Deep Space Nine 5x23 "Blaze of Glory"

 rating: ***

the story: Eddington's last stand.

what it's all about: Aside from Voyager's "Extreme Risk" (which came about a year later), this is about the last episode in the Maquis narrative begun in Next Generation mostly as a way to set up Voyager.  Eddington last appeared in "For the Uniform," which to my mind remains one of the signal episodes of the series, but this was immediately preceding "In Purgatory's Shadow"/"By Inferno's Light," where the Dominion War becomes inevitable upon Cardassia joining the evil Gamma Quadrant faction.  Seems the Maquis were targeted for elimination after that. 

So there had to be a follow-up, right?  Between Ro Laren (Next Generation's seminal "Preemptive Strike") and Tom Riker (Deep Space Nine's own "Defiant"), usually once someone has made the fateful decision to join the Maquis and either gone off into the sunset or be captured, it had become customary to never hear from them.  Voyager's contingent, of course, is an exception, for obvious reasons.  "Cause" ended with Sisko putting a stop to Eddington's adventures.  "Blaze of Glory" sees Eddington use some trickery to get his way out.

The Eddington of "Uniform" is more charismatic and thrilling than the Eddington who appeared in any other episode, including "Blaze.  This is my main stumbling block with it.  On the one hand, it confirms the cunning that was needed to engineer the long con necessary for the big reveal in the earlier "For the Cause," as well as the cat-and-mouse game of "Uniform," but it seems a little too clockwork in "Blaze," almost inevitable.  The attempt to make him sympathetic, which is what the episode is ultimately about, kind of foreshadows Damar's fate late in the series, which is far more successful.

It's almost like the season's last bit of bad timing.  Had Eddington returned in the sixth season instead, during the actual war, and actually made a selfless decision to help out the Federation in the war, that would've been a redemptive moment.  Instead...I don't know.  Just one of those moments that doesn't resonate the way it seems it should, even for an admitted fan of the Eddington character from well before there was any reason to care for him...What he ends up with is a valiant death, a sacrifice for family, but it could've been so much more.  Still there's something to be said for living up to one's own principles to the bitter end.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - The Maquis story reaches a sad climax.
• series - A necessary beat in the run-up to the Dominion War.
• character - Whether or not it feels satisfactory, this is the final appearance of Eddington, who became one of the unsung essential components of the series.
• essential - Lingering doubt about the creative decisions around it dull the impact.

notable guest-stars:
Ken Marshall (Eddington)
J.G. Hertzler (Martok)
Aron Eisenberg (Nog)

Deep Space Nine 5x13 "For the Uniform"

rating: ****

the story: Sisko finally nabs the renegade Eddington.

what it's all about: This is some of the boldest storytelling Star Trek ever did, and it follows some pretty basic templates, going all the way back to "The Doomsday Machine."  It's a simple story about revenge, but it also cracks the whole series open, all over again.

If "The Darkness and the Light" a few episodes earlier finally acknowledged that the Bajoran Resistance really was made up of terrorists, then "Uniform" finally admits that the Maquis are terrorists, too.  This is a huge leap, made possible because at this point, the Maquis over in Voyager have happily assimilated into Janeway's orthodox Starfleet crew (a fact that actually astonished fans to no end, fans who apparently had no idea they were watching idealistic storytelling), and thus there was no longer any reason to protect them.  Deep Space Nine's later Maquis episodes were probably the best Maquis episodes (except perhaps for "Preemptive Strike" over in Next Generation, with its shock betrayal of Picard by the lovably combative Ro Laren), and while "Defiant" was already an unlikely touchstone (it happened to feature the later adventures of Riker's transporter duplicate), it was Eddington's trilogy that really drove it home.

"Uniform" is a sequel to the fourth season episode "For the Cause," which was somewhat hampered by the fact that Sisko and the audience are swerved with a focus on Kasidy Yates (his freighter captain love interest) rather than Eddington, who to that point had been a somewhat familiar recurring character who'd been around for about two seasons without having really previously distinguished himself. Yet he became the second best Maquis defector, and arguably the best after the events of "Uniform."

