Yora reviews Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - All of it!

[Rodin]

Kira has always been very clear about that. She always insisted that anyone who wants to learn skills from her is asking to be become a terrorist. And given how stubborn she always has been, she won't fake regret even to try to save her life.
It does come across as somewhat cold and confrontational, but she seems to see her past as something for which no apology will make any difference, and instead of defending herself, she accepts any consequences that come to her. An approach to gray characters that I don't think I've seen anywhere else.

The immediate example that comes to mind for me is Scar from Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. When Winry confronts him about how he killed her parents, his response is "Anything I could say would be an excuse. The fact is, I killed your parents. Do with me as you will." He doesn't apologize, but neither does he try to shift the blame or dodge the consequences of his actions.

Kira's attitude is definitely similar - the Bajorans were at war for their very survival as a people, and terrible things happen in war. Kira's atonement for her terrorist days is trying to make sure nobody ELSE has to go through what she did, as we see when she takes Ziyal under her wing.

[Yora]

S5E12: The Begotten

Odo comes to Bashir with severe back pain because he's not used to taking care of his body. Quark barges in because he got his hands on a container holding a dead shapeshifter, but Odo immediately realizes that it's still alive and just very sick. It also seems to be extremely young and lacking the ability to take on solid forms, so it's not a threat to anyone. Bashir is able to remote the radioactive particles that contaminate it, making it look much healthier, but it does not appear to have any body control yet.

Meanwhile Kira is having her child. The O'Briens are of course attending, since it's their child, and Kira's boyfriend Shakar also comes to the station to be with her.

Odo is determined to raise the shapeshifter much more gentle and nurturing than he was, but of course Doctor Mora heard about it and immediately came to get a look at it. He wants to go to work immediately, but Odo doesn't want him to do anything to it, but Mora explains that he knows much better what temperatures and nutrients are the most healthy at this stage. Odo agrees to let him stay and make suggestions, but he will make all the decisions for how to help the shapeshifter to develop its ability and mental capacity.

Odo is very hands off, but Mora thinks the shapeshifter's development is extremely slow. They quickly get back to their old arguments about whether Mora's methods to get Odo to develop his abilities were justified or cruel. Sisko drops by and brings news that Starfleet is very interested in the shapeshifter. They are willing to let Odo and Mora handle it, but only as long as they are making good progress in getting it to a state where it can communicate and be questioned. Mora tries to explain to Odo that he was in a similar situation with the Cardassians and he had to be somewhat forceful in his methods or he would have lost the ability to continue working with Odo.

Odo agrees to an experiment in which a low current is passed through the walls of the shapeshifter's container to get it to move into the center. When he thinks they are ready to go, Mora tells Odo that he should be the one turning the device on. Odo really doesn't want to do it, but without any reason to move, it won't even realize that it has the ability to do so. When the current is turned on, it moves into a ball in the center, which gets Odo excited, but Mora reminds him that this is exactly the same reaction he had back then. Later they try to release it from a cylindrical container, and after first landing in a puddle, it resumes a cylindrical shape on the first try. Odo says when he did this exercise he also could do it the first time, he just didn't do it because he felt like being stubborn and uncooperative. While they are talking, the shepeshifter even tries to roughly emulate Odo's face.

They are both very excited by this development and Mora admits that Odo's more nurturing treatment of the shapeshifter made it develop significantly faster than Odo did. And he is a little bit sad Odo got it to form a bond with him, with Mora never managed. But Odo also starts to see how much Mora's attention and commitment really helped him. Late into the night he invites Quark to celebrate with him, but then gets a call that the shapeshifter's vital signs are critical. They take it to Bashir and apparently radiation it was exposed to did some permanent damage, which is now killing it. Bashir and Mora try to save it, but Odo can't do anything to help except stay out of the way. They have no success and as it dies, Odo holds it in his hands. It is absorbed into his body, unlocking his ability to change his shape.

Odo takes Mora to his shuttle back to Bajor and explains that he never understood what he meant to Mora. And he now also feels bad for heading out on his own as soon as he had the opportunity and cutting contact with Mora.

--

Well, this didn't last long. Barely half a season during which Odo was a full humanoid. I personally feel like there never really was much of a point to it. Sure, there are a couple of episodes that address it, but it really didn't feel worth the effort. It will be interesting to keep an eye out to see if the whole thing left any real impact on Odo that justified it.

It's an okay episode, but nothing very remarkable in my opinion. It's a continuation of S2E12 The Alternate, but that one was a much stronger episode with better conflict and tension. Here the conflict feels a bit like a half-hearted reheat. The birth of Kira's child doesn't really add anything to it, as they are all about the people in attendance being bored and bickering with each other as they wait. There's no real story to it.

I don't want to complain about this one, but I don't think there is anything to miss here.

[Cikomyr]

The first time this episode aired, I was really entranced by the scene where the changeling tries to mimic Odo's face. It was magical.

I have a soft spot for this episode. It's a nice twist of the old "you understand your parents better when you become one yourself"

[Gnoman]

The immediate example that comes to mind for me is Scar from Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. When Winry confronts him about how he killed her parents, his response is "Anything I could say would be an excuse. The fact is, I killed your parents. Do with me as you will." He doesn't apologize, but neither does he try to shift the blame or dodge the consequences of his actions.

Not quite the same thing. Scar killed those particular people in an unthinking act of hatred (he saw the color of their eyes and reacted explosively), and it had nothing to do with his private war against Amestris. Kira's innocent victims were a cold-bloodedly accepted side effect of well-planned strikes against the enemy.

[Rodin]

I quite enjoyed seeing the deeper exploration of Odo and Mora's relationship. The first time we meet him there's an implication that Dr. Mora was kind of abusive and treated Odo more like a science project than a child. In this episode we see that while that's kind of true, Mora really did care deeply about Odo from quite early on. And what's more, his parenting methods were not entirely wrong either. It would have been very easy for them to make Dr. Mora's methods incorrect to show how much better Odo is at it. Instead, we see a mix of the two - Odo would have been too soft, but his love and care does give good results.

I recall reading somewhere that they took away Odo's shapeshifting to save money, but the fact that it's only half a season makes me question whether that's true. From a story perspective, I found the Changelings removing his ability to shapeshift to be a very fitting punishment for murder. They are unwilling to kill Odo in response, so making him not be a Changeling is the ultimate punishment - the worst form of solitary confinement a shapeshifter can imagine. Locked into a single form, never to be able to join the Great Link again.

From that perspective, Odo getting his powers back here feels unearned. He didn't really grow much as a result of being a solid, and there's no additional confrontation with the Founders over him being a Changeling again. The plot thread just kind of...dies.

