3.7 — “Civil Defense”
Plot: During routine maintenance, Jake and O’Brien trip a security code in DS9’s ore processing plant that activates a Cardassian security program that tries to kill them and ultimately destroy the station.
Thoughts: DS9 turns into an escape room puzzle! That’s fun, but beyond the general concept there is not a lot here. The script would be better suited if it had been written for a video game. It’s unfortunate that finding solutions to the “puzzles” the characters have to solve requires them to spout meaningless blocks of technobabble.
At least the episode has Garak and Gul Dukat, who get some of their worst dialogue of the series to go with some trumped up interpersonal conflict which seems arbitrarily inserted to give the characters something to talk about.
Garak gets less interesting as he becomes less inscrutable. So I can’t support making him into some kind of master of intrigue who retains power and connections to do virtually anything. The episode doesn’t bother to examine the most interesting question, which is why he’s interested in helping (if he’s helping).
The structure of the episode reminds me of TNG 5.5, “Disaster.” I’m sad to report that the TNG episode is better.
2 of 5 discarded baseballs.
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