24. Invasive Procedures

Summary

The station is evacuated down to just a skeleton crew during a plasma storm, but unexpected visitors arrive in the form of a group of four terrorists: two Klingons, a Trill man named Verad and his girlfriend Mareel. They force Odo into a container and lock him there, then drag Bashir, O'Brien and Quark to Ops to join Kira, Dax and Sisko. Verad announces that he's there to steal the Dax symbiont...he is very bitter over being rejected for symbiosis. He forces Julian to cooperate and the surgery takes place. While Julian struggles to keep Jadzia alive, Verad Dax goes back to the bridge a different person...to Mareel's distress. Benjamin rejects Verad's overtures of friendship when his attempts to convince him to return Dax to Jadzia fail and starts to work on Mareel...telling her that Verad won't need her anymore now, etc. Quark fakes an injury and is taken to the infirmary where he and the doctor succeed in disabling the Klingon guard and freeing Odo. Verad Dax tries to escape only to find that Odo has released his ship from the docking ring. Sisko convinces Mareel to let him go so he can capture Verad and remove the symbiont...when Verad tries to steal a runabout Sisko is there waiting for him. Dax is safely returned to Jadzia.

Analysis

This is a pretty good episode, if a bit draggy. I could have done with less scenes of Sisko chipping away at Mareel's loyalty to Verad and less of Julian mooning over Jadzia. The episode does have a definite eerily moody atmosphere, mostly due to the station's being almost deserted...the feeling is that of a raid on a ghost town. Though this is a Dax episode, Jadzia really is hardly in it at all. I do have some problems accepting the way the Dax symbiont interacted with Verad. I would have thought that Dax would have more of a problem with what had just occurred, and would have more of an influence over Verad's behavior so soon after joining and given Verad's unsuitability for joining in the first place. There are other rather grievous oversights...Odo just stands there and lets Verad escape, for example...but overall the episode works. Quark shows some rare heroism here...his phony screeching and moaning in pain is a hoot. I've never been a big John Glover fan, and his Verad pre-joining is annoyingly submissive and stammering. Sisko's angry speeches are among his most eyeball-twitching over-the-top.

Rating: 7.0

Memorable Quote:

Quark: He's still my brother!
Odo: And you'd betray him in a minute if it suited your purpose!
Quark: That doesn't mean I don't love him!

Classic Scene:

The sight of Quark leaping onto the back of a Klingon twice his size deserves some sort of historical preservation.

Sexually Slanted Line 'O the Episode:

"I want Dax." --Verad...yeah, well take a number, pal.

The O/K Status Report

Ehh...nothing, really. Odo's hardly in it, Kira not much...she does have the line "If Odo's free there's no way you're getting off this station," delivered with a kind of gleeful pride..."My security chief's cooler than yours, nyah nyah nyah."

Special Alerts

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