Random Dude Watches 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'

It is not within my nature to comply with the collective.

"Dax" - After sharing a meal together, Bashir somewhat creepily offers to escort Dax to her quarters.  She says that won't be necessary, but Bashir, being creepy, interprets that as not a "no" per se, so he creepily follows her to catch up and escort her to her room anyway.  Only, when he does reach her, he sees Dax being attacked by some mysterious strangers, who knock Bashir out and nearly succeed in kidnapping Dax, but Sisko, Odo, et. al. are able to stop them just as they're about to board a ship on the docking ring.  However in a surprise twist, it turns out the mysterious strangers have an extradition order for Dax, who is wanted for murder on their planet.  It turns out that this planet, which I don't remember the name of and don't care to look up, was roiled in civil war until a couple of decades ago, and back when Jadzia Dax was still Kurzon Dax, he was assigned to this planet where he befriended the general whose death ultimately sparked the end of the civil war, and Dax is the prime suspect in both his murder, and in traitorously passing information on to the opposing army.  What's weird is that Dax refuses to tell Sisko what's going on, and she doesn't even seem remotely interested in defending herself.  Sisko is able to convince Dax's would be kidnappers that since Dax is on a Bajoran station, Bajoran authorities must decide whether the extradition order applies.  So he sends Odo off to Planet Whateveritscalled to see what he can learn about the murder, and meanwhile he proceeds to argue to a Bajoran judge that since Dax is Jadzia Dax now instead of Kurzon Dax, she is a different person from the one named in the extradition order.  There's a bunch of back and forth about the continuity of Trill identity between hosts, while over on Planet Whateveritscalled, Odo learns that the circumstantial evidence does point to Kurzon Dax being the only plausible killer.  He meets with the murdered general's wife, who insists that Kurzon Dax and the general were best of friends, and seems inordinately interested in how Dax is doing.  Eventually he learns why, and gets the general's wife to return with him to DS9 where she confesses that Kurzon Dax was not the traitor because on the night when the general was betrayed, she and Dax were spending the night together, as they were secretly having an affair at the time.  The reason Jadzia Dax was refusing to talk was that Kurzon Dax had been sworn to secrecy by the general's wife, because Dax didn't want to tarnish the memory of this general, who is a revered figure on this newly peaceful planet.  Another reason is that, while she and the general's wife are still the only ones who know, it was actually the general who turned traitor, and was killed by the opposition's army.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of the episode.  The trial itself per se is a fairly standard, if competent, Star Trek trial episode, but it ultimately serves to give us an excuse to do a lot of explaining about what the deal is with Trills, which had never been satisfactorily explained to this point, and which was much needed (like up to this point it still wasn't entirely clear whether or not the hosts were even generally speaking, willing participants in this process).  It wasn't the most elegant of info-dumps, but then again, it's impossible for an episode like this not to suffer from that.  And what's more is they do a pretty good job of exploring what the ethical implications would be of the actions committed by a Trill for a new host.  Jadzia Dax is not the same exact person as Kurzon Dax, but Dax the symbiont is still at least in part responsible for everything they did while residing in every other host over the course of their life.  This leads to some fairly nuanced stuff about the weightiness of decisions made by Trill.  Because although Jadzia Dax didn't have an affair with the general's wife, she still feels guilty about what Kurzon Dax did.  Ultimately this is a really interesting idea, but it's kind of undercut by a couple of things.  First, Dax still isn't a very well-written and fully-formed character of her own yet; outside of this episode, she's mostly been a smiling MPDG who seems almost implausibly tolerant of creepy behavior from the likes of Bashir and Quark, and otherwise she's just been another source of technobabbly dialogue, and it doesn't help that here, where she's finally given an interesting story of her own, she spends the majority of the episode stoically refusing to talk while the two male characters who have a crush on her try to save her life.  Something about that is a little off.  And secondly, while Kurzon Dax did a kind of shitty thing, his sin of having an affair with a woman whose husband seems like a kind of shitty person doesn't at all seem to match the punishment that's being offered, nor does it seem like something that Jadzia Dax should be quite so tormented about.  Overall though, this was still a solid episode, and easily DS9's most genuinely philosophical story to this point. B

Not fully-formed? She has loads of character traits! She's smart and pretty and flirty and fun and just waiting to lift some sad sack Trek writer out of his doldrums. She's everyone's favorite manic pixie dream alien!

