2x01 “the homecoming”
this is an interesting one, because it seems like a pretty straightforward episode about kira rescuing a pow, and then it just kind of hits you with a last-second plot twist right when it seems like it’s wrapping up, and then flashes the “to be continued…” and if you don’t know it’s coming, you’re just sitting there like, “wait, what?” it’s honestly kind of super effective! like, i kind of like that this just seems like a lowkey “kira is doing bajoran stuff” episode until then, and then it just carries you forward into a larger arc in a way that feels like real progression & escalation.
we also get what feels like it’s going to be a pretty straightforward b plot where chief o’brien & odo show sisko some graffiti and sisko recognizes it as the symbol of a racial purity extremist group on bajor called “the circle.” it seems like it’s gonna be a pretty star trekky allegory, but this b plot is actually going to end up being the a plot of this three(!!!)-parter.
incidentally, i think there were a number of tng two-parters that would’ve been greatly improved by being expanded to three-parters. even “the best of both worlds,” probably the most famous & definitely one of the best two-parters in the history of trek, really could’ve used a full three-part expansion. (i know “family” forms a sort of unofficial third part, but i think we would’ve been best served by keeping it but still expanding part 2 into two parts.) so, yeah, i really admire ds9’s willingness to go to three parts, even if this isn’t necessarily the best multi-part episode in the show’s history, it still demonstrates a commitment to a different kind of storytelling.
all that being said, this is a good (not great) start to a good (not great) three-parter. i don’t want to damn it with faint praise, i just think it’s more important for what it reveals about the show’s overall storytelling ethos than anything that happens in this particular episode.
(on a degenerate note, fascists are gross, but the forced branding of quark was kinda hot.) b-rank
2x02 “the circle” & 2x03 “the siege”
so, the previous episode ended with the bombshell that the famous pow major kira helped rescue is to replace her as first officer on ds9, and kira is to report to bajor for reassignment. it’s pretty transparently obvious that this is because bajor’s first minister sees this war hero as a threat to his political position, but said war hero doesn’t really mind because as we learned in the past episode his role in the bajoran resistance was greatly overstated and he doesn’t want the pressure of being a leader, but every time he tries to set the record straight people think it’s just false modesty.
what won’t become obvious until the plot starts to unfold further is that another huge part of this is keeping kira out of the way (and putting her in extremely convenient kidnapping range, like exactly 1 kidnapping distance away). after sisko’s opening volley in the fight to keep kira on the station, we move on to a frankly pretty hilarious scene where kira is packing and nearly every single other main cast member bursts into her quarters to commiserate or encourage her to fight this. it’s the kind of scene an aaron sorkin show would probably do, except better because it’s not aaron sorkin. (yes hi i used to be the kind of idiot who watched that propaganda. i got better.)
the last person to enter kira’s quarters is vedek bareil. he’s there to invite her to spend some time in his monastery if you know what he means. wink-wink, nudge-nudge. ok in all seriousness bareil does get significantly less creepy eventually when he & kira do actually end up in a pretty hot & heavy romantic relationship, but their first few encounters really do rub me the wrong way.
we hear (but never really see) that violence is escalating on bajor. quark bursts into odo’s office and basically says “we” (yes, “we”) “have to get out of here!” so, you know. husbands. instead, odo extorts quark into being his deputy, performatively hating his own idea the whole time.
husbands.
i’m not going to do a blow-by-blow of everything that happened in these episodes, but basically it turns out that first minister jaro is behind the circle (what!! i’m shocked!!) and he finds a temporary ally (and sexual partner, gross) in vedek winn, but she never really fully commits and throws him under the bus the moment it suits her. starfleet orders sisko to evacuate deep space nine, and he doesn’t directly disobey but he does drag his feet quite a bit, forcing a fight between the skeleton crew left on the station and the invading bajoran forces.
the pow kira rescued back in the first episode of this three-parter shows exactly the kind of leadership he kept denying he had the capacity for when he gives an impassioned speech to his fellow bajorans asking that they let their non-bajoran comrades have priority in the evacuation because the invading bajoran forces are unlikely to target them in the same way they’ll target outsiders. his story ends up wrapping up with him throwing himself into a phaser beam meant for commander sisko, also demonstrating exactly the kind of courage he insisted he lacked. dude had a serious case of imposter syndrome, turns out.
