Melora

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Ensign Melora Pazlar, Space Cartographer, is the first Elaysian to join Starfleet from her low gravity world. Somehow Deep Space Nine is so terrible that anti-gravity doesn't work here. I think it must get too depressed or something.

Melora requires a wheelchair in Earth-brand gravity. But no special treatment! Also ramps and a romper room. O'Brien bumped his head a lot to make one. Melora's got the bumps too. Oh, sorry, that's just her face. But no special treatment!

Quark's trying to sell the one ring to rule them all, and 41 others besides. A man with a beak called Fallit Kot is eager to kill Quark, proving only that he's met Quark. Kot looks like Romulan Prison Fried Chicken, in fact, thanks to Quark he was SCARRED! SCARRED FOR LIFE!

Bashir and Melora begin courting (and court food poisoning) in the Klingon food court. Earthworms and peaches, looks like.

Julian tells her a sad tale from his youth, how at age ten he saw a girl die, and he found out later he could have saved her with herbs that were all around them. It inspired him start a career in tennis. Also, doctoring. He even shows her his bedside manner. Although in her room, it's probably more ceiling-side.

Now, not to be indelicate, but does this delicate hollow-boned young lady seem up to the rigours of intercourse? I'm just saying. Conversations with Julian can take a lot out of people.

Pondering aloud what future she might have with a human, Melora hears Dax's tale of a hydrogen breathing Lothra and an Oxygene who were together for 57 years, for only 40 minutes a day. Which is enough, perhaps. (You think they'd just wear gas masks, but then they'd be asking 'Are you my mummy?' instead of saying 'Who's Your Daddy?'

Bashir adapts a technique to strengthen Melora, but if she uses it she can never return to low gravity. Is the warm bum worth never visiting her family again?

Kot shoots a guy while robbing him, then shoots Melora as a hostage. She has enough of Julian's magic spinach in her muskels to clobber the giant chicken when Dax shuts off the runabout gravity.

"Melora" is the face in the misty light, footsteps you don't hear down the hall. That gal who floats on a summer night that you can never quite recall. She gave her very first kiss to you. That's Melora, but she's only a dream.'

I choose to believe that's the old standard the Klingon Chef is singing. But probably not.