Section 31 operative Sloan reaches out to Julian Bashir once more, enlisting him to spy on the Romulan government during his upcoming diplomatic conference to their homeworld. Ordered to play along in the hopes of exposing the rogue organization, Bashir soon finds himself in a web of espionage with no one to trust.
I remember being wowed by this episode when it was brand new. Not only was I interested in the "dark underbelly of the Federation" that Section 31 represented, I loved the wheels-within-wheels nature of the plot and its many reversals. On a rewatch now? Well, it's still pretty good, but I wouldn't say great -- for a handful of reasons.
For one, the scheme feels unnecessarily convoluted here. Starfleet already has an embedded op at the highest levels of Romulan intelligence who seems to be under no suspicion, but everyone goes through this elaborate plot to... dig him in deeper, I guess? I mean, the stated reason for all this is to arrange the downfall of Senator Cretak, but surely there would have been a more direct way to do that which didn't involve risking the exposure of Section 31's existence to the Romulans?
Another issue is that Sloan is ridiculously far ahead of the game here. The risk of Bashir using his "mutant brain" to unravel the whole plot seems pretty high; but Sloan (whose brain is not mutant, so far as we know) has just out-thought him at every step. Reportedly, in the planning phases of this episode, Sloan was to be caught in the end, but in writing it, Ronald Moore became convinced that having him escape again was more interesting. (As a result, this plot thread they were meaning to tie up needed to be revisited one more time during the final story arc.)
I do find myself wishing this episode had tested Julian's morals a bit more. But then, I suppose we already have the excellent episode "In the Pale Moonlight," which put Sisko in that role (and which used Garak more effectively than his walk-on appearance here).
But even if parts of this episode seem perhaps farfetched, I still find it quite a lot of fun. The reversal that "Section 31" might just be a fiction concocted by a sad lone wolf bent on revenge is a marvelous red herring. The "badges off" conversation between Ross and Bashir, in which the benefits of a black ops group are debated, is typical of DS9's willingness to explore gray areas. And while Sloan may be an impossibly clever puppet master, I find him an intriguing character: he's glad there are idealists like Bashir in the universe... and they need to be protected from what the universe truly is.
The episode also draws a lot on past Star Trek lore in a fun way... though with some recasting. The character of Senator Cretak was Colonel Kira's frenemy in the season seven premiere, but is more sympathetic here both by circumstance and thanks to a warmer portrayal by Adrienne Barbeau. Romulan Praetor Neral was first introduced as a lowly "proconsul" back in "Unification II"; high office has really aged him. (He was recast with an older actor, presumably for more gravitas.) And though Koval is a new character, actor John Fleck previously played another Romulan schemer on The Next Generation.
Other observations:
- The argument in the opening scene between Cretak and Worf is fun, each poking at the other in a passive-aggressive manner over the tactical proclivities of their people.
- How long does Sloan sit in Bashir's bedroom waiting for him to wake up and observe the dramatic entrances?
- There's great, easy production value in this episode by using the sets of Star Trek: Voyager instead of giving us another Defiant-class starship.
- About that crazy Latin title? Ronald Moore took it from the dust jacket of a book by William Rehnquist he randomly came upon while working on this script, and "took perverse glee" in using the phrase here. Show runner Ira Steven Behr quipped that Moore was just looking to top the flowery "Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night" and must have thought, "Latin!"
The first time around, I probably would have given this episode an A or A-. Now, I see it more like a B. Maybe a more fair score would be somewhere in between?
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