From: ckeroack@hamp.hampshire.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.current
Subject: DSN *Spoilers* Synopsis/Review, "A Man Alone"
Date: 27 Jan 93 17:36:30 GMT
Organization: Hampshire College
NNTP-Posting-Host: hamp.hampshire.edu


	Space, the final frontier. Only way on the edge of it.
	These are the voyages of something which, when operating within 
		safety parameters, shouldn't go too fast.
	It's continuing mission:
		To be able to make a decent cup of coffee without a 
							systems failure;
		To wait for New Life (tm) and New Civilizations (tm) to 
			 come by and try to stake claim to the quadrant; 
		To boldly STAY.... RIGHT.... HERE!!!


	*Spoilers like crazy for the Deep Space Nine episode "A Man Alone"*
	*Moderately detailed synopsis and review below*














		Eh. I was hoping for much more. Much more Rene A., that is.
And it doesn't look like next week will get any better. 
		ANY-way...



A Man Alone, Episode #403

Synopsis:
		Dax is in meditation with an Alkonian brain-teaser, 
the object of which is to calm oneself enough to emit a certain kind 
of brainwave which turns a floating, prismatic sphere in front of the 
player into a solid colour. Dr. Bashir comes in and starts hitting on 
her, inviting her to dinner and constantly commenting on her 
appearance and "that wonderful scent" she has on while she tries to 
instruct him in the way of the meditation-game. He tries it, fails 
miserably, and just as he starts to invite her to dinner again, Sisko 
arrives; she already has a dinner date with him. She leaves and Bashir 
sadly tries the game again.
		On the Promenade, Odo is chatting with Quark about how 
well the Ferengi has done, well enough that Quark is "almost making an 
honest living". They notice that O'Brien and Keiko are having a bit of 
a spat, and Quark's observation on how Keiko doesn't like it on DSN 
leads to a discussion on Odo's not understanding the need "to couple", 
alluding to a previous relationship and talking about how he prefers 
to live alone. Quark notes Dax and Sisko entering and immediately 
begins drooling, commenting that Dax used to be a he before she got 
the new body, so Sisko's no competition...
		Sisko and Dax talk about how some things in their 
relationship just haven't changed (their food preferences, for one) 
and Dax takes the opportunity to suggest that the best way for Sisko 
to adjust to Dax's new body and persona is to be "comfortable with 
(his) discomfort". Sisko says that Dax is/was a mentor and 
father figure and that despite some Trill's experiences with 
friendships, theirs will last.
		Odo notices a man in the bar and asks sharply, "How 
long has *he* been here?" Odo tells him in no uncertain terms that he 
doesn't want him around. When the man replies that he has every right 
to be here, Odo comments that he's the one who determines who has 
rights on the Promenade and promptly starts wrestling with him. Sisko 
breaks them up and Odo informs the man that he has 26 hours to leave
the station.
		O'Brien and Keiko discuss keiko's feelings on the 
station. As a botanist on the frontier station, she doesn't really 
feel like she belongs, and she wants to be content without favors from 
O'Brien (like his suggesting he use his influence to get her on 
Runabout missions) or making O'Brien lose his new rank and position. 
He makes a feeble attempt at suggesting she create a greenhouse or 
spruce up the place with trees or some such, but noticing Jake 
wandering aimlessly below, Keiko simply asks, "Is this the sort of place 
you *really* want to raise a child?"
		As Jake introduces himself to Nog, Quark's nephew,
(since they seem to be the only two children on the station that are 
close in age to each other), Odo talks to Sisko about the man in 
Quark's place. His name is Ibudan, a black marketeer who made a living 
gouging prices on medical supplies during the Bajoran/Cardassian war. 
He was a real mercenary; ruthless enough to let a child die because the parents 
couldn't afford the medicines that he had. Ibudan killed a Cardassian 
in a disagreement over payment, and Odo sent Ibudan to jail for 
murder. Now, the provisional government has let Ibudan go (since 
killing Cardassians isn't exactly a problem these days). Sisko tells 
Odo that as long as Ibudan has done nothing wrong on the station, he 
should be allowed to stay and that Odo shouldn't take the law into his 
own hands. Odo scoffs at this, remarking that "..laws change, but 
justice is justice". Sisko informs him that if Odo can't do his job 
then he'll find someone who can. Odo leaves, simmering, and shortly 
afterward Ibudan is killed in one of the holosuites.
		Jake and Nog get into some trouble on the station, 
startling some tourists with mites that cause them to itch and change 
colour. Security catches them, and Keiko notices all of this sadly.
		Julian is in the middle of hitting on Dax, who is 
trying to explain to him that Trills find romance a nuisance no matter 
what the urges of the host body are, when Julian is summoned to the 
scene of the murder. Between Julian, Kira, Sisko and Odo, it is 
determined that the suite was secured, with only Ibudan's entrance and 
the murderer's exit recorded; there was no chance of a beam-in; the 
knife thrust that killed Ibudan was expertly done. Julian starts of a 
sweep of the room while Sisko delays departures on the station.
		Keiko talks with O'Brien some more about the living 
conditions on DSN, saying that it isn't like a starship... there's too 
many things to get into mischief with on a space station. She thinks 
that the place needs a school...
		Mr. Zayra, the person in operation of the transiting 
center, offers information to Kira and Sisko that he had talked to 
Ibudan immediately after the incident in Quark's, and says that Ibudan 
feared for his life. Kira immediately defends Odo, saying that Odo is 
the most honorable man on the station, and Zayra simply replies that 
all he knows is, an hour after his conversation with Ibudan, Ibudan 
was dead. 		
		Odo searches Ibudan's quarters, notices that they're double 
