Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season One Rewatch

Emissary:

Past Prologue:

It’s still a little more simplistically structured than the show will be in its prime, but right away we see a very different style of storytelling than TNG. This is a complicated story with lots of different characters, who each have their own agenda and perspectives.
I love the exploration of the challenges facing Bajor — and Kira, personally — in this brave new post-war world. The Bajorans have gotten what they wanted — independence from the Cardassians — but it’s not going to be easy to actually construct a functioning society out of the ashes of the occupation. I love that we see the existence of more violent splinter groups. I love how we see the challenges Kira faces, in terms of choosing which side she is on and also in struggling with her guilt over the actions that she herself committed. (We see that in her terrific scene with Odo, the first of many, many great Odo-Kira scenes. I love that Kira trusts Odo, and I love how Odo gently pushes Kira towards what she knows is right. I love Odo’s comment about how he never mastered pretense, and I love how, at the end, he calls Sisko on his comm badge.) I love that the show isn’t moving too quickly to round the rough edges off of Kira. I love that she gives right back to Sisko when they argue while walking into the med-bay to see Tahna Los for the first time, and I love that she goes right over Sisko’s head to the Admiral. (It’s a minor thing, but I love that, when the Admiral calls Sisko, she immediately has his back and calls Kira the problem, as opposed to questioning Sisko’s handling of the situation.) (I also love that Sisko gets to give Kira his version of the “I’ll snap you back so hard” speech that Riker gave Shelby in “The Best of Both Worlds,” when she went over his head.)
Of course, this episode is notable for the introduction of “plain, simple” Garak. They don’t quite have the character all figured out here (it implies that he does have an easy connection to the Cardassian central command when he’s negotiating with Lursa and B’Etor over Los, but looking back we can imagine that either Garak was bluffing and hoping to use Lahs as leverage for himself with Central Command, or that he found a way to connect with Vaughn Armstrong’s Gul Danar), but still, this is a very memorable introduction to one of the greatest TV characters of all time. Andrew J. Robinson is magnificent in the role.
It’s fun to see Lursa and B’Etor again! On the one hand, I think this 1st season of DS9 relied a little too heavily on using TNG characters (Q, etc.). On the other hand, one of the greatest aspects of DS9 was the way it embraced the complicated continuity of the Trek universe more than any of the other Trek shows. On TNG there was a fight about even the mention of Spock’s name. But here on DS9, we’ll see constant references to characters, locations, etc. from across the Trek series, sometimes in a major way (like actually seeing Original Series Klingons Kor, Kang, and Koloth again) and other times in a more minor way (like seeing the classic Original Series Saurian Brandy bottle in Quark’s bar). And so I love that this is established right here in episode two. Just because DS9 is mostly about Cardassians and Bajorans, we’re not going to ignore the Klingons!
I love Odo’s exchange with Lursa and B’Etor: “You can leave the weapons or leave the station. Your choice. Please make it now.” “Who are you?” “I’m the one giving you the choice.”
Vaughn Armstrong would play many different characters across the various Trek series. He’s great as the Cardassian captain here, Gul Danar. (I love when Sisko hangs up on him at the end, when the Cardassian is speechifying!! Sisko is NOT Picard!)
I like the touch of O’Brien commenting to Sisko that they shouldn’t allow any man to be handed over to the Cardassian’s “tender mercies.” As noted above, I like that these characters have different perspectives, based on their own life experiences, as opposed to the more homogenous TNG cast. (I like how Odo wants to just lock up Lursa and B’Etor, while Sisko feels it’s his responsibility to maintain the rule of law. We already see that for Odo, “justice” is more important than specific legalities, which is an interesting perspective for his character to have.)

A Man Alone:

A strong episode with a terrible ending. Odo’s pulling Ibudan’s mask off, Mission: Impossible style, was silly (couldn’t we have a more Star Trek version of Ibudan’s disguise, with a holographic mask or something like that?)… and then there’s the insane idea that the clone Bashir grew in his lab just off and started a brand new life, a fact presented and quickly dismissed in Sisko’s episode-ending log entry. Whaaaat…???
I do like most everything else about this look at Odo. I like learning more about his mostly-isolated life. I like how, even more clearly than in “Past Prologue,” we see that Odo’s personal idea of “justice” is far more important to him than any specific Federation (or Bajoran or Cardassian) law. Sisko’s speech before the mob is overly simplistic, but I like the idea that we’re seeing the opposite side of Odo’s single-minded pursuit of “justice.” (I wish the episode gave us a moment in which we saw that land for Odo, that this mob frenzy is the dark-side of not caring about the rule of law.) I like learning that Odo regenerates each day in his bucket. I like seeing more of the Odo-Kira friendship, how she stands up for him as best she can. I like how Odo calls Sisko on the doubts Sisko surely has as to whether this man, who he really doesn’t know yet, was capable of murdering Ibudan. (I don’t buy the idea that civilians could so easily break into and vandalize Odo’s security office — that should be one of the most secure spots on the whole station.)
The Bashir-Dax stuff is right on the edge of annoying, but Julian’s boyish enthusiasm seems just innocent enough that I can live with it, even though when viewed through today’s eyes his constant pursuit of Dax seems uncomfortably like harassment. I do like learning a bit more about Dax’s past lives, and it’s interesting to see Sisko struggling with this adjustment, too, in his own way. (I like the moment when Sisko begins telling Bashir a story of his adventures with Curzon, then thinks better about what he’s about to share with a junior officer.) (I also like the beat, right before that, when Sisko asks Dax out for lunch and Bashir obliviously thinks Sisko is asking him.)
I like seeing the beginning of the Nog-Jake friendship, and I like that the show isn’t shying away from addressing the realities of life on the station. What WOULD the kids be doing all day? (There are some great shots early in the episode, in which we follow different people through the crowds on the Promenade, giving us a nice sense of how busy and hectic things are on the station.) It’s fun to see Rom (Nog’s father, played by Max Grodenchik), though they hadn’t figured out his character yet — this is a far cry from the Rom we’ll later grow to know and love. (I can retroactively pretend that Rom is just acting here the way he believes he’s supposed to act, as a stereotypical Ferengi male.) I like that we see Rom telling Nog he doesn’t want him hanging around with that human boy (Jake), just as Benjamin had previously said to Jake about Nog.
Speaking of Ferengi, we get several interesting scenes showing Quark sticking up for Odo, and trying to be his friend, in his own Quark way. When I first watched DS9, these scenes didn’t work for me. It felt like too soon to sand the edges off of Quark and to see these two as sort-of-friends. But upon rewatches, knowing where this relationship goes, I enjoy these scenes a lot more, and I know that actually these two knew each other for years, through the Cardassian Occupation, so this pre-existing sort-of friendship makes a little more sense.
I love seeing Keiko again, and I like the idea of her struggling with her purpose on the station. This reality of life for a spouse in a military-like organization like Starfleet is not something we’ve seen before. (It wasn’t Keiko’s idea to move to DS9, but she was forced to uproot her family when Miles was transferred.) The idea that Keiko will begin to run a school on the station is also an interesting way to explore how life for everyone on the station is changing under the Federation, as opposed to what it was like under the Cardassians. On the other hand, it seems like a failure of imagination on the part of the writers that there’s truly no purpose for a scientist like Keiko on the station, which is about to become a hub for exploration of the Gamma Quadrant… and there’s something unfortunately gendered about the idea that the best role Keiko can find for herself on the station is as a school-teacher.
When Odo is reviewing the logs of Ibudan’s travels, we see that he traveled through the Alderaan spaceport! Nice!

