[Nate the Great]

October 17, 1993, "Invasive Procedures"

No fiver

The Episode

ODO: What are you doing here? You're under strict orders from Sisko to stay in the bar.
QUARK: I'm not a prisoner, Odo. I volunteered to stay and help you protect the station.
ODO: The only reason you volunteered is because there wasn't any room on the evacuation shuttles for six hundred bars of gold-pressed latinum.

This is weird, because back in "The Siege" they implied that all of Quark's money could fit in one bag.

Furthermore, at one point Quark states that his daily profit is about five bars. I don't see why he would keep half a year's worth of petty cash in hard currency instead of investing it. Ferengi would know the importance of a diversified investment portfolio.

And frankly, I would expect Quark to have a safe capable of keeping this stuff secure. For that matter, he's been known to spend days on Ferenginar without taking all of his money with him. And the bar was open and operating at those times, his safe would be much less secure.

(And to be really pedantic, in "Who Mourns for Morn" Quark estimates a few tablespoons' worth of latinum to be worth a hundred bars, and it doesn't seem to weigh all that much. Surely he could temporarily extract the latinum from his six hundred bars and evacuate with a Thermos of latinum, leaving the worthless gold behind until he returns and can restore the latinum.)

QUARK: That doesn't mean I don't love him. Chief, do you have any brothers?
O'BRIEN: As a matter of fact, I have two.

Only mention of O'Brien's brothers. Which is weird, because this seems like the kind of thing they could build good characterization with. Have one of them stay home and the other be a full-blown Starfleet officer. Miles was the youngest and felt like he had to live up to them both, creating conflict.

O'BRIEN: Listen, friend, in case you haven't heard the Federation and the Klingon Empire are allies now.
T'KAR: The Empire is governed by doddering fools and frightened old women who aren't worthy of the name Klingon.

You know, with what we know about Klingon politics, I have to wonder why a pro-war faction hasn't threatened Gowron yet. If Martok is to believed, there are very specific rules about when and how the sitting Chancellor can be challenged. Even so, this would seem to be the reason for keeping an opposing faction like Duras' around to provide a counterpoint.

The mention of "frightened old women" surprises me. Has Gowron voluntarily allowed women into the High Council by now, after seeing that women can be as capable as men?

T'KAR: Mareel, the box. Put it in your stasis chamber. Now. Or I will destroy it.
BASHIR: Is that supposed to be some kind of threat?
O'BRIEN: They've got Odo in there.
BASHIR: I see. Well, in that case.

This seems odd. Are they implying that Odo would eventually be able to get out if he wasn't put in stasis? Not to put too fine a point on it, but Dr. Mora would've tested how small of a hole Odo can go through. This would be public knowledge. And Odo should be able to sit in a locked box for awhile without being hurt.

KIRA: Why Dax? There are thousands of symbionts on Trill. Why her?
VERAD: I did research. I worked it all out. The Dax symbiont is the best match for me. We have mutual interests. Science, diplomacy...

This is an interesting question. Does the intellectual compatibility of the symbiont and the host affect the quality of the bond? That's a doctoral thesis at Starfleet Medical School that's waiting to happen.

Another question is how much you can define a symbiont's personality outside of the blended version with each host. For that matter, how come we never had a scene where Jadzia spoke to Dax directly? It would make for an interesting philosophical discussion, something very appropriate for Trek.

SISKO: Verad. There's another reason, isn't there? The wormhole. After you've stolen the symbiont, you plan on escaping to the Gamma Quadrant, don't you.
MAREEL: Can you think of a better place to start a new life?

Okay, they don't know about the Dominion yet. Even so, the Gamma Quadrant still has too many unknowns associated with it. Like I've said before, they should know about all governments within a certain radius of the wormhole by now, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

DAX: I understand your frustration, But there could be dozens of reasons why the Board didn't select you for symbiosis. They have to be very careful. An improper joining can cause permanent psychological damage to both the symbiont and the host. They were only looking after your best interests.

I'm reminded of that time on Legends of Tomorrow when they needed to find a new Firestorm partner for Professor Stein, but that's another story...