there are some shortcomings with these episodes to be sure, but they do accomplish a lot of worldbuilding and give us some quality star trek fighting. overall, it feels like they spent a lot of time between seasons thinking about a way to relaunch the show. in a lot of ways this whole arc felt more like a series premiere than a season premiere, and it definitely helped the second season hit the ground running. b-rank
2x04 “invasive procedures”
[gordon ramsay meme] finally a good dax episode.
i’m not saying i like what this episode puts dax through, i definitely don’t. but it feels like the show has spent a season+ not really knowing what to do with her. knowing from previous watches that she’s absolutely one of the best characters on the show, it’s been a bit frustrating to see how underutilized she was early on in the show’s run. (i’m sure this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she’s apparently the only character that the show bible goes out of its way to give a physical description of, specifically that she’s very attractive. sigh.)
the thing is when the show lets her, terry farrell acts circles around everyone.
well, yeah, ok, so does avery brooks. and nana visitor. and–okay look this show has a lot of great actors, i’m just saying she’s definitely one of them. and the idea that the show’s producers mostly saw her as a pretty face at first is infuriating.
it sucks seeing jadzia in pain, but the scene where she wakes up terrified & alone without her symbiote is the first really juicy acting challenge the show has ever served her up, and she knocked it out of the fucking park.
this is also a pretty great sisko episode. as soon as the dax symbiote is implanted in its attempted thief, he immediately pounces and tries to use his two lifetimes’ worth of a friendship with dax to convince him to give up the symbiote so jadzia doesn’t die.
it really feels like quark gets off too easily here? like, i’m not siding with odo, don’t get me wrong. but he literally helped an invading force get onto the station. i don’t think a few halfhearted attempts to help defeat them really balances those scales? i just don’t think this was great writing.
overall, though, definitely a pretty great episode with a lot of interesting things going on in it. for now we’ll just have to wait patiently for dax’s role to grow into what it’ll be in later seasons of the show. b-rank
2x05 “cardassians”
garak’s back!! yay!!
even if season 2 weren’t otherwise the beginning of a steady improvement for the show (as often happens in golden age trek), it would be an improvement if only because we actually get multiple garak episodes this season. he’s just truly one of the best things about this show.
i also love the retcon that he & bashir have apparently been having lunch together every day since their first meeting. gayyyyyyyy. and, y’know, i’m me so i love garak’s overall aura of threatening homosexuality so fucking much.
assigning keiko & miles o’brien to look after the cardassian boy is a wild choice. like, keiko by herself would clearly be great (though preparing a cardassian dish for a boy who clearly hates being a cardassian & considers himself a bajoran is an odd choice), but miles? like, “hey, we need a neutral party to take temporary custody of you, so we picked our best racist! we really think you two will get along.”
also, like, sisko & co. just summarily assuming custody of the boy is just a weird overreach for the typically cautious sisko? idk man, i don’t get how any of this is the federation’s business.
there’s a fun running gag where dr. bashir keeps interrupting commander sisko’s conversations with gul dukat with some dramatic information he’s gotten from garak, culminating in him proving conclusively at the trial that gul dukat masterminded the boy’s becoming a “war orphan” in the first place.
there’s some structural problems with the episode, not the least of which is the fact that the ending is hella rushed with sisko’s ruling on custody coming in a captain’s log basically right after that bashir scene. but like, again i still don’t really know why any of this was sisko’s decision in the first place? it just really feels like there was a lot of connective tissue missing here. basically the only reason i’m giving it a high grade is that garak was fucking wonderful as always. the scene where bashir is startled awake to find garak just looming over him was priceless. a-rank
2x06 “melora”
you know, i was working on a much more patient & equivocating review of this. it’s difficult sometimes to figure out the right tone to take when critiquing imperfect representation, because at the end of the day is bad representation better than no representation? it seems like a fair question, and one that deserves honest thought.
and then i read that the original script for this was much more firmly on melora’s side and depicted the abled main characters misunderstanding her needs, but it went through several rewrites and came out the other end buried under a mountain of stereotypes & othering, and i’m just not interested in being fair or patient anymore.
i don’t mind that melora is abrasive. i think she has every right to be. it at least takes a little bit of the edge off of the overall inspiration porn-shaped central thrust of this episode’s narrative. but the only reason she’s characterized that way is so noted creeper & literally her doctor julian bashir can thaw her out, and can we just 100% not with any of that? please?
i think melora is a great character, but she deserved a better episode. that i’m not rating this any lower is attributable entirely to melora herself, and not to anything about the episode itself.
