DS9 S01E16, S01E17, S01E18, S01E19

In this installment:
(viewed Sunday, July 6th)

Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S01E16 - "The Forsaken"
Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S01E17 - "Dramatis Personae"
Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S01E18 - "Duet"
Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S01E19 - "In The Hands Of The Prophets"

---

"The Forsaken"

• "Commander Sisko is very busy with the...recalibration...sweep."
• Oh, yeah.  This is the Lwaxana Troi episode.  Awesome...
• She does know how to deal with Quark, though :)
• "Your certain you were wearing it today?"
  
  "Of course I'm certain!  I never use this hair without it."
• "Quark has plenty of reason to feel guilty, but he usually doesn't have to resort to petty theft to fleece his clients."
  
  "Thank you."
• Pretty much any scene where Chief O'Brien is arguing with the computer is going to be good for at least one or two laughs.
• "Obviously, the young woman doesn't have the necessary experience.  Perhaps I can..."
  
  "The 'young woman' over there has over 300 years' experience, Ambassador."
• "Is 'Odo' your first or last name?"
  
  "Yes."
• Transferring data from an alien probe of unknown origin into your station's computer system?  WHAT COULD GO WRONG?!?
• "Frankly, in my opinion most of you humanoids spend far too much time on your respective mating rituals."
• "Madam Ambassador, I do not eat!  This is not a real mouth, it is an approximation of one.  I do not have an esophagus or a stomach or a digestive system.  I am not like you.  Every sixteen hours, I turn into a liquid."
  
  "I can swim."
• While trapped together in the turbolift, Lwaxana tells Odo the story of the time she was kidnapped by a love-struck Ferengi DaiMon (TNG, "Ménage à Troi")
• It's really only a matter of time before we had an episode where the computer imprinted on O'Brien.
• The whole thing of distracting the computer while you disable it?  Very 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  
  
  
  
• So...I guess it's a good thing that the officer you sent with all of those pesky ambassadors is the station's chief medical officer, then?
• Odo reverting to his liquid state and Lwaxana taking her wig off so that he sees her for who she really is too?  That's pretty sweet, actually.  I actually kind of like her in this episode.
• "You are not at all what I expected."
  
  "No one's ever paid me a greater complement."
  
  Aww...
• Chief O'Brien adopts the "puppy" and they leave it in an isolated subroutine in the computer, and then we never hear of it again.  I wonder if the Dominion found it when they took control of the station :)

---

"Dramatis Personae"

• Valerians?  Those jerks.
• Nothing to spice up your day like a teeny, tiny little Vor'cha-class attack cruiser barreling out of the wormhole and exploding on your doorstep.
• Dr. Bashir being all cloak-and-dagger?  That's not a good sign.
• And now Chief O'Brien?
• I think there was an episode like this where the members of the crew started to get all suspicious of each other on either TOS or TNG (probably both; they loved to recycle plots in these shows' early seasons, before they found their own voices), but I can't recall the name(s) right at the moment.
  
  
  
• When Major Kira gets all coy and flirty to try and get what she wants with Constable Odo (and later with Lt. Dax)? 
  
  I mean, I like to think of myself as a cerebral fellow and not easily influenced by superficial displays of cuteness...but it certainly twirls my beanie.
• "You know what they say:  'Put the shoe on the right foot first, but put the left foot first into the bathtub'."
  
  Dax-on-LSD could be a whole meme.  I hope there are a lot of these moments in the rest of the series that I've just forgotten about.  It's comedy gold (-pressed latinum).
• Mysterious alien energy spheres?  That seems...unsafe.
• See?  This is why you always have a non-humanoid crew member handy.
• "Everybody grab hold of something secure!"
  
  "BECAUSE WE'RE BLOWING THIS BULLSH*T INTO SPACE."

---

"Duet"

• I remember this as being one of the standout episodes of DS9's early seasons.  We'll see if it's held up over the years, I guess.
• Harris Yulin, the actor who plays Aamin Marritza (who, in turn, is accused of being / masquerades as Gul Darhe'el) is really fantastic in this episode.  He's another actor who I could've just sworn had done lots of Trek work, but apparently this was his only role.
  
  Of course, he has been in all kinds of other stuff.  He played US National Security Advisor James Cutter in the film adaptation of the Tom Clancy novel Clear and Present Danger, a movie I've seen many, many times (which is probably why he looks so familiar to me).
• Major Kira's description of the horrors of the Gallitep forced labor camp is clearly meant to invite comparisons to similar (real life) horrors at Nazi camps throughout Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
  
  This episode aired in 1993, less than 50 years after many of those camps were liberated by Allied forces in the last years of World War II.
  
  Throughout the 1990s, the news was filled with stories of old men who were being extradited (or whom various governments were attempting to extradite) for having overseen such camps or were accused of committing other atrocities during the Nazi occupation of Europe (e.g. Erich Priebke).
  
  For a young history buff and budding humanitarian, I found such stories horrifying and fascinating at the same time.  I think it's probably one reason why I find the fictional story in this episode so compelling, and one of the best of DS9's first season.
• It's handy to have a medical condition like Kalla-Nohra Syndrome that can link suspects to their involvement in a particular atrocity or war crime, I suppose.
• Hey kids, it's Gul Dukat!
• "This Bajoran obsession with alleged improprieties during the occupation is really quite...distasteful."
  
  "I suppose, if you're Bajoran, so was the occupation."
• There is just fantastic, fantastic interplay here between Kira and Marritza.
  
