“Field of Fire”

Oh,the people on the pictures are smiling! - It MUST be a Vulcan! Hmmm. Yea - I suppose so... WHY?? Am I the only one to find this deduction unbelievable?

One other tiny complaint: What are 900 Starfleet Officers doing on Deep Space Nine? First: In the beginning of the series it seemed that there was a Starfleet crew of about three dozends (look for example at "The Siege").
Second: Why should the Chief of Operations be an enlisted man, when there are Lt. Commanders running around the station. Or why is Lt.(JG) Dax a Senior Officer and that killed Lt. Commander isn't? Phil Farrand would definetely call this a "Changed Premise"

The big issue I have here is that Jadzia had apparently come to terms with Joran previous to this (remember her embracing him?) so the whole idea that his memories are simply repressed is a bit fake to me.

While some of the criticisms (especially Brian's) are definitely right, I think the episode, as seen on its own, still deserved the three stars it originally got.

A bit dull and unbelievable. Once it was known the vulcan had the rifle the correct thing to do would have been to call security. Shooting the gun itself would have been the next thing to do. Calling the infirmary without calling for security as well seemed illogical as well. 2 stars

I actually really like this episode and aside from the murder mystery is that the writers avoided the obvious. The obvious being that I thought for sure that the killer was somehow going to be related to Joran, a kind of sub-conscience kind of think. I also feel the twist making a vulcan the killer was a big surprise.

I liked this one too- a nice sci-fi meets murder-mystery fulcrum to swing on. It certainly deserved more stars than the execrable 'Prodigal Daughter'. That said, Ezri's final conclusion was pretty racist.

I generally liked this episode, except for one tiny fact: the way Joran behaves as he "counsels" Ezri is more indicative of a serial killer than someone who killed a mere 3 people.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to devalue the life of 3 persons (within the story's context), but Joran evokes imagery such as the "hunt", "become the killer", "enjoy it" etc. while talking to Ezri, and this approach seems to contradict the character's backstory as he is presented to us in "Equilibrium" through Jadzia Dax. As Jammer says, we're far from the "ultimate evil" that "Field of Fire" wants us to imagine, and I too seem to remember that only one person was killed in "Equilibrium". Perhaps Joran had time to kill two more people during the time he was joined?

Also, the device used by Ezri / the killer to see through walls is not only very convenient for the purposes of the story, but too good of a gimmick to only make its appearance as late as Season 7. I know I'm nitpicking, but a thing like that would have been useful in MANY of DS9's past reconnaissance missions.

Nutshell: The Silence of the Trills. I always thought of Joran as more of an obsessed Trill than a psychotic killer.

I can't get over Joran's character assassination. In "Equilibrium", Joran was a troubled musician who had been joined and wasn't supposed to be, who killed the doctor who recommended he be removed from consideration for joining! And the way it was described seemed to describe it as second degree murder (as opposed to premeditated). Now suddenly he's a practiced serial killer who can identify other killers just by looking at their eyes! Wolfe is a great writer, but he doesn't seem to understand that not all killers are 'inherently evil', some just lost their self-control due to extenuating circumstances. And I agree with Destructor, Ezri's conclusion that the killer must be a Vulcan is far-fetched and racist. Between this and "Take Me Out to the Holosuite", Vulcans seem to have been singled out for species-bashing this season... truly the total antithesis of what Star Trek should be.

I suspect that the Vulcan-bashing has to do with the fact that Vulcans are the most Trekkian of aliens and therefore in the DS9 Universe must be destroyed...

I don't really see why your being a sucker for homicide investigations makes this episode any good. I'm not saying it's that bad, but why should anyone's personal tastes influence his take on a show's quality.

I suppose it was supposed to be a chance for Ezri to be anything other than bright, chipper and nauseating...eh 2 stars maybe?

Yeah, the Joran characterization was the most blatant case of rewriting history Trek had until Star Trek: Nemesis came along and presented Picard as suddenly being everbald, even at 22.

I agree with roughly half the previous comments. The Joran re-characterization was terrible, the anti-smiling Vulcan theory was laughable, and, as always, I wanted Nicole de Boer to stop talking. 1.5* at best.

@Jay :

I agree that Nemesis was an atrocity and all but destroyed the TNG cast, but changing a character's coiffure of the past is not characterisation. Such minutiæ are part and parcel of storytelling which lasts for so many years in the genre of television.

@ Elliott

I didn't say it was a characterization change, I said it was a historical rewrite...

@ Marco


Agreed, and in fact any episode which introduces a device for the sake of its own plot contrivance (like this stealth firearm) whose mere presence would actually have enormous repercussions in the greater universal setting beyond the one episode automatically has the effect of rendering said episode about a two and a half star ceiling.

@Elliott, that's right. With the Vulcans' violent history and connection to Romulans a Vulcan murderer is SO completely out of the realm of possibility that it's insulting. It's all part of the DS9 writers' insidious plan to systematically dismantle everything Star Trek stands for.

You REALLY need to get over it.

In every other series (except ENT), Vulcan's and their culture are treated with respect, even awe by humans. In DS9, they are frequently ridiculed, at odds with members of the main cast and characterised as nothing but ignorant know-it-alls. I would call that enough of a trend to question its motivation. If it were here and nowhere else, an anomaly. In a series which is in many respects more careful than any of the others to be consistent in its continuity and purposeful with its plots, that's the best conclusion I can come up with--if you have a better one, let's hear it.

I hate ds9 take on Vulcans.

A boring filler

Elliot, I would offer Voyager as picking apart what we were led to believe about Vulcans. In the first episode, Tuvok is undercover as a Maquis. Chakotay challenges him on the Vulcans Can't Lie motif, but Tuvok basically says "it's okay because I was doing my job."

In a later episode Tuvok disobeys Janeway and helps Torres buy a device that might get them home. He explains that it was logical to disobey her. Janeway's comeback is "you can use logic to justify anything."

Enterprise of course took Archer's prejudice that all Vulcans are arrogant pricks and made it a racial trait.

I thought "Take Me Out..." took it a bit far with Starfleet allowing an all Vulcan crew led by an obviously racist Vulcan, but DS9 wasn't the only series to take exception with the TOS/TNG build up of the Vulcan culture.

I actually like Ezri, but a THIRD Ezri episode in a row? Seriously?!

This episode creates so many new Star Trek truths and forgets so many more that it might as well be a Voyager episode.

Most of all being...um...why is Joran nothing like Joran?! We saw him in Equilibrium, when Jadzia hugged him. He had black hair and a round baby face. Then we heard him speak in Facets, when Sisko allows him to take over his body. He's got a distinct inflection; a high-pitched, lilting, musical, crazy-person way of talking. And that was a ridiculously chilling scene Avery Brooks treated us to! With Joran banging his head against the force field, all while smiling that wack-job smile. So, how in the world is this nearly-blond, angular, even-keeled, deep-and-mellow-voiced dude supposed to be Joran?!

If that were the worst thing about the episode, I wouldn't be complaining so much. But it's just the kind of lazy writing/casting that pisses me off so much I can't shut up about it. If there's any group in the world that you can't pull crap like that on, it's Star Trek fans.

Upon rewatch, I've discovered why I can't stand Ezri. It's because she's being forced. A THIRD Ezri centric episode, not even halfway through the final season. We didn't even need another Dax, but forcing upon the viewer like this is annoying as hell.

That said, this episode is actually okay. The best Ezri episode by far IMO, but it would have been so much better if it Prodigal Daughter didn't exist (which was a completely unnecessary episode).

Whilst I enjoyed the scene where O'Brien demonstrates the rifle's abilities against that melon, each time I see it, I find it absurd that Odo puts on the saftey goggles. He's a shapeshifter, they're not real eyes! And if he needs protection, he can just morph his own goggles on =P

Meh... 2 stars. Maybe. I actually liked "Prodigal Daughter" better than this, believe it or not. Also, at this point the screen time really should have been used for something with more impact, instead of serving us yet another mediocre filler episode. Too bad.

Trek doesn't do murder mysteries all that well usually. So for a murder mystery, it was pretty good. Otherwise, very middle of the road.

I'd give this one two stars at most. The way she came to the conclusion that the murderer was a Vulcan was stupid. People tend to smile when taking a photo. How is that any kind of lead?

The episode was okay. Not good.

I actually enjoy this episode, as far as Trek murder mysteries go. One thing that bugs me is the way Joran "functions". If he's a projection of her subconscious, how does he look at a photo behind Ezri and say Bolian kids are ugly? As in, he's wandering the room behind her, looking at things she can't see and commenting on them. Not sure a projection does that.

Maybe that's too literal, maybe as a projection of her subconscious, Ezri did notice the photo as she walked in and Joran appearing to "examine" it was her subconscious mind taking note of a fleeting detail she glanced at. Sort of.

Also I'm not one to notice music much...not Trek music anyway, it's just this sort of blurry ambient horn sound that drones on in the background usually before rising before a commercial break, but in this episode I thought it was quite effective.

Two and a half seems accurate, very slightly above average.

Man, I can't believe people dislike Ezri so much!? I think she's a interesting take on the Dax character, and believably scattered considering she was never meant to be joined.

She has a very different personality from Jadzia--I dunno, to me the character is a refreshing change from most Trek characters, who (let's face it) are usually pretty sure of themselves.

That said, I agree with all the complaints about this episode. I enjoyed it, but the Vulcan deduction is a huge stretch.

And since I've never commented before, and probably won't again, I just want to say.... Jammer, this is my first time watching DS9, and I've really enjoyed reading your reviews after every episode.

The Ezri hate in the comments on this site is misleading. I do know that for a time there was a hater going from page to page -- using different names, no less; I know because I can see the IP addresses -- hating on Ezri just because. It was childish and annoying and the sort of thing that gives fanboys a bad name, but what you gonna do. So bear that in mind when you see it.

@Jammer, wow, that really sucks!

@JustinS, I think that the deck was a little stacked against Ezri to begin with. Introducing a new character in the last season of a show rarely leads to that character being welcome. Ezri's job as counselor was also a position that didn't really *need* to be filled on the show (which had gone six years without one), and Ezri stories pretty much by necessity distracted from the main story arcs that fans were interested in. Plus because she was Dax she was measured against Jadzia, and Terry Farrell had had six years to get comfortable with that role.

I think I enjoyed Ezri well enough but didn't find her thrilling. Her speech about the Klingon Empire in "Tacking Into the Wind" was excellent and something that only she could really have given -- no one else was in a position to speak both with the authority of someone with real knowledge and experience with Klingons and with the view of a jaundiced outsider. The various relationship stories seemed fairly irrelevant though. I am by no means against Trek romances, but romances work best when they reveal new dimensions to characters (such as Odo/Kira in "Chimera," and I believe Worf/Dax generally did; Torres/Paris did on Voyager); Bashir and Ezri getting together didn't reveal anything about them because there was never any time to know what that relationship meant to them besides them liking each other (and the question of whether Julian's affections were transplanted directly from Jadzia to Ezri and the unexamined implications of that). So I think Ezri was fairly ill-served story-wise and came in at the wrong time in the show to find her own new niche.

Good episode. I don't get the Ezri hate, but then I didn't get all the Jadzia love either. She was a boring, badly-acted supergenius; DS9's Wesley Crusher.

"I don't really see why your being a sucker for homicide investigations makes this episode any good. I'm not saying it's that bad, but why should anyone's personal tastes influence his take on a show's quality."

Sometimes I wonder if Elliott actually reads what he writes.

