Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season Five Rewatch

“Apocalypse Rising”

• Season five gets off to a fun start with this solid (if not spectacular) season opener.
• It’s fun to see them follow up so quickly on the Gowron-is-a-Changeling cliffhanger, and, of course, I love the twist that it actually turns out to be Martok.  It’s great to see Martok again… and it’s great to see Gowron again (in the flesh, not just on a viewscreens as he was in the season four finale).  Gowron gets some great moments in this episode, none better than his delivery of “Glory to you… [WIDE EYES] and your house…!” when he bestows the medal to the in-disguise Sisko.  The Worf-Gowron fight is fun (Gowron didn’t realize that Worf is THE GREATEST HAND-TO-HAND FIGHTER IN THE GALAXY!!)… I love Gowron’s dig at Worf afterwards (“If your Klingon blood wasn’t so thin…”) and it’s nice to see Gowron be mostly reasonable at the end… albeit still somewhat stubborn so the Federation-Klingon schism isn’t wrapped up too simply/easily.  I’m glad the show takes this tack that the season-long conflict between the Federation and the Klingon Empire can’t be so easily wiped away.
• I love the starry-eyed look Worf gets at the beginning when he learns of the mission.  (“If we succeed… there will be many songs sung in our honor!”)
• It’s nice to see Dukat again, and I’m glad Damar is still at his side.  I love that Dukat is now wearing a Klingon baldric around his chest… spoils of war, I guess.  It’s clever to use his captured Klingon bird of prey for this undercover mission.
• I love the scene of Kira and Bashir bantering (“This is all YOUR fault!”).  It’s nice to see them so comfortable and friendly with one another.  Of course, it’s extra funny because Alexander Siddig IS the father of Nana Visitor’s baby, so in a way, it really IS all Bashir’s fault.
• There are some plot holes that weaken the episode somewhat.  At the beginning, we learn that Sisko is traversing a war zone in a little runabout, which is a colossally stupid idea.  And I think the idea of sending Sisko, Worf, O’Brien, and Odo undercover to Q’onos is pretty stupid.  I always object when Trek does these storylines (such as TNG’s “Chain of Command.”)  Doesn’t Starfleet have special agents trained for exactly this sort of undercover op?  Sending O’Brien seems particularly stupid.  (If we’re going to send DS9 characters, how about Dax?  Curzon was the Ambassador to the Klingon Empire for decades!!)  Then, when they get to the big Klingon Hall, everyone is speaking English!  Usually I can forgive Trek for having everyone speak English, assuming that they’re using the universal translator to understand one another.  But I also assume that the translator can be recognized as such, so couldn’t these Klingons tell that Sisko and co. we’re speaking Klingonese?  It just stretches my credulity a tad too far…
• Also, that Worf comes very close to mutinying against Kira at the beginning of the episode (as he wants to take the Defiant out to search for Sisko’s missing Runabout, whereas Kira is standing by Sisko’s orders to keep the Defiant at the station) is a little much.  (If they had to go there, I would’ve liked a follow-up scene in which Worf showed his contrition for undermining her authority.)

“The Ship”

• The series’ 100th episode is, like “Apocalypse Rising” a solid (if unspectacular) episode.
• It’s fun to see the Jem’Hadar and Vorta back as real threats.
• It’s always nice when we get real exterior locations on the show.  I love all the interior sets of the upside-down Jem’Hadar warship… though the exterior of the ship doesn’t seem to match well with the visual effects we’ve seen before of Jem’Hadar ships.
• It’s nice to see Muniz again (from “Starship Down”), and sad that he meets such a tragic fate here.  I’m glad this redshirt was more fleshed out than usual, and it’s nice to see Sisko actually upset about him and the other four crew members he lost on the mission.  It’s unusual to see a Trek captain so shaken by the loss of his men.
• As always, it’s fun to see O’Brien’s easy rapport with the people under his command.  When he says “yeah, that was a good one,” it is heartbreaking.
• While I’m not sure the episode quite earns Worf and Dax’s bad behavior as the siege goes on (they both seem like they’d be tougher than that), I did enjoy seeing Worf and O’Brien’s very different viewpoints about life and death.  This fits their character.  It’s interesting to hear Worf say “it does no good to shield him from death.”  I like their quiet rapprochement at the end of the episode.  “We will both keep the predators away.”
• The twist that there was a Founder onboard is clever, though I’m not sure it makes sense.  Was the Founder injured in the crash?  If not, surely the Founder could have easily killed Sisko & co. at any time.  And I’m not sure the Founder’s presence sufficiently explains why the Vorta Kilana didn’t have her Jem’Hadar storm the ship.  Surely these professional soldiers could take out the Starfleet personnel easily, without injuring the Founder?  Failing that, surely these professional soldiers could have easily taken Sisko out any of the many times he went outside the crashed ship?
• Speaking of plot-holes, Sisko and co. were conducting a mineral survey in the Gamma Quadrant with just a Runabout?  Once again I must complain about the stupidity of any mission into the Gamma Quadrant with nothing more than a Runabout.  (As I did, for example, in “The Quickening.”)
• Muniz’s teasing O’Brien about Ireland having hills but not mountains is jokey reference to Colm Meaney’s role in the movie The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain.

“Looking for Par’Mach in all the Wrong Places”

• What a great title!  I love this episode that is a fun and funny romp but one that also tells some interesting stories with real emotional stakes!
• It’s great to see Grilka again (from season three’s “The House of Quark”).  I never expected to see her again!  It’s fun to see Quark actually working hard this time to earn her affections, and nice to see that she reciprocates!  The idea of Quark and Worf in a Cyrano de Bergerac story is brilliant.  And, of course, it all builds to the momentous beginning of the Worf-Dax romance!  I love this pairing, and unlike the other stories in this episode (Quark and Grilka, and Kira and O’Brien), that relationship will be VERY important to the show moving forward.
• The Kira-O’Brien story is the least interesting.  It’s not crazy that the two could develop feelings for one another, living in such close quarters.  But the pairing is out of left field, and is never addressed again, and here in this episode it’s really just played for laughs (as opposed to the Quark-Grilka and Worf-Dax stories), so it winds up feeling like the slightest.
• It’s funny to see Quark and Bashir refer to the “Battling O’Briens.”  It feels a little cliche that the writers depict the one married couple on the show as often fighting, but on the other hand it’s nice that DS9 allows its characters to be realistically flawed.  And, of course, I like the switch here that it turns out that O’Brien is fighting with Kira at the beginning, not Keiko.
• There are so many funny moments and great bits of dialogue in this episode.  I love how Dax points out to Worf that he’s surprisingly attached to Klingon tradition for someone raised by humans and currently serving in Starfleet.  I love when Quark says “War, what is it good for?  Absolutely nothing!”  I love Dax’s description of Pa’Mach as “love, but with more aggressive overtones.”  I love the Bashir-O’Brien scene when Bashir says “it’s a small station” and O’Brien retorts “it’s a HUGE station!”  I also love their later “I’ll bet you looked” exchange.  (That scene feels like a Seinfeld scene to me!  So does Dax’s advice later to Quark: “No staring at her cleavage!”).  When Quark tells Worf that Worf has the key to Grilka’s heart, and asks if Worf can help him unlock it, I love the intense, wide-eyed look Worf has when he says, confidently “Yes, I can.”  I love the Kira-Odo scene when she talks about being practically part of Miles’ family and Odo, getting right to the heart of the matter, asks her: “Which part?”
• And, of course, the scene at the end in which a very banged up Quark and Grilka and Worf and Dax all arrive is hilarious.  One of my favorite DS9 scenes!
• It’s interesting to see Worf attempt at first to court Grilka in a traditional Klingon manner (by being rude and blustery).  It’s interesting how Grilka’s old advisor, Tumek, sees right through Worf, and tries to let him down gently.  (It’s bizarre that, when he asks Worf if he’s ever pursued a Klingon woman, Worf says no.  What about K’Ehleyr?  I guess she was more human than Klingon in Worf’s mind?)
• I’m glad the episode was consistent with what we saw of Worf and K’Ehleyr in that we see that Worf feels that Dax to take the oath with him (get married) now that they’ve had sex.  I like seeing how the confident Dax isn’t going to get pushed into that until she’s ready.
• I love that Worf — THE GREATEST HAND TO HAND FIGHTER IN THE GALAXY!! — is so good he can even help Quark, remotely, defeat Thopok, the head of Grilka’s guard.  (OK, it’s wildly implausible, but I still love it.)

