Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
S3E21: The Die Is Cast
This epsiode marks the start of the ''complcated serial" DS9 and moves away from the "story of the week, watch in any order" format. It gives you a great pay off after two and a hlaf years of buliding things up.

The founder homeworld being, ahem, close to the Wormhole, isolated and unguarded was a HUGE red flag....even the first time I watched the epsiode way back when.

It's a great moment, as soon as you get to the ''how many Jem Hardar ships are coming out of the Nebula?". For context, just about all of TNG and DS9 has been models up to this point. This means you saw a LOT of slow moving two dimensional battles. TNG is infamous for ''evade patter delta"....and then they would, er, tip the model to the side a bit. And TNG had a lot of Data Talk for a battle-"the ship has spun around and under us and fired(but we never SEE that happen....)''.

Also Star Trek had an oddly small universe. We never see much more then five or so ships(aka models) on the screen at the same time. Even when they talk about a ''fleet" they only talk about like twenty ships. And along the same lines the Obsidian Order/Tal Shair attack fleet is small too.

But then...then...the Jem'Harda come out of the nebula....with 150 ships. More ships then have ever even been mentioned in Trek. They are CGI ships, of course, but it's a great moment to say ''good bye small Trek".

The anti changling devise is a bit odd: why did Odo not just smash it? And is not just ''normal humanoid Odo a decent threat?" At the end he knocks out Garak no problem...but does not shapeshift into a ''Tarzokian punching beast".

And the Lovok Changeling frees Odo sure as ''Ape does not harm Ape"....but then just lets him go into a huge space batlle with a ''good luck?"