Daveportivo's Cultural Evaluation Facility

Episode Five - Indescrection

An old friend of Keira's tells Keira of the Ravinok the crashed Cardassian ship that was carrying Bajorain prisoners one of which was a close friend of Keira's. She plans to investigate but when the Cardassians catch wind of the escapade they demand they to have a representive of Cardassia join her in her search and Oh Yeah its Gul Dukat. Normally a Keira episode would annoy me but Gul Dukat and Keira stuck together should make for an interesting pairing.

They are both curious of each others motives, Gul was in command of the ship and he is responsible for the crew. Keira is looking to find the man who recruited her into the resistantance. The episode become interesting when Gul starts arguing that Cardassia has made Bajore a stronger nation, they are stronger, they've been tempered with Cardassian steel and will play a close role together as allies. Keira says "Bajore and Cardassia maybe" him and her never. Good stuff, its the intergalatic intrigue that makes DS9 and this is a good slice.

Sisko and Cassidy are the side story of this episode. Cassidy is considering moving onto the station and Dax is playing match maker. Sisko is reluctant however. Cassidy thinks he's affraid of commitment and says she won't take the job in this sector if he doesn't want her too. Not bad but hardly inspiring, emotional scenes bring out the worst in Sisko's acting range.

Gul Dukat and Keira talk with Keira's friend who brings them wreakage of the ship and they learn of the planet where the ship crashed. Gul and Keira's friends have a nice stand off. They find the planet but the atomsphere is to dangerous to beam into so they have to land. Gul Dukat ripping into Keira as they walk across the desert like planet is pretty awesome.

Back to Sisko, he's discussing what happened with Dax, Bashir and Quark, its Quark its not funny.

Gul and Keira have found the ship and its shot down by phaser fire and twelve gaves. We get an interesting scene regarding the digging up of the dead. As we get an interesting look into the burial vituals and religious believes of the Cardassians. Also you can tell that Keira and Gul kinda like each other. Interesting it turns out Gul Dukat had a Bajoran lover and he found her pledge braclet in one of the graves and he's distraught. Keira is shocked and Gul Dukat says his wife will never know. Again this is intriguing stuff, Gul Dukat character has been given suprising depth.

Keira tracks hidden implants to find the survivors and its patterned Star Trek run around in the caves action. Oh dear and we get Keira and Gul comedy as he sits on a spike and Keira has to pull it out of his arse, they find it hysterical, Gul hopping around on his rubbing his arse is pretty funny but its ludicriously stupid and very campy. It looks absolutely awful.

Anyway it turns out that Keira has found out that Gul Dukat had a daughter with his Bajoran lover. Who he intends to kill but Keira's not going to let it happen. Yet again that twisted logic of Gul Dukat as he argues with Keira is pretty brilliant. Gul is putting his new career before his daughter and his family, despite Keira's best arguement he is resolute in killing his daughter.

Sisko is now grilled by Jake about his relationship about Cassidy. Its pretty lame.

It turns out the Breen are using the survivors as salves in a dilithium mine on a planet that it too hot for them to mine themselves, as they come from an ice world. Gul sees his daughter, and Keira and Gul must work together to free the Bajorans.

Anyway they break into the mine and start kicking arse. Dukat runs off to find and kill his daughter giving Keira the slip. He totally owns one Breen with a pistol whip. Gul finds his daughter and just as he's about to kill his daughter when Keira confronts him. His daughter says dreaming of him coming to save her and she said she'd rather die than be without her father. Gul drops his weapon and embraces her.

Sisko finally comes to apologise to Cassidy and ask her to take the job in the sector. He runs through the usual soap opera stuff of his job getting his old wife killed and ho he loves her and such, it turns out she took the job anyway.

Keira and Dax are talking about Gul sitting on the spike, hahaha, and apparently Gul is taking her back to Cardassia with him he seems a little suspicious.

Review: Well smultsy ending aside that was a pretty strong effort from the DS9 team, Gul Dukat is always gold and the one area where Keira is strong is when she's clashing with him and they played off each other well. Its interesting to see the Cardassians and the Bajorans have clearly rubbed of on each other and how Keira and Gul are both changed peoples, and perhaps more intriguingly depending on whether you believe him or not at this stage of the series it would seem Gul has changed more and modernised better than Keira. The Sisko side story was reasonable but has been done by a million sitcoms and soap opera's before both better and worse. Overall a nice tale but nothing exceptional. (***)