Character – The first sign that Dax is the biggest gossip this side of the Alpha Quadrant, taking Odo into her confidence against his will and forcing him to listen to all the latest goings on on the station. He pretends that he is appalled by her behaviour but I think he secretly loves hearing this stuff.
Odo has come to the Gamma Quadrant hoping to learn something of his origins…be careful what you wish for Constable. Ultimately, he does learn something very profound and disturbing about his people but he only learns that it is relevant in hindsight after discovering who the Dominion are in the next season. This show reveals that it is playing a long game with this character. Lysia Arlan is mentioned here and how Dax thinks she fancies Odo. We meet her later in Broken Link and she makes her advances perfectly clear.
Sisko does that thing that all Dads tend to do and that is to assume that their children are going to follow in their footsteps. He thinks Jake is just a work-shy whiny bitch rather than recognising that his son has other career aspirations in mind.
We learn a little about O’Brien’s Dad and to this day it seems bizarre that after 13 odd seasons on Trek that we never got to meet his folks, not even at his wedding.
Kira has an interesting approach to her spiritual wellbeing, jumping the bones of a Priest.
Performance – You have three gorgeous performances from the main characters featured in the Gamma Quadrant plot; Kenneth Mars provides a quirky and funny Colyus, Kenneth Tobey adds weight and gravity to the plot as the grumpy and ultimately tragic Rurigan and in a rare win for child actors Noley Thornton has an excellent rapport with Rene Auberjonois as Taya. As a result it is one of the better populated alien worlds on Trek. Watch Auberjonois as he plays his scenes with Thorton. He’s immediately more childlike and gentler.
Great Dialogue – ‘What happened to your face?’ ‘Nothing happened to my face, I happen to be a shapeshifter. I just don’t do faces very well.’
Production – The great Star Trek interior exterior set makes another reappearance with a minimal redress. I think you could probably trace how many episodes took place on this piece of set (you know, the one with a the huge stair case and multiple levels) and bask in the comforting glow of its repetition. I think it can be traced back to season three of TNG and forward as far as Voyager season four. On DS9 it featured more memorably in Children of Time.
Best moment – You might think pairing up Odo with a twee little girl would be the most agonising television of all time but instead it works a treat, with both characters coming away from the experience better off. Taya finds out the truth about her disappearing mother and learns to trust strangers and Odo softens considerably in her presence. The moment when he turns into a spinning top to make her smile makes your heart melt because this really is out of character for Odo but he wanted to do something special for her.
The moment that really counts is when Odo digs deep to find out just how much Rurigan cares about his fake community. They are real to him and you really feel it in that moment.
Worst moment – Given that this is a story about 22 missing people it hardly feels like an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. Instead it is pitched at such an effervescent level that it would have been wrong had the reason for their vanishing had been anything other than malfunctioning equipment.
I wish they hadn’t done that – Bariel is handsome but he is literally the dullest man ever to have set foot on the station. I wish they had paired Kira up with somebody a little more exciting.
You might think that Odo and Dax would jump immediately to the ‘this is a holographic programme’ explanation given that they handle that kind of technology all of the time. But that would deny us the very cool moment when Taya’s arm vanishes and we realise for ourselves. It makes the characters look a little dim to allow us to have that moment and the mystery beforehand. There isn’t the time to explore the existential crisis that discovering that your entire colony is a holographic. It’s merely a case of ‘oh well, I guess we’ll have to get used to it’ which seems especially glib to me. The point is to show the lengths the Dominion will go to punish people who disobey them rather than to provide a gripping citation on the epistemological nature of life.
A reason to watch this episode again – A sweet piece, which is far more relevant in plot terms than it appeared to be at the time (both in terms of Odo’s origins and the Dominion war plot). This is one of those adventures that DS9 could have in the Gamma Quadrant before the Dominion plot kicked in, one where the stakes aren’t really that high but the interaction between the characters is enjoyable. Three plots adorn Shadowplay and that was probably a wise move because whilst the primary story is amiable enough, I would suggest it isn’t meaty enough to sustain an episode on its own. Instead this bounces between Dax and Odo’s investigations in the gamma Quadrant, Quark trying to distract Kira so he can get away with criminal activities and Jake deciding that he doesn’t want to join Starfleet. Rather wonderfully this adds depth to Odo (who learns how far his people are willing to go), Kira (who is in a relationship with Bariel from this point on) and Jake (who would go on to become a reporter on the back of his confession here). This won’t go down as one of the DS9 big hitters but it doesn’t do anything wrong and for all its character significance actually provides a really entertaining time.
***1/2 out of *****
Clue for the next episode:
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