This is probably the first episode where there is tacit involvement with a planet which is under the jurisdiction of the dominion.
Cliff DeYoung A.k.a. "Dr. Cray Z. Molardo" from "Robocop" (1994), is Croden, A hapless alien from the Gamma quadrant that unfortunately went to Quark to solve his problem.
Randy Oglesby is a Twinned Miradorn- Who drives a Raider ship much like we saw in the Star Trek TNG episode "Gambit". We also saw that same ship, although a much bigger version of it, flown by the "Children of Tama" in TNG "Darmok"- A ship which inflicted major damage upon a galaxy class starship under maximum shields.
Croden's dilemma involves One of these twinned Miradorn. These are people you don't want to cross.
But we don't know Croden's backstory, it is told to us as this episode unfolds.
He describes a planet where justice is meted out the way the dominion would do it. And although the dominion or the founders are not mentioned, this is the first time Odo is referred to as "a changeling".
Both DeYoung and Ogleby put relish into their characters, we believe them. We believe who they are represented to be.
That is what makes this one of the best season one episodes. As Croden's True story comes out, we start caring about him.
We probably would have liked to see more episodes where Twinned Miradorn were involved, they had quite interesting aspects although the characters of Ro-Kel/Ah-Kel were particularly surly. The only other time where this race is mentioned was in "Q-Less", where we find out that Picard's Girlfriend "Vash" had run afoul of the law on that planet.
There is also a gag where they use a particular gas inside of a nebula as a weapon... this gag was used in Voyager at least once and possibly in both enterprise and TNG. Why not? It was a great gag. And Odo thought of it first.