Kira giving birth feels like something they were required to put in. Having gone with the pregnancy plotline to hide Nana Visitor's real-life pregnancy, they had to resolve that story once she had her child. I suppose they could have put more effort into it, but I think it's fine.

[Traab]

I agree with you rodin, there doesnt seem to have been much growth for odo before he got his powers back. I would have liked to see more of an adjustment period as he adapts to being a solid, develops more empathy for what it means to be such. Things like that. Sometimes griping about a sore back didnt really do it for me. I would have liked the idea of odo becoming more like the solids in outlook to be a fitting change and backfiring against the founders like that as he becomes less willing to ever be a part of their great link.

[Yora]

I recall reading somewhere that they took away Odo's shapeshifting to save money, but the fact that it's only half a season makes me question whether that's true.

It doesn't hold up. Odo has barely using his shapechanging ability before anyway. It never was used much at any point in the show.

[Yora]

S5E13: For the Uniform

Sisko makes an undercover trip into the badlands to meet a man who claims to have information about the activities of Edington. When he arrives at the meeting place, he is greeted by Edington himself, who says they already caught the traitor and marooned him on an uninhabited planet. He berates Sisko about the Federation abandoning their colonists to the Cardassians, and Sisko tells him the people are only living in caves in poverty because people like Edington are telling them they can beat the Cardassians if they refuse moving to Federation worlds. Edington beams away and Sisko calls the Defiant to beam him over and pursue his ship.

Edington lures the Defiant into the Badlands, and when they try to disable his ship, Edington activates the sabotage programs he left in the computer before he left. He calls Sisko to give more speeches and has his own ship shot a couple small holes into the Defiant just to piss off Sisko some more. He also sends him a text file of Les Miserables. They make it back to the station, but O'Brien thinks it will take two weeks to get it back to full service. Odo also discovered similar programs in the station's computers, and isn't sure if he found all of them.
"Captain, did you remind Starfleet Security that they stationed Edington here because they didn't trust me?" "No." "Please do." *mic drop*
Worf also has news that the Maquis captured a freighter, but it didn't seem to be very useful stuff.

Starfleet is also assigning someone else to hunt for Edington. Sisko has been at it for over half a year and not accomplished anything yet, and they think Edington has too much leverage to trick and bait Sisko. And Sisko does indeed get very worked up about it. The station gets news that Edington used the chemicals from the freighter to make chemical weapons that specifically target Cardassians but otherwise don't harm the environment or are dangerous to other species. And the Maquis still should have huge amounts of the chemicals.

Sisko orders O'Brien to get the Defiant started. It will fly, though not at full speed, and the weapons are working, but targeting is barely working. They also don't have internal communication and Nog gets assigned to be message runner between the Bridge and the Engine Room. Just undocking from the station and turning the ship around turns out to be a huge ordeal.

They actually find Edington in the Badlands pretty quickly and Edington makes another call to Sisko to taunt him. Once Edington hangs up, the sensors identify the ship as a decoy. Sisko immediately takes the Defiant back to the station, and once out of the Badlands they get an emergency call from the Starfleet ship that was disabled by the Maquis in a trap. The captain transmits Sisko a coded message they intercepted, and they send it to Odo on the station to decypher it. When Odo calls back, he identified it as a nonsensical Breen children's song. He assumes that it actually is a signal to a Maquis group to carry out a pre-established plan that involves the Breen. Which he suspects could be about cold storage systems for their chemical weapons. Sisko has Worf check sensor logs of Federation border posts near Breen territory, and they did pick up suspected Maquis ships, so Sisko decides to try catch up to them.

They can narrow down the Cardassian colonies in that region that Edington might attack to two, and Sisko thinks he will attack the less tempting target and try not being predictable. When the Defiant arrives, the two Maquis ships have already dropped the chemical weapons, but are still very close by. They destroy one of the ships and the other one turns around to disable one of the Cardassian evacuation ships to keep the Defiant busy with saving it from falling out of orbit.

Sisko start to read Les Miserables. Not because he thinks the villain really has anything in common with himself, but because Edington might make that comparison because he sees himself as the hero of the story, and that could give Sisko insights into what he is planning. Sisko comes up with a plan to play up to Edington's idea of a villain and bait him into heroically sacrificing himself to save his people from him. He sends a message to a Maquis stronghold and tells them to evacuate now, because he will be destroying their base with chemical weapons. With only a minute on the countdown, Edington finally calls Sisko to tell him he knows he's bluffing. But Sisko doesn't and has the two bombs detonated high above the settlement, triggering an immediate evacuation. He tells Edington that the Maquis has become a major security threat and his solution is to make all the contested planets uninhabitable to humans. Edington says the civilians have nothing to do with any Maquis attacks, but Sisko tells him the Cardassian colonists also didn't do anything.
Eventually Edington offers to hand over his chemical weapons and turn himself in if Sisko stops targeting any more of the Maquis world. Which Sisko accepts.

--

Apparently a lot of people really like Sisko and Edington arguing with each other. I mostly think it's pretty corny. Doesn't really do much for me. But even despite of that, this episode is still really quite decent. Good pacing and tension, and all of that.

But what really bothers is the casual use of chemical weapons in this episode. The way it is portrayed, both Sisko and Edington release deadly poisons into the atmosphere, which gives the colonist a good amount of time to evacuate the planet before the deadly clouds reach them. So supposedly, nobody got actually physically hurt. This is still ethnic cleansing and the use of horrifying terror weapons against civilian populations. It's equivalent to driving into a town and setting everyone's houses on fire. And then telling them to start running, or you will burn them alive as well. How much time do the people have to evacuate their homes? A hour or two perhaps? How do you expect everyone to pack up their entire life and arrange interstellar transportation for it in an hour? Most people will have lost almost everything they had. No court would have any doubt that this clearly falls under crimes against humanity.
And Sisko did it. And he feels smug about it and Dax cheers him for it. This is seriously messed up. Having chemical weapons not touching anyone also complete trivializes the fact that basically every use of chemical weapon does hit lots of people.

Most of the story good, those casual chemical weapon shenenigans horrifying. So I split the difference and still call it okay, but seriously. This might possibly be the most messed up Star Trek episode ever!

[Rodin]

Eddington doing it is entirely in character for him. It's an extreme way to remove the Cardassians while being "technically" non-lethal, so Eddington can pretend to be the good guy and have a clear conscience despite performing a monstrous act.

My jaw hit the floor when Sisko did it right back, and it proceeded to drill a hole in the floor and dig me a basement when the story treated it as the right thing to do and didn't result in Sisko going to jail for war crimes.

