course!) is causing people’s imaginations to come to life. While that’s being investigated, the figments hold a little figment parliament to figure out of their experiment (doubtless one to learn more about these strange creatures aboard the station) is going well.

The figments somewhat complicate the evacuation of critical areas, which is done to prepare for the crazy plan to take out the space anomaly. With rays? Special pulses? Some sort of field? Nope! Torpedos! Leave it to those peacenick starship crews to direct a subspace pulse through the main deflector or that crap, station crews just blow shit up.

This occasionally causes problems, such as the thing you are shooting torpedos at exploding and your station getting caught in the blast. Of course, if the subspace anomaly itself is imaginary, then none of that matters! Neat and tidy.

Oh, and the figments? Totally space explorers who have never seen anything like this strange emotion you humans call “love” the capacity for imagination before. Dabo!

• When a lobe tingles, it means only one thing: Opportunity! Or frostbite.

• The captain of the trading ship Nog is trying to sell all the Yamok sauce to is surprisingly one of the more believable characters in the show so far. I am totally sold on that guy being an alien space captain.

• What’s the opposite of a luddite? Like the kind of person who is to luddites what luddites are to technology? Because Star Trek is that.

• Today’s Important Life Lesson might be that there is a real distinction between stem bolts and self-sealing stem bolts.

• On the other hand, self-stealing stem bolts can’t be that important if even Miles doesn’t know what they are.

• I know he’s still just a commander, but I grow more and more certain that Sisko is my favorite captain. (Don’t tell Jean-Luc!)

• I’m not clear on how much money 5 bars of gold-pressed latinum is. Is it a lot?

Today’s adventure* concerns a power transfer from one of Bajor’s moons to Bajor. Why? Because in the SPACE FUTURE, it is much easier to get energy from millions of miles away than it is to get it from where you are. Of course, that energy, which is going to heat up a bunch of bajoran homes this winter, comes from a place where other bajorans are living. Dax and Kira fly by to check it out and find some people still living there, so Kira goes down to have a chat with them.

Up on the station, Nog has the idea that getting 5,000 wrappages of Cardassian yamok sauce will make them wealthy. Hoping to sell them for 5 bars of latinum, they are disappointed to find that the only captain on station that does business with the Cardassians is not carrying any latinum. But they trade their sauce wrappages for 100 gross of self-stealing stem bolts. I am excited about these nonsense objects!

The family of bajoran farmers that Kira is supposed to evict is fighting back hard. Their primary weapon? Supper! I wish people who disagreed with me would do so by offering me suppers. Life in the future is so much better than now! The old man in charge, in between talking about how long it will take roots to soften, explains that he has no interest in leaving his farm because he is a typical stubborn Star Trek rustic archetype.

Wondering what self-sealing stem bolts are? So is everyone else.

Kira, back on DS9, is trying to convince the bajoran minister in charge of the energy grabbing operation to use “phased energy” something something to get the energy so the locals can stick around, but frankly I am way less interested in the stubborn rustic main plot than I am in the Nog and Jake’s Big Business subplot. When that fails, she goes down with a couple of goons to convince them to leave, which is obviously a great idea that could not possibly result in any old men getting totally shot. OH WAIT!

Meanwhile, Nog and Jake have traded their 100 gross of self-sealing stembolts for 7 tessipates of land.

The upside to the Kira/rustic plot is that, when she decides to stay on the planet and take care of the old got-shot guy, we get to see Sisko throw his weight around in a very Siskoish fashion. When he explains to Bashir that he told the minister that Kira would be remaining on the moon for a couple of days at Bashir’s request, Bashir responds that that is not true. Sisko simply tells him to “make it true,” and then waits quietly for Bashir to tell him what he wants to hear. Sisko gets shit done! I love that about the guy: He gets that he is in charge of DS9 and that Starfleet Command is far away. That done, he goes down to the moon himself for a third-act game-winning heart-to-heart with big K. He leaves Kira to think about it, but we all know he has totally won this one. Dabo!

Back upstairs with the Nog and Jake, we learn that the Bajoran government wants to build a reclamation center on a certain piece of land. GUESS WHICH ONE! While Quark is trying to find out who owns the land, Nog drops the “we’ll sell it for 5 bars of gold-pressed latinum” bomb on him. A victory for team precocious youngsters? Looks that way!

Incidentally, Kira convinces her old man buddy to leave his moon by burning his house down.

* Or what would have been today’s adventure if today was May 9, 1993.