Friday, June 29, 2012

Second Sight

*** (3 stars out of 5)

It's the fourth anniversary of the Wolf 359 massacre (I told you Molly O'Brien couldn't be four yet) and the Sisko men are having trouble sleeping.

When all of a sudden, EUREKA! A woman appears. Fenna is a free spirit who catches Ben's eye but keeps vanishing. Ben is too smitten to describe the elusive woman effectively to Odo. 'She wore RED." he gushes. (Space-dark hair, skin the colour of Raktajino, and double-tipped Vulcanoid ears are a couple of details that might've helped the search. Odo might even have been able to ask lady cop Elisa Maza to assist him.)

Meanwhile Professor Gideon Seyetik, a terraformer without humility or common sense, is heading for Epsilon 119. It's a dead star and he intends to re-ignite it. For his personal reading lamp or something.

His starship is called Prometheus and probably wasn't built by Weyland Industries. Hopefully, science has come a long way since Dr. Marcus used protomatter to coalesce a sun and planet out of a nebula nine decades ago (for about a month). Seyetik paints giant murals and writes giant narcissistic autobiographies and he's on his ninth wife: Nidell from New Halana.

She's the buttoned-up spitting image of Fenna. And she says she's never met Ben before. Although a married woman wouldn't have stopped Curzon (so Jadzia claims), Ben is hesitant. When Fenna next appears, she kisses Sisko and disappears before his eyes.

She's a physical manifestation of pure energy with no cells or DNA. An illusion projected by the dreaming mind of the psychic Nidell. Gideon admits she's miserable with him but Halanans mate for life.

Seyetik solves his marital problems and mid-life crisis with a certain horrible flair: he sends his shuttle pod to kick-start the star without getting out first.

"Second Sight" it's the sci-fi version of stepping out on your marriage so I don't know how to respect it. Good drama, certainly, Salli Richardson is lovely, and it's nice to see Sisko caring about someone instead of brooding for the rest of his days. It also seems like Starfleet ships don't need captains anymore, just lieutenants reporting to suicidal madmen. (They probably ignored the posted warp speed limit, too!) Back to back with 'Force of Nature' it's noisy scientist explosion month here on Star Trek.

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