In Purgatory's Shadow

 **** (4 stars out of 5)

Garak and Worf sneak into the Gamma Quadrant in response to a call from Garak's not-so-dead mentor. They soon find all the Jem'Hadar they could ask for and a free trip to death camp 371!

Conveniently, everyone of interest to them is there... in the same cell.

One-eyed Klingon General Martok has been interred there for 2 years. It's actually the first time Worf has met Martok for reals, and they quickly become BFFs. Enabran Tain has been held captive since the Unpleasantness in the Omarion Nebula. Oh... and SURPRISE: Julian Bashir. Since before the grim grey uniforms came into use, for over a month, Deep Space Nine's chief surgeon has been a changeling! Long enough to treat baby O'Briens, baby changelings, and do delicate brain surgery on Sisko, anyway.

Garak tells Bashir that sentiment is the greatest weakness of all, but he comes by such terrible ideas honestly: Tain was his father. Though they may only have had one pleasant day together, when Garak repeatedly injured himself learning to ride a hound. (Scrappy Doo is a figure of terror on Cardassia.)

Tain's heart is giving out. The crusty, hamburger-loving, spymaster gushes with pride as he dies: "I should have killed your mother before you were born. You have always been a weakness I can't afford."

Speaking of appalling fathers, Dukat does his best but cannot convince his daughter Ziyal to return home with him. She likes that terrible tailor Garak too much. So Dukat abandons her. Not for the first time. And what's WITH Ziyal? Somehow, half-Bajoran Cardassians have accelerated growth in their early teens accompanied by radical changes in their skulls and faces? (I am, of course, mocking the THIRD actress to play the role of Ziyal in as many years.)

Dax's widow Khan (no relation) invents a method to close the wormhole permanently. But for some reason it fails and "Bashir" looks like the cat that's eaten the riding hound.

The Dominion invades the Alpha Quadrant. "God help us all," intones Sisko. And might I add: YOU ASKED FOR IT! If you'd respected their territory, maybe they would have done the same. Probably not, but you could at least pretend you had the high ground.

"In Purgatory's Shadow" earns those stars. The Bashir Changeling reveal is a great blind-side. The death of Tain is powerful. Over two years building to the Dominion War and it is upon us at last. Hold on to your butts.

Blood Fever

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Last time, on True Blood, Jason has become a were-panther. Will Sooki be able to... what?
Oh, right, Star Trek.

It's a callback to the Original Series once again as what we learned about Vulcans during 'Amok Time' has come back to haunt our newest newbie Vulcan pal Vorik.

72 years at best from his happy spawning grounds, on a ship with no lady Vulcans, Vorik's making the best of his first pon farr by fighting off the plak tow symptoms on his own, in his quarters, in the dark. (Too much meditation, contrary to the rumor, does not give a Vulcan hairy palms.)

Acting on ignorance and instinct, the young Vulcan engineer forces a telepathic betrothal bond on B'Elanna. And in the process forces the symptoms of pon farr on her as well.

"For such an intellectually enlightened race, Vulcans have a remarkably Victorian attitude about sex," opines the EMH. The doctor continues to respect confidentiality, but devises a possible solution and a possible partner in a "recreational/medical" hologram gal called T'Pera. Or, if you prefer, prostitute by prescription? The term might not apply, after all, they don't use money in the 24th Century. Also, it doesn't take. Vorik's choice is already made and Tuvok's uncomfortable non-advice is non-helpful.

Torres, meanwhile, sparks a confrontation with the xenophobic alien Sakari while trying to mine their gallacite without her top. By which I mean, horny as a targ. Which is to say, throwing herself at Tom Paris. Paris, to his credit, isn't so caddish as to take advantage of the chemically unbalanced woman... at least the first ten times she asks. When it becomes clear her life is on the line, Tom relents and is quite prepared to suffer the slings and arrows (possibly literal arrows, certainly literal slings and band-aids) of sex with the lady Klingon.

However, Randy... I mean, Vorik, is still up for a little frig or fight. And under the "rules" of improvised koon-ut-kalifee, Torres can name herself as her own defender if she doesn't want any of his Oingo-Boingo. And this is one Rumble in the Jungle whose outcome is never in doubt. (Torres is a biter.)

All's well that ends well, and Tom and B'Elanna illuminated a little truth about themselves in the deep, dark caves.

But what horror does Chakotay find among the bushes? A halfling of sorts. Part faerie, part human...
Sorry, that's True Blood again. "Blood Fever" is some other thing. Sexy, funny, and frightening, sometimes all at once, this is a great piece of television.

