thepkhunter

Fairly strong continuation from the previous episode. The scale of the situation builds really well, and Avery, Colm and Rene work their magic and sell the crap out of every scene they're in. Some fun Quark stuff was also welcome, and the double act with Odo is getting stronger.

Maj. Kira was actually pretty under-utilised considering how much of the plot affects her, and some of her scenes crept further into cheesy than compelling.

I really hope we get a villain turn from Bareil because if he's legit the good-guy that the series has set him up to be, using the prophet orb to sexually manipulate kira is creepy as hell.

I find Winn and the leader of the circle to be really boring villains. They're so one-note and they both talk with this affected Shakespearian drawl that results in all their scenes feeling. Very. Slow. It dampens the political intrigue a lot, and the story should be a lot more interesting than it ends up being. The abuse of the church being used to affect political power is a really strong premise.

The Cardassian involvement is a nice touch and gives some great Federation stakes that Sisko has to wrestle with, although i don't quite buy that the Prime Directive gets in the way of defending Bajor when they have evidence of the Cardassians arming the uprising.

Just as a matter of record, Bashir in the caves fight was poo, and they seem to have basically removed Dax from having any story involvement at the moment - she was noticeably pushed into the background.

Surprised to see another to-be-continued. Can't think of many other three-parter serialised episodes in Trek history.

This was not quite as enthralling as the end of season 1, but still a really strong showing.

Possibly more than anyone else in the cast, Avery seems to give away whether he's enjoying or not enjoying a script.

This one gave him more to do than most episodes, and he's great in it. Lots of good family stuff with Jake, some light hearted comedy and then some big gravitas in the later monologues. Definitely the best Sisko episode so far.

We get some relatively flat political stuff that feels bland versus how season 1 finished, but still provides a good backdrop. The rescue mission to the quarry is pure undiluted trek, and I'm here for it. Grey stone quarry, phaser fight and some good ham acting. I'm in. Shot quite cinematically, too, with lots of big telephoto shots - rare for this era of star trek.

The 'twist' as it were of Mr hero being an unwilling fraud, then being convinced to be the symbol Gotham needs is all a bit cliché. He wasn't a compelling character at all, despite a good guest star performance.

Aaand we get our first(I think?) dun dun duuun cliffhanger to be continued of ds9.

I dunno, I feel like they could've leaned way more into that side of the story. Have her lose her rank and military service as punishment for going against orders, give it some stakes more than a completely arbitrary 'she's been reassigned'. It all just got a bit away from the writers in the third act, I think.

Quark stuff was premium. More of that.

Super episode. I had a full eye-roll at the cold open because it was going to be another spiritual episode, but my god (irony intended) they really put some meat on the bones of this one.

So, so, so much better handled than any of the Bajoran prophets stuff so far throughout season 1. We finally get some payoff for the never-quite-settled tensions between the Bajoran staff and starfleet, and the story is presented as a web of intrigue and mystery, until with all the players established, the payoff of the episode unfolds with a lot of satisfaction.

Poss less obvious in the nineties, it's clear from the start that guest star Neela is going to be an antagonist and that removes a bit of the murder mystery vibe, but for the first two acts we still get the joy of Rene and Colm teaming up to solve the case, and it's joyful and dramatic and compelling against the backdrop of Sisko and Kira dealing with the macro level politics.

A great example of the A and B stories being interwoven to create a much stronger whole.

All performances are good, great even, no doubt helped by Bashir only being on screen for about 6 seconds. I did find myself missing Quark, though, and his one contribution ("Odo, you wound me!") is delicious.

Can we talk about the school explosion, too? That has to be at the absolute limit of a practical, non-vfx fire on an indoor soundstage. Extremely impressive and makes some of the voyager explosions comical by comparison. Colm being held back when he's terrified for Keiko's safety was really good stuff. Lots of money spent making this episode feel like a season finale.

Knocking a few points off the rating for particularly nonsensical technobabble leading O'brien to the answer, especially when the conduit he investigates that supposedly controls the weapon detector can be seen to have a bio of Quark on it. Probably wouldn't have been visible on an old TV, but it was pretty front and centre and distracting. It's also bizarre that when they unlock the mcguffin file and see the escape route, neither Dax or O'brien tell anyone or, I don't know, disable the programme or put additional forcefields in place. O'brien even says it's an escape route, then proceeds to do absolutely nothing about it. The direction of the assassination attempt was also weak compared to everything else in the episode, and the slowmo comes across as super cheesy rather than exciting. Again, probably more forgivable with nineties glasses on.

