Copyright 1993, Jennifer A. Hawthorne. All rights reserved,
but I'm not stuffy about it as long as you don't go overboard.

[DSN] Episode Synopsis: "If Wishes Were Horses" **SPOILERS**
=============================================

Episode Number: 416
Air Date: 5/15/93

There are SPOILERS below! You have been warned.

Ye who enter here, all hope abandon of remaining unspoiled.


	As the show opens, Odo and Quark are sitting in Quark's
place, chatting. They see Jake Sisko entering a holosuite; 
Odo questions the purpose for which the commander's son 
plans to use the room, but Quark explains to him that Jake 
employs the holosuite for baseball games, not games of a 
more adult nature. Quark goes on to expound upon his future 
plans for adding on a family entertainment center to his 
place, complete with rides for the kiddies and Ferengi 
salesman peddling useless souveniers.
	In another part of Quark's, Dax and Bashir are sharing
dinner while Bashir once again tries to convince Dax that 
she's his one true love in the Universe. Dax comments that 
he didn't seem to feel that way while he was courting other 
females on the station recently; only slightly abashed, 
Bashir says that they were just poor substitutes for Dax 
herself. Dax is amused but not beguiled, and tells Bashir 
that he's a "wonderful friend" -- which, predictably, 
distresses Bashir as his hopes for something more intimate 
are once again dashed. Dax heads off, telling the 
frustrated doctor to take a "high pitched sonic shower". He 
grumbles that he already tried that, and it didn't help.
	Dax enters Ops to find Sisko and Kira checking out an odd
high-density thoron reading in the Denorios belt. Dax 
speculates that the increased traffic through the plasma 
field might be responsible, and wonders if it could be a 
sign of impending trouble.
	In the O'Brien quarters, the Ops Chief is putting his
daughter to bed with a fairy tale, "Rumplestiltskin", as 
Keiko watches. When the story is finished, the O'Briens 
kiss Molly goodnight and head off to their own bed. Before 
they can take more than a few steps, though, Molly's door 
opens and the toddler comes out, saying that Rumplestiltskin 
is in her bedroom. Miles tries to reassure her that 
Rumplestiltskin is a fictional character, while commenting 
to Keiko, "Why do we tell her stories about evil dwarves 
that want to steal children?" He shepherds the child back 
into her room, only to discover to his shock that 
Rumplestiltskin *is* inside -- or someone looking very much 
as Rumplestiltskin might. O'Brien hands Molly to Keiko, 
telling her to take their daughter and leave; Keiko is 
puzzled, until Rumplestiltskin follows O'Brien out into the 
main room and begins toying with all the knickknacks, 
making a royal mess. O'Brien summons Security, then tries 
to demand an explanation from the little man; however, all 
he gets by way of answer are unhelpful comments about 
spinning straw into gold. O'Brien tries to dispel the dwarf 
with his name, but Rumplestiltskin scoffs at the attempt 
and fails to vanish.
	Two security men enter the room, phasers drawn, and the
dwarf cautions them not to try and grab him. But, at 
O'Brien's impatient gesture, they try anyway, only to have 
the little being disappear without a sound. The dwarf then 
reappears, and tells O'Brien he should name his needs, and 
Rumplestiltskin will name his price.
	Sisko is sitting in his quarters when O'Brien calls in on
his comm badge, asking for the commander's assistance. On 
his way out, Sisko encounters Jake, who stops his father to 
introduce Sisko to his companion, a man in an old-fashioned 
baseball uniform that says "Kings" on it. Jake says the man 
followed him home from the holosuite. The ballplayer greets 
Sisko with a "Hello, Ben", while Sisko stares at him in 
amazement.
	Elsewhere on the station, Bashir is snoozing, apparently
having pleasant dreams of female companionship, when he 
awakens with a start to realize that he's not just dreaming 
-- Dax is there. And she's behaving in an 
uncharacteristically amorous fashion, to the young doctor's 
astonishment. As Dax continues to press her advances, a 
thoroughly flustered Bashir decides one of the two of them 
must be ill -- either *she's* feverish or *he's* 
hallucinating. His nearly frantic attempts to figure out 
what's going on are hampered by Dax's increasingly 
distracting attentions, as she asks him, "Why are you 
fighting this?". He realizes that he doesn't have a good 
answer for that, and decides to cooperate with the 
inevitable.
	Just as they are getting down to serious business, however,
Kira summons all senior staff to Ops. Bashir decides that 
this whole scene must be a practical joke on him, probably 
instigated by O'Brien, and rounds on Dax in bitter 
resentment. Dax denies it, but he yanks on his boots and 
stalks out of the room. She follows.
	The two of them arrive at Ops to find the rest of the
senior staff waiting for them -- along with the dwarf 
Rumplestiltskin and the baseball player Harmon "Buck" 
Bokai. Sisko explains that holodeck images and fairy-tale 
characters have come to life on the station, and asks Dax 
if it could be related to the increase in the thoron field 
they noted earlier. Dax reacts with a total lack of 
comprehension.
	A second later the lift arrives in Ops -- carrying a second
Dax, who suggests that Sisko should be asking *her* that. 
Bashir gapes back and forth between the two Daxes as the 
alter-Dax hides behind him.
	Bashir scans the three apparitions and determines that they
all appear to be completely real. Bokai asks Sisko what 
this is all about, and Sisko tells him that he's just a 
holodeck image. Bokai protests that he remembers everything 
he ever did, and Sisko states that all that information was 
programmed into the computer. Bokai came out of Jake's 
imagination, the same way that Rumplestiltskin came out of 