accomodations even though he traveled alone (though a ship crewman 
suggests that he was just trying to get larger quarters), and also 
notices his name as the last item on a to-do list, right around the 
time of his death.
		Sisko talks with Keiko about setting up a school and 
agrees it'd be a wonderful idea, considering that there are about 12 
other children from 8-16 on the station. He offers her all the 
equipment she'd ever need and warns her that it'll be hard to teach to 
such a wide variety of cultures. She says she'll try her best and 
leaves, letting Sisko start in on Jake about staying away from Nog...
		Odo talks with Kira about how neat a package the 
murder is, noting that from the evidence so far (no new DNA traces 
were found, so no one could've been in there), the only one who 
could've gotten in would be someone who could get through the cracks 
in the door: a shapeshifter. After implicating himself in such a 
manner, Kira asks for any possible alibis, not wanting to see Odo get 
in trouble. Odo replies that since he has to return to his natural 
state every 18 hours, "...to be quite honest, I was in a pail in the 
back of my office at the time of the murder". Kira asks if there's 
anyone who would want to frame him; he replies that of the hundreds 
who would, none of them have been on DSN recently. Kira arranges for 
a sweep of Ibudan's quarters, becoming increasingly distressed at how 
things are looking.
		Keiko has a chat with Rom, Nog's father, about the 
school. He says that Ferengi simply throw their kids into the regular 
world of commerce and "..anyone who survives, graduates." She tries 
persuading him with the idea that Nog would have an advantage over 
others in the marketplace with a knowledge of other cultures. He 
replies that his son wouldn't take lessons from a human female. She 
asks him to consider it and he agrees, if only to be able to get back 
to work in Quark's place.
		Zayra is talking at the other end of the bar, 
meanwhile, with some locals who are apprehensive about the situation 
with Odo. Zayra notes that Odo was the chief of security when the 
Cardassians were there, and Quark immediately comes to his defense: 
"He's an ill-tempered, overbearing crosspatch.. but he's no Cardassian 
collaborator, and no killer." When asked why he's suddenly defending 
his worst enemy, Quark remarks that right now, that may be the closest 
thing Odo has to a friend...
		Sisko, after hearing Zayra and a moderately good-sized 
group complain about Odo, decides to relieve Odo of duty until things 
cool down. Kira defends Odo, but Sisko says that a) the people have a 
right to complain and b) having Odo keep his position would only seem 
like favoritism, which would make things worse.
		Bashir, having finished a sweep of Ibudan's quarters, 
finds fragments of biological sample containers, suggestiong medical 
experiments. Odo says that Ibudan was neither a scientist nor a 
doctor, so why would they be there? Bashir notices some proteins on 
the containers forming DNA patterns, so he starts accelerating the 
growth of the biological remnants to see what Ibudan was up to.
		Sisko informs Odo that Kira and Dax are now in charge 
of the investigation, dismissing him temporarily while saying that he 
personally doesn't think that Odo did it. Odo verbally pokes at 
Sisko, saying that Sisko doesn't know him very well, that perhaps Odo 
*could* kill if it suited him to do so. Sisko is just trying to do 
something which would be in Odo's best interest, but Odo says that 
he'll look after his own best interests, thank you.
		Odo is being watched and followed warily from afar 
wherever he goes now. Where he goes at the moment is to his office, to 
start clearing it out. He finds that his office has been smashed, the 
word "Shifter" scrawled on the wall. Quark comes by and offers to find 
out who did this to him. Odo suggests that Quark takes advantage of 
Odo's absence, and Quark says that he already is. Quark and Odo 
express some mutual admiration for each other's ability to keep the 
other on his toes, with Odo even jokingly asking if Quark could use a 
shifter in his operations. Quark informs Odo that he's asked around 
the prison where Ibudan was kept, and that Ibudan had no enemies since 
he spent most of his time hanging around Bajoran dissidents.
		Bashir discovers a genetic drift in the humanoid DNA pattern of 
the whatever-it-is that is now growing rapidly in a tank. Sisko and he 
have some lunch (after mis-hearing Sisko invite Dax to lunch), and 
Sisko tells Bashir rather plainly and amicably that a) Dax has gone 
through about 6 hosts or so, but that may be off since Dax always 
seems to forget some of them, b) Dax loves the races, and c) Sisko and Dax are 
just friends, so Bashir has nothing to fear from him.
		Keiko preps the classroom, and O'Brien brings a 
schoolbell as a gift and sort of peace offering for the problems 
they've had. 
		By now, an angry mob has followed Odo to his office, 
shouting "freak! shifter!". Odo locks himself in and Sisko orders some 
armed security downstairs while Kira slows down the turbolifts. After 
a bit of a skirmish, Sisko admonishes the crowd for persecuting Odo 
simply because he is different. Zayra says that they demand justice, 
that they follow because of evidence, and Bashir comes in, having made 
a realization and found new evidence.
		It seems the man murdered was not Ibudan, rather, he 
was a rather poor clone with identical DNA to Ibudan but a gene 
sequence degradation which tipped off Bashir. Odo does some checking 
and finds that Ibudan was buddy-buddy with a scientist sent to prison 
for illegal cloning methods, and Odo goes to Ibudan's quarters and 
discovers Ibudan in disguise, arresting him for the murder of his own 
clone. 
		Stardate 46421.5. Life on the station has returned to 
normal, with Odo receiving no apologies and the new clone which was in 
the acceleration vat getting up and walking out to a new life. Keiko 
starts the first day of class with only 4 kids or so... one of them 
being Nog, who is told by Rom not to have anything todo with the human 
boy (Jake)...


