Treachery, Faith and The Great River

DVD, DS9 S7 (Treachery, Faith and The Great River)

The pieces are falling into place for the end of the series. The revelation of the Founder's illness, the duality Odo feels, even Weyoun Six' suggestion that Odo could undo the damage of his people, they are all steps towards the inevitable. Not that it was inevitable at the time. I never really guessed what was going to happen, because the story is always wide open in Trek, and anything can happen. Like Nog pulling through and saving O'Brien's bacon.

The fun B-story was a bit at odds with the deep defection story on the Runabout (the good old Rio Grande doing the job again), and had the feeling of Season 5's 'In The Cards' where again it's Nog trading things to get a desired item, only that time there was the whole Jake/Nog thing which added a lot. This episode suffers because of the lack of such things, and would have been an ideal situation to bring Jake into. It does introduce the closest thing to religion for Ferengi, however, typically to do with material goods! Wonder why Nog didn't talk about that when he was trying to get the baseball card...

The episode as a whole doesn't quite gel well enough, although it was a solid opportunity to see Odo get out and do something. It can get a little tedious to see him and Kira in every scene, as if they've lost all contact with their jobs and other friends. So to pull back a bit, while giving us some pointers to the future of the War, was a good move. I don't know, somehow Odo and Weyoun, together in a Runabout should have given some heightened drama, but they're both so unsure of their allegiances, or at least, the knowledge that their actions will cause trouble for their own people, that nothing much is really gleaned from the interaction, other than a sort of origin story for how the Vorta came to serve the shapeshifters. That was interesting enough that I wished we could have seen it in flashback, but at least we were treated to some exciting chase sequences, and in a comet's asteroid field!

CGI had really moved on for TV, as these elaborate, 'Star Wars' type moments present. It was only that once the initial surprise at seeing Weyoun and then his defection, is over, the drama is pretty much done too, and not enough emotion was injected into their sorrow at two heritages. And Quark still hasn't been used enough, only really being important to a couple of episode so far. This episode was perhaps the least satisfying so far, but it was still good enough to enjoy.

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