Just...screw this episode. Some of the banter was fun, but the "tee hee I left a virus that works because you stupidly didn't flush the computer systems" irked the heck out of me. The Maquis using such an easily traceable message was dumb. And the chemical weapon stuff....yech.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Eddington doing it is entirely in character for him. It's an extreme way to remove the Cardassians while being "technically" non-lethal, so Eddington can pretend to be the good guy and have a clear conscience despite performing a monstrous act.

My jaw hit the floor when Sisko did it right back, and it proceeded to drill a hole in the floor and dig me a basement when the story treated it as the right thing to do and didn't result in Sisko going to jail for war crimes.

Just...screw this episode. Some of the banter was fun, but the "tee hee I left a virus that works because you stupidly didn't flush the computer systems" irked the heck out of me. The Maquis using such an easily traceable message was dumb. And the chemical weapon stuff....yech.

To me it prevents Cardassian retaliation on a military level. Who instead of giving the colonists ample time to evacuate would have just bombed them from orbit. Sisko's response and by proxy Starfleet perceived response is they won't tolerate the use of these weapons and will respond in kind. No one can claim that Starfleet secretly supports the Maquis after that.

[Yora]

S5E14: In Purgatory's Shadow

Odo is remodelling his quarters back to his needs as a shapeshifter. Dax picks up a signal from the communications satellite in the Gamma Quadrant that seems to be encrypted in Cardassian military codes. Since no Cardassian ships have been through the wormhole since the fleet of the Obsidian Order tried to kill the Founders, this seems to be very important and while they wait for Bajoran Intelligence to decrypt it, they ask Garak to give it a try as well. When he breaks the code, the message is only an old survey report.

Right after delivering his findings, he tries to steal a shuttle, but Bashir is already inside waiting for him and takes him to Sisko. Garak admits that the message was really a call for help from Enebran Tain. And he is certain it's real because it's a code he and Tain created for their own communication. Sisko agrees it needs to be investigated and Worf volunteers to take him to the Gamma Quadrant to go looking for Tain and possible Federation prisoners. Dax is rather upset when she hears about it from someone else? "Were you afraid I would humiliate you by crying in public?" "You are capable of many things." She takes his collection of Klingon operas hostage as an incentive for him to come back quickly before she misplaces the data rods.

Garak is talking with Ziyal, who is very worried about him going into the Gamma Quadrant. He is touched by her concern for him, but assures her that he will be fine. Then Dukat just happens to show up and is really angry at seeing Garak with his daughter. Sisko sees Worf to the shuttle and reminds him to always keep an eye on Garak. "I will kill him at the first sign of betrayal, but I promise to return his body intact." "I assume this was a joke." "We will see..."

During the flight, Garak entertains himself by trying to convince Worf to sponsor his application to Starfleet.

Dukat goes to see Kira to have a serious talk about her letting Ziyal talk with Garak. Kira doesn't like Garak herself, but she thinks that's really not something she has to intervene with. She didn't agree to look after Ziyal as a favor to Dukat, but to protect her from Dukat taking her into battles with the Klingons.

Worf and Garak trace the signal back into Dominion space. Worf was ordered to only investigate and not take any risks, but Garak persuades him to take a course through a nebula that will hide them from Dominon sensors. Inside the nebula they fly right into a huge Jem'Hadar fleet. Worf is certain the Dominion is assembling a force to invade the Alpha Quadrant and sends a message to the station before they are captured.

The message makes it to the station and minutes later the connection to two sensor posts in the Gamma Quadrant are lost. Sisko has an emergency message send to Starfleet and puts the station on red alert. Kira takes the Defiant to investigate and quickly returns confirming Worf's warning. Dukat tells Ziyal that she has to go to Cardassia because the station is no longer safe.

Worf and Garak are taken to a prison on an asteroid and get immediately on the bad side of the guards. The warden is quite happy to have another Klingon for dueling, and they find General Martok among the prisoners. He tells that that he's been there for two years and knows Worf only by reputation. He takes them to the prisoner barracks and takes them to Tain, whose health is failing badly. But he is only disappointment in Garak screwing up his rescue attempt and getting himself imprisoned as well. In the prison, Worf and Garak also meet Bashir, who has been kidnapped from his bed during a medical conference a month ago.

Sisko gets informed that Starfleet reinforcements will take two days to arrive, but even then the Dominion fleet greatly outnumbers them, so he enlists Dukat to help with defending the station. Sisko's plan is focus all efforts to prevent the fleet from coming through the wormhole, which does include the final option to destroy it's entrance. It won't harm the Prophets inside the wormhole, and they never needed it to communicate with the Bajorans, so if the threat is Bajor being destroyed by the Dominion, he considers that an acceptable sacrifice. It also will mean no hope to ever rescue Worf and Garak.

Ziyal tells Dukat that she won't be going to Cardassia and wants to stay with the Bajorans. Dukat insists that in these things she has to obey her father, but she doesn't budge and so he storms off in anger.

Tain is dying and Garak goes to sit with him. He asks Garak what happened to his many enemies, and Garak tells him that they're all dead, which greatly relieves Tain. He tells Garak to promise him to not die in the prison as well, and to escape and avenge him. Garak only asks him to at least accept him as his son for once. Which he kind of does, but remains evasive to the end.

The relay across the wormhole picks up the approaching Jem'Hadar ships and Sisko gives the order to destroy the entrance. But the modified phasers fail in the crucial moments and the invasion fleet comes though.

--

This episode is a continuation of S3E21 The Die Is Cast. And like the last time, this is an unlabled two-parter. I think it was a great move the first time, and while it's not nearly as clever and surprising here, it works quite well again. In season 3, it only became evident that the episode wouldn't be wrapped up in the last 30 seconds. Here it's pretty obvious if you take a look at the clock in the last 10 minutes. But it still makes the first half or so of the episode seem less significant compared to what you would expect if you know the whole thing is a 90 minute big event story.

I thought Kira was getting way too friendly with Dukat in season 4. Nice to see this somewhat corrected here in an elegant way that doesn't strictly contradict what had happened so far.

Ziyal is basically telling Dukat that she gave that thing with living as a Cardassian a try, but it really isn't working out and she has much more of a future with the Bajorans. She tries to be somewhat diplomatic about it, but makes it clear when Dukat tells her Cardassians have to obey their fathers.

Nice to see Tain again, though sadly he really only has one real scene. That he is Garak's father was quite a surprise the first time, but given both their habits to always lie and deceive everyone they talk to, it's really completely believable. I wonder if the writers had already planned that back in S3E21 The Die is cast, or maybe even S2E22 The Wire? It also felt very appropriate that Tain would only acknowledge it in so far that he directly responds to it without denials. And Garak then takes it without much grief, knowing that this is the best he was going to get.

