Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 2-11: Rivals

Episode:

31

|

Writer:

Joe Menosky

|

Air Date:

02-Jan-1994

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm finally writing some thoughts about Deep Space Nine's Rivals. Not Relics or Rascals or whatever else my brain keeps telling me to type.

I'm not getting back into writing about 26 DS9 episodes a year, because that turned out to be work, but I hope to throw in the occasional episode every now and then. Rivals is perhaps not the DS9 episode most people would pick to write about if they could only choose one, but I promised I'd get around to it eventually so I feel like I owe it to you. Even though I promised it way back in January 2018.

Another reason I picked this one to write about is because it's the next episode after Sanctuary, so it means I haven't skipped any yet. By the way the intro to my Sanctuary review has gotten hilarious wrong in the meantime, and it's getting a little more wrong all the time:

"There will never be more episodes of Trek airing in a year ever again. Unless Discovery gets three spin-offs and they're all released simultaneously."

2019 won't be breaking 1993's 55 episode record, but with Discovery, Short Treks, Picard and Lower Decks in production, plus the other cartoon, the Section 31 spin-off, and a possible Starfleet Academy series on the horizon, it seems possible we'll soon be getting more Trek episodes a year than ever before.

Rivals was the first Star Trek episode to air in 1994 by the way. 1994 was an important time for Deep Space Nine as it was the year that Star Trek: The Next Generation ended, leaving DS9 to represent the franchise entirely on its own... for a dozen episodes or so. Then Voyager started up and got all the attention. DS9 also got its very own nemesis that year, as Babylon 5's first season started airing a few weeks after this episode. (At least that's how it worked out in the US. For folks watching Trek on BBC 2 in the UK, Babylon 5 beat DS9 to television by over a year.)

Anyway there'll be SPOILERS for the whole damn episode below, and I'll probably end up spoiling something from an earlier episode of Star Trek as well. I mean an episode that aired earlier, not an episode from one of the prequels. No Discovery or Enterprise spoilers here.

---

The episode begins with two people we don't know drinking together at Quarks and discussing how she's a reasonably well-off widow planning to invest her cash in asteroid mining to get rich. Straight away it seems like someone's about to get conned here, but it's not clear who.

To be honest though I was more interested in the camera work here, as it starts on her face and then pulls back to reveal the two of them talking. Halfway through Odo walks into the shot as a fuzzy shape pacing around on the lower floor, but he's in the middle of the frame so he gets your attention. The camera notices him too, as it turns a little to follow him and begins to zoom in as he climbs the stairs. Soon he's the one filling in frame as he stares at them from the other side of the bar, despite the fact the camera has barely moved during the entire minute-long take.

Just as the guy begins proposing a partnership with the widow Odo comes over to drag him to security.

We're informed that he's Martus Mazur, a refugee from the El-Aurian system. Funny how Star Trek: Generations came out the same year and also featured refugees from the El-Aurian system, it's almost like there's a connection there... though if that's the case then they aired this 11 months too early, as Generations came out in November.

The El-Aurians are Guinan's race by the way (though we don't learn that until Generations). Martus was apparently intended to be her son at first, but when Whoopi Goldberg wasn't available that got dropped. But he still presumably has the same long life span and sensitivity to time weirdness that she does. He's also a good listener, as El-Aurians are all aurally proficient. Well they're good at getting people to talk to them anyway, and Odo tells us the story of how Martus got an elderly couple to tell him their bank details and then invested their savings in his business.

And the teaser ends with him being locked in a cell, like we're supposed to care enough about this con man guest star to stick around to see what happens next.

ACT ONE

Act one begins with Bashir holding two fingers up to O'Brien as he enters his new racquetball court. It's not subtle either, he holds that pose for a good five seconds, though it's obviously just Siddig El Fadil screwing around with Colm Meany.

This is what he looks like from the reverse angle and the actors play it as if this is what O'Brien sees.

This isn't a holosuite they're in, it's a proper racquetball court that O'Brien just finished building. Though in real life building things is expensive, so it's actually just a redress... of the holosuite set.

O'Brien built it figuring that there'd be other players on board, but seeing Bashir here is clearly not an outcome he anticipated. We already learned in Melora that Bashir almost became a tennis player before studying medicine, and here we learn that he was also captain of the Starfleet Medical Academy racquetball team and won the sector championships.

You can tell he's good, he knows all the best warm up poses.

O'Brien's had no formal training himself, he's just very keen on the sport, but Bashir sticks his foot in his mouth and tells him not to worry as some of his toughest opponents didn't know what they were doing either.

