When It Rains...

**** (4 stars out of 5)
Whenever I see Klingon Chancellor Gowron throwing his weight around I always think back to something I heard him say repeatedly in the ST:TNG VHS video board game: "YOU WILL EXPERIENCE BIJ!" (pronounced BEEEJ, means 'punishment').

And we're all getting punished today: Gowron's jealous of Martok's wartime prestige so he's moving in to take command and credit, Ross and Sisko order Kira to hang out with the fine, upstanding men of the Cardassian rebellion, Odo discovers he has the same wasting disease as the Founders, and Dukat goes temporarily blind. (Not from looking at Kai Winn in the buff, you understand, but from peeking at the devil's books, I guess.)

Sisko gives Kira a drab new uniform and battlefield commission so the Cardassians won't have to think 'Bajoran' while she's bossing them around. Although it's really her face that gives it away... so... whatever. She's not making many friends teaching Killing Cardies 101 at the Cardassian Learning Annex anyway. Also, it's easier to work with Damar and think of him as a hero if Kira and Garak never bring up the way he shot their friend Ziyal in the back.

Dr. Bashir has a scheme to learn rapid organ replacement synthesis from whatever Odo's made of. We'll never know if this payed off... except otherwise Odo would never have found out he was sick. Well, the 'crumbling to dust' would've been a clue, but doctors like to feel useful. Like the desk-bound PADD-pushers at Starfleet Medical: who wouldn't lift a finger if it might help Odo. A cure for Odo might get back to the Founders. And nobody wants THAT. The Founders might be grateful or shamed by Solids who show compassion or something.

As Bashir deduces, that hardly sits well with the solids who infected them in the first place: our old pals, the spooks at Section 31.

"When It Rains..." is continues the gripping saga with desperate humanity eager to throw the Founders to the wolves, Sisko forced to do the same with all his non-Federation peeps (except Quark, I guess), the Kai throwing her blind ex-lover into the street, and Gowron settling in drunk behind the wheel of the bus he's throwing Martok under.