Bashir strikes out with Jadzia in the cold opening.
I’m rewatching bits of this on the computer to double check certain things as I write, and watching the intro upscaled fullscreen with headphones on is giving me goosebumps and a huge hit in the nostalgia feels.
Guest Starring Rosalind Chao, who plays Keiko, cool.
Jadzea sounds likes she wants to eat Justine Dasna, and Avery Brooks goes a good job acting a laughing scene. Keiko lacks imagination about what she can do as a Botanist on the station.
I really like Odo’s line, “Justice is justice.” This is an important factor in my perception of the show. I liked that he cared about Truth and not whether someone was a Cardassian or Bajoran. He sent a Bajoran to a Cardassian prison. In hindsight, the thing Odo was angry about was the he wasn’t giving free medicine to people that couldn’t pay, which though perhaps callous, isn’t necessarily something one should go to jail for.
Eww, webbed fingers!
While scanning for the webbed fingers to get a screenshot, I happened across Odo’s speech about compromising with a woman, which raises the question, who could he have been dating?
The guy that Odo just complained about gets murdered. We’re obviously Framing Odo here; sure I’ve seen it before, but not just in this episode!
The boys play mischief. Boys will be boys, you might say. The victims of the apparently harmless prank start changing colors, hahaha, “Violet, you’re turning violet!” Is is just me or does that woman have no breasts?
Keiko ‘s school actually sounds like a good idea. It’s not government run, though being government run wouldn’t have bothered me in those days as it does now. It reminds me that this place really is a frontier, and the local residents are taking responsibility for things like schooling. Heh, “innovative programs” to handle disparate cultures. There’s a Star Trek trope which I have since learned is false. The truth is, Diversity + Proximity = War. However, in a “rural” frontier town, it may not be so bad. This is starting to sound like the fabled “space western” that Gene Roddenberry tried to pitch the original Star Trek as.
Now we have character I’m going to call, “Framey Guy” as he’s leading the charge against Odo.
There’s a shot of a sneaky Bajoran Jedi-looking guy, perhaps religious, watching the framing.
Odo is very honest with how the facts implicate him.
They found some DNA thingy. I think I remember what happens, but I am not exactly right. I thought they cloned Odo to frame him, but it turns out it was someone else.
Kira has Odo’s back, though. Ooh, a racism scene led by Framey Guy. If you prick Odo does he not bleed? Actually, no, he doesn’t.
So to investigate further they clone and attempt reanimate an unknown organism!! WTF!? What if it’s a T-Rex!? It’s dumb, not to mention the moral issues that are way worse than not being forced to give up something you have for the needs of others.
I have to talk about these square drinking vessels. I remember seeing these, and thinking they were so cool, but decades later I actually used one, and found they are ridiculous. You have to drink out of the corner, which I guess is okay if you prefer the dubious advantage of being able to pour a glass out without spilling slightly more easily, as long as you remember to use the corner. You can’t drink from the flat side though, as it will spill down your chin.
Now we have another “Racism Scene,” #2, lol.
Keiko and Miles’s mixed-race mutant-growing baby daughter Molly [1] asks, “Where you been, mommy?” I think jokingly that her reply is, “Pretending to have a career!” After all, we know that being a teacher isn’t a “real job” according to some people. Hmm, this is the future where money isn’t a thing in Starfleet, how does that work for trying to start up a school? This proves that I never really thought about economics in science fiction. I never really realized that money wasn’t a thing, except for that throwaway line in Star Trek IV, and yet they have “gold pressed latinum” in DS9, which I didn’t understand how that was supposed to work if they didn’t have money. Come to think of it, The Ferengi make no sense without money, and they go back to the beginning of Next Generation.
Racism scene #3, led by Framey Guy!
The Jedi Observer guy is seen sneaking around, I just realized as I’m writing this that perhaps they are trying to suggest he’s the secret racist king.
So the mysterious humanoid kinda looks like cling wrap in water or something. It resembled Metroid with a human heart, earlier.
Now the crowd is being dispersed, “Shows over folks, nothing more to see!”
So, it was the creepy Jedi all along! He has a weird French alias, “La monnaie est.” This sounds like they are trying to insinuate that the character has some infatuation with money, but they poorly translated French. Since we’re on the subject on money again, I realize that Odo’s complaint about not giving medicine to a family that couldn’t pay makes no sense unless Bajor still has money. How would you integrate that into the Federation, and why would the commerce that Sisko is concerned about even be a thing? I’m going to have to insist the the concept that the Federations doesn’t have money is so preposterous that I have to ignore it. That line in Star Trek IV could still work as future money would be incompatible with 1980s money.
I didn’t remember exactly, but I knew it was a clone. I guess it couldn’t have been Odo once we learned it was humanoid. So, it will become a living breathing member of society in 2 days, and will be illegal to kill, but as we know from “Up The Long Ladder” of Next Generation season 2, currently it’s just a clump of cells legal to destroy. Much cringe.
Final Grade: C-
Morally, this episode gets an F from me, but entertainment wise it’s maybe a B.
Note: I need to grab some more pictures, but I’m in writing mode at the moment so will be pasting them in later.
1. I only mention race-mixed to describe what the character factually is. Keiko is Japanese, and the actress that plays her is Chinese, so let’s not pretend something I said was racist. About the mutant-growth baby, Molly appears maybe 4 or 5 here, but I think the character is only a couple years old. She went from being a baby to being a 3 year old the following season in The Next Generation, so my friend and I dubbed her, “mutant-growth baby.”