i’m going to be patient and extend the benefit of the doubt whenever i can, because i think in the past i’ve erred on the side of being overly critical and writing things off too quickly, but this is not one of those times. do better. c-rank
2x07 “rules of acquisition”
and then the show turns around and pulls something like this out of its hat, and i’m just like okay what the hell.
my headcanon for pel is definitely that he’s transmasc & gay. i mean, he literally binds, so i’m not pulling this out of nowhere. i think it’s pretty clear that the episode doesn’t intend for him to be read that way, though, and what’s more it would arguably detract from some of the themes of the episode, so i’m actually going to set my headcanon to the side for the moment. to avoid confusion, i’ll also use she/her pronouns to refer to this character for the bulk of my review, as again i believe this is the episode’s intention.
what the episode is about is a woman challenging the place that ferengi culture has assigned her. and it’s actually a damn good exploration of how someone in her position would likely have to navigate that. the overcompensating by knowing the rules of acquisition probably better than quark. the ways she has to guard her secrets. the discomfort of quark after he finds out the truth about her and finds her in her quarters out of drag and is like, “what are you doing? put your lobes back on!” there are a lot of tiny details in this episode that i really wouldn’t have expected, and pel herself is such a fully-realized character. the writing here is actually just miles better than i would expect it to be.
but what really always sticks out in my memory about this episode is the way quark reacts when pel confesses her feelings to him. the guy really does surprise you sometimes with how much of a heart he actually has? he gives her a bunch of latinum to go start a life for herself, and his reason for refusing her overtures is that she’d “never be happy as a ferengi wife.” that kind of insight & empathy came as a surprise, but it doesn’t feel discordant or out of character? instead it just feels like a revelation, like we’re learning something about this character that we didn’t know before. and that’s just phenomenal character writing, imo.
if you had asked me sight unseen how ds9 would handle an episode like this, i don’t think i would’ve predicted it going this well. but it actually is a really great episode with a lot of heart. i still prefer my headcanon, though. i totally ship quark & transmasc headcanon pel.
oh hey, totally minor note. this episode is about the ferengi trying to get their foot in the door in the gamma quadrant, and they find out about something called “the dominion.” that’s probably not gonna be a big deal or anything, right? a-rank
2x08 “necessary evil”
i always love a good star trek murder mystery, and this gives us some backstory on kira to boot. it being from odo’s perspective does spoil it somewhat, though. i mean, on the one hand i do appreciate that he kept gul dukat off of kira’s back and didn’t turn her in for being part of the resistance because it wasn’t within the scope of his investigation. and also that the only reason he was even performing the investigation was because dukat was threatening to kill a bunch of innocent bajorans to make an example of them.
but despite any depicted reluctance here, odo has said on numerous occasions that while the cardassian occupation was “harsh” (read: literally enslaved an entire race), “at least they gave him the freedom to do his job” without the kinds of restrictions the federation imposes on him, and like, yeah man! that’s because they were fucking fascists! cops are literally the only people who will have “more freedom” under that kind of regime. (and that “freedom” will only be professionally, not personally; and just wait & see what happens if you ever refuse to do their dirty work for them.) so seeing the beginning of that professional relationship is not exactly something that’s gonna make me like this character better.
still, though. this was a satisfying mystery plot with plenty of twists & turns, and kira is great in it, so despite my antipathy for its protagonist i nevertheless enjoyed it quite a bit. i just wish that, for as nuanced & interesting as the show’s writing can be at times, it wasn’t in such a hurry to do all this non-sexy bootlicking. b-rank
2x09 “second sight”
idk man. like, unquestionably the best stuff in the episode were the quiet moments between ben & jake where they talk about their grief, and when jake encourages his dad to pursue a new relationship, and is eager to meet his new romantic interest. i just love how warm & supportive their relationship consistently is. they’re so fucking good.
but for the most part, this episode was just sort of… there? the siskos’ grief is just way more interesting than the bizarre romance that’s the actual focus of the episode. like, i can’t just hate on the episode because that more interesting stuff does really permeate the entire episode, but i just wish there were another way to explore that because the rest of the episode is kind of a dud imo. c-rank
2x10 “sanctuary”
the thing i love about this episode is that it’s just extremely easy to empathize with literally everyone in it. i think ultimately haneek’s fixation on her people settling on bajor when she’s only interacted with literally two bajorans is misguided, but it’s pretty easy to understand how she got there.
