In this batch of episodes, the fan favorite for the whole series...
- We start with a Keiko and Miles episode--"The Assignment". She's back from Bajor--and she's been possessed by a evil non corporeal entity! Haven't we seen this MANY TIMES before on Trek? She forces Miles to do her bidding--and not tell anyone what they are doing--or Keiko dies. He has to keep the charade going during his own birthday party, making it even more difficult. Dax discovers the changes to the systems, forcing Miles to implicate Engineer Rom, who was just trying to help. Rom, the idiot savant, figures out the changes to the station will fire a beam that kills the wormhole Prophets. Of course, Miles figures out how to shoot Keiko with it instead--and promotes Rom for his help.
- We move on to the classic episode, "Trials and Tribble-ations". You know--the one where they go back in time and save James T. Kirk from a Klingon agent bent on revenge, done as a tribute for Trek's 30th anniversary? The amazing visual effects--dropping the DS9 cast into existing footage from "The Trouble with Tribbles" and interacting with the TOS cast--is similar to the footage in Forrest Gump. This wasn't green screen work--they actually rebuilt sections of the original set! In-jokes abound.
- The "temporal investigators" are reminiscent of Mulder and Scully from The X-Files
- Kirk's seventeen "temporal violations"
- The different look of the Klingons, which Worf refuses to discuss
- Bashir: "I'm a doctor, not a historian"
- Bringing tribbles back to the 24th century to repopulate the species, just as Kirk did the same with humpback whales
- The original Arne Darvin, Charlie Brill, reprising his role
- It's a hassle to rewind a show on Netflix, but in this case, it was worth it to watch some scenes twice. One question--Dax has to hide her Trill "spots" before going over to NCC-1701, but she states she "met" McCoy as a previous symbiote. So why hide the spots? Maybe the Trill weren't in the Federation yet, and so couldn't be in Starfleet? In any case--if you haven't seen the episode (or seen it lately), stop reading this and do it now.
- Dax and Worf are having issues in "Let He Who Is Without Sin…". Jadzia talks Worf into going to Risa (the pleasure planet), Worf refuses to get into the spirit of RIsa--he won't change out of his Starfleet uniform. Vanessa Williams (early in her acting career) guest stars as old of Dax's old lovers. Throughout the episode, Worf and Dax bicker over how each is respecting their relationship. Unfortunately, a fundamentalist group wants to shut down Risa and return to traditional values. They prove their point with a fake attack, then set off a rainstorm (Risa is normally weather-controlled)--and Worf is helping them? His argument with Dax comes to a head, and Worf performs a monologue about losing control as a child and killing another. The fundamentalists move onto an earthquake, so Worf and Dax have to shut them down. Bashir, Dabo girl Leeta, and Quark have a B-story about ending relationships.
- Sisko, Dax, Odo, and Garak relive Terek Nor's "Things Past". They find themselves back in the Cardassian days of the station, and everyone sees them as Bajoran. But are they really there? Their bodies are found on the runabout--alive but unresponsive. Back on Terek Nor, Odo seems to be having visions. Dax is taken by Dukat as a possible concubine, while the other three are working in Quark's. Odo recognizes their Bajoran names--they were implicated in an assassination scheme (although they were innocent), and who were killed as an example. Yikes! Kurtwood Smith guests as Terek Nor's security officer (the one before Odo had the job). Turns out the whole thing is in Odo's mind, fueled by guilt about his initial response to the event, with the others' minds dragged in through technobabble and telepathy.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (and all the Trek series) is available on Netflix.