Since Martok doesn't know Worf, it means that so far we've always only saw his replacement and never the real one. Which matches the hints at the start of the season that the Martok changeling gave Gowron the idea to attack the Cardassians. Bashir still wears the old uniform, so he had been replaced since at least S3E10. It seems a bit strange that the Founders would pick someone with such highly specialized skills to replace. But it also means that it really was another shapeshifter that helped Odo and Mora with removing the toxins from the sick one they found. Even more strangely, they already replaced Bashir once, and the Founders must have known about it, because they know that the same agent was later killed by Odo. And we also had someone store his memories and personality in Bashir's subconscious early in season 1. The murderer is always the buttler. And the fake officer is always Bashir.

I'll take a closer look at the A-plot when it's wrapped up next episode.

[Rodin]

Overall a fantastic episode (and I was quite shocked to find the plot kicking off in such a big way in an episode 14, an area of the season normally relegated to Lwaxana Troi and Ferengi episodes). Totally didn't see the fake Bashir coming either.

However, there were a few things that bugged me.

The first is the same old complaint I had back when the Dominion were introduced. There is a massive fleet on the other side of the wormhole. The station is not in position to fire on anything coming out of the wormhole.

And the number of ships on station is...one. Which isn't even there the whole episode.

I just...I can't even. The Federation has the dumbest military in all of Science Fiction.

But that's an old complaint. Let's get to the new one, shall we?

Are you telling me that with something as important as the "shut down the wormhole gun", O'Brien would NOT have done a double check to make sure it wasn't tampered with? And had Jadzia double check him to make sure neither of THEM is a shapeshifter? If there is anywhere in Starfleet that is prepared for shapeshifters sabotaging stuff, it should be the staff of DS9 that have had personal experience dealing with them on multiple occasions by this point. They would be paranoid as HELL about getting the modified phase beam doohickey to work correctly.

What's more, we're back to the "single point of failure". They've known about the Dominion and their desire to take over everything for two years now. Why did O'Brien have to frantically work to bash together a way to shut down the wormhole instead of having a way ready to go? Why isn't there a minefield in front of the wormhole? Why aren't there MULTIPLE separate devices designed to shut down the wormhole on a moment's notice to make sure the greatest threat to the Federation since the Borg cannot come through the only means of passage to the Alpha Quadrant?

Dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I realize locking the wormhole open was essential for the plot, but I just can't get over how bad the Federation are at this. No wonder Section 31 exists...although from a "in-universe" standpoint they dropped the ball on this one pretty hard too. I know, I know, they hadn't been invented yet.

[Yora]

If only someone could have guessed that the Dominion might conceivably try to attack the Alpha Quadrant.

Since the Defiant was send to the station, the Dominion has tried to get the Federation into a war with its neighbours twice, tried to orchestrate a coup of the Federation (there was a changeling walking around as Admiral Layton in Starfleet HQ), successfully caused a war between the Cardassians and Klingons, and destroyed the military capabilities of the two most efficient intelligence services.

In the meantime, the defense efforts of the Federation were to put a sensor satellite on the other side of the wormhole, so they would have a one minute warning before anything comes through.

If only there had been any warning that the Dominion might attack, which would have allowed someone to put up some fortifications. But when they attacked, nobody could ever have imagined the possibility.

[Seppl]

Dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I realize locking the wormhole open was essential for the plot, but I just can't get over how bad the Federation are at this. No wonder Section 31 exists...although from a "in-universe" standpoint they dropped the ball on this one pretty hard too. I know, I know, they hadn't been invented yet.

Here we see the great meta-dichotomy between early DS9 and late DS9. In early DS9, for budgetary and stylistic reasons, space travel was like age of sail. When 20 ships were a great fleet. When a heated battle meant two ships standing side-by-side and exchanging blows. When a state-of-the-art warship and a fortress could be expected to hold a choke point for several days. And late DS9 when computer effects and audience expectations led to spaceships working as they do in Star Wars. Where fleets have hundreds of ships and thousands of snub fighters. When even great battleships have the maneuverability of a modern day fighter jet. When a single escort ship and a fortified position are laughably inadequate in face of an expected enemy attack.

Well, yes, Starfleet looks incredibly dumb here, for good reasons. But they would not look as dumb as they do if fleets still had the size they did when the Defiant was assigned for defense to the station. Remember the Romulan fleet that was supposed to intervene in the Klingon civil war, and the fleet Starfleet send to prevent it? Just a handful of ships were expected to change the outcome of a species wide civil war at that time. And it was considered a big deal. Same for the fleet sent to intercept the Borg, an existential threat to the Federation. Another handful of ships, whose loss was a major blow to Starfleet.

[Gallowglass]

Here we see the great meta-dichotomy between early DS9 and late DS9. In early DS9, for budgetary and stylistic reasons, space travel was like age of sail. When 20 ships were a great fleet. When a heated battle meant two ships standing side-by-side and exchanging blows. When a state-of-the-art warship and a fortress could be expected to hold a choke point for several days. And late DS9 when computer effects and audience expectations led to spaceships working as they do in Star Wars. Where fleets have hundreds of ships and thousands of snub fighters. When even great battleships have the maneuverability of a modern day fighter jet. When a single escort ship and a fortified position are laughably inadequate in face of an expected enemy attack.

Well, yes, Starfleet looks incredibly dumb here, for good reasons. But they would not look as dumb as they do if fleets still had the size they did when the Defiant was assigned for defense to the station. Remember the Romulan fleet that was supposed to intervene in the Klingon civil war, and the fleet Starfleet send to prevent it? Just a handful of ships were expected to change the outcome of a species wide civil war at that time. And it was considered a big deal. Same for the fleet sent to intercept the Borg, an existential threat to the Federation. Another handful of ships, whose loss was a major blow to Starfleet.

I actually preferred Star Trek when the navies are smaller in number. I mean, the current U.S. Navy is made up of 490 ships. That's it. And its the largest Navy on Earth. I mean, there are 11 aircraft carriers. That's it. If Aircraft carriers are the equivalent of Galaxy class starships like the Enterprise, then a small number of ships spread over a vast quadrant of space... it makes sense that major space battles might be half a dozen ships total.

I like it better that way. Its more relatable and more dramatic and easier to see what's going on.

[bguy]

The first is the same old complaint I had back when the Dominion were introduced. There is a massive fleet on the other side of the wormhole. The station is not in position to fire on anything coming out of the wormhole.

And the number of ships on station is...one. Which isn't even there the whole episode.

I just...I can't even. The Federation has the dumbest military in all of Science Fiction.