This is the episode where Sisko first considers that the ends do justify the means.  This is the moral ambiguity of the series that seemed to repudiate the idealism of the franchise, which had been borne of a decade (the '60s) when the counterculture violently rejected relativism.  Later, and far more famously, Sisko lies to the Romulans to get them into the war, spending the entirety of "In the Pale Moonlight" trying to figure out how he feels about what he's done.

In "Uniform," he realizes the only way to stop Eddington is to play the same game he is, and see which of them has the guts to stick it out, basically a game of chicken.  Does this make Sisko a villain?  It's a fascinating new Star Trek template, although the same one Kirk always played when he refused to obey the strict guidelines of Starfleet's Prime Directive...

Besides all that, it's a hell of an experience.  At one point Eddington has sabotaged Sisko's ship, the Defiant, forcing everything to be done manually, and it's some of the best storytelling concerning the act of flying a starship I've ever seen, how everyone comes together (brilliant use of Nog, showcasing how valuable he really is in a Starfleet uniform) to pull it off. 

There's a feeling that this is a big deal throughout the episode, and for that reason alone, nailing the tone for an entire episode (Next Generation had this in "Best of Both Worlds," but really for that climactic moment Riker decides to fire on the Borg ship containing the assimilated Picard), which sets up the drama of the later Dominion War..."Uniform" also captures the end of the transition to the extended serialization that later characterizes the series.  It's a belated sequel that itself later has a sequel ("Blaze of Glory") late in the season, which later probably would've been done back-to-back-to-back (if not in Deep Space Nine then Enterprise, where three-part episodes became common in its final season).  In fact, if you can manage it, try and watch "Cause," "Uniform," and "Blaze" like that.  It'll enhance the impact of the trilogy, shake it loose of the fact that it otherwise seems lost in the run-up to the Dominion War.  In its own way, this is every bit reflective of the series at its best.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - A classic trope - revenge! - revisited.
• series - The Eddington adventures reach their climax.
• character - Sisko at his commanding finest.
• essential - If the original series had Harry Mudd and Next Generation had Moriarty, then Eddington is Deep Space Nine's unsung best villain, and here's exactly why.

notable guest-stars:
Ken Marshall (Eddington)
Aron Eisenberg (Nog)
Eric Pierpont

Deep Space Nine 4x22 "For the Cause"

rating: ***

the story: Kasidy is suspected of being a member of the Maquis.

what it's all about: For whatever reason, Star Trek became hugely interested in double-crosses around this time.  The Maquis, members of Starfleet and the Federation who decided to declare war on the Cardassians, were ripe for this kind of character, whether the most famous example of Ro Laren (Next Generation's "Preemptive Strike") or the triple-agent Seska in Voyager.  Yet the most surprising betrayal came from the character no one saw coming: Michael Eddington.

Eddington had been a minor recurring character since the start of the third season.  I always liked him; he'd managed to be a security officer assigned to the station who was perfectly comfortable working alongside Odo, the Bajoran-affiliated constable who had previously chafed at any such Starfleet maneuvering.  The series had even had another double-cross in the first season, with a character who made a few appearances before revealing her true alliances, but her name and impact are minimal, and represent the nascent relative failures of what would later characterize the series. 

The thing that makes Eddington's turn so genius is that it exploits one of the weaker elements of the fourth season, attempting to introduce drama in the relationship between Sisko and Kasidy Yates, another character who debuted in the third season.  Kasidy was unique from the start, an independent freighter captain, a human at that, who not only managed to stick around, but establish the first Star Trek romance with a lead character that actually went not only more than one episode, but all the way to the end of the series.  But their chemistry was so instantly winning that it was a terrible idea to try and introduce friction into it.  This episode redeemed the idea, however, in not only exploiting Kasidy's unique status, but revealing that any mistrust cast her way was in fact a deliberate and calculated play on Eddington's part, who by this point knew the station as well as anyone.

But this isn't really Eddington's spotlight.  This is a necessary link in a greater story (like "The Muse" before it), with a dynamo payoff next season in "For the Uniform" (and to a lesser extent, "Blaze of Glory," which is kind of a rehash of the unrelated "Defiant," which was a Deep Space Nine Maquis story the series didn't technically have to do after having previously used the rebels to help set up Voyager, thereby proving that they really did have storytelling legs).  There's a b-story about Garak's pursuit of Dukat's daughter Ziyal (a permanent actor still had yet to be found to portray her, and so once again she won't be listed in the "notable guest-stars" section), which likewise diminishes the immediate impact of the episode, dulling it to look more routine than it really is.

