S06.E20: His Way

[rmontro]

Quote

The crew enjoys a new holosuite program of Dr. Bashir's featuring a 1960s Las Vegas lounge singer named Vic Fontaine, who has been programmed with sentience and awareness that he is a hologram.

From the episode description, I thought this was going to be about Dr. Bashir, but instead it was about Odo.  

I guess they needed this episode to make Odo likable again after he betrayed Kira, Nob, and the entire Alpha Quadrant earlier in the season, just so he could link with the female changeling for awhile - she wasn't even that cute!  :)  

They do a good job of it as Odo is a delightful goof as he pretends to play the piano to various standards.  And Vic gets him to loosen up enough to finally win Kira's romantic interest.  Not sure if this was worth starting its own topic about, but there it is.

[John Potts]

20 hours ago, rmontro said:

Not sure if this was worth starting its own topic about, but there it is.

That was kind of my impression of the episode too (hence I didn't open the thread!).

Yeah, if this is what reconciles Odo & Kira, then... Kira is WAY more forgiving than I am. Odo can't even claim he was faithful to Kira as he was shagging linking with the female Changeling while she was on the station. I'd want some grand apology before even thinking about dating the guy!

[rmontro]

7 hours ago, John Potts said:

Odo can't even claim he was faithful to Kira as he was shagging linking with the female Changeling while she was on the station. I'd want some grand apology before even thinking about dating the guy!

Well, technically you could say that Odo and Kira were not an item at the time, even if you do equate linking with shagging.  

But with Kira's background as a highly militant resistance fighter, it just seems very unlikely that she would be so willing to forgive Odo's actions, which put the defense of the entire Alpha Quadrant in jeopardy.  And to add insult to injury, Odo was so giddy over his link/shag, he did not even CARE about the consequences of his actions.  Not about the Alpha Quadrant, not about Kira being upset, and not about Nob, who was going to be executed because Odo did not provide the distraction that HE, HIMSELF had a part in planning.  If Nob had died, it would have been like Odo would have killed him himself.  But Odo was not the least bit bothered by this.

[BigBeagle]

I remember reading the Deep Space Nine Companion article about this episode. Both Nana V. and Rene A. had been opposed to any romantic link-up between the characters — they thought the two characters should just remain friends. Considering that, I guess it's some sort of minor miracle that the pairing worked as well as it did.

[blueray]

10 hours ago, rmontro said:

Well, technically you could say that Odo and Kira were not an item at the time, even if you do equate linking with shagging.  

But with Kira's background as a highly militant resistance fighter, it just seems very unlikely that she would be so willing to forgive Odo's actions, which put the defense of the entire Alpha Quadrant in jeopardy.  And to add insult to injury, Odo was so giddy over his link/shag, he did not even CARE about the consequences of his actions.  Not about the Alpha Quadrant, not about Kira being upset, and not about Nob, who was going to be executed because Odo did not provide the distraction that HE, HIMSELF had a part in planning.  If Nob had died, it would have been like Odo would have killed him himself.  But Odo was not the least bit bothered by this.

Do you mean Rom? I'm sorry I had correct that. Rom is Quark's brother, the one who got caught by the dominion.  Nog is his son (Jake's friend who is in starfleet). 

 

The way that they brushed off what happened with Kira and Odo always bothered me. Apparently the actors didn't like how it was handled either. Anyhow as for this episode, I've always liked it. I remember being glad that Kira and Odo finally got together.

[John Potts]

6 hours ago, blueray said:

Anyhow as for this episode, I've always liked it. I remember being glad that Kira and Odo finally got together.

Yeah, for all my criticism of the episode, I do actually think the romance is rather sweet. It's just I can't see how they could have got there from where they were 15(?) episodes ago. "We wanted a romance, so we had to have Kira & Odo reconcile first, but we couldn't think how to do that so it had to happen offscreen" is not a  very satisfactory explanation!

[rmontro]

12 hours ago, blueray said:

Do you mean Rom? I'm sorry I had correct that. Rom is Quark's brother, the one who got caught by the dominion.  Nog is his son (Jake's friend who is in starfleet). 

Wow, how many mistakes can I make in one sentence?  First off, I got Nog's name wrong, by calling him Nob.  Secondly, I forgot it was Rom who was going to be executed.  I was thinking that Nog would have been the one to attempt the sabotage because he was in Starfleet.  But Rom is a good engineer in his own right, and he was still on the station because he was a civilian.  Oops, my bad, and thanks for the correction.

5 hours ago, John Potts said:

Yeah, for all my criticism of the episode, I do actually think the romance is rather sweet. It's just I can't see how they could have got there from where they were 15(?) episodes ago. "We wanted a romance, so we had to have Kira & Odo reconcile first, but we couldn't think how to do that so it had to happen offscreen" is not a  very satisfactory explanation!

I think the real mistake was the scene where Odo didn't give a rats that he had betrayed Kira, Nog, and the Alpha Quadrant.  I could buy that Odo got involved in the link and lost track of time.  But having him show no remorse was out of character.  Especially since he had always cared about Kira.  I guess the writers would argue that the link was so profound that Odo temporarily lost interest in things that he had previously cared about.  But more likely they included that scene just because it was such a shocker.  Then it became too much of a mess to try and figure out how to put things back together again.