Well as shown back in "The Search Part 2" all it takes to collapse the wormhole is a single runaway firing a single volley of photon torpedoes, so why would the Federation bother to station a whole fleet at DS9? It would be a waste of ships to tie down that many vessels at DS9 when all you need is a single runabout to protect the wormhole, and keeping a whole fleet at DS9 would probably be seen as a massive provocation by first the Cardassians (since Bajor is relatively close to their homeworld) and then later on by the Klingons and Dominion (who both know that a large fleet isn't necessary to defend the wormhole and thus would assume it was there as a prelude to attacking them.)

Are you telling me that with something as important as the "shut down the wormhole gun", O'Brien would NOT have done a double check to make sure it wasn't tampered with? And had Jadzia double check him to make sure neither of THEM is a shapeshifter? If there is anywhere in Starfleet that is prepared for shapeshifters sabotaging stuff, it should be the staff of DS9 that have had personal experience dealing with them on multiple occasions by this point. They would be paranoid as HELL about getting the modified phase beam doohickey to work correctly.

Now this I agree with (though the stupidity is on both sides here since given how important propping open the wormhole is to the Dominion, they really should have replaced O'Brian and Dax with Changelings as well (and probably Sisko also) to insure the sabotage worked.)

What's more, we're back to the "single point of failure". They've known about the Dominion and their desire to take over everything for two years now. Why did O'Brien have to frantically work to bash together a way to shut down the wormhole instead of having a way ready to go? Why isn't there a minefield in front of the wormhole? Why aren't there MULTIPLE separate devices designed to shut down the wormhole on a moment's notice to make sure the greatest threat to the Federation since the Borg cannot come through the only means of passage to the Alpha Quadrant?

Well again the Feds always had a very easy way to quickly collapse the wormhole. They are only having to scramble here because Sisko got cute, and decided they were going to collapse it in a way that wouldn't damage the wormhole instead of going with the much more direct option of just firing a few photon torpedoes at the wormhole. If they had had less time, Sisko probably would have just said to hell with it and ordered a photon strike instead. (And he probably assumed he could still employ the torpedo option as a backup plan and simply did not anticipate the Dominion sabotaging the plan in a manner that made the wormhole too stable for the torpedo option to work.)

[Rodin]

Here we see the great meta-dichotomy between early DS9 and late DS9. In early DS9, for budgetary and stylistic reasons, space travel was like age of sail. When 20 ships were a great fleet. When a heated battle meant two ships standing side-by-side and exchanging blows. When a state-of-the-art warship and a fortress could be expected to hold a choke point for several days. And late DS9 when computer effects and audience expectations led to spaceships working as they do in Star Wars. Where fleets have hundreds of ships and thousands of snub fighters. When even great battleships have the maneuverability of a modern day fighter jet. When a single escort ship and a fortified position are laughably inadequate in face of an expected enemy attack.

Well, yes, Starfleet looks incredibly dumb here, for good reasons. But they would not look as dumb as they do if fleets still had the size they did when the Defiant was assigned for defense to the station. Remember the Romulan fleet that was supposed to intervene in the Klingon civil war, and the fleet Starfleet send to prevent it? Just a handful of ships were expected to change the outcome of a species wide civil war at that time. And it was considered a big deal. Same for the fleet sent to intercept the Borg, an existential threat to the Federation. Another handful of ships, whose loss was a major blow to Starfleet.

Part of the problem I have here is that this isn't the first time we've seen a huge number of Dominion ships. I don't remember exactly how large the fleet that annihilated the Obsidian Order/Tal Shiar fleet was, but I'm pretty sure it was over 100 ships. There's no way that even a beefed up DS9 would be able to withstand that sort of assault.

And if DS9 had demonstrated the capability of defending (even temporarily) from fleets coming through the wormhole, I would also have less objections. But...they don't. The Dominion sends fleet after fleet through the wormhole while the Federation is in control of Deep Space 9, and they do not engage fleets as they come out of the wormhole a single time.

Still, it is pretty incredible to think that Wolf 359 represented Starfleet's entire military might that was able to engage a ship entering from outside Federation space and flying all the way to Earth itself...and consisted of 39 ships.

For comparison, the Spanish Armada consisted of 130 ships. The U.S. brought more than 700 ships to the Battle of Leyte Gulf. And that's one nation, on one planet. If you actually wanted to be realistic about it, the size of the fleets even after the change to large fleets are comically small on a galactic scale. That's not something I can fault the show for though - that's just standard "even fiction cannot represent the sheer numbers without getting overwhelmed" that's applicable to all Sci-Fi.

One thing DS9 does get right is that it casually tosses around that millions die in the Dominion War. I find that number entirely believable given the scale of the conflict.

[Androgeus]

While it’s still dumb that the wormhole isn’t better guarded, diplomatic issues would probably prevent The Federation from stationing a full fleet at DS9. I can’t see the Bajor being too welcoming to having a foreign fleet sat in orbit, there would definitely be parts of the populace that see The Federation as just Cardassians in sheep’s clothing.

[Aeson]

Still, it is pretty incredible to think that Wolf 359 represented Starfleet's entire military might that was able to engage a ship entering from outside Federation space and flying all the way to Earth itself...and consisted of 39 ships.

The TNG-era Federation "encompassed 8,000 lightyears," and while the shows and movies are far from consistent about how fast warp speed is, they rarely indicate sustainable warp speeds working out to anything much over a few thousand times the speed of light - and if you go by the TNG writers' guide then Warp 9 is only about 1,500 times the speed of light in the TNG era. However you want to interpret 8,000 lightyears as the measure of a volume of space, that makes Starfleet's ships relatively slow relative to the size of the Federation.

Given that the fleet assembled to face the Borg Cube at Wolf 359 was pulled together in about a week, I don't think it's completely implausible that only 40 or so ships were available - assuming all the ships came running at Warp 9 and taking the TNG writers' guide conversion of v_{realspace, apparent}=[warp factor]^10/3*c for warp factors up to 9, only ships within about 30 lightyears would have had time to arrive. DS9: The Sound of her Voice puts Warp 9.5 at about 50% faster than Warp 9, which could plausibly expand the region from which ships could have been pulled to form the fleet out to about 50 lightyears, and after that you can factor in whatever your standard multiplier for "the writers don't care what speed Warp Factor X works out to be, they just make up a number that works for them" happens to be, but at the end of the day you're almost certainly still left with "the ships that were pulled together to meet the Borg Cube at Wolf 359 were called together on short notice from a relatively small fraction of Federation space." Earth might be an important target in Federation space, but so, presumably, are Vulcan, Andoria, Tellar Prime, Betazed, Delta IV, Benzar, Ardana, Bolarus IX, Rigel IV, Risa, and all the other homeworlds of the various member species, and one would think that not all of those are right next door to one another, figuratively speaking.