I'm really not sure what the purpose of recasting Joran Dax from an effeminate late-20s creep to a 50-something Mitt Romney/Hannibal Lecter type was, but it didn't improve my impression of Nicole de Boer's Ezri Dax ONE. LITTLE. BIT. All this episode accomplished was to force me to compare Ms. de Boer to Jodie Foster and, if that was the intent, it was a really, really, REALLY bad idea. I'd bet serious money that Jodie Foster has had ingrown toenails excised that were more talented actors than Nicole de Boer.

It's really funny because I watched this something like 12 years ago and I remembered this as part of the episode where Kira's past enemy kills a bunch of her past associates.

And reading the comments of many here, it suddenly clicked.

Why are Ezri's memories inconsistent with Jadzia's?

Memory is easily distorted.

As much as I hated the previous episode, it's probably noteworthy that this Joran looks an awful lot like her brother, who was recently discovered to be a killer. Ezri probably never actually saw Joran and could easily have mixed the two.

How can the projection of Joran be able to process something that Ezri isn't looking at? He lives inside her memories. It's well known that the mind can see and capture images subconsciously far more comprehensively than the conscious mind can access them. They did studies on fighter pilots and their ability to identify planes when flashed an image in a tiny fraction of a second. I recently saw a documentary on robots that explored this and found that the eye can detect a single frame showing an animal of 100 pictures flashed in a second. This is because the brain processes 'important' images (animals and other perceived threats as well as human faces) with a special processor.

It's not really unrealistic to assume that as Ezri was wandering through and processing with her conscious, Joran was processing information as it passed into her memory.

It kinda fits.

Given the memorable nature of the weapon (the only thing I really remembered after 12 years) and some of the better moments (Worf), I quite enjoyed this one.

@JimmyDee, I love the idea of Ezri projecting something of her brother-the-killer brother onto Joran. I don't know whether the episode bears this out, but it's a very clever and original take on the episode.

Far too much focus on the subpar character of Ezri Dax in season 7.

3/10

Funny. I thought the Ezri hate here seemed excessive, and now we know why. Thanks Jammer. xD

But on to the show! There are obvious problems with this one, even if you're watching for mere entertainment and not intellectual stimulation. For one thing, why does Sisko give Ezri the power to independently conduct a murder investigation? Why her and not someone who specializes in it? Why not have her simply assist Odo? If Sisko thought one of her previous hosts being a killer would give her an edge, he definitely should have said so. Another problem is Joran himself. I thought he killed in a fit of rage, not in the cold, calculated manner of a serial killer--but that would have limited his usefulness here. And Ezri can see Joran, but as far as anyone else on the station knows, she's just standing around talking to herself in public. Obviously they notice this (Quark, the Vulcan, a woman who walked by), so why doesn't anyone ask her about it? I guess they couldn't very well report it to the station counselor. :D

I can take all of these issues in stride, though, because quite frankly I love this episode. It might go down as one of my favorites. Ezri's investigation is interesting, and her violent assault and near-stabbing of a bigger, stronger suspect was refreshingly extreme, a sign of how Joran was getting to her. After that she begins to take better control of him, and by the end of the episode he's deferring to her instead of trying to take over. Another thing I didn't predict was that the Vulcan would target Ezri herself (don't ask me why, as she didn't fit his M.O. and he had no good reason to think she was on to him) forcing her to get him before he got her. Now that was a hell of an ending.

Like 'The Emperor's New Cloak', this episode also highlights that deBoer is a better actress when she's restrained and serious. After her mercenarial jaunt in the mirror universe, she said she wished she could play that character every week--and here she got another opportunity to explore her dark side.
Joran: "You won't be able to forget me, or bury me as deeply as Curzon and Jadzia did. I'm part of you now. As much as Audrid, Torias...any of them."
Ezri: "I'll have to be careful."
I hope she's not TOO careful. I like this side of Ezri.

Dumb premise, but not worse than usual Dax's episodes. Jadzia's included. In fact, that DS9 does not know how to portray Vulcans, it seems more than clear at this point.

Was on the fence on this episode up until they both looked at each other through the x-ray sights. I would've loved to see an Oh Shit expression on the vulcan's face as he saw that Ezri was looking at him with the exact same gun. Can you imagine looking through a sniper rifle to see someone else looking at you as well?

@ Justin :

As further evidence of what Vulcans mean to the franchise and why DS9's (and Abrams' later on) take on them is so subversive, check out the dialogue from the end of TNG's "Unification"--Spock points out how Vulcan-like Picard's behaviour is and in the end tells Picard that the Romulan people are on an "inexorable" path to a Vulcan philosophy. From the beginning, Vulcans have represented the ideal to which one must strive. Sela says she hates Vulcans for their logic and arrogance and I think the DS9 writing staff felt similarly. The Vulcan race was the embodiment of Gene's ideal philosophy, and those with different views inevitably mistake this for arrogance as it is a direct threat to a more conservative point of view. By making DS9's representative Vulcans (as I remember them) 1. a thief, 2. petty racists who hold grudge matches on the holodeck and finally, 3. a psychopathic murderer, this central ethos is effectively subverted.

Imperfect but moderately diverting attempt at CSI:DS9, the premise is obviously lifted from the Farsight weapon in the N64 game "Perfect Dark" but was interesting enough. 2.5 stars out of 5 for me.

I agree with Dusty's comments about Nicole DeBoer in 'The Emperors New Cloak' - she looked a lot more comfortable out of character in the mirror universe than in character.

@eastwest101: It rips off a game that wasn't released until the following year? That's futurism!

@Elliott: Are imperfect Vulcans subversive? Or an embodiment of the "infinite diversity" they, the Vulcans, supposedly value most? If anything, it's a repudiation of the species essentialism that is rampant throughout Trek.

Also, your list of DS9's defective Vulcans omits the Saratoga captain seen in "Emissary," who was probably, like, a registered sex offender or compulsive gambler or something.

Vulcans the embodiment of Gene's ideal philosophy? Where does that interpretation come from? Certainly not from the Original Trek where we're bludgeoned again and again with the message that the ideal towards which the humanity ought to strive is neither uber-logic (Spock) nor uber-emotion (McCoy) but rather a synthesis of both (Kirk).

In TNG that approach got somewhat modified because the show wasn't as allegorical as TOS which really relished the morality play setup. But even in TNG Vulcans were hardly given the position of some "ideal humans" we're all evolve into down the line. Let's be honest, Vulcans were barely present in TNG.

"Silence of the trill"

I'nora, ja'kala vok 'za Ezri. Zhian'tara rek pora'al Zheem Dax tanas rhem Joran. 'za Ezri tanas rhem Joran. Vok Ezri, Joran tanas rhem.Tu Dax noh zhian 'vok j'zui. Joran rhem tanas Ezri.

(burp)

I guess that the "Zhian'tara" or the Guardian isn't needed anymore.

(burp)

Vulan's smiling

(burp)

Zero Stars.

TR-116: Prototype, then ABANDONDED? Yeah, right. What a weapon! Can you say "assasination?" Fire from concealment, no energy discharge? And range limited by transporter? (Why is being on Bajor -- the guy Ezri almost stabbed -- an alibi?) The defensive advantage of firing while completely concealed gives it a huge advantage over a phaser in a straight-up firefight. Maybe Section 31 forced it to be "abandonded".

Um... I like Ezri, and I liked this episode. But, given where the series is, can we focus on someone other than Ezri for a while?

@Elliott
So, all other Trek (execept ENT) treat Vulcans with awe, so DS9 must be the anomaly? ENT and DS9 represent (by series) 40% of Trek. And, as pointed out above, Kirk (human) is the ideal of TOS. So, we've got:
2 series Vulcans thumbs up (TNG, Voy)
1 series Vulcans neutral (TOS)
2 series Vulcans thumbs down (ENT, DS9)
(though I hated what ENT did to Vulcans)
Hardly evidence to consider DS9 "subversive", or to say that Vulcans were Gene's ideal.
(BTW, who gives a flying f**** what's Gene's vision was? For a fairly obvious agnostic, when did Gene become god?)
One REAL fault with Trek is that other species are pretty one-dimensional: Ferengi are greedy, Klingons war like, Romulans treacherous, and Vulcans logical. It's an improvement to see some non-logical Vulcans for a change. Why does DS9 focus on the non-logical Vulcans? It makes good TV.

My 2 cents about Vulcans on DS9

1) I liked Sakonna and Quark from "The Maquis" episodes. Voyager made it painfully clear that nobody considers a Vulcan maquis to be weird (else Starfleet's choice of putting Tuvok undercover on Chakotay's ship would be the stupidest undercover operation in Trek history), so I don't actually think Sakonna is subversive unless Voyager is as well. And she's a thief? So what? As DS9 makes clear "freedom fighters" do illegal things for good reasons. We're meant to side with the Bajoran resistance and against the Maquis, but they both see themselves as freedom fighters.

2) The Vulcan captain from "Take Me Out" was a Vulcan supremacist. The idea of a Vulcan who thinks Vulcans are superior is really not that weird given the cannon material. This episode would have played less racistly weird if he was not in Starfleet though. I liked the episode but it bothered me that Starfleet allows an all Vulcan crew like that. I'd have preferred a different backstory than meeting at the academy and a Vulcan science ship or something. It would have been more palatable to me.

3) I think this episode was kind of sucky, we really didn't need the can of worms this gun opens up, the extra Ezri episode, the out-of-character take on Joran, etc. But the Vulcan wasn't really a problem. Vulcans can experience PTSD and Vulcans can certainly go nuts and have emotions (see every third Tuvok episode :P).

I can see how Vulcan villains being a pattern on DS9 might seem intentional, but I think 3 in over 150 episodes may just be coincidental. Although there were 2 this season. But scratching this episode would have helped a great number of issues this season, so I'm in favor.

Robert: "...it bothered me that Starfleet allows an all Vulcan crew like that."

When an all-Vulcan crew on a Starfleet ship was first mentioned in TOS "The Immunity Syndrome," I figured it was some sort of subcontracting or whatnot. Like, Russia is a partner in the ISS, but Russia could still fly all-Russian crews. Or, more directly parallel, NASA could borrow a Soyuz to fly an all-American crew.

@Grumpy - That makes sense, but Solok was in the Academy with Sisko and is definitely an officer. So there's no subcontracting from the Vulcans there. Unless he's in charge of a subcontracted Vulcan ship?

@zzybaloobah, et al.:

The S7 Vulcan baddies weren't portrayed as villains who happened to be Vulcan, but villains *because* they were Vulcan. The animosity in the writing stemmed directly from what the Vulcan people, as an analogy for a type of human (which you pointed out is true of basically all Trek aliens. More on that in a moment), represent.

Spock, Sarek, Tuvok and the reformist Vulcans from ENT S4 were never portrayed as arrogant the way Solok was. Arrogance, recall, is an emotion. Non-Vulcan characters have often mistaken Vulcan logic for arrogance (Bones, Neelix). Perrin remarks in "Sarek" that she is impressed that Picard does not make this mistake, a condonation of his attitude and perspective. In "Unification," Spock comments to Data that Picard is himself remarkably Vulcan-like. And recall that Robert also made the mistake of considering his brother to be arrogant in "Family."

In the transition from the TOS era to the TNG, the writers very carefully carved out a place for the Vulcan philosophy as a kind of benchmark of humanoid progress (TMP being the Apollo to TWoK's Dionysus). This benchmark sits right alongside the idealism of the non-religious, non-capitalist society humanity is supposed to have achieved by the 24th century. DS9 was in the habit of wiping its ass with this idealism, and that practice goes hand in hand with its treatment of Vulcans.

