93. The Muse

Summary

Jake Sisko meets Onaya, a mysterious woman, who tells him about all the famous artist's she's known and helped...and offers to help him unlock his writing talent in the same way. He goes to her quarters and she places her hands upon his head, whereupon he begins to write (with a pen and paper, no less) with amazing speed and fluidity, not stopped for almost three days straight. All the while, unbeknownst to Jake, Onaya is absorbing some kind of energy from his mind. When he finally collapses at the Replimat and is brought to sickbay, Bashir discovers a strange energy acting in his brain that would have killed him. Onaya appears in sickbay and takes Jake away with her. Sisko finds them just as Jake is about to die and Onaya admits that she lives off the creative energy of artists...they die, but she unlocks their deepest talents and attain immortality. She vanishes in a burst of energy and Jake recovers.

Meanwhile, pregnant Lwaxana Troi seeks Odo's help from her husband Jeyal. Her child is male and Tavnians believe in strict separation of the sexes...Jeyal intends to take Lwaxana's child away as soon as he is born. Odo takes her in and they concoct a scheme to free her. If she marries Odo, her marriage to Jeyal will be annulled and Odo will become the baby's father by Tavnian law, but first Odo must convince Jeyal during a traditional Tavnian wedding ceremony that he really wants to marry Lwaxana. He does so in front of all his friends and Jeyal leaves. Lwaxana plans to go home to Betazed to have her baby. Odo, having gotten used to having her around, wants her to stay, but she realizes that he'll never love her as she loves him so she leaves.

Analysis

Okay. Not only do we get the lame one-episode-romance (sorta, it's not really a romance for Jake) but it's COMBINED with the lame strange-energy-being Trek cliche. It's double jeopardy, where the scores can really change, but this plot comes up with a big fat zero. Dull, dull, dull. The talented guest star Meg Foster definitely has the velvet voice and mesmerizing eyes for the part but it's scarcely a part at all, more like a series of cheesy speeches and gasping gestures. Cirroc Lofton is also wasted...all he does is swoon and write. Inconsequential. Even Avery seems to be sleepwalking his way through it.

The B plot is contrived as well. The phony-wedding thing is more suited for sitcoms than a show like DS9, but I suppose it was inevitable. I'm just sorry Odo had to be the one put through it. I do like Lwaxana but she's so predictable. The B plot does provide some cute moments, though...their game of hide-and-seek in Odo's quarters is a rare look at Odo's playful side. The wedding is excruciating. I just can't help feeling sorry for poor Odo, for whom there could be no greater torture at this point in his character's development than to have to stand in front of his friends and a complete stranger and bare his innermost feelings. He reluctance to let Lwaxana leave doesn't ring quite true but it's still sweet, and Lwaxana shows some rare maturity in not taking him up on it.

Rating: 3.0

Memorable Quote:

(at Odo and Lwaxana's wedding)

O'Brien: Who's that?
Kira: I think that's Lwaxana's husband.
O'Brien. Huh. Good of him to come.

Classic Scene:

The aforementioned hide-and-seek scene is a rare smile in this boring episode.

Sexually Slanted Line 'O the Episode:

"There are ways...exercises...techniques..." --Onaya...is she fully functional, too?

The O/K Status Report

Nothing much, Kira's scarcely in this episode at all. One note: At the wedding when Odo says that when he met Lwaxana, he wasn't alone for the first time, the camera cuts to Kira who looks down a bit shamefacedly. Some people read stuff into that, I think it's possible to do so. It's also not too much of a deductive leap to surmise that, while Odo did mean some of what he said about Lwaxana during their wedding ceremony, a good deal of it also applied to Kira.

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