O'Brien's, and the alter-Dax out of Bashir's. Bashir tries 
to deny responsibility for the alter-Dax, who is nuzzling 
him in a suggestive fashion, but quickly realizes that it's 
pointless. The real Dax watches him flounder, an odd 
expression on her face. The alter-Dax suggests she and 
Bashir go to his quarters, and he stalks away from her in 
exasperation, saying he hasn't got time for this. The 
alter-Dax promptly vanishes. The real Dax suggests that the 
apparitions might be a result of a dimensional shift or a 
subspace anomaly too small for her to notice with her 
previous scans. Sisko assigns her and O'Brien to the task 
of studying the problem.
	Odo calls up from the Promenade, telling Sisko that it's
snowing on the Promenade. Sisko orders the station to 
yellow alert, as Dax's scans detect some sort of subspace 
rift forming close to the station. Odo reports in again, 
saying that the snow has vanished but has been replaced by 
a "Goonjee jackdaw", a large bird resembling an Earth emu.
	Down in Quark's, the bar's patrons are having a remarkable
winning streak. Odo enters and calls for attention, then 
requests, with a straight face, that everyone refrain from 
using their imaginations. Quark comes down the staircase 
from the second level, and he has apparently been using 
his, for he is accompanied by a pair of barely dressed 
lovelies, one dark, one fair, and both extremely attentive 
to him. Odo says that the staff is working on solving the 
problem of the strange manifestations; Quark says that 
there's no hurry, until Odo points out that Quark's 
customers are in the process of bankrupting him at the Dabo 
table. Quark rushes over in alarm to try to discourage the 
players, but fails, and is so distressed that he loses 
interest in his female attendants.
	In the science lab, Dax and Bashir are studying the
subspace rift. Dax says that the proximity of the wormhole 
is amplifying the rupture. They work for a few moments in 
silence, which is broken by Bashir attempting to forward an 
apology to Dax for the situation with the alter-Dax and her 
behavior. Dax replies that she feels like everyone else 
should apologize to Bashir for their unintentional invasion 
of his privacy. Bashir is relieved, and the two of them 
agree to put the incident behind them. But a second later, 
Dax comments, "She really is submissive, isn't she? Do you 
really want me to be that submissive, Julian?" As he gropes 
for a reply, alter-Dax appears on the scene, complaining to 
the real Dax that she's not submissive, she's simply not 
the cold fish like the real Dax, who is not in the least 
amused by this characterization. Bashir tries frantically 
to limit the damage the alter-Dax is doing with her 
comments, without success; the alter-Dax tells the real Dax 
that she should be more appreciative of Bashir's charms, 
clinging to the doctor all the while. The computer 
interrupts by announcing the completion of its analysis of 
the rift, granting Bashir a (temporary) reprieve.
	The emissions patterns of the rift match that of a similar
anomaly that appeared several hundred years ago in another 
region of space. This earlier rift was responsible for the 
destruction of an entire star system.
	A probe is launched to study the space rift, while Sisko
reports that over half of the station's residents have 
been experiencing manifestations. O'Brien is tending to his 
duties when Rumplestiltskin appears, offering his help and 
getting in the way. O'Brien tries to ignore the bothersome 
dwarf, and Rumplestiltskin cautions him not to be too hasty 
to refuse his help. He accuses O'Brien of being afraid of 
him, which the Ops Chief angrily denies. The dwarf 
continues to harass O'Brien, who refuses to respond, until 
Rumplestiltskin makes a veiled threat to Molly. O'Brien 
angrily turns on the little man, who vanishes, leaving a 
worried O'Brien behind.
	The probe's scans show nothing unusual, which strikes the
staff as strange. They call up a visual of the rift, and 
see that it has begun to draw the matter of the Denorios 
Belt into itself.
	Sisko heads off to another part of the station, and
encounters Buck Bokai on the way. Bokai tries to interest 
him in some baseball, but Sisko repeats that Bokai is only 
a hologram and the only baseball field on the station is a 
hologram too. Bokai tries to get Sisko interested in him, 
and manages to involve him in a discussion of Bokai's 
statistics and his weaknesses as a ballplayer. "You were 
the best that every played," says Sisko. "I know; I've 
played with them all."
	"It really meant a lot to me, how much you cared," says
Bokai. "I guess I thought you should know...just in case I 
do finally disappear."
	Elsewhere on the station, the three apparitions -- Bokai,
Rumplestiltskin, and the alter-Dax -- are meeting among 
themselves. "We don't know any more than when we started," 
grumbles the dwarf. Rumplestiltskin and the alter-Dax are 
at a loss to explain their creators reactions to them, and 
the dwarf suggests abandoning the project. Bokai protests, 
saying he thinks he has made a connection with Sisko. Sisko 
seems to have genuine affection for someone he never really 
met, a ballplayer who died two hundred years before Sisko 
was born.
	The staff confer in Sisko's office about the subspace rift.
It is continuing to expand, and they have no good idea how 
to stop it. Dax says that a Vulcan ship attempted to close 
the previous rift by detonating a pulsed-wave torpedo 
within it; the explosion caused the rupture to expand 
rapidly, destroying both the ship and the nearby star 
system. After that, the rupture reached a critical mass 
point, imploded, and disappeared. Sisko asks if the Vulcan 
crew experienced hallucinations while near the rift; they 
didn't, but they weren't there for that long and Vulcans 
aren't very imaginative to begin with. There is no 
