Faced with crippling debt, Quark seizes on an opportunity from his cousin Gaila to sell weapons. But while the venture is profitable, it quickly costs Quark all his friends. And soon it may cost him his life. His boss Hagath will not be crossed, and Quark is unwilling to help a customer carry out a mass-scale genocide. Meanwhile, baby Kirayoshi O'Brien just won't be content anywhere but in his father's arms.
I'm going to start with the B plot first here, because I gave myself whiplash writing the last sentence of that last paragraph. And yet, there's no smoother way to do it, and no better way of conveying how out of place this go-nowhere story line feels in the midst of this otherwise dark and serious episode. We slide whistle from one scene to the next; neither a babysitting Jake nor a quippy Doctor Bashir is of any help at all. And O'Brien won't simply take off work until Sisko finally orders him to. The one touching moment in this entire perplexing run of scenes is when Worf confesses remorse at having missed his own son's life at this age... but that quickly gives way to the joke that Miles has fallen asleep and didn't hear it.
The A story of the episode is better conceived, though, and a rare chance for Quark to be more than comic relief. He has a great character arc here, his desperation driving him to convince himself that he's just using his good salesmanship, and that what he's selling doesn't matter. But hew-mon ideals have gotten in his head to some extent, and soon he's looking for an escape from the man he's come to work for.
Hagath the arms dealer is an intimidating adversary for Quark, and the episode does do a good job of telegraphing just how crazy he is. Both he and Quark's cousin repeatedly give warnings that he will not tolerate betrayal. And he seems to be a true psychopath, blind to the feelings of others. His jokes come at others' expenses, he kills those who fail him, and he takes control of Quark's finances without asking. Plus, of course, the gunrunning. It's a pretty good performance from guest star Steven Berkoff...
...and yet maybe not unhinged enough, as I found two other guest stars in the episode more chilling still. Josh Pais is great as the much-talked-about-but-never-before-seen Gaila. His manipulation of Quark, securing his help even after trying to kill him previously, is Machiavellian. His monologue about the universe never missing a beat if a single star were to wink out is a ghastly application of big picture thinking. Then there's famous tough guy actor Lawrence Tierney as the Regent whose arms request is a bridge too far for Quark. Tierney had suffered a stroke in recent years and reportedly struggled with his lines here. All the same, his demeanor in his one key scene is quite unsettling.
Guiding all these performances was actor Siddig El Fadil, taking the Trek director's chair for the first time (and not using the name he adopted mid-series as an actor, Alexander Siddig). He'd had some experience directing plays, but he takes to the camera quite well here. There's a fun upside-down shot when Odo comes to see Quark during a massage. There's a dramatic and dark look to the fateful dinner when Quark realizes he's in too deep. The nightmare sequence in which Quark is haunted by dead friends is in an evocative, smoke-filled set. It's all solid work.
I do like the way the episode uses Dax. We don't exactly need permission to hate gunrunning, but it matters that Dax, who in the past has stood up for Quark in his more Ferengi-like moments, refuses to do so this time. Plus some other fun continuity: Bashir has to stand farther from the board now when playing darts with O'Brien, thanks to his genetic enhancements. And in a clever bit of writing, the Bajoran government looks the other way on Hagath and his associates because of the help they got in the Occupation.
Other observations:
- Is tongo actually a good game for just two players? It feels enough like poker for me to wonder. Yes, there's skill in a heads-up poker game... but I just don't find it a very fun game without a full table.
- A couple of fun name drops in dialogue: Quark's concern for quadrotriticale futures calls back the grain from "The Trouble With Tribbles," while the Breen gun being named the "CRM-114" is a reference to Dr. Strangelove.
- The episode tells you how Quark is going to get out of his problem long before it's clear he's even in a problem. In an early scene, Gaila and Hagath wax nostalgic for a time they sold weapons to both sides of the same conflict.
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