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: "The Forsaken" **SPOILERS**
=============================================

Episode Number: 417
Air Date: 5/22/93

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

As the show opens, Sisko comments into his station log
that a group of Federation ambassadors has arrived on DSN 
on a fact-finding expedition to learn about the wormhole. 
The officer assigned to shepherd the ambassadors around the 
station turns out to be Dr. Bashir, who is seated in 
Quark's surrounded by his charges. The young doctor, 
looking harried, is attempting to keep the ambassadors 
happy, but with little success; they appear to be more 
interested in complaining than in learning anything about 
the wormhole they have come to investigate. One of the 
ambassadors expresses a desire to speak with Cmdr. Sisko, 
and Bashir offers only weak and unconvincing excuses for 
his inability to arrange such a meeting. The female 
ambassador, Ambassador Taxco, is deeply offended that a 
mere first-year officer has been assigned as their escort.
	The ambassadorial gripe session is interrupted by a shriek
of outrage from the nearby Dabo table. Bashir heads over 
to see what the problem is, and discovers a highly irate 
Ambassador Lwaxana Troi, sporting a bright pink coiffure, 
shouting that a latinum hair brooch has been stolen from 
her. She assaults Quark, grabbing him by the ear, demanding 
that he return her possession. Hearing the ruckus, Odo 
comes over to intervene. He states that Quark does not 
usually participate in *petty* larceny, and suggests 
Lwaxana use her telepathy to scan the room for the guilty 
party. Lwaxana is unable to locate the offender, and 
concludes that it must be a Ferengi since Betazoids can't 
read Ferengi minds. Odo stalks through the room, and after 
a moment collars a short individual of a race bearing a 
certain resemblance to the Ferengi. He shakes down his 
captive, discovering that he has an assortment of items in 
his possession which don't appear to be his, including 
Lwaxana's missing hair brooch. Odo identifies the 
individual as a "Daktarian", a race closely related to the 
Ferengi and therefore also immune to Lwaxana's abilities. 
Lwaxana is very impressed with Odo's handling of the 
situation and his deductive reasoning, and as Odo hauls his 
prisoner off to the security office, she requests of Bashir 
that he tell her *everything* he knows about Odo.
	Up in Ops, Chief O'Brien is trying to deal with the routine
maintenance of the station, but is having difficulty with 
the balky and argumentative main computer. As O'Brien and 
his Bajoran assistant, Anara, struggle with the 
uncooperative machine, Sisko enters, just in time to bear 
the brunt of a tirade from O'Brien about the worthlessness 
of the Cardassian computer. O'Brien states his intention to 
rebuild the device from the ground up, even if it takes 
years; Sisko is dubious, but O'Brien insists and Sisko 
gives in.
	Bashir arrives with his three charges, saying they insisted
on being shown to Ops. Sisko is clearly less than thrilled 
to have to deal with the ambassadors, but he puts on a 
bright smile for them nonetheless. The VIPs proceed to 
complain to Sisko about Bashir and their accommodations, 
appearing inclined to continue for quite a while; they are 
interrupted, however, by Kira stating that an unidentified 
ship has come through the wormhole. Dax scans it and states 
that it has no life forms aboard, and is therefore probably 
a probe. The design is unrecognisable and the probe is 
unusually densely packed with computer equipment.
	Sisko orders the probe towed in close to the station, and
tells O'Brien to try to connect up to the probe's computer 
systems and download any information that might be stored 
in them. Bashir tries to chivvy the ambassadors out of Ops, 
but the Bolian ambassador makes a fuss, asking to stay and 
see what comes of the investigation of the probe. Sisko 
"suggests" to Bashir that he take the ambassadors elsewhere 
on the station where they can get a good view of the probe 
itself.
	Odo is at work in his security office when Lwaxana Troi 
comes to the door, her hair now a brilliant red. She 
endeavours to make conversation with Odo, and her manner is 
flattering and more than a trifle suggestive. Her style 
makes Odo very uncomfortable, even more so when she 
confesses to having lost her heart to him and proceeds to 
make advances that culminate in an attempt to get the 
flustered Security Chief into a clinch. Odo, close to 
panic, makes a very feeble excuse, then flees the security 
office and, more to the point, the woman within.
	Up in Ops, Dax and O'Brien have succeeded in getting a
linkup with the probe's computer systems, to O'Brien's 
considerable surprise. The station's computer is being 
unusually co-operative. Dax begins to analyse the data from 
the probe.
	Odo goes to see Sisko in his office. He tells the commander
about Lwaxana's attitude and actions, to Sisko's 
amusement. Odo is confused and put off by Lwaxana's 
aggressive advances, but a not very sympathetic Sisko 
suggests that a little romance might do Odo some good. Odo 
expresses disdain for humanoid "procreation rituals", which 
are all irrelevant to him anyway, and asks Sisko to make 
Lwaxana leave him alone. Sisko says, "You can handle 
