DS9 S02E09 & S02E10

In this installment:
(viewed Saturday, July 19th)

Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S02E09 - "Second Sight"
Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S02E10 - "Sanctuary"

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"Second Sight"

• This episode begins four years (and one day) after the Battle of Wolf 359, in which Jennifer Sisko was killed.  Neither her husband nor her son can sleep :(
• The woman that Cmdr. Sisko runs into during his late-night stroll on the Promenade introduces herself as "Fenna".
  
  She's played by Salli Richardson-Whitefield, who's done a lot of other television work (but no other Trek appearances).  I recognize her first and foremost as having played Allison Blake on Eureka.
• "Good morning, Chief! 
  
  "Morning, Commander."
  
  "Is this maintenance or repair?"
  
  "Right now, it's maintenance.  Five'll get you ten it'll be a repair by the time I'm through."
  
  "Admit it, Chief.  If you were on a station where everything worked, you'd be miserable."
  
  "You may be right, sir.  But I'd be willing to give it a try."
• The ship that Starfleet has assigned to assist Professor Seyetik on his mission to reignite the dead star Epsilon 119 is the USS Prometheus (NCC-71201).
  
  
  
  
  It's a Nebula-class starship, and obvious is retired from service at some point between this episode (which takes place in 2370) and the commissioning of the prototype USS Prometheus (NX-74913) (which is seen in the VOY episode "Message In A Bottle", which takes place in 2374).
• "It's because I'm a woman now, isn't it?"
  
  "Don't be ridiculous!"
  
  "No, I understand.  It's hard to talk man-to-man with a woman."
• Professor Seyetik's plan to reigniate Epsilon 119 involves injecting its core with protomatter, the same dangerous, unstable material used by Dr. David Marcus in the construction of the Genesis Device (Star Trek III:  The Search For Spock).
  
  I guess it's not as important that it's unstable if you intend to use it to ignite a massive fusion reaction anyway :)
• Of course Dr. Bashir finds Professor Seyetik "remarkably entertaining".  They share the same sense of self-importance :)
• Fenna is Nidell, Nidell is Fenna.
  
  
  "Now, we have something to talk about."
  
• "With the exception of Professor Seyetik, no one has left the Prometheus the entire time it's been at the station."
  
  {cue creepy music}
• Quark's offering to counsel Cmdr. Sisko in matters of the heart is one of the more amusing moments of the second season to this point.
• The crew of the Prometheus, including its commanding officer Lt. Cmdr. Piersall*, are still wearing the "Type B" TNG-style uniforms. 
  
  
  
  Lt. Cmdr. Piersall
  
  As I've mentioned before, it's clear that the production staff intended the uniforms worn aboard Deep Space 9 to be standard for personnel aboard space stations and starbases and for Starfleet personnel aboard starships to continue wearing the other style. 
  
  Of course, the real-world reason for this is probably just because they wanted the two shows to have slightly different looks while they were on the air together.  Eventually, starting with the movie Generations and on VOY, all Starfleet personnel would wear the same jumpsuit-style uniforms worn on DS9 (and even later, everyone except the stranded crew of the Voyager would transition to the grey-topped jumpsuits of the mid-to-late 2370s).
  
  * - Piersall is "only" a lieutenant commander, so it's unlikely that he's the permanently-installed commander of a ship as significant as the Prometheus.  The show doesn't state specifically, but we should assume that he's either temporarily in command while the ship conducts this particular mission with Professor Seyetik, or that he's the first officer or second officer and that the captain simply never makes an appearance.
• "I'm not reading any cellular structure; no DNA patterns."
  
  THIS LADY ISN'T REAL, BEN.
• So Halanans are "psychoprojective telepaths".  That sounds...dangerous.
• "I'm as real as you are."
  
  Except you totally, totally aren't.
• You're a megalomaniacal scientist whose wives all end up hating you, except you pulled a total d*ck move and married a woman from a species who mates for life.  So what do you do?  You ride a shuttle pod into a star.
  
  Classy move, sir.
• "LET THERE BE LIGHT!"
  
  Okay, slightly less classy move.

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"Sanctuary"

• The tune being played by Bajoran musician Varani in Quark's (much to the Ferengi's dismay), is actually a contemplative, mellow variation of the main theme from the show itself.
• This is one of the few episodes in the entire Star Trek franchise where the universal translator isn't able to translate the spoken language of a newly-encountered alien species (at least at first).  Chief O'Brien and Commander Sisko explain that the universal translator had difficulty developing a "translation matrix" for the Skrreea because their syntax and grammar were completely unlike anything in the program's existing database.
• One of the Skrreea, called "Gai", is played by Leland Orser. 
  