"For the Cause" is no "Preemptive Strike" (much less "State of the Flux," the Voyager episode where Seska reveals her true loyalties), but that's in part because Eddington's story is really only just beginning.  Until this point he hadn't seemed like he had much of a point at all, just a pleasant familiar face who showed up every now and again, more akin to how recurring characters appeared in the original series than how Deep Space Nine radically changed the concept.  In a lot of ways, that made him the perfect character to revisit an aborted concept from the franchise's past: the Vulcan conspirator Valeris in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country had originally intended to be Saavik, a character Gene Roddenberry had decided couldn't be handled in such a way, as to his mind she'd reached "beloved" status in her several movies appearances.  Valeria made a huge impact in her single appearance; retaining the lack of expectation, Eddington allows fans to see the whole process, which makes the betrayal ten times worse...

The idea would be revisited again in the series with Martok, but handled totally differently, with far wider-reaching results.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - The Maquis (although by no means the sole proprietors of this) claim another double-cross.
• series - A brilliant repackaging of a recurring character.
• character - It seems to be about one character, but turns out to be the defining moment, to that point, for Eddington instead.
• essential - The weakness of the episode, actually, is that it seemed to think it was necessary to double-up on the swerve. 

notable guest-stars:
Ken Marshall (Eddington)
Penny Johnson (Kasidy)
Andrew Robinson (Garak)

Deep Space Nine 4x10 "Our Man Bashir"

rating: ****

the story: A systems malfunction significantly raises the stakes for Bashir's secret agent program.

what it's all about: If you somehow can't watch the earlier "Little Green Men" and embrace it for the classic romp it is, then "Our Man Bashir" is waiting in the wings for you.  It joins a suite of such episodes from the franchise ("A Piece of the Action" from the original series; "A Fistful of Datas, Next Generation; "Bride of Chaotica!," Voyager) to toss Star Trek into unexpected storytelling with wonderfully entertaining results.

"Bashir's secret agent program" means that the good doctor is playing James Bond in all but name, and so at heart "Our Man" is a spoof of Bond movies, with every main character factoring into the plot in surprising ways, including Sisko (as he was in the original Deep Space Nine Mirror Universe episode, "Crossover," playing the part of a villain, which he also does memorably in "Facets;" no other lead character in franchise lore ever convincingly played the part of ultimate hero and ultimate villain, let alone three times!).

The great thing about the episode is that it ends up later as foreshadowing of Bashir's reluctant involvement with the nefarious Section 31, the covert operations division of Starfleet that was later prominently featured in Star Trek Into Darkness.  It's also the one time we get to enjoy Bashir, with or without O'Brien, enjoy one of his much-discussed holosuite programs, and that alone makes "Our Man" pretty noteworthy.

It also serves as a pretty handy dividing line between the apparent mandate for a greater focus on episodic storytelling in the fourth season to the more serialized form that would pick up with the two-part "Homefront"/"Paradise Lost" after it and in fact the rest of the season, nearly all of which had something useful to say about matters of a slightly more weighty significance to the rest of the series.

It's a resounding triumph for Bashir, meanwhile, arguably his most enjoyable lead appearance to that point in the series, making up for the grimness of "Hippocratic Oath" earlier in the season and making way for "The Quickening," which also feels like an apology for "Oath," after it. 

criteria analysis:

• franchise - A classic Star Trek romp.
• series - An unexpected link to storytelling elsewhere in Deep Space Nine.
• character - An excellent Bashir spotlight.
• essential - Entertaining in a very easy-to-approach manner!

notable guest-stars:
Andrew Robinson (Garak)
Max Grodenchik (Rom)
Ken Marshall (Eddington)

Deep Space Nine 4x6 "Rejoined"

rating: ****

the story: Jadzia is reunited with a symbiont who was a former host's wife.

what it's all about: The benefit of the fourth season fresh start is that it gave Dax a chance to start over, with the exact episode the character had needed ever since her creation: a direct response to the debut of the Trill in Next Generation's "The Host."  In that episode, a lot of things were exposed about Star Trek.  Fans and critics at large always assumed that Gene Roddenberry had essentially created a counterculture allegory set in the future.  But if you look back at the original series, you see a lot of refutations of essential counterculture lore, such as the episodes directed against both hippies and the drugs they helped make mainstream.  And yes, his was an inclusive, idealistic vision, but it was more a melding of the mainstream and countercultures than anything, which the extreme reluctance to embrace the LGBTQ community proved somewhat repeatedly through the years, and the outright allegorical repulsion exhibited at the end of "Host," in which Dr. Crusher ends up in a relationship with a Trill symbiont (she makes it past the original host and embraces the idea with Riker when he serves as a temporary substitute) but backs out of it when the replacement host turns out to be a woman. 