Geordi is creepy as fuck when it comes to women, but I couldn't hate him as a character, because I find LeVar Burton to be a very endearing dude. He wasn't given much to do, acting-wise. I agree though that Terry Farrell has no acting skills whatsoever. She's strikingly beautiful and that's why they picked her I'm sure. 

So far Farrell seems like the weak link acting-wise on DS9, yeah, but I dunno if I'd say she's any worse so far than anyone outside of Stewart and Spiner on Season 1 of TNG.

I do wholeheartedly agree with you re:  Levar Burton.  While he probably has a kind of limited range as an actor, he seems like a charming, decent person who had to make the best of a lot of cringe-worthy writing on TNG.  He's also probably the first actor I knew by name and Geordi may be the first character I thought of as a fictional person played by an actor, in that one of the few things I remember of kind of occasionally watching TNG as a small child when my dad had it on, was being told that the guy who played Geordi was also the Reading Rainbow guy.  So I also find it very hard to dislike Geordi.

Season 1, Episode 9:  "The Passenger" -  After a brief 26 month break, I'm back with my review of "The Passenger", the next episode of Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine.  I ended up falling behind writing these reviews back when I was initially watching the show; then after finishing the first season, I quit watching for a while, and when I returned to the show, I didn't remember a bunch of stuff that had happened, so, this being Trek's least episodic series, I decided I'd rewatch Season 1, and this time review all the post-"Dax" episodes for this thread.  So here we go.

We open the episode with some cringeworthy bragging by Bashir about his skills at 24th Century doctoring as he and Kira are returning from some planet in the DS9 runabout Rio Grande, when they receive a distress signal from another ship.  Bashir and Kira beam aboard, quickly realize that the ship's air will only be breathable for a couple more minutes due to a fire, and start searching for survivors.  Bashir finds an alien woman lying half-conscious on the floor next to a locked door that the woman tells the doctor not to open, as the prisoner inside is very dangerous.  Not heeding her warning, Bashir proceeds to open the door, and then attempts to attend to the gravely injured alien man in the room behind the door.  His efforts are unsuccessful, however, as the alien grabs Bashir by the throat, gasps "Make...me...live..." and then immediately dies. Some doctoring, there, Bashir.

Bashir and Kira return to DS9 with the alien woman who warned Bashir about the prisoner.  After she recovers from her injuries, we learn that her name is Tycho Kojada or something along those lines, and she is a Kobliad, as was Ventika, the prisoner she was transporting before her ship got all fucked up.  Kojada, who has been pursuing Ventika for 20 years in order to apprehend him for killing others in order to prolong his own life, is very intent on ensuring that Ventika is actually dead.  She makes Bashir promise to do a thorough autopsy and genetic analysis of Ventika's corpse, and to check her ship for organic lifeforms hiding out.  

Then Quark and Odo have a conversation about unrequited love and solitude while Quark acts like a massive creep towards Dax.  Odo warns Quark that he'd better not be attempting to do anything to the shipment of something called diridium that'll be arriving in a couple of days, and then leaves.  He's immediately accosted by a man dressed in a Starfleet uniform who looks exactly like Andy Richter.  This guy's name is Lt. George Primmon, he's with Starfleet security, and he's fucking pissed that Odo would leak news of the diridium shipment to Quark.  

Bashir holds a conference with Sisko, Kira, and Dax saying that Ventika's autopsy came back pretty normal, and then proceeds to give us an info dump about the Kobliad.  The Kobliad are a dying species who need diridium to live, and as diridium is so scarce that the Federation cannot provide them with enough of it, Ventika was seeking to hijack the shipment headed for DS9 in order to steal it for himself.  

