Good points already, but I'll add couple of further musings:
- 2 fundamentally contrary versions of how Curzon died.
I don't really get this one. "Emissary" shows him on a surgery table as an old man, with Jadzia next to him. "Let He Who Is Without Sense Watch This" tells us why this old man is on that surgery table, dying with a smile on his face. IMHO, the two stories support each other in full.
- Martok changeling being "made up at the last minute" creates tons of inconsistencies for the episodes where he was retroactively supposed to be a changeling, but wasn't really because that idea wasn't even in the writers' mind at the time of those earlier episodes.
I don't see any damning cases. And if there were any, well, that's just the Founder being very good at maintaining his cover.
Likewise it makes no sense how Martok changeling could have fit in with the Klingon culture for so long yet Odo picks up that he's a changeling in less than an hour due to him not having a basic understanding of Klingon culture.
To be sure, "Martok" had no reason to be careful about it with Sisko and the others, as he knew the prisoners would all be torn apart by the enraged crowd in a matter of minutes - and I can't fathom how he
could have been careful about it,as he had to lure Sisko's team into murdering Gowron. He'd only have aroused more suspicion if he tried to invent some half-assed reason as to why he couldn't do it personally.
- Ditto most of the above when it comes to the Bashir changeling.
I actually think the plot twist turns some earlier episodes into more interesting and consistent ones. "Bashir" operates on an unconscious Sisko, claiming that it is a matter of life and death - and as the result, Sisko stumbles out of surgery, delirious and insisting that Bajor not ally militarily with the Federation. "Bashir" oversees Odo's interaction with a Founder baby, and judges Odo redeemed - and as the result, the baby gives Odo back his Changeling powers.
- Federation characters have money in DS9 (saying they are 'credits' and not money isn't an excuse; they are still money even if they are called credits). The Sisko even demands money from Quark to fix the cargo bay that he got shot up.
Now that's wholly consistent with all other Star Trek. Starfleet heroes can buy and sell things; Kirk often did. Starfleet can buy and sell. But whether a Federation citizen (let alone a junior one) has or needs any money is a wholly separate issue.
- Founders have no reason whatsoever to look like Odo, especially when Odo isn't anywhere near them (the excuse "they are mimicing Odo's appearance" doesn't work for this reason.)
Why wouldn't it? We've never seen a Founder when it isn't near Odo.
Except, of course, the character known as the Female Founder. But she always looked like that for Odo's benefit when Cardassians were around - it's psychologically consistent that she wouldn't put on a different face just to interact with Gul Dukat or Gul Damar whom she deeply despised. And once her disease set in, she was stuck with that face forever.
- Klingons that are supposed to be 'honorable' stab the Albino in the back (nothing could be more dishonorable than to stab a man in the back).
How can you tell? It's alien honor you speak about - yet it's considered extremely honorable for a father to strangle her daughter in certain circumstances, right here down on Earth.
And history is full of far stranger definitions of honor. Rather naturally so, because honor is but an arbitrary set of rules intended to stop people of means from using those means to the fullest, through mutual agreement of convenience. The content of that agreement would depend on the means, and thus today's definitions of honor, while geographically extremely varied, are even more at variance with those of yesterday. Sneaky assassination has often been a highly honored skill.
In the Klingon case, it is quite consistent that a sneaky kill would be held in esteem. After all, these are the folks who think that invisibility screens are the ultimate in honorable starship combat.
- Worf had no right to challenge and kill Gowron according to what Jadzia said in an earlier episode: Klingons are only allowed to challenge their direct superior, that's it. Worf would have had to challenge and kill Martok first, his direct superior, before being allowed to challenge and kill Gowron.
And Picard had no right to challenge Admiral Dougherty. He just said "Screw the rules!" and went and did the right thing anyway. That's how it looks like,
both times that Worf attempts to slay Gowron: he's essentially performing suicide, literally and figuratively, by doing the right thing against all rules and customs.
- The wormhole aliens don't know anything about humans when they meet Sisko in episode 1, yet by Seasons 6 and 7 they are directly responsible for giving birth to him.
Which is only fitting when one considers what
sort of aliens they are.
Timo Saloniemi