indication of what the cause of the earlier subspace rift 
might have been, and there was neither a wormhole nor a 
great deal of starship traffic near the area where it 
appeared. O'Brien says that he thinks the pulsed-wave 
torpedo approach is still the best way to go; when Kira 
objects, he says that the technology has improved a great 
deal since the Vulcans tried it. Kira says that if it 
doesn't work, the entire system of Bajor will be destroyed; 
Sisko says that if they don't close the rift, the system 
will be destroyed anyway. Sisko orders O'Brien to go to 
work on the torpedo, and tells Kira to organize an 
evacuation of the pylons. Kira calls for help from Odo, but 
the Security Chief is too busy herding Goonjee Jackdaws through 
the station to give her a hand.
	Kira steps out of the lift in one of the pylons, and looks
up to see a huge fireball racing down the corridor toward 
her. The blast knocks her into the wall of the lift, and 
she yells into her comm badge that Pylon One is already 
gone. She hears someone screaming, and looks up to see a 
man, engulfed in flames, running toward her; she ducks down 
in the lift, trying to ward off the flaming figure -- but 
it vanishes just before reaching her. Sisko calls in from 
Ops, demanding an explanation, and Kira looks up to see the 
corridor in front of her, undamaged. Shaken, she tells 
Sisko to disregard her call.
	On the promenade, Quark approaches a busy Odo, who is
struggling to maintain order. Quark wants Odo to go look 
for his two beauteous companions, who have disappeared; Odo 
is not inclined to help. The two birds that Odo has been 
chasing abruptly disappear, and Quark's two ladies 
reappear, to Odo's disapproval. Quark accuses the 
shapeshifter of having no imagination, and walks off with 
the products of his own.
	Odo enters the security office, and begins checking
readouts, when he notices that one of his viewscreens 
shows Quark safely ensconced in the brig. Odo demands to 
know how Quark got in there; Quark replies, "You put me in 
here!" Odo stares at him a moment, then smiles slightly. "I 
guess I did, didn't I? No imagination, indeed. Hah."
	In the Sisko quarters, Jake is working on his homework when
Bokai appears and tries to convince him to go play ball. 
Jake says his dad will kill him if he goes to play before 
finishing his homework, and a duplicate Sisko appears. Jake 
tries out his excuses on the alter-Sisko, who doesn't 
accept them, and Jake resigns himself to doing his 
homework. Bokai vanishes.
	Up in Ops, Dax reports to Sisko that the rift is widening
at an ever-increasing rate. He suggest moving the station, 
but she says that if the rift implodes, the shockwave will 
overtake them anyway. They decide to proceed with the 
pulsed-wave torpedo. Sisko calls up the rift on the 
viewscreen, and it appears: a ragged gap in the sky with 
plasma swirling into it. The staff regard the anomaly 
gravely, as one by one the three apparitions appear beside 
their creators, watching their reactions.
	Kira walks in, reporting the pylons secured and the
evacuation complete. The alter-Dax comments that Bashir 
looks worried; he confirms it, saying that the subspace 
rift could well kill everyone on the station, real or 
imaginary. She asks him to hold her; he is startled, but 
when she adds a timid "Please?", he takes her in his arms.
	Sisko orders shields up and red alert, and the torpedo is
launched into the rift and detonated. At first it seems to 
be working, but after a minute an unexpected reaction takes 
place, causing a subspace oscillation that shakes the 
station. There is an explosion from the rift, and the 
station rocks violently, sending personnel and furniture 
flying. Lights flicker and sparks fly from the control 
panels as Ops goes dark. The crew scrambles to restore 
order and get the lighting and communications back on-line. 
They can no longer read anything from the rift.
	Elsewhere in Ops, the alter-Dax has been badly injured by
the shockwave. Bashir sends Bokai for a medkit. The 
alter-Dax weakly apologizes to Bashir for bothering him; he 
tries to soothe her, telling her she wasn't bothering him, 
and then goes to work on her injuries.
	The rift is still present, and Dax can't make any sense out
of the readings. O'Brien reports that the torpedo's 
effects are being neutralized by the anomaly, and it's only 
a matter of time before it starts expanding again. Sisko 
calls for suggestions, but gets only silence in reply. Then 
Rumplestiltskin speaks up, saying, "Maybe I could help." He 
tells O'Brien that O'Brien created him with powers beyond 
those of normal men, powers that he would be happy to use 
to help them...for a price. The dwarf gestures, and Keiko 
and Molly appear in Ops. "I always wanted a daughter," says 
Rumplestiltskin.
	Kira reports that the oscillations have begun again, and
the station shakes. Rumplestiltskin says he can seal the 
rift, if O'Brien will meet his price. O'Brien is incensed: 
"You're out of a storybook! A fairy tale!"
	"Are you willing to give her up to save so many others?",
says Rumplestiltskin.
	"No," says Sisko. "He doesn't have to."
	As Rumplestiltskin and his senior staff stare at him,
Sisko explains what he has just now realized: the subspace 
rift was only detected *after* Dax speculated that it might 
exist. And once she learned that such a rift had in fact 
existed at one time, the entire staff began to believe that 
that was the explanation. He orders the shields down, 
saying, "There *is* no rupture. There is no threat to the 
station or the system." He again orders the shields down, 
telling O'Brien that he has to *believe* that everything 
will be fine.
	Sisko asks Kira if she's still picking up shockwaves; she
responds affirmatively, and he corrects her -- "No, you're 
not. You're not picking up anything at all." The vibrations 
suddenly cease, and Kira corrects herself -- "None at all."