There's also that most of TNG appears to take place in a relatively peaceful period of Federation history, so Starfleet could be assumed to be at relatively low peacetime force levels when Wolf 359 occurred, probably with its forces spread out to deal with brushfires and border skirmishes rather than concentrated to deal with a major threat like a Borg incursion or a major war with for example the Klingon Empire, whereas by mid-/late-season DS9 you'd think that Starfleet would have begun gearing up for war, even if DS9 itself has little to show for it beyond a single relatively small starship.

[Yora]

S5E15: By Inferno's Light

The Dominion fleet ignores the station and sets course to Cardassia. Dukat takes his ship after them and Kira tries to stop him, but he tells everyone that he's not going to fight, but made an alliance with the Dominion, which in turn made him the new Cardassian leader. O'Brien and Dax checked what the sabotage to the phasers did, and it turned out that it didn't destroy a weakness in the wormhole but instead permanently stabilized it, making it impossible to try again.
In the Dominion prison, all prisoners are taken to the yard and all Cardassians informed that they are now Dominion citizens and released. Except for Garak. Martok shows Garak the communicator that Tain built hidden in a space inside the barracks walls. Garak wants to try modify it to contact their ship and escape with it.

Worf is taken to the duel ring to fight a Jem'Hadar. He wins, though not easily, and is told he just beat the weakest of them.

With the help of the Dominion fleet, the Cardassian turn their war around and have the Klingons on the retreat. Gowron takes his ships to Deep Space Nine to have their wounded treated and Sisko reminds him that the Federation still wants to continue their old alliance.

Worf keeps winning fights against Jem'Hadar but gets beaten up worse every time and Bashir thinks he's probably going to be killed soon. Garak is fiddling with the communicator but is suffering from claustrophobia which severely impedes his ability to work.

Dukat calls Sisko to suggest to him that the Federation should join the Dominion or face being destroyed. The Cardassians will also retake all their lost possessions, which does include the station,

Once Garak has recovered from his panic attack, he volunteers to get back to work inside the wall. Which greatly impresses the two Klingons, as there is no enemy more frightening than your own fears. Worf gets to fight the Warden himself and Jem'Hadar come to the barracks to look for Garak.Since they can not find him they search the room and find the leaver to pry open the wall panel where Garak is still hiding.

Starfleet and Klingon ships are getting ready to defend the station and a Romulan fleet shows up unannounced to join them.

While Worf is loosing his fight against the warden, the guards are looking inside the walls. A Breen prisoner grabs a guard's weapon and kills two of them before getting killed himself and Bashir and a Romulan knock out the third guard. With Worf being unable to fight but refusing to be defeated, the Vorta in charge of the prison tells the warden to kill him, but the warden things there would be no victory in that now. So the Vorta tells the other guards to just shot Worf and Martok. Garak reaches the ship and beams all of them out of the prison.

The station is ready for battle, but even though the engine trails of the Jem'Hadar and Cardassian ships arrive at the wormhole, they can't see any actual ships on the sensors. They get a message from Bashir from the Gamma Quadrant and immediately go looking for the impostor. He was last at one of the shuttle bays, so Sisko tells the Defiant to pursue and destroy the shuttle at any cost, with its crew presumed to be already dead. They catch up to it in the last second before the changeling flies the shuttle into the sun. There are no signs of the attacking fleet.

Things get wrapped up with everyone being welcomed back home, the Federation and Klingons renewing their alliance, and Dukat calling Sisko to mock him. Sisko brings up that destroying the sun would also have killed Dukat's daughter, but he says that she chose to abandon him and Cardassia and has to live with the consequences.

--

Unsurprisingly, another really good episode. Though I am not having a lot of thoughts about it. It's good, but nothing really stands out as worth of deeper thought.

Again, we have a Vorta and a Jem'Hadar commander at odds because the Vorta don't understand that the Jem'Hadar do have a culture and honor code of their own. This is the third or fourth time. I wonder if this will ever become relevant for any plots.

Dukat basically put on his villainous goatee this episode. He was always shady but pretended to be cordial, but I think from here on he won't ever be going back to that. He is now a dictator who made a deal with a devil and bases his claim to legitimacy on promises of conquest. That's a point from which you can't really step back. There's only victory or your corpse dangling upside down from a gas station.

What I find odd is that the Founders are apparently willing to sacrifice their own lives to deal major blows against their enemies. We already had that in S3E26 The Adversary. In both cases they were still hanging around just seconds before their ships would have blown up. I don't think this quite fits with the rest of their characterization. They created the Dominion as a tool to manipulate other for the purpose of defending themselves, because they think everyone else is their enemy. Ensuring their own survival is the whole purpose of the Dominion. Giving their own life to expand the influence of the Dominion seems to go completely against that. Self-preservation should be their primary goal for which everything else can be sacrificed. These people don't sacrifice themselves for a greater cause than themselves. I think this doesn't really work.

[Traab]

I think its more about the great link and the collective. That the Founders are like biological borg while odo is hugh. The individual is probably not considered that important. Also, I think this episode was a love letter to Worf. Finally, after years of being a literal trope for the tough guy who always loses, Worf, gets to be the big man fighting in a sci fi Kumite and winning right up till the last battle where he wins through sheer refusal to stop fighting. He wasnt the big tough klingon warrior being tossed like a ragdoll by the monster of the week. he was a proud, highly skilled warrior who earned the respect of his enemies through combat.

[The Glyphstone]

"I cannot defeat this man. I can only kill him."

[Cikomyr]

If anything, the Founders are extremely respectful and caring of every single one among their number, since everyone among their number has shared everything there is to share about their existence to the rest of the Great Link.

Maybe their agents are indeed willing to sacrifice themselves for the Great Link. Or maybe they have some secret escape plan they have prepared and we never got to see. After all, the first Vorta we ever saw managed to escape while there are no ship in detectable range either.

[Yora]

S5E16: Doctor Bashir, I presume?

Rom is planning for weeks to ask out Leeta. Every time he sees her he only mumbles an awkward greeting, and while we know Leeta also has her eye on him, she doesn't really know how to talk with him like that. Quark still tries to keep them apart and makes very offensive jokes that within this context are still funny.

Bashir is visited by an engineer called Zimmermann who created the Emergency Medical Holographic program used on the Voyager and wants to base the next model on Bashir. To make the hologram a believable person, he not only needs to scan his image and digitize his voice, but also interviews people who know him well to program its personality. He also invites Bashir's parents to come to the station, without telling him. When they do arrive they seem very charming people, but Bashir is really not happy to see them and quite angry with Zimmerman about it.

