Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — 1x10 — Move Along Home

Aired 1993-03-14

SpaceOpera.com rating:1

Average reader rating:4.1

Synopsis

Quark's attempt at deception toward a newly-encountered alien race places the space station's senior officers in a labyrinth of danger.

Filler rating: bad filler

Nothing to see here. Move along...

Remarkable scenes

Sisko laying into Bashir for not packing his dress uniform.
Quark after his decidedly negative reaction to the nectar: "One man's priceless is another man's useless!"
Kira: "I'm a Bajoran administrator. This is not what I signed up for!"
Odo laying into Primmin for letting all the senior staff disappear without noticing.
Odo: "And don't call me constable, I'm chief of security!"
The hopscotch game with the little girl. Hilarious!
Morn appearances; 1. Seen just after the credits rolls walking by the camera. 2. Seen behind Quark and Sisko when they talk just after the credits.

Review

This episode has almost no substance and decidedly manufactured danger. It's completely incredible that there was no real danger; the aliens of the week should have seen that our heroes all thought it was real and pulled the plug, or at least told them they were safe. Instead they just egged on the hysteria. There's no evidence that they somehow needed unwilling participants to enjoy their time in Quark's bar, so the whole story is one giant contrived plot device.

8 reader comments

I'd give it a 2 instead of a 1 because it does have some fairly comical moments
by Pete Miller | 04/15/2006 at 4:36 am

My (admittedly now vague) memory of DS9 is that it was the high point of the Trek franchise, so it's been a bit surprising to me in my current run through the series to find that, after the promising pilot, the early part of the first season flounders with some truly unremarkable episodes.
"Dax" is a bad episode and doesn't really even get to accomplish the character development it shoots for because the episode is handled so badly. "The Passenger" is lackluster because we pretty much know that Julian is the one carrying Vantika's consciousess from the very beginning.
Then we get this mess: Annoying, ridiculously over-the-top alien-of-the-week. What amounts to a recylced holodeck-malfunction-puts-crew-in-danger plot, and then there turns out to be no real danger at all. On top of that, none of this really makes any sense. At least there are some comical moments.
Also, what's with Primmin? I have no recollection of him, and I can only assume that he goes away quietly after a few episodes. Was he simply a replacement for O'brien during his short stay away from the station?
by JRPoole | 11/17/2008 at 3:40 pm

Couldn't bring myself to watch this one again in my current 'revisiting' of the series. So it must be bad.
by Bernard | 12/02/2009 at 7:03 pm

It cannot be overstated how much I completely hate, Hate, HATE this episode.
The worst show of the entire series. The only good thing you can say about it is that they got it out of the way early.
by John DC | 01/06/2011 at 12:58 am

This story is similar to "The Celestial Toymaker" from early black & white Doctor Who, and believe it or not, the hoary 60s show did it far better. In the Whovian story, there was a real threat that the characters would be trapped forever as toys of the game-playing Toymaker. The games were equally silly and easy to overcome, but the dialogue and the villain were more convincing.
by Tallifer | 03/08/2011 at 6:22 am

I really enjoyed watching the first season of DS9 so far, much better storytelling than any other Star Trek series and more interesting characters than the one dimensional ones TNG had … except for Ro Laren, love her, a real shame that she didnt want to play the Kira character (but Nana Visitor is awesome too).
And because DS9 was really great to this point I am very offended by this terrible episode. I think the biggest problem is that Odos reaction to the game didnt make any sense. If he really feared that these aliens would play with the lives of Sisko and the others why didnt he force them to end this immediately? But no, they played along and gambled for their lives! That's just bloody stupid and even vicious. I cant find words for how much I hate this lazy written bullshit episode!
by Zaphod | 04/16/2011 at 10:18 am

I watched every episode of ds9 when I was a child. For some reason this is the only episode I can remember clearly. Now that I'm re-watching this episode it does seem a little ridiculous. But I still like it for some reason (probably nostalgia more than anything else).
by Shani | 01/12/2014 at 12:50 pm

Glad to see I am not alone in being appalled by this episode
by BV | 10/28/2015 at 5:35 pm