but it’s also super easy to understand bajor’s position. and why kira, who did initially support haneek’s petition, ultimately concurs with that decision even when it strains her relationship with haneek.
add to that the tragic death of haneek’s son towards the end of the episode, and you really do end up not quite knowing how to feel about the resolution. and i think that’s appropriate here. again, ultimately i think the resolution is what makes the most sense for everyone, but i get why literally no one involved feels good about it, and i really do admire the show for being willing to not wrap things up overly tidily.
i do wish we ever heard from haneek again, like even a throwaway line from kira in a later episode about them patching things up and staying in contact would be lovely, but i can’t hold that lack of followup against the episode. judging it on its own merits, it really has a lot going for it. b-rank
2x11 “rivals”
the plots intersect, but: o’brien vs. bashier @ racquetball > quark vs. what’s-his-face @ capitalism. i really appreciate the slow burn of their bromance.
i also liked actually seeing keiko & miles interacting in a way that suggests they at least like each other? and cutting back & forth between their conversation and bashir & dax’s conversation about the same racquetball game was a cute bit of parallel structure.
other than that, this episode is super meh. i neither like nor dislike it. c-rank
2x12 “the alternate”
fuck off with this abuse apologism. d-rank
2x13 “armageddon game”
this is one of those plots that easily could’ve fit into either ds9 or tng, and frankly probably would’ve made slightly more sense for tng? so hilariously the title makes it sound like a tos episode.
but yeah, to employ a metaphor sisko would approve of, just a right over the middle of the plate star trek episode. the peril & politics of the situation are both very star trekky, the investigation including doctored security footage is textbook golden age trek stuff, and the cute twist at the end where sisko stalls the bad guys by remote piloting one runabout while he & his officers are actually escaping on another runabout is simultaneously very in character for him and an extremely star trekky tactical move. we also get some continued advancement of the bashir/o’brien slow burn towards best friendship with the whole “it’s been an honor serving with you” stuff.
this isn’t an especially remarkable episode or anything, but sometimes all they have to be is solid & star trekky. b-rank
2x14 “whispers”
this is a really fun episode. i know that’s probably a weird thing to say about an episode where a main cast member is spiraling into pretty justified paranoia as evidence mounts that everyone around him is conspiring against him, but idk i love a good mystery episode, conspiracies are fun, and the structure of this episode being told in flashbacks during a log entry is a favorite star trekky structure of mine. so it has a lot working for it!
i really like how the episode plays with perspective. i especially like the bit of the episode when odo gets back from a trip to bajor and you’re like, “phew, finally, o’brien has an ally and they’re gonna figure this out.” which makes it even more terrifying when o’brien realizes “they” “got to him too.”
i don’t think everything totally adds up once you know the whole story? like, why wouldn’t they just get him in the brig and then come in and explain like “hey chief, we’re not sure you’re you, if you are we’re really sorry, if you aren’t we’ll figure it out.” just sort of telling everyone he might encounter and treating him with kid gloves seems like a pretty bad approach? but still, in the moment it really does work. and it’s one of the most unique & interesting episodes of the series to this point. a-rank
2x15 “paradise”
this is not an especially pleasant episode to watch or one i look forward to, but damn is it ever an effective bit of drama.
sisko & o’brien get stranded on a planet where electromagnetic activity is suppressed, seemingly because of some kind of natural phenomenon at first, but the long & short of it is that none of their technology works, including their tricorders, phasers, and most importantly the comm badges they need to beam back up to their runabout.
they meet the planet’s inhabitants, an unregistered human colony that settled on the planet when their ship crashed several years ago and have formed an agrarian society that seems to be thriving. they initially receive a warm welcome, and it soon becomes clear that the colony revolves around a woman named alixus, but she insists that no one is “in charge.” which, btw, is a huge red flag? in the absence of formal power structures, power structures generally do exist, they just rely on informal power and are thus less transparent & accountable. so that’s a shrewd bit of writing.
as the episode goes on, it becomes clear that life in the village is far from as idyllic as it’s initially presented. without access to modern medicine, people are dying of preventable illnesses. and regardless of her protestations, alixus rules with an iron fist. and one of the most important instruments of that rulership is a punishment box that colonists are confined in for the slightest infractions, their punishment coming in the form of claustrophobia & exposure to the elements. as soon as you see it you just know either sisko or o’brien is ending up in it at some point. the foreshadowing is not subtle.