	Bokai and Rumplestiltskin vanish. Dax reports everything
normal, as outside the station the subspace rift also 
vanishes. Bashir tells the alter-Dax that she's going to be 
fine, and she smiles and replies, "Of course I am. I have 
the best doctor in the galaxy." She then vanishes, leaving 
behind an unusually pensive, and slightly saddened, Dr. 
Bashir.
	Kira demands to know exactly what happened; Dax suggests
that the heightened thoron field, which is still abnormal, 
might be responsible. Sisko encourages her to continue her 
investigations, but without speculating this time. He then 
orders O'Brien to take his family home, and heads to his 
own office, where he sits quietly for a few moments. Bokai 
appears before him, and Sisko says, "You're not just a 
figment of my imagination, are you?" Bokai admits as much, 
saying that he and his people are on an extended mission of 
exploration in the galaxy; they followed a ship through the 
wormhole and chose this method for studying the people they found on the other side. They were wary of simply opening 
communications before learning about the station's 
residents, for fear of not being well received. Sisko asks 
why it was necessary to endanger the station, and Bokai 
says that they didn't do that, the crew's own imaginations 
did.
	Bokai tells Sisko that the imagination possessed by his
people is a valuable gift, a remarkable thing that allows 
them to feel affection for a person they don't even know. 
He then prepares to take his leave of the station. Sisko 
protests that they haven't learned anything about Bokai's 
people, and Bokai says, "Maybe next year." He tosses the 
baseball to Sisko, and vanishes.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Copyright 1993, Jennifer A. Hawthorne. All rights reserved, 
but I'm not stuffy about it as long as you don't go overboard.
	