"Rejoined" is an allegory (an outright gay character wouldn't actually exist in this franchise until Star Trek Beyond and the forthcoming Star Trek: Discovery), but on the surface it finally breaks the mold in definitive fashion.  I know, because it caused great controversy in my own household when it originally aired a little over two decades ago.  Up to that point the family had been staunch Star Trek fans, and had happily continued watching it when Next Generation ended and Deep Space Nine became the handiest replacement (in our market, both shows aired on Saturdays, whereas Voyager, which instantly split fans more than ever before and as such was never a common viewing with us, aired on the UPN network during the week, which was less conducive to bringing everyone together).  Between the Breen armor that debuted the previous week in "Indiscretion" that bore an uncanny resemblance to the bounty hunter armor Leia dons briefly in Return of the Jedi and this controversial decision, I was to become the lone ongoing, regular viewer of Deep Space Nine in the house.

Anyway, ostensibly the big taboo is within Trill society, in which former lovers from previous hosts aren't supposed to interact in later lifetimes, so that Jadzia is strongly discouraged from spending time with the scientist who comes to the station as part of her work.  Yet Jadzia is too compelled by the thought.  By the time "Facets" aired at the end of the third season, the series had finally gotten a good handle on how to handle the idea that Dax wasn't just a young Starfleet officer but also the latest in a long line of hosts.  "Rejoined" is the next and ultimate step forward in that line of progression, a compelling drama that forces very personal feelings to come forth from a normally confident woman, who was as sure of herself as anyone in the history of Star Trek.  Suddenly, where a lot of other characters had risked their careers for various reasons, Dax wasn't just doing that, but flirting with expulsion from her own people (also a thing that'd happened in the franchise previously).  Yet it never really strays from being an incredibly personal and intimate matter, so that all you really need to care about is how she feels about the scientist, and whether or not the scientist is willing to reciprocate.

The big moment, the second most important kiss in Star Trek history (after Kirk and Uhura's in "Plato's Stepchildren"), is when Jadzia and the scientist kiss.  Honestly I don't know why it isn't talked about more.  Arguably it's the most important one now, because in 2016 (which is when I'm writing this) it's still more rare to see this sort of thing, in the mainstream, where it's not when looking at the state of white and black actors interacting in television or the movies (despite what so-called controversies at the Oscars will have you believe).  I mean, Will Smith, during the first decade of the new millennium, became the most bankable actor in history.  Can you say the same about an openly gay man, or any other differently-sexed actor?  Not by a longshot. 

But none of that matters if the episode itself doesn't ring true, and it does.  It's Jadzia's big chance to finally blow past all the barriers initially expected of a character who might otherwise have been pegged as the pretty girl, and she nails it.  And yes, it's somewhat ironic that by the end of the series, a different Dax host is kind of fighting the same battle, without any Trill butting their heads into her affairs (well, for that reason, anyway).  That's how you make interesting drama out of an alien species.  Usually this only happens for Klingons.  So it figures that only a few episodes later Jadzia begins the initial steps toward a relationship with one...

This was a season that forced the series to redefine its vision, and for a while that proved to be more trouble than anyone might have realized, but "Rejoined" is the moment everything crystalized.  It was an episode that seized the unexpected opportunity, and created something special because of it.  That's how "Plato's Stepchildren" happened, too, in the midst of a third and final season of the original series, when there were no more guarantees about its future.  So it went for broke, literally breaking new ground with the first interracial kiss in dramatic programming history.  Thankfully, Deep Space Nine lasted the rest of its fourth season, and for three more. 

