Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — 4x13 — Crossfire

Aired 1996-01-29

SpaceOpera.com rating:5

Average reader rating:4.69

Synopsis

Odo's hidden feelings for Kira interfere with his duty to protect the Bajoran First Minister, who also happens to be attracted to her.

Filler rating: not filler

This episode establishes the Shakaar-Kira-Odo love triangle.

Remarkable scenes

Odo perfecting his office and his disposition just prior to Kira's arrival to discuss station security.
Quark complaining about Odo making too much noise shape shifting above Quark's quarters.
Kira: "It's just Quark's luck that you would be assigned quarters above his." Odo: "Luck had nothing to do with it."
Odo: "I have a daily routine which I follow unwaveringly. The shopkeepers on the promenade joke that they can set their clocks by me."
Odo and Worf discussing order in their quarters and reasons/methods of deterring visitors. O'Brien has a tendency to drop by a lot and it annoys Worf.
Kira asking Odo why he doesn't wear a belt anymore. Odo's response: "It didn't really serve a purpose. It's not as if I needed it to hold my pants up." When she said it looked good on him, he materialized it.
Odo smashing things in his quarters.
Quark confronting Odo about the noise.
Odo denying that he knew the floor renovations he requested had sound proofing in it.

Review

So there's more talk about Bajor's push to join the Federation, this is something I like. It's always nice to see the show advancing its premise. This episode also featured a few nice scenes between Odo and Worf. Though the episode was more about Odo than anyone else. Odo of course is in love with Kira is too afraid to tell her. There are some good scenes between Odo and Quark in this episode too. Their half adversarial half friendship relationship is one of the best character developments of the whole series, and this episode contributes heavily to it. My favorite moment between them in this episode is Odo installing sound proofing in his quarters to make Quark happy, then denying all knowledge of the whole operation to Quark's face. It was a great ending to this otherwise unremarkable episode. Literally, nothing happens in it except we get to watch Odo go through some social pain.

4 reader comments

One thing that struck me watching the scene with Odo's belt, is that Odo has walked around naked his entire life! That must provide for additional weirdness-factor for the people on the station.
It also means his comm-badge is really just him. How would it feel to be part-computer? If we think this through a little further: how would it feel to be Sisko's briefcase in Homefront? How would Odo know when to turn back into his humanoid form? Bags don't usually have ears, or brains to process sound.
I would like to hear explanations to these things instead of the throwaway technobabble that we sometimes get to hear.
by Remco | 01/25/2009 at 7:06 pm

Why not just beam VIPs to and from locations instead of all the security hoopla?
by krs321 | 04/18/2011 at 3:28 pm

I have been wondering why we don't see Odo doing more Reed Richard's routines (or plasticman etc). I thought that if shifted shape he would not necessarily take on the properties of the object he turns into - but this time his hands in the elevator…
I liked this ep though, and great that it didn't focus on the assassination.
Best moment : Quark in PJ's
by Hugo von Ahlenius | 04/30/2012 at 6:21 pm

In a season that hasn't really missed with an episode yet, this one has not aged well. "Odo the incel" is a pretty yucky plot, one we are able to more accurately diagnose in 2021 than a writers room in the mid 90s could. The development of the overarching Odo-Kira subplot could have been handled much better than this.
by Gaius Gracchua | 10/04/2021 at 3:27 pm