Hawthorne's Deeply Spaced Reviews: "If Wishes Were Horses"
Review by Jen Hawthorne <jen@athena.mit.edu>
============================================

One-sentence opinion summary: An episode both amusing and
confusing, and one that led me to some contemplation of 
the relationship between a show like Trek and its dedicated 
fans.

There are SPOILERS below! You have been warned.
Ye who enter here, all hope abandon of remaining unspoiled.


"I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a
butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a 
man."
-- Chuang-Tzu, "On Leveling All Things"

"Well it was just my imagination/Running away with me...."
-- Some group I can't remember (anyone?)

"Hmm...gratuitous emus..."
 -- Tom Giordano, while watching this episode

So...if you were sitting around in your home one day, and
your favorite TOS, TNG, or DSN character popped into 
existence and started talking to you, how would *you* 
react? Assuming you didn't just decide you'd gone 
completely over the edge, that is. What would you say? What 
would you do? What would you do if (s)he showed up and 
started acting out some vivid fantasy you'd had about that 
character, no matter how private? What if (s)he did it in 
*public*?

Seriously now, all joking aside...what would you do? And
how would you feel?

That's the heart of this DSN episode -- the question of how
we interact with the things that our imaginations conjure 
up, what they mean to us, how we feel about them, and why 
we are capable of interacting with them on an emotional 
level when they have no genuine substance. The theme of 
this show really got to me where I lived, a reaction I 
suspect most people did not have; however, as a writer, I 
spend a lot of time interacting with the figments of my 
imagination in various and sundry ways, and therefore "If 
Wishes Were Horses" really caught and held my attention. 
But even those of you who don't enjoy writing and haven't 
experienced the odd relationship writers have with the 
characters they create should be able to see a little of 
yourselves in this episode. For, if you're reading this, 
you must be a Trek fan of some flavor, and if you're a fan, 
that probably means that you somehow manage to care, to a 
lesser or greater extent, about these people whose 
adventures you watch every week on the TV screen or every 
two years in the movie theaters -- these people who do not 
exist and will never exist and who have no objective 
reality.

Do you *care* when Picard gets tortured by the Cardassians?
Are you enraged, horrified? When Sisko is in agony over 
the death of his beloved wife, do you feel sympathy for 
him?

If your answer is "Yes", ask yourself *why*. There never
was, nor ever will be, a real person named Jean-Luc Picard 
or Benjamin Sisko. The pain Picard experienced was not 
real; it never happened. The emotional agony of Sisko was a 
fraud; he never existed, he never had a wife, and she was 
never killed by the Borg.

So why do you care?

Think about it. The only reason that TNG and DSN exist
today is that the fans of TOS cared about it so much they 
made it a nationwide phenomenon. They wouldn't let it stay 
dead. *Why?* Why did they care so much about a fantasy?

Why do any of us care?

I'm not going to bother trying to answer these questions
here; much wiser and more eloquent individuals than myself 
have been trying to understand the importance of fiction, 
of stories, of fantasies, to humanity for centuries, 
possibly even millenia. Find your own answers; they're the 
only ones that matter anyway.

But the scene in this episode that made the most impact on
me was the one where Sisko and Bokai were talking, and 
Bokai tells Sisko, "It really meant a lot to me, how much 
you cared. I guess I thought you should know...just in case 
I do finally disappear."

This wasn't the real Bokai. And yet Sisko was affected by
the thought that if the real Bokai *had* known how much he 
cared, he would have appreciated it. And I couldn't help 
but wonder...what would it mean to me, if my favorite Trek 
characters sprang to life one day and thanked me for caring 
about them?

It would mean a lot, that's what. (Though my first reaction
would be to look around for Alan Funt...)

Well, anyway...that's a sufficient number of rhetorical
questions for one review. It's about time I progressed to 
something more objective and less philosophical, wouldn't 
you say? So, okay, I will, but after one final point: Not 
only did this episode argue the power of imagination, but 
it also seemed to be making the point that letting your 
imagination overwhelm you can be a very dangerous thing.

How about the plot of this episode? It had its good points
and its bad points. Yes, it was basically a retread of the 
TOS episode "Shore Leave", but I don't mind that because 
it's a still a decent gimmick for letting us learn about 
the characters. Also, it managed to transcend "Shore Leave" 
by addressing the question of the relationship of the main 
characters to the figments of their imaginations instead of 
simply using the gimmick strictly for horrific/comedic 
effect, as "Shore Leave" did. While there were some things 
I liked about the "Curious Aliens" explanation for what 
happened, the revelation really raised more questions than 
it answered and made interpretation of some of the events 
of the episode truly hairy. Among the things I liked about 
it were the fact that we got to see Sisko dealing calmly 
with an unsettling first-contact situation, and the 
Bokai-alien's comment about how he and his people were on 
an "extended mission of exploration in the galaxy" -- did 
that sound as familiar to anyone else as it did to me? 
("These are the voyages of the Thoughtship 
'Existential'...")

The main thing I didn't like was that the "figments=aliens"
explanation didn't quite hold water -- or at least there 
were some large holes in the bucket. If all of the 
manifestations were people or simple objects to be 
interacted with, like dwarves and ballplayers, I could 
understand it, but the presence of additional effects such 
as snow, fireballs, and the subspace rift itself makes 
things less clear-cut. Were the aliens (I'll call them the 
"Figments", for lack of a real name) not in control of the 
effects that were being produced? Did they somehow empower 
the crew's imaginations, and once having done so, were then 
forced to manifest as whatever the crewmember dreamed up? 
The Bokai Figment implied that the dangerous effects were 
somehow the crew's fault, but I fail to see how that could 
really be possible. (Of course maybe the Bokai Figment was 
lying.) And were the Figments mind-readers or what? In all 
three of the primary instances, they could have learned 
enough about their targets' wishes to manifest without 
resorting to telepathy -- by watching the holosuite 
simulation, listening to the bedtime story, and 
evesdropping on the Dax/Bashir conversation. But if so, 
then Bashir can't really be held responsible for the 
behavior of the alter-Dax, because the Dax Figment 
extrapolated his desires from a very small piece of data -- 
one conversation -- and really had no idea of the actual 
depth or extent of the doctor's feelings for Dax (a 
question which is still very much up in the air -- see 
below.)

