DS9 S03E23, S03E24, S03E25, S03E26, S04E01

In this installment:
(viewed Sunday, October 12th)

Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S03E23 - "Family Business"
Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S03E24 - "Shakaar"
Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S03E25 - "Facets"
Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S03E26 - "The Adversary"
Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S04E01-02 - "The Way Of The Warrior" (Parts 1 & 2)

---

"Family Business"

• New rule:  No more episodes that start with Sisko cooking in his quarters and singing to himself.  No more.
• "You only cook Hungarian food when you're in a really good mood."
  
  Okay, that's not a real thing that anyone would do.
• This is the second mention of Captain Kasidy Yates, Cmdr. Sisko's eventual wife, prior to her actual appearance.
• Hey kids, it's liquidator Brunt!  And yes, that's Jeffrey Combs underneath that makeup.  We'll grow to love him first as Weyoun on DS9 and later as Shran on ENT.
• "Your mom is totally turning a profit.  We can't have any of that.  You're under arrest."
• In this episode, Kira and Sisko discuss the assignment of a new runabout to the station, which Sisko says he would like to name Rubicon.
  
  Kira jokes that it's a good thing that Earth has so many rivers, given how quickly the station goes through runabouts.  This is one of those cases where the Trek writers give us a little wink-wink, nudge-nudge to the inescapable fact that they're burning through something (e.g. "redshirts", shuttlecraft, etc.) at an astonishing rate.
• This episode is the first time we actually get to see Ferenginar, the homeworld of the Ferengi species and the capital of the Ferengi Alliance.  It's...not a pleasant place.
• This is also the first time we see Ishka, mother to Quark and Rom.
• "Your mother...is wearing clothes."
  
  "Mother!  Get undressed this instant!"
• O'Brien and Bashir breaking into Quark's so they can get their dartboard back?  Priceless.
• Sisko:  "Exactly how many people has Jake told about this woman?"
  
  O'Brien:  "...everyone."
  
  {O'Brien swiftly turns around and goes back to work.}
• The entire concept of Ferengi women being traditionally forbidden to wear clothing is never more creepily brought to our attention than when Rom tells his mother that he would be more comfortable if she were naked, and she takes her clothes off to make him feel better.
  
  I get it:  It's their culture, it's not a sexual thing, etc.  Still, even just beyond the overt sexism...gross.
• Oh, I stand corrected!  We do finally get to meet Captain Yates in this episode.  And she's kind of awesome.  Her brother even plays baseball!
  
  
  
• "Do you know what this means?"
  
  "It means Moogie's got the lobes for business."
• Although sometimes the Ferengi story-lines bore me, I like pretty much any episode where Rom proves that he's smarter, more capable and more ethical than anyone (especially Quark) will ever publicly acknowledge.
  
  Seriously.  I <3 Rom.
• The little "tip jar"-type containers everywhere on Ferenginar (and fees from things like taking the elevator, sitting in a chair in the waiting room, etc.) are a bit slapstick, but amusing.
• In a bit of idle chatter during their first "date", Yates tells Sisko that her brother is a colonist on Cestus III, and Sisko comments that it's "on the other side of the Federation".  Yates says that because of the distance, it takes two weeks for a subspace transmission from the colony to arrive in the vicinity of Deep Space 9.  It doesn't give us any really hard numbers, but it supports the idea of a Federation that takes (at least) several weeks to traverse even at high warp.
  
  If "Cestus III" sounds familiar to you, it's because it's also the planet where Captain Kirk fought the Gorn captain in the TOS episode "Arena".  At the time of that episode, the planet was the site of a Federation research outpost.
• "I sincerely hope I never see any of you again."
  
  "The feeling is mutual."
  
  Don't bet on it, fellas.

---

"Shakaar"

• Two things, really quick:
• It's hard to beat Miles O'Brien at darts (unless you're genetically engineered, like some people).
• No way would Captain Picard play darts with Chief O'Brien.  Commander Sisko is much more the "I'm your commanding officer...and your pal!" type than Picard ever was.
• Hang on, a second.  So the First Minister of the Bajoran Provisional Government dies...and they appoint Kai Winn--a religious leader--to fill the post (in addition to her religious duties)?  Yeah, that's going to work out really well.  I'll talk to you guys again in about four seasons, and you can let me know if you still think that was a good idea.
• "It has been my observation that the problem with giving people the freedom of choice is that sometimes, they make the wrong choice."
• Bajoran politics aside, this entire episode basically boils down a dispute over farming equipment.
  
