Weekend Trek “Image In The Sand”

The new Dax shows up at the end of this episode.  There’s not much to go on here, but I did note actress Nicole de Boer got listed, like, third in the credits.  But that’s mostly because the cast are listed alphabetically after whoever is playing the captain.

I’ll say more about her once I get to know her.

As much as Star Trek typically is episodic in nature aside from the occasional two-parter, this episode itself felt a lot more like an episode of serialized TV as it seems to exist mostly to set up some plot lines that can run from here to establish whatever the status quo is for the cast of characters and the station as a whole.  It would seem that the Cardassians are holding their own in the war, Sisko hasn’t left his father’s restaurant in a while to both Jake and Joseph’s concern, Worf is being short with everybody starting with poor Nog, and Kira has been promoted to Colonel, putting her in charge of the station.  She’s answering directly to Admiral Ross, the best Starfleet admiral I think I have ever seen since he is actually helpful and not corrupt like most of the ones that appear in various episodes.  I just generally don’t have much to say about him.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no drama.  It comes down to three plotlines for now, and the main cast is clearly being split into three groups.

Sisko got the most attention because the Prophets finally sent him a vision of a woman’s face in the sands of another planet that he’s been to before.  There’s apparently one more Orb of the Prophets out there, the Orb of the Emissary, and it may be able to open up the wormhole.  Plus, it turns out the mystery woman that Sisko remembers well enough to make a composite drawing of was actually his mother.

Yeah, Ben Sisko had never met his mother or seen her picture.  Jake had found a pic while cleaning up the place, and I might have gotten a wee bit cantankerous over that bit of information, but it turns out that Joseph remarried later and Ben got along great with his stepmom and not the woman who more or less literally disappeared one day.  Apparently, Ben needs to return to the same planet (maybe) to find an Orb that had never been mentioned before in the Bajoran holy books (maybe).  Oh,  and the Pah-Wraiths have a cult of followers now, one of whom stabs Ben in the gut, but thankfully not fatally.  All that means is all the Siskos, plus New Dax, will be going to look for this Orb on a planet that hopefully has some better clues to find an Orb beyond “somewhere on this planet”.

Worf’s concerns are also fairly easily set up once he stops trashing Vic Fontaine’s place or telling off Nog.  There’s only one person who can get through to Worf now:  O’Brien.  Why?  He has Klingon Bloodwine, and I guess as an Irishman, he can hold his drink pretty well.  Get Worf loosened up enough, and even though most Klingons would have gotten over the loss by now, he’s really upset that Jadzia isn’t in Sto’Vo’Kor because she didn’t die in glorious battle.  She can get in if Worf dedicates an unlikely victory in her name.  Martok even has one:  a one-ship attack on a heavily-fortified Dominion target that has many times over repulsed various attacks.  Worf can do that!  Oh, and Bashir will go too for Jadzia, Miles will go to look after Bashir, and Quark thinks they’re all nuts, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he went too.

And then there’s Kira, dealing with the Pah-Wraith cult, and now she has a Romulan Senator on the station to act at a liaison.  The thing is, Senator Cretak seems rather friendly and open for a Romulan.  That’s…unexpected.  Even she notes her people’s reputation for deception.  Oh, could the Bajorans provide an unused moon for a Romulan hospital?  Sure, nothing wrong there, and it could save lives.

Except these are still Romulans, and they still aren’t trustworthy.  After turning away a Federation ship full of wounded Vulcans, the truth comes out:  the Romulans have weapons stored in their hospital.

This is the sort of thing the Dominion likes to hear.  I know because Damar and Weyoun both said as much.

So, not a bad episode, but again, it is mostly there to set up what’s going on.  The best character-interaction was probably between Ben and Joseph Sisko and then a little bit of the stuff with Miles and Worf.  I know next to nothing about Ezri Dax, and the Romulans still have that fortified hospital.