“Nor the Battle to the Strong”

• Another great episode.  This isn’t much fun to watch — which of course is the point — and it’s such an important story for Star Trek to tell, both for Jake’s development and that of the whole of the show.  At this point in the series, many fans (like me!!) were excited for the show to lean into action and battle.  Let’s see all-out war with the Klingons!  Let’s see war with the Dominion!  That stuff can be fun and exciting in a TV show.  I love watching starships go at it!  But this episode reminds us that war is not fun and exciting.  It’s messy and ugly.
• Jake goes on a wonderful journey in the episode, at first excited about getting to chronicle Bashir’s exploits during wartime and then immediately confronted with how horrible war and death really is.  I love that Jake doesn’t wind up being a hero in the end.  He isn’t able to save that injured security man who he finds after running away from Bashir during the bombing.  Jake is a normal kid — he’s not a Wesley Crusher super-human and he’s not a Starfleet officer.  I love that DS9 allowed him to be that.  I love that it’s Nog who winds up in Starfleet, not Captain Sisko’s son.  And I also love that, by the end, Jake finds his own brand of heroism by writing honestly about his experiences.
• There are a number of very interesting vignettes and fascinating characters who Jake meets.  The Starfleet officer who shot his own foot so as to be able to get taken away from the front lines.  The grizzled, badly injured security officer who stayed behind to die so his comrades could escape.  (His death is so gruesome — very unusual for Star Trek!)
• Also unusual: the device of Jake’s narration.  I enjoyed this as a way to get into Jake’s head.
• The scene in which Jake first saw the room with all the body bags was also very effective and moving.
• Such a serious episode begins with one of the series’ great funny scenes: “So much for Quarktajino!”  What a great scene with almost the whole ensemble.  “The removal of caffeine from beverages has plagued bartenders and restauranteurs for centuries!”
• I also like the later Sisko-Odo scene in which Odo admits he hurt himself while trying to shapeshifter, forgetting that he’s not a Changeling anymore.  The show hasn’t spent too much time dealing with this, so it’s nice to be reminded.
• I love Sisko reading Jake’s story recounting the battle. I love the part where he says the Battle of Ajilon Prime probably won’t be remembered by anyone, but he and the soldiers who fought it will remember it. The same is probably true for so many soldiers who fight in any battle.
• By the way, how great is Bashir at this point in the show? He’s so capable a physician, and so calm in this intense situation. He’s come so far from young, inexperienced season 1 Bashir!!

“The Assignment:

• This is a fairly thin episode that is mostly notable because of all the important stuff that it sets up with the Pah-Wraiths and the Fire Caves.  What I do like about this episode is how it doesn’t feel at all significant — it feels just like a normal stand-alone adventure — so it’s cool that looking back on this episode now we can see how much big stuff was seeded in here.
• O’Brien is awesome as always, and I really enjoy how big a player Rom is in the whole thing.  It’s fun to see Rom’s excitement at his first day on the “swing shift” — I love this brief look at all the “lower decks” junior officers there must be working on the station.  It’s also great to see how smart and competent Rom is at his job.  (He figures everything out way before O’Brien!)  I like learning that Rom has been spending a lot of time with Leeta.  It’s nice to get that hint of how their friendship (which we first saw in “Bar Association”) is growing, even though she’s not in this episode.
• This episode is also a great showcase for Rosalind Chao as Keiko O’Brien.  She’s terrific as this cold, cruel version of Keiko.  It’s nice to see her have such a big role in an episode, even though it’s as a possessed version of herself.
• My main problem with the episode is that there feels like a billion ways that Miles could have gotten help from Sisko and the others without Keiko knowing.  Miles worked two whole days around the station out of sight from her.  Why did he have to walk to the Promenade to try to find Sisko?  Couldn’t he just send a text message through the computer systems, systems that he knows better than anyone else?  Once Dax detects the sabotage, and the senior staff gathers, why couldn’t O’Brien have told them the truth then?  I can’t see how Keiko would have known about it.  For that matter, how would a non corporeal Pah-Wraith that’s been imprisoned in the Fire Caves for centuries have such a detailed knowledge of DS9’s computer systems and technology to give O’Brien such specific instructions?  I like the tension of the episode, but the story just doesn’t really work in my opinion.
• I do love that painfully awkward birthday dinner scene!
• They’re written Pah-Wraiths, but in my mind they’re “Pagh-Wraiths” (which I believe is what writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe has said was his original intention…).  Bajor’s “Fire Caverns” were first mentioned way back in Season One’s “The Nagus,” which is apparently where the notion of Pah-Wraiths originated (though the reference to them was cut from the script).  The Pah-Wraiths are called Koss’moran here but will hereafter be referred to as the Kosst Amojan, which I guess the writers felt sounded cooler.  (They were right.)

Trials and Tribbleations

• A highlight of the run of DS9, this episode is magnificent — a fantastic, fun, funny episode that’s a special effects and visual effects marvel and a beautiful love letter to the 30th anniversary of Star Trek.
• I love the idea of the DTI (Department of Temporal Investigations), and the Mulder and Scully anagramed agents Dulmer and Lucsly.  (I’m surprised no future Trek show has revisited the DTI!  They were the subject of several fantastic novels by Christopher L. Bennett.)
• The moment in which the original Enterprise (“no bloody A, B, C, or D”) comes on screen, to the Alexander Courage fanfare, is magnificent.  The CGI effects recreating the Big E, as well as the Klingon D-7 battlecruiser (which has NEVER looked better) as well as station K-7, are perfect.  These Original Series designs looks so fantastic when brought to life using modern tech.  (By the way, the Klingon D-7 ship designation actually originated unofficially in Star Trek publications after the Original Series went off the air — this is the first time we hear that mentioned officially on-screen, which I think is very cool in a very nerdy way.)
• It’s incredible the way the production department recreated the look and feel of the original Series.  Let’s start with the sets: they rebuilt portions of the Enterprise corridor, the Enterprise bridge, the turbolift, and of course also sections of K-& (especially the bar/lounge, where Uhura first meets Cyranno Jones and a tribble, and where the brawl takes place).  Then there are the costumes: how great do all of the DS9 leads look in Original Series era costumes!!  The hair and makeup effects, the lighting, everything is perfect.  (This episode, along with fan films such as Star Trek: New Voyages and Star Trek: Continues, all proved that the Original Series designs and look stand up beautifully even so many decades later.  It’s something I wish Star Trek: Discovery had learned.)
• All of these practical effects are beautifully expanded upon using CGI, giving us a seamless blend of the new sets with CGI extensions with, even more astonishingly, actual scenes from the original “Trouble with Tribbles.”  This is the episode’s true achievement, and where it really sings.  The DS9 characters are perfectly blended with the original episode, using groundbreaking technology developed a few years earlier for Forrest Gump.  Those scenes look perfect, and I mean perfect.  That this was all accomplished at the budget level of a weekly television series is magnificent.
• And those scenes of the DS9 characters on screen with the Original Series characters are so incredible.  I love the idea that the DS9 characters get involved in the brawl, and seeing Bashir and O’Brien in the lineup in front of Kirk is so perfect!!  (I love that O’Brien wishes Keiko had been there to see him lie to Captain Kirk!)  I love how the classic moment of Kirk sitting on a tribble on the Bridge is given a whole new context, with Dax worried that it was a bomb!  (I love the little smile and shrug Dax gives Kirk right after that happens.  What a perfect moment.)  I love that we establish that Dax and Sisko are throwing tribbles out of the storage compartment and onto Kirk’s head!  And, of course, that last shot of Sisko shaking hands with Kirk is beautiful.  (That scene was actually taken from another episode, “Mirror, Mirror,” when Kirk meets the Prime Timeline’s Marlena Moreau.)  That Uhura is giving Sisko — a sexy black man — the eye is an extra layer of perfect beauty to the scene.  (In “Mirror, Mirror” Uhura is looking at Marlena because she’s seen the Mirror Universe version.  But her look plays totally differently here!!)
• It’s amazing seeing Charlie Brill reprise his role as Arne Darvin!  (I only wish he was in more of the episode!)
• I love hearing a McCoy-ism in the mouth of Bashir: “I’m a doctor, not a historian!”
• I love the way the episode cleverly points out many differences between the Original Series and the 24th century Trek shows: the departments are identified by different uniform colors; you actually have to grab the handle in the Enterprise turbolift for it to start moving; you can’t just slap your insignia on your chest to open a communications channel, you have to actually open a communicator; etc.  Of course, the biggest difference is in the makeup used for the Klingons, which leads to possibly the episode’s best scene, as Bashir and O’Brien start giving out all sorts of fan theories for the difference, while Worf just says “it’s a long story” and “we do not discuss it.”  So funny!!
• It’s fun seeing Dax in the role of Original Series Star Trek fan, which of course makes sense since she was alive during this era!  I love that she’s in love with “classic 23rd century design,” that she wishes she could see Koloth in his prime and get to meet Captain Kirk, etc.  I also love that she’s more attracted to Spock than to Kirk!  (And I love that Dax is able to calculate the tribbles’ exact rate of replication, just as Spock did.)  I love that she had a fling with McCoy!  (“He has surgeon’s hands.”)
• “Lilac?” So funny!
• Kirk has “seventeen separate temporal violations — the biggest file on record,” according to the DTI agents!  Ha!
• Bashir’s brief flip-out when he thinks he’s wound up in a “predestination paradox” after flirting with the cute Enterprise crew-member is so funny.
• Sisko wants to ask Kirk about fighting the Gorn on Cestus Three, a great callback to the original Series episode “Arena” that also has extra resonance because we’ve established that Kassidy’s brother plays baseball for the Pike City Pioneers on Cestus Three!
• If Darvin could manipulate the Orb of Time for his own ends, couldn’t the Cardassians have used it for all sorts of nasty stuff over the years they had the Orb in their custody?  For that matter, why don’t our heroes ever use this for time travel when things go wrong in future episodes?  As in most fantasy series, when time travel is made too easy, it undermines future adventures.  But this episode is so much fun I don’t mind that they didn’t waste much time with the time travel mechanics.  Speaking of plot holes, though: it does seem like the Enterprise’s sensors would have detected the big explosion at the end, though, right?
• I absolutely adore the final comedic button to the episode, when we see Tribbles all over the Promenade and Quark surrounded by them up to his head, just like the bartender on K-7 was.