  "So, we need to save our CGI budget for this war we've got coming up.  Any ideas on what we can do in the meantime?"
  
  "Uh...farming episode?"
  
  "Let's do it."
• One of Kira's old resistance pals, Furel, is played by none other than William Lucking.  He may be a relatively minor star of the small screen to most of you, but to me he's quite the celebrity.  For four seasons, he played Piermont "Piney" Winston on Sons Of Anarchy, one of my favorite television programs of all time.
  
  
  
  William Lucking as Furel (left) and Piney Winston (right)
• "I'm not sure this is a fight you can win."
  
  "That's what the Cardassians used to say."
• If I may make an observation, "By any means necessary..." is a great turn of phrase for a radical but it's not really the kind of thing you want to hear out of the mouth of your civil leaders.
• Forcing Kai Winn to bow out of the election or you'll expose her idiotic handling of the farm equipment fiasco?  Ouch.  She's going to remember that.
• Farm equipment and darts.  The whole episode...farm equipment and darts.

---

"Facets"

• I'll get right to the point:  This is the episode where we spend some time with Dax's previous hosts, because we're stalling for time before the Dominion War scripts are ready.
• "If you don't mind, I'd like to borrow your bodies for a few hours."
  
  Kinky.
• "Correct me if I'm wrong, but did Quark just agree to embody one of your female hosts?"
  
  "Yes, he did."
• Although there's some quality drama that arises from the main plot of this episode (Dax's zhian'tara), the "b-plot" about Nog nervously trying to prepare himself for Starfleet Academy is also pretty interesting.  I liked Nog once they moved him past "immature, two-dimensional adolescent Ferengi", and I like any story-line that exposes the inner workings of the Federation, Starfleet, future societies, etc.
• Although it's a little dull for us as an audience*, this episode must've been a lot of fun for the actors--the chance to literally play totally different people.
  
  (* - It's a finely-crafted episode, but if you're someone like me--who enjoys the dark, militaristic story arc that the show takes in its later seasons--and you know that there's a lot of that kind of stuff comnig up soon...it's kind of like "Oh, okay.  I have to watch this Dax episode first.  Yawn.")
• "Tobin, I don't think Chief O'Brien would appreciate you biting his nails."
• "Don't worry, Constable.  Joran won't be able to hurt anyone from inside a holding cell."
  
  "There's just one problem, Commander.  You're going to be in there with him."
• It seems appropriate that they picked bat-crap insane Avery Brooks to play the crazy host :P
• Okay, I get that they would have Odo embody Dax's most recent--and arguably most important--host, Curzon.  They wanted to be able to have a scene where he actually changes his appearance, and to make him more expressive.
  
  But...how could they even be certain that the same telepathic process that allows the transference of the old hosts' memories into a new body would even work with a Changeling?  I mean, they don't even have brains (or they have millions of tiny brains, or whatever).
  
  Oh, or I could watch a few more minutes of the episode--and how they explain that Odo's shape-shifting nature blended the two personalities so we get, like...Curzodo, or something.
• "Curzodo" (yes, I'm sticking with it) orders two tranyas from Quark's.  This is the same beverage that the weirdo child-alien drinks in the TOS episode "The Corbomite Maneuver".
• Curzodo is just...so much cooler than Tuvix.
• This episode is another good moment for Rom, standing up to Quark when he finds out that his brother tampered with the pre-Academy spatial orientation test.
• Wait.  Curzon washed you out of the Trill initiate program because he had the hots for you?  That's kind of...gross.
• "It just occurred to me:  As soon as that kid graduates from the Academy, I'm going to have to call him 'sir'."
• "What can I get you, Nog?"
  
  "A root beer."

---

"The Adversary"

 

• This is it!  This is the episode where our fearless leader officially becomes Captain Benjamin Sisko, and gets that fourth pip for his collar.  It only seems appropriate for the dude who's in charge of one of the most important installations in the quadrant.
• Oh, and hey.  It's Eddington :-\
• "Here's the newest, and best, captain in Starfleet."
  Somewhere, Jean-Luc Picard's ears are burning.
• This episode is the first mention of the Tzenkethi, a space-faring race of some considerable strength that occupies space bordering the Federation.  While we'll never see them on-screen, the brief bit of background given in this episode implies that there have been a series of border skirmishes between the Tzenkethi and the Federation--some of them quite serious.
• "You're gettin' jumpy in your old age, O'Brien."
  
