“Necessary Evil”
Written by Peter Allan Fields
Directed by James L. Conway
Season 2, Episode 8
Production episode 40512-428
Original air date: November 14, 1993
Stardate: 47282.5
Station log: It’s a dark and stormy night on Bajor. Quark is visiting Vaatrik Pallra in her home (which doesn’t have power at the moment), a conspicuously wealthy woman, who starts the conversation by insisting she didn’t kill her husband, even though everyone—including “that shapeshifter”—thought so. Quark doesn’t appear to entirely believe her or entirely care. She wants Quark to retrieve a box from the chemist shop she and her husband used to run on the station. She’d go herself, but she can’t stand the thought of being there, where her husband was murdered. She’ll pay him five bars of latinum; he promises to have it for her in a day or two.
After he leaves, a thug walks out from where he was hidden, and he and Vaatrik nod to each other.
Back on the station, in response to a request from Sisko, Odo has very reluctantly begun a log to keep record of law-enforcement affairs on the station. His first entry: “Everything’s under control.”
Quark and Rom go to the storage unit that’s where the chemist shop used to be. Rom boasts that he can get the door open in ten seconds, with a device that Nog put together for him. (He’s been practicing on Quark’s store room, as Quark often forgets to give Rom the de-sealer when he needs to get in there.) When they get to the panel Vaatrik specified, Rom has another suggestion for breaking in that’s better than Quark’s, in this case magnesite drops that can burn off the bolts holding the panel in without anyone seeing the flare; he used them to store Quark’s profits when he was away last.
They retrieve the box, Quark swearing never to let Rom touch anything ever again. Quark, of course, opens it, finding a list of eight Bajoran names. He sends Rom to get an imager, and while he’s gone, the thug shows up and shoots Quark, taking the list (he says that Vaatrik knew he wouldn’t be able to resist looking at it).
Bashir treats Quark while Odo and Sisko question Rom. Odo plays bad cop, pointing out that Rom gets the bar in the event of Quark’s death. Odo says that Rom isn’t as stupid as he looks, to which Rom replies, “I am, too!” Sisko plays good cop, referring to Rom as a family friend, and saying that it is his own brother. Eventually, they break Rom, who admits everything, leading Odo to the storage room. (“Do you want me to open it? I can do it in ten seconds!”)
This prompts a flashback…
We jump back five years, to a much more subdued Odo who arrives on Terok Nor for the first time and comes to the same storage room that at this time was a chemist shop. He meets Gul Dukat, who first met Odo when he was “viewed” by Cardassian High Command at the Bajoran Center for Science two years earlier.
Since then, Dukat’s kept an eye on Odo. He’s served as an arbitrator for Bajorans with disputes occasionally, viewed as a neutral observer. Dukat wants Odo to investigate the murder of the chemist shop’s owner, Vaatrik Daasa. The Bajorans won’t talk to Cardassian authorities, but they might talk to Odo. Odo, reluctantly, agrees to look into the murder, especially since the alternative is for Dukat to round up ten Bajorans at random and execute them.
His first task is to question the widow: the very same Vaatrik Pallra who will hire Quark to steal a list five years later (and to whom Dukat is uncharacteristically polite and solicitous; the Vaatriks also had private quarters, which was unusual). She says that her husband was having an affair; he confessed it to her a few days ago, and she believes that the other woman killed her husband in a jealous rage.
Vaatrik points the woman out to Odo, sitting and eating at a table: it’s Kira, with much longer hair, tied back in a ponytail.
Back in the present, Kira meets with Odo and they speculate as to whether or not this list has something to do with Vaatrik’s murder five years earlier. Odo then questions Rom to see if he can remember any of the names on the list. He finally remembers that the first word began with a C, ended with an O, and had an apostrophe—maybe “Ches’so”? Odo shows the name to Kira, who doesn’t recognize it.
In the past, Odo sits with Kira and questions her. She did know Vaatrik and had become friends with him, but she denies killing him—and also denies the affair. If he was attracted to her, he never showed it. As for the previous night, she was at the bar, trying to get hired by Quark for dog work. Kira also questions why Odo has been assigned to this when Cardassian security’s perfectly capable of handling it.
