Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 43: Crossover [VHS]

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 43: Crossover [VHS] Review

"Crossover" is a runaway favorite with fans, and it's easy to see why. The alternate universe is a dark, twisted place full of intrigue and high weirdness--and Kira Nerys's evil twin running amok in black stretch vinyl. We're talking kitten with a phaser. We're talking the whole reason for Starfleet's temporal policy department. Watch as alternate Odo rules hapless Terran miners with an iron fist. See Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) perform actual hard manual labor in the mines of Terok Nor; think silently that after the way he behaved in the episode's teaser, maybe he deserves it. Meet a kinder, gentler Quark who rescues hew-mons from their torturous fate. Marvel as Kira flirts with herself. All this while alternate Garak schemes... it's just too wondrously bizarre for words.

The story has its roots in the original series' "Mirror, Mirror"--a fact openly referenced in the screenplay. Thanks to solid writing and a lot of inside humor, the ensemble cast plays it to the "alternate" hilt. Special kudos to Nana Visitor as the coquettishly perverse Intendant--a woman with an ego so large she gets a charge out of having her alternate self around to talk to. Kudos to the DS9 station as the eerie Terok Nor, which looks like a slice of juicy film noir. Watch for Colm Meaney's poignant performance as Smiley and Armin Shimmerman's softened Quark. Both alternates offer subtle twists on their core characters. Watch "Crossover" for the hoot value; treasure it for the nuances. --Kayla Rigney

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 54: Meridian [VHS]

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 54: Meridian [VHS] Review

Exploring the Gamma Quadrant, Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) encounters a planet where none had existed moments before. That planet, Meridian, shifts between dimensions, appearing in our time and space for short spells every 60 years. Upon investigating, Dax falls in love with one of Meridian's inhabitants, Deral (Brett Cullen), setting up a big problem as the clock ticks down to another, imminent dimensional shift. Basically a star-crossed romance from the get-go, "Meridian" doesn't have a lot of mystery to it. But it does have the considerable charm of Terry Farrell, whose Jadzia was always a woman for all seasons on DS9: gorgeous, funny, tough, lusty, a tomboy, a lover, a surrogate sister. Not surprisingly, this character-driven story, with a higher quotient of emotion than usual, was directed by Jonathan Frakes, Riker on The Next Generation and heir to directorial duties on Star Trek feature films. --Tom Keogh

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 70: Shakaar [VHS]

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 70: Shakaar [VHS] Review

Major Kira (Nana Visitor) has another attack of divided loyalties when her former mates in a Bajoran resistance cell come under fire from the new Minister of the Bajoran Provisional Government: the loathsome Kai Winn (Louise Fletcher). Oblivious to the irony of persecuting the very people who fought Cardassian occupiers for self-rule, Winn becomes unnervingly reminiscent of Fletcher's turn as the manipulative, power-mad Nurse Ratched in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. A major problem in the first couple of seasons of DS9 was overexposure of Kira in too many episodes focused on her. Thus a Kira-centric story such as this one from the series' third year, in which she rejoins her old compatriots, really does look better with time and distance. Supporting players Duncan Regher, Dianne Salinger, and William Lucking, among others, are very good as weathered freedom fighters ready to take up arms again--this time against an internal enemy. --Tom Keogh

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 51: Second Skin [VHS]

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 51: Second Skin [VHS] Review

Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) is a good person. She often serves as the series' voice of reason, because she can always be trusted to do the right thing. This trust is hard earned because Kira also has one very particular prejudice, and everybody knows it: Kira Nerys does not like Cardassians. Her prejudice elevates "Second Skin" from just ironic to deliciously creepy. Imagine waking up in a strange place in the middle of your own worst nightmare. All the people around you insist that this is reality and everything you hold to be true is a lie. Now imagine that when you look in the mirror, the reflection of your mortal enemy stares back at you...

In this episode, nothing is what it seems. The viewer is forced to peel away layer after layer to finally reveal the answer. And that answer isn't black or white. It's gray--like the Cardassian skin in which Kira finds herself encased. Nana Visitor is given good, solid material here, and she runs with it. Cardassian kudos to Lawrence Pressman as Legate Ghemor and to Andrew Robinson as the ever mysterious Garak. Great line: "Anything worth doing in a holosuite can be done better in the real world." Great scene: Sisko gleefully blackmailing Garak into submission. "Second Skin" is a puzzle within a puzzle--there may be only one solution, but getting there is half the fun. --Kayla Rigney

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 33: Armageddon Game [VHS]

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 33: Armageddon Game [VHS] Review

"Give me two good actors in a room," said frequent DS9 and Next Generation director Winrich Kolbe in Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman's book Captains' Logs Supplemental, "and I prefer that over six bad actors hanging from a rope on the Matterhorn."

Kolbe got his wish in "Armageddon Game," one of the early DS9 episodes to highlight the superb chemistry between costars Colm Meaney (who plays chief engineer Miles O'Brien) and Alexander Siddig (known as Siddig El Fadil at the time, and the actor portraying Dr. Bashir). The two Starfleet characters are assigned to a laboratory orbiting T'Lani III to implement an agreement between the feuding T'Lani and Kellerun societies, who wish to dismantle a biochemical warfare system known as the Harvester. Before the chief and the physician can finish the job, however, Kellerun soldiers overrun the lab and O'Brien is exposed to the Harvester's dangerous contents.

A number of times on DS9, Bashir and O'Brien find themselves in harm's way together, allowing the show's writers (Morgan Gendel in this case) and directors (such as Kolbe) to bring a rare sort of actorly texture to the proceedings. Meaney and Siddig simply click together with their excellent, often funny dialogue, some of it quibbling, much of it pure banter about the most human, everyday things: family, love, decisions once made, etc. A very rewarding show. --Tom Keogh

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 8: Dax [VHS]

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 8: Dax [VHS] Review

Jadzia Dax, Deep Space Nine's Trill science officer, is kidnapped by an armed "extradition" party charging Curzon Dax (Jadzia's previous incarnation) with treason and the murder of a Klaestron war hero, who was a national icon and the father of the gung-ho prosecutor and platoon leader (guest star Gregory Itzin). The extradition hearing is a tepid courtroom drama, but it helpfully sifts through the secrets of the Trill race, the unique symbiotic marriage of mortal humanoid and long-living sluglike beings that were introduced in the Next Generation episode "The Host." While Sisko wrestles with law and ethics (can an entity formed of two sentient beings be held responsible for the past actions committed by one of the pair?), Constable Odo investigates the murder and uncovers a carefully preserved secret that even Dax refuses to unleash in her own defense. Director David Carson, who piloted the DS9 pilot and the feature Star Trek: Generations, can't turn the static script (cowritten by longtime Trek writer D.C. Fontana) into space-age excitement, but he lets Sisko's cocky control have a field day as a sly, smiling courtroom defender. --Sean Axmaker

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