  Psst.  Hey, Chief.  Don't look, but I think there might be something behind you.
• In this third season (the first one where they had the ship), they only got a chance to take the Defiant out and stretch its legs a few times.  So it's always exciting when they do.
• One of the most clever things the writers on DS9 did with the Dominion--the main protagonists for most of the series--is to make the Founders shape-shifters. 
  
  Not only did it let them give a lot of dept to Odo's character, but during long, slow burn that led up to the actual Dominion War, they got to do a lot of paranoid, almost thriller-like "The Founders could be among us!" story-lines.
  
  These are some of the best ones in the middle pat of the series, in my opinion.
• Eugh.  How much do we hate Eddington?  Even before we found out that he was a traitor to Starfleet and working for the Maquis, I never really liked him.  He's such a by-the-book teacher's pet.
• "Which means...someone aboard this ship is a saboteur."
  
  Dun dun DUUUUUNNNN!
• The scene were Lt. Dax is scanning the senior staff for tetryon particles to see if they're the saboteur?  It (and so many other "Hey, which one of us is the Changeling" scenes on DS9) is very evocative of a similar seen in one of my favorite horror films, the 1982 John Carpenter remake of The Thing.
  
  Warning: Mildly gross...
  
• "It's a Changeling!"
  
  Really?  Ya think?
• "He is one of your people.  Can't you put yourself in his position, try to anticipate his next move?"
  
  "I've thought it.  But the truth is, I don't understand my people all that well."
  
  "That's too bad."
  
  "Yes, it is."
• This Bolian kid is kind of an a-hole.
• Tricksy shape-shifter is tricksy.
• It's a little funny that Dr. Bashir is one of the crew members "replaced" by the Changeling, given that they Founders actually do replace him with one of their infiltrators for quite a long time later in the series (somewhere starting in the fifth season, I believe).
  
  
  
  That's one Bashir too many, thank you very much.
• This is one of a handful of times that the full auto-destruct sequence for a Federation starship is shown on-screen (it happens at least once in TNG that I recall and of course in Star Trek III; I don't recall if it happens again on DS9 or on VOY/ENT...it probably does).
  
  In this version, aboard the Defiant, it requires the authorization of only the commanding officer and the first officer.  In other iterations, sometimes a third officer (e.g. the second officer or chief engineer) is also required.
• "Sisko to O'Brien."
  
  "O'Brien here."
  
  "I could use some good news right now, Chief."
  
  "How about this?  I think I may be able to shut down the Changeling's force-fields and gain access to the sabotaged systems.  The only problem is that we may lose our force-fields, too."
  
  "AUTO-DESTRUCT IN SEVEN MINUTES."
  
  "Just tell me how long it will take."
  
  "Well, I guess it'll have to be less than seven minutes, won't it?"
  
  "That'd be my suggestion.  Sisko out."
• Two Bashirs and now two Odos?  That is such a d**k move, Changeling.
• "Look, I have more important things to do than play 'Choose the Changeling'."
• So Odo kills this Changeling, totally out of self-defense, and the Founders--being totally swell people--tracking him down in another episode ("Broken Link") and taking away his shape-shiftiness.  Swell folks, those Founders.
• "Captain, there's something you need to know.  The Changeling--before he died, he whispered something to me."
  
  "Go on..."
  
  "He said, 'You're too late.  We're everywhere."
  
  {cue ominous music and the end of Season 3}

---

"The Way Of The Warrior" (Parts 1 & 2)

• Although this episode aired as a two-parter to open DS9's fourth season, it's a single 93-minute episode on Netflix and it has a single Memory-Alpha entry.  I'm having the vaguest memory of being so exasperated that I had to wait a week in between the first and second halves of this story. 
  
  To be honest, I powered through the last four episodes of the third season today just so I could watch this two-parter tonight.  Not that those last four episodes are bad (a couple of them are quite good; excellent, in fact), but this was the prize in the cereal box for me today.
  
  Intrigue, drunk Klingons (the best kind of Klingons), a fleet of warships attacking the station and we finally get our other transplanted TNG character (who will go on to be so, so much better on DS9 than he was on TNG)?
  
  This is a good, good episode.  It's probably one of my favorites of the entire series.
• Oh, and the opening of the fourth season sees now-Captain Sisko sporting the shaved head!  He grew the goatee towards the end of the third season, and the grey-topped uniforms are coming in (I believe) the fifth season.  We're two-thirds of the way to Sisko's final, total, 100% badass incarnation.
• Nothing to boost morale like horrible performance during a life-or-death training drill.
• See?  Kasidy likes the shaved head too, Ben. Good call.
• How in the world do Tholians make silk?  Aren't they like...made of rocks and magma and stuff?
• "My brother says if you're ever on Cestus III, he'll get you seats in the dugout."
  