In the present, Odo goes to Bajor to question Vaatrik, where her power is back online. She insists she knows nothing about the list, doesn’t recognize the name “Ches’so,” and is sorry that Quark’s dead; Odo, however, informs her that he’s still clinging to life. He also questions where she got the money to pay for getting her power back on, which she says was a loan from a friend who’s married, and whose identity she won’t divulge.
Kira has good news and bad news for Odo: the name may be Chess’arro, who does a lot of charity work for war orphans, and whose work took him to the station a lot back then. The bad news is that he died on his property the previous night. Odo blames himself for his death, as he alerted Vaatrik to the fact that they knew at least a version of his name.
Odo requests Vaatrik’s communication records, that the medical examiner on Bajor treat Chess’arro’s death as a possible homicide, and that the bank on Bajor keep a supervisor available all night, as he’ll need records—for whom he’s not sure. He also posts a twenty-six-hour-a-day armed guard on Quark.
In the past, Odo checks Kira’s alibi with Quark, who tries and fails to hire Odo to do the Cardassian neck trick in the bar. It takes Odo all of half a second to break the alibi, which it turns out Kira paid Quark for. But Odo won’t release her name to Dukat until he knows for sure that she paid for the alibi to kill Vaatrik.
In the present, Odo reconstructs the list based on Vaatrik’s communication records. She’s spoken to all of them a great deal the past few days, and never spoke to any of them prior to that. They’ve also all transferred 100,000 litas into Vaatrik’s account in the last two days. Odo assumes blackmail, probably to keep from revealing how they came out of the occupation with that kind of money, which in turn was probably due to their being collaborators.
In the past, Kira admits that she didn’t kill Vaatrik—because she was committing acts of sabotage on behalf of the underground. If he turns her in, she’ll be executed, as that’s a far worse crime to Cardassia than a Bajoran killing a Bajoran. To Kira’s relief—and Dukat’s annoyance—Odo lets Kira go, saying he’s convinced she didn’t kill Vaatrik.
In the present, the thug kills the guard in the infirmary and tries to kill Quark, but Rom interrupts him long enough for Odo to arrive. (Rom is disappointed to realize that, if he hadn’t shown up, he’d have the bar.)
The thug is put in a cell, and so is Vaatrik. She insists she’s never met him before, but Odo knows she transferred money to his account and communicated with him repeatedly. She goes into the cell, but insists she didn’t kill her husband. Odo says he knows she didn’t.
That last admission shocks Kira, and the two of them go to Odo’s office where the truth comes out. It was somebody else in the underground who performed the sabotage; Vaatrik was Kira’s responsibility. Her task was to find out who the collaborators were: Vaatrik was the direct link to Dukat. That’s the one element Odo didn’t know until now, which explains why Vaatrik was a target, and also why Dukat brought in Odo—he needed to protect his network of collaborators. It also explains why the Vaatriks had private quarters and why Dukat was so solicitous of the widow. Kira searched for the list, but Vaatrik interrupted her, and she was forced to kill him in self-defense. Vaatrik’s widow knew about the list, but only hired Quark to get it because she needed money, and the list would provide blackmail material to enable her to continue to live in comfort.
Kira makes no apologies for lying to Odo back then because he was working for the Cardassians. When Odo reminds her that it’s been over a year since that was the case, Kira admits that she resisted telling him because she was afraid it would ruin her friendship with Odo.
When Kira asks if he can ever trust her the same way again, Odo has no answer.
The Sisko is of Bajor: It’s fun watching Sisko play good cop to Odo’s bad cop, and it’s also refreshing to see that he’s come around on the friendship between his son and Rom’s, to the point where he publicly refers to Rom as a family friend. (Of course, he’s perfectly happy to use that to get Rom to talk, too.)