For The Uniform

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Maquis leader Michael Eddington spanks the mighty Defiant with a computer virus and an outdated raider. This dingus worked every day with Sisko for a year and a half and nobody even knew he had a personality until he turned traitor.

Now Eddington uses biogenic weapons on Velos Prime- specifically poisoning the atmosphere against Cardassians but not humans. He made the weapons out of Selenium and Rodian Nitrates (a healthy part of Greedo's Balanced Breakfast). He's running circles around Sisko and the Captain's head is about to pop off.

Starfleet gave Alien Nation's Tenctonese cop Captain Sanders the "Catch Eddington" mission and it sticks in Sisko's craw.  So he goes out anyway, with the Defiant still half-functional. The ship nearly hits Deep Space Nine while trying to launch from it.

Downgraded from fancy new holocommunicator to communicating with a Nog, a tin can and some string. In fact, Nog has Sigourney's job from 'Galaxy Quest': repeating everything.

Eddington compares Sisko to obsessive Inspector Javert from Les Miserables. Casting himself as Val Jean, nest-ce pas? For such an Anglo looking guy, he's even more vocal about his love of romantic French history than Picard.

Sisko decides if Eddington wants to play the hero, then that makes him the villain. Twirling his mustache and Dr. Doom cape, Sisko salts the atmosphere of a Maquis world with Cardassian-safe Human poison. Threatening to take his poison sprayer out on the road, Sisko forces Eddington to surrender himself.

Cardassians and Maquis swap worlds, possibly forced to put their nonsensical fight on hold briefly, and NOBODY wants that. Sisko admits that even though it worked, he didn't clear his poison plan with Starfleet ahead of time. Imagine that: Starfleet probably wouldn't have given thumbs up to planet-wide bioweapons deployment. You learn something new every day.

"For The Uniform" introduced the holocommunicator and I really liked that idea. Holodecks that can manifest whole cities but they're still chatting on Skype? I understand why the FX guy might not want to make a switch decreasing the amount of FX viewscreen conversations, but there's a certain dramatic improvement in scenes where the actors are actually face-to-face. I wish they'd used it more often, but this was pretty much it.

Coda

 *** (3 stars out of 5)

Following Janeway's hit Dance of the Dying Swan on talent night, she suggests Chakotay take his turn. "Maybe I could stand with an apple on my head and you could phaser it off!"

"Sounds great," he laughs. "If I miss, I get to be Captain."

When shuttle Sacajewea is brought down by ion lightning, Janeway DOES die. Oh, sorry. SPOILERS.

I'm starting to think the crew of Voyager's most practiced skill is surviving shuttle crashes. What is this, like the fifth time Chakotay's been in a crash in under 3 years?

Anyway, if it feels like a repeating time loop, looks like a repeating time loop, and generates anti-protons like a repeating time loop maybe it IS a repeating time loop. Janeway repeats and relives her death in various exciting ways: strangled to death by a Vidiian, shuttle explosion, catches the phage and is euthanized by the EMH. Didn't he get the memo? We did all that LAST season!

A bright light is following the Ghosty Captain, and her dead dad comes out of it. He drowned years ago under the ice cap of Tau Ceti Prime. If that isn't enough reason to doubt him, there's the fact that her Blue Blood father might be Broadway's demon barber of Fleet Street!

Or perhaps she's suspicious that a man who died in 2358 is wearing a badge not introduced until 2371. Then again, maybe Starfleet recycles the designs every second decade: the oval might make a comeback in 2381!

"Coda" keeps you guessing, right through. A good Janeway story, even if in retrospect all the tearful eulogies must have been written about her, by her, in her own head. Best way to get the results you want, I say. 'She's the mother-figure I always wanted,' sounds a lot better than 'Damn fool ruined all our lives'.

The Begotten

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Odo buys a baby changeling from Quark. I'm sure there's a way to charge the bartender with sentience trafficking or some such, but Odo is much too enamored to bother. Dr. Bashir saves the little Founder foundling from tetryon radiation poisoning. Then the constable speaks lovingly to the jar of honey, having decided to raise it in all the kindness he missed out on during his infancy as a lab rat.

Speaking of which, Dr. Mora Pol comes to visit from his job helping Starfleet devise new ways to kill changelings. Conflict of interest? Bad dad graduating to grouchy grandpa? Well, such is life on DS9.

Meanwhile, the O'Briens finally get their baby back from Major Kira. No matter how you slice it (Do NOT slice up the child, Solomon, it's just a figure of speech) that kid was gestating for well over six months, not counting his original womb. That makes Kira a shoo-in record holder for an alien race whose pregnancies last a mere five months, who never get morning sickness, and who give birth by reaching a state of complete relaxation. Almost makes up for the decades of brutal slavery and torment. Oh, relax, I meant the Occupation, not parenthood!

