Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Episode Guide Part 4 @~Continued from Issue 64 SEASON TWO 1993-1994 021 "The Homecoming" Stardate not given: A visitor to DS9 gives Quark the earring of a legendary Bajoran POW, and Quark hands it over to Kira. Kira recognizes it as the one belonging to Li Nalas, the greatest freedom fighter in Bajoran history and legend. Kira convinces Sisko to loan her a Runabout - and Chief O'Brien as pilot - to travel to Cardassia IV. Recovering Li Nalas and a handful of other Bajorans from a forced-labor camp, Kira and O'Brien rush back to DS9. Though the Bajoran provisional government officially condemns Kira's cavalier rescue operation, the Bajorans on the station and everywhere rejoice in Li's return. Sisko hopes Li can reunite the gradually dissolving Bajoran government, which is splitting into many factions, including the extremist reactionary Circle, isolationists who mean to evict all non-Bajorans from Bajor or DS9. The Circle is, in fact, beginning to make its presence known aboard the station, as is Li Nalas, when he winds up replacing Kira as the Bajoran liaison officer on DS9. 022 "The Circle Stardate not given: Kira has been recalled to Bajor, and accepts an invitation from Vedek Bareil to spend some time at his monastery. There, she encounters the Third Orb, which gives her a strange vision including Dax, Vedeks Winn and Bareil, Minister Jaro, and the Bajoran Chamber of Ministers. In the meantime, as Li Nalas tries to fit into his role as DS9's first officer, the crew stumbles across evidence that the Circle is not just an isolated faction, but is instead a well-organized and surprisingly well- armed movement which is waiting in the wings to overthrow the provisional government of Bajor by force. Unknown to the Circle's members, however, they are being provided with weapons by the Cardassians, who anticipate correctly that Starfleet will order Sisko and all other Federation personnel to evacuate DS9 and leave Bajor to its own political machinations, wide open for a renewed Cardassian occupation. The Circle launches assault ships to take over the station, and many of the Starfleet occupants have no choice but to stay behind and fight for their survival. 023 "The Siege" Stardate not given: DS9 is being abandoned, and everyone from the Starfleet contingent to civilians are evacuating to various places of safety. In the meantime, Sisko and some others decide to stay and fight it out with the Bajoran assault squadrons. Kira is determined to get proof of the Cardassians' interference in Bajoran affairs to the Chamber of Ministers, even if it means walking into the assembly and showing the evidence to them herself. Li tells her where to find hidden fighter craft left over from the Cardassian occupation, and with Dax's help, Kira sets out on her mission. Bajorans General Krim and Colonel Day, along with several shiploads of soldiers, take over the station, cautious because there is no resistance. Sisko, Li, Odo, and many other crew members begin to wage guerrilla warfare upon DS9's new occupants. Kira and Dax, after a quick dogfight with Bajoran assault ships, crash-land on Bajor and are rescued by Vedek Bareil, who gets them into the Chamber of Ministers with the damning evidence intact. As the Circle's popularity dissolves before the eyes of its high-ranking supporters, the Bajoran troops on DS9 are ordered to stand down - but some of them insist on bearing a deadly hatred that will cost the Bajora one of their greatest legends. 024 "Invasive Procedures" Stardate 47182.1: DS9 is evacuated to avoid endangering any personnel due to the passage of a plasma storm. A handful of renegades infiltrates the nearly-abandoned station with the aid of Quark, who doesn't know what they're really after. The leader of the intruders is Verad, a candidate for Trill host who was rejected by the symbiosis evaluation board as unfit for the joining, and he intends to steal the symbiont Dax. As the crew is held hostage, Bashir is coerced into performing the operation to implant Dax into Verad. As Bashir struggles to keep Jadzia alive long enough to reunite her with Dax, Sisko tries to keep the newly integrated Verad Dax talking in hope of appealing to his mentor's better nature. 