Vortex

Woah woah woah! We have our first properly good ep of ds9!

Rene absolutely carries it, but it's got actual intrigue and substance. Quark gets used for story and not just bad comic relief, Sisko has to toe the line between starfleet ideals and underbelly reality and the guest star can act. Firing on all cylinders.

Some really, really good space shots for the time, too.

Odo was maybe a little too quick to break the rules for a stuffy security officer, but his motivation to do so is sound and well explored in the episode.

This presents some exciting questions for the series to continue to answer.

Great episode.

Who is Odo? Where does he come from? Are there others like him? If so, where do they come from? These questions and more are dealt with in this episode.

The word "changeling" is first used to describe Odo's race.

An homage to Alfred Hitchcock in the opening scene (pre-credits) with the glasses on the tray.

This episode has a lot of action. Firefights on the ground and in space.

Also: don't pre-judge the rogue (Croden) in this episode. He is annoying but by the time the episode reaches a dramatic conclusion his motives and personality become a little clearer.

() The first episode of DS9 that really feels up to the classic Star Trek caliber. Hits all the beats for the tight 46 minute form factor; the story's efficient and well-paced, with not just solid characterization for Odo's continuous series arc, but also plausible, well-rounded arcs for the villains/blocking and one-off characters (with three pleasing, well-resolved final-act twists).

() As with so many of the stories in this episodic structure, they live or die on performances - and Auberjonois and Cliff De Young's strong dramatic chemistry solidify this as something memorable.

() Costuming for Croden looked like at least a partial repurposing of Vincent Schiavelli's as The Peddler in TNG S01E20 "The Arsenal of Freedom."

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.

One species from the gamma quadrant kills another on DS9 and Odo gets involved.

This is a strong character episode for Odo and it makes his origin quite intriguing.

The highlight for me is when story asks questions about the Changeling species and makes me want to find out more. Rene Auberjonois carries the episode very well with a grouchy, reluctant hero performance.

In the second half, when the action moves off DS9, it gets quite compelling and there are a number of cool moments with quite plausible danger and characters doing the right thing in difficult circumstances. There are some convenient plot turns, but it doesn't spoil anything. Also the visual effects are done to a pretty good standard considering that it's Star Trek.

All performances are very good, particularly Auberjonois, Armin Shimerman, Cliff DeYoung and Randy Oglesby.

It's a 7.5/10 for me but I round upwards.