		

		Sorry this is so late this week.. this is my first 
week of classes for spring semester and I've been running around like 
a disguised Bajoran with his face ripped off.
        

Impressions:

		I should've titled this one "depressions". Yig. This 
was a *very* difficult synopsis to write, primarily because the 
writers fell into the old trap of "how can we jam several plotlines 
together in a coherent fashion"? The answer is, most times, you can't. 
This was *very* poorly patched together; even in some of the poorer 
TNG episodes, the various plotlines had *something* to do with each 
other. I can't even make the slightest connection between Keiko 
finding something to do and Odo's murder-plot-thingy (which was slow, 
heavy on the pseudo-science and moderately transparent). I can't 
remember a more "and I would've done it, too, if it weren't for those 
darn kids" moment than when Odo ripped off Ibudan's mask (though 
admittedly, it was a good piece of make-up work... wonder how many 
takes and how many pounds of face-putty they went through to shoot 
that one =) ). At the very least, they could've given us longer 
moments with each plot rather than jumping, and could've paced things 
so that the ending, with Odo's realization and detective work, wasn't 
so rushed. And the Dax/Bashir/Sisko triangle better resolve itself 
quickly; they haven't even fully addressed more than a few times in 3 
episodes and already it's tiring. And did *anyone* make any sense out 
of the forced "ol' friends" scene with Sisko and Dax? Steamed danza, 
boiled, fricasseed... no, still doesn't sound funny to me. Sorry.
	On the plus side, though, Rene did very well with what he was 
given. (Though what he was given was silly in some places.... yes, 
he's crotchety, yes, he's a realist, yes, Sisko doesn't know him... 
but why bend over BACKWARDS to implicate oneself when everyone around 
you is either thristing for your punishment or actually trying to 
help?) His scene with Quark was *marvelous* (though that may just 
shine in comparison with everything else); they're the only two, 
besides Sisko and Jake (whose "I thought you didn't want to discuss it 
now" scene was well-played), who feel like they have a relationship 
which has lasted longer than the series has. 
	Well, I have to go to class, and other than O'Brien's "It's 
just a little something I replicated on the way over" line, there's 
nothing else to be said on this one. Eh.
 

Dem numbers:

Plot: 3. Well, 3 only if you can hold on to the plot long enough...
Direction: 2. One plot at a time, folks!
Characterization: 7. Only because Rene deserves it for seeming to be 
the only real actor with a part this week. It'd... be HIGHER. If Aaa-very 
Brooks. Would not choop up his CADENCE when-he-SPEAKS.....

   
Next Week:
	
		A deadly plague. Kira's the only one who can save 
them. Thank heavens TNG is emerging from the depths of reruns or we'd 
starve! =)


	    

		Questions or complaints to:

					ckeroack@hamp.hampshire.edu
Posted-Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 10:30:19 CST
Received-Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 10:28:57 CST
From: Otto Heuer #3 <ottoh3@cfsmo.honeywell.com>
Subject: Re: DS9 rumor *SPOILER* 
To: rec.arts.startrek.current (r.a.s.current)
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 10:30:19 CST
Organization: Hack-Man's Hangout
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