I also can't figure out how much of the way the Figments 
behaved was their own choice and how much was forced on 
them, somehow, by the imagination of the responsible 
crewmember. Would the Rumplestiltskin Figment actually have 
done anything to Molly had O'Brien agreed to sacrifice her 
to save the station? Would he have *had* to, because 
O'Brien expected him to? How about the alter-Dax -- was she 
injured because Bashir wanted her to get hurt so he could 
show off, or was this something she decided to do on her 
own to try and make an emotional connection with him? I'm 
unclear.

Something else that one of my friends watching the episode
with me brought up that made my head hurt was the question 
of whether or not the Bokai-Figment's explanation of the 
events of the episode were *real* -- or whether Sisko got 
an explanation that he could accept just because he 
*imagined* that he would get one! Of course, we did see the 
one scene of the Figments talking among themselves, but 
still -- if Sisko was already imagining that there was an 
explanation for these things, you could conceivably argue 
that this little conversation came out of his imagination 
as well. (Don't think about this too much or your head will 
start to hurt too.)

And I wonder about the similarities between the Figments
and the wormhole aliens. If you buy what the Figments 
said, then they aren't the same race. But there is sure a 
lot in common between the effects the Figments produced in 
the crew and the effects the wormhole aliens produced in 
Sisko during "The Emissary".

Other little plot nitpicks include: Did the folks on Bajor
see the subspace rift as well? If they did, what did they 
think? If they didn't, why didn't anyone on the station 
think to ask them about it? (Of course then they might 
start imagining it themselves, and if the whole planet did 
it they might never have gotten rid of it...would the 
Figments have let matters get so far out of control? How 
exactly did they manage to empower the imaginations of the 
crew to the extent that the station was actively 
endangered? Or was the station never truly in danger at 
all?? Were there any casualties besides the alter-Dax from 
the shaking the station got? Wait, I'm backsliding into the 
topic of my previous paragraph...) Also, for some reason 
the "Tech is Teching!" stood out more than usual in this 
episode; all that babble about what the probe was doing 
grated on my nerves. (Maybe just because it distracted from 
the main part of the story, which I was enjoying so much.)

I didn't have much problem with the "There really was no
threat at all" part of the ending, though I suspect other 
people may be less than thrilled with it. It gave the story 
as a whole a much nicer sense of closure than it would have 
if it had turned out that the rift was real and was 
responsible for the manifestations. Also, on rewatching I 
noticed that there were plenty of subtle clues as to what 
was going on throughout the episode, things I failed to 
pick up on the first time through, which I appreciated.

Now, moving on to characterization. Some quite nice stuff
here for Sisko, O'Brien, Bashir, and Dax (sort of...), 
some minor nice bits for Odo and Jake, and nothing much for 
Kira or Quark. Keiko and Molly are back but not doing much 
of note, and Nog is not to be seen.

I enjoyed the characterization of Sisko in this episode
more than I have in a while. For one thing, his sense of 
humor came through more strongly than it has recently; in 
particular I liked his wink to Bokai (as well as his 
"strong on the *left*" comment) and the "I should have 
guessed" expression on his face when he figures out what's 
going with the double Daxes. (Daxen?) And as I said up 
above, he didn't lose his cool with the Bokai alien the way 
he did with the Wadi in "Move Along Home", which was nice. 
As for the way he handled the final revelation of the cause 
of the subspace rift -- all I could think of what that this 
was his usual practice of defining reality to suit his 
needs (as he did in Dax and Progress) taken to its logical 
extreme; here is Sisko *literally* defining reality for his 
crew, and they trusted him and *accepted* it! Quite nice. 
Of course, I shouldn't fail to mention again how much the 
dialogue between Sisko and Bokai near the lift really 
brought the heart of the episode home to me; it was truly 
well done.

As for O'Brien, I loved seeing the opening scenes of him
being a family man. Up to this point we've only seen him 
and Keiko when they're having problems; it was nice to see 
a normal, quiet family moment for them (until 
Rumplestiltskin showed up, of course.) His reactions to the 
dwarf were perfect, too, particularly the deliberately 
antagonistic way he said "Rumplestiltskin" the first time, 
and the way he tried to deal with the Figment by ignoring 
him. (Clearly they keep pairing O'Brien with characters who 
annoy him because he does that exasperated manner so 
well...) The way he kept slapping Rumplestiltskin's hands 
away from his control panels was great, too. On a less 
humorous level, his concern for his family came through 
very nicely, especially at the end; had it actually been 
required that he sacrifice Molly to save the station, I 
believe he would have done so, but he would never, ever 
have forgiven himself for it afterward. I was a little 
surprised to hear O'Brien stating that he wasn't afraid of 
*anything* -- I had considered him the type to be perfectly 
willing to admit that he was terrified, but continue on as 
necessary regardless -- but I could see why he wouldn't 
want to let Rumplestiltskin know that he was, in fact, 
frightened for his daughter. There wasn't much that was new 
here, but the expansions on the older characters bits were 
nice to see.