thieves and killers, but not one Betazoid woman?" Odo 
replies, "I *understand* thieves and killers. I don't 
understand...*her*."
	Outside in Ops, O'Brien is still checking out the probe
with help from Dax and Anara, the Bajoran assistant. The 
probe is strangely designed; it has no real equipment 
beyond the computer hardware, and nothing to give any hint 
of its mission or origins.
	Up on the Promenade, a now peroxide-blonde Lwaxana corners
Odo near a turbolift with an invitation to join her for a 
picnic in the holosuites. Odo is horrified at the thought 
that she told Quark she was taking Odo into a holosuite, 
and tries to escape to his duties, but Lwaxana sticks to 
him like glue, following him into the turbolift. She 
continues to press her picnic plans upon the hapless 
shapeshifter, who protests, but to no avail: "Every sixteen 
hours I turn into a liquid!" Not in the least deterred, 
Lwaxana replies, "I can swim."
	In mid-conversation, the power in the Turbolift suddenly
fails, leaving the pair trapped within, to Odo's dismay. 
He calls Ops, and is informed that the Turbolift power has 
failed. The staff in Ops try to transport them out, but the 
transporters are off-line as well. O'Brien is called to Ops 
to deal with the problem, as in the Turbolift Lwaxana 
exclaims, "Alone at last!" Odo reacts to this with 
something resembling sheer terror.
	Up in Ops, the staff is unable to find anything wrong with
either the Turbolift or the transporter, except for the 
fact that they aren't working. O'Brien suggests a possible 
power re-routing, but is unsure how long the procedure will 
take to complete. Kira calls Odo and tells him not to try 
to shift out of the Turbolift; there are exposed circuit 
coils in the walls which could be dangerous to him.
	Lwaxana suggests to Odo that they pass the time by getting
to know each other better, but Odo tells her he'd rather 
pass the time quietly. Lwaxana tries to comply, but after a 
few moments gives up and confesses that she doesn't think 
she could stand to be silent while waiting for rescue. She 
begins to relate tales of her previous adventures to Odo, 
who endures in silence. After a few minutes of her chatter, 
however, she notices him gazing about at the walls of the 
Turbolift. When she asks him what he's doing, he replies, 
"I was just wondering how many volts are in that exposed 
circuit coil..."
	In Sisko's office, the commander is trying to buck up an
exasperated Bashir who is fed up with his current 
assignment. Sisko says, "It's a simple job. Just keep them 
happy -- and away from me." Bashir protests loudly and 
theatrically that keeping them happy is flat-out 
impossible, which gets a laugh from Sisko. Sisko tells 
Bashir that when he served under Curzon Dax, Curzon used to 
delight in sticking him with the job of dealing with 
troublesome VIPs; Bashir astutely deduces that Sisko is doing 
the same to him, and Sisko, completely unrepentant, agrees. 
Bashir asks how Sisko managed to stop getting such 
assignments, and Sisko tells him it ended when he punched 
out one of the VIPs. Sisko suggests, however, that Bashir 
not hit any of the ambassadors, as Sisko is not as 
understanding as Curzon was.
	O'Brien calls Sisko over to tell him that the computer is
behaving very strangely. It won't power up the Turbolift, 
but aside from that it is being far more co-operative and 
helpful than is its usual wont. In effect, its whole 
personality has changed. And O'Brien has noticed something 
else that seems too odd to be a coincidence; each time he 
leaves the computer, something else goes wrong on the 
station that calls him back to it. "It's almost like the 
computer doesn't want me to leave it alone."
	Sisko, O'Brien, Kira, and Dax confer about the problem. Dax
suggests that perhaps they uploaded some sort of 
unsentient, non-organic life form from the probe when they 
downloaded its data; Kira suggests that it might be 
analogous to a stray puppy that has attached itself to 
O'Brien. Sisko orders O'Brien to get rid of the thing, 
whatever it is, before it causes serious trouble on the 
station, and O'Brien says he'll try simply uploading the 
probe's data back into the probe. Sisko comments to Kira 
that Odo's been trapped in the lift for over four hours, 
and wonders about the cycle of his regenerations. Kira is 
worried about what may happen if Odo liquefies without his 
bucket around.
	O'Brien tries to upload the probe sequences from DSN into
the probe, but the station computer refuses to complete 
the command. When O'Brien tries to force the issue, all the 
lights on the station go out.
	Down on the Promenade, a weary Bashir is riding herd on the
ambassadors, who have seized on the power outage as a new 
excuse to complain, and to question O'Brien's competence. 
Bashir defends the Ops Chief, and suggests that the 
ambassadors wait out the problem in their quarters.
	In the Turbolift, Lwaxana is trying to draw Odo into a conversation 
about himself. The shapeshifter is starting to look rather 
waxy and physically uncomfortable. Reluctantly, Odo tells 
Lwaxana about the scientist who was assigned to study him 
when he first arrived on Bajor; Lwaxana comments that it 
sounds like a lonely existence. Odo, uneasy, tries to call 
Ops again but the comm. is still down. Lwaxana continues to 
