An assassin tries to kill Garak by setting off a bomb in his tailor shop. But Odo's ensuing investigation reveals that Garak was not the only target. Several former operatives of the Obsidian Order have been murdered, in apparent preamble to some unknown action by the former head of the Order, Enabran Tain, in conjunction with the Romulans.
This story pays off Garak's exile, Odo finding his people's homeworld, and the previous tease of an illegal Obsidian Order fleet. But it wasn't any of those episodes that inspired series editor Robert Lederman to team up with David R. Long to pitch the idea of Garak blowing up his own shop to escape assassination. He'd been cutting together "Second Skin," in which Garak murders a high-ranking Cardassian agent, and figured there's no way that dangerous spies would let him get away with that without retaliation.
The writing staff loved the pitch, but ultimately pulled on different parts of series history to craft this script -- chiefly, bringing in Enabran Tain. One thing they did not bring in was the notion of a two-part episode. René Echevarria's script had Odo and Garak getting captured in the final act, but then being released because Garak had slipped sensitive information to Bashir earlier in the story that Tain didn't want released. Everyone found it an unsatisfying ending, but the episode was due to go before the cameras in days.
In one of his last acts as executive producer on the show, Michael Piller suggested that maybe Odo and Garak shouldn't get away. What if, instead, they remained on the ship, which then went into battle against the Founders in a second episode? The idea was well-received, even though it came so late in the process that the next episode was already in production planning. "Through the Looking Glass" was thus filmed after this episode, between the two halves of the two parter, to ultimately be aired first.
A lot of action and drama is deferred to that second part, but there's plenty of great material in this episode. It subverts the usual Bashir/Garak pairing to give us an Odo/Garak pairing instead. Garak tries similar lies and half-truths about his true nature -- claiming he's already broken into Odo's files, trying to rush past the affection Mila has for him, making constant taunts and interrogations of his own (how can Odo ascribe emotions to others when he doesn't understand them?) -- but Odo's reactions to these games is very different than Bashir's. And Odo figures out Garak's scheme: he blew up his own shop as cover to get protection from a real assassination attempt.
That said, there's plenty of great Bashir/Garak material too. Their opening conversation is a fun culture clash. (Shakespeare is farce, not tragedy, because Julius Caesar was such a fool; humans still eat like they fear starvation, even though they have plenty.) Their last exchange is a parody of the original story line of this episode: if Odo and Garak don't return, Bashir is supposed to find secret information in Garak's quarters... and eat it.
But the best Bashir/Garak moment comes in the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. It's one of the series' best exchanges between the two. Bashir is trying to make a point about someone who repeatedly proves to be untrustworthy. Garak suggests the true moral of the story is that one should never tell the same lie twice. And what puts the exchange over the top is that the plot of the episode itself is Garak's take on the story. Knowing he could not ask for protection, knowing he would not be believed, he told a bold and unique lie: he blew up his own shop.
This is another episode directed by Avery Brooks, and he has by this point established himself as one of the best directors of the show. As always, he gets great performances from the actors. Andrew Robinson is at his best as Garak (the "act out" that goes to commercial on his coy smile is particularly great). Odo's questioning of the Flaxian assassin (about his poisonous perfumes) is both playful and cutting. The three-handed scene at the end of the episode -- between Garak, Tain, and Odo -- is marvelously balanced, highlighting each of the three when they get in a good verbal jab. Even a one-off minor character comes off great -- the Romulan operative's irritation at learning that her records have Garak's occupation wrong is a wonderful little moment.
But Brooks is really growing in the use of the camera as well. Standing out in particular among many great shots is the sequence where Odo goes to the infamous "Star Trek caves" to meet an anonymous Cardassian contact. The scene places the contact on a level high above Odo, introducing a third dimension to the action. The director of photography serves up great lighting, framing the Cardassian's face in shadows, but with his eyes brightly lit. It's a fun bit of stagecraft to depict the spycraft.
Other observations:
- This is the third episode in a row to include Garak (with, obviously, a fourth one next). He's practically part of the main cast at this point. (No complaints here.)
- There's a fun little bit of filler just before the bomb goes off in Garak's shop, where Kira comes to Bashir to discuss the unusual environmental needs of a visiting alien. Though it's a throwaway scene, it feels like there real joy between the two. By this point, Nana Visitor and Alexander Siddig were a real-life couple, and it feels like Avery Brooks tapped into that for this moment.
- As Garak's shop burns, he notes that Julian's pants won't be ready on time. Garak's the liar, but Julian's pants are on fire. (Ha! My husband fired off that one.)
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