Fascination

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.

If you've always wanted to see A Midsummer's Night Dream performed by the cast of Deep Space Nine... first, you have an exceptionally rich and potentially unique imagination. Second, you'll have a blast. For all others, viewer discretion advised. Its like they distilled all the annoying parts of every character than exclusively amplified those. Not saga relevant, good skip.

This episode goes back to the very earliest Lwaxana TNG episodes where she was a silly horndog. Those were extremely bad and this basically feels like a remake of one of them.

Lwaxana had some good stories late in TNG's run, and she had a remarkably touching story with Odo previously on DS9. This episode squanders that Odo moment and even jokes about it.

I didn't care much for the use of Bareil here either.

There are some fun bits here, particularly with Jake, so it's not a compete loss.

It's a Lwaxana Troi episode, which means its a skip. But on top of that, you get a moping Jake, O'Brien's bratty wife and Kira's creepy milquetoast boyfriend.

O'Brien's wife bitches and moans like a spoiled brat, Jake mopes, and Troi is... well... her usual unbearable self. Probably the worst episode in the series.

Everyone goes crazy and starts lusting after each other. Jake is in love with Kira, her lame boyfriend lusts after Dax, and Dax can't keep her hands off of Sisko. Meanwhile Miles and Keiko argue and complain (as usual). It's all very awkward and weird and total filler. The mystery is obvious and easily solved.

Sisko calling Dax "old man" while she gropes him is kind of funny I guess. Otherwise you miss nothing by missing this one.

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.