Babel:

The aphasia virus is an interesting idea, though like many of these 1st season DS9 episodes I’m far more interested in the character stuff than the sci-fi plot. This one, like the clone mystery from “A Man Alone” and many other 1st season stories, feels like a TNG-type story rather than a DS9 story. Thankfully, there is a lot of great character stuff here.
I love seeing O’Brien’s struggles to keep everything on the station working. I like seeing the show sticking with the premise established in “Emissary.” Not only does O’Brien have to deal with the challenge of integrating Federation technology with the Cardassian tech on the station, but we learned in “Emissary” that the Cardassians trashed the station before they left. This wouldn’t be something that would be able to be fixed overnight. As always, Colm Meaney is spectacularly watchable as O’Brien. I love the snarky way he responds to Sisko’s demand that he fix the replicators… and I love the nervous look he gives Sisko at the very end, in which Sisko again attempts to order coffee from a (still-broken) replicator.
I love that it winds up that the virus was created by Bajorans, not Cardassians. A nice twist. I love how tough and smart Kira is, bullying/manipulating the Bajoran doctor Surmak Ren into helping her at the end.
I love the whole idea that Quark is sneaking food from command-level replicators in order to keep his business open. It’s funny and clever. I like that things on DS9 are often broken. I like that we see that there’s a waiting list for items to be fixed on the station. Quark, and that unfortunate freighter captain, just have to wait their turn. Unlike on the Enterprise, things aren’t all always magically working perfectly.
The Quark-Odo stuff is fun. As in “A Man Alone,” when I first watched DS9 I didn’t like how friendly/silly Quark was at this early point, rather than the more dangerous character we met run “Emissary.” But knowing that Quark is actually a softy inside, I enjoy these scenes a lot more now. I love how Armin Shimmerman plays Quark’s joy at being in Ops, and also his terror as the countdown to the ship exploding reaches its final seconds.

Captive Pursuit:

We meet our first new alien from the Gamma Quadrant in Tosk, the creature bred to be hunted. I like the story of O’Brien’s friendship with this gentle but tough alien. It’s a bit simplistic, but it’s fun to watch O’Brien’s gradual understanding of who and what Tosk is. Colm Meaney is eminently watchable as always, and the make-up and prosthetics on Tosk are terrific. (The actor also does a great job with his alien, lizard-like movements.)
I have a love/hate relationship with the B-movie look of the aliens hunting Tosk. It’s a wild, cheesy look that doesn’t really mesh with Trek, but that incongruity does successfully sell the idea that these are totally different aliens from the other side of the galaxy. I also like their weird transporter effect.
The opening scene is a weird one, with a dabo girl complaining to Sisko that sexual harassment is written into her contract at Quark’s. The scene isn’t staged comedically (thank goodness), but it does sort of feel like it was meant to be amusing. If that was the original intent, it hasn’t aged well. It’s weird that Sisko doesn’t follow up on this, despite telling the girl that he will. I feel like the intention here was to show that this isn’t TNG, that things are darker on this space station and that these alien cultures, especially the Ferengi, don’t operate like the Starfleet vessels upon which all previous Trek shows had been set. That’s a worthy goal, but this feels a little too skeezy even for the Ferengi, and if the show was going to bring this up, it feels like it for sure should have been followed up on.
Meanwhile, all of the actual scenes with Quark seem to lean very far in the opposite direction. The Quark we see here is almost sweet! He genuinely seems to want to connect with O’Brien and his other customers, and his feelings are hurt when O’Brien calls him “barkeep” (as opposed to “host”). (I actually side with Quark here — O’Brien is rude and dismissive in refusing to refer to Quark as a host, the way he’s asked to be.) But the dichotomy between the Quark we heard about in the opening scene and the Quark we see in all his scenes are two totally different characters — I feel the writers hadn’t quite figured out how they wanted to depict him.
Odo is spectacularly useless when the hunter aliens beam onto the Promenade in search of Tosk. I guess the budget to depict Odo’s shapeshifting had been used up? I do like Odo’s declaration that he never uses a weapon.
I like how Sisko tells Odo not to rush, when they realize what O’Brien has done to free Tosk at the end, and Odo’s first instinct is to spring into action.
Did Tosk kill all those hunters at the end? If so, O’Brien seems rather blasé about that. I was surprised the episode’s ending didn’t clarify that.
Overall this is a strong episode with some fun action, a great new alien, and good stuff for O’Brien. Its only failing is that the story is a bit simplistic.