As for Paul M.'s "[T]he ideal towards which the humanity ought to strive is neither uber-logic (Spock) nor uber-emotion (McCoy) but rather a synthesis of both (Kirk)," I find this rather dubious. If by "synthesis," he means dialectical synthesis, Spock is himself a synthesis of two antithetical philosophies, is he not? And most of the time, Spock's perspective is clearly in the right; Bones has to be handled by Kirk as a kind of mediator, but it's rare that Spock's logic fails him where Bones' emotions do not. If by "synthesis," he means the more common "combination," one cannot combine two elements if they are "uber," that is, entirely. I think it's unfair to judge Spock or McCoy as being extremists in their positions as logical or emotional. All the Big Three showed nuance and temperament in their approaches.

TOS' overarching narrative relies heavily on exploiting Kirk's flaws, so how can he be the "ideal human"?

As for your proportioning out thumbs up or down based on series percentiles, I can't say much more than it's incredibly reductionist and inaccurate, if for no other reason than the shows ran for different lengths of time. AND the shows had vastly differing references to Vulcans or Vulcan characters.

DS9 had its own agenda, but given episodes like "In the Cards," "Rapture," "The Siege of AR3.14...," "Covenant," "In the Hands of the Prophets" and others, it's reasonable to extrapolate an over-arching anti-Trek philosophy which emerges. These Vulcan episodes fit right with that.

Races/species in Star Trek are "hat races" on purpose because aliens were always meant to represent different facets of humanity, politically, ethically, historically. "Bad guys" (Klingons, Romulans, the Borg, Cardassians) possess, as a people, qualities which should be repudiated, whereas the "good guys" (Vulcans) possess, again as a people, qualities which should be emulated. The majority of Trek races are given this one note, usually bad, to stage the Morality Play. A few, like the Klingons and the Vulcans, are given enough development to explore the issues in more complex ways. There are indeed good and bad sides to Honour and Logic which are worth exploring.

@Elliott - The one in Field of Fire was a villain because he was Vulcan, but he was also suffering from some kind of extreme PTSD. VOY made it clear that Vulcans HAVE emotions, they just suppress them well. And Tuvok has made it very, very clear that if he ever lost control the result would be intense. I don't like Field of Fire, but given what I would imagine Tuvok with PTSD to look like it doesn't seem like a negative portrayal of Vulcans.

Likewise Sakonna, as I said, is a villain that just HAPPENS to be Vulcan. And she's only a villain because we're supposed to be for the Bajoran resistance but against the Maquis. I always felt that, prior to Eddington, the Maquis were grey villains, as opposed to black ones.

You have a point with Solok of course, but... I don't know. I guess I just don't see it as being as subversive as you think it is. Yes, Solok is arrogant. In my post above I said specifically that a Vulcan who thinks Vulcans are superior would not be particularly problematic in cannon. A Vulcan experience arrogance as an emotion? I could see that being problematic. The all Vulcan crew on a Starfleet ship strikes me as a poor idea too. The fact that I liked nearly everything else about the episode lets me largely overlook it, but I think this episode is problematic.

That said, a young Tuvok experiences emotions (love) and needs to go train with a master to "fix it". The problem with Solok is that without much of a backstory or getting to know the character he just seems to be a Vulcan that is too emotional. Which isn't great, but it's not as bad as the all Vulcan ship.

Elliott:

"Races/species in Star Trek are "hat races" on purpose because aliens were always meant to represent different facets of humanity, politically, ethically, historically. "Bad guys" (Klingons, Romulans, the Borg, Cardassians) possess, as a people, qualities which should be repudiated, whereas the "good guys" (Vulcans) possess, again as a people, qualities which should be emulated. The majority of Trek races are given this one note, usually bad, to stage the Morality Play. A few, like the Klingons and the Vulcans, are given enough development to explore the issues in more complex ways. There are indeed good and bad sides to Honour and Logic which are worth exploring."

This is a pretty succinct explanation of why alien races (and the stories based on them) in most of Trek are simplistic slush. DS9 is the strongest show overall because it recognizes and avoids these storytelling gaffes.

Solok's fixation on humiliating Sisko is illogical though.

I dunno. I wouldn't describe Spock and Sarek as arrogant. However, TOS does portray them at times in negative lights as being stubborn and pigheaded. "Journey to Babel," after all, is Sarek's only appearance in TOS proper, and we learn that he essentially cut off contact with Spock for choosing Starfleet. There are quite a few elements of the Vulcans in TOS that were taken from a certain old-school Jewish culture, as Nimoy has attested at length, and this story has a lot in common with the "The Jazz Singer" (or, if you prefer, The Simpsons' "Like Father, Like Clown")-type story of a rabbi's son choosing a profession he deems unworthy of him and thus cutting off contact. This is not strictly logical, though Sarek frames it as such: his son has disappointed him, and therefore until his son redeems himself in his eyes it is proper parenting to shun him; or, rather, it is logical in that it follows from Sarek's core assumptions, but those assumptions override what should be bigger axioms: that his son doing good in the world is something to be applauded rather than shunned.

Spock does go out of his way to make fun of his human costars pretty often, in what I think goes beyond "yes I think that emotionalism is a poor way of making decisions" and into the occasional pettiness. I think in Spock's case, it's really because his proximity to humans makes it difficult for him to fully separate from them, and his difficulty reconciling his human side makes him want to point out his differences as often as possible. That said, I do think Spock is shown to be more frequently in the right than McCoy is, and less frequently led astray. I think Spock's biggest weaknesses are an occasional lack of imagination in comparison to Kirk and, especially, poor PR. Spock doesn't manage his image well when he's in command, which fails to induce confidence in his officers. This failing is only a problem when one is dealing with other emotional races, however.

I guess to continue: while Enterprise and the Abrams films (well, 2009 anyway, I haven't seen Into Darkness still) really do go to extremes in terms of portraying Vulcans as closed-minded and bigoted, there is a little more original series-era justification. Star Trek: The Animated Series is generally considered not to be canon, but "Yesteryear," Dorothy Fontana's Spock time travel story, is a pretty big influence I think, one which gets a canon name-drop in "Unification" IIRC. I know this because when I was younger I had the Star Trek Encyclopedia and it considered that episode canon and no others, because, you know, huge dork. But anyway, the episode does have the other Vulcan children ostracizing Spock pretty heavily, even though it's TOS era. Fontana is basically the expert on TOS Vulcans -- maybe the biggest creative voice besides Nimoy's in terms of fleshing out Spock from Roddenberry's very rough original conception.

None of that means that Solok or the "Field of Fire" guy are really particularly precedented, which they aren't. Spock was meant to be a hero and is ultimately both TOS' arguably biggest breakout character and is also someone whose qualities are much more frequently admirable than not.

The thing is, Vulcans being unethical do have TOS precedent, in T'Pring's chessmaster maneuvering in "Amok Time," which Spock compliments at the end as flawlessly logical. While she breaks no laws, T'Pring's use of Spock's emotional frenzy and Vulcan rituals to get the lover she wants is some coldblooded calculation playing with life and death. It also is something that would be unnecessary if it weren't for the extreme ritualistic nature of Vulcan marriage, bonding etc., which apparently does not permit escape, partly because of the intense, overwhelming mating urge which Vulcan ritual just barely holds in.

So, you know, I do think a Vulcan either acting as genius chessmaster, letting people die for personal gain, is precedented, as is Vulcans in emotional amok mode when their defenses shut down. I think in that sense the Vulcan killer in "Field of Fire" sort of almost works. He is coldly logical in his approach and attack and emotional in his motivations -- PTSD as Robert said.

However, I do think the episode places the blame on his Vulcanness. He wanted to kill people because he hates emotion!!!! Really? Rather than showing complexity in a race, this takes one trait associated with the race and magnifies it out of proportion, moving from disdain for personal emotion to killing happy people. Because logic demanded it, is his reasoning, because Vulcans like logic, right? It's not the main point of the episode so whatever, I guess.

Just watched this one. It worked, I suppose, but I didn't find it all that compelling either as a mystery or as an(other) Ezri episode. Not sure we need more of her at this point anyway.

I'm with Jammer in that I thought Joran had only killed his teacher, not two others. In "Facets" Joran was played as a crazy man, so I guess with this episode the Crazy-Joran evidence outnumbers the Eccentric-Joran from "Equilibrium".

I wasn't big on the episode's solution either. The jump to determining the killer was Vulcan seemed contrived in that This-Alien-Race-Represents-This kind of way. Painfully obvious but ultimately nothing is even done with it outside of TV show motivations. And why did that ensign hit Ezri? Isn't it better to just go with Odo and let them find you innocent (which they do) instead of risking court martial by striking another officer? They aren't on Cardassia ffs. Ugh.

I did like the scene on the darkened promenade with Worf and Ezri. He seems protective in a way. Some could read it as creepy but I think we know Worf well enough that that isn't the case.

2-1/2 stars. The extra star being there just because it's all forgettable rather than terrible. I don't recommend this one but I won't actively suggest skipping it, either.

@$G :

"This is a pretty succinct explanation of why alien races (and the stories based on them) in most of Trek are simplistic slush. DS9 is the strongest show overall because it recognizes and avoids these storytelling gaffes."

Mmmm..no, I don't think so. That "simplistic slush" is actually the way myths are told (I've gone on before about how Trek is really a kind of TV mythology more than it is your standard Sci-fi). In myths, different supernatural creatures or gods are metaphorical representations of facets of human psychology, precisely because myth is the ancient method of arresting human nature. Trek is very similar in its handling of alien races--the names of the original Trek aliens (Vulcans and Romulans) should be a clue as to the thinking here.

This was a add some value to Ezri episode, or find her something to do episode. Didn't work for me.

"I'm really not sure what the purpose of recasting Joran Dax from an effeminate late-20s creep to a 50-something Mitt Romney/Hannibal Lecter type was."

Same here. I much preferred Equilibrium's depiction of a temperamental, slightly imbalanced Joran - not to mention Jeff Magnus McBride was much better looking, and - this may sound odd - he looked a lot more similar to Jadzia and Ezri, which lent him more credibility.

@Vii, I had to laugh at your post, it was funny, I felt very much like you did inre: Joran. I didn't feel he was effeminate but young and disturbed. You got it dead on the money about the 50-something Mitt Romney/Hannibal Lecter type.

I am not an Ezri hater but I felt they needed more time than they had to develop the character. I am not a good one to comment on her since it took me 3 seasons to like Kira and 6 seasons to like Julian, never liked Quark and half the time liked Odo. The only characters that I liked from the beginning to the end were Jake, Ben, Nog, Miles and Jadzia. I Liked Worf from season 4 on.

To be honest with you, Afterimage and this ep are the only two times Ezri was ever tolerable to me.

It makes me wonder what could have been done to handle Ferrel's departure, cause after all is said and done, no, ultimately I don't think Ezri was the answer. Maybe bring in Odan from TNG? I understand they didn't want to lose the momentum and connections built up over six years, but what we got instead was something of a mess.

Everything about this episode was horribad!

It was known that Season 7 was going to be the last. Why the hell would they spend so much of it introducing a quasi-new character?!? That's why nobody like Ezri: she took so much time away from the established, beloved characters.

So now we get a whodunnit and it's not Odo who's investigating, it's Ezri. For no apparent reason. She herself tells Sisko that she's no expert in criminal psychology. She's barely a capable counselor...

The moment the new character was the center of attention at Quark's bar, I turned to my girlfriend and said, "Dead by the end of the episode!"
Was there any point in wasting three minutes on him?

The gun is ridiculous. So now we're beaming bullets. Why does it take seconds to beam anything else?

The conclusion with the Vulcan is beyond ridiculous.

Nobody likes Ezri. Speak for yourself. I love Ezri. She's one of the best characters in Trek.

I wonder if Jadzia had come after Ezri would we dislike Ezri as much as we appear to? (I personally like her) Jadzia is the only DS9 character who has no faults whatsoever. She's perfect by human standards - beautiful, smart, highly experienced, calm under pressure and brave. That kind of character is difficult to develop, and after Season 1 Jadzia barely develops at all. There's the crush on Worf which we don't really see her struggle with too much (it would have been nice to see her try to win him over and perhaps fail), but that's about it.

