Crossover (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 23) Kira and Bashir visit the Mirror Universe

Rewatching ST:DS9 Bashir thinks he’s bonding with Kira in a runabout as he namedrops and mansplains cheerfully about meditation and music, and asks her to call him “Julian.” Most of this happens in a single two-person take, and it’s delightfully cringeworthy to watch. A problem with the engines and an unusually rough return trip through…

The Wire (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 22) While examining an ill Garak, Bashir discovers a mysterious implant

Rewatching ST:DS9 While sparring with Bashir over literature, Garak gets unusually cranky and headachy, but insists he’s fine.  Bashir pays a house call to Dax’s quarters, where he treats a plant that’s languishing because it’s away from its natural environment (an apt metaphor for Garak’s situation). This bit not only delivers exposition as Bashir talks…

The Maquis, Part 2 (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 21) Sisko must stop the dissident Maquis from reigniting a war with Cardassia

Rewatching ST:DS9 Hudson and Sisko have at it with the rhetoric on a casual stroll across a cheesy-looking jungle soundstage. Hudson admits he can’t prove the Cardassian government is arming its settlers, but he’s not interested in working with Sisko to find that proof. Instead, he phaser-stuns Sisko and escapes. Back on DS9, Sisko gives…

The Maquis, Part 1 (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 20) Dukat pressures Sisko to deal with armed Federation colonists in the Cardassisan demilitarized zone

Rewatching ST:DS9 A man in a gold Starfleet uniform tampers with the hatch of a Cardassian ship. Dax and Kira are sparring in a sisterly way about their tastes in men when that same ship goes boom. The investigation implicates Federation technology. Sisko’s old friend Lt. Cmdr Hudson visits from the demilitarized zone, reporting tensions…

Blood Oath (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 19) Glory to Dax and her three aging Klingon chums

Rewatching ST:DS9 A rowdy Klingon customer overstays his welcome reliving a battle in Quark’s holosuite, and ends up drunk in a cell, where a second Klingon leaves him with contempt. Realizing that she’s stumbled across some of Curzon’s old friends, Dax (re)introduces herself. Kor is willing to go with the flow, but stickler Koloth believes…

Shadowplay (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 16) Odo investigates disappearances in an idyllic colony

Rewatching ST:DS9 Just like last week’s episode, this week a hitherto unexplored pairing of main characters are motivated by scanner-confusing plot contrivance particles to beam down to a planet, and the teaser ends with the landing party facing an unhappy colonist’s weapon (which gets lowered almost as soon as the opening title sequence ends). Protector…

Paradise (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 15) Anti-technology colony welcomes Sisko and O’Brien a bit too enthusiastically

Rewatching ST:DS9 In a runabout on a survey of star systems near the wormhole, Sisko asks O’Brien to take Jake on as an apprentice.  They find a planet giving off low-level plot contrivance particles. When they beam down, none of their technology works. They also find a thriving agrarian human colony, built around the empty…