It feels like this is setting up a lot, and has reaffirmed kira's place in Team Sisko which I expect to play out in upcoming episodes.

Really good stuff.

Oooh, that was a bit good.

It gives some extra context to one of the most memorable Voyager episodes, too, where the doctor faces a moral dilemma of working with a holographic representation of a cardassian doctor who caused tens of thousands of Bajoran deaths. I now see that episode is very much a sequel to this one.

We get intrigue, we get great performances, we get some real depth for Nana to work with and she absolutely revels in it. What a great performance, and the guest star playing the cardassian absolutely goes toe to toe with her. The shift when he is initially outed as the commander of the camp into full nazi is fantastically evil. The material would be heavy handed if it wasn't sold with such gusto. Really strong.

Gotta give another shout out to my boy Rene. He's subtle and subdued, often playing the straight man to Kira'a raw emotion, and it's a fabulous double act.

Also true to my word, I have to ring my Good Bashir Bell. He's used sparingly and plays the gravity of the scenes well, with the possible exception of the cold open - 'just what is going on here, this man needs medical attention!' What a tonal shift for the show, too. There's no shlocky b-story, all focus is on the plot, and it's so much better for it.

Why does nobody do anything when he gets stabbed, though? Someone call the doctor, at least.

Very sleepy episode. It starts strong with a one-two punch of action and intrigue, but it soon gives way to a bit of a muddled story that is never... bad... but just never gets good, either.

The core conceit of the historic power struggle affecting our crew via telepathy is a fine, silly scifi concept. I'm in. I'm on-board. But there are so many odd choices and unanswered plot holes that we don't have time to solve. And yet somehow we do have time for Sisko to build a never-explained clock across some excruciating long and overacted scenes.

I guess if we just accept that the telepathic personalities all had backstories and traits that we can't possibly have time to explore, fine, but that doesn't mean you just play it as if you're waving a giant neon sign above your head with the one character trait they bothered to attach to each personality. There's no depth or mystery to the performances. Terry Farrell's choices in almost every scene are particularly annoying. Ham acting and no explanation, ever.

Odo as the main character again is something I can get behind, but the mystery he unravels is simply boring.

I am going to generously ring my Good Bashir bell 🔔, however, as he, Colm and Nana (for the most part) are the only ones who manage to play their unique personalities with nuance and subtlety.

Odd episode. Very unsatisfying. What about the entire rest of the population of DS9? What was the point of the valerian ship being this absolute nothing of a mcguffin? How can a telepathic field phase through matter, but still be blasted out an airlock?

'Is Odo your first name or your last name?' 'Yes.' It's funny - this episode has a lot of the ingredients I've complained about in previous episodes. Schlocky writing, slapstick goofs, no real A-story and a reliance on recurring characters from TNG... But I can't help but quite like it. Rene is, again, an absolute gem and is quickly becoming my favourite character. He plays comedy and drama with equal conviction and it's hilarious. Playing opposite Majel Barrett - trek royalty for numerous reasons - creates a great slapstick double act and odo's little pleading faces of discomfort had me lolling. Third act is also quite touching for a comedy episode.

There's something really odd with the conversation pacing in this one, though, almost as if they're reading off cue cards SNL style. Can't decide if it's in the direction or the edit, but either option would be unusual form for Les Landau. Majel even fully flubs a line in the turbolift and they just keep it in, and a lot of the scenes are cut with very little coverage which leads me to believe they were suuuper short on time to get this in the can. Leaves a lot of slightly awkward lingering reaction shots in Sisko's office and in the turbolift.

Nice to see some experimentation with vfx and bluescreen to create a new style of turbolift shot we haven't seen before. Also makeup + vfx for odo's Cronenbergian transformation into liquid looked great. Horrendously expensive to do shots like that at the time!

Shout out to Colm's whole performance, too, though it's weird that his relationship with the computer never appears again.

First act is almost unbearable. I think it's trying to portray a life goes on aboard DS9 kinda vibe, where the characters exist outside of the A-stories shown in episodes, but it's written so poorly, and performed so dejectedly. Even Rene can't be bothered, and the man usually manages to weave gold out of all but the worst dialogue. A lot of really long single-takes, with no interesting camera moves or wit. You just sit in the rubbishness of it all and feel vaguely uncomfortable at the overt horniness that has appeared out of nowhere.