Let He Who is Without Sin…

• Pretty much a total misfire (rare for this period of DS9).
• In theory, a return to Risa sounds like fun, and I like the idea of digging more deeply into the Worf-Dax pairing (which was played mostly for laughs when it was introduced in “Looking for Par’Mach…”  But Worf is stuck in maximum stick-in-the-mud mode here, and watching him and Jadzia bicker for an hour isn’t a lot of fun.  Also they weren’t able to actually depict Risa as the hedonistic pleasure-paradise it’s been described as (because of budget and the realities of what could acceptably be shown on a family-friendly TV show), so it all just feels small-scale and dull.
• While I can see Worf finding some value in the perspective of the New Essentialist movement, the idea that he’d get involved in their terrorist activities is ludicrous.  (Also, wouldn’t he get court-martialed for his actions??)
• Worf’s speech about killing a fellow soccer-player as a boy is a powerful moment.  But it doesn’t explain away all of his bad behavior in this episode, and it doesn’t come close to saving this episode.
• Venessa Williams was a big-get as a guest-star, but while she looks wonderful in a bathing suit, she’s not given any real character to play.
• It’s nice to see Leeta again (speaking of looking great in a bathing suit) — I’m enjoying the development of her character, and I love the idea of the very-mature Bajoran separation ceremony.  It’s fun to hear that Leeta is grooving on Rom…
• Other little notes that I enjoyed: that Worf and Dax’s sex-life has resulted in their both being in the infirmary multiple times; another mention of Captain Boday and his transparent skull; that Quark gets a Horgon (a nice callback to TNG’s “Captain’s Holiday”); that Curzon died from Jamaharon; that there’s no word for “crisp” on the constantly-wet/rainy Ferenginar.

“Things Past”

• Another misfire.  I like the idea of seeing more of life on Terok Nor under Cardassian rule (first glimpsed so memorably in season two’s “Necessary Evil”), and I also love the idea of exploring the contradiction that always seemed inherent in Odo’s backstory of having served as security chief under the Cardassians for the last several years of the occupation.  How could the Bajorans have ever really trusted Odo, since he collaborated in working for the Cardassians?  And how could Odo have possibly emerged from years of such work with his hands clean?  These are fascinating questions.  Sadly, “Things Past” is, to me, a clunker.  The set-up is absurd (I just don’t buy that the now-solid Odo could somehow enter into a mental version of the Great Link with his also-solid DS9 comrades — I could forgive a similarly silly set-up in the fun and funny “Our Man Bashir,” but here it doesn’t work at all for me); and the “reveal” of the ending is totally telegraphed (Odo acts guilty right from the beginning, and we even see him with BLOOD ON HIS HANDS, for goodness sake!!).  It all feels boring and by-the-numbers to me.
• Watching Dukat select Dax as a comfort woman is very disturbing.  But did this actually happen?  Or was this all an invention of Odo’s dirty mind?  (Later episodes WILL confirm that Dukat behaved in this manner; but because we know that nothing in this episode is actually real, it still rings hollow here.)  I also find Dax’s performance in the scenes to be weird in tone — she slips immediately into acting like a scared, frightened Bajoran (at least until the end, when she whacks Dukat over the head).  I guess Dax is acting to maintain her cover, but it feels like the writers were more interested in our seeing what these scenes between Dukat and Bajoran women under his thumb would have been like, rather than showing us Dax’s actual perspective as someone out of time.
• I miss Kira’s presence in this episode.  (I believe Nana Visitor was at the end of her pregnancy so they’d written her mostly out of this run of episodes.)  It’s nice to see her at the end, but the attempt to parallel the end of “Necessary Evil” falls flat to me.
• I love Kurtwood Smith and he was well-cast as Thrax.  I wish he had more to actually do in the episode.
• I believe this is the first time someone refers to the Cardassians as “spoonheads”!
• It’s so creepy (and in character) when Dulat refers to the Bajorans as his children.

“The Ascent”

• A third clunker in a row in this rare rough-patch in later-seasons of DS9.
• It’s nice for Odo and Quark to get an entire episode together… but the story is so by-the-numbers and predictable.  What do we learn about either one of them, or their relationship, that we didn’t already know?  Nothing.
• I also like the idea of the B-story more than the actual execution.  It stretches my credulity that Nog, who just started at the Academy, is back on DS9 for a field-study.  They talk about the Academy’s sophomore-year field study program, but that doesn’t really seem so plausible to me.  But, OK, I can live with it because it gets Nog back onto the show.  And it’s fun to see how different Jake and Nog have become now as young men, and how they both are sort of the opposite of what you’d expect.  But the actual depiction of their fighting and then reconciliation feels very predictable and undeveloped to me.
• I love that Quark plays Fizzbin (the game that Captain Kirk made up in “A Piece of the Action”!!)
• I do smile at Quark and Odo’s “I meant every word of it” scene in the infirmary (a reversal of the usual TV “I take it all back” apology ending you might expect).
• The Sisko-Nog stuff is solid. We don’t see those two characters interact much, but it makes sense that they’d have some sort of relationship because their sons are so close.

“Rapture”

• Suddenly the fifth season is back on course with this spectacular episode.
• It’s a milestone in many ways.  Visually, we get a big change as the DS9 crew starts wearing the new Starfleet uniforms introduced in Star Trek: First Contact.  I love those uniforms!
• Sisko’s mission, introduced in the pilot, was to ensure that Bajor would be able to one day join the Federation.  It’s exciting to see that day finally arrive — and a great twist for things to then go in such a different direction.
• I love episodes like this that dig into Sisko’s role as Emissary, another element baked-into the show from the pilot, but something that was mostly ignored for the first several seasons of the show.  I’ve also commented previously how much I love how DS9, along among all the Trek shows, has depicted characters having dreams and visions.  It gives the show wonderful added layers of complexity and nuance.  We dig into that in a bigger-than-ever way, here, as we see Sisko’s visions — visions which might be the result of an explainable scientific event (the neural shock he received in Quark’s holosuite), or as a gift from the profits (a pagh-tem-far).
• Sisko’s visions are awesome, and give one a lot to consider as one dissects their meanings.  I love that Sisko refers to “the coming war with the Dominion” — that was exciting to me as a Trek fan when this episode originally aired, as no previous Trek series had ever actually gone all the way to depict the Federation at war.  The brink of war, sure, but it had always been walked back in the end.  Sisko speaks of the cloud of locusts going to Cardassia…!  (We won’t have to wait too long to see what that means…!)  “Locusts…They’ll destroy Bajor unless it stands alone!”  “Bajor musn’t join the Federation — if it does, it will be destroyed!”  Lots to unpack there…!
• This episode explores the balance between religion and science in a big way, another aspect of DS9 that differentiates it from all the other Trek shows.  One of my favorite scenes in all of Trek is the conversation between Dax, O’Brien, Worf, and Kira in Ops about Sisko’s visions.  (Worf: “What I believe in… is faith.  Without it, there can be no victory.  The captain’s faith is strong.  He will prevail.”  Dax: “That’s not much to bet his life on.”  Kira: “You’re wrong.  It’s everything.”)  Wow.  There is a whole universe contained in Kira’s one line.
• Kai Winn returns in this episode, and I love how we see some new layers added onto her character here.  It’s fascinating to hear of her time in a Cardassian prison camp, where she was regularly beaten.  “While you had your weapons to protect you… all I had was my faith.”  Wow, is Winn actually somewhat sympathetic here?  It’s amazing that the show could go there with this villainous character.  (And also, she’s not altogether wrong when she asserts to Kira that she and the other Resistance fighters feel that they alone were the ones who saved Bajor.)  It’s so weird and wrong and delightful to see Sisko and Winn actually working together at the end of this episode!
• I like the Kira-Winn scene in which we’re reminded that, five years ago, Kira was AGAINST Bajor’s joining the Federation.  It’s intriguing that, at the end, when Bajor DOESN’T join the Federation, we see that Winn isn’t actually pleased, even though she got what she wanted.  (“Now… nothing is certain.”)
• And as if all that wasn’t enough, Kassidy Yates returns as well!  It’s a fun twist that, rather there being a lot of drama over her return, that the two of them are both eager to pick up their happy, romantic relationship right where it left off.  (I do wish the show had explored a little more about Kassidy’s experiences in a penal colony for 6 months.)
• I love everything about Sisko’s discovery of the Lost City of B’Hala.  It’s such a cool, weird, unexpected place for the show to go.  I love Sisko’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind moment, when he shapes the food on his plate into the shapes of the Ancient Bajoran runes.
• It’s interesting to hear hints of what might happen after Bajor joined the Federation — that the Bajoran militia would be absorbed into Starfleet, etc.  I love when DS9 fleshes out the reality of this ideal future world!
• The scene when Sisko walks along the Promenade, giving prophecies to those he meets, is so memorable!
• I wish Shakaar had been in this episode.  He should have been at the signing ceremony.
• At the end, we see that Jake isn’t ready yet to live without his dad.  Shades of “The Visitor”.  (Knowing where the show winds up in the end, we can see Jake being slowly nudged along a certain path… being prepared for what would come…)
• The end gives us the first real schism we’ve ever seen between Ben and Jake Sisko.  When they do clasp hands, it’s a callback to Ben’s “this… is important” speech (from xxx??)
• When Admiral Whatley asks Ben at the end: “Are you speaking as a Starfleet captain, or as the Emissary of the Prophets?” Sisko smiles and says “Both”.  What a moment!  For all that this was a traumatic experience, Sisko has emerged as a truly unified person for perhaps the first time in the run of the show!