Don’t ask my opinion next time: Kira came to the station for the first time five years ago to find out who Vaatrik’s network of collaborators were. She killed him and lied to Odo about it—and continues to do so, even in this episode when Odo first brings up the list of names, since by the end we know that Kira knows exactly what the list was; it was what she was sent to find. It’s no wonder Odo can’t answer her trust question….
Rules of Acquisition: We get our first hint that there’s more to Rom than meets the eye, as his mechanical and technical acumen is on display for the first time. Odo also quotes Rule #139, “Wives serve, brothers inherit.”
For Cardassia! Cardassian policy when there was Bajoran-on-Bajoran violence was to round up ten random Bajorans and kill them. Killing Bajorans was, after all, their job. When the station was still Terok Nor, there were guarded gates all over to help restrict free movement.
Preservation of mass and energy is for wimps: When he first was introduced to the Cardassians by the Bajoran scientist who “raised” him, Odo would do a Cardassian neck trick. We have yet to see this trick in reality, which honestly is probably for the best. This episode chronicles in flashback Odo’s first time meeting Dukat, Kira, and Quark, as well as the first time he was called “Constable,” by Kira, a prefix that would stick.
Keep your ears open: “You’re not planning on leaving the station soon?”
“If I were, would you have the Cardassians stop me?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m not planning on leaving the station soon.”
Odo and Kira at the end of their first meeting.
Welcome aboard: Recurring players Marc Alaimo and Max Grodénchik are back, the former as Dukat in the flashbacks when he was still running the joint, the latter in the present as Rom. Katharine Moffatt appears in both present and past as Vaatrik Pallra; she last appeared as Riker’s playmate-turned-saboteur in TNG’s “The Game.” Robert MacKenzie plays Vaatrik’s pet thug.
Trivial matters: This is our first look at the station under Cardassian occupation, as we flash back five years. The station is darker and more unpleasant, with more gates and restrictions and such. (At one point, we see two kids running and playing in the present, soon followed by a shot of two kids staring dolefully through the gate waiting for their father to come home from the ore processor.)
Rom makes reference to Quark staying overnight in the Gamma Quadrant, which happened in the previous episode, “Rules of Acquisition.”
The flashback in this episode is fleshed out and added to in the Terok Nor novel Dawn of the Eagles by S.D. Perry & Britta Dennison.
At one point, Bashir asks for an anti-grav unit to carry Quark to the infirmary, even though “Melora” established that anti-grav units don’t work on the station.
It’s unclear why Odo was given the permanent job of security chief on the Promenade after this, since he didn’t solve the murder, and since Dukat wanted him for this specific murder for reasons that wouldn’t apply moving forward.
Quark said in “Emissary” that Odo’s been trying to nail Quark for four years. It’s now a year later, so the five-year flashback tracks nicely.
The episode “Things Past” in season five will serve as a companion piece to this one, as we get another flashback, this time to something Odo did in the past while serving as security chief on Terok Nor.
Walk with the Prophets: “Everybody has to choose sides, Constable.” Flashbacks are often fun, once you get to know characters a bit, it can be very entertaining to see what they were like before we met them for the first time. Aaron Sorkin is a past master at this, doing it particularly well in The West Wing on numerous occasions, and also on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Of course, The Shield’s “Co-Pilot” remains a cautionary tale….
“Necessary Evil” is a superb example of the breed. Deep Space 9’s past as Terok Nor, the seat of the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, is rife with potential for storytelling, and given that the show started with Kira, Odo, and Quark all knowing each other for some time, it’s fun to see how they all first met.
This episode works beautifully on every level: as a procedural (Odo goes full-on investigator in both the present and the past, and even gets a cute Columbo moment where he just-one-more-things Vaatrik; writer Peter Allan Fields worked on Columbo), as a flashback story that fleshes out the characters (Kira as a terrorist, Odo when he was less sure of himself, Quark when he was—well, exactly the same, really), and as a DS9 episode.
We’re also treated to a deliciously malicious turn by Marc Alaimo as a Dukat who is large and in charge. More than any other episode prior to it, this cements Alaimo’s Dukat as a force to be reckoned with, his oily charm with menace right underneath it, his manipulative skills, and his disdain for Bajorans all on full display. His dismissal of dead bodies in mines as “casualties,” his telling Odo that he should be grateful that he’s different from Bajorans, and so on.
