Synopsis: Odo receives a sick infant Changeling from Quark and tries to teach it to shapeshift without resorting to the invasive techniques used by his old mentor, Doctor Mora. Meanwhile, Major Kira gives birth to the O’Briens’ baby.
Review: While I admit I had trouble at times not just wondering what materials the infant Changeling was made out of, it was not for lack of effort or skills on Rene Auberjonois’s part.
Synopsis: Following a hit and run attack on Deep Space 9 by a band of rogue Jem’Hadar, Sisko and his crew are joined by the Dominion on a mission to locate the rebels, who have discovered another Iconian Gateway.
Review: An important episode for the series as we get to know the Jem’Hadar more deeply, yet there’s something about the rhythm of the episode that loses me.
Synopsis: Kira rescues a Bajoran Resistance hero from a Cardassian labor camp; an extremist group calls for all non-Bajorans to leave Bajor. Sisko and Odo work to reveal the real force behind the Circle’s coup. Sisko tries to prevent the Circle from taking the station; Kira and Dax take proof that the Cardassians are the real force that is arming the Circle to the Bajoran government.
Review: The first three-parter in the Star Trek canon does an excellent job at immersing us in the DS9 world of the Bajorans, while unfortunately only having an average plot to go with it. Li Nalas is a rather drab character study of a war hero, though I did like the scene where he describes his accidental foray into being that hero, shooting a Cardassian in his underwear out of sheer luck. During the final two episodes, he is just sort of there, doing predictable things, including his sacrifice to save Sisko.
Review: Similar themes to The Hunted from TNG, Captive Pursuit explores pretty well the dilemma of what to do with a member of another species that finds value in its members not being equal. Of course, we don’t even learn about this dilemma until there’s about 15 minutes left in the episode, so the first two-thirds are only vaguely interesting as we learn about our first Gamma Quadrant species.
Synopsis: With the Dominion on track to winning the war against the Federation, Sisko and his crew take a captured Jem’Hadar ship into enemy territory with a mission to cut off the Jem’Hadar’s supply of ketracel-white in the Alpha Quadrant.
Review: I wish the losses suffered by the Federation here would have had more impact. In The Best of Both Worlds, we see the destruction at Wolf 359 and it’s powerful. Here, the loss of 98 ships is mentioned in a conversation and it doesn’t feel as powerful.
Synopsis: Sisko leads an invasion of Cardassian territory, ignoring a warning from the Prophets, with fatal consequences for a member of the DS9 crew. (Season finale)
Review: Jadzia’s death initially had an impact on me (though it was foreshadowed a bit too much with all of the talk about having a baby with Worf). It was quick. It was brutal. It had no purpose. Yet the writers chickened out and allowed her to have one last dying breath statement for her husband. Man, I hate that crap. It’s faux-drama. Almost nobody dies getting to say what they want to say.
Synopsis: Jack, Lauren, Patrick, and Sarina, the genetically-engineered Humans, return to the station, asking Bashir to help rouse Sarina from her cataleptic state.
Synopsis: A Federation ambassador brings newly-promoted Captain Sisko orders to take the Defiant on a patrol of the Tzenkethi border, where a destabilizing coup has just taken place, but everything is not as it seems. (Season finale)
Review: A fairly disappointing season finale naturally features The Dominion much like TNG’s season 3 finale featured the Borg. And while The Dominion feel like more of a threat after this episode, the script itself is pretty cheeky and predictable.
Review: Finally in season 1 we get an episode about the one main character we know the least about. Unfortunately, it’s yet another senior-officer-accused-of-murder episode, right on the heels of A Man Alone. Two of the same plot in the first seven episodes is really lazy. On the bright side, this episode does it way better, partly because Dax never denies murdering someone (even though she didn’t). The mystery is why she’s remaining silent, and it’s a decent one.
Death By Troggles 
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