  Mr. Orser will play a few other roles on DS9, VOY and ENT and has been in many other films and television series.  I recognize him best as "Larry Purvis", one of the unwitting victims of intentional alien impregnation in the movie Alien Resurrection.
  
  You know, this guy.
  
  
  
• "Three million of my people are on the other side.  We must bring them through the Eye.  We must bring them here."
  
  Eh, the Deep Space 9 is a big place...but it ain't that big.
• The Skrreea are a matriarchal society.  Haneek says that they don't involve the men in the decision making process within their communities because they are "too emotional".  I'm sure the writers intended this to be a quite pointed reference to the fact that the same ridiculous excuse was used (and is still tried to be used) to exclude real-life human women from positions of power on real-life Earth.
• The Skrreea call the Bajoran Wormhole the "Eye of the Universe" and believe it's the path to a mythical homeworld called Kentanna.  The Bajorans, of course, believe that the wormhole is the "Celestial Temple".  Pretty much only Starfleet and the friggin' Cardassians just call it "the wormhole".
• Constable Odo explicitly states that Deep Space 9 can only hold 7,000 people.  We don't know if this is how many people it's designed to accommodate (i.e. with living quarters, food replicators, waste treatment, etc.) or whether that's literally how many people you could cram into the physical spaces within the station if absolutely necessary.  Either way, it's a lot less than 3,000,000.
• Haneek explains that the Skrreea were conquered and enslaved by the T-Rogoran several hundred years prior to this episode, and the T-Rogoran were in turn recently conquered by the Dominion--at which time the Skrreea took the opportunity to flee captivity in search of Kentanna.
• You thought she liked the dress, she bought you the dress, she actually hated the dress, you hate the dress too...IT'S LIKE A GORRAM SITCOM UP IN HERE.
• And now Jake's datin' a Dabo girl?  Yep, a sitcom.  Except for the dark part with all of the refugees.
• Incidentally, that Dabo girl?  Her name is "Mardah" and we do actually get to meet her.  And the actress who plays her is only two years older than Cirroc Lofton.  When I saw this show for the first time, I always got the impression she was a lot older.  That's probably because they talked about her all the time and Sisko was all disapproving and stuff...and we only got to see her in one episode (I think).
• "What is 'entymology'?"
  
  "The study of bugs."
  
  "Oh, you mean she wants to be a chef!"
• The Skrreea have a natural property to their skin that causes it to flake.  So, that's gross.
• I think Varani is the only Bajoran I've ever seen who didn't wear an earring.
• Draylon II sounds like a nice place.  No?  You'd rather settle on Bajor?  Okay, let's talk about that...
• One of the many models re-used as a Skrreea ship is that of the Promellian battle cruiser from the TNG episode "Booby Trap".
  
  
  
  (image courtesy of Ex Astris Scientia)
  
  The same model will be repainted and used as an unknown Klingon ship class in the fourth season episode "Sons Of Mogh".
• The Bajoran Provisional Government's rejection of the Skrreea request to settle on Bajor is based mostly on the already-precarious situation of the Bajorans themselves after the damage done to their planet and their society by the Cardassian Occupation.
• Tumak, the young Skrreea who takes a ship and heads for Bajor, is played by Andrew Koenig, son of Walter Koenig.
  
  
  
  
  And yes, he played "Boner" on Growing Pains.
  
  Very sadly, he took his own life in 2010 :(
• Tumak's ship is unfortunately destroyed in a brief skirmish with at least two Bajoran interceptors.
  
  
  
• "I think you've made a terrible mistake, all of you.  Maybe we could've helped you.  Maybe we could've helped each other.  The Skreeans are farmers, Kira.  You have a famine on your planet.  Perhaps we could've made that peninsula bloom again.  We'll never know, will we?  Fifty years of Cardassian rule have made you all frightened and suspicious.  I feel sorry for you.  You were right.  Bajor is not Kentanna."
• Aside from the sadness of an actor who's passed away playing a teenage character who's tragically killed, this episode's edgy and dark ending is typical of the tone of DS9 and is a pretty good example of why it remains my favorite series.  I tend to like dark drama in general, and DS9 gave us that in spades.  It's not as prominent or as well-defined in the first couple of seasons as it is later on, but it's there if you know where to look for it.