encourage him to talk about himself, and he opens up a 
little, telling her that in his early years he tried to 
make a place for himself on Bajor by being entertaining -- 
doing shifting tricks at parties and so on. He concludes, 
"I hate parties." Lwaxana tells him he should come to one 
of her parties sometime, and she'll have the other guests 
entertain him instead. Odo doesn't reply, and after a 
moment he groans as if in pain. Concerned, Lwaxana asks him 
what's wrong, and he says that he's in the fifteenth hour 
of his sixteen-hour cycle.
	Up in Ops, O'Brien is planning to manually transfer the
probe data out of the station computer. To distract the 
invading life form, the assembled staff start asking for 
various complicated analyses, while Anara pulls the memory 
rods out of the computer. The computers begins to 
malfunction, and suddenly the control panel erupts in a 
flare of sparks. Dax calls out that she's reading a plasma 
build-up in the habitat ring.
	Down in the habitat ring, Bashir is escorting the
ambassadors to their quarters when, without warning, the 
hallway in front of them erupts in a huge fireball. The 
corridor's emergency bulkheads slam down, trapping the four 
of them inside with the flames.
	In Ops, O'Brien yells that the fire suppression units in
the habitat ring aren't functioning. Sisko calls for an 
emergency fire crew to head to the site of the accident, as 
he and Kira make for the Turbolift.
	In the smoke-filled corridor, Bashir attempts to get the
seal open, but neither the electronic controls nor the 
manual override are functioning. He pounds helplessly on 
the door as the flames close in.
	Kira and Sisko have reached one of the corridor seals. 
They try to cut their way in with phasers, but the material 
of the blast door is too tough and it does not give way. 
Sisko tells O'Brien that if he can't get the fire control 
systems on-line, the people trapped inside will die.
	Up in Ops, O'Brien is failing to get any reaction out of
the disabled computer. Dax suggests that the main problem 
is that the invader doesn't want to leave; it's acting like 
a scared puppy. O'Brien recalls owning a puppy at one time, 
and comments that the animal craved attention and was 
unlike to leave any location where it was getting what it 
wanted. "Lieutenant," says O'Brien, "I've got to build a 
doghouse."
	In the frozen Turbolift, Odo has turned his back on
Lwaxana. He tries to call Ops again, his voice gone raspy 
and indistinct, but gets no reply. He tells Lwaxana that no 
one has ever seen him like this before; she tells him he 
doesn't need to be ashamed, and he replies that it's not 
shame, just a matter of privacy. "How can I make it easier 
for you?" she asks. "You can't," Odo tells her. Instead of 
replying, Lwaxana pulls off her bright yellow wig, 
revealing the short brown real hair beneath. "No one's ever 
seen *me* like this," she says. Odo turns around, so that 
she can see his features melting and flowing like wax. He 
tells her that her hair looks fine, but she replies that 
it's ordinary -- and she doesn't like to be ordinary. "You 
are not at all what I expected," says Odo, and she replies, 
"No one's ever paid me a greater compliment." Odo starts to 
lose control of his form, and Lwaxana says, "Let go. I'll 
take care of you." He melts and flows, and she catches his 
liquid form up in her skirt, sheltering him.
	Back near the burning corridor, Sisko and Kira have a crew
working on cutting through the blast door -- but they are 
preparing for the worst.
	Up in Ops, O'Brien has created a computer subroutine called
"Pup", designed to be a monitor program that can watch all 
the activities of the station's computer. He then tries to 
transfer the probe's computer entity into his subroutine -- 
and is successful. The station's main computer comes back 
on line, and O'Brien tells Sisko to try opening the blast 
door.
	Sisko does so, and the door opens, revealing a charred and
smoking hallway beyond. There is no sound or motion from 
within. It appears that they have arrived too late.
	 Suddenly, a hatch door is kicked open at floor level, and
a grimy but uninjured Bashir crawls out, getting a hand up 
from Sisko. He is followed by the three ambassadors, all 
intact, and all effusive in their praise for the young 
officer's actions during the crisis. Sisko compliments 
Bashir on his work, and the doctor replies, with an 
uncharacteristic lack of arrogance, "Just in the right 
place at the right time, sir."
	Lwaxana and Odo have finally been released from the
Turbolift, with Odo restored to his humanoid form. "I know 
that wasn't exactly what you had in mind for your picnic," 
says Odo. "When it comes to picnics," says Lwaxana, "the 
only thing that really matters is the company." Odo tells 
her that he appreciates her sensitivity and discretion, and 
she replies, "Oh? Next time you see me, I'll give you a lot 
more to appreciate."
	Up in Ops, Sisko asks O'Brien how he got the computer
working again, and O'Brien explains that he "adopted" the 
invading program by giving it a special subroutine as its 
home. Sisko is unsure that this is a wise idea, but Dax 
says it should be considered just another new life form to 
be studied. O'Brien says that he'll be responsible for 
taking care of it, and Sisko responds wryly, "Keep it off 
the
furniture."