Second act is... ok, although it's mostly a lot of disjointed nothing happening. Terry Farrell having to play the ditsy sex-object just amplifies everything annoying about Bashir up to and including this point. A vague bit of intrigue finally gets introduced when the figments talk conspiratorially about their hosts, and reveal their alien origins, but then it just kinda yadda-yaddas an ending and never gives a satisfactory conclusion. A little tag-on scene with Sisko just about saves it from being a completely toilet episode, but definitely skippable.

Bashir still cannot act and this episode does not help his case. There's some odd casting decisions and we get a texan security chief which is pretty funny. The prison guard lady gets some obnoxiously bad dialogue, and Quark is just rubbish. Not the actors fault, they just get nothing to work with.

Paul Lynch puts the camera in a lot of places it doesn't usually go, which sets a bit of a visual trend going forward and episodes get more creatively shot from this point on.

Story is poor, and you can literally call the entire episode's twists from the cold open. Weird smiles between the crew at the end when prison guard shoots the petri dish. Forgettable.

How does Quark do so much illegal stuff throughout this show and not face any consequences?

I'm not exaggerating when I say this is probably the worst trek I've ever seen. At least when a ghost has relations with Doctor Crusher in TNG there's some artful lighting.

Looks terrible. Written terribly. None of the cast want to be there and protest the script through the screen. The low bar for Bashir - shockingly awful.

Quark still being played for laughs, so no stakes at any point. Odo wasted.

First episode focusing on a first contact from the gamma quadrant and we get this. The whole point of the show is that the station is on a new frontier - a gateway to a completely unexplored part of the galaxy... And we get this. Useless, useless episode.

Allamaraine, Count to four.

Woah woah woah! We have our first properly good ep of ds9!

Rene absolutely carries it, but it's got actual intrigue and substance. Quark gets used for story and not just bad comic relief, Sisko has to toe the line between starfleet ideals and underbelly reality and the guest star can act. Firing on all cylinders.

Some really, really good space shots for the time, too.

Odo was maybe a little too quick to break the rules for a stuffy security officer, but his motivation to do so is sound and well explored in the episode.

This presents some exciting questions for the series to continue to answer.

Great episode.

Oof. Talk about a return to rubbish form after the previous episode's highlight. This week's episode was Battle Lines. Absolute snooze of a plot. A cool sci-fi concept of a prison planet keeping its prisoners alive indefinitely completely wasted. Really basic on-the-nose writing - at one point Bashir hits you over the head with a literal 'we appear to have a moral dilemma'.

Some vaguely mystical nonsense that doesn't get explored with the bajor spirit queen had potential, but just resulted in kira being an absolute sap for the whole episode.

Why are all these gamma quadrant aliens just boring humans?

Bad.

Bad, but not offensive. Just very middle of the road D-tier TNG episode. There's been an uncomfortable number of episodes this series where the cast are just.. Hating being there. Colm phones this one in so hard that Bashir's performance actually looks competent by comparison. There's a scene in particular with entirely ADR'd dialogue because of the wind machine where Colm might as well be reading from a phone book. Really cringe stuff.

Some cute stuff with Jake and Nog and Odo elevates this to a 4, but as an episode it has no linking theme between the A and B plot resulting in a disjointed mess that doesn't say anything. Trek at its best asks big moral questions. This is just community theatre and asks nothing.

Random cameo from The Punisher Jon Bernthal as an uncredited Bajoran villager.

A moral dilemma with one of our core cast at the heart of it. Nana Visitor finally given some material to actually showcase her acting ability, playing opposite some old Hollywood royalty.

A low budget bottle episode, but the writing and performances are such a step above recent episodes that it felt like a real breath of fresh air.

I'm going to start ringing a little bell when there's good Bashir stuff, cos he's used perfectly here which is a rare treat for season 1.

The core conceit of the old frontiersman standing in the way of the greater good is well trodden territory, but it works. I'll go as far as even saying it's a genuinely moving ending, and leans more into the idea that on ds9, not every story gets wrapped up in a pretty bow. This one hurt Kira, and that's exciting ground for Trek to explore.

B-story with some fun Jake and Nog stuff adds very little, but I'm enjoying their friendship.

Watched for the first time in 2024.