Sisko meets with Primmon in his office, and when Primmon tells him that he thinks Odo sucks shit at security officer stuff, Sisko tells him to shut the fuck up and that he could learn a thing or two from Odo, who obviously leaked the news about the diridium shipment to Quark to let Quark know that he knew that Quark already knew about the shipment.

Primmon apologizes to Odo for being such a dick, and then proceeds to pester Odo into showing him his security plans for the diridium shipment, but they've been erased from the computer, so Odo can't do this.  Dax informs Odo the ship's memory has been wiped, and, in the funniest moment of the episode, when Odo goes "That's impossible!" Kojada pops into frame from out of nowhere and immediately responds with "Oh it's possible, all right!  Ventika did the same thing on Rigel VII!"  This was not necessarily a very well acted or well directed or well written moment, but I nevertheless cannot stress enough that it was still very good.

Kojada is certain that Ventika is still alive somehow and that he's using an illegal shunt to hack into the computer system, and her seemingly paranoid suspicions are backed up when Odo and Primmon find such a shunt on the station.  Odo, meanwhile, threatens to resign his post over Primmon.  Sisko tells him he's going to need to learn to work together with Primmon but that on joint exercises like this, Odo will be in command of security.

Dax then tells Sisko that somebody tried to break into the cargo bay of Kojada's ship, probably to steal some sort of computer chip that has a dogshit 90s CGI map of the human brain on it that Ventika had in his possession when Kojada placed him under arrest.

In his casino, Quark is crawling around on hands and knees in the dark looking for random coins people have dropped when a man grabs him from behind and demands in a whisper to know if he's hired mercenaries to steal the diridium.  Quark doesn't realize the fact that it's very obviously Bashir, and thinks it's Ventika, and tells him that he thought Ventika was dead, but he'll hire the mercenaries anyway.

Bashir tells Kojada that Ventika's DNA scan came back normal, so he's not a clone or something.  And Dax tells Bashir that Ventika's shitty computer program about the human brain suggests that he may have found a way of storing a second person's neural patterns inside somebody's brain.  This leads them to hypothesize that Ventika may have transferred his consciousness into Kojada before she died.  Sisko points out that this makes no sense, as Kojada has been insistently asserting that Ventika is alive.  Bashir and Dax say that it's possible that Kojada is unaware that Ventika is inhabiting her brain, and in any case, Odo argues that she needs to be kept out of any security plans for the upcoming diridium shipment.

Upon learning that she no longer has access to the security plans, Kojada immediately loses her shit, and demands that Odo keep an eye on Quark.  Kojada then goes to spy on Quark while he's meeting with the mercenaries he's hired to steal the diridium, but she falls off a balcony onto the ground.

Before losing consciousness in the infirmary, Kojada claims that she was pushed off the balcony by Ventika.  Dax, meanwhile, finds a microscopic generator implanted under one of Ventika's fingernails and says that it could have been used to transfer his neural patterns into the glial cells of another person. 

Odo gets super mad when he learns that Lt. Primmon isn't assisting Kira with the final preparations for the diridium shipment, but then he learns that this is because Primmon was searching all the nonessential computer systems for another of Ventika's illegal shunts.  He finds one that would have shut the station down and prevented them from doing anything for at least an hour, and he realizes that Primmon has been helpful after all. 

Quark leads the mercenaries to the Rio Grande, which Ventika has assured him will be available for the mercenaries to hijack, but when he gets there, he's horrified to discover that Bashir is standing there in the craft waiting for them.  Bashir seems weird and assures them that it's all right, and he tells Quark and the mercenaries to join him.  

The freighter carrying the diridium comes through the wormhole, about the same time that Kira notices that the Rio Grande is departing the station and Dax shows up saying that she can't find Bashir, whose comm badge was left in the infirmary.  The station computers tell Sisko et. al. that Bashir was the one who authorized the Rio Grande's departure.  