On paper, Jadzia is a very poor character indeed. Ezri fares much better - dealing with ongoing internal issues and deficiencies which the show did not get a chance to go deeply into due to lack of time. I wonder if Terry Farrell is simply the more popular actor, and 6 seasons have made us accustomed to her presence. To me, she's by far the weakest character of the show.

@James - I actually really like Ezri in ensemble episodes. She just failed to ever really captivate when carrying an episode by herself.

I don't fault the actress either, they were just terrible episodes. I think I did this once before but I'll do it again because I can't remember.

Here's what S7 looks like
701&702 - Opening two parter. I liked her here just fine (as I do in most ensemble pieces she's in).

703 - Afterimage is our first real Ezri episode, but she's not the star. The star is Garak. This is by far my favorite Ezri episode.

704 - She's great in the baseball episode, very cute and remembering her past athletic hosts is fun. Again though, I always like her in the ensemble.

705 - Bashir Episode

706 - Odo Episode

707 - Worf/Kor Episode (though Ezri was cute in what she did do here)

708 - Ensemble war episode. I liked her a lot here, she had chemistry with the guest stars.

709 - Kira Episode

710 - Nog/Vic Episode with Ezri as a perfectly likeable side roll.

So far so good, right? Now here's where we run into trouble.

711 - Ezri episode. We get a followup to O'Brien's Honour Among Thieves and it's a BAD episode about Ezri's family.

712 - The WORST mirror episode by far, heavily featuring Ezri.

713 - The episode we're discussing here. A stupid murder mystery starring the station's counselor and a disturbed Vulcan.

And let's not forget that 710 heavily featured Ezri as well. So 4 episodes in a row, starting Dec 28th, 1998 and ending a month and a half later on February 8th with almost all Ezri all the time and 3/4 of them BAD and my beloved characters side-lined in their LAST season. I've warmed to the character in repeat viewings but I'm about 99% sure that this stretch of episodes is what lead me to hate her the first time... because I don't remember disliking her at the beginning of the season (even though many other people did).

714 - And Odo Episode (heavily featuring Kira)

715 - Badda Bing Badda Bang (a Vic/ensemble episode... and Ezri is cute here too)

716 - Bashir/Section 31

And that's it... season over folks! There's obviously the 10 part finale (which I liked her a lot in... I thought she was great paired with Worf dealing with their issues at first and later helping him through his issues as friends). But yes... if you discount the giant ensemble arc stuff that is the first 2 episodes and the final 10 we only got 14 regular episodes this year and 5 or 6 of them heavily featured Ezri and the two that she starred in sucked. Those 2 episodes (along with the mirror episode she was heavily featured in) are by far the weakest point of the whole season.

And we have 0 Jake episodes, 0 O'Brien episodes and 0 Sisko episodes out of those 14. That's right ZERO folks. So let's scrap the mirror episode, Prodigal Daughter and Field of Fire and add an O'Brien episode, a Jake episode and a Sisko episode. Then you have Ezri heavily featuring in all the ensemble pieces, Afterimage and Paper Moon. That really would have been sufficient.

People don't like Ezri because they shoved her down our throat at the expense of our "family". Sorry for the long post!

@James - And as for Jadzia.... it's kind of difficult for a 300 year old character to develop much over 6 years. The best you can do is to have the viewers learn more about her over time (which we did). In all fairness though I think Terry had a least one really strong episode every season that developed her.

In S2 Invasive Procedures was a good Dax piece and Terry's role was small but good. In S3 both Equilibrium and Facets developed Dax a lot and Terry did excellent work in both. In S4 Rejoined was great. I can't point to an awesome Dax episode in S5 but I loved 2 or 3 Dax episodes in S6.

@Robert, I agree that the real problem with Ezri is that the show gave her a *concentrated* series of *bad* episodes, while neglecting several main cast members.

I take some issue with 0 Sisko episodes" -- the opening two-parter and "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" are basically Sisko-centric. They may be ensemble pieces, but the opening two-parter is very Sisko-focused, with the Sisko story arguably being the A-plot (in an A/B/C structure), and at least the title story, but anyway over two episodes constituting about one Sisko-centric episode. "Take Me Out..." is all about Sisko's baseball obsession and while it is an ensemble show, it is an ensemble related to Sisko's leadership and tone-setting -- though I will accept that this is a significant departure from previous seasons, where there were both "Sisko-led ensemble episodes" and "Sisko & one other person" episodes constantly.

I think that in s5-6 the focus of Dax episodes shifted away from stories about Trill issues and Dax-the-symbiont's past ("Dax," "Invasive Procedures," "Playing God," "Blood Oath," "Equilibrium," "Facets," "Rejoined") and, with "The Sword of Kahless" as transition ep, became primarily Worf/Dax stories ("par'Mach," "Let He Who Is Without Sin," "Soldiers of the Empire" [more Worf/Martok-centric with Jadzia as important supporting role], "You Are Cordially Invited," "Change of Heart," and the subplot in "Time's Orphan"). The one major Jadzia episode which is neither a Worf/Dax (or Worf-Dax) episode nor in some way about her Trill-ness is "Meridian," which, you know, let's forget about that. Actually my favourite Dax episode is probably "Blood Oath," which is maybe a marginal case but is still very much about Jadzia's relationship with Curzon Dax's past. ("The Sword of Kahless" is transition because it is a sequel to "Blood Oath" and is the main Worf-Dax story of s4.) And there are episodes like "One Little Ship" in which Dax is something of a co-lead in a more adventure-y/tech-y plot. For what it's worth, I don't really like many Jadzia episodes that much -- "Blood Oath" is my favourite, followed by "Dax" which was admittedly Dax 1.0 -- and I think I like Jadzia best in a supporting role, such as in "The Quickening."

But anyway, that gives some background to interpreting the Ezri episodes against the Jadzia episodes. "Afterimage" is a getting-to-know-you episode and so obviously a fine story to tell (I forget how successful it was, but that's another story). "Field of Fire" is pretty dumb but is at least consistent in subject with the type of Dax stories we have seen before. It's hard to know what the motivation behind "Prodigal Daughter" is though. I'm not saying the episode couldn't have been good, but why this interest in showing Ezri's (blood) family, when there was never even the slightest interest in examining Jadzia's (blood) family? Didn't they spend four years establishing that any "family drama" episodes for Jadzia are told through metaphor via her "ancestors" and "family members" via the symbiont? It's like another entry in the TNG s7 family drama sweepstakes...but this time for a NEW CHARACTER just introduced. Episodes about the Dax symbiont history, and about Ezri rebuilding (or not) her relationships with the DS9 crew based on Jadzia, are relevant to the show's history and make for a logical continuation of Dax's narrative. In fact, since the Trill change-of-symbiont is built into the character, it is fully consistent to continue telling Dax stories after Jadzia's death. But it gets really weird with an episode like "Prodigal Daughter," or really material about Ezri that's totally unrelated to the fact that she's Dax; it's really late in the series, with a lot of plotlines left to tie up, to basically introduce a new character and give her so much screentime, some of which continues a character we know and some of which, "Prodigal Daughter" and "The Emperor's New Cloak" (where IIRC Mirror-Ezri is unjoined), seem to have nothing at all to do with the character from the past.

Now...again, if the stories were good enough, it wouldn't really matter, but "PD" and "TENC's" Ezri portions feel disconnected to DS9's first six seasons and also suck, whereas "Field of Fire" is...somewhat more connected to DS9's first six seasons, and also sucks.

For what it's worth, (SPOILER) I find both the Ezri/Worf and Ezri/Julian material, well, relevant I guess, but oddly hampered by a lack of real follow-up to "Rejoined." Shouldn't Ezri/Worf be verboten, by Trill custom, even if Worf isn't Trill? And isn't Julian/Ezri on very thin ice for that reason? The Ezri romance material does also suffer because it is going on at the same time as Damar's preparation for rebellion against the Dominion and Dukat's game on Winn and so on, and it's not just a matter of scale, they are really completely unrelated types of stories, and it gives the weird impression that our main cast are really quite boring in comparison to the supporting players -- that the only interesting questions for the main cast are who they will end up with. Fortunately Worf and Bashir got meatier material later on (even if I think "Extreme Measures" was badly botched), but Ezri really doesn't get much, which...is probably okay (it would be hard to figure out what major part of galactic politics Ezri would have a logical stake in -- it turns out that the symbionts in that pool on Trill have superpowers that hold the key to the war!).

@William - I'm not 100% sure I agree with the Sisko story in the opener being an A-B-C style as much as an A-A-A style... but I'll give you that the baseball episode was probably Sisko centric enough to count. You have his baseball obsession, character back story, and a bunch of other Sisko/centric bits. And the central lesson was his to learn. So yes, I'll give you that one. It's not a typical Sisko episode like say... Destiny... but I'll count it.

"The one major Jadzia episode which is neither a Worf/Dax (or Worf-Dax) episode nor in some way about her Trill-ness is "Meridian," which, you know, let's forget about that."

Deal! And I like Blood Oath too :)

"Now...again, if the stories were good enough, it wouldn't really matter, but "PD" and "TENC's" Ezri portions feel disconnected to DS9's first six seasons and also suck, whereas "Field of Fire" is...somewhat more connected to DS9's first six seasons, and also sucks."

Agreed mostly. "Field of Fire" is connected to the rest of the series, but it's such a weird reboot of Joran's character that I'm not sure why they bothered. That just wasn't the same type of killer we saw in the previous episodes. I'd have preferred her need to tap into a different Dax. One we'd have spent less time with... like maybe the nervous one O'Brien played in Facets. Maybe something that would have helped her deal with her own neuroses? I dunno.

It's not even that I HATED FoF... it's just it was in the middle of such a miserable slog of Ezri garbage (and as you said, EZRI garbage, not even Dax garbage) that my patience for an episode such as this were about non-existent.

"Shouldn't Ezri/Worf be verboten, by Trill custom, even if Worf isn't Trill?"

Yes, and Worf mentions this. I assume if they'd continued their relationship outside of captivity that it would have been dealt with.

"Isn't Julian/Ezri on very thin ice for that reason?"

Probably not? No more than 3 lifetimes of friendship with Ben. Or basically taking Jadzia's old life....

I actually don't think the stuff with Worf scales poorly. As one of only 2 times in Trek history that 2 main characters got married (or 3 if you count Nemesis... but that's awfully late in the game) these 2 characters tying up their history was a necessary end game plot. The Julian stuff felt "fluffy" compared to all the heavy weight stuff, yes.

"it would be hard to figure out what major part of galactic politics Ezri would have a logical stake in"

It's a small role but I LOVE her role in Tacking. Once we got over the relationship stuff Ezri's friendship with Worf is really sweet.

@Robert: Point on the A-A-A plot in the s7 premiere. Although, I feel like Sisko's gets the edge on "episode's most important" given that it is the one that gets the title of part 1 and then a middle section in part 2 where for a few minutes it seems possible that the other two plotlines may be deluded scribblings of Benny Russell.

And yeah, Joran was portrayed very differently in "Field of Fire." Well, actually, he sort of went from "weirdo musical genius with anger management problems" to "soft-spoken psychopath" to "expert on the art of murder" in the three episodes that focused on him, and so it may be more "Facets" that altered his character -- but still.

Yeah, I guess the Ezri/Julian thing doesn't break the reassociation taboo any more than being friends with Sisko as you say. It's more that if they are going to have a romantic ending, it seems like they should acknowledge that Bashir had this six-year torch which was still being brought up until the episode Jadzia died and afterward, and whether that would make it super awkward for him and Ezri (spoiler: I bet it would!). I didn't get deep into them but I read the first of those post-DS9 novels and they did start on that, which is a good call.