Q-Less:

On the one hand, bringing Q and Vash over to DS9 feels, as I’ve noted above, like a cheap ploy to spark interest in this new show, out of fear that it couldn’t stand on its own two legs. On the other hand, it’s hard to complain, because it’s a delight to see these two again. It felt like a missed opportunity that we never saw these two together again on TNG after season four’s Q-Pid. Their banter here is a lot of fun. (“The eminent Vash! Barred from the Royal Museum of Epsilon Hydra VII. Persona non grata on Betazed. Wanted dead on Miridon for stealing the crown of the First Mother.” “Dead OR alive.” “PREFERABLY dead.”)
It’s great fun watching Q gently poke fun at the new show and its characters, mocking DS9 as dreary and dismal and referring to O’Brien as “one of the little people.” It’s also a fun way to highlight the differences between Sisko and Picard. (“You hit me! Picard never hit me!”) I love that Q actually uses the term “technobabble” (a term used by fans to criticize TNG’s occasional over-reliance on made-up tech to solve their episodes’ problems) on-screen. That Q-Sisko old-time boxing sequence is terrific, from Q’s mustache to Sisko’s disinterest to, of course, Sisko’s punching Q.
It makes sense that Vash would have been drawn to the Gamma Quadrant and that she’d want to parlay her experiences into riches. I love the Vash-Quark pairing.
Q’s somewhat stalker-ish behavior towards Vash (and Bashir’s behavior as well) was comedic back in 1993, but it’s a little more uncomfortable when viewed today. (One could take a more kind view towards Bashir here and perhaps suggest that, in the 24th century, people didn’t have all the hangups we have today, and if someone was interested in another person, there was nothing wrong with letting them know without hesitation. Had Vash said no to Bashir’s offer of dinner, hopefully he would have respected that. On the other hand, in previous episodes we’ve seen him continue to pursue Dax despite her disinterest, which reflects more poorly on Bashir’s behavior.) DS9 was designed to be edgier than TNG, with people behaving a bit more like real people than the perfect heroes of TNG. That gives DS9 a richness that TNG doesn’t have, but it also results in some misfires particularly in these early episodes, with some scenes/moments that don’t work so well today.
Speaking of Bashir, it’s weird how no one seems to know or care that he vanishes for the whole second half of the episode, after being put to sleep by Q!
It also doesn’t reflect well on our heroes that no one thinks to inspect Vash or her Gamma Quadrant artifacts once problems start happening on the station. There were problems on the shuttle (that presumably only started after they picked up Vash) and then problems on the station after they brought her on board so… come on, people!
I was also surprised that they made no effort to evacuate the station towards the end (despite, earlier, Sisko’s saying that they’d start evacuation procedures if needed, several hours before the crisis point). It’s weird when we see our heroes rush onto the Promenade at the end, with the station minutes from total destruction, and we see people just hanging out and eating/talking like nothing’s wrong. Perhaps when things escalated they felt they didn’t have time to evacuate and didn’t want to start a panic, but if so, that deserved at least a line of dialogue.
Bashir’s story to the Bajoran woman at the beginning is, I believed, the first instance of our learning that he failed to graduate at the top of his class at medical school because he mistook a pre-ganglionic fiber for a post-ganglionic nerve. I love that very memorable turn of phrase (even though I’ve read that anyone who knows anything about that field can say that a pre-ganglionic fiber and a post-ganglionic nerve are entirely different things and unlikely to be confused), and enjoy that this will come up again with greater consequence later in the show…

Dax:

Our first (and still one of the best — for whatever reason, I found I didn’t much care for many of the future Trill-focused episodes of the show) exploration into Dax and what it means to be a joined Trill. I really like this episode, and this look at the complexities of a Trill’s long, multi-host existence. While it’s not too hard to predict, I do like the reason given at the end for Jadzia Dax’s frustrating behavior of keeping silent about what really happened all those years ago with Curzon on Klaestron Four.
The biggest hole for me is why no one asks Dax or the other Trill called as an expert witness about how these sorts of cases are handled on Trill. While this might be a new legal question for the Federation (though Curzon has been established as working for or with the Federation for decades, in the TNG episode that introduced the Trill, “The Host,” which was set only a few years before this episode, their existence as a joined species was still a secret), surely on Trill this sort of thing has happened before? So how do they handle the prosecution of these sorts of crimes, committed by a previous host? It’s weird that the show never actually answers that question.
I like learning more about Curzon. It’s interesting that Sisko describes him a man with more flaws than you’d generally see in a 24th-century person. So are most of the characters on DS9, which is why I love this show even more than TNG.
This episode adjusts what we’d learned about the Trill in the TNG episode “The Host.” This episode, and all of DS9 that would follow, establishes that when a symbiont bonds with a new host, there is a complete blending/merging of the personalities of host and symbiont. That didn’t seem to be the case in “The Host,” in which the Odan symbiont seemed dominant in all three hosts seen in the episode. Also, in that episode, when we see a new host at the end, it appears to be a complete blank slate before merging with Odan. I like the DS9 version much better; it feels more interesting to me. (There are a few examples of how the DS9 writers were still figuring out all of this Trill business for themselves here. We hear about the “Trillian” government at one point, but in the future the planet and people are just called “Trill.” There’s also one point at which Sisko speaks of “becoming a Trill” when he means a “JOINED Trill” — everyone on the planet, joined and unjoined, is a Trill. I wonder if that was a mistake in the script or if Avery Brooks just accidentally dropped a word. By the way, I like the revelation in this episode that some Trill are NOT joined, and they have to compete for the honor of doing so. This will be explored more in the future.)
The always radiant Fionnula Flanagan plays Enina Tandro. (She’d return soon after as Juliana Tainer in TNG’s “Inheritance”.) She’s only in a few scenes, but these are critical scenes and she’s terrific in them. I particularly love her tender final scene with Jadzia Dax, walking along the Promenade’s upper level.
Anne Haney (who previously played Rishon Uxbridge in TNG’s “The Survivors”) is a ton of fun as the no-nonsense Bajoran arbitrator.
Ilon Tandro is played by Gregory Itzin, a wonderful actor most known these days for his role on 24. He’s perfectly arrogant and self-righteous. (But I like how the episode does give him some justification for his self-righteousness. He truly believes that he is pursuing the person who murdered his father.)
There’s some nice action/suspense in the first-act sequence of Ilon Tandro and his attempt to kidnap Dax. I also love how Kira and Sisko work together afterwards in there scene in Sisko’s office with Tandro. It’s delightful seeing Kira drop the hammer on Tandro (who initially dismisses her), explaining that Bajor has jurisdiction in this matter because DS9 is a Bajoran station, not a Federation one.
(As an aside, it’s weird that the Federation apparently has a treaty with Klaestron Four that allows “unilateral extradition.” Also, while we’re picking at plot holes, how Odo can zip back and forth to Klaestron Four and conduct a full investigation in just the one day in which this hearing takes place is implausible. Even more ludicrous: there’s no place on the station that could host the hearing other than Quark’s Bar? Come on.)
I like how much trouble everyone is having keeping the station running while O’Brien was away! (I believe Colm Meaney was shooting a movie at the time.) I love how we see in all these early episodes that things on DS9 don’t always work, a nice contrast with TNG and the perfect, pristine Enterprise-D.
This episode was co-written by D.C. Fontana, a critically important writer from the Original Series. It’s her final Trek script (which is a shame, because this one is great).

