The station is emptied to a skeleton crew as an interstellar storm sweeps through the region. This leaves the senior staff vulnerable to a surprise attack. An unjoined Trill named Verad boards the station with a team of mercenaries (and help from a scheming Quark), plotting to steal Dax's symbiont for himself.
A lot about this episode reads as an elaborate budget saving measure to compensate for the expenditures of the season's opening three-parter. There are no background actors, all the scenes take place on existing sets, and there are only the most rudimentary effects depicting space outside the station. But to hear script co-writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe tell it, there was a larger storytelling goal here. The writing staff wanted to introduce the idea that not all Trills are joined, that it's in fact a rather rare thing. They reckoned that this would reflect on Dax, making her special and exceptional in much the way Spock or Data were on their respective series.
Interestingly, this doesn't much play like a "Dax episode." It's all about her, yes. But once the lives of her friends are threatened and she chooses to voluntarily give up her symbiont to protect them, she all but vanishes from the story. We basically get just two scenes with her after that... though they're boosted a lot by Terry Farrell's performance, and no doubt are why she cites this as one of her favorite episodes. First, we get to see a little of Jadzia without Dax. It's interesting to see how the very strength (of Dax) that allowed her to go through with her self-sacrifice vanishes on the post-op table when she's now just a young woman in her 20s fearing for her own life, cut short. Second, we get to see Dax later reunited with Jadzia, now forced forever to carry the memories of the brief, terrible things she did to her friends as Verad Dax.
The terrible acts of Verad, however, aren't as big an issue was what Quark does in this episode. He's directly responsible for the criminal gang getting aboard the station in the first place. While I totally respect the instinct to keep Quark a little wicked and not let him become a totally de-fanged sweetheart of a character, the pendulum swings way too far here. His act of atonement in getting them all out of trouble doesn't count for much when he got them into the trouble. Also bad, he's rather stupidly caught off guard when he gets double-crossed, revealing that he really had no long-term plan here. At least keep Quark smart if you're going to make him "evil."
For what it's worth, the man himself agrees with me. Armin Shimerman spoke negatively of this episode in at least one interview, noting that he worried "when Quark doesn't get punished for really sizable crimes. It makes the character less important since his acts trigger no consequences, and it makes Odo look a little foolish, in that he's the law keeper and he can't get this little troll punished." That certainly cuts to the heart of another problem here -- there are no lasting consequences. Kira says, partway through the episode, that Quark has crossed a line this time... but we never see any payoff for that, now or in any later episode.
With the roles of Dax and Quark handled strangely here, the episode might actually be the best showcase for Sisko and Avery Brooks. The commander gets to be the thinking captive in the hostage situation, working every possible angle to try and turn the tables. The moment Verad and Dax are joined, Sisko is trying to appeal to the better nature of his "old friend." When that doesn't work, he tries to drive a wedge between Verad and his girlfriend Mareel. Ultimately, he surprises everyone by risking the death of Dax to prevent the escape of Verad. It's fun to watch the character go through all these calculations in a short span.
It's a bit of a mixed bag for the other characters, though. Bashir throws attitude at a dangerous Klingon and earns some respect... but he also displays terrible bedside manner when he raves to a panicking Jadzia about the success of the operation to remove her symbiont. We learn that O'Brien has two brothers, but I don't think this fact is ever paid off in a future episode. Kira just comes off poorly all around, first complimenting the Cardassians on the construction of the station (as if!), and then failing to best another woman in hand-to-hand combat. (And even as Sisko manages to take down a Klingon. I guess I'm saying I think Kira could take Sisko in a fight.)
But it is a good episode for the guest stars. John Glover plays Verad, and serves up distinctly different takes for the unjoined and joined versions of the character. Megan Gallagher (later a regular on the TV series Millennium) makes a lot out of a stock character -- the kind-hearted criminal who ends up turning against her vicious partner. Tim Russ appears here in his second Star Trek role, less than a year before he'd become Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager.
One angle that's completely unaddressed is whether joined Trills are or aren't an appropriate analogy for transgender people. Of course, television wasn't ready to take this on in 1993, not even by Star Trek allegory, but it is intriguing to think about what this episode might look like if made today. There is a clear angle here in which a Trill assumes a new identity and becomes a new person... who nevertheless carries the memories of the former person. In this specific story, there are different ways that people who knew the old person react to the new. On the other hand, a transgender person isn't becoming a new individual so much as acknowledging the one who's always been there. Nor is there the notion that past Trills (former hosts, or the previously unjoined Trill) were anything less than a full, true person. I certainly don't have the answer here, but that makes me wish all the more that the question could have been explored.
Other observations:
- Dax's willingness to sacrifice her own life for others is in keeping with behavior in the previous season's "Dax."
- Not only do we learn of O'Brien's brothers in this episode, we learn Dax has a sister. (We never meet her either.)
- One of the Klingons in this episode, T'Kar, is motivated by hatred of the treaty with the Federation. It gives me a sort of neo-Nazi vibe, in that the treaty is old enough (and T'Kar seems not old enough) to truly remember what it was like before the peace. So where did he get these attitudes/opinions?
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