Thursday, June 7, 2012

Dramatis Personae

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Valerians have redundant nostrils and a history of running weapons to Cardassians, so Major Kira wants to crack down on their weapons-grade dolamide. Commander Sisko wants to put on diplomatic pressure from the UFP instead. Diplomatic pressure! Thrills galore!

A Klingon ship returning early from the Gamma Quadrant explodes just outside the station and the lone survivor groans "Victory" as he dies of his disruptor burns. It's all very well for HIM, what about us?

Dax has a brain fart, smiling to herself instead of doing her job.

Odo takes his brain farts MUCH more literally. He seizes in pain and his entire head turns inside out!

This leaves him the only one acting normally in an utterly improbable coup Kira suddenly cooks up against Sisko. She starts recruiting among the senior staff for a M-U-T-I-N-Y. She turns on the charm, alternately rubbing her hands together in villainous glee and putting her arms behind her back to impress upon Odo the importance of her breasts. Sisko builds an alien clock, to impress upon us that he is Cuckoo for Cocoapuffs.

Quark makes Dax a Modala aperatif. That's somewhat amusing because there's a Trek comic book called 'The Modala Imperative'. Well, amusing to me. A little. Sometimes I make my own fun.

According to their logs, the Klingons opened some energy spheres. Never a good idea (see 'Return To Tomorrow'). The ancient power struggle that destroyed the Saltah'nans is being replayed on DS9 as it was on the Klingon ship. Only for laffs! (Laughs not included.)

Slaps, injections, and phasers come out, but just in time Odo badgers Bashir into creating a telepathic interference field to drive away the Saltah'nan influence. Say, kids, until now, no technological means existed to block telepathy. Hooray! Problem solved forever!

Unless Bashir's method only works this one time on this one type of telepathy and never again... Oh. That IS what happens. Screw you then, episode.

"Dramatis Personae" lets the actors go nuts, and that's often welcome. I'm firmly on the fence about this: I don't think the characters were well-defined enough yet that the audience would know what the hell was going on. Or, far worse, CARE.

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