After being forced to thumpher about last week, it’s a pleasure to see Armin Shimerman back in form. The opening with Vaatrik is splendid, setting the noir tone, and also firmly establishing Quark as more than just comic relief: he’s the guy who gets things done, for a price. In addition, Max Grodénchik shines, displaying Rom’s depths without losing the character’s bumbling and desperate need to be accepted, and half-assed attempts to be a proper Ferengi but failing because he really does love his brother. Plus Nana Visitor is her usual fantastic self.
But the episode belongs to Rene Auberjonois. He owns every moment, no matter how many modes the script throws a him: subdued and looking away when he first meets Dukat, growing hesitantly into the role of investigator as he questions Vaatrik and Kira and Quark, his barely restrained impatience when questioning Rom, his much more assured questioning of Vaatrik in her home, and his philosophical ramblings in the log entries that he resents having to do in the first place. (Indeed, his opening monologue where he spends several minutes decrying the notion of a log as a waste of his time before concluding with “Everything’s under control, end log entry” is a tour de force.)
The perfect DS9 story. Everything that’s great about the show is on display here.
Warp factor rating: 10
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s latest book is Ragnarok and Roll: Tales of Cassie Zukav, Weirdness Magnet, a collection of urban fantasy short stories taking place in Key West, Florida. Look for more on the book on Tor.com in the coming weeks.
Loved this episode, Star Trek at it’s noiriest. The Security Log voice-over adds to this effect tremendously, as well as the dark shading in the Terok Nor timeline.
But as much as this was Odo’s episode, Rom really steals the scene, especially in the end. “AAAH! AAAH! AAAH!” “Rom, you’re a hero! You saved your brother’s life!” Huge grin… until the implications of that dawn on him (love that face)… “AAAH! AAAH!”
Nothing much to add because I’m in complete agreement. It still impresses me how completely differently the production team could make those sets look and feel by shooting with different lighting and lenses. I always considered this outing to be the first (and best) of the occasional welcome visits to the dark side of the station. Along with the excellent “Things Past” that you mentioned I’d include “Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night” (which wasn’t shot nearly as well as this), the various mirror universe episodes and the later episodes set on Empok Nor in that mix.
“It’s a dark and stormy night on Bajor.”
I was hoping you’d open that way. Thanks! Guess that makes up for all the low-g monkey sex two eps ago.
I haven’t watched a lot of DS9 and saw this one the first time last week. Some of the most acclaimed DS9 episodes annoy me with weak writing (often employing tropes common to TV at the time) but this one was perfect. Though since we’re supposed to believe Kira was a terrorist, they could have gone all the way and said her job was to assassinate the guy, not that it was self-defense.
The more of this show I watch, the more Auberjonois and Shimerman are my favorites. They’re both astoundingly fun on their own, but when you put them in the same room together the roof blows off from all the chemistry going on.
I’m sorry but I find this one mostly forgettable. The opening scene is just dull and is almost enough to make me just stop watching without bothering with the rest of the episode. I also usually hate flashbacks. There’s virtually nothing in this episode that appeals to me.
It was a dark and stormy night. According to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, that is the worst possible opening sentence for a novel. It’s a bad, bad way to open a DS9 episode, too. This episode is a 10? Perhaps in the mirror universe.
I found it amusing when Quark sent Rom to find an imager. These days even the cheapest cellphone is equipped with a camera. The writers missed that technological trend but then again, Season 2 DS9 really isn’t a sci-fi program.
Fortunately, the TV ratings gods will soon deliver us from space drama. Rewatching this after 20 years, I’m amazed that DS9 survived past the second season.
“At one point, Bashir asks for an anti-grav unit to carry Quark to the infirmary, even though “Melora” established that anti-grav units don’t work on the station.”
