The Maquis, Part I

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Hey, nerds, guess what? Dax likes to date guys with big brains! Even if she can see it through their skulls, or it's four-lobed and crammed full of latinum.

Before we find out who Kira might go out with, the Cardassian freighter Bok'nor implodes just outside. (Although my guess is, she'd date whoever set the bomb.)

Commander Calvin Hudson, Starfleet's attaché to the DMZ last seen yesterday on TNG, comes by to check it out. He's an old friend of Ben Sisko's. Nothing says double date fun like beer and sausage on the moon!

Speaking of weird dates, Sakonna of Vulcan opens negotiations with Quark. It's your first clue that something is wrong with her. She's buying guns. Lots and lots of guns. And speaking of things that are just plain wrong, Gul Dukat is sitting in the dark on Sisko's couch when Ben gets home. (It's a trick he learned from DC Comics' Darkseid.)

The Volon colonies in the Not-So-Demilatarized Zone are locked in skirmishes with their new Cardassian landlords. (If it were VORLON colonies, the fight would be over by now!)


Dukat has seven children, and his culture conducts intense mental training to bestow photographic memories on its four year olds. "Education is Power. Joy is Vulnerability." is probably what it says on their state-issued nap-time blankies. After the kids embroider it themselves in the sweat shops.

Farmer Bill Samuels confessed to the bombing before his convenient suicide by Cardassian disruptor in the back.

Sakonna and her peeps kidnap Dukat in retaliation. Odo grouses that under Federation rules he can't set a curfew, search the incoming passengers, or have 50 more deputies. Poor Odo! Those darn trains to the death camps don't run on time anymore, either.

Dukat's kidnappers operate in and around an area of the Cardassian border called "The Badlands". (Famous for its plasma storms, missing ships, and scrumptious Indian food.) Those wacky, desperately violent human-types call themselves: The Maquis.

Were you as unsurprised as I was that Cal was one of them?

"The Maquis, Part I" kicks off all the fall-out from 'Journey's End' which will last for years. DS9 can't just fly away from consequences, so when things go wrong they tend to stay wrong or get wronger.

The Pegasus

**** (4 stars out of 5)

It's Captain Picard Day! Delighted children make papier-mache heads and crayon scrawls in Jean-Luc's honour. Then, on to merrily smashing a Pica-nata full of caviar and dusty old pottery shards, before donning fedoras and muttering the traditional "Oh, Stop, my heart" until an early bedtime under a Personal Relaxation Light. For kids!

Cagey but ebullient Admiral Eric Pressman of Starfleet Intelligence swoops in on a mission to recover his long-LOST starship Pegasus. He's LOST his hair, and, you guessed it, LOST his mind.

Seriously, once you're promoted to Admiral they must give out free passes to some island where nothing makes sense.

See, Pressman was Will's first commanding officer. Twelve years ago an accident on a secret mission ended in mutiny. Young Will defended his Captain against the entire crew who turned against Pressgang... uh, Pressman. Why did they revolt, you ask?

The UFP-Romulan Treaty of Algeron prohibits the Federation from developing cloaking technology. And sneaky Pressman built a cloak that was also intangible! It got everyone killed and his ship stuck half-in half-out of an asteroid. Now the Admiral wants it back because... uh... I dunno. Heavy drinker?

Speaking of which, what wing-nut makes a deal to abandon an entire line of defense technology unilaterally? "We're ABOVE all that CLOAKING DEVICE folderol. Oh, you Romulans go right on using them. Here, have some of our colony planets, too. No, no, they won't mind. Why, yes, I AM drinking trilithium! Yes, it DOES taste ghastly, but simply ALL the diplomats are doing it nowadays."

Picard sternly chides his boss, debates the merits of the illegal machine, and uses it to escape the nasty black Romulan anyway. Moral dilemma, shmoral dilemma!

"The Pegasus" once more brings us Riker skipping merrily away from murder charges, madmen in the admiralty, and (as with the Cardassian Treaty) the reminder that Federation Diplomats are simply BEGGING to get screwed over.