28. Necessary Evil

Summary

A Bajoran woman who used to live on Terok Nor with her late husband Vaatrik hires Quark to locate a small strongbox that her husband left in the wall of his shop, now a storeroom. When Quark locates the box he's surprised to find only a list of names inside...but before he can make a copy he's shot. Odo learns about the box from Rom...it makes him remember a incident from the past. Four years before the Occupation ended, Gul Dukat selected Odo...then just another station resident with a reputation for fairness and sorting out petty disputes among the Bajoran workers...to investigate Vaatrik's murder. His widow (the woman who hired Quark) tells Odo that she thinks her husband was killed by a woman with whom he was having an affair...Kira. Odo questions her, she denies the affair and tells him that when the murder took place she was at Quark's looking for work. In the present, Rom remembers the first name that was on the list. Odo questions Mrs. Vaatrik but she claims not to know the man...but later he ends up dead. In flashback, Odo remembers questioning Quark about Kira, and he eventually admits that she paid him for the alibi. When Odo confronts Kira, she admits she wasn't at Quark's but insists she didn't kill Vaatrik. She eventually tells Odo that she's in the Resistance and at the time of the murder she was planting a bomb in Ore Processing. When Dukat demands to know if she's guilty, Odo tells him that she didn't kill Vaatrik and lets her go, keeping her Resistance activities a secret. Back on DS9, Odo realizes that the list was a list of collaborators and Mrs. Vaatrik is blackmailing them...her husband was a collaborator too. He arrests her for hiring the man who shot Quark...but that's not all Odo's learned. He's realized that Kira did, in fact, kill Vaatrik. She admits it, ashamed, and tells him that she was there to find the list but he surprised her and she had to kill him. Odo asks why she didn't tell him before. She tells him that his opinion of her matters a great deal and she was afraid it would ruin their friendship. Odo says that perhaps it doesn't have to, but when she asks him if he can ever trust her the same way again, he has no answer for her.

Analysis

Definitely the best episode of season two and probably one of the series' top five, "Necessary Evil" is at once emotionally evocative, moody, an intriguing mystery and it reveals a great deal about both Odo and Kira as well as the nature of their friendship. Flashbacks are a difficult device, but the episode utilizes them with finesse and integrates them seamlessly into the present-day storyline. Odo's voiceover narration, in the form of security log entries, provides more insight into his mind and his feelings both about himself and Kira. When it comes out that Kira did kill Vaatrik, that final scene is so perfect...the final fadeout on the two of them standing silently in tableau in Odo's office is just the ending to make you go "ooooh" and want to immediately watch it again. Since we already know of their close friendship, we're naturally curious about exactly how Odo and Kira first met...the fact that they met when she was a murder suspect in one of his investigations was certainly unexpected. One can easily see how they became friends after he lets her go...it must have been very welcome for her to find someone who valued justice and didn't just do what the Cardassians told him to do. Their scenes together crackle with chemistry...incidentally, it was the look that Odo gave Kira at the end after she admits that she was afraid of ruining their friendship that made the writers and producers of DS9 think that he had feelings for her, which was something they hadn't considered or planned. Look what that's led to! A superlative episode, with fine writing and terrific performances.

Rating: 10.0

Memorable Quote:

Odo and Kira's first meeting:

Odo: Pretty girl like you shouldn't be eating alone.
Kira: I don't do whatever it is you want, not for money, not for food.

Classic Scene:

The final scene is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series, a perfect island of reluctant truths and wrenching realizations that fades away in unresolved silence.

Sexually Slanted Line 'O the Episode:

"I can do it in ten seconds!" --Rom...hey, that's nothing to brag about, pal.

The O/K Status Report

Phew. This episode is the ICBM for the Odo/Kira relationship, the one that started it all. The friendship had been alluded to and visible in prior episodes, of course, but the fact that the writers chose to have an episode that was devoted to it (because really, though the murder mystery is the framework, it's really about them) was already an indication that they considered the relationship an important one. What developed because of it was unexpected, but would provide fodder for many a future episode, most of them quite good and some of them extremely good. This relationship, even it hadn't ripened into romance (which it has), constitutes a large part of the show's emotional/personal core, and one of the things that distinguishes DS9 in my opinion is its willingness to concentrate on interpersonal relationships...their ups and downs, their consequences and their rewards and the unanticipated twists they can take. Necessary Evil is a prime example of this, and it set into motion a series of events between these two characters that would eventually culiminate in something never before seen on Trek...a solid, mature, mutually respectful love affair that has its roots in long-standing friendship. In other words, a realistic relationship.

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