Dramatis Personae

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Valerians have redundant nostrils and a history of running weapons to Cardassians, so Major Kira wants to crack down on their weapons-grade dolamide. Commander Sisko wants to put on diplomatic pressure from the UFP instead. Diplomatic pressure! Thrills galore!

A Klingon ship returning early from the Gamma Quadrant explodes just outside the station and the lone survivor groans "Victory" as he dies of his disruptor burns. It's all very well for HIM, what about us?

Dax has a brain fart, smiling to herself instead of doing her job.

Odo takes his brain farts MUCH more literally. He seizes in pain and his entire head turns inside out!

This leaves him the only one acting normally in an utterly improbable coup Kira suddenly cooks up against Sisko. She starts recruiting among the senior staff for a M-U-T-I-N-Y. She turns on the charm, alternately rubbing her hands together in villainous glee and putting her arms behind her back to impress upon Odo the importance of her breasts. Sisko builds an alien clock, to impress upon us that he is Cuckoo for Cocoapuffs.

Quark makes Dax a Modala aperatif. That's somewhat amusing because there's a Trek comic book called 'The Modala Imperative'. Well, amusing to me. A little. Sometimes I make my own fun.

According to their logs, the Klingons opened some energy spheres. Never a good idea (see 'Return To Tomorrow'). The ancient power struggle that destroyed the Saltah'nans is being replayed on DS9 as it was on the Klingon ship. Only for laffs! (Laughs not included.)

Slaps, injections, and phasers come out, but just in time Odo badgers Bashir into creating a telepathic interference field to drive away the Saltah'nan influence. Say, kids, until now, no technological means existed to block telepathy. Hooray! Problem solved forever!

Unless Bashir's method only works this one time on this one type of telepathy and never again... Oh. That IS what happens. Screw you then, episode.

"Dramatis Personae" lets the actors go nuts, and that's often welcome. I'm firmly on the fence about this: I don't think the characters were well-defined enough yet that the audience would know what the hell was going on. Or, far worse, CARE.

Second Chances

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Nervala IV (not to be confused with Nelvana III) is transporter-accessible for only for a few days every eight years. The last time anyone was here, it was Will Riker.

And he never left.

A bizarre transporter malfunction back then split Lt. Riker into two guys! Neither is his evil half (unless they both are?). While we were following the one with the "cushy" life, the other has been alone in a shabby station for most of a decade. Dr. Crusher confirms that Ragged Riker is no clone: there's no genetic drift and his brain is nearly identical. (Crusher is very quick to claim clones can't be programmed with memories for someone who just met the high-functioning Kahless Clone. How could incense-huffing Klingon clerics do something the UFP can't?)

Geordi offers the "explanation": some sort of power surge, a second annular confinement beam, and a little phase distortion voodoo, but enough chit-chat, let's get to the kissing! Ragged Riker, now in gold, leaps for Deanna's lips. He's a PRE-BREAK-UP copy who's really been pining for some Betazoid Boinking.


Where there's Two Wills, there's a way. And plenty o' friction between the "brothers". Yet they don't seem very inclined to settle things with a Dance-Off or a Devil's Three-Way.

Lt. Riker creates a romantic scavenger hunt for Troi. The prize is a mouthful of beard!

Bev encourages Troi's interest in Lt. Willy. Bev got to taste the beard back in 'The Host', so why not Deanna?

Commander Riker knows about their Panking of Hankies and feels "Flattered... sort of." He also warns Deanna against the strong probability that she will be hurt... again. Red saves Gold in the caverns while retrieving valuable data mcnuggets, but, of course, when the chance arises to further his career, Gold jumps at it, and jumps ship. He's going to take the name Thomas Riker (their middle name) in the divorce. As a consolation prize, Deanna gets Just-Friends 'Original Recipe' Riker, and Tom gets a trombone.