They're really squeezing every bit of comedy they can out of the scene, but O'Brien's not amused. He just wanted to enjoy some racquetball, he didn't want to be stuck in a room with Bashir, and he definitely didn't want to spend the whole time being demolished by a pro.

Oh right, Martus is in this episode as well.

He's sharing his cell with another prisoner, who has a little purple ball with him and a tendency to snore. Nice of Odo to let him keep hold of his unknown alien artefact, even though it could've been some kind of remote forcefield hacking tool or bomb.

Martus wakes the guy up and listens to his sad story. He had everything but it all fell apart, all because of his little gambling toy and a string of bad luck. He's reached the point now where he wishes he could die and get it over with, and after playing the game one last time, he does! He's finally won.

The gambling orb is clearly bad news, but Martus has never seen The X-Files and he doesn't seem to realise he's in the Twilight Zone, so he swipes it from the dead man's hand. The allure of a purple sphere with flashing lights was just too great.

ACT TWO

Hey it's Keiko! O'Brien's feeling a bit frustrated after getting annihilated and humiliated by Bashir, which he demonstrates by slamming his gear onto the floor, but I'm sure she'll be able to cheer him up. Actually she says that his failure is to be expected, because he is old. I think she's trying to be reassuring.

It's a good scene for fans of angry shirtless O'Brien, because by the end of it he's very angry and very shirtless. I can tell Keiko's a fan by her grin as he walks off. His misery sustains her.

If O'Brien had lost against Sisko or Dax his attitude here would seem absolutely ridiculous and childish, but seeing as it's that git Bashir, it kind of works. Being stuck in a room with Bashir for 90 minutes would be enough to wind him up even without getting thrashed at his favourite sport on his brand new court.

Bashir's not that much happier, though he does still have his shirt on.

He explains to Dax that didn't take any pleasure out of utterly thrashing O'Brien as he thought he was going to have a heart attack. He lied about having to go to an appointment but O'Brien forced him to keep going! He only escaped because he faked an emergency call, but O'Brien demanded a rematch.

That's a weird futuristic ketchup bottle he's got there by the way. Actually he's got three, as he's been struggling to find out with any left in. Almost like he's having... bad luck. Though that's offset by how lucky he is that Dax is still tolerating him.

Actually I think Bashir comes off as pretty likeable in this scene, as it's clear by the end he really wants O'Brien to be his friend and this road he's stuck on clearly isn't heading there.

Martus plays the luck ball and when he wins he discovers that he's free to go as the charges against him have been dropped! So he goes right back to Quark's bar, meaning that the 'rivals' are finally getting to meet for the first time and it's only a third of the way into the episode.
He's got no money, so he basically bets his toy in a coin toss to win a drink. I can't understand why anyone else over the age of five would give a damn about the ball, and Quark says as much himself, but he's always interested in new games (we saw that in Move Along Home), so I can buy him trying to acquire it away. Even if it is just a mechanical coin toss. But he makes an uncharacteristic error and offers too much money for the thing (plus a drink), and Martus decides it's worth more to him if he holds onto it.

By the way, I've been watching season six recently and it's strange going back to season two cinematography because everything looks so wrong somehow

That's the pilot episode Emissary on the left, Rivals in the middle, and a season six episode on the right. Marvin Rush was the director of photography for the first two seasons (plus half of Next Gen, and all of Voyager and Enterprise), and when he left to join Captain Janeway's crew he was replaced by Jonathan West, who brought a darker, moodier look to the series, but also made it look cosier I reckon.

Martus goes out onto the Promenade and runs into a woman packing up her shop. She says she's been running it with her husband for nine years, which means she came on board four years before Odo got his job and has suffered through seven years on Terok Nor under the brutal Cardassian occupation. But her husband's just passed away and her heart's not in it anymore. So Martus has found himself another potential business partner like two steps outside Quark's! The ball doesn't manipulate luck, it creates script contrivances!

Over on the racquetball court it seems that Bashir's suddenly suffering a case of bad luck. But it turns out he's just trying to give O'Brien a win so he'll be happy. O'Brien's onto him though and he's furious. I thought he did a pretty convincing job of missing the ball myself. In fact they've done a good job of making it look like they're actually bouncing a ball around the walls.

Here's some racquetball trivia for you! The sport first appeared in the season four Next Gen episode Suddenly Human, but on a different looking court. They explained that in this episode by saying that O'Brien prefers the old style rules. Mostly as an excuse for Bashir to accidentally imply that O'Brien's old.