  "How far is Cestus III?"
  
  "Eight weeks at maximum warp."
  
  "To see a real baseball game?  It might be worth the trip."
• This episode is the first real appearance of the Klingon Negh'Var-class warship.  Bigger and more powerful than the already-formidable Vor-cha class attack cruiser, the ship that shows up unexpectedly on Deep Space 9's doorstep (at the head of a massive Klingon fleet) is the "new Klingon flagship".
  
  
  
  (original image from Star Trek Fact Files by way of  Ex Astris Scientia, composited by me)
  
  The model was first used (in a very slightly different configuration) as an unnamed future Klingon warship in the TNG finale "All Good Things..." a little over a year before this episode aired.
• Hey kids, it's General Martok!  (or is it...)
• The Klingon fleet that decloaks at Deep Space 9 is led by the new Negh'Var class, but it's composed of every conceivable ship type known to serve in the Klingon Defense Force during the 24th Century:  The aforementioned Vor'cha-class attack cruiser, the ubiquitous Bird-of-Prey and even the aging K't'inga-class battlecruiser.  All of them are present in large numbers.
• I believe the fourth season's premiere is also the premiere of an updated title sequence for the show, that includes more ships and small craft shown docking at and departing the station and a slightly more fleshed-out theme song.  The Defiant is shown undocking and entering the wormhole as well, although I don't recall if they added that bit in the third season or not.
• "Calm down, Quark.  The Klingons are our allies."
  
  "They might be your allies, but they're not mine."
• So, spoiler alert:  This "General Martok" is actually a Changeling, although we won't find out about it until the fifth season premiere.  It's unclear whether Martok's ability to pass the "cut your hand and see if you bleed" test in this episode is simply a continuity error (i.e. the writers didn't know they were going to have Martok be a Changeling originally), or if it's implied that this Changeling was clever enough to find a way to fake the test.
  
  I think it's obvious that it's really just a minor continuity hole, but there's certainly know reason why the Founders wouldn't know that the solids would perform blood tests and make sure their infiltrators had ways to bypass them.
• Major Kira is super not comfortable with the sensual holosuite massages, Lt. Dax.  Let it go.
• "Didn't you play make-believe as a child?"
  
  "Yeah, I used to make believe that the Cardassians would stop killing the Bajorans and just go away."
• And today, Odo will perform...drinking!
• "Actually, I'm not sure Constable Odo has a mother."
• "They broke seven of your transverse ribs and fractured your clavicle."
  
  "Ah, but I got off several cutting remarks who no doubt did considerable damage to their egos."
  
  After a brief break, it's nice to have some more Garak in the show again :)
• This episode is the first on-screen appearance of Captain Yates' ship, an older Antares-class freighter called the Xhosa.
  
  
  
• Yeah, if you're a Klingon commander and you screw up on the job...they will totally, totally kill you and take your knife.
• "Curzon told me once that in the long run, the only people who can really handle the Klingons...are the Klingons."
• Hey kids, it's Worf!  I was seriously so happy to see him on DS9.  I never felt that he got a chance to shine on TNG.  It's hard to be the toughest and the strongest when one of your crew-mates is a freaking android.
• "Let me guess, Klingon bloodwine?"
  
  "Prune juice, chilled."
• Drex, son of Martok, is named after long-time Trek product and effects dude (who's since worked on all kinds of stuff, including Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica reboot) Doug Drexler.
• MARTOK AND WORF:  SHOUT-FEST 2372!!!
• It's stated in this episode that Worf's brother, Kurn, sits on the Klingon High Council.
• "Cardassia? Why would the Klingons want to invade Cardassia?"
  
  Uh...have you ever met Klingons?  Invading is kind of their thing.
• This episode is one of the handful of times that the Cardassian Union is referred to as the Cardassian "empire".
• "What did the Federation Council say?"
  
  "They've decided to condemn the Klingon invasion.  In response, Gowron has expelled all Federation citizens from the Klingon empire and recalled his ambassadors from the Federation."
  
  "You're saying he cut off diplomatic relations?"
  
  "He's done more than that.  The Klingons have withdrawn from the Khitomer Accords.  The pace treaty between the Federation and the Klingon Empire has ended."
• Hey kids, it's Gowron!  He's pretty much at his craziest in this episode, when he greets Worf on the bridge of his ship.
  