Odo tells Quark that being a surrogate parent is the most rewarding thing in his entire life. And is too happy to arrest the Ferengi for selling a baby.

Too much love, or not enough discipline? Between them, Odo and Pol get that kid wiggling and jiggling and pretending to be that tentacle-face from The Abyss.

But tragedy and elation will mingle in a deeply moving climactic event and Odo will be forever changed by "The Begotten".

Thanks to Duncan Regehr and James Sloyan for their final Star Trek appearances to date. Shakaar was a strong, memorable presence, and Mr. Sloyan in particular put his DNA into lot of interesting, conflicted alien roles over the years. To this day, when I read Star Trek fiction, I still find it useful to imagine secondary characters are James Sloyan with some wacky forehead.

Alter Ego

 **** (4 stars out of 5)

A study of that now-common phenomena: on-line romance gone wrong. Well, let's pretend it's not just Fatal Attraction with Tuvok.

Tom preens for B'Elanna in his Hawaiian shirt, but it's Vorik the Vulcan who accompanies her at the beach. That Vorik! He's like Reggie Mantle to Tom's Archie Andrews. In terms of hair, at least.

Harry Kim has become twitter-pated for recreational hologram Marayna. Kim asks Tuvok to teach him Vulcan techniques to squelch his feelings. The Bolian Method would probably be eating your feelings, so Vulcan it is!

The Vulcan method works perfectly for several minutes until Tom drags Harry to the luau and Tuvok becomes intrigued by Marayna instead. She enjoys playing "Vulcan Chess" so much that she steals the Doctor's Mobile Emitter, and breaks into Tuvok's room to play it ALL NIGHT LONG. (Not a sexy metaphor.)

It comes to light that Marayna is no trick of the light at all. She has a taste for danger and a horribly lonely job. She sits alone atop a fiery nebula and works all the buttons to keep it contained. (Not a sexy metaphor, I swear.)

She chose this lighthouse-keeper life, but lately she's opening other people's mail from ships that pass in the night. Tuvok urges her to seek more sociable employment.

Mercifully, the lunatics one meets online these days are not yet able to physically emerge in one's home and mess with one's stuff. That's NEXT year's upgrade.

"Alter Ego", in the words of Jess from 'The New Girl', screams "Give my nipples a purpose!" Allow me to explain. Swimsuits and leis all around, and yet apparently Marayna's swimsuit needed a liner sewed inside to save us from the traumatic sight of chilly lady beans. Thanks for nothing, UPN.

Fair Trade

*** (3 stars out of 5)

On a space station outside the Nekrit Expanse, Neelix realizes that his usefulness as a local guide to the Voyager is at an end. He's never been beyond this point. (Presumably his self-esteem is also at a low ebb from his off-screen break-up with Kes.)

Neelix can't get Torres to apprentice him in engineering, or Tuvok to squire him in security. He's convinced that amateur ambassador, newsman, and cook are not valuable enough jobs. He wants to find a map and nobody around here does anything out of the goodness of their heart or other organs.

The desperate fellow falls back into the bad influence of Wixiban, a Talaxian smuggler. Wix feels, rightly or wrongly, that Neelix owes him a debt for the year he spent in a Ubean prison. A punishment which Neelix avoided. Just like he tries to avoid the familiar Vulcan engineer (Taurik's identical cousin Vorik) who's always in the way when Neelix wants to talk about doing crime.

Whatever his reasons, Wixiban is now dealing narcotics in the hopes of buying his ship out of impound. He mentions only the medicinal applications when he dupes Neelix into playing along with a deal between a Bothan-looking burn-out and a Nausicaan-esque drug lord.

Bar Rodent tries to bring his dilemma to Helm Boy, but Tom only drones on about how things wouldn't have escalated in his own sordid past if only he'd learned earlier to TELL THE TRUTH. Pssh. Like we haven't heard that one before.

The Expanse Station is run by a surly so-and-so called B'Tardat.

Sorry, that's a Tard Cat. (Also he's really called Bahrat but I missed my chance to use the B'Tardat line months ago.) Just ignore me and keep peering at this grumpy, grumpy cat until he steals your soul and shoes.

"Fair Trade" informs us that when Neelix said he was "a dealer in junk" he meant it- in the street slang sense. Junk. Horse. Meth. Nose candy. The Old Willy Wonka Blueberry. The Subspace Vacuole. The Autobot Matrix of Lazy-Shit.

Or maybe he really was in salvage only. It's not entirely clear. Welcome to the Nekrit Expanse. Here there be dragons. Or something else, probably not dragons.