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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 Review: "The Forsaken"
Review by Jen Hawthorne <jen@athena.mit.edu>
============================================

Editorial notes: This review is likely to be shorter than
normal because I'm currently visiting my folks in 
Michigan, and am therefore writing it via long-distance 
dialup. (I'm going to have to go into hiding for a few 
weeks after my folks get the phone bill, in any case...) 
Also, this terminal is not coping well with my text editor 
for some reason, so there may be a higher-than-normal 
incidence of typos and possibly some garbling of text. 
Apologies in advance for any problems. Next week's synopsis 
and review will be late since out here in the boonies we 
don't get DSN until a full week after it's aired in Boston, 
but it should be free of text-editor mangling, at least.

Onward...

One-sentence opinion summary: Some of the Odo/Lwaxana
scenes were quite nice, but the rest of the episode was a 
completely transparent excuse for sticking those two in an 
Turbolift together.

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


It seemed obvious to me after viewing "The Forsaken" that
what we had here a case of someone coming up with a decent 
little idea -- Lwaxana Troi and Odo trapped together, alone 
-- but being unable to come up with a decent frame to fit 
it into, and also being unable to come up with sufficient 
interaction between the two of them to fill up more than 
one-third of an hour. There's not much theme to discuss 
here, as it was a character- and plot-driven show. 
Unfortunately, the plot completely failed to work for me 
(details in a minute), and while I liked some of the 
character scenes between Lwaxana and Odo (one of them very 
much) and also the little Sisko/Bashir scene (except for 
some awkward dialogue), on the whole there were more misses 
than hits in terms of character development in this 
episode. So I really wasn't impressed with "The Forsaken".

First, I had a number of problems with the plot. Okay, I
can deal with the fact that they wanted to get Lwaxana and 
Odo trapped together in order to make the story possible; 
but couldn't they find some more reasonable way of doing 
it? There must be more than one Turbolift on the station, 
yet from the way they were talking in the episode, the only 
one to get stuck during the power outage was the one 
carrying Odo and Lwaxana. And the transporters just 
happened to go out at the same time. I will give them 
credit (and plenty of it!) for finally REMEMBERING that 
they had transporters and trying to use them during a 
crisis, but it would have been much less annoying if they 
had lost the transporters *first*, say some ten minutes 
before, and *then* lost the Turbolift power. In reality, 
this may not be any less contrived than the two systems 
malfunctioning at the same time, but if *feels* less 
deliberate this way. (All drama is contrivance, but in 
well-written drama the seams don't show...) And of course 
the Turbolift turns out to be dangerous for Odo to shift 
out of. Again, they at least managed to remember that he 
had the ability to do so and covered the hole, which is 
good, but it just sounded so...contrived.