025 "Cardassians" Stardate 47177.2: A Bajoran man arrives on DS9 with his adopted son, a young Cardassian who was abandoned when his people withdrew from Bajor. This draws the attention of the Cardassian government, particularly Gul Dukat, who claims he is eager to solve the dilemma of Cardassian war orphans left behind on Bajor. DS9's resident tailor, Garak, seems to find Dukat's sudden pledge to resolve the abandoned children's situation ironic, since the boy in question is really the son of one of the civilian assembly who voted to pull the Cardassian military out of Bajoran space - one of Dukat's political adversaries. Sisko and Dr. Bashir, aided and abetted by Garak's cryptic advice, must decide the fate of the Cardassian youth, possibly deciding the end result of an internal power struggle whose combatants couldn't care less about the boy's situation. 026 "Melora" Stardate 47229.1: The first Elaysian officer in Starfleet, Ensign Melora Pazlar, is assigned to DS9. Bashir and O'Brien have had to modify various passageways to permit Melora - whose low- gravity home world leaves her body reliant on a wheelchair in normal gravity - access to as much of the station as possible. In the meantime, Quark's former partner, who he once sold out to the Romulans in order to save his own skin, has finally been released by his captors and has come aboard the station to exact vengeance upon Quark. Bashir decides to make an effort to cut through Melora's oversensitivity and defensiveness in order to help her, and even discovers that there may be a way to reverse her handicap. 027 "Rules of Acquisition" Stardate not given: Grand Nagus Zek once again plans to use DS9 as the launch pad of Ferengi business opportunities in the Gamma Quadrant, and again he sees Quark as a valuable agent in securing the financial future of the Ferengi Alliance - or a scapegoat should his efforts to make commercial inroads through the other side of the wormhole fail. A newcomer to Quark's is another Ferengi named Pel, who is especially savvy to Ferengi rules of commerce and materialism - but flies in the face of the rules of traditional Ferengi customs, since Pel is a female in disguise who, in Ferengi society, could be jailed for stepping out of her house with clothes on. 028 "Necessary Evil" Stardate 47282.5: Quark is hired to retrieve a list of names hidden on DS9 by a Bajoran five years ago, but when he gets curious about the list's contents, a Bajoran man enters his bar and shoots him. As Quark fights for his life in the infirmary under guard, Odo realizes that this incident is somehow linked to the murder of a Bajoran five years ago, when Odo was assigned to investigate his first crime on DS9 by Gul Dukat. The Bajoran whose murder Odo never solved turns out to be the husband of the woman who paid Quark to get the list. Five years ago, she accused Kira of the crime, claiming that the then-resistance fighter was having an affair with the woman's husband. Though the woman is currently involved in some suspicious activities, she was correct in one of those assumptions. 029 "Second Sight" Stardate 47329.4: On the fourth anniversary of the Wolf 359 attack and the death of his wife, Commander Sisko tries to evade the painful reminder by walking around the station. On the Promenade, he meets a woman who identifies herself as Fenna, and though a spark of fascination ignites between them, she disappears without a trace moments later. The next day, despite Fenna's vanishing act, Sisko carries out his duties, including the preparation of the USS Prometheus to carry out a hazardous stellar ignition experiment under the auspices of Dr. Seyetik - whose wife, as it so happens, turns out to be Fenna...or a duplicate of her. En route to the potentially deadly site of a dead star via the Prometheus, Sisko struggles to decipher Fenna's secret. 030 "Sanctuary" Stardate 47391.2: A damaged ship emerges from the wormhole carrying four members of an unknown race from the Gamma Quadrant. The station's universal translator takes a good deal of time to decipher the aliens' language, but when it does decode their incomprehensible speech, they are able to tell Sisko and Kira that there are three million others on the other side of the wormhole, referred to in their native Skrreean mythology as the eye of the universe, looking for Kentaana, their destiny according to legend. As it turns out, Kentaana is known in the Alpha Quadrant as Bajor, and the Skrreeans intend to emigrate there. @~More next issue - o -