37. Playing God

Summary

While Kira and O'Brien are tearing out their hair over a vole infestation on DS9, a Trill initiate, Arjin, comes aboard the station for field training with Dax as part of his candidate evaluation. He's somewhat dreading it since Dax is famous for rejecting candidates. Since this is Jadzia's first initiate, she urges him to relax and be himself, and tries to learn more about his personal goals beyond joining...and is a bit disturbed to find that he doesn't seem to have any. While on a trip to the Gamma quadrant, the two Trill pick up some kind of subspace matter on their nacelle and bring it back to the station for analysis, where it begins to expand. Arjin, who's pretty stiff and nervous, continues to concern Jadzia but when she informs him of this he turns on her, feeling betrayed after her earlier reassuring words. He even tells her that he can certainly see why Curzon rejected her...she herself doesn't meet the joining standards. While Arjin, believing his life is over, drowns his sorrows in synthale the crew discovers that the subspace matter is, in fact, a proto-universe undergoing expansion and unless it's stopped it will engulf their own universe. They decide to erect a force field around it that will force an implosion...but before they can, Dax detects signs of life, introducing a moral dilemma. They decide to chance taking it through the wormhole and put it back where it belongs in subspace, but during the trip Dax and Arjin must avoid all the verteron nodes. Arjin's level-five piloting skills get them through safely and the universe is safely restored to its rightful place. Jadzia explains to Arjin that she'd hoped to inspire him to work harder and develop his own personality further before going before the Symbiosis Commission. He leaves with a greater resolve, and Jadzia is relieved that she was able to fulfill her duty as field supervisor without acting like Curzon.

Analysis

Yawn. This type of plot is very common in Trek...a character oriented A plot intertwined with a ship-in-jeopardy B plot, and the two intersect near the end of the episode. It's so predictable that it's ceased to have any kind of dramatic impact, and this episode suffers from its use of such a hackneyed structure. I also hate it when the B plot is such a contrived end-of-the-universe thing...such momentous and perilous developments seem trivial when relegated to the back burner of a character story. Add this to the fact that the Dax plot really isn't all that interesting and you end up with a pretty dull episode. The Hugh Grant-esque Geoffrey Blake as Arjin doesn't make much of an impression, and the proto-universe plot doesn't inspire any real suspense...as if there were any doubt that the situation would be resolved safely. Very little drama and not much good character stuff to balance it out. This was the first time we'd heard about Jadzia's initiate torture at Curzon's hands, a plot point that would be explored later and with far more success in season three's "Facets." Lemme put it this way...this was one of the episodes that I had to force myself to sit down and rewatch in order to write this guide!

Rating: 2.0

Memorable Quote:

Odo: You can't just arbitrarily wipe out a civilization!
Kira: It's like stepping on ants, Odo!
Odo: I don't step on ants, Major! Just because you don't understand a lifeform doesn't mean you can destroy it.

Classic Scene:

I love any scene in the Klingon restaurant. In this one, our favorite portly Klingon chef favors us with a rousing song accompanied by an concertina! I wish they'd bring him back.

Sexually Slanted Line 'O the Episode:

"You're early again...we'll have to work on that." --Dax, to Arjin...try thinking about Quark next time.

The O/K Status Report

Nada.

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