Behind The Lines

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Having not heard Jim Kirk say "Don't let them promote you", Ben Sisko is kicked upstairs behind a desk as Dax takes the Big Chair on the Defiant. Captain Sisko started a ritual of applauding their battles by saving each and every spent phaser power cell. Dax continues this. Also, for good measure, she saves all the empty TP rolls.

Kira and Rom start a riot by stealing and losing Cardassian Glinn Damar's contingency plan to poison his Jem'Hadar allies... losing it right next to his Jem'Hadar allies. Is it any wonder the man's become an alcoholic? Or at least too drunk to keep from blabbing his schemes to Quark?

Because if Damar gets rid of Rom's minefield, 'Freedom Fries' are going to have to be re-named again.

The Lady Founder (though how can you tell? and would it make any difference?) drops by for some mingling with Odo. She hasn't got a name: she's simply a Drop out of the Ocean.

The fate of multibillions rests on Quark's idiot brother Rom sabotaging the Cardassians. But instead of backing him up, Odo is having, well... a jellyroll with the Founder. He's such a Mellow Jello afterwards that Rom's arrest, Kira's screaming, and all the people who are going to die, are simply shrugged off because it's not his problem. Whu-oh!

"Behind The Lines" has beautiful moments of character triumph and failure. Odo at his most passive- just letting injustice slide. Shrugging when reminded of the stakes: "I has nothing to do with me." While genetically ultra-selfish Quark realizes that his distaste for all the root beer in the Federation isn't worth trying to make nice with the Dominion. Beginnings and endings may get at the pomp and flash, but let's hear it for a strong middle third!