S02.E06: Melora

[ShadowDenizen]

Bashir tries to help Ensign Melora Pazlar, the first Elaysian to join Starfleet, adjust to "normal" gravity.

This was one of my least-favroite eposides of the season....

While it DOES set up Bashirs ongoing tendency to play the White-Kinght and/or fall for the wrong women, it was handled much better ln later seasons.

 

And the "Deus Ex Machina" after Melora gets phasered? Beyond lame!

[Ailianna]

This is the only episode of the entire series that I absolutely will not watch while doing a rewatch.  I can't stand this episode, or the way all the characters bowed down to her rude, arrogant guest-star self and acted like she was better than everyone else.  Hate the episode, hate the character.

[John Potts]

I guess the message of the episode was that even handicapped people can be jerks? Which is undoubtedly true, but not a very Trekian message.

[Meushell]

Lol. I really had no idea how popular or unpopular. I came in here thinking, "No offense to anyone here, but I find this episode rather boring." It turns out I am not the only one with issues with this episode.

The character would have been a lot better if she had been tuned down in the first place, and opened up more than just Bashir. It was nice to see a bit of bonding with Dax.

Odo is really lousy at his job in this episode. I know he doesn't like Quark, but he really seems to fart around while Quark is threatened. End result? An innocent man dies. Two Starfleet officers and a civilian are kidnapped, and one of the Starfleet Officers is nearly killed.

[HalcyonDays]

Bit of a boring episode, yes. Liked seeing Bashir being a bit more confident with his romantic actions and flirty.

 

The only saving grace for this episode - the Klingon Restaurant scene. "Throws plate over shoulder" C'mon, it's hilarious!

 

Klingon Restaurant on DS9

[ShadowDenizen]

Ah!

Thanks for the reminder.  I'd forgotten about that. (And I was always kinda hoping that Morn and the Klingon Restaunter were somehow related....)

This episode gets a half-grade higher for that bit!

[HalcyonDays]

What is interesting is that originally, Dax was supposed to be in a wheelchair, a la Melora. Can you imagine? But the show quite early on realized the limitations that would occur - i.e. it would have be too hard to film and placed limitations on where Dax could go/do - and decided to drop the idea for Dax, but still did the Melora episode anyway.

[iMonrey]

Two Bashir episodes in a row may be one too many but at least he's stopped perving over Jadzia. Otherwise, this episode didn't have a lot to offer in terms of story-building and exemplifies why I was so frustrated with this show in its early seasons. They had such a strong start with that three-parter about The Circle and now they seem to have lapsed back into tedious character study episodes that barely even utilize the show's premise let alone the season story arc. I could be generous and say "Well, they had X number of shows to write per season and it's hard to keep a serialized story going for that long" but that's really just an excuse for lazy writing. They proved they could do it in the last couple of seasons, and they had fewer episodes per season (20) than either TNG or Voyager (26). 

[Ailianna]

TNG and Voyager didn't really do serialized arc story telling, though.  They pretty much  sailed in, imposed their version of truth and virtue, and moved on by the next week.

 

There are little things from the early seasons that work as call backs later, but I think the show was still working its way out of some of the restrictions Roddenberry liked, such as no bad guys in Star Fleet and so on, that limited the storytelling options.  As the show moved away from the original restrictions when Roddenberry died, I think it really found its's voice.

 

I really hate this episode though, which I've mentioned above, so I won't get into it again, but it's really terrible.

Edited June 18, 2017 by Ailianna