Deep Space Nine 604 "Behind the Lines"

I am admitting this freely.  I dreaded writing this one.  Mainly because it focuses on Kira and Odo, and if there's one thing that bores me to tears even more than musical theater, it's Deep Space Nine episodes featuring Odo and Kira, the Odd Couple of interstellar sexual frustration.  That said, let's make the best of it...

We kick off with Ben Sisko giving a little speech over the spent casing of a phaser coil's power cell.  I did like this not because it was particularly inspiring, but because it seemed to be the progenitor of the whole "So Say We All" thing in Battlestar Galactica.  I know Ron Moore didn't work on this one, but still.  

Like any good red-blooded American, I love a good bar fight.  So does Kira, because meanwhile back at the ranch, Kira is inner-monologueing outloud (for us dumb viewers who can't put two and two together) the setup to her and Rom fomenting a bar fight caused by the Jem'Hadar reading Glin Damar's diary, which includes some embarrassing revenge-based fanfic about poisoning the Jem'Hadar for being uppity.  Oh, Damar.  When will you ever learn.  So yeah, there's a huge bar fight.  Backs are broken.  Foreheads are caved in.  And then Dukat yells at Damar and sends him to his room.  I swear the conversation immediately following between Dukat and Weyoun about morale and damage control could be lifted from a couple of parents chaperoning the junior cotillion after their kid has been caught spiking the punch.  Keep smiling!

This looks like an exciting mission, right?
Hope it's enough for you, cos this is all you get.  Sucker.

We then get to Sisko planning a daring raid on a Dominion listening post, navigating through some dangerous environmental obstacles, and destroying what is sure to be a heavily guarded installation.  He gets the green light!  What a great mission this is going to be to watch play out, right?  Wrong.  Not only does Sisko have to pilot a desk back at the starbase from Wrath of Khan, but we see nothing of the actual operation.  Dax takes the ship, we are later told that the mission is a smashing success, and it's all huzzah for the good guys.  An no, you will never get a look at it.  The best they can do is show you the powerpoint.  I suppose the budget for effects got shot on Sacrifice of Angels (two eps from now), but STILL!

Soooo, yeah.  Back on the station, Poor Decisions Odo gets a visitor in the form of the old and somewhat gross female changeling.  She then wastes very little time going all Svengali on Odo, pulling what is nothing short of a big, deliberate mind-screw on him.  Why the Major Kira did not note the Founder's presence on the station and Odo's odd behavior since her arrival a GIANT red flag to get him the hell out of the loop in her little resistance cell, I shall never know.  Oh, wait, I do know.  It's because Kira is the only one on the station with worse decision making skills than Odo.  Ugh, the whole thing is just... I give up.

I should note that the female changeling's Hannibal Lecter-like influence over Odo is creepy, but probably in a way not intended by the show's producers.  Or maybe it was.  I don't know.  All I know is that Odo turns into a blithering idiot whenever she shows up, and it just seems... odd.  I mean sure, there's the whole great link thing, which is I guess like a combination of sex, telepathy and the best back rub you've ever had.  But I really am very confused as to why Kira, veteran of being a clever terrorist during the Cardassian occupation, did not catch on to the fact that her old pal was acting weird and admitted that he was linking with the enemy, and she relied on him anyway.  I wanna smack the earrings off her.  

The best part of the episode is between Quark and Damar.  Damar's swagger over having gotten one over on everyone else, and ordering off the top shelf intrigues Quark, and Quark's utter stressed-to-the-point-of-drinking-to-cope explanation of Damar's plan to take down the minefield is cute.  I enjoyed the character business.

So of course the little resistance on the station hatches a plan to disable the equipment that's going to take down the minefield, but because Kira is clueless, she actually relies on Odo for an integral part of her plan.  Shockingly, she is shocked when Odo completely fails her due to being changeling-brainwashed.

I hate these two.

Next up, this episode is redeemed by bringing on the huge effing fight...