Business as Usual - Quark reveals to Jadzia that he's up to his loves in debt and will be out of business soon. His cousin Gaila (who Jadzia reminds us tried to kill Quark in 'Little Green Men') shows up on the station with a business offer for Quark: he wants Quark to sell weapons for him. He tells Quark he'll make so much money that the FCA will give him his license back and he'll be able to buy his own moon. Jake comes to visit O'Brien, who is having a hard time getting Kirayoshi to sleep wtih Keiko is off the station. Jake offers to babysit, but the baby cries when he holds it so O'Brien takes it to work. Quark meets Gaila's business partner Hagath (Steven Berkoff, very well spoken and scary) and shows him his special holosuite program that perfectly simulates the guns they'll sell. It's a clever way to arms deal without actually bringing guns to the station. Quark impresses Hagath with his sales technique, but Quark is disappointed to learn he won't be seeing any profit until all his debts are paid. O'Brien plays darts with Bashir while holding the baby. Odo arrests Quark for the arms dealing, but Sisko and Kira arrive and free him. Hagath sold weapons to the Bajoran resistance so the Bajorans owe him and don't want him arrested. Sisko makes it clear he's not happy with Quark. Federation citizens stop coming to Quark's bar (but Morn is there!) but Gaila assures him it doesn't matter as an important customer is arriving soon and they'll make a lot of money. Jadzia gives Quark the cold shoulder and he asks why she's judging him. He insists the weapons he's selling are purely defensive, which even he must know is bullshit.
Bashir reports that there's nothing wrong with baby Yoshi, he just cries a lot. The regent from a planet at war is set to arrive on the station and Hagath scares Quark for fun by pretending the food he prepared isn't very good. Then saying actually the food is great! That Hagath's such a joker. The regent (real life tough bastard Lawrence Tiernay) wants to buy a biological weapon that can kill 28 million people. Quark is taken aback by this and suggests just wounding them instead. Gaila wants to retire with the money he'll make for this and warns Quark to get his conscience under control. Gaila tells Quark to look at the stars and asks if anyone would notice if one of them went out. He offers Quark ten million bars of latinum. Quark has a dream where he sees the DS9 cast as zombies asking him why he killed them. It's one of those overly literal dream sequences Star Trek does sometimes. I think we already knew Quark was struggling without giving him a dream where O'Brien waves a dead baby at him. Meanwhile O'Brien has found a spot in Ops where Yoshi can sleep without cryng. Everyone watches the baby before Sisko tells them to get back to work in a cute bit. Quark brings his tongo wheel to Dax as a gift as he isn't expecting to live much longer. Quark tells Hagath that there's a problem with the biological weapon, but he has an alternative. He's going to arrange a demonstration of this weapon for the regent ("Find a planet with some low level lifeforms nobody will miss.") Quark brings the leader of the resistence on the regent's planet to the station and tells Gaila he's going to sell weapons to both sides to double their profits. Quark arrents for the regent's people, the resistence, Hagath and Gaila to all end up in the same cargo bay. A fight phaser fight breaks out. O'Brien fnds that Yoshi dosn't cry when Worf holds him. Quark tells Sisko he just wanted the deal to be called off and didn't know everyone would shoot each other. The regent is dead and a purification squad have been sent after Gaila and Hagath. Sisko is happy the renget is dead and agrees to let Quark get away with it if he pays for the damage to the cargo bay. Dax plays Tongo with Quark again.
It's good to have Quark in a more serious episode. He works better like this than in the outright "Moogie and the Grand Nagus are having sex!" type comedy episodes. It's a solid story and mostly well executed. The dream sequence is a bit over the top and Quark's soloution of just having everyone shoot each other could have easily gone wrong, but all the character stuff for Quark works. Steven Berkoff is a pretty entertaining guest star though he does go very theatrical and broad at times. It's a good episode.