The second of the plotlines, with Bashir and the
ambassadors, starts off fine but later suffers from the 
same contrivance problem as the Turbolift. *WHY* did a 
computer foul-up cause a plasma explosion on the station??? 
I didn't understand this in the slightest. And of course it 
happens to occur just where Bashir and the ambassadors are, 
and the fire suppression systems weren't functioning, and 
the doors can't be cut through with phasers (I hope they 
remember this little detail in future scripts.) Isn't that 
piling the implausibilities on rather thick? It felt like 
it to me. It also felt to me like this whole part of the 
story was something thrown in to fill time that wasn't 
taken up by the Odo/Lwaxana plotline -- "Uhm, we need to 
fill another fifteen minutes...let's have a station 
accident and endanger one of the regulars..." The only 
redeeming features I saw in it were that a) Bashir got to 
be competent at something other than medicine (though I 
didn't much like the way it was executed -- see below) and 
b) the Sisko/Bashir scene was nice (more details on this in 
the characterisation section of the review.)

What exactly did Bashir do to save himself and the 
ambassadors that impressed them so much? Just found a 
cubby-hole to hide in? I have no problems with Bashir's 
being capable of keeping his head in a crisis (except for 
some character continuity quibbles I'll cover later on) but 
I wanted to *see* what he did that was so remarkable, or at 
least hear about it. As it is, the audience is supposed to 
take it on faith that he did something very clever, and I'd 
prefer to be allowed to make that judgement myself, thanks. 
Not to mention the fact that it would have been nice to see 
the changeover from pounding-on-the-door-panic to 
think-fast-Julian! mode, but that's more of a character 
issue.

I also can't quite swallow the ambassadors' attitudinal
one-eighty after the accident. Okay, maybe they'll think 
better of Bashir given that he saved their lives, but I'd 
have expected them to come out of that hole screaming blue 
murder about what an awful death-trap the station is and 
how could Starfleet allow this and I'm going to complain to 
my government! Given that they'd spent so much time and 
energy nit-picking and finding things to complain about, I 
would have guessed that now that they had something *real* 
to gripe about, they'd be worse than ever.

The third part of the story, the mysterious probe and its
computer entity (or whatever it was, I'm still not clear) 
felt very much like an excuse generated to set up the 
Odo/Lwaxana situation. I don't think much of their computer 
security at all if it allows the downloading of invasive 
self-modifying code and permits it to disrupt their vital 
systems. Okay, so Cardassian computers are the local 
equivalent of the Commodore Vic-20; but if they're *that* 
bad, they shouldn't be doing risky data transfers with 
them. I'm no computer person, but even so I thought that 
the sequence of events and the way the crew dealt with them 
made no sense. They do a manual shutdown of the computer 
(during which time I fully expected to hear it start 
singing "Daisy, Daiseeee....") which for some reason results 
in a plasma explosion? Hunh?

And then they give the Pup (or whatever) the ability to
monitor the station's vital systems (if I understood the 
technobabble correctly) and just left it there? Sounds like 
a very good way for some alien intelligence to get complete 
details on the functioning of the station and its 
strengths/weaknesses. I hope for DSN's sake that those 
aliens aren't hostile and don't come through the wormhole 
and just download all that vital information from their Pup 
-- or order their Pup to cripple the station. That could be 
very embarrassing for the DSN crew.

And speaking of the technobabble, it was even worse than
usual this episode; very intrusive and annoying. If they 
keep this up I'm going to start cringing every time Dax and 
O'Brien are in the same scene, because it seems like every 
time they are, a large chunk of back-and-forth technobabble 
dialogue is sure to take place.