I'm really not keen on that woman's hood.

Back in the Promenade, Quark is complaining to Odo because Martus has opened a casino overnight and he's supposed to have an exclusive contract for gambling on the station! Martus's club is called Club Martus, but he's apparently decided to pass on putting up a sign, instead trusting that the flickering lights will draw customers in like moths to a flame. Personally I would've been disappointed to find there wasn't a Ferris wheel on the other side.

Yeah, I know there wouldn't be room for a Ferris wheel behind that door, but I've seen exterior shots of the Promenade, there shouldn't be room for the shops either!

ACT THREE

I love this scene of Sisko and Quark riding the lift down one floor in the Promenade. At first I wondered if it was a working lift, like the one in Ops, or the one next to the Enterprise's warp core, but then I realised that I was an idiot. The doors close before we see it moving, of course it's not a working lift! It's clever editing is what it is, pulled off flawlessly.

Act three begins with Quark complaining to Sisko, mostly to give him a scene in this episode. But Sisko points out he didn't have an exclusive contract to run a casino, he just bribed the Cardassians. Quark claims that Sisko owes him after he begging him not to leave in the pilot. Sisko reminds him that he blackmailed him to stay, and it's worked out pretty well for him so far. He ain't lying but I did not expect him to admit it so bluntly, like he's proud of it.

It's a bit of a shame that Quark isn't even trying to use cunning schemes or his business skills to fight back, he goes straight to the authorities. Martus on the other hand goes straight to Quark's brother, making him a one-quarter partner in the business. I think this is supposed to count as a victory for him.

Whoa, Martus actually has a pretty good set. He's also replicated larger versions of his gambling balls to embed in the bar and that's worked somehow. I guess you need pretty huge balls to run an establishment like this, as he's not just using the alien toy to change his own luck, he's letting everyone else mess around with luck as well. Though to be fair I don't think he realises what's going on yet, he just knows these toys have an inexplicable attraction to people and people are presumably losing more than they're winning or else they'd be bleeding the house dry.

I've noticed that a lot of people are gambling with actual money on this station, though that makes sense seeing as they're well outside the Federation. So it probably cost Martus's new business partner a lot to set this up and replicate the balls, or else anyone could replicate yamok sauce and self-sealing stem bolts for free and there'd be no need to trade them. Martus also plans to invest a lot of her cash into that asteroid mining scam... I mean scheme from the teaser, because when you've got Scrooge McDuck's lucky dime what could go wrong?

Speaking of cash, this is the first time in Star Trek that we hear about an 'isik', which gets mentioned a few times in Discovery, with people saying "Isik for your thoughts."

At least Rom's actually using his head this episode, checking the food to make sure Quark hasn't poisoned it. Martus isn't worried, because he's been having so much luck lately he doesn't think anything can go wrong. It's like he's completely forgotten the scene in the cell earlier where the previous owner died right in front of him, imprisoned and destitute.

Though when he gets one of the waitresses to sit on his lap he's very nearly caught by his business partner, who's apparently okay with him running a casino but not him pulling a Quark with his employees. Either that or he's replaced her husband in more than one department.

He soon clears up any ambiguity about their relationship by pulling out a wedding earring and proposing to her! I think. I feel like the episode must have jumped forward a month or two without me realising.

Meanwhile in Ops, Kira and Dax finally get a scene this episode, though things are so dull that Dax has her feet up on the console. Season one Dax would never have done this. In fact I'm not sure season one Dax ever did anything.

Just then she finds a program she's been looking for weeks, purely by chance. So whatever those giant spheres are emitting, it also makes computer searches more effective.

And also apparently makes O'Brien slip on the racquetball ball. Maybe it's not just the gambling balls that are against them, maybe all the balls on the station are in on this scheme and have been messing with O'Brien from the start.

It's shame we only get to see the aftermath of the incident, as he apparently slipped on the ball while it was in the air. In fact we barely get to see anything of the sport at all.

Bashir is called to the Infirmary and on the way out he finally finds the words to say 'you've drained all the joy out of this sport for me and I'm never playing it again with you' in a way that doesn't sound insulting. And it only took him somewhere between a couple of days and a few months depending on how much time's passed during this story.

O'Brien makes his way to Quark's bar, which is practically abandoned. It seems that O'Brien's the only person who doesn't know about Club Martus yet.

This story reminds me a bit of the Next Gen episode The Game, where the crew ended up addicted and brainwashed by an incredibly simple video game, except there's no mention of the spheres doing anything to people's minds. So I guess everyone went to Club Martus because... everyone else is there? Except Morn of course.