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Truly went where no Star Trek had gone before.
• series - A definitive statement on the continued viability of the original Deep Space Nine model.
• character - The definitive Dax episode.
• essential - You saw "definitive" used twice already, right?

notable guest-stars:
Susanna Thompson
Ken Marshall (Eddington)

Deep Space Nine 3x26 "The Adversary"

rating: ****

the story: The crew takes the Defiant into enemy space, only to find the enemy aboard the ship in the form of a Founder who, as a shape-shifter, could be anyone...

what it's all about: Fans tend to forget how awesome "The Adversary" is, because in a lot of ways it was rephrased and blown to even more epic proportions in the fourth season premiere, "The Way of the Warrior," which has the distinctions of not only bringing in the Klingons, but introducing Worf into the series.  By contrast, "Adversary" actually features a one-off alien threat that's not even seen.

But it creates its own history, quite decisively, too.  The first and most obvious way is in Sisko promotion to captain.  It's the culmination of everything the season accomplishes for Sisko, rebuilding him into the strong center of Deep Space Nine in every way possible.  As the only lead character (until Star Trek: Discovery some twenty years later) of a Star Trek series to not be a captain in the pilot episode, Sisko always seemed to be at a disadvantage.  Well, by the end of the third season, not only does he run a station, but his own warship, and so of course he finally gets the big promotion.

But that's really only in the running for most interesting thing about the episode, because this is the one that really ramps up the threat of the Dominion.  Curiously, after the second season ended with "The Jem'Hadar" and this one began with "The Search," the Dominion had all but fallen by the wayside, lost to a number of other intrigues that only sometimes intersected with it.  This was a season of making sure fans understood what the stakes were.  So by the end of it, the threat of the Dominion can be revisited, and vastly intensified, as the nature of the Founders becomes chillingly apparent for the first time.  These are villains who will stop at nothing.  The fourth season's "Homefront"/"Paradise Lost" would pick up on the paranoia aspect, but most importantly, Odo is forced to do something that would later have a cataclysmic impact on his life, and all because of this Founder oath: "No changeling has ever harmed another."

Which of course means Odo is forced to kill one.  We've already seen how conflicted he is over the revelation that his long-sought-over people run the Dominion.  To then be forced into a situation where his outsider status is made about as stark as it can be...It's high drama.  It's matched by the first real sustained action-oriented drama of the series, which would of course later feature two final seasons entrenched in the Dominion War, making "The Adversary" the first true preview of what was to come.

That makes it hugely significant, and another chance for more hesitant fans to catch a glimpse of what all the fuss was about.  That makes it a classic.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - To that point , really on "The Best of Both Worlds" had given fans a glimpse of this kind of storytelling in Star Trek.
• series - But it's just a glimpse of what would become Deep Space Nine's hallmark.
• character - Sisko's promotion, Odo's fateful moment...
• essential - It's a classic, okay?

notable guest-stars:
Ken Marshall (Eddington)
Lawrence Pressman

Deep Space Nine 3x21 "The Die Is Cast"

rating: ****

the story: A joint Romulan/Cardassian war party enters the Gamma Quadrant as Garak's betrayal continues to sink in.

what it's all about: Where "Sins of the Father" sowed the seeds of a continuing Klingon arc in Next Generation, famously, the exact moment Deep Space Nine transitioned from episodic to serialized storytelling, which eventually became its trademark, is far harder to determine.  One might argue the general introduction of Winn in the first season finale, "In the Hands of the Prophets," or the Dominion in the second season finale, "The Jem'Hadar," but the later Dominion War that became the hallmark of the series really owes its greatest debt to the two-part "Improbable Cause"/"The Die Is Cast," in which the Alpha Quadrant actually declares war on the Gamma Quadrant first.  This was an arc that had quite a few claims to a beginning (the most obvious ones would be "Defiant," where we first learn about a secret Cardassian fleet, or "The Wire," in which we learn a little of Garak's mysterious past in a Cardassian espionage ring called the Obsidian Order), but if you really want to pin the origin of the series as it became known, you'd probably want to settle on "The Die Is Cast."

Yes, it continues the story from "Improbable Cause," which concludes with Garak betraying his friends aboard the station and reuniting with his old mentor (and father) Enabran Tain.  Before this (and after) Garak was best known for his incredibly ambiguous presence in the series, in some ways the very heart of a series that came to be defined by its ambiguousness, never comfortable with the much more definite conclusions found in most other corners of Star Trek as a whole.  If Garak was never a main character, he stood at the forefront of a rich cast of supporting characters, who when he did appear always had something worthwhile to do, and never moreso than in "Die Is Cast," the one moment in the series he flirts with being unambiguous, a suitably villainous Cardassian at last.