Which brings us to Bashir. We start off with a bit of a
backslide into the Bashir-as-skirtchaser routine that 
tends to irritate me with its predictability. My annoyance 
was offset somewhat by the fact that he and Dax were 
discussing things in a straightforward manner for a change, 
and by his lovely theatrical reaction to being LBJFed by 
the object of his desire. (LBJF="Let's Be Just Friends," 
that phrase that so many men absolutely dread hearing.) I 
had a severely mixed reaction to the bedroom scene; on the 
one hand, it *was* very funny to watch him reacting like a 
car-chasing dog that finally catches one -- "Now that I 
have it, what am I supposed to *do* with it??" And the part 
where he decides someone's having a laugh at his expense 
was both unexpected and yet exactly *right* (Anyone want to 
bet he was the butt of a lot of practical jokes at the 
Academy?) However...here we go with another of Jen's 
feminist notions. Although the "Why *am* I fighting this?" 
question was a hoot, the proper answer is, of course, 
"Because something's clearly wrong with her, even if I 
can't figure out what, and taking advantage of it for my 
personal pleasure would be indefensible." It's tantamount 
to frat boys getting young women drunk expressly for the 
purpose of getting them to do things they otherwise 
wouldn't want to do, and claiming afterward that "She 
wanted it." No, he didn't get her into this state 
deliberately, and yes, given the situation between the two 
of them and the alter-Dax's intensely provocative behavior, 
it's easy to see why Bashir's self-restraint would snap. 
Still...I didn't like it, darn it. If that really *had* 
been the real Dax, under the influence of something odd, 
and they had gone all the way with it, I think Dax would be 
perfectly within her rights to be quite upset with Bashir. 
(She might or might not actually hold it against him, but 
she would have reason to, if she so chose, IMHO.) No matter 
how much fun a roll in the hay with Dax would have been in 
the short term, would it really have been worth the 
long-term havoc it was likely to wreak on their 
relationship if it wasn't with her full, knowing consent? 
(Being female, I wouldn't know the male perspective on 
these things...guys, would it be worth it to you? And how 
would you feel the next morning if she turned to you and 
said "It really wasn't me, it was the virus/alien 
force/suggestion drug"?)

I can forgive the fact that the Dax Bashir's imagination
conjured up was a total ditz by rationalizing it as I did 
above -- that the Figments weren't mind readers, and had 
created the alter-Dax from information gleaned through 
listening in on the Dax/Bashir conversation at the start of 
the episode instead of from Bashir's true image of how he 
wants Dax to be. For one thing, the alter-Dax was really 
brainless, and I find it hard to believe that Bashir is 
only attracted to Dax for her looks; I would expect that 
it's the beauty/brilliance/personality combination he finds 
irresistible, and given his reaction to the alter-Dax's 
insistent come-ons, I think my expectations are in line 
with what the writers had in mind. (Perhaps I'm just 
spoiled by the fact that I have a bunch of smart, basically 
classy male friends who are not, as far as I can tell, 
amazingly impressed by a beautiful face covering an 
essentially empty mind. From my experience, most 
intelligent men prefer intelligent women as companions. 
Then again, maybe I'm deluding myself.) So, given this, I'd 
say that Dax's comments about "Do you really want me to be 
so submissive?" weren't totally fair to Bashir, although 
she couldn't know that at the time; I'd prefer to believe 
that Bashir *doesn't* want her that way, but that the 
alter-Dax Figment interpreted his desires too narrowly 
based on limited information.

Don't get me wrong here -- I really did enjoy watching the
Daxen make Bashir squirm, especially since he deserved at 
least some of it. I'm just trying to put forth my 
impressions of how the Dax/Bashir relationship is 
developing under all that, okay?

Now, in the later Bashir/alter-Dax scenes, things get more
revealing. The trouble is, I'm not sure which of two ways 
those scenes are supposed to be interpreted. The way I'd 
prefer *not* to interpret it is to say that she got hurt 
because Bashir wanted her to get hurt so that he could 
impress her with his medical skills. However, I don't think 
this is the case, for two reasons: one, I don't think the 
Figments were mind-readers, so what happened to the 
alter-Dax must have been the alter-Dax's idea, not 
Bashir's, and two, I just can't see Bashir ever wanting to 
see Dax hurt, even an imitation Dax. So I choose to 
interpret it thusly: the alter-Dax's purpose was to try and 
make an emotional connection with Bashir in a similar 
fashion to the way that Bokai made a connection with Sisko. 
She (it?) had tried to do it the way she thought was most 
likely to succeed, i.e. sexually, and had completely 
failed, but then discovered that appealing to his 
protective instincts was a better way to get a real hook on 
his emotions. Thus the injury. It worked, too, which I 
think was an excellent move on the writers' parts, as I 
found Bashir genuinely likeable in those scenes. It was a 
nice antidote to the slight bad taste left in my mouth 
after the bedroom scene. Thanks to those scenes, it's 
possible to view Bashir less as a rather shallow young man 
obsessed with his own pleasure and more as young man whose 
main problem is that he just doesn't know himself very well 
yet; it's possible to believe, thanks to those scenes, that 
he actually is interested in something more than just a 
tumble with Dax, although he may not have realized this 
fact himself just yet. ("Wait a second...maybe I *do* 
actually love her for real...that's a scary thought...") 
Perhaps I'm reading my own wishes into this a bit, as I've 
been waiting almost since the premier for the writers to 
give a bit of depth to the doctor...but I hope I'm right, 
and that this is deliberate and not a product of my own 
imagination :-)

