By Inferno's Light

***** (5 stars out of 5)

Dukat's little tantrum at his daughter last episode makes a little more sense (but is still appalling) in light of the fact that he's been negotiating a treaty between the Dominion and Cardassia for months. Last week Cardassia JOINED the Dominion.

Well, to coin a phrase, shit.

On sunny Internment Asteroid 371 all the Cardie prisoners are released: oh, not so fast, Mr. Garak. The new ruler of Cardassia is not your pal. But while denying things to his enemies, Dukat pledges to give his eldest son a birthday present: 5 days from now there will be no Klingon or Maquis left alive within Cardassian borders. (And all Mekor wanted was a riding hound!)

The Bashir Changeling modified that beam intended to shut the wormhole: instead it made the wormhole stronger and angrier.

Jem'Hadar prison may be an endless parade of beatings, maimings and murder, but at least it's co-ed! Bashir keeps claustrophobic Garak from going mad inside the wall working on the transmitter. It seems he was buried alive on Tzenketh once. (Oh, also, his father locked him in closets throughout his youth.) Meanwhile Worf Balboa boxes for his life.

Gowron and his troops limp back from Cardassia, re-instating the Khitomer Accords and thus ending their unprovoked war with the Federation out of BRAVERY and UNITY rather than sheepishness and desperation. Right?

Dukat generously suggests Sisko talk the Federation into joining the Dominion, too. Because he's about to try to retake Deep Space Nine. It may have been built with the blood and bones of Bajoran slaves, but, what the hell. What Dukat wants, Dukat gets, at least with a Jem'Hadar army around.

Quark's financial prospects under Dominion occupation look dim. Neither the Founders nor their troops eat, drink, or use holo-brothels. Ziyal looks on the bright side: "For all we know, the Vorta could be gluttonous, alcoholic, sex maniacs."

"My people have a saying: Never turn your back on a Breen." Oh, Romulan Girl! Racist AND Right. Breens might not have blood (weird) but they're great at shooting people in the back.

"By Inferno's Light" is brilliant. I still flip for the sequence where Defiant plucks the changelings' runabout full of corpses and bombs out of its sundive. They got a whole star for that moment alone! Then there's Dukat, Garak, Worf, and Martok, plus a good and evil Bashir? Way to be, DS9! Nice one.

Things Past

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Life was getting a little too enjoyable on Deep Space Nine in the midst of a brutal Klingon war and simmering Dominion Cold War, so how about a trip down memory lane to the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor once again? Nobody's sick to death of hearing about that yet.

Returning from a historical debate at which Garak wore a nametag reading "Elim Garak- Former Cardassian Oppressor", Sisko, Dax, Odo and their Cardassian colleague enter a dream together from which they cannot awaken. It is seven years ago, and they are all Bajoran slave labour on Terok Nor. Everyone sees them as Ishan Chaye, Timor Landi, Jillur Gueta, and that girl who happened to be hanging around Ishan, Timor, and Jillur.

Dax's character's name being irrelevant, she is scooped up in the daily allotment of women delivered to Gul Dukat's office for the full Roddenberry.  The fellows, meanwhile, are working the fry station and scraping gum off chairs at Quark's when they happen to be standing too close to an explosive assassination attempt on Dukat's life.

Thrax, the station's chief of security, has a fair demeanor for a spoon-head, but he's overworked and too quick to pin the blame. The trio are scheduled for an execution with a free trial if there's time. And only Garak could really use one, truth to tell.

Can they find a way to awaken before their sleeping minds convince their bodies they've been shot? Why is Thrax still working here when this representative weekend of justice miscarriage was really during Odo's tenure? What's really going on here? And could Dax hit Dukat in the head a bit more? I'd really appreciate it.

"Things Past" serves mainly to remind me of what I already know: Kurtwood Smith is the cat's ass. He's great in everything I've ever seen him in. The story itself is grim, glum, dire, dour, no heroes anymore, seen it all before. But damned if it didn't used to give me chills.

Return To Grace

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Legate Dukat is a thing of the past. Meet Bellhop Dukat, carrying Kira's Bajoran baggage and Captaining the run-down freighter Groumall. Disowned, divorced, and disavowed, and even though it's Kira's fault (for making him drag his love-child home alive), she knows damn well it couldn't happen to a nastier ex-dictator.

Tricked into a diplomatic mission by her new boyfriend the First Minister, Kira never reaches the conference because the Klingons blew it up. Delegates from both Bajor and Cardassia dead by the dozens. Rather than reporting this to anyone, anyone who might, for example, have a cloaked warship idling away in the space garage with a Strategic Operations Officer drumming his fingers on the dashboard, they go on the offensive alone in their unarmed garbage scow.

With Dukat's humiliating circumstances and chirpy daughter Ziyal to enjoy, Kira finds herself teaching Dukat and Daughter to play terrorist.

They pull the old 'Search For Spock Switcheroo' and swap places with the Klingon crew using transporters. They manage to capture the first Bird-Of-Prey ever for Cardassia. But the Detapa Council doesn't want to carry on this fight.

Dukat can't talk Kira into joining his one-man war, but she talks him into letting Ziyal live with her rather than raise her as a freedom fighter.

 "Return To Grace" is cool, especially if you overlook how illogical it is that Kira keeps ending up hanging out with Dukat. You would think, dramatic as it might be, that in the real world the Israeli girl and Hitler wouldn't have as many dinner dates as these two do. Quibbling aside, Marc Alaimo never disappoints as the insidious Dukat. The effects are good too, and we meet Dukat's right hand man in adversity, Damar, due for recurring character status soon enough.

State of Flux

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Ensign Seska attempts to rekindle a romance with Chakotay over some mushroom soup. When he learns she's stolen the repast in what she brags about as a Maquis operation, he turns them all in (including himself), cancelling their replicator rations for two days as punishment. And ten points from Hufflepuff.

Of course, Seska is rather naughtier than that. They renamed the episode from the working title 'Seska' because of a little thing I like to call spoilers. Anyway, it's all about Seska. That poor Bajoran girl who fought Cardassians with the weird, Cardassian-like attitude and the Cardassian-like blood who's always holding a spoon up against her forehead and sighing wistfully has a secret...

When Voyager responds to a Kazon distress signal it is too late to save a ship of fools who botched the stolen plans for a food replicator so badly they wound up embedded inside walls.

Who would give Federation technology to jerks like Kazon Maje Cullah? Didn't we already cover technology sharing yesterday and exactly how everyone feels about it? How Janeway feels, how Tuvok feels, how Carey feels... hey, Chakotay, how does SESKA feel? A little scaly, you say?

Cullah plays the identity of Voyager's traitorous inside man close to his fuzzy Muppet vest, even poisoning his own goons rather than risk Janeway figuring it out too early.

"State of Flux" has great character moments for Chakotay, demonstrating the fierceness of his loyalty. And the traitor is very suitably chilling even if her identity could not have been more clear if she had worn a hat proclaiming her the Mayor of Obvious Corners here in Obvious County.