  "Worf!  Woooooooorf!!!  Hahahahahaha!"
  
  (image spoilered for profanity)
  
  
• Gowron just...really does not like being told "no".  He will take all your toys away, kick your brother off the High Council and then go invade Cardassia.  He's that kind of crazy.
• "Chief, do you remember the time we rescued Captain Picard from the Borg?"
  
  Uh, yeah.  We kind of all remember that, dude.
• Sisko and the Defiant head off to rescue Gul Dukat and key members of the Detapa Council, the civilian government of the Cardassian Union (which, until the unrest on Cardassia Prime, served primarily as a rubber stamp to the Central Command and the Obsidian Order).
• "Sir, I hate to bring this up...but our agreement with the Romulans expressly forbids the use fo the cloaking device in the Alpha Quadrant."
  
  "You're right, it does.  But there are hundreds of Klingon ships between us and Dukat, and I intended to make that rendezvous in one piece."
  
  "Well, I won't tell the Romulans if you don't."
• This episode is one of the rare occasions when the scales of ships involved in a scene are shown correctly.  The three Klingon Birds-of-Prey attacking Dukat's ship are shown relatively small compared the larger Galor-class ship, and the Defiant is similarly show to be a smaller ship as well (although both she and the BoPs certainly have teeth).  The Vor'cha that comes into the fight toward the end is displayed at a similar size to the Cardassian ship (which is accurate).
• "The Klingons have closed to point-blank range."
  
  That's pretty much never good news.
• This episode is the source of perhaps one of the best exchanges of dialog in Star Trek history, and both an amusing and insightful look at how non-Federation citizens might view the Federation.  I will both quote it and link a YouTube video, because I'm a nice guy like that.
  
  
  "And the worst part of it is...my only hope of salvation is the Federation."
  
  "I know precisely how you feel."
  
  "I want you to try something for me.  Take a sip of this."
  
  "What is it?"
  
  "A human drink.  It's called 'root beer'."
  
  "I don't know..."
  
  "Come on.  Aren't you just a little bit curious?"
  
  {Garak drinks the root beer and grimaces.}
  
  "What do you think?"
  
  "It's vile."
  
  "I know.  It's so bubbly and cloying...and happy."
  
  "Just like the Federation."
  
  "But do you know what's really frightening?  If you drink enough of it."
  
  "It's insidious."
  
  "Just like the Federation."
  
  "You think they'll be able to save us?"
  
  "I hope so."
• This is also the episode where the station gets a chance to show off its new hardware:  Upgraded phasers, shields and a buttload of photon torpedoes in cool automatic launcher things.
• "Dear Quark,
  
  I used parts of your disruptor to repair the replicators.  Will return them soon.
  
  - Rom"
• Dukat and Garak side-by-side is a pretty amusing picture as well.
  
  
  
• "Right now I've got 5,000 photon torpedoes, armed and ready to launch."
  
  That...seems like a lot.  Maybe he's talking about micro-torpedoes?  I don't doubt that you could physically fit 5,000 photon torpedoes into the internal volume of a station the size of Deep Space 9, but having them all slotted into their automatic launchers and armed and stuff at one time seems far-fetched to me.
• "He said 'Today is a good day to die.'"
  
  Really?  How original of him.
• The so-called First Battle of Deep Space 9 is one of the most exciting action sequences in Star Trek to this point in the franchise.  It was one of the first times that a large fleet action had been shown (in this case, a Klingon fleet of "several dozen" ships attacking the station), and was really thrilling to see.  It's even more impressive, considering that they were still doing everything with physical models.
  
  
  
  
  It heavily foreshadows the kind of massive starship combat that we'll see during the Dominion War.
  
  It also featured a lot of live-action sequence with both ranged and hand-to-hand combat as the Klingons board the station.
• I think I kind of honestly thought, when this episode first aired, that they were going to kill off Kira after she got stabbed by a Klingon.  I guess I thought that they added a major character (Worf), so they'd probably get rid of one (Kira) to balance it out.  I'm glad I was wrong.
• The lead ship of the Starfleet relief force is the USS Venture, a Galaxy-class starship.  She is accompanied by at least two Excelsior-class starships and a Miranda-class starship.
• "But let your people know:  The Klingon Empire will remember what has happened here.  You have sided against us in battle.  And this, we do not forgive...OR FORGET."
  
  Okay, Chancellor Crazy-pants.
• "You look good in red."
  
  
  
• "It looks like the Klingons are here to stay."
  
  "Maybe they are.  But so are we."