Dax's development was mostly limited to the "submissive"
scene with Bashir in the science lab; for most of the rest 
of the episode she was too busy technobabbling about the 
rift and the probe to do much else. What little she had to 
work with was quite good, though. The initial scene with 
Bashir was nice -- she really does enjoy making him squirm, 
doesn't she? -- and her silent reactions to the alter-Dax's 
behavior with the doctor were terrific. I liked the fact 
that in the "submissive" scene we finally get to see 
something get under Dax's skin, namely that "cold fish" 
remark. Something struck a little too close to home there, 
it looked like; it brought to mind the "Dax" episode and 
Curzon's adventuring, and the attitude I hypothesized that 
Jadzia might have about such things based on Dax's memories 
of Curzon's behavior. It added some depth to Dax, which 
she's been needing at least as badly as Bashir has. This 
character has been badly underutilized, and now that Terry 
Farrell is settling into the character in a very 
satisfactory fashion, it's time for her to be used to 
better effect. The scenes with the injured alter-Dax had 
the rather odd effect on me of making me want to see the 
real Dax in a vulnerable position at some point; for one 
thing, I'd be curious to know what the real Dax's 
vulnerabilities might be, since so far we haven't seen any.


The Odo, Quark, and Kira scenes were all pretty
predictable; though they weren't at all bad, they didn't 
show anything really new. I do wonder whose idea it was to 
put a pair of emus in the show, though, and what it was 
like for the actors to have to work with them! (Or were 
they rheas instead of emus? Any ornithologists in the net 
audience?)

Performance-wise, I don't have a single complaint to make.
All the regulars did a stellar job, in particular Brooks, 
El Fadil, Meany, and Farrell (who had the tough job of 
playing to herself; it wasn't perfect, but it succeeded 
more times than not, and in being the alter-Dax she 
portrayed a very nice range of expression that she usually 
doesn't get to show.) I was also bowled over by both Keone 
Young as Buck Bokai, whom I found to be an immensely 
likeable screen presence, and by Michael John Anderson as 
Rumplestiltskin, who has impressed me before in Picket 
Fences. (I know he was on Twin Peaks, but it's hard to 
judge an actor's ability from scenes where all he does is 
perform odd dances and talk backward...)

So, although I found the plot confusing and a bit
nonsensical at spots, I have to say I really liked this 
episode and am looking forward to watching it again real 
soon.

Short Takes
===========

-- A technical note: The double-Daxing effects were nicely
done; in a couple of places I had trouble figuring out 
exactly how they did it. Unfortunately, in a couple of 
places, most noticeably the "cold fish" dialogue between 
Dax and the alter-Dax, the timing of the lines was slightly 
off, making it obvious that the two sides of the 
conversation were two separate takes and spoiling the 
illusion a little. Still, overall it worked pretty well. 
Also, the fade-ins and fade-outs of the apparitions were 
nice and smooth, with no obvious "freezing" on the part of 
the other characters.

-- I prefer the scenes of the crew conferencing in Sisko's
office while sitting comfortably in chairs to the ones of 
them sitting around the big table in Ops on those stools or 
whatever. It looks like a lot more reasonable and 
comfortable was to conference.

-- Quark's plans for a Ferengi Family Fun Center sounded a
lot like Disneyland to me. Maybe this was the real 
inspiration for the Ferengi concept. (Or possibly Las 
Vegas, which has, in real life, recently been undergoing a 
serious shift in focus from "adult entertainment" to 
"family fun".)

-- A random observation I happened to make while rewatching
this episode: I switched to CNN briefly to see what was up 
in the real world, and found out they have a reporter named 
"Miles O'Brien" on staff. D'you suppose he's a distant 
ancestor? ;-)

-- As a final footnote: I'm going to put in a plug here for
a favorite short story of mine, George R.R. Martin's 
"Portraits of His Children". It's a very effective little 
piece about a writer whose characters come to life and pay 
him a midnight visit. As a portrayal of a writer's 
relationship with his characters, I have yet to see 
anything better. Check it out sometime if you're 
interested.

Next week: A dangerous new threat to DSN arrives at the
station -- and its name is Lwaxana Troi. Oh, there's also 
this mysterious probe that shows up to wreak havoc. Which 
will be the bigger problem? (My money is on Lwaxana.)

Copyright 1993, Jennifer A. Hawthorne. All rights reserved,
but I'm not stuffy about it as long as you don't go overboard.
