Well, I finally made it through...
"Meridian"
This one wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. The A story was pretty limp, but the B-story was actually pretty good.
Well, to be precise the A-story didn't make sense on any level. Why didn't all of the colonists just leave Meridian with the Defiant? In the Trekverse, there is a nearly infinite quantity of empty M-class planets awaiting settlement. I just don't get why they wouldn't get off the planet and go somewhere else. Seems a lot easier to move 30 people than to screw around with a star. Which they really shouldn't do anyway, since it's a unique natural phenomenon, and "fixing" it makes the galaxy a little less wondrous.
The other A-story, Dax falling in love with the spot-curious guy and choosing to stay with him, made even less sense. It's completely implausible that someone as centered as her would do that. They lampshaded that at one point by having her say that after 300 years she was ready to do it, but still. It's just ridiculous.
Now the B-story...that had some real potential. Jeffery Combs was awesome! I don't even know his character's name--I just kept calling him "Jeffery Combs." Real seeds of a comedy gem there, with him tasking Quark with getting him some KiraPorn. There are worse kinds of HoloPorn to be caught with in Trek--remember when the Doctor found Seven's stash of ChakotayPorn? It was well-played by Combs and everyone else involved, especially Odo. I loved his shock at the beginning, when Kira declared he was her lover.
But doesn't she already have a Naked Dream Boyfriend guy? Vedek Bariel? Who's probably got some time on his hands since he's not Kai? Not for the dramatic purposes of this episode, she doesn't.
And I loved the final reveal of Quark's "creation." Brilliant pan up the body...to Quark's head.
Inspired by another Jonathan Frakes-directed episode, "Sub Rosa," I'd say that even the A story works on a certain level. My theory about "Sub Rosa" is that Frakes directed it as a deliberately comic pastiche of the gothic romance genre. "Meridian" kind of works the same way for more generic romance novels, though you don't have stock Scottish characters or granny sitting up in her coffin to make the comedy as obvious.
I wish they had added one more scene of the B-story: Odo and Kira entering a holosuite that's running the KiraPorn program. It would have been about as awesome as the Goddess of Empathy bit from "Hollow Pursuits." I would see HoloKira as being into bondage and kinky punishment stuff, though. It would have been fun to see how far they could have pushed it.
If I was given this script, I would have said to toss the entire A-story and just use the B-story as the basis for everything, Maybe Jeffery Combs is also running a smuggling operation that Odo's trying to break up, which would give him something more to do. And maybe something that Quark does causes a drain in the station's power supply, which would involve O'Brien too. I'd have kept the ultimate resolution the same, but just added a few false turns and some more holodeck stuff. Maybe the first time Quark uses the holofilter he gets Odo instead. Or Quark just keeps on coming up with different ruses to get Kira to "pose."
So altogether it was a bad episode, but that B-story made me laugh.
