After a bit of a break, we're back to Deep Space Nine...
- …and we start with the two-parter, "The Way of the Warrior". They sped up the opening theme--it was a big slow--and added more CGI. It's Klingon "Fleet Week" at the station, and Sisko needs some help--from a certain Starfleet Klingon looking for work. Worf (Michael Dorn) ioins the series with this episode, and much of the action surrounds him. The Klingon Empire attacks Cardassia, using an insurrection there and the previous Dominion war as an excuse--and breaks off diplomatic relations with the Federation. It's more honor and duty hoopla, and Barney Google aka Gowron (Robert O'Reilly) drops by. There's a big battle with the Defiant, Cardassians, and the Klingons--and it seems the station got yet another set of weapons upgrades. There's even hand to hand combat on the station--looks like Call of Duty--I don't think Gene Roddenberry would have approved. In the end, the Klingons and the Federation are essentially at war.
- After all the action (and expense) of the last episode, we go to a character story--"The Visitor"--starring Benjamin and Jake. The elder Sisko gets pulled out of technobabble phase, and Jake lives the rest of his life without him with rare exceptions when Ben drops in and out of his life, each time only for a few minutes. The older Jake (Tony Todd), now dying, is visited by a young writer who wants to know why he stopped writing. We get an alternate future where a) DS9 is handed off to the Klingons; b) Jake moves to Earth and marries a Bajoran girl; c) she leaves him due to his obsession to find Ben; and d) Captain Nog (?!?!) and the crew (with lots of old-age makeup) return with the Defiant to save Ben. More technobabble and a suicide later, this history is erased, Ben is saved, and all is back to normal. It's widely considered to be one of the finest episodes of DS9--not sure if I would agree, it seems a bit maudlin.
- Bashir gets a chance to shine in "Hippocratic Oath". He and O'Brien are captured by a Jem'Hadar group, and our doctor ends up running drug rehab for them. There's a whole "Bridge over the River Kwai" vibe to it--Bashir is torn between his job to heal and his orders to fight the Dominion, while O'Brien has no interest in helping them. There's also a B-story with Worf falling into old Security Chief habits, which means he butts heads with Odo.
- We get two views of Love, Federation Style in "Indiscretion". Kira and Gul Dukat look for survivors of a prisoner ship--he's there to find and apparently kill his daughter, who the result of a tryst with a Bajoran. There's a lot of dialogue between them--looks like they needed to save more money on the show. There's an obscure race--the Breen--who appear to have the same outfit as Princess Leia while she was rescuing Han. Meanwhile, Sisko is getting cold feet as Kasidy Yates pushes him to move their relationship forward. Mindy noted that it was lucky that the only two African-Americans in the Federation found each other.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (and all the Trek series) is available on Netflix.