Quark's currently annoyed by the fact El-Aurians are known as listeners, saying that he can listen as well as anyone! And to prove it, he listens to O'Brien... for a little while, until he gets distracted by thinking up a new scheme. His only scheme to be precise, as we're 25 minutes into the story and all he's done so far is whine to Odo and Sisko.

Meanwhile Kira's lost the file she was working on, and the backups! Sisko realises this is another bad luck story to go with all the others they've been hearing lately.

Martus is having a bit of bad luck as well, as the luck machines have made the customers so lucky that they keep winning at the luck machines. Seems like the first rule of running a casino should be "Know more about your games than your customers do." Or "Know anything about them at all" at least.

I can't help but think this could've been avoided if he'd just made a replica of the mysterious alien device he knew nothing about instead of replicating it. Then he'd be able to set the odds of winning and ensure it wasn't manipulating reality like a mischievous godlike entity.

I've been thinking about this, and I reckon I'd be happier about these devices if they turned out to be a red herring and it was Q doing everything, because at least then there'd be some intelligence involved. There could've been an entity or entities pulling a Final Destination on people, messing with them like the If Wishes Were Horses aliens... actually I'm putting myself off the idea now.

ACT FOUR

Now it's Quark who's got his feet all over the furniture.

I appreciate well shots like this, because it makes my life easier. There Quark on the bar promoting his new scheme to his audience, Bashir and O'Brien looking troubled to his right, Martus looking concerned in the doorway to his club in the background, and I got it all in just one screencap! By the way, if you're wondering what that door used to lead to before Martus moved in, it was the Bajoran temple.

They never explain how Quark lured everyone back here to hear the plan that will lure everyone back here, but it's pretty straightforward: he's going to stream live footage of the plumber and the doctor playing space squash, right here in the bar! Years he's been running this place and this is the first time it's occurred to him to put a TV in. This is all news to O'Brien and Bashir of course, but Quark gets them in a charity trap, knowing that they won't do it to earn money for themselves but if the money's going to orphans then they'll have to. Even though it's scheduled for midday and they've got jobs.

And just to make absolutely certain they'll do it, he even invited some Bajoran monks to stare at them. Or maybe they've just go nowhere else to go now Martus has moved in to their temple.

Meanwhile in Ops the crew continue discussing how there's a definite increase in accidents and system failures lately. Sisko believes there must be a logical explanation for this, like maybe a virus. A luck virus? I didn't know Sisko was a Red Dwarf fan.

Martus was annoyed enough at everyone winning the jackpot simultaneously, but now that Quark's found a way to steal everyone's attention for maybe an hour or so he's really miserable. Or maybe that's because Rom keeps following him around the room telling him about his childhood for some reason. Oh, it's because he's a listener! Okay, I've got it now.

He really is following him around the room as well, as they complete an entire lap of the circular table in the centre. The direction's more interesting than the story this episode and it's not even close.

Anyway, Martus requires the comfort of a compassion soul, so he rests his weary head on his waitress's breasts.

And it's then that the woman he proposed to walks in.

He immediately assures her that "It's a joke," once again demonstrating the quick thinking and wit that's made him such an interesting and dynamic character this episode. Personally I would've tried to change the subject by pointing out how weird the waitress's hair is, in the hopes she'll forget what she was angry about. Because it is incredibly weird hair. It's like a galleon sinking in a storm, its masts sticking out from the vortex.

His partner still has the lease so she kicks him out, but she neglects to mention what he should do with the profits from the club, so he gives them to the woman from the teaser, who still needs money for her asteroid mining expedition.

He feels that his luck has returned and has a go of the gambling machine to confirm it. He loses.

ACT FIVE

Act five begins with another shirtless O'Brien scene!

Also Keiko's making another appearance, bringing her total screen time this episode to just over two minutes! There's something really weird going on here though, as she's actually being supportive and encouraging. She even ties a silk handkerchief scented with her perfume around his head. Not sure why she had to point out it's a Medieval Japanese design though.

Oh hey, if you ever wanted to know what the underside of Bashir's console in the Infirmary looks like, then you'll appreciate the next shot.

Bashir doesn't have a loved one supporting him, but he does have Quark, who brings him a bottle of some ancient brew made by the monks. We know from act one that Bashir's into ancient methods of increasing racquetball performance, if they work. But Quark apparently forgot that he's a scientist, so of course the first thing he's going to do with a mysterious substance is analyse it.