I think at this point, they did enough jerry-rigging with the power systems on the Promenade to allow anti-grav lifts to work. But JUST on the Promenade itself. I know a few seasons from now, when Sisko finally meets Mrs. Leon Vance (ahem) um, uh, Captain Kasidy Yates, she’s telling one of her crewmen to “Don’t kill yourself, get an anti-grav sled” as they’re loading/unloading her ship.
This one is a standout. They’ll go back to “Odo as a noir protagonist” a few more times over the show, and while Auberjonois is always great the results have diminishing returns. But I’m in complete agreement that this is a 10.
One of my favorite episodes. Great stuff.
Bobby
Hmmm, this one sort of rubs me the wrong way and I struggle to articulate why. I don’t really disagree with any of the positive comments. It IS wonderful to delve into the backstory. The weaving together of plots is solid. The acting is all pretty good. And yet…
There’s something about the pivot in the opening 10 minutes that feels off. It starts off as a playful episode about Quark and ends up as a dark and textured story about Odo and Kira. Once it gets into the groove of that story, it really is very very good. But the movement from the goofier beginning to the more complex middle and end just doesn’t quite work for me.
Still, great episode. Even if the rest was bad (and it’s not), the way it picks apart and re-establishes the Kora/Odo relationship in several different ways would be enough to make this a true standout.
CharlesO: Huh? Of all the adjectives I would use to describe the teaser and Act 1 of this episode, “playful” is about as far down the list as you can get. Certainly there wasn’t anything playful in the opening in Vaatrik’s candlelit house with thunder booming outside, which was right out of a 40s noir picture.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I agree with Charles. While the teaser does have a dark tone on the surface, the dialogue between Quark and Vaatrik is playful and flirtatious. I found it a delightful contrast. And yes, very 40s noir throughout.
Also, I liked Odo’s reference to a sense of “justice” perhaps being something ingrained in his species. I don’t know if they had already come up with the idea of the Founders, but it still serves as a nice preview of sorts to their particular view of, ahem, justice in the universe.
@7: I had a similar thought. Maybe the events of “Melora” prompted O’Brien to think of a way to adapt Federation antigravs to the Cardassian grid, or vice-versa — just not in time to do Melora any good.
I really liked Peter Allan Fields’s DS9 work, so I’ve been interested to see his early work in the DVDs of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. that I’ve been Netflixing lately. There’s a lot of cleverness and charm in those — but also disturbingly pervasive sexism even by mid-’60s standards. It’s a good thing Fields outgrew that by the time he got to DS9 and was able to write Kira as a strong and effective character.
Yep, a very good episode and one that not only provides some interesting backstory, but also tosses an interesting complication into the relationship between Kira and Odo. Even at this point, he occasionally gives her a look, leaving us with the impression that maybe he has feelings for her that he’s keeping even from himself.
As for why Odo became security chief even though he failed in his first mission, it may be that Dukat saw some value in his excuse for using Odo in this matter. Bajorans probably would rather talk to Odo than to a Cardassian.
A little off-topic for this specific episode, but I always thought that Quark was trying a little too hard to be a “real Ferengi”. Kinda like Spock at times was trying to outvulcan the Vulcans.
I loved this episode
@3:
Remember, this was still the 90s, this was still a part of the Trek franchise, and this was still built for syndication. While the show often says that Kira was a stone cold killer who’d done some morally questionable things during the occupation, actually showing it was way out of the question back then.
In retrospect, it’s a missed opportunity (how great would it have been if Garak was initially assigned to Terak Nor for counterintelligence, and had personally interrogated/tortured/killed dozens of Kira’s friends?), but this was groundbreaking at the time. Even so, I think the episode still holds up for the quality of the dialogue and acting. Great job all-around.
I enjoy this episode I like learning a more of Odo’s backstory. In hindsight does anyone else find the log entry “Everything is under control . ” a bit more ominous considering how the Founders are about controlling the world around them?
Rom doesn’t have a sneaky bone in his body, and is apperantly fun to interrogate since even Sisko joins in.