The Passenger:

Ugh, the series’ first real stinker. It’s not all bad. The basic murder mystery is interesting at first, and I liked Julie Caitlin Brown’s guest appearance as the investigator, Kajada. But once we got to the end and Siddig el Fadil’s monstrously terrible performance as the mind-controlled Bashir, the whole thing collapsed into ridiculousness.
I like the idea of Odo coming into conflict with Starfleet procedures, and the Starfleet security officer introduced here, Primmin, had potential. But weirdly, after appearing in this episode and the next one (“Move Along Home”) he vanishes from the series, never to be heard from again. (We get basically the same story again with Michael Eddington in season three…)
I like the little in-joke in Bashir’s comment about “synaptic pattern displacement never being done by a non-Vulcan.” We’ve of course seen Vulcans do this in the fal-tor-pan at the end of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

Move Along Home:

Allamaraine! This episode is well-known among fans as one of the worst DS9 episodes ever, but I have a lot more patience for it now, because of my love for the characters and the show. The episode isn’t entirely without merit. I like the Sisko-Jake stuff. I like Sisko’s enthusiasm over a new first-contact situation, and his very human disappointment (unusual for what we saw of Starfleet officers on TNG) when it doesn’t go as he’d hoped. I like the idea that the aliens, surprisingly, have more in common with a gambler like Quark than the stuffy Starfleet officers.
The show does get very silly once Sisko & co. are zapped into the game. I wish I actually understood the relationship between Quark’s moves on the board and the actions of the players in the game. It’d have been better had it felt more like the ingenuity/bravery of the players affected what was going on out on the game board in the real world.
On the one hand, I like the twist that the aliens had no intention of putting Sisko & co. in jeopardy because, after all, it was “just a game”. That feels like a playful tweak on how this story might have gone in TNG. On the other hand, it also undermines what little momentum the episode had, because nothing that happened during the game turned out to really matter.

The Nagus:

The first Ferengi-focused episode, and still one of the best. It delighted me then and it still does today that the show got the great Wallace Shawn (The Princess Bride) to play Grand Nagus Zek. He’s spectacular in the role, so funny and so memorable.
Rewatching the show I am struck anew by how crazy this episode is. A whole episode focused only on greedy Ferengi, plus a B-story in which Jake and Nog have a fight? Wow, this is a far cry from TNG! But I love it.
The Ferengi stuff is so great; there’s a tremendous amount of world-building as we learn a lot about Ferengi society. We’re introduced to the Nagus, of course, and we see the hierarchy of Ferengi society (with all the rich businessmen beneath the Nagus but still way above Quark in their social structure). I am pretty sure this is the fist time we hear about “Rules of Acquisition,” and we get several great ones here. (I love “once you have their money… never give it back.”). I love the detail that when a wealthy Ferengi dies, his desiccated remains are sold. And so much more.
It’s nice to see Max Grodenchik get his largest role in an episode so far as Quark’s brother Rom. The writers haven’t quite yet found the Rom we’ll soon get to know and love, m but we can see a lot of interesting movement in that direction from the one-dimensional cretin glimpsed earlier in the season. This Rom seems good-hearted at times (he returned the lost money-purse to the customer who lost it), though he’s also mean to his son (passing on to Nog the punishment of polishing all the bannisters in the bar that Quark had given to him) and he does conspire to murder Quark! (I love the twist at the end that Quark isn’t at all upset, and is actually sort of proud that Rom actually took some initiative for a change!)
The Jake-Nog stuff stretches my patience a little bit, but I appreciate the writers trying to find stuff for Jake to do. I also like that this sci-fi show is willing to spend the time to show us the small-scale scenes of Ben Sisko struggling to figure out how best to parent his teenager. This father-son relationship was important in the pilot, and I like that it is continuing to be treated as such. Also, I love how we’re already seeing, in Rom and Nog, an attempt to also develop the show’s supporting cast, beyond the main ensemble. This will very soon start to pay enormous fruit. Getting back to Jake and Nog, I like the very Star Trek idea that these two kids can find common ground that their fathers don’t see.
I love the scene in Quark’s quarters, after he’s named Nagus, that homages The Godfather. I love the joke of their being blinds on the window behind Quark; we see Quark holding a sci-fi creature (similar to how Brando was holding a cat in the iconic Godfather opening scene); and they even parody some of that scenes’ famous dialogue, with Quark saying “and now you call me Nagus…”
I love the staging of the scene in the medical bay, after the assassination attempt on Quark. It’s a serious scene but it’s also very funny. The sight gag of Rom’s head popping into frame always makes me smile.

Vortex:

This episode wasn’t as bad as I’d remembered, but it still doesn’t really work. The main problems are that 1) the episode teases us with revelations about Odo’s background but doesn’t actually tell us (or Odo) much of anything, so it feels like a time-waster, and 2) Croden is just way too boring to support the story. His surfer-dude delivery was too lackadaisical, and his pajama-like outfit was at best uninteresting and at worst silly. It just doesn’t work. We needed an actor with a stronger presence to make this story more convincing. I did like the twist at the end with Croden’s daughter, and the revelation that he’s not a scoundrel at heart.
I like Randy Oglesby, who plays both of the Miradorn twins (in a beautiful, you’d never know it was there visual effect), but he’s mostly wasted as a cardboard villain. (He’ll be much better used as Degra in the third season of Enterprise.)
How can Odo get knocked out by a falling rock? Wouldn’t he just revert to his liquid form? Silly.
Also, how could Ah-Kel’s ship get away fromDS9 so easily? (We just saw in “Babel” that if a ship attempts to pull away from the station with the docking clamps still engaged, the results will be explosive. Also, we saw in “The Passenger” that the station has a tractor beam, so why couldn’t they use that to hold Ah-Kel’s ship and prevent him from getting away to the Gamma Quadrant to find Odo and Croden?
I am surprised, in retrospect, that what little tidbits we get in this episode about Odo all turn out to be consistent with what we’ll learn later. (That his race are called changelings, that they’re from the Gamma Quadrant, that they were persecuted and driven off of planets, that they are stubborn and have a strong sense of what they see as justice…) Nice attention to detail on the writers’ parts.
I believe this is the first episode in which Morn is named, and the beginning of the long-running joke about how talkative he is, despite our never actually hearing his voice… (though we did hear Morn laugh last week in “The Nagus,” oops…)