As for the Odo/Lwaxana plotline: well, it was the best of
the three, quite strong in points. I had one problem with 
it, though (in a plot sense, that is; I had a couple of 
problems with it in a character sense.) Namely, what is so 
bad about Odo going liquid without a bucket (or similar 
container, I imagine) around? That Odo wouldn't like to 
have humanoids around when he was helpless, I can see; that 
he'd find it embarrassing to do in public, I can see. But 
from the way Kira and Sisko were acting, it's like Kira 
expected something really bad to happen to Odo if he 
liquefied without his bucket. Was she expecting that he'd 
dribble out through the cracks in the floor? Or what? It 
was implied that there was some danger to Odo in this, but 
I can't see where it comes from. It felt like a false sense 
of jeopardy; like a cheap shot. The plot worked fine with 
the only problem being Odo's embarrassment; nothing more 
was needed.

In terms of characterisation, this episode was a real mixed
bag. I'll deal with each featured character briefly, in 
order of importance to the episode.

Odo's characterisation was expanded a bit, which I'm glad 
to see, but I wonder about some of it. His reaction to 
Lwaxana seemed both right and wrong for the character. 
Going to Sisko and complaining that he doesn't understand 
her was right, but his near-terror when dealing with her 
directly at the beginning was wrong. It would have felt 
better to me if he'd just fixed her with one of his icy 
stares, chin up, and walked away from her in an offended 
manner when she started bothering him. I just can't see him 
being...well, *flustered*...by Lwaxana Troi. It didn't work 
for me in the slightest. His behaviour in the Turbolift was 
much more appropriate -- the aloof disdain and the wry 
comment about wondering how much charge was in the exposed 
coils were fitting. I'm of two minds about the "performing 
at parties" thing; it's very hard for me to see prickly, 
proud Odo debasing himself like that. On the other hand, 
people do change, and having dealt with that sort of thing 
in the past would be a reasonable basis for his current 
curmudgeonly attitude toward the antics of humanoids.

As for Lwaxana...well, I've never liked her much. (Sorry,
Majel fans; I've heard Majel is a lovely person, but I 
just can't deal with Lwaxana.) In the first half of this 
episode, nothing happened to change my opinion. In fact, I 
was getting very annoyed with her when she was coming on to 
Odo because I think that was definitely sexual harassment. 
(Yes, it can go female-to-male, too, and does.) Not only 
was the attention unwelcome and discomfitting to the 
target, but she was in a position of some influence over 
Odo, being of Ambassadorial rank, such that he felt he had 
to restrain his response to keep from offending her. It's 
no more appropriate for her to force herself on Odo than it 
is for Bashir to continue to pester Dax (considerably 
*less* so; not only does Dax not seem to mind, but Bashir 
has never gone so far as to lay hands on her without her 
invitation, as Lwaxana did to Odo.)

In the second half of the episode, however, I found myself
actually liking Lwaxana a bit. The point where my opinion 
changed was quite distinct; it was when she admitted to Odo 
that she didn't think she could manage to keep quiet while 
waiting for rescue. It was an admission of weakness, and it 
roused some sympathy for the character that up until then 
had been completely lacking in me. After that point she did 
a complete flip in the tone of her interaction with Odo; 
instead of thinking solely about her own desires, she 
actually started worrying more about what Odo was going 
through, and trying to make him more comfortable rather 
than less. And the crowning scene, with her taking off her 
wig and offering shelter to Odo in his helpless state, was 
effective and affecting; it was one of the few times in the 
episodes that I actually felt some emotional connection 
with what was going on on the TV screen. In other words, it 
was one of the few times I cared. Too bad it couldn't have 
been that way all the way through.

The handling of Bashir in this episode puzzled me more than
a little. At places I just had to wonder if this was the 
same doctor we've seen all season. For example, that 
comment he made to the ambassadors about "Here on the 
frontier, it's just one adventure after another" was a 
paraphrasing of his comments to Kira in "The Emissary", but 
I couldn't figure out what it was supposed to mean in that 
context. Was he being sarcastic? Sincere? Offering it up as 
an excuse for the problem with the lights?? It was just 
*off*. The line didn't make any sense to me. And as I said 
above, while it's nice to see Bashir getting a chance to be 
competent at something other than medicine, we didn't 
actually get to *see* it, nor did we get to see how he 
managed to get on good enough terms with the Ambassadors 
that they emerged calling him by his first name. And he was 
damn near *humble* after getting out of there! Is this 
*our* Bashir? I felt like they should be checking for pods 
or something. (I'm all for character development, but it 
shouldn't be this abrupt and, IMHO, unjustified by the 
circumstances. And if they're going to do that, they should 
at least show us *what happened* to bring about the change. 
Having it happen off screen is a cheat and a real 
disappointment.)