Turns out that when Rom wasn't lying when he said Quark might poison their food, as he's drugged Bashir's brew with an aesthetic! I guess in the future the athletes are the ones who perform the drug tests.

Well now Quark's entirely screwed, as he's just gotten caught trying to drug a Starfleet officer and will presumably be getting prison time. Oh hang on, this is a comedy episode, so he'll be facing absolutely no consequences whatsoever! To be fair, it seems like Bashir's hanging the threat of retribution over his head to make sure he really does get those orphans their blankets.

Back in Ops they've discovered that the solar neutrinos are acting weird. About half of them should be spinning anti-clockwise but way more are spinning clockwise right now. This isn't bad on it's own, it's just weird.

I don't know what those people on the balcony are doing because there's no way they can see the screen from that angle.

O'Brien gets an early lead, but it seems like it's all luck. My first clue was Bashir's future racket made from sci-fi alloys breaking in half the third time he hit the ball.

Meanwhile Club Martus is still abandoned. Seems like his war with Quark is pretty much over already, as he's got no counter move and the woman ran off with all his money. Rom's sick of him at this point, so he throws his fancy jacket back at him and storms off... with the waitress.

I really wish that woman had gotten a line, seeing as she's in almost every scene with Martus and Rom. It's weird for her to be so prominent and yet entirely silent.

Even with the forces of luck working against him, Bashir has still managed to win three 3 points, but he's miles behind O'Brien and probably a bit sore seeing how he keeps slamming into walls.

O'Brien's had enough at this point and cuts the transmission. He wasn't this good at racquetball even when he was playing it five hours a day, every day, so something's clearly up. Wait, five hours a day? This isn't a hobby, it's an addiction!

Dax and Sisko arrive and they watch as the ball goes straight back to O'Brien's hand every time he throws it. Must have taken a few takes to get that right. This isn't giving them new information, but they've decided that this is the point where they'll solve the mystery. And the answer is... something on the station is changing the laws of probability so that improbable things happen on a regular basis.

So the gambling ball is basically an Infinite Improbability Drive out of Hitchhiker's Guide, except more finite.

Man, this is like the ending to Q-Less all over again, except better because only one of them has a tricorder out this time. It looks so ridiculous when they're all waving them around.

About 40 minutes into the episode they finally figure out that it's the gambling machines that are affecting the laws of probability, leaving them with just three minutes to solve the problem before the credits come up. Really this should've been detected at the 'replicating an unknown alien artefact to use it in a casino' stage; these people need some safeguards.

Though I can't be too hard on them as they actually solved the mystery before it became a real crisis this time. The station wasn't at risk of falling into the wormhole or anything like that, they just had people tripping and losing files.

Oh, well that's one way to solve the problem: immediately shoot all the luck balls with flawlessly synchronised phaser shots. Seems a bit drastic, seeing as a: there's no imminent threat to the station, and b: they're using energy weapons against an unknown power source in a room where the laws of probably are extremely warped. But hey, it worked out. They've missed one though, as the original toy that started it all isn't here.

Sisko's got nothing he can charge Martus with, but the episode does that thing where a character has clearly been listening to the conversation before entering the room, as Odo walks in and says he can charge him with something! Turns out that the elderly couple he ripped off has decided to press charges after all.

So now Martus has gone though the whole arc of that guy he met in the cell at the start, except for the 'wishing for death' part.

He's not alone though, as the woman with the asteroid mining plan has also been brought in after trying to pull the same scam on Quark. I think this was supposed to be a twist.

I was genuinely surprised that Quark decided to get Martus out of jail though, and he doesn't even want anything in exchange. It's not even to get rid of him off the station, as they work out how much he's going to lone him to buy a ticket afterwards.

The scene's over before they've settled on a sum, but that's just so Quark can have the last line, saying "Go on. I'm listening." 'Listening', get it?


CONCLUSION

---

There are three big problems with Rivals:

1. It keeps cutting away to show what a guest star's up to and that rarely works out well on this series. Martus isn't Outrageous Okona bad, and I thought Chris Sarandon did what he could with the role, but I've got no attachment to his character and the focus on him over the leads comes off as strange.

2. It doesn't live up to its premise. Well okay, the 'O'Brien is mad because Bashir's better than him at his favourite game', plot got exactly as much exploration as it deserved and turned out alright, but Quark vs. Another Quark promises so much more than we got here. A war between two scheming con men with rival businesses should be a bottomless well of fun scenes, but the episode does next to nothing with it. Quark complains to Sisko and sets up a live sporting event, Martus hires Quark's brother, and that's it! There's no escalation of their rivalry, that's the entire extent of their competition. The episode earns bonus points for tying the two rivalries together by the end, but at that point Martus has already lost due to bad luck, and it's third con artist who actually beats him at his own game.