Battle Lines:

Ugh, this episode doesn’t work at all. I hate the decision to kill off Kai Opaka in this, inly her second opinion. Her death will lead to many terrific storylines (beginning in the season one finale “In the Hands of the Prophets” and continuing into the great three-parter that kicks off season two), but the way they handled it here is just terrible. Opaka gets killed on this random mission? The idea that she’s not actually dead but just stuck on the planet is even worse. It doesn’t make sense story-wise (seriously, wouldn’t Bajor devote all of its resources to solving the technological problem keeping her stuck there??) and it’s even less satisfying on an emotional layer, because Opaka was introduced as such an intriguing character in the pilot that it’s very frustrating for her to be so quickly taken off the board, and in such a stupid way. That somehow it was Opaka’s destiny to get trapped on this moon (to, presumably, find a way to mediate a peace between the two warring factions) also feels very silly to me. This is more important than her guiding the destiny of all Bajorans? Come on. (Anyone can mediate a conflict between two warring groups. But Opaka’s role on Bajor was unique and critical.)
There was an interesting story at the heart of the never-ending struggle between the two sides trapped together on this moon. I see the potential for a classic Trek story about the futility of hatred and war. But the episode doesn’t go there; everything stays very superficial. (Same goes for the scene in which we see Kira get all emotional with Opaka about her violent past. This is fascinating territory to explore with Kira, but this one suddenly-emotional scene didn’t do it for me.)
It doesn’t help that the Ennis and Nol-Ennis look so silly. This is cliche B-movie sci-fi dystopia at its worst. (I’m reminded of Highlander 2.) Jonathan Banks is an amazing actor (who will go on to be so great on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul), but even he can’t elevate the Ennis leader into a character of any interest.
The stuff with O’Brien and Dax on the runabout, looking for their missing crew members, is pretty bad too. It’s all meaningless technobabble (I’d have preferred if they’d used those scenes to explore O’Brien and Dax as characters), and Science Officer Dax is reduced to waiting for O’Brien to come up with all the good ideas.

Did we see O’Brien fixing the broken turbolift in Ops in Vortex? Or Battle Lines?

The Storyteller:

I have some fondness for this episode, which I remember enjoying when it first aired. But, really, it’s mostly a mess.
The best thing about it is the beginning of the O’Brien-Bashir relationship, which starts here in a very antagonistic place. Bashir has been terribly annoying for most of the season so far, and Miles has no patience for it. (Though O’Brien is pretty snooty and disrespectful himself in terms of his interactions with Bashir early on.) I love the scene in the Sirah’s home in which Bashir munches on fruit and takes delight in O’Brien’s discomfort at being named the savior of the village. This is the first glimpse of what this relationship will become, and we get a taste of the more enjoyable, looser version of Bashir who the character will slowly evolve into.
The biggest problem of the episode is that it makes the Bajorans look like absolutely clueless primitives. Star Trek has often had a flaw of looking down its nose at some of the less evolved societies that the various starship crews would encounter. One of the best aspects of DS9 is the way it would develop the Bajorans into a truly complex, interesting society. This is especially notable because DS9 would treat the Bajorans’ religious beliefs with far more respect that Trek usually handles religion. But, oy, none of that sophistication or complexity is on display here. The Bajorans in this village are impossibly simple and easily manipulated. You mean the Sirah has “defeated” the monster for multiple days in a row, at the end of every harvest, year after year, and no one has ever sussed out that it’s all fake? Come on. Watching the simple villagers get so easily terrified by the monster, and then so easily calmed by the Sirah (and, at the end, by the Sirah’s apprentice) makes them look so foolish. The Bajorans in a land-dispute that Sisko is called in to mediate don’t come off so well either, as both sides seem intractable. And was NO Bajoran capable of mediating this little dispute over a river? Why was Starfleet involved in this??
I didn’t remember how much Jake and Nog stuff there was back in season one! They’ve had a number of B-stories devoted to them (such as in The Nagus a few episodes ago, and again in the very next episode, Progress!). Here in The Storyteller, they get mixed up in Sisko’s land dispute because they befriend the young woman, Varis, who is the head of one of the arguing families, following the murder of her parents by the Cardassians. There’s nothing terribly bad about this story, but there’s not much too interesting, either. I do like that it’s Nog’s Ferengi knowledge of negotiating that comes in most handy to Varis, rather than Jake’s being the one to save the day. Seeing Nog and Jake wrestle outside of Varis’ door is painful. The bit with the kids pranking Odo isn’t as funny as it should have been, though it’s fun to see Odo’s bucket (in which he regenerates every night) for the first time!

Progress:

After five weak episodes in a row (with only “Then Nagus,” in between them, being of any quality), we finally get a better episode here in “Progress.” I know some people LOVE this episode. I don’t rate it that highly (I found it very boring when it first aired, and while I appreciate the drama of the story a lot more now, it’s still a little one-note), but it’s a breath of fresh air after this run of bad episodes and a taste of the greatness just around the corner (in “Duet” and “In the Hands of the Prophets”).
Mullibok, the stubborn Bajoran old man, is still a bit too much in the mold of the simple Bajoran villagers seen in The Storyteller. But he’s a much more interesting character than anyone we saw in the previous episode, so I can forgive that, mostly. Brian Keith is terrific, giving Mullibok a lot of depth and charm. He’s likable, despite his stubborn refusal to do what Kira wants/needs him to do.
The episode is also a great spotlight for Nana Visitor as Kira, who’s torn between her duty and her grudging affection for this stubborn old man. This is the first of many father figures to whom Kira finds herself drawn. As we learn more about her past, this will make a lot of sense. I like how we get a look (far more than the one token scene in “Battle Lines” with Opaka) of how Kira is struggling to find herself after the occupation. She used to be the underdog, and she loves the underdog. It’s why she’s unexpectedly drawn to Mullibok’s side. But now she’s the one wearing the uniform. This transition is hard for her! I love that the show is exploring this. We also get a taste of the PTSD Kira is dealing with, trying to live in peacetime after years of brutal war. When she admits to Mullibok that she’s angry, but she doesn’t know why, it’s a powerful moment which allows us broader insight into her character.
Sisko has stepped into the background for much of season one, after the wonderful spotlight he got in “Emissary.” But this episode has some great Sisko scenes, particularly his conversation with Kira at the end, after he beams down to Mullibok’s home. He strikes a perfect tone with Kira. He shows her some tough love, but he’s also tender and understanding towards her.
We get another Jake-Nog story, and this one might be my favorite so far, as we follow Jake and Nog on a series of trades in pursuit of profit. I love how, by this point, “gold-pressed platinum” has become an important thing on DS9 (the first time any sort of currency other than the occasional mention of “credits” has ever appeared on a Trek show!) I adore the nonsensical-sounding “self-stealing stem-bolts.” Look for the DS9 writers to playfully reference those stem-bolts for many years to come. I like the Jake-Nog scenes here. They’re not doing annoying kid stuff. Instead, this is a nice look at their genuine friendship. And I love that after earlier episodes that were about Nog learning from Jake (see: Jake teaching Nog to read), we’re now seeing Jake learning from Nog. (Here, we’re exploring the Ferengi love of business and pursuit of profit. This episode doesn’t look down on either of those things as negative. We see it, as Jake does, as an adventure! This is a great step in the right direction towards how well DS9 will treat and develop the Ferengi into more than the one-note villains they were on TNG.) I love Nog’s comment about getting “a tingling in his lobes.”
Is this episode our first reference to Cardassian “yamok sauce”?? It’s another wonderfully memorable term that will pop up again and again throughout the series.
I love hearing Dax joke about Morn’s asking her out, and how she finds those wiry little hairs on the top of his head appealing. (I love that these women are talking about Morn! The writers are, slowly, starting to develop the world of this DS9 universe!)
The ending is appealingly ambiguous — though, for my tastes, just a tad too ambiguous. It’s as if the credits rolled just a bit too soon. I’d have appreciated another few moments to linger with Mullibok and Kira. So did he just go with her? Did he remain furious at her, or did he ever make peace with what she’d done. Did he reunite with his two mute friends, who’d been evacuated earlier? I wish I knew more, but the episode keeps those answers from us. I respect the ambition of this choice, even though it doesn’t quite sit perfectly with me.