I definitely agree about her speech in "Tacking," a great moment for the character.

One of those episodes that is dull and fairly uninvolving for most of its length and is then somewhat redeemed by an excellent, dramatic climax. I'd agree with others that the characterisation of Joran seems off given what we've seen previously too. There's a bit too much scenery-chewing going on.

"Nice melon" indeed. 2 stars.

Well that was dull.

1. God I'm sick of watching Ezri try to figure herself out.

2. Good thing the technology to see through walls and fire bullets with microtransporters didn't exist at any other point in time in the entire Trek universe up to this point, because that really would have messed up just about every episode of every series ever. Let's just pretend this episode didn't exist.

3. And so much more awful.

Here we have Part Three of what I'm dubbing the Dark Ezri Trilogy. As with "Prodigal Daughter," there are some good scenes here which elevate what is a pretty dumb "murder mystery." "PD" at least bothered to establish the killer as a character before the end, but "FoF" at least bothered to put some effort into there being some tension around whether the murder gets solved. Still, despite Wolfe's many talents, this episode comes out to a kind of amateur hour. Joran is unconvincing, first of all because, yes, this really rewrites who he was in "Equilibrium" and even "Facets," and makes him a boring serial killer cliche in the process, but also he's basically almost unwatchable -- blah blah, killer, blah blah, instinct, blah blah, control, etc. Anthony Hopkins, he is not. Along those lines, the dream sequence was really ineffective and the moody atmosphere at night when Ezri bumps into Worf also suspended disbelief too far. (Who directed this -- hey, Tony Dow? THAT Tony Dow?) The episode shuts Odo out of the murder mystery story when, you know, it's actually his job AND his hobby. And there's no way Ezri's "who would want to kill smiling people? a Vulcan! THE FIRST VULCAN I SHARE A TURBOLIFT WITH" is not racist and also incredibly stupid. The weapon is ridiculously powerful as both assassination tool and surveillance device, the kind of thing that if taken literally breaks the narrative. Odo puts safety goggles on. Better protect those eyes.

So the question becomes whether the Ezri story is worth the rest. I'm going to say no, but with some caveats. The thing is, the collective gist of these three episodes for me (okay, maybe not TENC) is that there is something *wrong* with Ezri, and I don't mean there is something wrong with her presence on the show, but that she is actually disturbed and unhappy and has only the vaguest ideas why. What this episode fails to get into, despite there being a good opportunity for it, is that actually "Equilibrium's" version of Joran was basically a guy who shouldn't have been joined, and that contributed to his emotional instability and led to a fit of second-degree-murder rage...which means that, hey, Ezri had no training to be joined whatsoever. She's the product of a home life so bad it drove her unjoined brother to murder, and now she's given up most of her life, has a bunch of lifetimes in her head and one of those lifetimes is of a killer. But most of the time she plays the sweet-insecure Ezri routine because she can manage to be cute and nonthreatening.

I mean, Ezri almost pulls the trigger on some unsuspecting Starfleet officer about halfway through the episode because Joran tells her to and she starts really liking the power rush of actually being in charge, rather than having to do what everyone else wants her to (her mother, Starfleet, Benjamin, eight lifetimes). And what I liked about that narrative dead-end scene where that guy was running all over Quark's is not so much Ezri about to stab the guy in the head with a blunt knife, but when she casually kicks over the chair to trip him. My favourite scene in the episode, the one that actually I think worked for me the way the whole ep was supposed to, is the scene where she's in the office with Sisko and she mediates, back and forth, between what Joran tells her and what Sisko tells her; Sisko gives his authority-superego declarations of truth, Joran offers a cynical-id riposte, and Ezri finds a way to rephrase what Joran said in a way that does not make her look quite as callous but still expresses the same preferences and ideas. That scene clarified what I think the episode is really about: Ezri is isolated, has no idea who she is, and has to perform all the time.

I have no idea how exactly she's going to explain how she was in the situation where she shot that Vulcan in the shoulder. I guess no one cares. Anyway, "logic demanded it" etc. but Ezri is not a killer, unlike Joran, and the episode ends with her burying him. And it's not exactly a big surprise. I'm not particularly convinced that Ezri really wanted to kill anyone, so I'm not exactly floored by the revelation that she can restrain herself from shooting a downed guy dead, killer or no. I think that's the problem with this episode, as is. I don't particularly believe the episode's insistence that Ezri's ready to pull the trigger or stab a guy in the head with a knife at any moment, and given that she was at that moment, it seems like maybe she should have thrown in the towel. This is, I know, supposed to be because she has Joran-the-serial-killer in her head. This may also be De Boer, here, where I'm supposed to buy the bloodlust behind those eyes and I just don't, or it could be me, as it turns out. But I *do* believe that she liked that feeling of being in control and the ruthless pragmatism she shows in the episode. I pretty much believe that she is not happy with her current life arrangement but tows the line because she doesn't know what else to do, and *anyone* telling her to do whatever she wants, even if it's a crazed psycho killer, is maybe freeing for a little while. I still feel like Ezri really shouldn't be on this station, and it's also quite possible that joining with Dax has ruined her life.

I gotta say, the other problem with Ezri-centric episodes is that we have to deal with Ezri, again and again, just stumbling onto the solution by sheer chance -- accidentally saying the trigger words to make Garak collapse so that it looks like she was the smart one, spending zero time investigating a murder until O'Brien makes her and spending her time with her brother worried he should take a vacation but then being the one to spot his angst face at the right moment, and this time the narrative rewards her stupid Vulcans-hate-emotions! thing and also puts her in the turbolift with the killer and then he still only gets caught because Joran stares into his eyes somehow even though he's just in Ezri's head, and so on. The climax with the two of them ready to fire at each other is kind of cool though.

Anyway there are a few scenes I like, but not many. I keep feeling like there is a good episode in here, but it's far away. 1.5 stars.

This episode does matter, but insufficiently fleshes out *why* it matters. We get told over and over that Joran is a part of Ezri and that he would be closer to the surface than he ever was for Jadzia or Curzon. Well that figures, since Curzon had no memory of him due to the memory suppression, and Jadzia only accessed those memories during Equilibrium, and seemingly chose not to deal with them. Jadzia was really into avoidance at times. Despite what some others above claim, Jadzia was nothing close to perfect; impulsive, rash, sometimes avoiding reality, self-indulgent, and a little too quick to make the prior hosts' hobbies hers instead of finding new passions.

That being said, although Joran's memories were unknown to Curzon they were still there in the symbiont and no doubt affected his combined character. Pretty much everything we know about Curzon is from after his joining, and by the time he met Kang, Koloth and Kor he was already joined. From that meeting we learn that he has a temper, is impatient, and probably has a threatening disposition. From later in Curzon's life we also learn that he has a taste for combat and gets on well with Klingons. Could it be that he acquired some of these eccentric traits from Joran?

There is discrepancy between Joran and shown here and as shown in Equilibrium and elsewhere, but one thing is common between them: he was an impulsive, mercurial man, who entertained moment-to-moment urges more so than rational deliberation about what he was doing. Remind us of anyone? Jadzia, maybe? Sisko once said of Dax that the symbiont was always prone to be rash and impulsive, and that was one of the things he liked about the various Daxes. But Sisko never knew the prior hosts; they may not have been rash at all (maybe Torias was). They may have picked up this little quirk from Joran, along with the melodramatic flair that Curzon, Jadzia and finally Ezri tend to bring to most scenes. Who else but a crazed musician to bring this element to the Dax lineage?

I've seen this decent episode many times, but only on this viewing was I realizing for the first time "Oh, I bet THAT's where Curzon Dax got that from." Even Curzon's ability to blend in with Klingons and enjoy the bloodlust on the field of battle alongside them would seem to go against the Trekkian view of future Humans, unless we notice that Curzon's previous host may have had a taste for killing which got sadly (but conveniently) passed on the Curzon. A lot of Curzon Dax was in Jadzia Dax, and after seeing Field of Fire I think that a lot of Joran was in Curzon.

@Peter G., that's a very good point about Joran being an influence on Curzon (and thus on Jadzia). I also agree with your assessment of Jadzia. What's interesting is that with Ezri, the writers seem to be trying to examine Jadzia critically. In this episode, (SPOILER) in Strange Bedfellows and in Tacking Into the Wind we see Ezri willing to do things Jadzia wouldn't -- here, to actually deal with Joran (to a somewhat greater extent), in SB to acknowledge that her attempt to Reassociate was a mistake, and in Tacking we see that she has a less biased view of Klingon society. It even seems like Ezri's constant self-doubt and uncertainty underlines the extent of Jadzia's apparent lack of self-reflection and her (possibly somewhat false?) confidence. Ezri's difficulty adjusting to her joining, and the everpresent possibility of her identity being subsumed into Jadzia's life (or in this episode, Joran's influence) also do, as you suggest, emphasize a little how much Jadzia based her whole identity on Curzon and other past hosts. The collective sense of this and "Prodigal Daughter" suggests to me that both Ezri and Dax have significant problems (with the possible threat of violence, too) and that *maybe* Ezri and Dax together can overcome them as one entity, to the point where it's possible that Ezri Dax's difficult transition to Daxness is actually a good sign (a sign that she's not as complacent as Jadzia maybe was), which is interesting but it's done in rather odd way (and SPOILER the choice to have whether she ends up with Julian or Worf as the big signal of whether Ezri Dax will make her own life or be trapped in the past leaves me a little cold).

Jadzia not only wanted to be joined but tore through the initiate program with a passion. I can only imagine that once she was joined she would wholeheartedly have dived into embracing her other selves without doing any contemplative work. Ezri, on the other hand, didn't want to be joined, and after the joining is obviously resisting the merging of the other memories into her own life. This seems like a mental problem on her part, and from the perspective of the symbiosis commission it probably is, but to be honest the integration of these memories is something that probably should be done with caution rather than abandon if one is retain a sense of self.

That Ezri's 'choice' boils down to Worf vs. Julian is a great example of how hard it would actually be to dissociate the memories from one's own current experience. The fact that Ezri has problems with pronouns underlines this, since "me" and "her" are not something she can easily separate.

Any Dune fans out there? For those familiar with the series the issue of abomination comes to mind, where Reverend Mothers who are awakened to their entire lineage of racial memories are at risk of becoming "abomination", which means utterly subsumed by the personas of the memories and losing themselves in the process. This is such a danger to them that they are trained rigorously to avoid this happening, and also tend to only have their memories awakened when they're older so they can have a strong 'lifeline' of personal memories to cling to as a "self" that can be distinguished from the other selves.

If anything Jadzia was all too willing to give up her sense of self and just become an amalgam of her previous hosts. Off the top of my head I can't tell you one single thing about Jadzia that the host brought to the table, other than her aptitude for science. I'm not saying she didn't bring anything, but we certainly never learn a single thing about what Jadzia was like and how that remained after her joining. From what little we learn in "Dax" it seems more like it was all wiped away and replaced largely with Curzon (and Joran). Ezri, on the other hand, seems intent on clinging to the self she was before joining and forcing the Dax symbiont to give her equal weight in the relationship. In this sense we might argue she's stronger than Jadzia was. I wish this angle had been pursued by the producers :p

@Peter G., I am a Dune fan, and yes that is something that I've thought of too.

About the most I can say is that I suspect that Jadzia in season one is closer to Jadzia pre-joining, and that it was only around the character started to become brasher in season two that she really embraced her Curzon-ness. She was quiet, bookish and serene in season one, and mostly dropped that later on. The serenity was initially, I think, meant to convey wisdom, but it wasn't that convincing (possibly because of Terry Farrell), but in retrospect it plays well as Jadzia affecting serenity because she thinks that's what people want to see -- in an Initiate, probably, and in a Joined Trill, certainly. "Facets" only underlines how little personality of her own Jadzia seems to have, which is a shame. I would indeed like for that contrast to be more heavily emphasized.