This is ironic, because this was the season the Cardassians took a turn for the friendly, something that would sit just as uncomfortably as it seems even now, until the fifth season when they joined the Dominion and thereby officially ushered in the war that would encompass the rest of the series.  Only the unabashed heroic reversal of Damar would ever truly and permanently redeem them.

No, Garak was never a hero, but when the sequence that defines this episode finally begins, you begin to see just how unique he really is in Star Trek.  He tortures Odo.  It's horrible.  I mean, torture is always horrible, but until The Passion of the Christ I would never again see anything approaching what Garak does to Odo in this episode.  In some ways, though, it's directly responsible for crystalizing the third season's efforts to bring out the best of the series, and the incredible depths it would explore later.  When we discover the torturer has no taste for his art, that he desperately wants Odo to give him something, anything, so he can stop, because he genuinely does want to stop, we learn that the lie wasn't to his friends, the lie was to himself, and the cost was too great to further pursue.  In the end, like Next Generation's answer to why Picard means so much to Guinan ("Time's Arrow"), it's such an obvious conclusion it still seems impossible: Garak is a good person who was asked once too often to be something else, and it nearly broke him. 

We would see echoes of this conclusion later, but in no greater form than in this episode.  And why is the war the defining element of the series?  For the same reason.  Garak's torture forces Odo to admit, for the first time, that he yearns to return to his people, the Founders, who run the Dominion.  This is itself an act of betrayal, and that's why Odo fights so hard to suppress this desire, and yet it's a pure one despite how others might interpret it, and that's why Garak finds in him a kindred soul, something pure that exists in the midst of something awful, such an inexplicable existence and yet this is a series jam-packed with such individuals, broken lives struggling for redemption (the parallels with Lost are why I found that series so hugely rewarding, too).  People remember the war.  Well, this is where it begins, and everyone's implicated, even Starfleet: it was Starfleet's decision to partner with the Romulans in the acquisition of a cloaking device for the Defiant that emboldened the Romulans in the first place.  This is why the war happens, not because of anything else prior to "Die Is Cast," certainly not the what-if scenario of the season premiere, "The Search," which for everything it helped set up still exhibited safe storytelling, compared to the pipe bomb of this episode, but for the direct provocation everyone all but willed to happen.  For the first and only time in franchise history, war is declared inevitable, a crucible in which truth finally stands revealed. 

This is exactly where you look to see what the whole series was about.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - War! What is it good for?
• series - Well before the Dominion War itself begins, this is where it began.
• character - Where we finally find out the truth about Garak.
• essential - For the torture sequence alone, this is a classic.

notable guest-stars:
Andrew Robinson (Garak)
Paul Dooley (Tain)
Leland Orser
Ken Marshall (Eddington)

Deep Space Nine 3x2 "The Search, Part 2"

rating: ****

the story: Odo learns who and what his people the Founders really are, while Sisko experiences what a Federation/Dominion alliance would look like.

what it's all about: "The Search, Part 2" is part deconstruction (the station crew and mission are dissected piece by piece) and character study (Odo discovers for the first time the true joy of being a shapeshifter), and it works brilliantly. 

As a continuation of its predecessor, the episode is a lot like "The Best of Both Worlds," the iconic Next Generation two-part thriller involving the showdown with the Borg: the second half of the story explores an unexpected way to conclude something sensational.  Part of it might be easy to dismiss in hindsight as a "reset button," because the Federation/Dominion alliance doesn't really happen in anything other than the minds of Sisko and his command crew, but evokes real emotion, the most emotion Sisko has exhibited all series.  It's downright spine-tingling when he unloads on Admiral Nechayev on his feelings about what's been happening, a stark contrast to the vaguely unsettling tension he showed toward Picard in the first episode of the series, "Emissary." 

