Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 71: Facets [VHS]

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 71: Facets [VHS] Review

Jadzia meets the previous Dax incarnation in a Trill ceremony that extracts the resonant memories from the symbiont and deposits them in a willing temporary host, in this case her closest friends on the station. Meanwhile Ferengi teenager Nog prepares for a Starfleet entrance exam while his father Rom suspects Quark is up to no good once again. This is the kind of episode that actors sink their teeth into: confident engineer O'Brien temporarily turns into a nail-biting mathematician who can't stop apologizing, confrontational Kira becomes a gentle philosopher with a motherly purr, and best friend Sisko agrees to house her psychopathic ancestor (first revealed in episode 50, "Equilibrium"). Odo's physiology results in a personality merge with the earthy, blustery "old man" Curzon and they enjoy it so much they decide to remain together, an unheard-of event in Trill history that shakes Jadzia's confidence to the core. It's a gimmicky episode without much of a dramatic spine, but it's fun to see familiar characters flip into radically different personalities, especially Rene Auberjonois, who convincingly turns Odo into the life of the party without losing the core of his own, unique personality. --Sean Axmaker