The Muse

** (2 stars out of 5)

Jake, minus Nog, still watches over the ladies on the Promenade, just this side of "stalker" because he's a writer making character sketches. At least, that's what he'll have to tell the judge. Unless he's the one that needs defending from predators. Young Mr. Sisko gets a creepy stalker girl of his own. Well, I say girl, but it must be noted she's an older woman. Much, MUCH older. This alien inspires artists and uses them up, sucking their bio-electricity through their shakras. I use the word "sucks" with no reservations whatsoever.

When vigilant Papa Sisko runs Mrs. Robinson off with a phaser, she confesses to "inspiring" many brilliant artists of the past: Keats, Tarbolde, Catullus, and presumably the writing staff of the cartoon Thundercats. She shakes her incorporeal fist and flies off to see how many more seasons she can possibly wring out of that tired old Star Trek writing staff. Hey-yo!

Meanwhile, in the B-story, Lwaxana Troi sobs on Odo's squishy shoulder because she is great with child. Her Tavnian husband Jeyal thinks of her as his property, and wants their son raised traditionally Tavnian: segregated by gender. They are not even told the other sex exists until they are 16. You know: solid Mid-Western values. Mrs. Troi would prefer the kid had a step-father more like Sheriff Waterbed.

Lwaxana's miserable mood is contagious, everyone in Quark's is sad all around her. She has lost her parents and a sister, her husband and her firstborn child, and she's not going to lose another one if she can help it. Odo offers to win the child back for Ambassador Troi with a sham wedding... but it's all over if the shifter can't convince the previous husband of his honest intentions.

"The Muse" is a sorry A-story if ever there was one. I wanted to give it one measly little star. But the Lwaxana-Odo bits are pretty good, and didn't deserve to be lumped in. You gotta give props to Michael Ansara: he's more threatening as a posturing chauvinist than the thousands-year old talent-sucker who's supposedly the Big Bad. It's Lwaxana's on-screen swan song, and she probably deserved better than playing second fiddle to some writer's onanistic magic groupie fantasy.