I enjoy this one. I think the opening that people are calling playful wasn’t meant to be that way, but since it was sort of a remake of countless scenes from countless old school noir films it seemed playful even if it wasn’t played that way. But it was nice to see the past, when the Bajorans were occupied because you often hear the word Empire throughout Star Trek; The Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire-but you never really see any civilization that is subjugated by another species. Martok, in a later episode, will make reference to the Klingons as a species that does not accept other culuters, they conquer them. That is never really seen until now. Though, I would make the argument that the Cardassians, as a sort of Nazi Germany stand in here, are subjugating in a sort of different manner. The Klingons, at lesast on paper, can be vicious, but they conquer to expand their Empire, probably like the Romans. The Romulans the same way, though named after Roman myth, are probably more like the Persians in the slave driving conquering way, as seen with the Remans later in the franchise. But the subjugated species are used to benefit the Empire’s expansion whereas here, the Cardassians used them to benefit their objectives but also just really, really liked killing them and hated the Bajorans with a passion. Plus, they are the Cardassian Union! Who else is in this Union? A Union of what, exactly?
Just realized I can’t believe I actually uttered the words it was nice to see Bajor occupied. That is a very strange sentence.
This episode is great, but personally I would have gone with “8” or “9” rather than “10.”
@15: And you forget to include Worf trying to be more Klingon than the Klingons?! That’s practically his defining characteristic! :) This reminds me of Data & Spock’s conversation in “Unification,” and the hints that it carried about “trying” to be “more” or “less” of a species stereotype is one of the major overarching themes of all of Trek.
@18: There are hints of other actual subjugations, although mostly in the novels; I hear the Gorn’s subjugation under the Klingons, for example, is fleshed out quite a bit (until they successfully revolt, become independent, and assume a strongly antagonistic position to the Klingon/Federation/Ferengi/Cardassian alliance in the years following DS9). We also see hints on-screen, such as the Karemma’s fealty to the Dominion or the Kazon’s occupation of the Ocampa.
I love seeing Bajor occupied!
I wouldn’t assume Cardassia didn’t have a strategic interest in controlling Bajor; they just also happen to be extremely brutal. I might have missed something about that though. I did assume Union is like “People’s Republic” etc – something that just sounds nicer than Empire.
People who don’t like this type of story, who feel that it’s overdone, or want classic Trek with space battles and exploration of sci-fi mysteries will naturally not like this episode.
Yeah, that’s what I mean, kinda. I’m sure the Cardassians did have an overarching plan other than Kill All Bajorans, but they were just brutal and sadistic in their occupation. In the books there are a lot of references to other things that were never shown on screen so I’m talking about things that are shown in the shows/films. Other than the Dominion because that was sort of the point of the Dominion was that they were a conquering faction and that they had subjects but it is only ever really implied that the Romulans or Klingons have subjects and conquered species.
@20: The Gorn were never subjugated to the Klingons in the novel continuity; that’s actually part of the backstory of the Star Trek Online MMO game. In the novels, it’s true that they’re part of the Typhon Pact, which is a political rival to the Federation, but of all the Pact’s members, the Gorn are the ones who are least antagonistic toward the UFP. Before Pact membership, they were an independent power who had limited but mostly friendly relations with the UFP; but an act of political grandstanding by the UFP president to compel their cooperation in the Borg Invasion of 2381 led to them and other minor powers (several of whom were more antagonistic than the Gorn) deciding they needed to ally to keep the UFP from dominating them like that again.
I thought that sounded familiar. That is Star Trek Online. The Gorn being blockaded by the Klingon Empire and then allying themselves in the war with the Federation. They are, I believe, also alligned with the Nausicans in the MMO.
In STO, we finally see the Klingon Empire as an actual empire, having subjugated the Gorn, the Naausicans, and allied with the Orions. Its an interesting development. As for this episode, its one of those early standouts that form the core of the DS9 story, one that when you watch it again after even many years, you found you haven’t really forgotten it at all. Just superb acting from all involved, a great hour of television.
@25: Well, in TOS we did see the Klingons occupying Organia and attempting to gain footholds on Capella and Neural (insofar as the Organian Treaty let them), and in TNG we saw that Krios was a Klingon subject world. We saw other Klingon subjects in ENT: “Judgment,” and it stands to reason that a lot of the Rura Penthe inmates we saw there and in TUC were from Klingon subject races.