If Wishes Were Horses:

There’s nothing particularly terrible in this episode, it’s just that it’s rather boring. There’s a core of an interesting idea here — aliens who can bring what people imagine to life — but this is one of several examples of early DS9 telling a TNG-style story, and it just doesn’t quite fit.
I do like the twist at the end, that all of the danger from the vortex — which the audience, like the characters, assumed was causing the imagination-related events — was in fact just a manifestation of Dax and the others’ imaginations.
The idea that Bashir was dreaming about a submissive Dax was intended to be amusing, but it’s really just gotten grosser with age.
Nice to see Keiko and, for her first time on DS9, Molly O’Brien. But seeing Rumpelstiltskin running around on DS9 is just not what I’m interested in.
I got a lot more enjoyment out of the third major imaginary character: baseball star Buck Bokai. It was fun to see him “in the flesh” after some previous references. I love baseball, and so it’s fun to see the show explore Sisko and Jake’s love of baseball (a love shared by series co-creator Michael Piller, who co-wrote the TNG third series premiere, “Evolution,” which established that baseball had faded away, an occurrence referenced again in this episode).
Holy cow, is that baseball that Buck Bokai gives Sisko at the end, “the” baseball which Sisko will have on his desk throughout the series?? Having not seen this episode for many years (I generally skipped it in my rewatches), I didn’t remember that at all!

The Forsaken:

This episode is yet another example of first-season DS9 incorporating TNG guest stars as a way to help support the launch of the show. Unfortunately, this appearance of Lwaxana is far less successful than the arrival of Lursa and B’Etor, and later Q and Vash.
The whole idea of Lwaxana’s incessant pursuit of Odo is painful. I found it awkward and annoying back when this episode first aired — as a result, I don’t believe I have ever rewatched this episode since the first season originally aired — and it’s still pretty unfunny and hard to watch now.
The only thing that works between Odo and Lwaxana is the stuff towards the end. It’s interesting to hear Odo talk about his “childhood” being raised in a lab, and how he created his own hair by modeling it after the appearance of the scientist who found him. (We’ll get to meet Dr. Mora later in the series.) We’ve heard of Odo’s need to return to a liquid form every 16 hours; it’s interesting to get to see that here (and see how hard it is for Odo to maintain his humanoid shape for too long). I also found myself moved by Lwaxana’s gesture, at the end, of taking off her wig. I wish all the stuff leading up to that scene wasn’t so unbearable.
Far more successful is all of the O’Brien stuff with the “pup” computer program from the probe that infects the station’s computers. This is still a TNG-style sci-fi-problem-of-the-week episode, but at least it fits better with DS9 than “If Wishes Were Horses.” I like that O’Brien is still having problems with DS9’s Cardassian computer, and I like the callback to “Emissary” of O’Brien’s frustration at the computer’s offering him unsolicited opinions. The idea that, in the end, O’Brien just allows the alien entity to continue to live in a sub-program within the station’s computers is a surprise, though it also feels like a bit of a cop-out, and like something that probably should have been followed up on. (Watching this episode, I wondered what happened to the “pup” program when Sisko blew up the station’s computers at the end of “A Call to Arms”…)
I like the shot of Odo and Lwaxana inside the turbolift, in which we can see the decks rushing by. I don’t believe that reverse angle on the turbolift is a shot we’d ever see again!
Sisko’s unwillingness to help Odo when he reports his feeling of being sexually harassed by Lwaxana really hasn’t aged well. Back when this episode was made, the idea was that it’d be a joke that a male would ever be unhappy with the sexual attentions of a female. It’s very uncomfortable when viewed today. Frankly, Benjamin doesn’t come off great in this episode. Beyond his unhelpfulness with Odo, he looks cowardly ducking the visiting Federation ambassadors, and petty by forcing Bashir to have to cater to their whims. Whereas Picard would have been fascinated by the computer entity and O’Brien’s solution, Sisko seems to just view the whole thing as a nuisance. He seems annoyed rather than amused at the end, when he tells O’Brien to be sure to keep his “puppy” off the furniture.
I like that the ambassadors all love Julian by the end, but it’s a painful road to get to that nice moment. I hate when Star Trek makes all other Starfleet officers and Federation officials look like buffoons, just so our main characters can be “better” than then. It’s stupid.

