Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — 3x20 — Improbable Cause
Synopsis
Garak's shop mysteriously explodes, launching Odo on an investigation to determine who is trying to kill the Cardassian exile and why.
Filler rating: not filler
Numerous major long term plot threads are serviced here.
Remarkable scenes
- Garak and Bashir discussing Shakespeare, and then the difference between human and Cardassian eating habits.
- Kira and Bashir discussing the atmospheric requirements of the Yalosians. Their atmosphere dissolves carpets and they can't see red or orange colors.
- Garak, lying in the debris after his ship blew up: "I'm afraid your pants won't be ready tomorrow after all."
- Bashir telling Garak the story of the boy who cried wolf.
- Bashir: "The point is if you lie all the time, nobody's going to believe you, even when you're telling the truth." Garak: "Are you sure that's the point, doctor?" Bashir: "Of course, what else could it be?" Garak: "That you should never tell the same lie twice."
- Odo: "I'm not about to leave you in here alone so you can look through my security files." Garak: "What makes you think I haven't already looked through them?"
- Odo's interrogation of the Flaxian. I like Odo's mixing of the perfumes, revealing the Flaxian's assassination arsenal.
- Garak: "The truth is just an excuse for a lack of imagination."
- Odo's conversation with his Cardassian contact.
- Odo getting pissed at Garak, realizing he blew up his own shop.
- Odo: "Well that's an interesting way of scrambling a signal." Garak: "Yes, I thought you might appreciate it on an aesthetic level."
- Garak's joking instructions to Bashir.
- Odo speculating that Enabran Tain means something to Garak.
- A Romulan warbird decloaking just above the runabout.
- Garak's meeting with Enabran Tain.
- Odo: "You both go to such lengths to hide the true meaning of your words you end up saying nothing."
Review
This episode is crazy! Talk about a web of complex hidden agendas that blows up into some major events going down. There is much to redeem this episode, so many details. My favorite is the reference to the buildup in the system controlled by the Obsidian Order in DS9: Defiant. But there are many more. The thing I like the most about this episode is how carefully Garak manipulated events in order to determine who was trying to kill him and why. We finally know now for sure that Garak and Enabran Tain were very close at one time, working together in the Obsidian Order. Something went bad between them at about the time Cardassia evacuated Bajor and Tain exiled Garak from Cardassia. But Garak truly cares for Tain for some reason and went with Odo on what appeared to be a mission of mercy, only to discover that the Obsidian Order and the Tal Shiar are working together to deploy a joint Romulan-Cardassian attack on the Dominion. This is probably one of the most complicated plots ever done on Star Trek, and not to this episode's disadvantage! An excellent first part to the two parter.