predictably, tensions mount and the situation soon devolves into a battle of wills between sisko & alixus. there’s a discomfort in seeing a white woman trying to force a black man to do her bidding (including literally working in the fields???) & employing a brutal, low-tech form of punishment to secure his cooperation? it isn’t something the episode goes out of its way to emphasize, but it’s super there and really adds an edge to everything.
i’m a bit frustrated by the ending, which seems to equivocate quite a bit about the ethics of the situation? like, fair enough if they feel like this planet is their home now, but at least establish that the federation is gonna provide them with modern medical care or something? and maybe have sisko blow up that fucking box like he’s kira and it’s a pizza oven? what ultimately saves it is that it is a great sisko episode. it gives him several signature moments that highlight his courage, toughness, and leadership. a-rank
2x16 “shadowplay”
this is one of those fairly unfocused episodes with like three or four plots going at the same time that don’t have much of anything to do with each other. dax & odo discovering a colony of sentient holograms is some good star trekky fun, sisko’s reaction to his son telling him he doesn’t want to join starfleet demonstrates once again what an incredibly awesome father he is, quark using vedek bareil to try to distract kira from his crimes was cute (and bareil has markedly less of a creeper vibe now that it’s clear that kira is hella into him too, i just still don’t like how we got here.)
each plot is handled perfectly well, and they all add up to a pretty good episode? like, i don’t have any major complaints or anything, it’s just not the most memorable episode due to its lack of a unifying central thrust. but that’s okay. they don’t all have to be banner episodes! b-rank
2x17 “playing god”
the thing about this one is i think the dax learning how to be an effective mentor bit of the episode works a lot better than the star trekky part of the episode. which, y’know, given a choice between the two i’ll take that! we’re just finally starting to get some good stuff for dax, so i’m not gonna complain about that. but it would’ve been a much stronger episode overall if the star trek dilemma had been stronger.
like, don’t get me wrong, the concept of the protouniverse and all the ensuing ethical questions it brings up were indeed fascinating. but i don’t think it was ever satisfyingly explained why chucking it back through the wormhole to the gamma quadrant does anything other than delay it displacing our universe? is it because it was originally in a subspace pocket? and if that’s the case, shouldn’t the episode have been about the science problem of getting it back into a subspace pocket rather than about getting it back through the wormhole? hell, we probably could’ve gotten a lot more information about how subspace works from such an episode, and i’m not just arguing for that because i’m a subby bitch & love being in subspace (though i am & i do), i just love that kind of lore expansion!
but yeah, again i’m more invested in this being a good dax episode so i’m still fairly satisfied with it, i just think it could’ve been even better. b-rank
2x18 “profit and loss”
they did casablanca in space with ferengi & cardassians. i don’t think it would have occurred to me to do this thing, but as soon as i realized that’s what this episode was, i kinda lost it a little. (i’m not sure why i never noticed this on previous viewings? or maybe i did and just forgot? that seems farfetched to me, though. it seems like something i would remember!)
also it’s better than casablanca because the person chasing them is garak? and he gets to make a dramatic entrance on ops with a cardassian warship literally on the viewscreen over his shoulder? and he ends up turning on the cardassians to help the dissidents escape. this is a top-tier garak episode, and one of the best episodes of the show’s early seasons. a-rank
2x19 “blood oath”
another good dax episode!! with klingon bullshit!! and some minor but distracting inconsistencies with existing klingon lore but SHHHHH.
also this is the episode that’s responsible for that tumblr imageset you’ve probably seen of kor hugging dax and saying “curzon! my beloved old friend!” dax saying, “it’s jadzia now,” and kor answering, “jadzia! my beloved old friend!” that always gets related to trans stuff.
this is one i always look forward to because it’s hella cool seeing these tos klingons come back! and i’ve also always really loved that dax’s relationship with klingon culture predates worf’s arrival on the show. (she’s also listened to klingon opera before this episode i think? it’s definitely something that comes up a lot in the show. and there’s also her friendship with the guy who runs the klingon restaurant!)
tl;dr: good dax episode, good episode overall, and yay klingons! b-rank
2x20 & 2x21 “the maquis”
the lead-in to this two-parter was the tng episode “journey’s end,” y’know the racist one about indigenous people. no, not that one. or that one. or that one. the one with wesley. yeah, there ya go. the chaser was “preemptive strike,” the drastically better episode where ro goes undercover to figure out what’s going on with the maquis and ends up joining them. so, yeah, neat little arc that cuts between two shows to give the titular antagonists of this episode an auspicious introduction.