Dramatis Personae:

After “The Nagus,” the back half of DS9’s first season is a real slog, with the exception of “Progress,” until we get to the strong one-two punch finale of “Duet” and “In the Hands of the Prophets.” I really don’t like “Dramatis Personae.” I hate mind-control stories and I hate the sort of fake-drama that these sorts of stories are usually used for on genre TV shows. DS9 has plenty of conflict baked into its premise. I’d much rather the writers explored actual, true-to-character reasons for the characters to be butting heads, rather than this very silly sci-fi premise of the characters reenacting an ancient alien feud because of some telepathic residue the Klingons brought back from the Gamma Quadrant.
Other than a cool shot of the Klingon warship blowing up at the beginning, there’s very little of interest to me in this episode.
I do like the cool design of the Bajoran clock that Sisko builds. (Though why the alien-influenced Sisko would build a Bajoran clock is beyond me.)
Once again (see: “Vortex”) we see Odo lose consciousness and yet retain his humanoid form, which doesn’t make any sense to me. “The Forsaken” established the intense concentration it requires for Odo to maintain his humanoid shape, so I’d think that as soon as he lost consciousness that he’d revert to a liquid. (I do like the visual effect of the weird thing that happens to Odo’s face when the telepathic matrix tries, and fails, to infect him.)

Duet:

At last we arrive at the first DS9 episode that really made me sit up and take notice of this show. Even looking back so many years later, “Duet” stands strong as not just one of the best episodes of DS9 ever, but one of the very best episodes of any Star Trek series.
There are lots of great aspects to this episode, but it rests on the incredible one-two combo of Nana Visitor as Kira and guest star Harris Yulin (who I’ll always best remember as the irritable judge in Ghostbusters 2) as the Cardassian who will eventually be revealed as Amin Marritza. Nana Visitor has been great right from the beginning, but she is truly spectacular in this episode, as Kira is forced to go through an emotional wringer and a true journey of her character. That Kira is eventually able to reach a point where she feels sympathy for Marritza would have been inconceivable to the Kira who started the episode. It’s an incredible performance. And then there is Harris Yulin, who is given a role for the ages in Darheel/Marritza, and who takes this great material and knocks it right out of the park. He is fearsome and loathsome when he is in full Gul Darheel mode, and he is pitiable and sympathetic at the end when the truth finally comes out and he is revealed as Marritza after all. The Kira-Darheel/Maritza scenes are among the best scenes this show would ever do, absolutely crackling with energy and potent emotion. The performances are riveting and the writing is out of this world. (Peter Allan Fields would write some of the best DS9 episodes in the early going, and “Duet” — which was also co-written by Lisa Rich & Jeanne Carrigan-Fauci — is probably his finest hour.)
There’s so much to unpack here. There’s a lot of ugliness inherent in the show’s backstory of the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, and this is the first episode to truly look unblinkingly at some of that horror. Kira is one of the heroes of the show, but she spent years as a “freedom fighter” or “terrorist” (the term would vary depending on which side one was on), and it’s hard to imagine that her hands are clean. In one of my favorite moments of the episode, Marritza (then in the guise of Gul Darheel) demands of Kira: “How many Cardassians did you kill?” She dodges the question by replying “Look, I regret a lot of what I had to do during the Occupation,” but he doesn’t allow her (or the audience) to be let off the hook nearly so easily, with his derisive and penetrating retort: “Oh, how convenient for you.”
We get a lot of ugly information on the horrors of the decade-long Cardassian occupation. Kira’s tearful description to Sisko of liberating a forced labor camp is clearly intended to be reminiscent of stories of the liberation of Concentration Camps at the end of World War II, and it is painful to hear. And then, of course, Marritza-as-Darheel gives us our first truly terrifyingly evil Cardassian as he boasts of what he accomplished while running his camp, grinding Bajoran scum under his boots. “What you call genocide, I call a day’s work.” Harris Yulin’s depiction of this true-believer is an extraordinary glimpse into true evil.
But it’s Mr. Yulin’s depiction of Marritza that is the most powerful for me. I love the way the episode slowly peels back the sad story of Marritza, a cowardly file clerk who could do nothing to stop the atrocities other than to hide under his guest, and who is so consumed by guilt that he creates this extraordinary set-up as a way to force the Cardassian people to confront what they did — both those who committed the atrocities, and those who stood silent. Star Trek is at its best when it tells stories about our world today, and “Duet” is one of the most powerful examples of this sort of story-telling. It’s also interesting that while, as I’d just noted, that Darheel is probably the most vile Cardassian glimpsed to date, so too is Marritza the most sympathetic. The Cardies have been pretty uniformly villainous in all their previous appearances so far on DS9 and TNG before it, but with Marritza we’re beginning to see that not all Cardassians are cut from the same cloth.
Its great to see Marc Alaimo back as Gul Dukat. I hadn’t realized that, after “Emissary,” this was Dukat’s only other appearance in season one! Luckily we’ll be getting lots more of Dukat in the seasons to come.
I thought Sisko came off very poorly in “The Forsaken,” but he’s much better depicted here. As usual, Sisko is caught between powerful opposing forces, including the Bajoran and Cardassian governments. But he keeps his cool and navigates those treacherous political waters smoothly, sticking to his principles (firmly but gently) and not allowing himself to get pushed around. He also shows a tremendous amount of trust in his first officer, Kira, allowing her to oversee the investigation into Darheel/Marritza despite his initial objections.
Ira Steven Behr and the other DS9 writers have pointed to the fantastic monologues delivered by Harris Yulin in this episode as Darheel/Marritza as an important early example of what they’d establish as a central Cardassian trait: the love of speechifying.
The only moment in the episode that’s a little off is in the computer reconstruction of the photo from Gallitep. How could the computer reconstruct Darheel’s face when it was entirely obscured? That visual effect was poorly designed. (Darheel’s face should have been blurred, but not completely blocked, in the original photo.) My only other regret about this episode is that, looking back on it now, it’s a shame that Garak wasn’t involved in some way in this Cardassian-heavy episode.
But in the end, without question, “Duet” is a true masterpiece, and a fantastic announcement of the strength of DS9 and the show that it would become.

