Fascination

Unlike today a star trek season had 26 episodes about the life on DS9 in the course of a entire year. Some might call it a filler episode, but then again you can call half of DS9 a filler episode. It's great to see all aspects of life on the station. This episode is fun and quirky, everything goes wrong :p Lwaxana being in the episode says enough.

Lwaxana Troi comes to DS9 for a Bajoran festival and kicks off some farcical shenanigans.

DS9 is generally a dark show and it needs infrequent lighter episodes to give its audience relief. This one has a good premise with the 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' tribute, but for me the comedy mostly fails, due to a lack of timing and an over reliance on individuals behaving out of character.

The humour is generally quite farcical and although certain situations should be quite funny, I find it difficult to let go of the actors usual portrayals to accept their characterisations here. In fact it is difficult to take certain individuals (like Bareil) seriously again in his other episodes. I think the writers are guilty of going over the top with the amount of characters behaving the way they do. I do not think it needed Bashir, Kira and Quark to be infected, when there were so many already.

The best scenes for me involved the O'Briens, as their dialogue exchanges were quite recognisable in interactions between couples. I've had a few like that myself!

All actors do their best with the material and it is a memorable story, but unfortunately one I would rather forget.

I appreciate that comedy is very much in the eye of the beholder and others may enjoy it.

This one's a little hard to watch at first, but if you yield to the premise, as I finally did after fifteen minutes of being irritated, you might find it enjoyable. Otherwise, it's a pretty far departure from the show's norm. The story is about a big festival day with a lot of lovers reuniting. But for some funny reason, love runs amuck, and many unusual crushes and flirtations appear. I chose to watch this episode for Majel Barrett, who proves she is still one of the best TV actresses from 1960's, if you like that exaggerated style. Majel's character (Counselor Troi's vampy mother) has a romantic fixation on Oto. Many other characters get fixations, too, and things get topsy-turvy as love goes out in all directions. Love, love, love—too much love, and none of it quite right. There are a lot of fun twists in this Midsummer's Night Star Trek, and some viewers will like it while others will hate it. I will say this, Nana Visitor never looked prettier.

Some Bajoran festival is about to be celebrated on Deep Space 9 when the show begins. What follows is a relationship all about relationships--and several couples are highlighted. Odo is horrified when Lwaxana Troi shows up and she's NOT about to accept no for an answer. Major Kira is about to get her groove on with Bariel--though completely out of the blue Jake Sisko professes his love for her (and this made no sense whatsoever), Bariel has some weird fascination for Jadzia Dax and, finally, Keiko returns to visit with her husband-- and with every word between them, it's more and more obvious that the marriage is pretty much over...and don't even get me started about Dax and her love interest!! The worst moment was when Keiko dropped a bomb (so to speak) on Miles and when he rightfully got upset, she told him he was acting like a child (oooh...low blow time). The bottom line is that by the end, EVERYONE is pretty miserable in their relationships! It almost seems like someone has spiked something on the station!!! What the heck is going on here?!

While none of this makes sense, later it DOES--and it makes for a rather funny and enjoyable "what if" episode. Well worth seeing.

Keiko was so annoying. Anything Miles did or said she shut down and then blamed him saying he'd be complaining. She should have stayed where she was. What made her think that her talking with another guy - and him saying to wait - was right? Then she gets mad at him for calling it out? Miles should have never apologized. Keiko was the one who was wrong. She was the one who wanted things her way.

Other than the Keiko thing, I liked the other issues. So funny with Odo. The pairings were interesting I think because it makes you wonder if there are underlying feelings somewhere with the cast and hookups.