Exasperated Calculator

Sisko is kidnapped by the mirror universe O’Brien.

Something just felt a bit off about this one. Perhaps it was as simple as the terrible costume design for Jennifer Sisko, which just looked wrong every time I looked at it. I appreciate what they were going for, but somehow it just didn’t work. Other than that, the pacing felt a bit stale, and the story overall was a bit forced with many jumps in logic.

The episode is mainly just a lot of fun for the regular crew, with everyone getting a chance to chew the scenery a bit and play an alternate version of themselves. Jadzia and Bashir are particularly good. Kira is still cover-your-eyes awful, just too over the top and vampy. An example of taking it too far.

(PS: Change your passwords! Especially if you’re worried about mirror universes)

363 down, 374 to go.

Someone on board is leaking information to the Kazon.

A nice episode that uses up what could have been a really interesting ongoing plot with a bit more work. The idea of a traitor in the crew is a good one, but it gets bought up and resolved in a single episode. We’ve now got a good basis for a recurring villain, but I think at least a few more episodes of ‘is there a traitor?’ could have worked.

The real highlight is when Seska decides to give up the charade and become her true self. It’s a nice turn into a different character, and really sells the idea of her as an undercover Cardassian agent. But I just don’t buy that the physioloogy is so similar that a scan would be anything other than a complete giveaway.

362 down, 375 to go.

Bashir is trapped inside his own mind.

Ultimately this was a failure of imagination. The possibilities for logical leaps and strange occurrences in dreams should provide for great potential. But other than a couple of hard cuts this episode does nearly none of that. The one good idea they try is the ‘crew equals aspects of personality’, but it isn’t written clearly enough, and is frankly abandoned before the final third of the episode.

So we spend a vast amount of time plodding through the setup, only to find that there wasn’t really a ‘there’ to go to from the setup. Disappointing.

361 down, 376 to go.

Voyager finds a race with the power to send them halfway home.

For the first 15 minutes or so this felt like an unwelcome step back to the bad old days of TNG Season 1. Something about the staging and set design of the planet rubbed me badly the wrong way. Super-advanced aliens are hard to write, and generally a bit boring. There was something creepily decadent about the alien society here, but that gets no exploration.

But once this became a story about the crew, and the divisions within the ship, it became a lot more interesting. The idea of ‘what are you willing to pay to get home quicker’ is one worth exploring. Tuvok’s decision to help out was a bum note, though.

The one cop out was the ‘catastrophically incompatible’ nature of the technology. That’s it, really? Surely there was at least the potential for a bit more investigation.

360 down, 377 to go.

Harry Kim is dying to get back to Voyager.

I enjoyed this. It was a pretty successful attempt to look at a trickier issue, and for once didn’t feel like all the answers had to be there for the episode to be complete. And it was nice that the solution came from Harry’s actions and taking a chance, rather than technobabble speech no. 147.

The one thing it didn’t really do is further any of the characters. Really any of the role here could have been played by any others, or the story transplanted to TNG or DS9. Or even TOS. That’s ultimately a sign of weakness, as it gives the story a too generic feel.

359 down, 378 to go.

Tom is accused of a crime he didn’t commit. So he says, at least.

This fell pretty flat. The science fiction element (the ‘relive the victims last moments’ thing) didn’t get a lot of use. It would have been nice, for instance, for the repetition to cause Paris to start to doubt his innocence. And the rest is a fairly dull procedural investigation, with a small side helping of ill-defined medical drama.

The final resolution is pretty clever, but it isn’t enough to carry the rest of the episode all on its own.

358 down, 379 to go.