“The Darkness and the Light”

• This is a dark, grim episode!  It’s fantastic, but very heavy.  This episode goes into some tough places, as Kira’s friends are murdered one by one.  It’s fantastic to see Furel and Lupaza again, and terribly painful that they’re killed off.  That hurts a lot.  But they had to kill off people we cared about in order to give the episode stakes.
• Kira was a terrorist, and I like that the show hasn’t forgotten that even this deep into the run.  Many of Kira’s rough season one edges have been smoothed off here by season five, but this episode reminds us that she is totally indomitable and tough as nails, and also that she doesn’t apologize for her past.  TV tropes (and also a lot of other Trek episodes) lead us to expect that Kira will express remorse for her actions at the end, when she’s face-to-face with someone maimed by her — but nope!  Not Kira.  She digs in and sticks to her guns.  “For fifty years you raped our planet, and you killed our people.”  All Cardassians on Bajor were legitimate targets, Kira angrily declares.  Wow.  This is tough stuff!  That is not a viewpoint I suspect many liberal viewers of this show would share.  I love that the show allows Kira, one of the show’s heroes, to have opinions that we might not all agree with, and I love that the show allows us to see her point of view.
• The scarred Cardassian, Silaren Prin, is an evil murderer, but the show also allows us to glimpse the pain and hurt behind his terrible actions.  We see how violence has begotten further violence, and it’s sad.
• Watching Kira beg was really something. She is normally so strong, and for her to come so low is a humbling development.  What a scene. Incredible performance by Nana Visitor.
• At the beginning, when Kira remarks to Sisko that the Prophets will look after her Vedek friend who was the first victim, Sisko replies “I’m sure they will,” and it seems totally genuine.  Coming after “Rapture,” Sisko believes that.  Season one Sisko would probably have sounded skeptical.
• I love seeing Nog use his ears to unravel the audio layers of the killer’s recordings.
• That transporter accident (shades of Star Trek: The Motion Picture) is really horrifying, especially the glimpses of the mangled remains.
• Kira’s monologue about joining the Shakaar resistance is very powerful.  I don’t think we’ve ever before seen her take her earring off.
• Speaking of Shakaar, though, I missed seeing him here just as I missed seeing him in “Rapture.”  I wish they’d included him in these stories.
• I love that Odo notices that his chair is a little out of place (after Kira snuck into his office to steal the list of suspects).

“The Begotten”

• This is a sweet, lovely episode.  It’s a wonderful follow up to season two’s “The Alternate.”  It’s great to see Dr. Mora again, and to dig deeper into his and Odo’s difficult relationship, and Odo’s negative feelings about his time spent in Dr. Mora’s lab.  I really enjoy the arc of their relationship here, as they eventually reach an understanding with one another.  This is a more satisfying resolution to their relationship than what we got in “The Alternate.”
• It’s very cool to finally return to the idea of “the hundred,” the hundred changelings sent out into the universe (as per season three’s “The Search” part 2).  It’s very cool to see this baby changeling’s slow steps towards consciousness.  What an acting performance by Rene Auberjonois as Odd, to show us Odo’s connection to this puddle of goo (and therefore helping the audience to make a similar emotional connection as well!!).
• The visual effects on the baby Changeling are fantastic, particularly the The Abyss scene in which the Changeling forms a pseudopod with a replica of Odo’s face at the end.  What a fantastic moment, beautifully realized by the effects.  Throughout the episode, I can’t believe that they’re able to get me to get emotional over this little puddle of goo!
• The most momentous aspect of the episode is that Odo gets his powers back.  I have mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, I wish the show had done more to explore Odo’s experiences as a humanoid solid.  After the big season-ending cliffhanger, we only got a few scenes here and there dealing with this.  (One of the best scenes was in this very episode, at the beginning when Bashir refers to Prune Juice, suggesting that the good Constable might have been a little constipated!)  On the other hand, I didn’t love Odo’s losing his shapeshifting powers, which made him so unique, and so I was happy that the show didn’t wait too long to return those abilities to him.
• While the Odo stuff is great, the stuff with Kira’s giving birth was played too silly for my tastes.  Making O’Brien and Shaker stereotypical dumb males felt like the wrong choice to me.  I was happy to see Shakaar again, but I wish he’d been in the previous two episodes, rather than the silly way he was used here.
• At one point Odo refers to never having been good at shapeshifting — “You can see the face I’m stuck with.”  But as I think I’ve mentioned before, I don’t understand why the show has occasionally suggested that Odo’s weird face is the result of his lack of skill as a shapeshifter.  From “The Search” onward, ALL Founders have worn a similar-looking face when in humanoid form, so it seems to me that that face is somehow shared by all Founders, perhaps a throwback to their original humanoid bodies?
• I love seeing Odo carrying the baby Changeling in a mug in the Replimat.
• The Odo-Quark scene after the baby shape shifts is great.  It’s so weird to see Odo happy!  (And so sad that things turn tragic immediately afterwards.)
• The ending is beautiful.  It’s so joyous when Odo’s powers are restored, and he can transform into a hawk to soar over the Promenade.  (I love the detail that his clothes — needed when he was a solid — drop to the ground when he shapeshifts into the bird.)  And the way Rene Auberjonois plays the moment immediately afterward, in which Odo’s euphoric expression turns to grief when he realizes what this has cost, is so beautiful and so perfect.
• Odo and Mora’s hug at the end is emotional, and a far more satisfying resolution to their relationship than we got in “The Alternate.”  I also like the nice moment between Odo and Kira at the end.

“For the Uniform”

• I think this is a terrific episode that’s only undermined somewhat by a crazy ending.  It’s great to return to the story of Eddington and the Maquis.  There are so many cool bits in this episode.  I love the new holo-communicator and wish they’d stuck with it.  (It’s a simple effect — just different lighting on the actor — and it’s nice to be able to get the two actors on stage together for these sorts of conversations, rather than recording things separately when this is done using a view screen.)  I absolutely adore the scenes of the Defiant under manual control, with all the chatter allowing us to glimpse the complexity of running a starship.  (I sort of wish ALL starship bridge scenes were played more like that!)  This episode also debuts a beautiful new visual effects look for the badlands, and its swirling plasma storms.
• It’s funny that Odo brings up — correctly — that Starfleet originally stationed Eddington on DS9 because they didn’t trust HIM.
• I like that Nog was used as the communications link between the Defiant’s bridge and engineering.  That was a cool way to use Nog.
• I love the beautiful shot of the disabled Excelsior-class USS Malinche.  We also get some cool shots of the Maquis raiders in combat,  shooting down the Cardassian freighter, and the cool shot of the Defiant blowing up the first raider after Eddington poisons the atmosphere of the planet.  (I love that DS9 in these seasons was able to show us some of these cool moments visually, in a way that seasons 1-3 weren’t able to.  It really enhances the episodes.)
• Sisko is a bit out of character in this episode, which really plays up his intense obsession with Eddington.  It makes sense that he’d take Eddington’s capture personally — not only because Eddington betrayed Sisko but because he threw Kassidy Yates under the bus when he did so.  But it would have been better had we seen tastes of this before, in any of the year’s worth of episodes between “For the Cause” and now.  Sisko’s decision to poison the atmosphere of a planet, just as Eddington had done, feels monstrous to me, even as that does restore the balance Eddington had upset.  (And the Maquis certainly had escalated things, poisoning a planet and attacking two starships.  But Sisko’s actions still seem to me to be a step beyond what we’ve ever seen a Starfleet captain do before.)  I wish the episode had clarified whether this was all a careful calculation by Sisko, with his craziness being an act for Eddington, or if Sisko actually was teetering out of control.  (Presumably this WAS just an act by Sisko, playing into his “role” as the villain Javert.  But I’d have loved if the episode had dug a little deeper into what Sisko was thinking and feeling, there, at the end.  Did he feel any guilt or remorse over what he’d done?)
• I really like Eric Pierpoint in the small role of the Malinche’s captain, Sanders.  He seems like a cool and capable officer.  I like when we see competent Starfleet officers outside of our main crew, as opposed to the too-frequent tendency to make everyone else either evil or an idiot.
• The Les Miserables parallel between Sisko and Eddington is interesting.