I guess what is interesting is why Jadzia wanted to be joined originally. There is an indication with Arjin that some people pursue joining because it is The Thing To Do, every Trill's dream, etc. And certainly one gets a shot at immortality, I guess, but the other side to it is that in joining with the symbiont one can lose oneself entirely and just be another host. Jadzia was obviously gifted and brilliant, given her advanced degrees and "tearing through the initiate program," and we know that Curzon fell in Real Love with her (rather than his shallow infatuations), but we still know very little about what it is that she wanted. That Jadzia builds her life partly around Sisko is a bit of a signal that she doesn't really care about continuing her own (Jadzia's) life that much so much as Curzon's. Some of this is maybe just that the show pushed the metaphor of Trill joining as the most interesting thing about Trills, and, yes, good point, but still. I too would have liked to see the Ezri/Jadzia contrast explored more.

Great comments, and it's for reasons like these that - despite not liking Afterimage, Prodigal Daughter or Field Of Fire - I prefer Ezri to Jadzia as a character (as well as preferring DeBoer's performance to Farrell's). It's a testament to the writers that we can have these kinds of rich discussions.

I'm so over Ezri! What - is she the only person on DS9! too many episodes focusing on a character that does not have much to offer... We kno the the story all ready! I miss Jadzia!

"Because logic demanded it"

^^^ Yep, this one's broken.

I'm a fan of the plot. The acting fell almost completely flat for me. The Dorn part is spot-on, as usual. It had a lot of unfulfilled potential.


Jammer: "Colm Meaney: The master of the credible matter-of-fact line delivery."
Haha perfect.

Jammer: "An argument can be made that we're simply seeing Ezri's perception of Joran in her own biased view, but there's not enough evidence in the episode to support that claim."

Reading that idea, I much prefer interpreting it that way. Thank you for mentioning it.

Still one of my favorites two years later. Several moments really stand out to me, for better or worse:
* "Nice melon." Rene Auberjonois is so good an actor that he could infuse the most basic lines with Odo's trademark gruffness and sarcasm.
* "NOOOO." Some actors just can't pull off the "NO" thing and we can safely add Nicole de Boer to that list. But I like most of her scenes here and her impatience with Joran seems natural.
* "How can anyone be so happy with such unattractive children?" Joran emerges as an arrogant, cynical, even sociopathic part of Ezri that I find uniquely entertaining in Trek.
* EZRI: "...Maybe I overreacted."
SISKO: "I'd say so." Speaking of Sisko, he was above average here; I don't think he over-emoted even once.
* EZRI: "You want me to kill someone? How about I start with you?!"
JORAN: "That's the spirit."

Quite the season for Vulcans in starfleet. First you have that prick who kept on about beating Sisko in a fight for decades and got his crew to learn baseball during wartime just to rub it in again... now you have a guy who randomly kills people when he sees photos of smiling in their quarters.

Then Enterprise comes a long and the first season wrote them like the most arrogant pricks in the universe and you hated them more than anyone else.

Trek reboot comes along and the esteemed Science Council are racist assholes.

As a mystery this episode is a failure (the killer just walks on the elevator?). As a psychological study I'd lien towards success. Also the scene of the klllet and Ezrinpointimg guns at each other from across the station is sci fi gold. Too bad it was in a so so executed episode.

I can't write off the contrivances in this episode as easily as Jammer does. The fact that the killer "must be a Vulcan" because of the laughing people in the pictures, then have the actual killer walk in the turbolift, and Joran figuring out that it's him with ine close look at his face... Too much.

What's also too much are the number of episodes centered around Ezri lately. I like her, don't get me wrong (although she is no Jadzia), but can we get away from her being a main character now for just a few episodes? Please?

Just rewatched this episode again and it wasn't as pedestrian as I'd remembered it to be, but my main problem with it (as many others have mentioned before me) was the inconsistency. This Joran had literally nothing in common with the Joran in 'Equilbrium' save the name and the fact that they'd both been Dax hosts. They don't even look the same. If anything this Joran bears a close resemblance to Ezri's mad brother who was also driven to murder. I like JimmyDee's theory that the Joran we see here is a projection of Ezri's, but that was lazy writing/casting on the producers' part that they couldn't even be bothered to find someone who resembled the Equilibrium Joran.

Another inconsistency I found hard to swallow was how Ezri made it very clear that Jadzia had suppressed and denied the memory of Joran Dax, even though the entire last scene on Trill in 'Equilibrium' was dedicated to the fact that Jadzia had accepted Joran into her life and as part of her identity. This episode basically cancelled out the denouement and thesis of 'Equilibrium,' which is another reason I find it to be somewhat lacking and unsatisfactory.

If anything the Joran of this episode was somewhat more consistent with 'Facets' Joran, but that one might as well have also been a different person from the Equilibrium version, who was painted as a sensitive if slightly unhinged young man who loved music, but had a violent temperament if provoked. The followup episodes basically turned him into a sadistic serial killer like Ted Bundy, whom according to his biographer was "a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human's pain and the control he had over his victims."

"Mr. Plow
Nutshell: The Silence of the Trills"

This.

It's okay. Derivative, but okay.

Could do without the spiritual ceremony stuff to bring out the repressed memories. Joran doesn't seem dark enough here either.

Would have been far better to have a twist where Joran is actually the killer through Ezri.

Another Ezri episode? Sheesh.

You just knew Ilario was going to die from the moment of the overdone first scene. I didn't understand how he had had time to develop his crush on Julian and Myles.

I thought that when Ezri said that she could understand how a murderer thinks, she would say, "Because my brother is one." Would have been more interesting.

I'm okay with Odo reading 20th century earth detective fiction but it needs a backstory. The culture that Odo identifies with is Bajor. If he's going to delve deeply into esoteric earth culture, he needs to give a reason for it.

How did the murderer know where to look for Ezri to shoot at her?

@Quarkissnyder

re: detective fiction, we shouldn't be surprised that detective fiction appeals to Odo as a genre -- he is, after all, the de facto crime-solving-head on DS9.

As to why earth detective fiction instead of Bajor? Bajor doesn't strike me as a culture that would tend to produce such novels -- instead they'd be writing loads of crap about the Prophets. I'm not sure many of the other races would be huge producers of such novels either. Except perhaps the Cardassians, but their crime novels take a very different flavor that wouldn't appeal to Odo.

i was onboard with this initially, but ultimately the script didn't sell me on the idea that joran was was offering any tangible help or unique insights that ezri wasn't capable of on her own as a trained psychologist, it was just a bunch of faff. i also don't recall him being a complete power-killer psychopath murderer in his first portrayal.

they could have done a lot more with this.

I find it a bit unfortunate that the writers dedicated so much effort across multiple episodes to constructing the Ezri Dax character considering the show was nearing the end at this point. It feels like a waste, but at least they made her short tenure as worthwhile as they could.

I really like Ezri so I have nothing against her being featured in several consecutive episodes. However I really liked Prodigal Daughter and thought that was a much better episode. I just can't get over all the plot contrivances here. Especially "we invented a gun that can shoot through walls, not be affected by dampening fields/whatever other stuff that would affect energy weapons, and a scope with it that allows you to see through walls, but we decided not to develop it".

@gingerbradman

You're probably right about it being a contrivance to have a weapon that handy that's never used. I suppose the general explanation the show could give is that it's only powerful in limited situations but not in the modern warfare of the time what with there being multi-targeting phaser rifles. It might also need to take advantage of the system's site-to-site transporters, so it would only be limited to use by ranking officers with access to those systems on a base.

That said, you'd think the rifle would be *extremely* helpful in holding a base, and it would be a no-brainer to issue them to a handful of snipers.

No kidding. I'm especially thinking of how useful it would have been during the occupation arc. Even if they would have still been forced to abandon DS9, a couple volunteer suicide snipers hiding out in obscure compartments could have killed Dukat, Damar, and a whole ton of important Cardassian targets on Terok Nor before the Dominion finally realized what was going on and killed them.

{ I should probably admit a personal bias up front: I'm a sucker for a good homicide investigation. }

Me too, but this episode wasn't it.

{ re: detective fiction, we shouldn't be surprised that detective fiction appeals to Odo as a genre -- he is, after all, the de facto crime-solving-head on DS9. }

Sure but the way it happened was just ludicrous.

Odo: I just instantly made a perfectly correct observation about a piece of technology I've never encountered.
Others: But how?
Odo: I suddenly have always been interested in reading Raymond Chandler stories.
Others: Well, naturally, as part of the cast you must be an expert in something that was well-known in the time period of the show's viewership.

And the idea that you "need a killer to catch a killer" was so bad. Joran murdered, therefore he automatically knows how every murderer thinks, even though this murderer was nothing like Joran in any way, and oh look at the convenience that Ezri runs into said Vulcan right about the time she makes the Adam-West-Batman-style wild deductions that are all perfect and right as he has decided to kill her for some reason even though this doesn't fit the pattern and he doesn't know she's accessing Joran to find him.

This episode was simply awful. Better than the Emperor's New Cloak, but other than that, it's at the bottom of season 7.

@Daniel B:

I liked this episode but your observations are on point and pretty funny haha.

2 out of last 3 episodes are the All-About-Ezri-Show. ENOUGH. Horrible character. What, trying to make up for the fact that she was shoehorned in only for 1 season, by giving her way too much bloody screentime?

@Daniel B: Earlier in the series O'Brien introduces crime novels to Odo. They do get mentioned once in a while so his interest in obscure earth fiction does have a back story.

Anyway, this was an OK episode. I agree that it had lots of potential that it didn't live up to, but it was far from bad. Joran gets a bit too much at the end, and as someone mentioned, I would really have loved it if the killer gave an "WTF!?" expression when he saw Ezri in his scope, aiming right back at him, in the end.

Two solid stars.

I think there a few decent aspects to this episode, but it was a strange choice to bring them together.

The actual idea of the rifle and the final shootout is great. When I first caught this episode in 2000 or so, I also enjoyed playing Perfect Dark on N64 with a rifle called Farsight that can shoot through walls. I can remember having these 'Enemy at the gates' kind of sniper duo encounters playing with friends and they were brilliant.

I also like Esri and de Boer's chirpy portrayal of a different Dax who is young and inexperienced. She would done well in more comedic, lighter episodes with Jake and Nog in earlier seasons, and could have had decent character growth. I just don't know why they kept throwing her these stories with murders. It doesn't make sense for a counsellor to be doing anything more than advicing Odo. Esri always gets the benefit of the doubt because Sisko likes Dax, but in a way, her not having alibi and talking to a murderous version of herself and almost killing someone should have made her a suspect in the end too.

I liked O'Brien's breakthrough and the melon demonstration the most. For me, this rifle murder plot should have been an O'Brien/Bashir & Section 31 plot. The weapon and seemingly random murders suits that world of conspiracy and fear.

While the technology of the TR-116 rifle and targeting system may or may not be sound , the discontinuation and non use of such a weapon is sound. Its a weapon of assassination and murder, its only purpose is to kill, in complete violation of the tenets of the federation. One would also assume it violates one of the many treaties of the federation, both internal and external treaties.

Beaming and replicator technology could be used to decimate almost any enemy, since a biogenic weapon beamed onto ds9 could have wiped out everyone, as could beaming a bomb onboard. instead soldiers are beamed in. even klingons, cardacians and romulans (the less enlightened, so to speak, confederations never use such methods). notably this is overlooked when a bomb is beamed onto the ketracel white facility (as gamma quadrant invaders seem to be unprotected by Alpha quadrant treaties..)the destabilization of a suns core to destroy the jem h'dar ship yards. The same goes for the section 31 changeling virus, though predicated on threat of dominion and considerably further away from federation tenets.

