Invasive Procedures

During a space storm the occupants and most of the staff of the space station are evacuated and only are cast regulars are on board. Quark stayed behind because he's got some unfinished smuggling business and let's a ship in that has a pair of renegade Klingons and a Kherbaclk woman and Verad an unassigned Trill who is the boss.

It is this time that Verad picked. The real mission is to steal Terry Farrell's symbiont Dax. Verad feels he was passed over and Dax should be part of him.

John Glover playing Verad does some subtle personality changes in his performance to show just why he was passed over for selection. Quite Good.

And Armin Shimmerman who knows he's in deep do do for being made a fool of redeems himself as well. Of course all according to Ferengi code.

A skeleton crew on DS9 are taken hostage by a Trill and henchmen.

This is a decent episode with some good moments for Jadzia and the Trill species.

The premise contains an excellent idea about stealing a symbiont from its host, but as a hostage drama it is pretty standard. Everything from the skeleton crew, to Quark's behaviour and Odo in the box feels contrived.

All the development of the Trills is very good. Jadzia is made an even more interesting character with this story and Terry Farrell does a great job of portraying her in a pretty vulnerable position. John Glover also delivers a strong performance as the primary antagonist.

To be fair all the cast are on good form with Avery Brooks and Alexander Siddig both having strong material that makes the most of their abilities.

I liked the visual effects used in the symbiont scenes which for me were quite realistic and well designed.

This episode has an interesting premise, but poor execution. They quickly retconned the whole Trill symbiote idea since it was started on TNG, it started as the symbiote being the conscious one and the body just being the body, but it would seem this episode retcons it again. Instead of being a partnership, the body now is the conscious one, and the symbiote worm thing just gives you memories, enhances your IQ. I think it's a little early in DS9 to be totally rewriting your fictional rules.

The new Dax is happy to be a villain, although it's not clear he's even conscious. He's maybe just a dumb space slug along for the ride. The new Dax also immediately betrays and turns on his hot girlfriend, even a sociopath might take more than five minutes to dispose of the only person who cares about him. It's so, SO, terribly convenient for the plot.

It would be better for this episode to have been deleted from the show's episode list.

This was, without a doubt, one of the episodes of all time.

Bottle episodes can be really effective - in fact we've seen several good examples in the show's run so far... This is not one of those examples.

Pretty poor execution of what could have been quite a good concept if the script had dared to take a few more twists and turns, and bang-average acting from everyone involved. Rene definitely only had a 2 day week on this one and he's sorely missed.

There's nothing overtly terrible here, it just feels slow, cheap and predictable. You have the entire plot mapped out from around minute five, and it's then just a matter of watching it play out. Shot almost entirely in mids, with very limited coverage, so you're just trapped at the pace of the sleepy performances.

Interestingly it's Les Landau's third episode of DS9 as director, and i rated his previous episodes a 4 and 5 respectively. I just don't think he really understood the language of Trek yet, and his episodes feel very old-school and uninspired.

He figures it out eventually - Counterpoint is one of the best episodes of Voyager's run, but that's four years after this utterly skippable episode.

The most exciting moment of the episode was when I realised one of the Klingons was Tim Russ - had no idea he'd played on DS9.

Super disappointing run of Quark's character development lately - I've mentioned on previous episodes it's ridiculous he never faces serious comeuppance for his crimes, and this one seems irredeemable. He'd get booted off the station (Kira threatens to do so, but they play it for comedy?!) You can't have him cross lines to this extent and not suffer any consequences - my suspension of disbelief is not strong enough to cover such a huge security risk being allowed to go about his way.

Just as a final matter of note, it must be said Terry Farrell is outrageously attractive in this episode.

2-Sentence Quick Plot Point: Invaders get on a mostly deserted space station with an insider's assistance. Their mission is to pull off a switch which will leave someone dead if they are successful.

Viewers Take Notice:

*A LOT of information about Trills and a lot of operating room Trill goobers. The most fascinating part, to me, was the emotional experiences Jadzia and the imposter-invader-person felt when joined and separated from the old worm Dax.

*Commander Sisko continues his ass-kicking ways by completely decimating a healthy, arrogant, cocky Klingon! As he does all of his hand-to-hand shock and awe, observe how gleeful Sisko is (or is it that the actor Avery Brooks is just completely enjoying himself in real life?) in taking apart this member of the warrior race.