"Second Chances" has to admit that Red Dwarf did this first with two Arnold Rimmers! but, heck, it doesn't matter. This is a marvelous story! The Riker effects blew me away back then, and they still hold up. This episode features a cameo appearance by Real-world astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison, first female African-American in space. It's also the Trek-directing debut of LeVar Burton, who will go on to direct many other amazing Treks. Don't miss your 'Second Chance' to experience them- keep reading my Beard-iful Blog!

The Forsaken

**** (4 stars out of 5)

An Arbazan, a Vulcan, and a Bolian walk into a bar...

Taxco, Lojal, and Vadosia AKA "The Ambassadors of Unhappy" are the picky, picky thorns in Bashir's side, while Ambassador Troi wanders off and attaches herself to Odo.

Odo was simply doing his job, catching the Dopterian who stole Madame Troi's brooch. But she sees him as: "The thin beige line between order and chaos!"

Taxco has a Cardassian bed with wood poles and gargoyles? And she's complaining? That sounds like the best one! Every other bed we've seen here is a dull grey futon. (Or a bucket.)

Yesterday, O'Brien's archenemy was the station's truculent Cardassian computer, but ever since a probe from the Gamma Quadrant arrived it's been downright helpful. Except if Miles takes breaks or leaves it alone for five seconds. Then it intentionally causes malfunctions to get attention.

Lwaxana is on the prowl for her brave Jello Lawman. Odo is out of his depth in a humanoid romance, and not interested in learning to... plumb... those depths. "Procreation does not require changing how you smell, or writing bad poetry, or sacrificing various plants to serve as tokens of affection."

He tries to make Troi back off. "I am not like you! Every sixteen hours, I turn into a liquid!"

Lwaxana shrugs. "I can swim."

Cardassians are insane! Who builds a high-speed turbolift with no doors? It looks like if you fell against that far wall you'd be minced into shoarma! Although maybe Odo would prefer that to being stuck in it with Lwaxana. She makes it explicit that she made love to her kidnapper Tog back in 'Menage A Troi'. Odo contemplates electrocuting himself rather than hear about it.

She wears him down, and finally Odo opens up to her. He spent his early, lonely years in a lab. He tried to fit in by imitating things at parties. "The life of the party. I hate parties."

Turning to liquid is a private matter to Odo. He doesn't want to be seen doing it. Lwaxana takes her wig off in front of him, tit for tat. When he finally can't help but go soft, she holds him safe in her lap. (Yes, I listen to myself. That's what happened!)

"The Forsaken" has a lot of great comedy lines, a technical breakdown with an clever fix, and a sweet heart. Majel really brightens up this dingy station, and made me see Odo for the first time. I liked him right away, but this was where I first loved that poor shifter.

Rightful Heir

**** (4 stars out of 5)

What if God was one of us? Just a troglodyte like us? Just a stranger bringing his bat'leth on the bus?

Worf's missed his shift and gone cross-eyed from chanting and burning the midnight incense. Since failing to find his father, he's tried to fill the emptiness with faith. What does Worf worship, you ask?

Like Jesus, King Arthur, and Sir Charles of Sheen, Kahless the Unforgettable laid down the law and said he would return. Ever since Kahless died in 822 A.D., his people have tried to follow his path of honour. Klingon faithful await him on planet Boreth, orbiting a star he may once have pointed at.

Well, he's back now. In the gnarly flesh. He hopes to unite Klingons who have lost their way and get them to stop fighting among themselves. Great theory. Of course, one wonders who they'd fight if they ever did...

Worf is skeptical of this fully mortal Kahless, and Chancellor Gowron is downright pissed. Dr. Crusher confirms Kahless' blood matches that on a sacred artifact called the knife of Kirom. (They keep it in the Vault of L. Ron Hubbard next to the Shroud of Turin and the Majestic Q-Tips of Ferenginar.)

Somehow, Gowron thinks Worf still has influence in the Empire. Wasn't Worf kicked out again for refusing to kill the Duras kid? Kicked out BY Gowron, no less!