“In Purgatory’s Shadow”

• I LOVE this two-parter!!!  This is a highlight of the run for me!  There is SO MUCH great stuff in these two-episodes.  Both fantastic character stuff and also huge shifts in intergalactic politics.  I love that DS9 at this point feels free to play with the status quo of the Alpha Quadrant (and we’re not even in a season finale or premiere!)
• I really love these two bizarre and memorable episode titles!
• I love seeing that Garak and Ziyal’s relationship has progressed from “For the Cause.”  I like the tender way they touch palms.  Garak is in top comedic form in that early scene.  (“That’s the look, exactly.”  “Tell Captain Sisko that I’d be more than happy to decode any Cardassian laundry lists that come across his desk.)  I like that Bashir sees right through Garak’s claim that the message was nothing.  Later in the episode, I love the way Garak flinches when Ziyal calls him kind.  I am always moved when Garak tells her: “and when I’m with you… it doesn’t feel so bad.”
• I love that we learn that Tain is alive!  (Martok: “He knew you’d come.”)  This is a wonderful follow up to “The Die is Cast.”  I love Garak’s loyalty to Tain, despite everything Tain did to him.  And, of course, we finally learn why, as this episode reveals one of the series’ longest-kept secrets, that Tain was Garak’s father.  This recontextualizes everything we knew about Garak and Tain, and it works beautifully.  Tain’s death scene is marvelous.  I love when Garak tells him “all your enemies are dead” — this is what Tain wants to hear.  Tain’s monologue about the day in the country — “I was very proud of you that day” — is a perfect final moment for the character.
• I LOVE the genius choice to bring back Martok!  The Martok who we previously knew, and who died in “Apocalypse Rising,” was a Changeling, so it’s cool to get to know the real Martok — and see how much cooler and more likable this Martok is, as opposed to the jerk we saw in “The Way of the Warrior.”  I also love his bad-assed one-eyed look!
• And, of course, we get the AWESOME twist of learning that Bashir has been replaced by a Changeling!!
• I’m glad Sisko is too smart to let Bashir and Garak go alone on an adventure in a runabout, the way I think the show might have done earlier in its run.  Worf is a much smarter choice to accompany Garak.
• I’m delighted to see the Dax-Worf relationship continuing to progress.  She plays him well, asking to borrow his Klingon operas.  “Have a glorious death… or don’t! It’s up to you.”
• I LOVE the scene when Dukat confronts Garak over his relationship with Ziyal!  What a great scene, and one that has been a long time coming!  When Garak, hanging over the edge of the railing, smiles and taunts Dukat, saying “public opinions seems to be running against you!” — It’s one of my very favorite moments in the whole run of the show!  And it’s almost met by the Ziyal-Dukat exchange that immediately follows it.  (Ziyal: “He’s a good man.”  Dukat: “You have no idea how much it pains me to hear you say that.”)  I love the moment at the end of the episode in which Ziyal stands up to Dukat, feeling that she can’t leave the station because of her promise to Garak that she’d wait for him to return.  Dukat’s angry reply — “stay here… and be damned!” shows us everything we need to know about his true character.
• The writers were in top form for this episode!  The Sisko-Worf scene in the airlock is great.  (Sisko: “I want you back in one piece.”  Worf: “And Garak?”  Sisko: “I want him back too.”)
• The Kira-Dukat scene is also so great.  I love the casual, condescending way Dukat refers to her “backwards superstitions” and I love how Kira doesn’t back down.  “I didn’t do it for you.  I did it for her.”
• I always laugh at the gentle TNG joke (referencing Captain Picard’s favorite beverage) when Garak snarks “I’d like to get my hands on that fellow Earl Grey and tell him a thing or two.”
• We get some cool visual effects of the runabout in combat with the Jem’Hadar ships.
• Sisko mentions the recent Borg attack, which is a nice reference to Star Trek: First Contact, which was released shortly before this episode.
• I like that Sisko and Starfleet are willing to collapse the wormhole.  This is a smart strategy and I’m only surprised it hasn’t come up before now.  (The method of dealing the wormhole was devised by Dr. Lenara Kahn, from “Rejoined.”)
• Melanie Smith becomes the third (and final) of the three actresses who have played Ziyal (Cyia Batten originated the role, while Tracy Middendorf played her in “For the Cause”).
• What a cliffhanger, as the Dominion fleet pours through the wormhole!

“By Inferno’s Light”

• My only small criticism of this amazing two-parter is that I’m always a teensy bit disappointed at the opening of part 2, in which we see that the Dominion fleet isn’t attacking the station.  This isn’t yet the start of open conflict.  It’s yet another misdirect of the type we’ve been getting pretty consistently since the season 2 finale.  But it’s a small criticism in an otherwise spectacular two-parter.  And I LOVE the revelation that Dukat has arranged for Cardassia too join the Dominion!!  What a twist!!  I agree 100% with Dukat when he tells Kira: “You and I… on the same side… it never seemed quite right, did it?”  I was worried, particularly in the early Ziyal episodes, that the writers were trying to reform Dukat and make him heroic, and possibly even entangle him and Kira in some sort of romantic relationship.  Thank goodness that was not their destination.  This twist makes all those earlier stories, which I’d somewhat questioned, work better in hindsight, as the true Dukat now stands revealed.  (This also puts Dukat’s anger in the previous episode when Ziyal refuses to leave DS9 in a different context.)  I love Dukat’s chilling, fanatical vow to eliminate all Klingons and Maquis operating within what used to be the borders of the Cardassian Empire.  “All we have lost will be ours again.”
• This opening gives us an explanation of Sisko’s prophecy from “Rapture” about the “locusts” heading for Cardassia!
• As if Cardassia’s joining the Dominion wasn’t enough of a huge shift in the interstellar politics of the Alpha Quadrant, we see Gowron re-sign the Khitomer Accords!!!  I love that so much!  It’s cool to see Gowron again, with the Klingons having been chased out of Cardassian space by the Jem’Hadar.  Gowron delivers one of the best lines of the whole series when he declares: “Think of it!  Five years ago, no one had ever heard of Bajor, or Deep Space Nine.  Now, all our hopes rest here.”  What a meta line about the show itself!
• It’s so cool how much DS9 has wound up using Gowron. You’d never have expected that from season one, right?? But (as I’ve said before), a key to DS9’s greatness is that, as the show evolved, it embraced the entirety of the Star Trek universe, including the Original Series and TNG.
• I love seeing the Romulans join the Klingon-Federation fleet!!!  What an awesome moment (and yet another example of DS9’s playing with the ENTIRE Star Trek universe.)
• I love all the Worf-versus-Jem’Hadar stuff, as we truly see what Worf is made of, and get further proof that WORF IS THE GREATEST HAND-TO-HAND FIGHTER IN THE GALAXY!!!
• It’s awesome to see the bond between Worf and Martok, and to see Worf finally have the true respect of another Klingon.  (Martok: “You truly have the spirit of Kahless within you!”)  It’s cool to see the contrast between the Jem’Hadar mantra of “victory is life” and the Klingon mantra of “today is a good day to die.”
• James Horan is great as the Jem’Hadar Ikat’ika, giving us another example of a tough, honorable Jem’Hadar (working under a smarmy Vorta).
• After learning about Garak’s true father, we also learn another of his secrets: his claustrophobia.  (This was seeded way back in season two’s “Second Skin” in a jokey comment by Garak that the Defiant’s cabins were claustrophobic.)
• I love the visual effect at the end of the Defiant jumping out of warp and snagging the runabout.
• I love the idea of leaving a permanent Klingon garrison on DS9 — which makes strategic sense — and that Martok will stay to command that group of warriors, thus becoming yet another in the show’s huge stable of regular recurring characters!
• It is a huge plot hole that the Dominions left the Runabout in orbit of the prison asteroid.  That’s absurd.  Oops.

“Doctor Bashir, I Presume?”

• Robert Picardo’s performance as the holographic EMH was the best thing about Star Trek: Voyager.  It was a genius idea to have him come too DS9 to play the human EMH’s creator, Dr. Lewish Zimmerman!  Mr. Picardo is a riot as the blustery, arrogant Zimmerman.
• Of course, this episode is most momentous about revealing that Dr. Bashir was genetically engineered!  (Right after getting the revelation that Tain was Garak’s father, we get this even BIGGER secret finally exposed.)  I didn’t love this revelation when I first saw this episode, as I felt it was way out of left field and that it changed the character in a fundamental way that I wasn’t sure would be good for the show.  It works much better for me upon a rewatch, where I can better enjoy the many little clues seeded in about the character before this, and how this revelation recontextualizes so much of what we knew (or thought we knew) about Bashir.  The dumb mistake he made that resulted in his not graduating at the top of his class at Starfleet medical (mistaking a pre-ganglionic fiber for a post-ganglionic nerve) — now we understand he flubbed this on purpose (something also hinted at back in season three’s “Distant Voices”).  His telling Sisko back in “Homefront” that he didn’t have anyone to look up back on Earth — he did, but he didn’t want anything to do with his parents.
• It’s interesting to learn that genetically enhanced individuals are barred from serving in starfleet.  This is one area of technology this future Star Trek society doesn’t accept.  We get a good in-universe reason why: because of Khan and his fellow genetically-engineered tyrants.  (Though they famously flubbed the timeline when the Judge Advocate talks about how “200 years afo, we tried to improve the species.”  Writer Ron Moore has freely admitted that he was thinking of Khan’s speech in Star Trek II about how “200 years ago, I was a prince,” and that he forgot that DS9 takes place 100 years after that.)
• I love meeting Bashir’s parents.  I am always interested in meeting less-than-perfect examples of 24th century humanity.
• It’s interesting how the episode pivots in the middle from silly fun with Robert Picardo to this more serious story about Bashir’s past.
• As fun as it is seeing Ribert Picardo play the real Dr. Zimmerman, it’s also fun to see him play the EMH again in the great scene in which the EMH meets the new Bashir LMH.  Its fun seeing The Bashir LMH who looks like Julian but has Zimmerman’s acerbic personality.  And that scene is a visual effects triumph, seemlessly intergating two Bashirs (the real Bashir and the LMH) and two Zimmermans (the real Zimmerman and the EMH)!
• It’s fun to see Zimmerman paired up with Leeta, and nice that this finally leads Rom to tell her how he feels about her.  Leeta is more passive than one might wish for in a modern heroine these days, but I like that, in many ways, she has the same childlike hinesty and innocence that Rom has.  (we see how she wears her heart on her sleeve when Rom interrupts her date with Zimmerman, and we see in her face how much she is hoping Rom will finally say something.). It’s nice to see their puppydog love story move forward.  I also like finally learning the stiry of what went down between Rom and Nog’s mother.
• I love how Rom angles his ears to eavesdrop on Leeta and Zimmerman in Quark’s.
• ”Why is everyone always worried about holograms taking over the universe?” Ha!
• It’s interesting that Zimmerman flat out asks Dax if Bashir harassed her with unwanted advances.  She smiles and says no.  So I feel better about that early season Bashir stuff even though in 2019 I’m still somewhat uncomfortable about it.
• it’s funny that O’Brien is concerned Bashir will find out that O’Brien calld him extraordinary to Dr. Zimmerman!  And I like how, later, he says “WE’VE got a problem” when he tells Bashir that his parents accidentally spilled the beans to Zimmerman.
• I like seeing the holographic communicator in Sisko’s office (which we previously saw on the Defiant in “For the Uniform”).  The simple overhead light effect really sells this.  Sadly, this is the last time we’ll see this tech on the show.  It’s a shame, as I thought it was cool!