this wasn’t a phenomenal two-parter or anything, but it gets the job done. sisko feeling personally betrayed by hudson leaving starfleet for the maquis is a familiar look that ds9 will return to again & again whenever they’re the antagonists. i think the first episode did a great job of introducing him and emphasizing his relationship with sisko, and both actors did a really great job of making their relationship feel lived-in so even though this was an entirely new character you really do feel for sisko when he finds out his friend has turned his back on sisko.
dukat’s role in this episode is also an interesting one. i love his dramatic entrance and the tense cooperation between him & sisko. speaking of well-known cardassians, though, in the petty complaints department, this two-parter’s lack of garak was nigh unforgivable. how do you do an episode that’s largely about political intrigue with the cardassians and not include him? c’mon, man!
the politics of the entire cardassian border thing are a bit interesting. like, the thing that ds9 brings up pretty often is that they’re dealing with life on the margins of a spacefaring utopian socialist society whose citizens are largely provided for in every material way, and consequently can generally be relied upon to treat each other with respect & kindness. there’s a line that’s said in a few different places, that it’s “easy to be a saint in paradise,” and what ds9 is often interested in is where the cracks in paradise are, and how people behave there.
i’m anxious to see how i’m going to feel during this rewatch about the way that’s handled on a micro & macro scale, and i’m sure there are going to be things that i violently disagree with. but my overall memory is that where the show usually lands is that all of these people really are dedicated to what the federation stands for. that they don’t want to fight, but that it’s worth fighting for.
i appreciate that sisko refuses to destroy commander hudson’s ship at the end of the engagement when both sides are basically knocked out of fighting commission but not destroyed, because he refuses to kill someone for defending his home. but one thing i would have liked to see tweaked a little bit is the conversation at the end of the episode. when kira tells sisko he should be glad he prevented a war, and sisko is all broody and asks if he actually prevented it or just delayed the inevitable. because when you’re in a position of marginal power in a situation like this, preventing a war for as long as you can is absolutely the most heroic thing you can do? it’s literally at the very limit of what you have control over.
i get why sisko is broody & uncertain here, but i don’t like fading to black on his brooding. i would have liked kira to have a forceful rejoinder about this being literally the most he can do. like, i don’t think anyone could have possibly have expected him to have done as well as he did. there’s maybe like three people in the galaxy who could have pulled it off.
anyway, yeah. pretty good two-parter with banner moments for sisko aplenty. b-rank
2x22 “the wire”
ladies, enbies, boys, and toys of all genders, we have our first s-rank ds9 episode!
this is the most garak-centric episode we’ve had so far, and features some of andrew robinson & alexander siddig’s best acting moments of the entire series. i especially love his “do you want to know how i got these scars?”-esque backstory that changes repeatedly throughout the episode.
we also find out how much dr. bashir truly cares about garak when garak is basically suffering from withdrawal and goes to some pretty dark places. bashir never gives up, never loses his patience. you can tell that some of the things garak says in that state really strike a nerve, but bashir still grits it out to be there for garak both as a doctor and a friend. (or, you know, boyfriend.)
this episode is so razor focused that i don’t actually really have a whole lot else to say about it other than just, “wow this is incredibly good.” like, i don’t want to sell it short by not gushing about it enough, but i also don’t want to just like do a blow-by-blow description of the whole episode and just point at each part and say, “that part was so good!!!” so yeah. that’s kind of where i’m at with it?
oh, one thing that feels like it deserves a mention, though, is that it’s just casually thrown in that odo “routinely monitors” all of quark’s communications??? and by that he means he has a camera mounted right on the bar and he just literally watches him every time he contacts someone??? like, wow, dude? pretty fucked up imo??? is quark the only one you’re doing that with? i really think sisko is giving this guy way too much leeway. this dude should not have this job in the first place, but if for some reason you’re going to want him in that position you at least need him under way more oversight, because this shit is getting out of hand.
but yeah, that’s a tiny detail in an otherwise truly incredible episode. s-rank
2x23 “the crossover”
the mirror universe is one of those incredibly star trekky things that it’s just kind of wild that tng never bothered revisiting? like, i think the two things about tos that stick in people’s memories the most are probably the mirror universe and tribbles, and ds9 is responsible for bringing both of them back to the franchise? so that’s kind of interesting.