Zimmermann uses the opportunity to invite Leeta for dinner and hit on her, wish pushes Rom to finally talk to her more openly. But he doesn't actually say much, to her disappointment. He tries to charm her with offering to help her get her own restaurant if she comes with him when he returns to his usual workplace. She is tempted but still wants to give Rom another chance by telling him about the offer and if he thinks there are any good reasons why she should stay on the station. Rom only mumbles something about it being a great opportunity and she walks off in disappointment.

Bashir has a talk with his parent and very urgently reminds them to be extremely careful with what they are telling Zimmermann about him, and arguing with his father that it was super stupid of them to even talk to him in the first place. His whole career is on the line, and his father reminds him that both he and Bashir's mothers would go to jail if their secret is found out, so he shouldn't treat them like idiots.

Bashir's parents go to talk to him in the hologram-lab and apologize about their argument, and assure him that they won't let anything slipped about him being genetically modified. But they happened to walk in on the hologram that just listened to them patiently and nodded when spoken too. Zimmermann and O'Brien heard them through the open door, just to see what would happen when someone talks to the hologram without knowing.

O'Brien goes to Bashir to confess what they heard, and Bashir is understandably furious. O'Brien wants to help him, but Zimmermann probably going to report him. Bashir tells him that as a child he had learning disabilities and developmental problems. So his father took him to an alien hospital to have his DNA altered and brain modified and went all out with the whole selection of options. Genetic modifications for non-life threatening conditions are banned by Starfleet as a security risk, but O'Brien says that rule had been irrelevant for over a century and an examination might find that he's not in danger of becoming mentally unstable. But Bashir thinks it's hopeless and just quit his job himself.

Bashir's father wants to legally fight the Starfleet regulations and salvage his career, but Bashir is really done with the whole thing and just face the consequences. He thinks his father is only so determined about it because next to all his failed careers, his son is the only real success he ever accomplished. His mother gets between them to explain that they both made the decision because they were deeply worried that he would suffer throughout his life and that their care for him as a child might have caused his development problems. She wants to support whatever decision he wants to make, and he remains convicted to tell Sisko in the morning.

When he comes to Sisko's office the next day, he finds his parents there who have already turned themselves in. The admiral responsible for such matters is convinced by Bashir's past record that he is not a threat to anyone, but unregulated genetic enhancements remain a serious threat of creating supervillains, so his father will have to serve two years in prison. Bashir is very much against anyone being punished to protect him, but his father tells him that he made a mistake and broke the law, and has to stand up to the consequences, which goes a long way to improve their relationship.

Leeta is about to leave the station with Zimmermann and Rom comes running in the last moment to ask her to stay, which she very gladly accepts.

O'Brien and Bashir are playing dart when O'Brien remembers that Bashir mentioned something about enhanced motor control and pressures him into playing with as much effort as he possibly can, resulting in Bashir hitting three times dead center in a row. So O'Brien tells him to play at a handicap at double the distance from the board.

--

This episode is difficult to rate. I find it to be sufficiently good, but not really good. It's a very solid episode without any real faults, but I didn't find it particularly entertaining or exciting. It's better than just okay, but not great.

The idea for the central conflict is a very strong one, but I think that the whole thing resolved rather easily. Writing a story about fictional social issues isn't easy, and in that light, I think they actually did pretty well here and made it come across as both plausible and understandable. But the pacing and tension still isn't that great when you already know what the skeleton in the closet it. Two decades later I have no idea how it was watching it the first time, and being 12 or 13 back then certainly wouldn't have let me fully appreciate anyway. But overall, I think the whole think is lacking in sufficient traction.

Rom's and Leeta's scenes are pretty decent as well, and they feel well matched up with the A-plot of the episode, though I can't really spell out what the shared theme is. The one thing I was wondering about was if in the end Leeta would make the final push. She certainly could just ask him instead of waiting, but I can somewhat understand that she wants Rom to give her a bit more indication that he is feeling serious about her. In the end it does come down to a kind of compromise when Rom comes running and saying something like "Don't leave!", and she replies with "I love you too". It's the thought that counts and we all know what he meant.

I was a bit worried about the actor playing the doctor on Voyager being in this episode turning out as another stunt, but his role is really small, and from what I remember of Voyager, this engineer comes across as being actually a different character.

[Traab]

Dr Zimmerman is very different from the Doctor on voyager. Iirc he was a cantankerous old man who was fairly rude to doctor considering him one of his earlier, flawed works. Whereas the voyagers doctor character had been developed over the multiple seasons into a different man. Its like worrying over Data and Lore. Same actor, very different characters. I will admit that I dont recall this episode of ds9 so I cant be certain the very different person continues.

[Rodin]

The episode is held up mostly by the acting of Robert Picardo, who never fails to impress me with how different he makes his characters. Apart from a certain stuffiness the Doctor, Zimmerman, and Woolsey (Stargate) all manage to be totally distinct characters. I found the episode fun pretty much for him alone, since I did already know the twist.

This was the other case of Starfleet prison sentences that I was referring to in the earlier episode - Bashir's father gets 2 years for genetically modifying a small child against his will. When genetic modification is what lead to the most devastating war to ever impact humanity. What.

If anything in the Federation would be a "lock them up and throw away the key" offense, I would have thought that gene modding would be top of the list due to how scared they are. 2 years is a slap on the wrist.

I still think this is the best they handled the gene modding issue though. The later episodes with the gene-mod patients are...not good.

[Traab]

The episode is held up mostly by the acting of Robert Picardo, who never fails to impress me with how different he makes his characters. Apart from a certain stuffiness the Doctor, Zimmerman, and Woolsey (Stargate) all manage to be totally distinct characters. I found the episode fun pretty much for him alone, since I did already know the twist.

This was the other case of Starfleet prison sentences that I was referring to in the earlier episode - Bashir's father gets 2 years for genetically modifying a small child against his will. When genetic modification is what lead to the most devastating war to ever impact humanity. What.

If anything in the Federation would be a "lock them up and throw away the key" offense, I would have thought that gene modding would be top of the list due to how scared they are. 2 years is a slap on the wrist.

I still think this is the best they handled the gene modding issue though. The later episodes with the gene-mod patients are...not good.

Time heals all wounds. Its no longer the early days of kirk and the still fairly recent memory of the eugenics war. Plus, I imagine the fact that he didnt get his child gene modded into a warlord who can benchpress tanks and instead concentrated on fairly benign mods also helped make a difference. They may also take into account the fact that bashir is not crazy as I imagine part of the punishment is, "You may have doomed your child to being locked up in an asylum you TWIT!"

[JCarter426]

The Darkness and the Light

Somehow I was under the impression that Kira's two friends were not actually killed in the explosion in her quarters but went into hiding, and they don't get a another message after that. But apparently I mixed that up with a completely different story, as there is no reveal that they are still alive. Did such a thing happen later in the series, or perhaps in Babylon 5? I could have sworm that I've seen that twist.