Sisko fared quite a bit better than Odo and Bashir. He was
properly sceptical about O'Brien's plans for the Pup and 
was just right in his priorities about *stopping* it first 
and figuring it out later. He also came off well in dealing 
with the plasma explosion crises.

In addition to that, he had three nice scenes, one each
with a different crew member, that added to his character 
in subtle and satisfying ways. First, his scene with 
O'Brien about the computer worked very well; his attitude 
toward O'Brien's obsession with the computer had just the 
right mix of doubt and faith in the Ops Chief. And I really 
liked the way he dealt with O'Brien's ruffled feathers in 
that scene; he came across as a competent, flexible manager 
of people. It's a command style distinctly different than 
that of either Kirk or Picard, but equally effective 
nonetheless -- and much more likely to be successful, given 
his rather uncertain mix of personnel, than either Kirk's 
or Picard's style would be in the same situation, I think. 
His reaction to Odo, while less than sympathetic, was still 
appropriate -- Odo calls *this* a problem?? And I very much 
liked seeing him interacting with Bashir in some fashion 
other than stern-superior-officer mode (most noticeable in 
Battle Lines and the Move Along Home teaser, but visible 
elsewhere too.) Seeing Sisko throwing Bashir into 
educational situations and then advising him with how to 
deal with them when he falters seems much more like the 
kind of relationship that was originally envisioned for the 
two characters than one where Sisko just chews out Bashir 
every time he messes up or opens his mouth at the wrong 
time. I like it a lot better this way and hope to see more 
of it. (In my experience in real life, a person with an 
attitude problem like Bashir's stands a much better chance 
of getting over it if another more clueful person that they 
happen to respect invests some time and effort in them. 
Just landing on them when they mess up is of limited 
utility -- or, to put it in strictly psychological terms, 
positive reinforcement works better than negative 
reinforcement in bringing about long-lasting behavioural 
changes.)

O'Brien got a little development, but he mostly
technobabbled a lot. I did like hearing about him having a 
puppy when he was younger; it's a nice little background 
detail. He shows again, as he did in "Captive Pursuit", 
that he has a tendency to champion the underdog (no pun 
intended!) that appears in need of a friend, although I 
will say as I said in my review of that episode that I 
wonder at the wisdom of it sometimes. (I really wonder what 
his reaction will be if that Pup turns on him and bites him 
someday, and the station with him...) I also liked his 
early scene with Sisko where he gripes and gritches about 
the computer's misbehaviour; a very realistic and 
understandable reaction for a man who's used to having his 
tools functioning properly.

Dax was present but only technobabbled; Kira was around but
didn't do much; Quark was present but only briefly. No 
Jake, Nog, Keiko, or Molly.

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

-- One thing they didn't mention that I was curious about:
would Lwaxana's telepathy have worked on Odo?

-- O'Brien is definitely turning into Scotty. When did he
turn into an engineer? I thought he was a technician-type 
(an operator, not a designer.) Where'd he get his 
engineering degree? He didn't go to Starfleet Academy 
because he was enlisted until he transferred to DSN and got 
promoted to Ensign. (Please don't start up that "What is 
O'Brien's rank?" debate again; if Bashir, a Lt. j.g., is 
his superior officer, then O'Brien is either an Ensign or 
an enlisted man.)

-- At one point the computer asks O'Brien if he wants to
"Abort or Retry " something. Sounds like the Cardassian 
computers run MS-DOS (yuck!)

-- Nice to see a Bajoran at work on the station; it seems
like all of the technical people we've seen on the station 
have been Starfleet. Maybe she'll show up again?



Next Week: "Keep on playin' those mind games..." Looks like
we've got another Happy Fun Ball crew take-over episode. 
This is what I get for complaining about glial cells, I 
suppose.

(Lessee, Sisko's the King, Kira's the Queen, Bashir's a
Knight, Dax and Odo are Bishops, and O'Brien's a Rook. 
Quark and Jake are harder to pin down, but I'd say Quark's 
also a Knight (because he moves in mysterious ways) and 
Jake's the other Rook. Yeah, that sort of works...)

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