3. Those bloody gambling machines.

One issue with the gambling machines is that they should have zero appeal to anyone older than a toddler. The devices steal all of Quark's customers, but I think the episode forgot to mention why. That's fine though, as the toy clearly came from the Twilight Zone, or the shop they got the Mogwai from in Gremlins. It's creepier when we don't know why people are drawn to playing them. Theoretically.

The thing that really bothers me about them, is that at one point Kira says "You make your own luck," and then trips over something off screen. Because luck is apparently real now and she's foolish to believe otherwise.

To be honest I've been looking forward to getting around to Rivals since I first started this site, because I knew I'd be able to go on a good rant about the science in the episode. But then I reviewed Doctor Who and Star Trek: Discovery and this all seems so tame by comparison. How I am I going to complain about the episode's handling of probability after writing about electromagnetic ghosts chanting coordinates across the galaxy and all life in the universe being connected by a mushroom dimension? Though I'll find a way, I always do.

Okay, there are two kinds of science in Star Trek: there's the kind that's wrong, and there's the kind that's probably wrong but I didn't notice or care. But the effect these machines have is straying into the realm of superstition and Trek has always fought against that. I'm fine with the cursed rabbit's foot in Supernatural's Bad Day at Black Rock and the luck virus in Red Dwarf's Quarantine, in fact those were way better episodes than this one, but one's outright fantasy and the other's a sitcom, so they're playing by different rules.

Star Trek's universe is filled with godlike aliens and energy beings, but it'd never have someone cast a spell to change the laws of mathematics so that 2+2=5. So the idea of someone changing probability so that a ball will always bounce into someone's hand just seems crazy to me, it doesn't fit this universe. Sure you could manipulate the outcome of a coin flip by simply gluing a piece of buttered toast to one side, and you can increase the chances of someone losing their files by pulling the plug on their computer, but you can't emit an energy field that makes someone miss a ball, slip over and break their racket in space squash. Making particles spin the other way is one thing, but Bashir's targeted misfortune required the machine to have an understanding of how the game is played and know how to manipulate whatever variables it could to adjust the ball's trajectory and cause a weakness to develop in the racket. I would've actually been happier if it had been someone like Q screwing around with them deliberately, because O'Brien's success in that match wasn't just implausible, it was pretty much evidence of an intelligence with an agenda.

But the Deep Space Nine scientists seemed happy enough that it was just messing around with probability... which means that their station can replicate a device which can edit reality like it's a simulation. This seems like a pretty game changing breakthrough in our understanding of the universe. A patient has a 50% chance of survival? Use a purple medical sphere and you can raise that to 100! Fire off the purple torpedo spheres which give the enemy ship a 100% chance of using its own replicators to produce a gas that knocks the crew out. Soon the Federation's in a probability war with the Romulans! Chances are that the Romulans are ruthless enough to win that one... so the Federation uses their purple war sphere to change those chances so that they're not. The story opens a bit of a Pandora's box.

The episodes kind of works as a break from the action adventure, heavy drama and moral dilemmas we've been going through... except we haven't really had any. Sanctuary had no emotional kick, Necessary Evil was pretty laid back, Second Sight is the most airy episode about a guy killing himself by driving into the sun to save his wife from a loveless marriage I've ever seen. So this just feels like more of the same.

But in the end I actually kind of sort of didn't hate this one, mostly because of the Bashir and O'Brien plot line, but also because it came right after Sanctuary and anything was going to seem better by comparison. This was writer Joe Menosky's second and final Deep Space Nine episode, and considering his other script was Dramatis Personae that may have been a good thing. He had better luck when he moved over to Voyager, co-writing a lot of the big episodes like Future's End, Scorpion, Year of Hell and Dark Frontier, and I'll get right onto reviewing them if I'm ever drunk enough to order a Voyager series box set.

---

COMING SOON

I actually did it, I finished writing my Rivals review, it's a miracle! Deep Space Nine sadly won't be returning any time soon because I'm still waiting to get a magical purple ball that lights up and that adds extra weeks to the calendar when you press a button. But next on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Babylon 5's Passing Through Gethsemane!


Your comments remain greatly appreciated. There has been no reduction in the amount I appreciate it when people take the time to leave a comment.