Deep Space Nine 1x6 "Captive Pursuit"

**

The first time we get something to visit us from the other side of the wormhole introduced in the pilot as one of the most important elements of the series, it's a little disappointing in retrospect that the creators hadn't yet come up with the concept of the Dominion (introduced properly in the second season) or that the aliens featured in "Captive Pursuit" are never seen again...

Some of this ends up making the wormhole seem like an excuse to allow the series to circumvent its own premise and still do an alien-of-the-week episode, but it's at least interesting that Miles O'Brien gets his first notable episode, trying to mediate between an abused victim of another species' sport that has stumbled into our territory, and thus allowing everyone to muse on ethics, in a way Captain Janeway would have been proud of.

That's really it, though.  As representative of the series, "Captive Pursuit" comes up a little dicey, though it's the first regular episode dealing with an episodic problem unrelated directly to any of the series regulars to be worth watching.  Ah, that is to say, it's a suggestion that "Babel" is not the best you'll get from this show, and that's promising indeed.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Scott MacDonald

Memory Alpha summary.