“A Simple Investigation”

• This is a pretty mediocre episode that would’ve made a lot more sense had they done it before “The Begotten,” back when Odo was human and actually capable of a physical sexual relationship for the first time in his life.  (The framing scenes in “Broken Link” with the sexy Bajoran woman seemed to telegraph that we’d get an episode like this in season five.  I have no idea why they waited until AFTER Odo had his powers back to do it…)
• The love story is OK.  I really disliked this episode when it first aired.  I have a little more patience for it now.  The melancholy ending is solid.  But I just don’t invest in this clearly one-episode-and-done romance for Odo.
• It’s fun to hear that Julian has a new spy holo-program (following up on “Our Man Bashir”) — thought I wish we’d actually gotten to SEE it!  I did laugh at the mention of “Lady Wantsomemore” (a GREAT juvenile Bond-girl name), and hearing Dax say “Somebody stop me!” (an Austin Powers reference).
• I like the gang’s kidding of Odo regarding his “bedroom eyes.”
• It’s nice to finally meet some Idahoans (they of the oft-mentioned “Idanian Spice Pudding”).
• We get our 2nd mention (after “The Ascent”) of the Orion Syndicate.

“Business as Usual”

• This is a fine episode, nothing particularly memorable.  It’s fun to finally meet Quark’s oft-mentioned Cousin Gaila in the flesh, and the other guest stars are great too: Steven Berkhoff (who was great as Stilgar in the Sci-Fi Channel’s Dune miniseries) as Hagath and Laurence Tierney (so famous from so many movies, and of course he also played Elaine’s dad on Seinfeld!) as the Regent.
• Quark has walked a very fine line on the show, with regards to his criminal activities.  It’s interesting to see him step over the line into selling weapons, and how Sisko and Dax react to that.  It’s nice to see Quark grow a backbone at the end and reject any further in involvement in weapons.
• It’s an interesting twist that the Bajorans feel that they owe Hagath for selling them weapons during the Cardassian occupation, and so they’re willing to turn a blind eye to his criminal activities now.
• I loved the mention of “Quadrotriticale futures,” which of course is an in-joke reference to the grain on Sherman’s Planet in “The Trouble with Tribbles”!
• Gaila directly references The Third Man when he gives his speech to Quark: “Do you think if one if those twinkling little lights suddenly went out, anybody would notice?”
• It’s been a while since we saw any dreams on the show, but I always love when they go there, so I enjoyed Quark’s dream.
• I like the cute subplot of O’Brien and Kirayoshi, and the comic scene of Kirayoshi’s falling asleep in the pit in Ops.
• I wish we’d gotten more of Odo in this episode!  It feels like he should have been more on Quark’s back once Quark started selling weapons.
• I like the nice little coda with Worf at the end (with Worf holding little Yoshi).

“Ties of Blood and Water”

• This is a very moving episode that unexpectedly brings back Tekeny Ghemor, from season two’s “Second Skin.”  We see that Kira has grown close to Tekeny, treating him almost as if he really was her father.  (It’s sweet how much Kira wants to treat him as a VIP when he first arrives on the station.)  When Tekeny reveals that he is dying, we see flashbacks of the sad story of the death of Kira’s actual father during the Cardassia Occupation.  This story — in which we see that Kira’s father died terribly, and that she used a mission as an excuse to miss being with him for his death — does so much to explain Kira’s character, and the way she has constantly seemed to gravitate towards father figures (starting way back with season one’s “Progress” and up to and including Tekeny himself).  We’ve been learning LOTS of important secrets about our characters in this run of episodes!! (See also: Bashir and Garak.) I think this episode is amazing at the way it allows so much of what we’ve known of Kira and seen her do to slip perfectly into place in a way that makes sense.
• I love hearing Dax’s description of Kira — “you should have seen her five years ago; back then, I never thought she’d be friends with anyone.”  It’s incredible that the Kira of season one could now take on the wrenching task of tending to a dying Cardassian.
• I love this first look at the perfectly Cardassian tradition that “the dying give their secrets to their family, to use against their enemies.”
• This is such a melancholy, emotional episode.  Nana Visitor is amazing.  I also love Odo and Bashir’s underplayed scenes with Kira towards the end, in which they both try to convince her to go back to Ghemor.  The end, in which Kira buries Ghemor next to her father, is extremely moving.
• It’s great to see Dukat again, after “By Inferno’s Light.”  It’s so Dukat that he still wants to be called Gul.  (And it works for the show, since “Gul Dukat” has always felt like his first name ever since the pilot.)  I love that Sisko hands up on him.  It’s so terribly cruel for Dukat to dangle Ilyanna in front of the dying Ghemor… and even crueler how he uses the monastery massacre to turn Kira against Ghemor.
• Weyoun returns!  Yay!  After getting killed off in “To the Death,” we now learn that the Vorta are clones and this is Weyoun Five.  I love Weyoun’s child-like, wide-eyed expression when Sisko tries to get Dukat to drink the poisoned Kanar… and even better is when Weyoun guilds the whole glass down himself, revealing that he’s immune to most poisons!
• It’s wonderful to see Furel again, briefly, in the flashback scenes.
• I love the cool shot of the big Jem’Hadar warship approaching DS9.  I also like seeing an Excelsior class starship docked at the station in the shot.  It makes sense that Starfleet is keeping more ships around the station now.

“Ferengi Love Songs”

• Like “Business as Usual” (which was only two episodes ago), this is a decent but not spectacular Ferengi episode.   “Business as Usual” is a little stronger because that episode leaned into the drama, while this one leans into comedy that doesn’t work as well.
• The pairing of Zek and Moogie is cute, but feels a little unbelievable.  And some of the antics in this episode felt a little too cartoony (like Zek and Maihar’du hiding in the closet of Quark’s childhood bedroom).  (Though Brunt’s later appearance in that same closet IS funny!)  Zek — who is the leader of the entire Ferengi society — is a little too easy for Quark to manipulate (when Quark starts talking about all the “rumors” about Moogie.)
• The Rom-Leeta stuff has similar problems.  I love that Rom and Let’s relationship is swiftly progressing (we’ve come so far from “Bar Association” which was just last season!), and there’s an interesting story to be told in how Rom and Leeta have to work to bridge their vast cultural differences — but the story we get in this episode is a bit too simplistic and cartoony for my tastes.
• Jeffrey Combs in back-to-back episodes!  After seeing Combs as Weyoun in “Ties of Blood and Water,” it’s awesome to see him here in the very next episode, back as Bruny.
• I love that “paying your respects” is LITERAL on Ferenginar!
• It’s nice to see Quark getting his Ferengi business license back, allowing him to finally get the better of Brunt.
• How exactly does Zek dazzle the FCA in that meeting at the end?  They allude to Quark’s passing Zek advice from Moogie, but how does the mostly senile Zek we see in the episode until that point turn into someone who can singlehandedly dazzle the FCA with his unparalleled business acumen?
• I like hearing about Quark’s “Marauder Mo” action figures.  (Note that they look like the whip-wielding Ferengi from TNG season one’s “The Last Outpost”!!)
• Cecily Adams takes over the role of Moogie from Andrea Martin (who apparently disliked the prosthetics so declined to reprise the role after “Family Business”) — and Ms. Adams does such a great impression of Andrea Martin that I find it impossible to tell the difference!
• I’ve read this episode’s title was originally “How Quark Acquired His Groove Back”, which I think would have been a much better title!!