I am glad that the symbiont is in danger as well, it makes this whole thing seem more like genuine symbiosis rather than the parasitism of TNG's Trill (and no, I haven't gotten over that discontinuity yet).

VERAD: What's that?
BASHIR: It's a delta wave inducer, to keep you asleep during the operation. It also increases your body's natural endorphin production to help accelerate the healing process.

That's not what endorphins do. They can suppress (or as Crusher would say, "cloak") pain, but they don't actually have anything to do with healing.

KIRA: How long can Dax survive without the symbiont?
SISKO: Once the symbiont is removed, the host usually dies within hours.

I thought that the exact number of hours was revealed elsewhere in Trek, but I guess not. All we know is that it takes 93 hours for a host and symbiont to integrate enough that the host will die if the symbiont is removed.

KIRA: Really? Then maybe you'd like to tell me how four armed terrorists got by our docking ring security grid.
QUARK: Security grid? I don't know anything
KIRA: Save it, Quark. You crossed the line this time.

Yeah, after stuff like this you really have to wonder how Kira ever got fond enough of him to endorse releasing a prisoner of war to him. Quark is now an accessory to terrorism and attempted murder. I'd call that a bit too much to recover from.

SISKO: Even if it means losing him?
MAREEL: Losing him?
SISKO: After the surgery, Verad won't be just Verad anymore. He'll be a blending of Verad, Dax, and all the previous hosts. Their memories, their knowledge, even their personalities.
MAREEL: Verad told me that you'd say things like that. I know he'll change. He'll be smarter, more confident, but in all the important ways, he'll be the same.
SISKO: I'm sorry, but if he told you that, he's lying. Once a Trill is joined, it's like a rebirth. He'll be an entirely different person.

This is a loaded issue that I'll skip the screed for, but I think a problem with this approach is that Sisko doesn't really know about this topic. He didn't know Curzon or Jadzia before they were joined with Dax. But he DOES know about the reassociation taboo, which definitely says that the host influences the symbiont.

BASHIR: Take this. Come on, we haven't got much time. Just move it back and forth over the wound in slow even strokes.
YETO: Why bother? She'll be dead in a few hours anyway.

Well, that's...dark. And rather unnecessary in this case.

SISKO: Of course you do. Remember when we first met?
VERAD: Pelios Station.

So Pelios Station wasn't invented for "Children of Time". I'd also forgotten that this event also came up in "Facets." It was also going to be mentioned in "The Maquis." A story in the novel "The Lives of Dax" will say what happened here.

SISKO: All the months we served aboard the Livingston?

I'm confused at this one. Curzon was a Federation Ambassador, he wasn't a Starfleet officer. Why would he be on the same ship for months? We know that Starfleet occasionally sends ships far outside the Federation for a couple years at a time, but I'm not sure they'd send an ambassador of Curzon's reputation on such a mission.

SISKO: You have to discuss it, Dax. You know as well as I do we can't let her die.
VERAD: But she's not going to die. She'll live on, in me.
SISKO: Jadzia's memories will live on, but Jadzia herself will die and you will have killed her.

Frankly I'm not fond of the idea that the personalities of prior hosts live on in "suspended animation" within the symbiont. The whole Zhian'tara thing just doesn't make sense to me, even if that episode had nice character moments.

The rest of the episode is pretty predictable, not much to talk about. That's the problem, we knew Dax wouldn't die or lose her symbiont going in, so the journey has to be good enough to distract us from the obvious. And this one wasn't.

Memory Alpha

* They point out that Quark wasn't punished. Even Shimmerman was bugged by it, it makes Odo not look competant.
* Terry Farrell liked this episode for the chance it gave to portray Jadzia without the symbiont as a different character. I say that if that was the intent there wasn't enough screentime devoted it to make it stand out.

Nitpicker's Guide

* Dax says only one in ten Trill is joined, and Kira says there are "thousands" of symbionts. That implies a rather small Trill population.
* Phil has a problem with a trained combat officer like Kira being beaten in a fight by a prostitute.
* Many contradictions with the joining process compared to "The Host." I still maintain that the "Trill" in that episode are a different race than the ones depicted elsewhere in Trek.
* Where did these "evacuation shuttles" come from? A couple episodes back they made it clear that they only had the three runabouts to work with?