DS9 S03E05 & S03E06

In this installment:
(viewed Sunday, August 31st)

Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S03E05 - "Second Skin"
Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S03E06 - "The Abandoned"

---

"Second Skin"

• I was apparently so excited about the Defiant's appearance in the DS9 S3 opener "The Search" that I neglected to notice that S3 is when they make the switch from the TNG-style comm badge to the VOY-style one that will be used for the remainder of DS9 and all of the TNG films (and of course for all of VOY).
  
  
  
  (original art from Star Trek Encyclopedia III, taken from Ex Astris Scientia and edited/captioned)
• See sad Dax.  See sad Dax drink by herself in the Replimat.
• We've got a genuine mystery on our hands.  Time to send a senior staffer off by themselves!
• "Space is dangerous, Doctor.  You never know what might happen."
• Holy moly, do Cardassians love to kidnap people.  I think that you really can't consider yourself a real character on DS9 until the Cardassians (or later, their Dominion buddies) kidnap and imprison, torture or otherwise torment you physically and psychologically.  What a bunch of jerks.
• As the scene zooms in to Kira surveying her surroundings and sizing up her chances of escaping, we get a good look at what is presumably the capital city on Cardassia Prime. 
  
  On a large public view screen, a Cardassian military official speaks in a monotone voice about the importance of Cardassian children to the future.  It's one of the moments when the intention of the writers to draw parallels between the Cardassian Union and totalitarian societies on Earth (especially Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union) is very clear. 
  
  Of course, as DS9 progresses and the Cardassians as a race are fleshed out, it becomes clear that although their government is oppressive and certainly a large number of Cardassians support it, there's more to their civilization than blind obedience.  Eventually we meet (and have already met, in fact) scientists, artists, academics and even members of the military who display dissident qualities.
• "Oh yeah, not only are you actually a Cardassian spy--your dad is totally a legate, too."
• "Commander, this is extortion."
  
  "Mmm...yes it is."
• I get that it's an exciting plot element, and there probably isn't a better way to rescue Kira anyway.  But it's a little surprising to me that Starfleet would allow, let a lone assist, Sisko's plan to take the Defiant (with "modified shield harmonics" to disguise it), himself, the station's head of security (who works for the Bajoran Provisional Government) and a Cardassian tailor into Cardassian space on a rescue mission...all without even having tried diplomatic overtures to the Cardassian government.
• "Mister Garak, I'm impressed."
  
  "It's just something I overheard while I was hemming someone's trousers."
• Oh, she smashed the mirror?  I think we all kind of saw that one coming.
• "The Obsidian Order and the Central Command have been given too much power over our lives.  We're going to change that."
  
  Oh, there some of that dissent right in this episode.  Right on.
• "Treason, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder."

---

"The Abandoned"

• This is one of the few times we actually see Jake's much-discussed Bajoran girlfriend, Mardah--a "dabo girl" at Quark's...who is just like, seriously way too old for him.
• It's the oldest sales promotion in the book:  Buy one cargo bay full of salvaged ship parts, get a free Jem'Hadar infant!
• Being baby-crazy is a really weird character trait for an otherwise-grizzled Starfleet officer like Benjamin Sisko.
• "He's an example of some very advanced genetic engineering."
  
  Takes one to know one, Doctor ;)
• "Sixteen years old and dating a dabo girl...godspeed, Jake."
  
  Miles Edward O'Brien, dirty old man :D
• This is the episode where Odo upgrades from his bucket to a full-fledged set of quarters, complete with a variety of shapes and structures for him to emulate when he reverts to his liquid state.
  
  His first visitor is, as you would expect, Kira.  And she totally brings him flowers, which he then puts in his bucket.
  
  It's so cute you'll want to rip your face off with a garden trowel.
  
  
  
• While discussing the young Jem'Hadar's (although they don't yet know that's what he is) physiology, Dr. Bashir and Lt. Dax describe a (seemingly purposefully-engineered) enzymatic flaw.  This flaw causes the boy to be unable to produce a key isogenic enzyme, without which he would suffer circulatory failure (among other very painful and debilitating symptoms).
  
  Later on, of course, we'll discover that this flaw was placed into their genetic code by the Founders to keep them loyal--through the strictly-controlled disbursement of the drug Ketracel-white (which contains not only this crucial enzyme, but all other nutrients required by the Jem'Hadar.
  
  It's basically the space equivalent of how the geneticists of Jurassic Park engineered all of the dinosaurs so that they couldn't produce lysine, pretty much.
• When trying to control an adolescent killing machine, it helps if they've been genetically-engineered to think you're a god.
• This episode has so many creepy smiling Odo moments...
  
  
  
• It's a little bit difficult to hate your son's girlfriend when her life story includes her parents being killed during the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor.
• Jake's a poet and his dad didn't even know it.
• "Seems a pretty cold-blooded thing to do."
  
  "My people don't have blood, Chief."
• So, Odo.  Let's chat about this.
  
  The kid already thinks that he's better than everyone else on the station (except you)...and he's already expressed an intense desire to fight.  So maybe showing him log footage of Jem'Hadar soldiers fighting and killing (which will clearly impress rather than horrify him), and then turning him loose in the holosuite with a combat program is maybe not the best thing? 
  
  I know you're trying, but I don't think he's got the right ethical context for any of this just yet.
• Ha!  Yeah, and then Kira walks in on that and says pretty much the same thing.
• "Is that all you think about...killing?  Isn't there anything else you care about?"
  
  "I don't think so."
• Starfleet sends the USS Constellation (NCC-55817) to pick up the Jem'Hadar boy from Deep Space 9 and deliver him to Starbase 201.  The Constellation is never seen on screen, nor is her class ever stated (although she was mentioned in a very early TNG episode, "Conspiracy").
• Oh, yeah.  I guess we all forgot that the Jem'Hadar can totally cloak (err, "shroud").  Probably should've thought of that.
• "Major...about the boy:  You were right."  :(