“Soldiers of the Empire”

• I love that Martok is back, and plays a major role in this episode!!  It’s very cool to see Martok added to the show’s deep bench of supporting characters, as this episode confirms he’ll be recurring and not forgotten about after “By Inferno’s Light.”  (Remember how cool it was back in season 4’s “Bar Association” when Rom — rather than any of the series’ in-the-credits leads — had the main story? At this point it’s not the least bit surprising that this episode really belongs to Martok.). I love this story for Martok, as he has to wrestle with the fact that, after two years’ imprisonment by the Jem’Hadar, he’s not the warrior he once was.  I love seeing the continuation of the close bond between Worf and Martok that we saw in the “Inferno’s Light” two-parter.  After so many years of Worf’s being an outcast, both on TNG and DS9, it’s cool to see that a bad-ass warrior like Martok likes and respects Worf.  It sort of validates Worf as a character, and it’s nice to see Worf getting some wins.  The whole idea of the moment of clarity between two warriors, and how that plays into the climactic duel between Worf and Martok, is fantastic.  I love the twist at the end that Worf dropped his guard on purpose — and I love that it’s not a secret, but that Martok is savvy enough to realize this immediately.
• I LOVE the episode’s ending, in which Worf joins the house of Martok!!  When Martok says “as a warrior… and a brother” — it’s such a great moment!!  Amazing!
• It’s nice to get a sense of what Worf’s job as “strategic operations officer” actually is, when the gang has to find a way to cover all of his responsibilities when he leaves for his mission with Worf.
• I like the bit early on in which Dax explains how life on a bird of prey actually works.  I’ve often wondered how it wouldn’t be chaos if Klingon officers can kill one another as we’ve seen before.  I like seeing some of the rituals of life on a bird of prey.  I like seeing Martok’s “I accept your lives into my hands” ceremony when he takes command.  I love that Worf leads the bridge crew in song!!  It’s awesome that the Klingons sing as they go into battle!
• I really like the Rotarran’s crew.  They did a good job in establishing a bunch of distinct, interesting Klingon crew-members.
• I love the Shakespearean drama of the climax.  I do wish we got to see the space battle, though.  But it’s such a great way that Worf finds to return Martok to his true self.

“Children of Time”

• This beautiful episode tells a TNG style spatial anomaly/time travel paradox story, but this is thoroughly a DS9 episode because 1) all of the drama is completely based in our characters (every one of the main characters, I guess with only the exception of Bashir, goes through a wrenching moral journey in this episode) and 2) because of the downbeat, melancholy ending.  (On TNG, that ending would have been the end-of-act-four cliffhanger, and then Data and Geordi would have figured out some techy way for the ship to go back through the barrier and somehow fix time and restore the colony’s existence.  But, nope, on DS9, our heroes try their best but in the end they fail.)
• I love the juicy time-travel dilemma presented by this episode… and the ending is tragic and affecting.  Our crew is presented with an impossible choice — and, this being DS9, it ends in sadness, rather than an all-is-well TNG ending.
• It’s weird to me that the writers broke up Kira and Shakaar off-screen.  I love this episode and I understand that for the drama of this episode to work they needed Kira to be unattached, but still, it’s a bummer not to have actually seen this momentous event.  It’s a letdown to me that Shakaar’s only actual appearance in this run of episodes was acting as a buffoon in “The Begotten”.
• I love that Worf makes a joke!  “Only when I am angry.”
• I love seeing Quark’s face on the holographic school-teacher program on the colony!
• I like that we get some friendly Kira-Bashir banter.  If the two actors as a real-life couple at this point in the show, I like that the writers started finding more opportunities to put these characters together for scenes and to show their growing friendship.
• I love the look of older Odo.  (Though his comment that “I’ve gotten better at shapeshifting over the years” bugs me — see my comments from “The Begotten” — these references to Odo’s face being the result of his poor shapeshifting abilities doesn’t make sense to me, since every other Changeling we’ve seen since “The Search”, including the Female Changeling, has the same smooth face!  So this must be a default look of their species.)  Rene Auberjonois is really spectacular as this looser, more content version of Odo.  This isn’t how I expected Kira to learn of Odo’s feelings for her, but it’s an interesting way to go.  I’m glad that old Odo says right out to Kira that he’s not expecting her to throw herself at him, thus avoiding a cliche way this episode could have unfolded.
• The child actors in this episode are all very good.  I really like the scene with the two girls in the school.  I love Sisko’s playing baseball with the colony’s kids.
• I like the twist that Yedrin’s plan turns out to be a fake.  It wouldn’t have worked anyway, because if the DS9 crew went back in time KNOWING about their future, things would have unfolded differently anyway and the Colony’s past would be changed.  (Would O’Brien wait twelve years before beginning a new life if this time he KNOWS he’s never getting back to Keiko?)  I do like that Yedrin isn’t played as a dastardly villain.  The scene in which he admits that this whole thing is his/Dax’s fault is very moving.
• I love “the sons of Mogh”.  I love that, when it looks like the colony is going to vanish, they want Worf to give them an honorable death.  This makes sense, and I’m glad they didn’t ignore this Klingon concept from the actual “Songs of Mogh” DS9 episode.  Since we know Worf won’t be able to kill them, I like the solution we see Worf come up with.  (“Time is their enemy. We should help them defeat it.”)
• I like the great, tense scene in which the DS9 gang argues over what to do, with Kira saying she’s willing to die, while O’Brien bitterly says that he doesn’t believe in “your prophets” when Kira tells him that the Prophets will take care of his family.  (And I love how O’Brien throws in Worf’s face that Worf hardly ever actually sees his son.)  I like that Sisko isn’t really willing to consider staying at first.  It makes sense that his priority is to getting his crew home safe, and that he wouldn’t consider asking O’Brien to leave his wife and children behind.  It’s lovely how we see how O’Brien slowly comes around to the realization that they can’t let these people die.  For all his flaws, it’s HIS moral compass that the show — and Sisko — follows.
• The planting scene is so moving — even more so upon a rewatch, knowing what’s going to happen.  The score over that scene is spectacular.
• “As long as we remember them” — shades of Star Trek II!
• Odo’s action, changing the Defiant’s flight plan, is quite a disturbing event!  It’s understandable but still disturbing.  (It’s weird to me that Odo tells Kira, but not Sisko!  I guess we can assume that Odo did also speak to Sisko, but I’d have loved a scene in which Odo told the whole DS9 command crew, and we’d had a chance to see ALL their reactions to this, not just Kira’s.)  Like the rest of this episode — and all of DS9! — this ending is messy and challenging.  I sort of love it for that, even as it makes me uneasy every time I watch this episode.  It’s painful to see a version of Odo — a character I love and am rooting for — do what he did.

“Blaze of Glory”

• Eddington returns! It’s nice to get back to Eddington’s story after “For the Uniform,” though I think this follow-up isn’t as great as “For the Cause” or “For the Uniform,” and in the end I’m disappointed they decided to kill Eddington off.  I guess with the show moving more and more towards a focus on the conflict with the Dominion, they felt it was time to wrap up the Maquis story.  Still, I loved the villain-version of Eddington so much that I’m sad we only got to see him for two episodes.  Despite Dax’s speech at the end, Eddington’s death at the end feels disappointingly pointless to me.
• It’s very interesting — and makes perfect sense — that the Cardassians’ new Dominion allies quickly made short work of the Maquis (and any remaining Klingons in Cardassian space).
• I like the opening with Nog, and seeing his struggles with not being respected by the Klingons.  (I like Jake’s “or get your butt kicked!” joke.)  The show often struggled to give us a good Nog/Jake story at this point in the series, with things turning so serious with the Dominion, so it’s nice to see the friendship between the two is still strong here in this episode.
• It’s great to see Martok back, so soon after “Soldiers of the Empire”.  I love that he’s a part of the fabric of the show now!  Both Martok and Nog are so great in their confrontation scene on the Promenade!  (I love Martok!)
• It’s weird to see the stock footage of the Regula One model (from Star Trek II) used to represent a prison.  Also, why is Eddington still in his civilian clothing, rather than a prison jumpsuit?  These both feel like mistakes to me.
• At this point when originally watching the show, I’d long since given up hope of ever actually seeing Cal Hudson again, but I appreciated hearing him mentioned when Eddington tells Sisko that he’s dead.
• When Sisko and Eddington find that corridor filled with dead Maquis, it’s a haunting image.
• It’s a fun surprise to meet Eddington’s wife!  (Though this episode makes me wonder how long he was in the Maquis.  He dug the tunnels himself, he got married, he became a leader… this couldn’t have happened while he was serving in Starfleet, but it was less than a year between when he left Starfleet in “For the Cause” and was captured in “For the Uniform,” so this doesn’t all quite fit for me…)
• I like the twist that the missiles were fake, just a ploy to signal Eddington to come and get his fellow Maquis.
• Dax wonders at the end, is this the end of the Maquis?  Pretty much, yeah, as the DS9 story is moving in other directions here in the last third of the show.

“Empok Nor”

• This is a solid if unspectacular episode.  I like the idea of a haunted house style episode, and there is some nice tense creepiness in the scenes on Empok Nor.  It’s an interesting concept, that something would break on DS9 that they couldn’t repair and so would need a similar part from another Cardassian facility.  But I feel like they didn’t quite sell the enormity of the problem.  After everything that Chief O’Brien has fixed on the station over the course of the series, this one burst pipe near Quark’s is beyond him?
• It’s nice to see Nog involved in the story, and proving to be a capable assistant to Chief O’Brien at the beginning.
• It’s funny to hear Garak acknowledge that he’s not used to being trusted, as he is by most of the DS9 crew at this point in the show.
• It’s interesting to hear Garak tweaking O’Brien about Setlik Three, and his and Bashir’s habit of refighting old battles in the holosuite.  It’s interesting that Miles defines himself as NOT being a soldier, despite how much combat he’s seen during his career.  I like that, at the end, O’Brien uses his engineering skills to survive (“you’re right — I’m an engineer!”), rather than his combat skills.
• I like the visual of the sideways Empok Nor station.
• I liked the group of junior officers who accompanied O’Brien, Nog and Garak on the mission, and I’m sorry they all got killed.  (I’d have preferred the episode to have not be quite so transparent in only having the regular characters survive, with everyone else killed off.)
• The final O’Brien-Garak scene in sickbay is good, though the “see you around” ending feels a little underwhelming to me.