Whatever the case, Gowron questions Kahless's expounding on scriptural stories but inability to recall details. Then, far more damning, the Chancellor easily bests Kahless in combat. That's like a random monk outdoing the Buddha at koans and overeating!

Koroth the Cleric admits to Worf that their saviour was cloned and his memories were implanted.

But it turns out your average Klingon is o.k. with that. Clone Kahless becomes the first Emperor in 300 years, and a spiritual figurehead, but hella popular.

Still empty, Worf wonders if Sto-Vo-Kor (the afterlife) exists, and if Kahless is really there. The Emperor suggests that the teachings may be more important than the man.

"Rightful Heir" looks different to me now. Once blasphemous, now not secular enough. Changed impressions on subsequent viewings- doubtless the mark of a good story. Speaking of looking different, when we last saw Kahless in 'The Savage Curtain', he was a manifestation based on young Captain Kirk's take: the equivalent of Lincoln or Surak only deadlier and with a talent for voice impressions. It's fair to say Kirk had never seen a painting of Kahless, what with the lack of ridges and all.

If Wishes Were Horses

** (2 stars out of 5)

The station encounters beings determined to make all their PG rated dreams come true.

Quark sees the future in family entertainment, expanding his holoprograms to include non-sexual themes, for young Jake and the "baseball mitten" set. "Rides and games for the kiddies... Ferengi standing in every doorway selling... useless souvenirs."

Odo reminds Quark that he finds him disgusting, while also implying that Odo finds all pleasures of the flesh-bags repugnant. Methinks the shifter doth protest too much. Or to mush, if you like.

Speaking of nobody getting any, Lt. Dax continues to reject Dr. Bashir, and despite her suggestion, a high-pitched sonic shower does not reduce his ardour.

Storyteller O'Brien is performing his fairy tales for an audience of one now, with his rugrat Molly shouting "Rumplestiltskin!"  And just like a Dal'Rok, speak of the evil dwarf and he shall appear.  So does Jake's centuries-dead batting partner Buck Bokai. Also a promiscuous Dax who wants to handle Bashir's bat.

"I am not submissive!" Pouty Dax pouts. "Am I?"

Snow on the Promenade, nobody can lose at Dabo, dogs and cats are putting in requests to share living quarters in the habitat ring. The dimensional rupture these figments are emerging from resembles one that ate the Hanoli System in the mid-23rd Century. Or ate a Canoli with gravioli? Even I can't keep the Treknobabble straight sometimes.

Ben and Buck bond over the bummer that baseball bought the farm way back when. As I understand it, baseball was replaced by Wii Sports, while hockey was replaced by beating people up and taking their Wii.

Buck, Rump and Sex Dax are explorers who hadn't encountered this thing called "imagination" before. Probably they were from another subspace realm but so frustratingly tight-lipped about themselves that I'm just going to say they were from the 5th Dimension of DC Comics' Mxyzptlk. And go watch the Superman cartoon with him in it again because it's more entertaining than "If Wishes Were Horses".

It's rather similar to "Where No One Has Gone Before", right down to the threat being defeated by star-math and wishy-thinking. It makes little sense and offers not much character insight, which would be o.k. if it was more fun.

Suspicions

*** (3 stars out of 5)

When Guinan makes a house call on Dr. Crusher about her tennis elbow, she gets an earful instead: Bev's facing an inquiry for, I dunno, curiosity or something.

To convince her scientific colleagues of the value of the invention of the Ferengi Dr. Reyga, Bev invited them all to the Enterprise for cookies and one-upsmanship.

Reyga's metaphasic shield can protect a shuttle within a star's corona, but he needed resources to develop it. He was a weird Ferengi: the only opportunity he sought was to be acknowledged and respected. What a jerk! No wonder these Federation types turned on him.

Something went wrong and pilot Jo'Bril died. Beverly's autopsy was both non-invasive and inconclusive. His Takaran internal anatomy is distributed throughout the body in a way she'd never seen. He's not even decaying right!