In the Hands of the Prophets:

A fantastic season-ender brings season one to an exciting close (and establishes the DS9 tradition of absolutely kick-ass season finales). It’s also interesting in that it’s the first Trek finale since TNG’s “The Best of Both Worlds” to NOT be a cliffhanger. This episode is a complete story designed more as a bookend with the series premiere, “Emissary.” (And yet, at the same time, it would also wind up being a beautiful kick-off to the three-parter that would begin season two. More on this below.)
This episode is important for a whole host of reasons, most notably for introducing Vedeks Winn and Bareil to the show. Winn could have been a one-off villain, and the end of this episode could have been the last we saw of her. Thankfully, the DS9 writers recognized not only how great a character she was, but the potential benefit to the show’s storytelling to not forget about these characters or these events. We’ll see that right away at the start of season two that the events of this episode serve as the springboard to a wonderful series of continuing stories. This is the start of the show’s gentle serialization, and it’s going to be a beautiful thing to behold. (“Gentle” serialization because, until the final run of episodes, DS9 remained primarily episodic in nature. But at the same time, characters and story-lines would continue from episode to episode, growing and developing and creating the vast, deep universe of this show.)
Star Trek has tended to look down on people who believe in religion as misguided or simplistic. Some episodes in DS9’s first season fell into this trap. (Cough The Storyteller cough.) Winn is an amazing villain, but one could see her as another example of this condescending attitude in the storytelling. That’s why Bareil is such an important character to introduce as a counterpoint. Here’s a leading Bajoran religious figure who isn’t simplistic or evil, who doesn’t dismiss science or the Federation. With this episode we’re starting to see the development of the Bajorans as a culture and a people in a way that presents their religious beliefs on an equal footing with that of the Federation’s science-based worldview. I love Sisko’s “my philosophy is that there is room for all philosophies on this station” line, and I like even better his later scene with Jake, in which he cautions Jake not to become Winn in reverse, dismissing the Bajoran belief in the Prophets and the Celestial Temple as stupid.
Star Trek has had some terrific villains over the years, but creating a new, memorable villain is a difficult challenge. They hit it out of the park with Vedek Winn. Louise Fletcher (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) is spectacular as Winn, all smarmy condescending evil. She’s a fantastic figurehead for the episode’s story about the dangers of religious fundamentalism, a story that remains (sadly) just as relevant today, several decades later. The historical parallels to this story of a school-teacher under attack are a little on the nose, but boy I think it works.
Speaking of which… I complained a bit earlier about there being a whiff of sexism in the notion that the only role Keiko could find for herself on the station was as a schoolteacher. But it was worth it to get to this great story. It’s exciting to see Keiko have some meaty stuff to do on the show, as she’s backed into a corner by Vedek Winn. (I do wish we’d gotten a final scene with Keiko after the school bombing. Also, one of the only failings of DS9 as a whole is that, looking back, it’s hard to deny that this was the best Keiko story we’d get. That’s a shame.)
The episode is also a terrific spotlight for Keiko’s husband, Chief Miles Edward O’Brien. It’s fun to see the arc of O’Brien’s relationship with Neela (“on your toes, O’Brien”) and, of course, it’s delicious when the episode shifts gears into a ticking-clock mystery, with O’Brien racing to put all the clues together and figure out what’s going on.
I think Neela is great, and I only wish we’d seen her again after this episode. I think the episode succeeds in keeping her role a secret from the audience until the exact moment they wanted us to know. The first time I saw this episode, I remember being shocked that she was the killer. And upon my (many) subsequent rewatches, I think it all holds up really well, as it’s fun and sad to follow her through the episode. I’m glad, also, that they included Neela in a previous episode (“Duet”), to make her turn here a bit more of a shock. (She was actually supposed to have been in even more episodes prior to this, but the initial actress, who appeared in “The Forsaken,” didn’t work out. They even refer to that here in which O’Brien and Keiko talk about how much better Neela is working out than O’Brien’s previous assistant. Note that Neela’s secret computer program is labeled ANA, which are the first three letters of the name of O’Brien’s original assistant, Anara!!)
Philip Anglim’s Bareil is an interesting counterpoint to Winn. He’s a breath of fresh air in his scenes here. Ultimately, unfortunately, I think Bareil winds up being rather one-note, but that’s not a problem with this episode.
Kira doesn’t get too much focus here, but she still gets some great scenes. I love her journey in the episode, very skillfully sketched out in just a few key scenes. It’s interesting to see that, at first, she is on the same page with Winn’s Orthodox beliefs, and that she’s not so sure as our Starfleet characters that Keiko is in the right. Later, I love that it’s Kira who immediately puts it all together and figures out that Winn was behind everything. The closing scene with Kira and Sisko (in a weirdly deserted Ops — come on, the station’s command center should be fully-staffed at all times, right??) is terrific, a wonderful culmination of the journey these two characters have been on for the whole season. This is a huge turning point for them, as we’ll see a much closer relationship between the two, moving forward.
This episode finally clarifies several points which really should have been more clearly established earlier in the season. First, that Sisko is considered “the Emissary to the Prophets” by the Bajorans, because of his discovery of the wormhole in the series premiere. (That episode was called “The Emissary,” but it never actually established that the Bajorans saw Sisko in that religious light.) Second, we definitively understand that the Bajorans believe that the Wormhole is the Celestial Temple, the home of the Prophets, the beings who they worship as gods. It’s great to finally have this all spelled out clearly. This is all so important going forward.
Dax and Bashir don’t get too much to do, but it’s nice to see them both being competent officers, as Bashir susses out that Aquino was killed by a phaser, not a plasma conduit (I’m skeptical that Bashir could determine that from the tiny pile of goo that was all that was left of Aquino, but I can live with it), while Dax ably assists O’Brien in defeating Neela’s secret computer program at the end. Odo also gets a few nice moments. I love his conversation with Quark (Odo to Quark: “Keep your ears open.” Quark: “Are you kidding? That’s the seventh rule of acquisition.”), and I really love the second part of that scene with O’Brien, in which Odo really comes to life as he starts putting the pieces of Aquino’s murder together. (As an aside, I also really love the shot that bridges those two scenes, in which we see O’Brien on the Promenade’s upper deck calling down to Odo. I love the way that shot shows off the scale of DS(‘s Promenade sets, and there’s also something so wonderfully informal and anti-TNG in the way O’Brien just sort of hollers down to Odo. I love it.) Speaking of Odo, I also love the moment in the lineup in Sisko’s office when it’s Odo who, astutely, points out that they shouldn’t assume that Aquino was killed in the plasma conduit where his remnants were found.
This episode is beautifully written by Robert Hewitt Wolfe, who will go on to be one of the show’s best and most important writers through season five. Here’s another exchange that I love: O’Brien: “What was he doing in a runabout at four in the morning?”? Odo: “Apparently, he was getting murdered.” Interestingly, this is the only DS9 season finale not written or co-written by Ira Steven Behr.
I believe this episode is also notable for naming the Bajoran snack-on-a-stick sold on the Promenade: Jumja Sticks! Another great DS9 term…

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