Bashir and the mercenaries beam aboard the bridge of the freighter with the diridium, kill or stun the crew, and take over the ship.  However, since Primmon found Ventika's illegal shunt, they are caught in the station's tractor beam.  Ventika, controlling Bashir, opens a channel with DS9, and tells Sisko that unless he releases the freighter from the tractor beam, he will put the ship into warp, which will kill Ventika, Bashir, and everyone else aboard, and also spread toxic diridium throughout the star system, causing entire planets to have to evacuate.  He gives Sisko one minute to make up his mind about what to do.

Sisko et. al. can't simply beam Bashir aboard DS9 as the freighter's shields are up, but Dax says that since she has a copy of Ventika's neural patterns, she could send them along the tractor beam at the frequency of the freighter's shields so that they interfere with Ventika's brainwaves and allow Bashir to take control of his body and let down the shields so they can beam him back to the station.  Sisko opens a channel with Ventika/Bashir again and stalls for a bit while Dax does the aforementioned technobabble shit.  They're able to successfully give Bashir control over his body for just long enough to get him to lower the freighter's shields and beam him aboard DS9.  

Once he's on the bridge, Sisko immediately stuns Bashir and they bring him to the infirmary where they're able to beam Ventika's neural patterns out of Bashir's glial cells and into a small metal disc prop that Dax calls a "micro-containment field".  

After Kojada heals from her injuries she tells Bashir that none of this was his fault and asks if she can take possession of the prisoner again.  Sisko is like "Yeah, sure," and Kojada wordlessly vaporizes the "micro-containment field" and walks away without saying another word to the crew of the DS9 who have repeatedly saved her life and helped her fulfill her lifelong dream of bringing Ventika to justice.

What did I think of this episode?

This was probably one of the better episodes of the season thus far.  It was certainly a lot better than that godawful Q episode or the one where everyone on DS9 comes down with a weird viral aphasia, that's for sure.  I think the B-plot, with the conflict between Odo and Lt. Primmon was perhaps the best material of the episode.  This is one of the first times that conflict between the Bajoran and Starfleet parts of the DS9 crew has felt organic.  I hope we see more of that guy who looks exactly like Andy Richter.  

The A-plot was a bit more a mixed bag.  On the one hand it's a pretty suspenseful story that's told pretty well.  Although it's a mystery to the crew what's going on, the show clearly doesn't expect the viewers to be surprised that Bashir is the one who's been possessed by Ventika.  The technobabble is also largely ancillary to the plot rather than the focus of the episode itself, which is good.  Also, while the actress playing Kojada isn't exactly good, I was very amused by the way that her character would just suddenly show up in the middle of other people's conversations or just walk away in the middle of talking to someone without saying goodbye.  On the other hand, a couple of the plot holes were a bit too glaring for me to get over.  For instance, both Bashir and Kira saw Ventika grab Bashir by the throat right before he died, so it seems odd that the idea never occurred to Kira at least that this was the means by which Ventika's consciousness may have been transferred to another person.  Also, when Bashir confronted Quark while being possessed by Ventika in the middle of the episode, it was still incredibly obvious from the sound of his voice that it was Bashir.  Why didn't Quark realize this as well?  On the whole, though, this was not a bad episode of DS9 for me to return to as I resume these reviews.  Especially considering how horrible a lot of the remaining episodes in Season 1 are.  C

You should keep track of how many times various character engage in sexual intercourse with each other.

In what respect?

Spoiler alert: You’re going to have to take that one up yourself at some point in (I think) Season 4.

Stalled out years ago on our DS9 rewatch with like 7 episodes to go, but the temptation to say "fuck it" and start all over again is growing by the hour.

MOVE ALONG TO MOVE ALONG HOME. Allamaraine, third shap!

Did you win?!

Except Profit and Lace.