Disappointed and angry, Reyga was found alone in Lab Four seemingly dead by his own hand. His family refused to allow autopsy: by unshakeable custom never mentioned before or since his body must be buried without violation. (Even non-invasive scanning? Nothing in this episode makes it sound like Reyga's valued enough by Ferengi standards to become a Corpse Collectible like the Nagus. So why no autopsy? It's not an insight into Ferengi Culture so much as a plot device.)

Full of "Suspicions", Detective Beverly interviews the other scientists. Her accusation against Kurak does not go well: she throws the nosey doctor across the room. But out of guilt or ordinary Klingon rage? Maybe SHIP'S SECURITY should be doing this... Nah. Where's the sense in that?

Beverly autopsies Reyga anyway, turns up nothing and is removed from duty. Riker urges her to stop making things worse. Nurse Alyssa Ogawa helps her continue to investigate, otherwise known as making things worse. (It looks like friendship and loyalty, but if you think about it, once Beverly's fired maybe Ogawa gets more scenes!)

Crusher steals Reyga's shuttle to test the sun-shield herself. It works fine. She is set upon by Jo'Bril: he's stopped hiding in the morgue drawer and started hiding in a foot locker. He can control his body at the cellular level, faking death. With Crusher's demise, he can take the technology back to Takara and weaponize it. Without attempting to stun him, Bev phasers a hole through his chest. When this doesn't work, she disintegrates him.

Way to kill, doctor!  Here's your job back.

Progress

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Nog overhears an opportunity: a careless order of 5,000 wrappages of Cardassian yamok sauce (now useless). "Recycling" them for his uncle Quark, Nog conspires with Jake to trade them to a Lissepian for 100 gross of self-sealing stem bolts. The Lissepian has a built-in beard but is not too free with instructions. Even O'Brien doesn't know what the bolts are for! But somebody does, and trades them for seven tessipates of land. Before anybody has to swallow a dog to catch a cat, Jake & Nog's No-J Consortium end up selling to the Bajoran government... by way of Quark.

That same government, with Federation help, is about to tap the molten core of Bajor's fifth moon, Jerrado, for enough energy to heat hundreds of thousands of homes. Great theory, but the evacuation of the moon missed some squatters. Crusty Mullibok and his two mute pals plan to stay on their katterpod bean farm. They fled the Cardassians and they won't flee uniforms again. Mullibok believes he will die if he leaves his home of 40 years, so he'd apparently rather die in seven days when an energy beam spears out of the sky to spilt Jerrado like a sulphurous egg.

Kira asks her government rep to reconsider phased energy retrieval: a slow but ecologically sound method. But when has THAT ever worked? Instead, forced evacuation, security guards stabbed, and Mullibok shot. Kira whips off her uniform to tend the old jerk in her crochet muscle shirt. She even builds him a kiln. Sisko comes after her, tells her he needs her, he likes her, and that she need not link her fate to Mullibok's. When the farmer's recovered and the kiln is built... Kira blows it up and burns his house down. So there.

Has anybody got the Genesis Device to work in the last 9 decades? (Rhetorical question: "Home Soil" strongly suggests they haven't). So why waste a perfectly good Class-M moon? If you'll recall from the B-story, Bajor is so desperate for farmland they're buying it from Jake and Nog.

That aside, there's a metaphorical level where I side with Kira. "The needs of the many" do, indeed, often outweigh the needs of the few or the one. Mullibok's petulant "I will die if you move me" attitude seems deeply selfish. He's like the noisy minority that calls down God's curses on the world of science, clinging fiercely to the past when the past was actually much shittier in every respect (including literally).

 "Progress" is half whimsy and half grimly real. Great performances from Brian Keith and Nana Visitor. I guess what's best here is the lack of easy answers. I'm pretty sure both Kira and Mullibok are in the wrong, but I can't see a better solution in the conditions created by the story. (Unless it's replicating the old coot an identical house with all the bountiful energy this project offers. Or beaming the original house to Bajor.) Any thoughts?