They show up in flashbacks in a later episode. Perhaps you're remembering that.

Kira has always been very clear about that. She always insisted that anyone who wants to learn skills from her is asking to be become a terrorist. And given how stubborn she always has been, she won't fake regret even to try to save her life.
It does come across as somewhat cold and confrontational, but she seems to see her past as something for which no apology will make any difference, and instead of defending herself, she accepts any consequences that come to her. An approach to gray characters that I don't think I've seen anywhere else.

She clearly has no sympathy for this guy, but I think she does feel remorse some of what she did, hence all the "don't be a terrorist" lessons to Ziyal et al. Maybe regret isn't the right word for it, though. Regret would imply that in hindsight she thinks it was the wrong choice to make and wouldn't do it again. To the contrary, she knew at the time that what she was doing was wrong, or at least she considered it morally wrong, but still made the choice to do what she did. It was war and she had her reasons and she would totally do it all again. She doesn't regret it and she doesn't feel guilty; she is guilty, and that's all there is to it. Apologizing won't change anything.

The Begotten

The birth of Kira's child doesn't really add anything to it, as they are all about the people in attendance being bored and bickering with each other as they wait. There's no real story to it.

The storylines are thematically tied. Odo adopts a Changeling baby only to lose it; Kira has to give up the baby she birthed because she was only a surrogate.

The heart of the story is between Odo and Mora, though.

For the Uniform

Apparently a lot of people really like Sisko and Edington arguing with each other. I mostly think it's pretty corny. Doesn't really do much for me. But even despite of that, this episode is still really quite decent. Good pacing and tension, and all of that.

Same here, more or less. I like Eddington but I just never cared about the Maquis at all and his betrayal is the fourth or fifth one in that storyline, and we aren't even told his motivation in this episode because it doesn't really matter. Sisko playing the villain because he realizes Eddington thinks of himself as a hero is a nice idea and all, but it seems like a last-minute effort to give Eddington characterization after neglecting him for so long, and Sisko's bluff is a little cartoonish and transparent.

This isn't the last we see of Eddington, though, and the next episode does make up for some of what's lacking here. They could've done so much more with the character if they'd made him a regular, but I guess they never would've done the whole betrayal thing with a regular.

In Purgatory's Shadow / By Inferno's Light
I remembered that Martok had always been a Changeling and the prison camp story, but I had forgotten that the timing of Bashir. So even upon rewatching I was surprised when it turned out he had already been replaced for a few episodes. It's a really bold twist.

Although it doesn't entirely make sense. I went back to watch the Changeling Bashir's scenes and while his interactions with Odo have interesting implications now, Bashir's role in the other episodes is just weird with the Changeling. Especially his involvement with Kira's pregnancy.

I think I read that Siddig hadn't been told, too.

That he is Garak's father was quite a surprise the first time, but given both their habits to always lie and deceive everyone they talk to, it's really completely believable. I wonder if the writers had already planned that back in S3E21 The Die is cast, or maybe even S2E22 The Wire?

I think it must have been planned. If not from the start, then at least from Tain's first appearance.

I don't remember if I was surprised or not. I think I first suspected from Garak's interaction with Tain's housekeeper. Although it was a long time ago, and it's possible I didn't even see all the Garak episodes in the correct order originally.

What I find odd is that the Founders are apparently willing to sacrifice their own lives to deal major blows against their enemies. We already had that in S3E26 The Adversary. In both cases they were still hanging around just seconds before their ships would have blown up. I don't think this quite fits with the rest of their characterization. They created the Dominion as a tool to manipulate other for the purpose of defending themselves, because they think everyone else is their enemy. Ensuring their own survival is the whole purpose of the Dominion. Giving their own life to expand the influence of the Dominion seems to go completely against that. Self-preservation should be their primary goal for which everything else can be sacrificed. These people don't sacrifice themselves for a greater cause than themselves. I think this doesn't really work.

There's a quote from a later episode that I think you'll find relevant here: "The ocean becomes a drop."

Doctor Bashir, I Presume?

The idea for the central conflict is a very strong one, but I think that the whole thing resolved rather easily. Writing a story about fictional social issues isn't easy, and in that light, I think they actually did pretty well here and made it come across as both plausible and understandable.

If you put the genetic modification aside, the story isn't unfamiliar. Brian George Bashir has been a failure at everything he's ever done and doesn't want that for his son. And parents can do questionable things when they think it's for their child's own good.

The context may be alien to us what with the genetic modification and what exactly it means to be a failure by the Federation's standards, but that's all window dressing. And the issue of genetic modification isn't quite so fictional anymore...

Overall, I think it's one of the stronger episodes of the series, which is even more impressive given how badly it could've gone. Bashir's genetic modification is an enormous bit of retcon. It's the kind I'd normally hate, but in this case I'd say all is forgiven. a) The story in which it's introduced is actually decent, b) They had decided for a long time that something else was up with Bashir's background and had hinted at it before, and c) It makes his character much more interesting in the long run.

[bguy]

Time heals all wounds. Its no longer the early days of kirk and the still fairly recent memory of the eugenics war. Plus, I imagine the fact that he didnt get his child gene modded into a warlord who can benchpress tanks and instead concentrated on fairly benign mods also helped make a difference. They may also take into account the fact that bashir is not crazy as I imagine part of the punishment is, "You may have doomed your child to being locked up in an asylum you TWIT!"

This. The Bashirs would make pretty sympathetic defendants (loving parents who wanted to help their child), and it would be hard to argue that their "crime" hurt anyone since it resulted in a handsome, heroic doctor who has already saved an entire sentient species from gradual extinction. Thus it would make sense Admiral Bennett would want to plea the case cheaply to make it go away rather than risk a full blown trial that could easily turn into a PR nightmare for the Federation and result in seriously undermining public support for the laws against genetic enhancement.

[Gnoman]

S5E16: Doctor Bashir, I presume?

Somewhat offtopic, but one of the ST books (I think it was one of the Starfleet Corps of Engineers novellas) had a really interesting follow-on to this episode. Way back when, Bashir mentioned that he finished second in his class at Starfleet medical on a basic mistake. The ship's doctor in that story was the one that finished first.


The interesting bit is told in flashback - after it became known that Bashir was genetically modified, Starfleet became incredibly suspicious that she was also modded, because she beat out Bashir. So she was arrested from her ship and interrogated for weeks. To make matters worse, while she was undergoing this procedure, her ship went into battle without her, and most of the crew was killed. The crux of the story is dealing with her PTSD from the experience and her outright hatred of Bashir.