“In the Cards”

• This is a silly, inconsequential episode, but I have a sweet spot for it!  I like getting a new Nog-Jake adventure at this point in the series.
• We get a classic DS9 questioning of standard Star Trek platitudes — when Jake says he doesn’t have any money because “we work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity,” Nog asks: “What does that mean, exactly?”  Good question!  (Jake’s line is a nice callback to when Picard says something similar in First Contact.)
• I love that we see that Sisko cooks for his senior staff.  It’s interesting to see everyone so downbeat at the start of the episode.
• I love Winn’s comment that she has “some amount of experience” with political intrigue.  Ha!
• Weyoun returns!  Great to see him again.
• I love the loony doctor.  “Cellular boredom” always makes me smile.
• I love Nog’s demonstration of “incentive-based economics.”  Once again, it’s awesome to see the Ferengi worldview and how it can actually be helpful.
• I love getting to see Bashir’s bear Kukalaka (first mentioned in “The Quickening”)!  (It’s funny that he wants the bear back from Leeta… though very creepy that the boys get it by sneaking into her quarters while she is sleeping!!  Ew!)
• It’s interesting to see that the Dominion wants Bajor to sign a nonaggression pact.  As Winn correctly points out, this is only needed because of Sisko’s own actions in “Rapture.”  (As I asked in that episode, why is Winn doing these negotiations, and not Shakaar??)  It’s interesting that I believe Winn when she says that she’ll do whatever Sisko tells her to do at that moment.  This might be the first time I’ve ever truly believed what Winn was saying!

“Call to Arms”

• Possibly my favorite single one-hour episode of DS9 of all time, this is a fantastic season-finale that propels the show into the Dominion War arc that kicks off the next season (with a six-episode story-line) and that really doesn’t conclude until the series finale.  We’re in the final arc of the show, now.
• It’s extraordinary to see DS9 finally take the step that no ever Trek show had ever done: presenting us with a full-scale interstellar war, one that would not be easily resolved at the end of a “part two”.  The show has been teasing this possibility ever since the season two finale.  Time after time they would tease us with the possibility of open conflict with the Dominion, but then put it off and/or reveal it as a misdirect.  But Sisko predicted it in “Rapture” and here, now, we’ve finally arrived at war with the Dominion.
• This episode is also a phenomenal showcase for one of the best aspects of DS9: the show’s extraordinarily deep bench of great supporting characters.  Garak, Ziyal, Rom, Leeta, Nog, Dukat, Damar, Weyoun, Martok… all are CRITICAL to this episode and have huge parts to play in the story.  It’s thrilling to see.
• The episode has a fun intro (EXCLUSIVELY with these supporting characters), as we see Rom, Leeta, Garak and Ziyal discussing the plans for Leeta’s wedding dress.  I love that Rom and Leeta get married in this episode!  I really like this cute couple, and it’s cool how the show has allowed these two supporting characters to develop such rich lives in the background of the “main” stories the show has been telling.  Rom’s “will you marry me?” to Sisko is funny, and it’s nice that Sisko does actually perform the ceremony later in the episode.  (I love hearing Nog call Leeta “Moogie” after she marries his father!)  Leeta is again more passive than I’d ideally like to see when Rom sends her off to Bajor after the wedding, but it is nevertheless great fun to hear the goofy, nerdy Rom quoting Casablanca to her.
• I love that Worf and Dax’s relationship ALSO progresses significantly in this episode, with their getting engaged at the end!  It’s so cool to see these TV show characters actually having lives that progress and change!
• I love that Quark is smuggling in Cardassian Yamok sauce.  “That little worm!  He thinks the Cardassians are going to retake the station!”  (He’s proven right!)  I love Dax’s question: “What is a yamok, anyway?”  We probably don’t want to know!
• We learn that Keiko and the kids have temporarily left the station.  We’re pretty much done seeing Keiko on the show, which is a bummer.
• I’m glad the episode addresses the events of “Children of Time”, with Odo and Kira avoiding one another.  Their later agreement to put off dealing with their relationship until after the current crisis is resolved feels a little silly, though — like the writers just pressing pause on this story for now.
• It’s fun to see Jake as a correspondent for the Federation News Service.  It’s nice that he has a job, and that job has the benefit of giving him a bit more purpose on the show.  His decision to remain behind at the end is foolish, but leads to good stories for him in season six.
• I love that we hear that the Romulans have made a treaty with the Dominion, further isolating the Federation and its allies.  I love that Sisko hears it from Nog — and I love that Sisko has spent enough time around Ferengi at this point to be able to quote a Rule of Acquisition back to Nog!  Later, it’s another great tense development for Sisko to realize what he probably should have known in the previous episode, that Bajor SHOULD sign the non-aggression pact with the Dominion, even though that should feel at odds with what our heroes would want.
• I love Sisko’s ominous “we’re losing the peace… so war might be our only… hope” act-ender.
• I love Rom mentioning a bathroom for possibly the first time in the history of Trek.  (“I’m going to waste-extraction.”)
• The Sisko-Weyoun scene, in which the two are just fencing, is great.
• Garak and Ziyal’s goodbye — and first on-screen kiss — is tender (and heartbreaking in hindsight of what’s coming).  I love hearing Garak tell his own story, describing how he “took shelter in the stronghold of his people’s most hated enemies.”
• I love the Bashir-Jake scene.  It’s a nice follow-up to their adventures together in “Nor the Battle to the Strong” and it’s very funny when, instead of Bashir’s giving Jake some cliched advice about keeping his head down, he says “just remember… Bashir is spelled with an ‘i’.”  I love that!
• I love hearing Garak remark to Odo how he regrets not killing Dukat in “The Way of the Warrior.”  Odo: “You’d shoot a man in the back?”  Garak: “Well, it’s the safest way, isn’t it?”  That’s one of my very favorite Garak lines!!!
• I also adore the Quark-Rom scene, in which we see they’re both refusing to leave the station.  Quark: “I have to look after my bar!”  Rom: “And I have to look after you.”  When Quark kisses Rom on top of his head, it’s perhaps the sweetest moment we’ll ever get between these two brothers.
• What a space battle!!  The Dominion’s assault on DS9 is phenomenal.  Gorgeous visual effects.  (I’ve previously discussed how DS9 doesn’t seem to depict the circular shield we saw around Starfleet ships in TNG.  That’s mostly true here though it’s interesting that we DO see a circular shield effect around the central core in one shot, though not around the habitat ring even though the dialogue repeatedly references a shield around that part of the station too.)  I like hearing Weyoun’s surprise that DS9’s shields are holding against their Dominion’s weaponry, and Dukat’s caution that “I’ve found it wise never to underestimate the Federation’s technical skill.”  Even if it happened off-screen, I like the idea that the Federation has been busy working to combat the Dominion’s huge technical advantage that we saw in the season two finale when we first met them.  I love seeing Martok involved in the battle, bailing out the Defiant.  I like the whole idea of the minefield, something Starfleet probably should have done long before now!  (It’s a great way to block the wormhole without destroying it like they considered doing in “In Purgatory’s Shadow.”)  I like getting a hint of some strategy in the assault on the station, with Dukat’s ordering his ships to concentrate their fire on one specific section of the habitat ring, in order to penetrate the station’s shields.  I love seeing Dukat wearing the headset that we’ve seen Vorta and Jem’Hadar firsts wear in previous episodes.
• THE DOMINION TAKES DS9!!!  What a fantastic development.  I love Sisko’s “here… in this place where I belong” good bye speech.  I love Kira’s line “Dukat wanted the station back?  He can have it!” as she trashes the station’s equipment, bringing it back to how the Cardassians left things before the pilot.  I love the deliciously awkward scene in which Kira, Odo, and Quark greet Dukat, Damar and Weyoun and welcome them to Deep Space Nine.  “Don’t you mean… Terok Nor?”
• I love the tense dynamic we see between the Cardassians and the Dominion. Dukat and Damar want to capture Bajor and occupy it again,while Weyoun insists that they, as a part of the Dominion, honor the Dominion’s non-agression pact with Bajor. I like how Weyoun struggles, yet succeeds, in controlling Dukat.
• It’s a bit lame that NO other starships were available to defend DS9 (despite our regularly seeing starships around the station in the latter half of this season), and that they were all needed for some off-screen secret mission to destroy the Dominion shipyards.  It’s my only real criticism of this episode.
• I love the bad-guy theme for the Dominion in this episode’s score!!  Very memorable!!  (I wish the producers had allowed more of this sort of thing into the scores of this era of Star Trek episodes.)
• The ending is phenomenal.  I love Nog’s “…and then we make the Dominion sorry they ever set foot in the Alpha Quadrant.”  I love Dukat’s “You, me, the Major, together again?  It should be most interesting.”  I love love love that Sisko left his baseball behind as a message to Dukat.  “He’s letting me know… he’ll be back.”  And most of all, I love that AMAZING final shot of STARFLEET ASSEMBLED!!!   This is a glorious sight, something we’ve never gotten to see before in all of Trek.  It might be my very favorite visual effects shot in all of Trek history.  It’s an astonishing end to an incredible episode.