  
• This episode is the first time that we learn some specifics about Kira's involvement with the Bajoran resistance during the occupation--specifically, that she was a member of the Shakaar resistance cell.
• "I do miss working with you, Odo."
• So, let's re-cap Marritza's plan:
• Step 1: Get massive plastic surgery to make yourself look like a war criminal
• Step 2: Pay your housekeeper a generous severance package (WTF?)
• Step 3: Book passage to a Bajoran space station
• Step 4: ???
• Step 5: Profit!
• "No, don't you understand?  I have to be punished.  We all have to be punished!"
  
  Well, I guess getting knifed on the Promenade counts?

---

"In The Hands Of The Prophets"

• I have always thought that jumja sticks were positively vile-looking.  They look like tongues on a stick or something.
  
  
  
• Keiko seems slightly jealous of Neela, one of Chief O'Brien's Bajoran subordinates.  Neela (who--spoiler alert--ends up being a bad guy in this episode) is the second of two female Bajoran engineers shown to be working with O'Brien during the latter half of DS9's first season.
  
  The first one, Anara, was originally supposed to be kept for three episodes and used as a villain in this one.  But for whatever reason, she only appeared in one ("The Forsaken") and Neela took her place in the other two ("Duet" and this episode).
• This episode is the first appearance of Vedek (later Kai) Winn Adami, who will become one of the most hated characters in all of Star Trek history (for me, at least).
  
  It's going to take us six seasons to get rid of this lady :P
• "You are opening their minds...to blasphemy.  And I can't allow it to continue."
  
  TEACH THE CONTROVERSY!
• Neela is...really pretty.  This whole series is just going to continually make me feel creepy about how attractive I find Bajoran women :P
• "Some might say that pure science--taught without a spiritual context--is a philosophy, Mrs. O'Brien."
  
  I don't like it when the writers make me dislike Kira :(
• Oh, right.  Cmdr. Sisko is the Emissary of the Prophets.  I guess we forgot about that for most of the season after the pilot, eh?
• Poor Ensign Aquino :(
• "Seek the Prophets!"
  
  "Seek them yourself."
• This episode is actually a pretty no-holds-barred look at the place that religion has (or doesn't have, depending upon your perspective) in the civil education of children in a pluralistic society.  I can actually imagine this episode being somewhat controversial if it were aired today.
• Apparently in the old school of Starfleet engineering, you don't take a chief's tools without asking.  YOU JUST DON'T DO IT, OKAY?!?
• So, a Bajoran spiritual leader tries to interfere with the teaching of science in Keiko's classroom.  Keiko counters by changing her lesson plan to teach the (remaining) children about Galileo's persecution by the Roman Inquisition.
  
  Well played, Keiko.  This may be the only time in the history of ever that I don't hate your guts.
• And kudos to Sisko for trying to teach Jake about tolerance...but a wag-of-the-finger to him for discouraging his kid's zeal for scientific truth.
• Vedek Bareil is the Bajoran spiritual equivalent to that relaxed school teacher who says "right on" and "groovy", and lets the kids in his art class sneak out the back door to smoke.
  
  (I actually had one of those in high school--although I was not myself, at the time, a smoker.)
• This episode is the first of many occasions when the Vedek Assembly proves itself to be completely, totally useless.
• "A directed energy discharge?  From a phaser?"
  
  "Set to kill."
  
  Dun dun DUUUUUUUUUN!
• "You're not like the others.  You don't...put on any airs.  You're just...nicer."
  
  She likes you, O'Brien.  You lucky bastard.
  
  Or she's playing you and is totally an assassin.  Either way, YOU LUCKY BASTARD.
• "Orthodox?  In that case, I'll need twice as many dabo girls.  These spiritual types love those dabo girls."
  
  Seriously...I mean, I think it's pretty funny.  But I can see religious folks being slightly offended by this episode.  I bet a script like this wouldn't make it to air on a network now without some serious modifications.
  
  I think the social commentary is brilliant and it--along with the intrigue and so forth--solidifies the first season finale as a pretty serviceable episode overall (in my opinion).
• "Odo, I'm not a killer."
  
  "No, but most of your friends are."
• The 7th Rule of Acquisition:  "Keep your ears open."
• Bombing the school?  STAY CLASSY, BAJOR.
• "Is the Emissary of the Prophets holding me accountable for this act of terrorism?"
  
  "The commander of this station is."
  
  Sisko v. Winn, Round 1:  FIGHT
• "You claim the Prophets as your personal constituency, Vedek Winn.  I'm not convinced that's justified.  Who do you speak for?  An order that's barely listened to in your Assembly.  So you come here, look for a more receptive audience."
• "The Bajorans who have lived with us on this station, who have worked with us for months, who helped us move this station to protect the Wormhole, who joined us to explore the Gamma Quadrant, who have begun to build the future of Bajor with us...these people know that we are neither the enemy nor the devil.  We don't always agree.  We have some damned good fights, in fact.  But we always come away from them with a little better understanding and appreciation of each other.  You won't succeed here.  The school will reopen, and when your rhetoric gets old the Bajoran parents will bring their children back."
• "The Prophets spoke, I answered their call!"
  
  And now you're totally, totally going to jail.  I hope the Prophets talk to people in prison.
• The moment when Kira finally realizes that the entire affair--the controversy over the teachings in the school, the bombing, everything--was just a plot by Vedek Winn to get Vedek Bareil to the station so Neela could kill him?
  
  That's a great moment.  It's nice when Kira comes around and joins the "We All Hate Vedek Winn" club.
• "Commander, I heard what you said to Vedek Winn about the school.  And I wanted to let you know that you're right about the Bajorans...at least about me.  I don't think you're...the devil."
  
  "Maybe we have made some progress after all."
  
  AND END SCENE (and season)