A damaged ship comes through the wormhole, piloted by an agitated creature named Tosk. He comes aboard DS9 for repairs and O'Brien befriends him and tries to earn his trust to figure out what he is so afraid of. He gets his answer when an advanced alien ship appears from the wormhole and attacks the station, but it quickly becomes apparent that their real target is Tosk. Now the crew of DS9 is faced with a moral dilemma and O'Brien's friendship with Tosk may influence him to put his entire career on the line to help his new friend.
Finally we get an episode with the Gamma Quadrant playing a role. I don't know why they waited until the fifth episode to start unpacking this particularly dense web of storytelling potential, but I'm just glad we are here now. The wormhole/Gamma Quadrant will be the driving narrative force for the whole seven seasons of DS9 and it all starts right here, which is very exciting.
Furthermore, even though the terms "Dominion" or "Jem'Hadar" are not mentioned here, this episode definitely foreshadows both. Most obviously: Tosk is very clearly Jem'Hadar or some closely related species created by the Dominion. It seems like a reasonable inference that the Hunters are members of the Dominion and were given slightly altered Jem'Hadar for their hunt (either that or the Hunters created the Tosk and then the Founders liked them so much that they adapted them as their own footsoldiers). Either way, the Dominion connections are clear, though not explicitly stated.
This episode is jam packed with story. At one point I thought the episode was probably close to over and checked the time stamp. Nope—there was still almost a third of it remaining. Probably more happens in any one act of this episode than in the entirety of the previous episode. So obviously there is a lot going on but we'll try to get into some of the details.
THE GOOD
- This story hits all the notes of a classic Trek episode. Moral dilemmas, touching human moments, conflict between Federation and alien value systems, tension and suspense, sci-fi technology, exploring the unknown, and of course, Prime Directive invocations. If you were to design a prototypical good ST episode, this is exactly what it would look like.
- Colm Freaking Meaney. This is why they brought him over to DS9; as a starring actor he can do the same thing Patrick Stewart does on TNG by taking an already very good script and making it great with his acting abilities. There is not a warmer or more relatable character in all of ST than Miles Edward O'Brien, and much of that is due to Meaney's talents.
- I like the interior design of Tosk's ship. The narrow crawl space to get to the inner workings of the ship feels realistic for a 1-man craft.
THE BAD
- The action sequences are very primitive and poorly done. Why do Star Trek directors think that combat is two groups of people standing in the open taking turns firing at each other? This isn't 1776.
- As good of an actor as he is, Meaney doesn't always sound like he believes his own lines when he has to speak technobabble. The lines in this ep about reversing polarity and bypassing phase inducers sound like an actor reading lines, not an engineer talking about his job.
- The episode focuses almost completely on O'Brien, which is nice, but the bad part is that the other characters don't get to do much, including Jadzia and Bashir, who have now played minimal roles in three out of the last four eps.
THE UGLY
- Miles cutting Bashir off sharply during the scene in Ops. This is the first indication of his dislike for Julian.
- Odo Shapeshift count: 1 (picture), 5 total for the series. It seems like my memory of Odo not shifting a lot was faulty, at least so far.
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