Even starfleet controlled replicators seem to have extreme restrictions, and require clearance and command approval for even replicating substrates for biogenic weapons (bashir- bio mimetic gel). The TR 116 seemed to have similar but less stringent restrictions on replication.

of course, lesser civilizations seem to use such methods and weaponry with frequency against their enemies and their own people. (quark as arms dealer).

Clearly very effective and highly destructive weapons are available, "genesis device" but they are not used, partly because of enlightenment but also probably because of treaty bans. This applies more for the Federation, take for instance the Defiant (even sans cloak) which is viewed pretty unfavorably within starfleet as a "ship of war", created in response to the "borg threat". That even at the height of the war with the dominion its the only one of its kind, discounting the "valiant". War takes its toll on enlightenment though and perceptions of the defiant shift quite dramatically though not enough to commission more of them.

basically, its very reasonable that the TR 116 was not used, regardless of situation.

as far as the vulcan issue there is a strong argument to be made that this is realism, not revisionism. Vulcans are physically and mentally superior to humans. arrogance is not an emotion it is a conclusion of logic. Logic as stated frequently in the commentary can be used to justify almost anything, including superiority of logical beings. They use logic to restrain an underlying violent and highly emotional psyche , to deny who they are at the core. All of the series depict them as a superior race that has reached THEIR peak, in part because of this compromise. They are a stagnant civilization , they are not particularly adaptive. Reliance on logic alone has to some extent assured this. the flaws of the vulcans, like all god like figures, become more apparent as their "children" surpass or outgrow them. This is perhaps most strongly portrayed in ENT as the children seek to step out from the "benevolent" shadow of the "parents". While this is a simplification, it is also reasonable justification for a greater depiction of limitations and even flaws of the "highly evolved" vulcans. Tempering emotion with logic is a great concept, one that should be striven for in our own development, however logic not tempered by emotion is not an evolutionary path to aspire to. one of the themes that runs through ENT, DS9 and VOY is that moderation/acceptance of emotion rather than near complete suppression of emotions is path out of stagnation for vulcans.

of course thats just my meandering thoughts on the topic

Decent episode that is likely the best Ezri episode to date + it uses the Joran host interestingly (albeit requiring a bit more suspension of disbelief to "conjure" him up). But I liked how the Joran character was acted -- certainly wasn't wooden, was engaging in a dark way. One could understand what a sociopath he was given the blatant disregard for life and describing a killer's motivations.

Had a bit of difficulty understanding why Ezri/Joran decided to focus on Vulcans as the logical murder suspects and that a Vulcan who has suffered a heavy personal loss could believe that logic dictates he kills those who are happy. Some relevant part of the canon may be escaping me as to why that could be plausible. Or it is just simply that the Vulcan murderer is insane.

But why does the Vulcan killer decide to kill Ezri -- just because he ran into her on the turbolift and he perceived her as acting weird (due to Joran)? Ezri (to my knowledge) didn't have a photo of herself being happy when with friends, which was the common link between the murder victims. The Vulcan looked up her personal file and then immediately decided to kill her but Ezri turns out to be a step ahead.

Thought the rifle transporting the bullet was quite cool although being able to look through bulkheads etc. is another bit of a stretch. Sounds like this kind of weapon should be used a lot more by the Federation (or its nefarious enemies).
In any case, the best scene was when Ezri and the Vulcan are using the same type of rifle to simultaneously shoot each other -- good suspense here.

2.5 stars for "Field of Fire" -- neat way of doing a murder investigation using the Trill framework and having Ezri be put through the wringer a bit (something DS9 likes to do to its characters). Joran being able to be a strong voice in Ezri's head is an intriguing feature as part of the Trill framework and with it represented as him being alongside her worked for me, suspension of disbelief to achieve this notwithstanding. DS9 is certainly trying hard to make the most of the Ezri character so far.

2 stars

Again not very compelling material for arc or final season
Never cared for the hallucinations Ezri had. Boring
trill Mumbo jumbo didn’t make a whole lot of sense
A murder mystery can work this one fell flat
Didn’t care for silly teaser celebrating piloting skills
Prodigal daughter better Ezri episode
Vulcan serial killer was interesting idea too bad used in such a lame episode

Hi,

Just wanted to say that I didn't think the Vulcan was necessarily intent on killing Ezri but checking her out by looking at her profile and record and then scoping out her room. I think he was surprised by Ezri holding a gun and was a little too late in reacting to beat her to the shot.

Watching and commenting:

--Lt Illario. He's doomed as sure as I'm sitting here.

--Lt Illario has been shot. Projectile weapon.

--Is this going to be a classic whodunit? Or . . . huh . . . is this going to be another Ezri ep? Again, so soon?

--What??? A transported bullet??? Well, no lack of imagination there, anyhow.

--Worf and Ezri. The size difference is glaring.

--I don't care for the suggestion that the former hosts' consciousnesses - not just their memories - are within the current host. They did this in the ep where all those hosts possessed the bodies of Jadzia's friends. It made no sense then or now.

--This actor playing Joran sure isn't pulling his punches. He's putting his all into being as annoying and creepy as Trilly possible.

--The murderer is definitely a Vulcan because the victims all have laughing pictures? And out of 48 Vulcan, he happens to be the first Vulcan they run into -- yes, it's intuitively obvious to the most casual observer, because of the look in his eyes?

--Agatha Christie is turning in her grave.

--Points for the green blood.

--Awful ep. Best line, from Joran looking at one of the smiling pictures: "How can anyone be so happy with such unattractive children?"

A watchable episode, but yeah... "they were smiling on photos, that's proof the killer is Vulcan" ...erm, what?

A good concept for an episode but poor execution at times.

Really strange they pushed Ezri so hard. Three episodes in a row is really strange. I also get the feeling they may have had episode concepts for Jadzia in mind but just retro-fitted them for Ezri.

That's for. I don't mind Ezri but it really comes at the expense of the ensemble. It's striking that Sisko has so little to do this season after the opening arc and before the final one.

And here, we have a fairly lightweight episode which doesn’t tie into the overall season storyline at all.

Sadly, it’s a whodunnit murder mystery of limited value - and one that leans heavily on the “invisible friend” trope. Even if this time there’s a mild twist, as Mr Invisible is actually a psychopath doing his best to channel a Hannibel Lector vibe.

(Though as other people have noted, this is somewhat at odds with the previous characterisations of Dax’s musically-murderous ex-host. And once again, it calls into question just how the symbiosis works, as we once again flip-flop back to it being a dumb facility for recording both memories and entire personalities…)

And then there’s the future-weapon, with the ability to both see through walls and teleport bullets.

Say what?

This is the kind of tech which would be invaluable in a war such as the Federation is currently fighting. I’m willing to bet that the poor soldiers stuck on AR-558 would have /loved/ a weapon which would let them snipe at the Jem Hadar without exposing themselves to return fire.

And it was independently dreamed up by at least two separate Federation engineers, to boot.

So, why is this the first we’ve seen of any infantry weapon other than a phaser?

(I know: the real-world answer is that realistic simulations of future war would be expensive to produce, and difficult to integrate into storylines. Far easier to have small groups of people having short-range pistol shoot outs and tussling in hand-to-hand combat…)

Beyond this, it has to be said that it’s a surprisingly flat ending. “Because logic dictated it” is entertainingly ambiguous, but by definition, that means it’s not particularly dramatic...

I enjoyed this episode. Really, not a moment is wasted in dead ends, and every action drives the story forward, which I find is actually rare for Trek!

The transporting a bullet is a new and brilliantly scary idea. It's great to see the dark side of everyday Treknology explored.

It also shows Ezri as competent at her job, where as normally you'd have a hard time believing she had any psychological training.

And finally I also enjoy whenever the symbiosis aspect of Trills is explored further than "I remember when we had fun together in my past life". Seeing how the memories of a former host can affect the current one, driving them close to murder, added some meat onto the Trill experience.

It's an entertaining and original story, and sometimes that's what we should be focusing on rather than criticizing how a projectile bullet affects wider Trek lore and the whole Dominion War...

I think the original 3 stars was deserved!

@ Locutus
I wasn't a big fan of that episode. The whole "you have to become a killer to understand a killer." Is pretty stupid when you really think about it. First a vulcan probably feels completely different from a trill. Not just because of the extreme mental training vulcans get but also because of basic emotional behavior inherent to a species. What I mean is that the episdoe treats trill and vulcans like humans with spots or pointy ears.

"The transporting a bullet is a new and brilliantly scary idea."
That was another thing that bugged me. Ok installing a transporter into a gun is very questionable but then just glossing over the fact that I have no idea how the momentum of the bullet is sustained by the transporter. That's probably breaking half a dozen laws of physics.

"It also shows Ezri as competent at her job,"
Does it?? She channels her psycho murder self and at some point gets so much into it that she almost kills somebody. Sure the gun isn't loaded still yikes...

And when the hell will starfleet produce a few machine guns. Borg seem to react badly to being hit by small fast objects. At least give the average officer a knife when they encounter borg. I mean come?! Worf sliced them to pieces like it was nothing.

I always wondered, if you were going to weaponize transporter technology, why bother with bullets? Why not just beam someone's brain out of their head, or just dematerialize them altogether?

@ Booming

“That’s probably breaking half a dozen laws a of physics.”

I’m pretty sure the transporter itself breaks not just a few dozen of those laws but all of them.

Yeah I thought that,too. With a mini transport you rip an artery and could probably kill many more. There is another bonus. Dying would often take much longer.

Another disturbing thing is the "look through everything" camera. Think about what that would mean...

@Luke
Sure. But it is one thing to have some tech that quickly brings things from a to b. Transporting kinetic energy is something else. Isn't the transporter just creating an exact duplicate. You cannot duplicate the kinetic energy. The transporter would have to fire/speed up the bullet again basically. Then the question would be why use a gun in the first place.

“why use a gun in the first place”

Because it looks cool. Works for me. LOL

"Another disturbing thing is the "look through everything" camera. Think about what that would mean..."

True, those implications are not dealt with here, but it's hardly out of keeping with what we've seen before. The technology to do such things is clearly reasonably widespread. I guess people have just outgrown the expectation of privacy?

@Top Hat
"I guess people have just outgrown the expectation of privacy?"
I think this is a good example for when Star Trek started to go of the rails. When it started to transition from science fiction to science fantasy and was less and less well thought out. Such a peeping Tom/Tina or peeping Tyrone/Tahleea tech (because of recent anxieties I have to include names that aren't typical for white people. Trust me) should have a huge impact on society but they just included it because it looked cool, as luke correctly points out.
And now these seeds of dumb have blossomed into what some now call NuTrek.

@Booming

Heat is kinetic energy of the molecules. Transporters beam the heat along with the matter, otherwise, people would arrive at 0 Kelvin.

@Top Hat
"True, those implications are not dealt with here, but it's hardly out of keeping with what we've seen before. The technology to do such things is clearly reasonably widespread."

This is true. If you can beam up people through a wall, there's no reason why you wouldn't be able to take a snapshot of them through the same wall.

"I guess people have just outgrown the expectation of privacy?"

The onscreen evidence from other episodes refutes this notion. Besides, I don't really see how this follows.

Just because something is technically feasible, doesn't mean it isn't frowned upon by society. This is true in today's world and won't be different in Star Trek's world. After all, just because burglar technology exists today, doesn't mean that people expect their houses to be broken into.

