DS9: Facets

In high school a friend and I tried to do past life regression on ourselves. This is not even the most ridiculous part of the story. That would be the fact that we attempted to do this with the aid of a cassette tape! (Google if you are unfamiliar with this ancient technology.) It didn't work out. We lay on my second-hand waterbed in my unventilated basement bedroom, closed our eyes, and dreamed up the most ridiculous, lavish, absurd past lives (I'm talking pyramids in ancient Egypt) then sat up, drank cokes and shared our "experiences" between X-Files commercial breaks.

This brings me round to the DS9 bottle episode, "Facets" in which Jadzia undergoes a special Trill ritual whereby she gets to meet and talk to all of Dax's past hosts. Oh and they all inhabit the bodies of her friends. Kira is a sassy old lady. O'Brien is a fidgety mathematician. Quark is someone's mom and Leeta is a super-bendy gymnast. It's fun and all seeing the people we know get to mess around as different characters but eventually you start to wonder where the story is. Finally Sisko is possessed by Jadzia's Hannibal Lector-ish past self and you think, "Oh here we go." But no, that only lasts about five minutes. Finally we get to Odo as Curzon. That's where the actual story is. And, while the last scene between Jadzia and Odo is VERY charming and sweet, I left this plotline feeling very much I like did upon leaving my own phoney-baloney-past-life-regression experience: a mixture of mild amusement and disappointment.

My favorite thing about this episode is actually the Nog runner. He spends the whole episode trying to pass the Starfleet entrance exam while Quark attempts to thwart his efforts. For Rom especially, it's a brilliant story. Things are starting to turn in a new direction for my favorite Ferengis and I love it!