like, i know there was a pretty intentional choice made in tng for the first few seasons to try not to bring tos characters/etc back in order to establish tng as its own thing, but like, your second episode was a retread of “the naked time”? which is a much deeper cut than either the mirror universe or tribbles? idk man.
i love that the mirror universe is always so fucking horny? and the intendant is basically the mascot of that? so yeah, that was a lot of fun in this episode. especially the bi selfcest directions it took! and giving nana visitor specifically that acting challenge was just such a shrewd move. seeing two drastically different versions of kira interacting & maneuvering around each other was really something else.
just great stuff all around here. a-rank
2x24 “the collaborator”
this is mostly about delivering the kaiship to winn, and i’ve already confessed this but yeah i do have a very shameful appreciation for kai winn. she effortlessly radiates toxic domme energy like a cersei from game of thrones (yes i watched a few seasons of that). i think the scene right after her ascension to kai is super effective. she has a quiet, almost conciliatory vibe in this scene but you just feel so much potential energy for evil & scheming just crackling under the surface. it’s an incredibly good bit of acting.
as far as how we get there, yeah, if i’ve said it once i’ve said it a thousand times: i love a good star trek investigation. this one isn’t very star trekky, there isn’t any science or any holographic recreations or whatever, it’s basically “oh, you deleted some emails. what’d you do that for???” type stuff. it’s very contemporary. the most distinct thing about this plot is that bareil has a few orb-inspired dream sequences that only really make sense in retrospect.
so yeah, basically an effective episode at moving pieces around that does a decent job of entertaining in the process, so no real complaints here. b-rank
2x25 “tribunal”
i know it’s difficult not to compare this to tng’s “chain of command,” but i think that temptation is worth resisting here because this episode really is doing much different things.
this episode isn’t trying to give colm meaney a “there are four lights” moment. o’brien doesn’t spend large portions of the episode engaging in a protracted battle of wills with another character. this is all about worldbuilding.
there’s been a few lines of dialogue in earlier episodes about how the cardassian justice system works, so that when we finally see it in action we’re kind of primed for it. i thought that was a pretty shrewd way to approach this. actually seeing it dramatized does make it an awful lot more memorable, though.
i think if i could change one thing about this episode, i would like to see the characters grapple with the fact that the cardassian people are just absolutely under the boot heel of fascism. (and as much as i love being under boot heels, that is not one i can brook.) i get that the urgency is in getting their friend/comrade/husband/etc out of that situation, but there’s this sort of homogenizing of other cultures that happens sometimes on star trek.
like, i get that there’s a tricky dialectic here because you do want to be respecting cultural differences and not imposing your own values on other people, but i think with things like fascism you truly need to make an exception? fascism is not baked into anyone’s culture, and anyone who is experiencing it is a victim of it and deserves your respect & support. ds9 does a lot of “we’re not so different you and i mr. bond” type encounters where it sort of humanizes the jack-booted fascist stormtroopers of the cardassian union, but i don’t think it ever properly displays sympathy for the civilian populace of cardassia other than late in the dominion war.
i don’t know. i know this is tricky stuff. i know i’m asking for a lot. and this is more of a big picture consideration, anyway. as far as this episode goes, i think it was a very effective bit of drama & worldbuilding, and at the end of the day that’s really all it was trying to be. and i think that i’m even mentally asking this much of the show is a testament to the level it’s operating on. a-rank
2x26 “the jem’hadar”
hello and welcome to shit getting extremely real.
it’s pretty clear that the biggest goal of this episode was achieving a tonal shift and getting the audience to understand the gravity of the threat posed by the dominion. and wow did it ever accomplish those goals? i mean, this is an episode that starts with the siskos and quark & nog going camping and doing odd couple comedy shit and ends with a jem’hadar attack ship ramming a galaxy-class starship into oblivion. the weight of that moment, and the shift it represented in what the show was going to be about going forward, was just staggering.
this isn’t a perfect episode or anything, but it does do a great job of introducing the titular jem’hadar and the vorta. i also appreciate that the identity of the founders isn’t revealed here. while this isn’t technically a cliffhanger, it is a very unsettling ending to the season, leaving you with the very real feeling that things are never going to be the same again. a-rank
s-rank: 1
a-rank: 8
b-rank: 13
c-rank: 3
d-rank: 1
average: 3.19 (b-rank)
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