One thing to understand with STO is that ‘gameplay concerns’ is a large part of what shaped the political landscape in the game. At launch, they wanted to have two factions — Federation and Klingon. But a faction of just “Klingons and make-your-own-alien” would have lacked a lot of variety, so they folded Orions, Gorn and Nausicaans into it to make it a sort of anti-Federation composed of the classic Trek ‘bad guys and ruffians’. That, of course, informed how they directed the backstory for the game.
Now, with that said, my Klingon-side captain is an Orion and I have a lot of fun. Klingon gameplay’s been massively fleshed out, and they have a pretty meaty and very Klingon-flavored leveling experience.
I thought this was a lot of fun – sometimes when they stray off the beaten path into a nother style it can fall flat to me (I’m not a fan of the ‘Western’ themed episodes) but I loved the noir-style tale and thought Odo’s voiceovers were pretty funny.
I also want all of Pallra’s outfits and hairdos!
The revelation in “Wrongs Darker than Death or Night” that Dukat was lovers with Kira’s mother and Dukat’s general interest in Kira [usually sexual] throughout many episodes — and the revelation in the novel “Fearful Symmetry” that Dukat had been watching over Kira throughout her life — presents a different possible reason for Dukat to get Odo for Vaatrik’s murder case:
Dukat suspected Kira was the murderer and didn’t want her found out and killed for it, so he “hired” Odo to do the investigation thinking that Odo would fail.
This same reasoning could explain why Dukat’s files on Kira [see “Battle Lines”] listed her as only a “minor operative” and errand-runner, even though she was actually a much bigger player in the resistance.
To quote the preeminent critic, Mister Peter Griffin, it insists upon itself.
But seriously, the problem I have with this episode is how hard it tries to sell the point that it is Trek noir. From the flashback lighting to the pointless voiceovers, it feels a bit pushy. Don’t get me wrong. I really like this episode, but I’d probably be more inclined to give it an 8.
Wow, a 10? I liked this episode, for all the reasons you mention, but it never hit the same chords as other episodes with the same elements.
@6 – GeorgeSalt: Even if the writers couldn’t foresee the fact that within little more than a decade we would all be carrying phones with cameras, how do you go pull a job like this without the equivalent of a tricorder, which has to have a simple photographic camera?
@22 – MattHamilton: I believe it is stated in DS9 that the Cardassians occupied Bajor because of its natural resources, because they had ran out on their own planets.
Odo’s Columbo moment was just great. Not only did he do the “one more thing” trick really well, he even used Columbo’s “It’s just routine” excuse when questioned “why do you ask?”
The episode worked well and it adds further depth to Kira’s character, which is quite welcome as she barely had screen time in the past few episodes.
A wonderful chapter but finally not perfect because it’s not clear what happen five years ago with the crime resolution. Do we have to assume that ten random bajorans were executed?
Hmmm… is it possible that “Terok Nor” is a bastardization of “Trek Noir”? :P
@33: While the investigation was open, it wasn’t leading to random Bajoran executions. So Odo stayed on the station to keep investigating the case until the Cardassians left?? ;-)
@34: That’s so good that I do not want to check what anyone really says about it,
Saw this episode for the first time today, I’d give it a 10 easily, great stuff all round.
@35 good point, Odo does say in his log that he still considered the case open!
On a recent rewatch, I think this episode was the standout of the entire run. All the best relationships getting the lion’s share of the screen time (Kira/Odo, Odo/Quark and Quark/Rom), the direction is beautifully considered and the jokes are great, too.
“the episode belongs to Rene Auberjonois”
It really does. Not to slight the contributions of set design, cinematography, and wardrobe to his transformation, but even Odo’s resting expression looks subtly different in the other time period, alongside the changes in demeanor/deference that come with his personal growth and the changes in circumstance.
Watching this, I didn’t see how they could complete the story within one episode, but they stuck the landing!