S1E16 - The Foresaken

[dnaphil]

I included this episode in our viewing because of the appearance of Lwaxana Troi.

This is another episode, where TNG is helping to get DS9 off and rolling. We get a cameo by another great secondary TNG character.

This episode has a personal story with Odo and Lwaxana, Julian handling diplomats, and an engineering story involving O'Brien and a rogue computer program.

I liked that as bombastic as Lwaxana is, that in Odo's moment of need (to revert to his natural form), that she makes a place for him to rest. It is the first time we see Odo vulnerable. I think this may be the first time we see Odo in his natural form as well.

I liked the engineering story. The rogue program and the solution for putting it in the doghouse was amusing.

The Julian storyline shows Julian as the eager, up and coming officer, but also that when danger occurs, someone who is quite competent. This is Season 1 and it will be a bit before Julian gets some good storylines and character development. But for now, he is a good junior officer, on his way up the ranks.

[Jared Rascher]

For all of her appearances on TNG, I think this was easily one of the best Lwaxana appearances, up there with Dark Page. I don't know if anyone else felt this way, but Lwaxana without her wig struck me as looking a lot like Deanna.

As much as I enjoyed this, yeah, it was a sign of the times that Lwaxana basically shames Odo for not responding to her advances, because I guess it didn't occur to anyone that its perfectly viable for someone to not have the kind of sexual feelings that Lwaxana was assuming were universal.

Not to overly hammer on Trek, because for all the mistakes it made, it still touched on subjects that network television was either botching far worse, or championing the wrong side of history intentionally.

[RobAbrazado]

The big part that sticks with me from this episode (and probably will for all time) is Odo's "I don't eat! This is not a real mouth!" protestation.