Prodigal Daughter

An *Opinionated DS9 Episode Guide* review.

Review of the Season 7 episode of *Star Trek: Deep Space Nine*.

## Episode information

* **Season:** 7
* **Episode:** 11
* **Original airdate:** 6 January 1999
* *Prodigal Daughter* at StarTrek.com, the official website
* *Prodigal Daughter* at Memory Alpha, a canon *Star Trek* wiki
* *Prodigal Daughter* at Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
* *[ Prodigal Daughter]* at the Internet Movie Database

## Review information

* Review link
* Published: 25 June 2022

## SF Debris synopsis

*Opinionated DS9 Episode Guide watches Ezri go back home, to remind us why the show is better when it's on Deep Space 9.*

## Post-Episode Follow-Up

### Final Score: 3

***It fills air***

"Final score for 'Prodigal Daughter' is 3 out of 10.

Now I imagine that this probably means a lot more to you as an Ezri fan. But, I have to say that I didn't really care for it. The failing of the episode is that it suffers from its own short development time. There's a murder plot that this is tangential to the real story. Ditto to the mob plot. The family drama dominates it all. Which is fine, except... there's only one note to it. The kind of story it wants to tell could definitely work. but it needs far more time invested in it to be fully realized.

Without it, it just becomes a series of scenes that have Ezri in them. There are many stories that delve into the past of the characters. Some of them are better than others. But this didn't do Ezri justice. We might better understand her sense of self-doubt, but this isn't even the point of the story, because it doesn't start with her self-doubt, nor does it end with her self-doubt. There's no sense on this journey, that this one thing we've had insight with Ezri has changed in her, and there is no other sign that she is changed from the experience either.

Norvo's murder revelation is extrmeely odd. I can't think fo any other example of anything like this. The events form a good character arc for him. You can see the progression of all of the events, to finally end with him committing the murder he has confessed to. The problem is that the murder he had confessed *to happened three weeks ago*. So, yeah... His character arc is perfectly logical if you assume he's a time traveller. It's a really odd kind of timeline that we have here, where as it's laid out to the audience, the events progress, but the actual chronology makes no sense. When you fit this back in and look back at it, Norvo seems like some kind of a sociopath. He doesn't seem to care at all for the life he has taken with his own bare hands. He goes through all of these events and it's all about him. And then we get to the end of the episode and it's ended with this murder that somehow... proves something... Except, that's not how he's behaved the whole episode... Like I said... You, you see where I'm getting at here ? He's on a character journey that only makes sense if uou assume that he's quantum-leaped...

So yeah, unfortunately, 'Prodigal Daughter' is a story that had definite potential to it, in so many of its aspects, it's just the problem was... it's enemy was time."

### Annoying Character

***Why ?***

"Annoying Character goes to making me have to sit through this."

## See also

* Opinionated DS9 Episode Guide
* DS9 Season 7 reviews