It's worth noting that for as many appearances as she made across Deep Space Nine and Next Generation, Nechayev never has a better showing than in "The Search, Part 2."  She was always a proud member of the Bad Admirals club, which Deep Space Nine would finally break with Admiral Ross later in the series, but this whole scenario is a perfect representation of the compromised, almost political nature of the rank, and why it so often produced this type of character.  It doesn't hurt that Natalija Nogulich always seemed so deliciously pleased with herself playing Nechayev, which itself kind of informs the later recurring character of Weyoun, and not to mention Dukat.

But the biggest news of the episode is that not only has Odo finally found home, but his people are the bad guys!  He and Kira (and as of this episode they're officially on their way to becoming a romantic couple) have a hard time reconciling his elation with the realities of the situation, but in the end, it is what it is, and the Founders are in fact the leaders of the Dominion, which will put Odo in a lot of compromising situations as the series progresses.

It's almost easy to overlook how important this development is, because it's by far the less sensational, and in fact almost numbingly mundane, half of the episode, but for those keeping score, it's ultimately hard to ignore. 

The whole thing is what the remainder of the series looks like in a nutshell.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - This is what it looks like when a story comes together in Star Trek.
• series - This is what the Dominion in its totality looks like.
• character - Whether Odo, Kira, Sisko, or even Nechayev, this episode's got them all covered.
• essential - Do you really need to ask?

notable guest-stars:
Salome Jens (Female Shapeshifter)
Andrew Robinson (Garak)
Ken Marshall (Eddington)
Natalija Nogulich (Nechayev)
Martha Hackett

Deep Space Nine 3x1 "The Search, Part 1"

rating: ****

the story: Sisko introduces everyone to the Defiant, a powerful new Starfleet warship he's taking into the Gamma Quadrant to confront the Dominion.

what it's all about: What always set Deep Space Nine apart was that it was, well, set aboard a space station.  Did that really change in the third season with the introduction of the Defiant?  Well, no.  Occasionally it would be used to tell more traditional Star Trek stories, but for the most part it remained an extension of the station dynamic.  But it was by its very nature a clear signal that this was a series that wouldn't outright condemn war so much as explore its many facets. 

It was also a kind of redefining of Sisko himself, who proudly announces his role in its development, and that he'll be its commanding officer (he wouldn't gain the rank of captain until the end of the season).  This whole episode begins the third season's strong characterization of Sisko, which was the series' best characterization of him to that point, and arguably from its whole run.  Sisko first appeared as a broken, lost man, and while accepting the space station assignment gave him new purpose, it didn't really fix him.  He and son Jake acknowledge that they've now found themselves a home, in the episode.  Sisko had purpose before, but now he has a reason to live.

But others are less happy about what's been happening.  Odo, for instance.  "The Search, Part 1" is also the first appearance of Michael Eddington, a seemingly minor and yet increasingly significant character in the middle portion of the series.  At first he's important because to Odo it's Starfleet's ultimate rebuke of his role as the lawman of the station.  This was something that bubbled up in the previous two seasons, but comes to a dramatic head with Eddington.  Odo doesn't particularly care about Eddington himself (he ends up working alongside him just fine) so much as the fact that once again he's being forced to confront his status as the unwanted "other."  Which leads him, unexpectedly, not only to resign but show up to take part in the expedition, because he once and for all is convinced that his origins, another long-teased development, really do lie in the Gamma Quadrant.

By the end of the episode, the mission has turned into a disaster, but Odo has discovered exactly what he sought: the Founders, and the forever-unnamed Female Shapeshifter who is destined to change the course of his life forever...

Unlike how the previous season began, with that historic three-part episode that ran out of steam and authentic developments well before its conclusion, "The Search" packs a strong one-two punch, with a strong beginning (here) and conclusion (next episode).  Both halves are distinct in and of themselves, although of course inextricably linked.  They both focus on Sisko and Odo, besides, setting them up one moment and knocking them down the next, to remarkable effect.  What was previously reserved for strong episodes was now beginning to settle on strong characterization.

Given how big the Dominion story ultimately became, it might be tempting to dismiss how it began and increasingly irrelevant.  But that would be a mistake.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Seldom has storytelling been this forceful and assured in Star Trek.
• series - Iconic elements are falling into place at last.
• character - Sisko and Odo are front and center.
• essential - And having some of their best-ever material.

notable guest-stars:
Salome Jens (Female Shapeshifter)
Ken Marshall (Eddington)
John Fleck
Martha Hackett