SCORE: 8/10
Ties of Blood and Water - Ghemor, who was Kira's Cardassian "father" in 'Second Skn' (as Dax explains to Worf) comes to the station. He's one of the leaders of the dissident movement and Kira is excited at the possibility that he could overthrow Dukat's government and end the Cardassia/Dominion alliance. Ghemor reveals that he's given up hope of ever finding his real daughter and Kira is the cloest thing to family he has left. But he can't help her overthrow Dukat because he's dying. Kira is still hopeful that Bashir can help get him well. Gul Dukat sends a message to Sisko (there's a bit where Sisko is surprised Dukat hasn't promoted himself "back" to Legate by now, but Dukat's always been a Gul in the show before this, even when he was in charge of Terok Nor, so I'm not sure why Sisko would say "back"?) He wants Ghemor returned to Cardassia. Kira shows Kirayoshi to Ghemor. He tells her he's proud of all she's achieved. Ghemor tells her he knows more about the Cardassian government than anyone else and his information could do a lot of good. He wants reveal all his secrets to Kira before he dies, an old Cardassian tradition. Kira feels uncomfortable about this but Sisko tells her it's a huge opportunity. Kira flashes back to her resistance days when her own father was dying from a Cardassian attack. Ghemor's condition worsens and he begins to tell Kira all he knows (Bashir has set up a pain relief system.) Kira continues to flash back to her father, who was just trying to talk some Cardassians out of burning down his garden when they attacked him. Ghemor's getting even sicker and Kira can't leave his side even though she's obviously struggling.
Dukat arrives at the station in a Jem'Hadar battleship, wanting to hear Sisko's decision on Ghemor. He comes to Sisko's office with Weyoun(!) who is actually a clone of the Weyoun we previously met ("Immortality. Interested?" he asks Sisko and it's great.) Dukat reveals that all of Ghemor's crimes have been forgiven and he's welcome to return home, but Ghemor angrily turns him down. Dukat tells him his daughter is alive and he knows where to find her. Ghemor refuses to take any deal while Cardassia is allied with the Dominion. Kira stays up for days listening to Ghemor's stories and looking after him. Dukat brings Ghemor's military record to Kira and she throws a cup at him. Kira reads it anyway and is angry at Ghemor when she discovers he was part of a squad that burned down a monastrry and killed seventeen monks (they were hiding weapons for the resistance and Ghemor was only doing his duty.) She accues him of lying to her but he says he just didn't want her to hate him. Weyoun plays Dabo in Quark's because he likes games. Sisko brings a bottle of kanar to Dukat and offers him a glass. Dukat won't drink it and Sisko reveals it's a poisoned bottle that was delivered to Ghemor (which Dukat obviously knew.) Weyoun is very amused by all this and just straight up drinks the poisoned kanar (Vortar are immune to most forms of poison) and it's awesome. Kira won't talk to Ghemor anymore, but Odo points out to her that he was only 19 when the monastery burned down and there were four hundred soldiers there. In flashback we see that Kira went off for revenge on the Cardassians who injured her father, even though he begged her to stay with him as he was dying. Bashir tells her Ghemor will be dead within the hour but she still won't go to him. We see in flashback that Kira's cell killed all the Cardies but she missed her father dying (he died calling her name.) Kira finally goes to see Ghemor and he dies shortly after. Kira has a long monologue to Bashir about what it was like to watch him die. She admits to Bashir that she saw a chance to get out of watching her father die so she took it. She stayed with Ghemor because she went to get it right this time (this last bit seems unnecessary, like they're speling out the story to the viewer but I guess tv does that sometimes.) Dukat wants Ghemor's body to bring him home and give him a state funeral where he'll reveal Ghemor endorsed the Dominion alliance before dying. But Kira has already buried Ghemor on Bajor.
I was getting close to rating this 9/10 for a while there. The stuff between Ghemor and Kira is very good, well acted by Nana Visitor as usual, and I especially loved the dynamic once Dukat got invovled. And every scene with Weyoun is just great, he's the breakout star of the episode. But then it just...keeps...going...on. Maybe they wanted to show that death can be a long drawn out process, but the result is that the ending just feels long and drawn out and Kira's big speech to Bashir is a bit pointless because you should already know everything she's saying by paying attention to the episode. Anyway, this still very good! Maybe I'm too critical now after years of reading tv reviews and watching youtube videos of people pointing out what's wrong with tv.
SCORE: 8.5/10