And another thing to keep in mind:

It's not just the criminal minds or even potential pranksters that have access to magic technology in the 24th century. Everybody does. This creates a kind of "balance of power" which greatly discourages this kind of tech abuse on a regular basis, through a combination of social norms, written law and defensive technology. The same things, really, which prevent 99.9% of present-day people from marching into your living room and taking your stuff.

@Ralph

In addition to your correct observation, one could legitimately ask how "transporting matter without it's momentum" could even work.

In modern physics, matter and momentum are intertwined. One cannot be separated from the other. In (real physics) technical jargon, particles are represented by wave functions (or fields), and momentum is determined by the shape of that wave/field in space.

So if we change the momentum of an object, we've changed the object itself (albeit microscopically). A bullet in motion is not the same object as a bullet at rest. Thus a teleporting device that creates a faithful replica of the original *will* preserve momentum by default. There's no way around this conclusion.

@Ralph
I think body heat is connected to potential energy being converted all the time. If I throw a snowball then it may heat up a little but that is due to friction. I don't think that a snowball would heat up if thrown in a vacuum, if the vacuum has the same temperature as the snowball. On the other hand the movement of cells and the like is connected to heat, as you say... hmmm...

We need a physicist or just accept it as it is because if not only potential energy but kinetic energy is transported, and Nutrek used that for some action scenes, then that opens up an entirely new can of worms. If a ship orbits a planet and you are beamed down. What energy is preserved? Sure, on the ship you are standing still but the ship is moving very fast. Then there is all the technology that keeps people from being crushed by gravity. If you are transported from one point with a specific artificial gravity to another without, wouldn't that be damaging? You know what, I accept it under the physical principle "the script demanded it."

You have a physicist right here :-)

And you are right. Beaming to a planet would be impossible without the transporter actively compensating for the relative motion and change of gravity. I would assume this to be an automatic part of the transport process, just like the biofilter.

At any rate, my previous point was that there's no reason to expect such a thing to happen by default. If I just mounted a microtransporting device on a gun and fired a bullet, I would be very surprised to see it re-materialize with a different momentum.

Oh,the people on the pictures are smiling! - It MUST be a Vulcan! Hmmm. Yea - I suppose so... WHY?? Am I the only one to find this deduction unbelievable?
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No. I just turned this ep off. Must be a reason I;d never seen it before. What a joke.

An OK episode for an earlier season. But wasted in Season 7. Nicole DeBoer played her best Ezri so far, but it is waste to give a new character so much screentime that doesnt advance the series plot.

Just watch this episode again. Wow, that was some hardcore Vulcan racial profiling. I laughed out loud when she actually brought up a list of all the Vulcans on board. She had no hard evidence at all. Just a stereotype that Vulcans must not like happy people?

I was hope for some sort of lesson for Ezra to learn. But this was the 90s I guess. This wouldn’t hold up today. I’m surprised it was written when it was.

meh , 1/5, the resolution on figuring out the murderer is a stinker and pretty random , the writers clearly didn't seem to know how to end this episode ....

Also , this is like the 4th Ezri centered episode in a row, I get she's a shiny new character but at this point I think there are plenty more arcs to explore and close down in winding episodes of a great series

@eastwest101
>Imperfect but moderately diverting attempt at CSI:DS9, the premise is obviously lifted from the Farsight weapon in the N64 game "Perfect Dark"...

Perfect Dark was released after this episode aired. The developers probably took inspiration from this episode.

I have seen this episode only twice in my life, and this time, I was especially struck by the flatness with which de Boer delivered Ezri's lines in what was supposed to be the character's native language. It didn't even have the kind of inflection that would give a sense of groups of syllable forming sentences, phrases, even polysyllabic words. She sounded like, well, exactly what she was: someone reciting a series of nonsense syllables with the same pronunciation of an English-speaking North American.

I thought about whether this was supposed to be showing us that she was reciting a ritual incantation that was not an ordinary thing for her to be saying, but I still couldn't help thinking it just sounded like bad acting. (I am not blaming de Boer alone for this; she could have used some direction regarding what the sound of the Trill language was intended to be.)

I could MAYBE have just barely cut a little slack if they had shown the character reading the words out a ritual book (or off a padd, but I think an old-fashioned looking book would have worked better), instead of having her be familiar enough with the formula to rattle it off by heart. I have literally prayed in languages other than my native tongue (both by heart and out of books), and it doesn't sound like Ezri's stream of syllables. It also doesn't sound like English.

What I have done that probably DID sound a lot like it was when I first started ministering within a Hispanic community and did not yet speak any Spanish, and I had my scripts for meetings translated and would just read them out loud, based on the Spanish rules of pronunciation. (I'll tell you, looking out at 200 people sitting on the edges of their folding chairs concentrating on trying to understand what I was telling them was quite an experience. For all of us.) But as my Spanish got better, so did my inflection and pronunciation.

Trek, like much of science fiction, normally glosses over language differences as a matter of convenience for the storytelling, and we generally only hear "alien" languages when the alienness is being emphasized to serve the narrative. Sometimes, it is done reasonably well, as in a lot of the Klingon dialogue. But it doesn't sound as if a lot of effort was put into making the Trill language sound "real."

This episode had SO much promise. I used to love watching shows such as Poirot or N.C.I.S. (in the latter's early days); there's nothing like a good whodunit for my money.

Instead, the ep. was in large part a vehicle for Dax v.8.0 to battle some internal demons... - and not even her own demons, such as her "my mommy didn't love me enough" or "I was never good enough for my daddy" childhood, but some dude from a "previous life." She makes him come to life with some dumb incantations and they go about solving ze merdeeeeeer. Seems legit. Good lord, give me strength. What a pissed-away opportunity...

Two points re the killer's m.o.:
1. He was wearing some blahbitty goggles to see through the bulkheads, indeed, the entire station! Since when does THAT exist!?! It means nobody can ever be sure they have any privacy in their own accommodations, in case there's some creep prowling around with such a device. Also, if this is possible, why wasn't it used any of the 35,000 times someone was barricaded somewhere and the place had to be stormed blind?!?
2. The killa fired the rifle and then teleported the bullet to just in front of the victim. Yeah, right!!! Their teleporters can't get a lock on a perfectly stationary object if it's a bit windy, and it takes about ten seconds to dematerialize and rematerialize said object, but a bullet, IN MOTION!, can be locked on to and teleported to exactly in front of a victim's heart while the victim is motionless, presumably pondering life, for 10+ seconds! WHAT!?!?! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Who writes this shit!?!?!

And then we get to Dax v.8.0's bolt of brilliance, straight out of the...vacuum: "someone who hates laughter [1/4-second pause] a Volcan!!!"
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Now, I'm all in favor of "racial profiling." It's logical and it's sensible. It saves time and resources. It's also pretty accurate. We all do it, especially those of us living in a big, "diverse" and "inclusive" Western city. Those who say they don't are silly liars. But the writers and the actress weren't even trying here. That leap made precisely zero sense. It might be "racial" but it sure as heck ain't "profiling" by any definition. It's pulling a (weak) hypothesis out of her six and running with it. By that point, we had less than eight minutes remaining so, naturally, the hypothesis turned out to be right. But man...

All that being said though, I did enjoy some of Dax v.8.0's analyses, dilettante though they were, and there was enough by way of a gripping story to keep me watching. I therefore say two stars, maybe even 2-1/2, is about the size of it.

CSI: DS9

Meh. Wasn’t a fan of the Joran character the first time around, even less enthused to see his return. Considering all the other plotlines we have to wrap up, I’m not sure what inspired them to produce this episode.

This was good, not fantastic but enjoyable.

@Michael and probably some (a lot of) others. Why is it that some tecnical obsurities disturbs us and some not? I agree that the integrity aspect of this target finder is a very strange concept to suddenly put in. But then, traveling faster than light, a basic concept for star trek is probably more impossible than this targeting system. And what about time travel?

I have chosen not to be too much angry or irritated regarding impossibilities, inconsistencies and further idiosyncratic things. Some approaches work fine for me others not.

By the way I intended to look DS9 from A to Z but i skipped the last episode because it has the for me the two most irritating components, "trying to be funny ferengis stories" and "alternate universes".

Now, Nicole deBoer might not win a major Award for her contribution but to me it is still vary accepatable.

Furthermore, Ms deBoer definetly gets some extra points from this sexsistic and grumpy old man. She is cute.

This episode makes a few leaps of logic that are difficult for the audience to follow behind.

I wouldn't say it's a bad episode. But it's one that I usually skip because it doesn't really hold my interest.

Also, wait... so... um... you can transport a bullet mid-path and have it take all it's kinetic force with it?

That just seems weird. The transporter has often been depicted as freezing people and objects in place as it teleports them from one location to another. It's so weird to imagine any force, other than gravity, taking effect when the transport is finished.

The way they figured out the killer was a little too convenient for my taste. How they linked the smiling photos to a Vulcan because of emotions, as if Vulcans are the only ones capable of emotional problems. And how they ran into the killer on the turbolift, and identified it was him by pure intuition. I didn't like these two oh so convenient moments. Joran was also a little one dimensional for my taste

Other than that, the episode was fairly interesting.

Re-watching this gave me a lot more respect for the special effects and the extra sets. It's not as bad an episode as I seem to remember, although I still don't see how a Vulcan could consider murdering random colleagues could ever be 'logical'.

Also: there are 900 Starfleet officers posted to DS9? If we include the Bajoran militia/staff and all the other residents, that's far, far more people on DS9 that I had ever estimated. Must be well over 2 000.

@Jon (from 2.5 years ago, so who knows if you’ll see this) I had your same thought through the last third of the episode:

“Wow, that was some hardcore Vulcan racial profiling. I laughed out loud when she actually brought up a list of all the Vulcans on board. She had no hard evidence at all. Just a stereotype that Vulcans must not like happy people? I was hope for some sort of lesson for Ezra to learn.”

I truly was expecting the story to be a lesson about how Ezri couldn’t allow the Joran facet of her multiple-personality to take over. I figured the bit with Ezri going overboard and pulling the knife on the escapee in Quark’s was going to be foreshadowing of us seeing next that she’d jumped the gun (pun intended) by profiling a Vulcan as the killer. That she hadn’t taken Sisko’s admonition seriously, she’d made the same mistake again.

When we saw the Vulcan looking up Ezri’s service record in his quarters, I supposed it was going to turn out that he’d merely been flattered by her attention in the turbolift and was trying to figure out how to ask her out. When he went to get the wrapped package, it was going to turn out that he’d stored up boxes of candy in hopes that he might someday have just such a meet-cute opportunity. I supposed Joran (her inner psychopath) was egging her on and she was weakly allowing herself to succumb to it, instead of holding that personality in check with the others in her, like a joined Trill is supposed to do, and as she would have been taught to do if she’d gone through the training. And I supposed the writers were taking us right up to the edge where she’d stop herself from shooting him just in time to learn he wasn’t the killer. (Or, my mind briefly entertained the possibility that she’d go so far as to shoot the non-killer and learn an even harder lesson.)

And THEN! KaBlam! All my suppositions destroyed when it turned out that the Vulcan really did have a gun and was the killer! So disappointing. I prefer my imaginary ending of Ezri learning dual important lessons about being a joined Trill and the danger of racial profiling. I sat in shocked silence through the end of the episode, then pulled up this site to search for whether others had the same shocked experience I did. I read Jammer’s (contemporaneous) review and the subsequent comments through the decades. Searching, searching. And it took until around 2019 for any commenters to begin hinting that this sort of profiling might be suspect.

So? How about, as an optimistic spin, Jammer’s 25-year repository of reviews and comments is a visible timeline of actual evolution toward a more equitable human perspective. We’re getting better at humanity. Slowly, sure, but in our own lifetime. Or at least, the lifetime of a TV show’s popularity.