Meridian

The minute the planet appeared in space, I said to myself, "This is Brigadoon!" It was so obvious.

I loved Brigadoon but not because it was Brigadoon. I'm a huge fan of Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly. They carried this. The music and singing and costumes carried it. These characters and actors cannot carry the DS9 adaptation of it. It succeeds only as an homage to the original film. It has little merit of its own.

On top of all that, we already know the outcome even if we don't know the film. Dax is a recurring character and can go nowhere. There is no element of surprise. This is a poor episode but bearable if you're reading or knitting while you watch it.

This episode is really boring. The whole "extra dimensional" aspect of the story is beyond science fiction and into science stupidity. On top of that they layer an extremely cheesy love story. Wouldn't be so bad if the male lover's acting weren't so terribly unrealistic. Someone in the writing staff of ds9 has the idea romance and seduction occur when a man stares creepily at a woman in awkward silence. It's atrociously shallow and silly. There's a "filler" subplot involving an alien trying to get a holosuite program of Major Kira. It's stretched-out too long but it builds to a funny, if cheap, laugh. Overall this episode has been one of the weakest in the ds9 series until this point. Totally forgettable.

Quick Review:

Story #1 - Sisko and the squad are off in the Gamma Quadrant in the Defiant exploring strange new worlds. This after getting their butts handed to them by the Jem'Hadar and the Founders. That confrontation wasn't even close if you will remember. And the Dominion didn't just physically destroy them in short order, they mentally and psychologically controlled them as well. This mission defies common sense and makes me wonder if the writers were getting bored with stories on the space station. It's so much more fun being out there in space and meeting interesting beings.

The planet they come across has an interesting dilemma they face as a society relating to dimensional shifts.

One of the sappiest Trek love stories ever to unfold on the screen does so involving Dax with one of the planetary lover boys attracted to women with spots. Planet man: "How far do those spots go down?" Dax: "All the way..." This romance is silly and ridiculous on so many levels. It makes Captain Kirk's weekly infatuations seem mature and realistic by comparison.

By the way Dax, did you happen to mention the worm living inside of you?

In the end the love story was so contrived it made me upset the writers were trying to present something which completely insulted the viewers in a way that had me saying, "Give me a break..."

Story #2 - Quark is offered a lot of compensation to create something interesting (and definitely ethically challenged) relating to the holosuite and Major Kira by an alien that reminds me of Pinocchio's naughty friend Lampwick. This weirdly obsessed alien asks Quark to create a computer simulation of Kira because he has been rejected in real life by her. When Quark asks the alien why he wants a holosuite creation of Kira they have a non-verbal understanding that borders on obsessive creepiness. All I could think as I watched the episode is: Oh boy, when Kira finds out........Instead...there is a hilarious twist which made me laugh out loud.

"With a brief stop to climb a tree!" Honestly? Eight lifetimes and still falling for a line like that, Jadzia! Well all the actors did what they could with a thin gruel, but " Please Sir, I don't want any more!"

I'm not going to mince words here -- the A plot with Dax and the dimension-shifting alien was an insult to script-writing, common sense, and every single attempt at characterization over the course of the series. Literally nothing about it made sense, from the sudden life-changing decision-making, to any attempt to make the dimensional alien attractive enough to lead to such a decision, to the fact that none of the other primary characters seemed to see that the entire situation was completely ludicrous. Whoever wrote this episode should be ashamed. Whoever greenlit it should be ashamed. People who happened to be standing near the set when it was filmed should be ashamed. It was just hack writing and a hack episode.

I'll give it three stars because of the B-plot, and that's stretching credulity too. The B-plot wasn't bad, per se, but it was also lazily done. It had so much untapped potential for hilarity that the writer never attempted to explore. That one joke at the very end wasn't nearly enough to make the plot worth it, especially when a better writer could have turned the entire sequence into a really funny farce. The idea behind it could have been developed much better than what we got -- too many potential comic scenes were left a straightforward drama and exposition. Quite disappointing.