Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — 5x17 — A Simple Investigation

Aired 1997-03-31

SpaceOpera.com rating:2

Average reader rating:4.69

Synopsis

Odo falls in love with a mysterious woman.

Filler rating: bad filler

No significant exposition, events, or consequences. And a lame episode on top of that.

Remarkable scenes

Arissa: "You mean you're just doing this out of the kindness of your heart?" Odo: "I don't have a heart."
Odo showing up during Bashir's holo suite program.
O'Brien taking advantage of Odo's interruption and cornering Bashir.
The senior staff gossiping about Odo.
Morn Appearances; 1. At the bar when Quark is trying to sell stuff to Arissa. 2. Quark locks him in the bar when he goes to close it down accidentally.

Review

Another Odo episode. It seems for some reason Odo centric episodes are always relatively boring detective episodes. In this case, a girl trying to flee the Orion Syndicate, with whom Odo falls in love. Except the girl is actually a sleeper spy, who happens to be married. And that's about it. Quite underwhelming.

3 reader comments

One of the most boring episodes of Star Trek I've seen so far… And that bed scene was unbelievably cheesy.
by Inga | 02/05/2013 at 6:51 pm

Sigh, in this episode Odo has sex as a changeling shortly after losing his human ability to ejaculate. Why? Why does he fall in love with this random person? This episode would have been better if he were still human. It might make more sense.
Imagine if Star Trek were on HBO. There'd be so much weird alien sex; the bedroom was super tame compared to what I'm imagining sex with a shapeshifter to be like.
by Mandeponium | 09/02/2013 at 5:30 pm

A hard episode to watch, in nregards to Odo centric episodes as you mentioned being like detective shows I agree, this is sometimes done okay like an homage to the greats in the style but i'd prefer the level of Columbo or Monk rockford files or even Murder She Wrote but no sadly not a patch on Jessica Fletcher on her worst day (seriously not a fan of MSW at all BTW just incase anyone was not getting my dry British sense of humour) this was akin to Diagnosis Murder merged with an imaginary late 90's BBC low budget remake of Heart to Heart.
Now then onto the part which could have redeemed the episode and instead destroyed it, the sex, or more accurate the lack of it, i know TV censors n stuff i am not expecting some Reed Richards-esq shlong action pinning her to the ceiling in a low gravity room as Odo morphs into a thousand different phallic object spearing her from every angle anywhere she wants it and more but at least some reference to it expanding her horizons in some way sexually instead it was like she had taken the virginity of a shy young boy and was his moms friend. When she found out it was his first time and she said she couldn't tell?!? Seriously Odo never swelled up the shape shifting manhood once inserted? I am trying to keep it pg13 here but you get what i am saying surely, how did Odo even know what to shape down there? I always thought he'd be like an action man figure or a ken doll, cough cough, not that i was checking that my action man had a schlong or not as a kid or anything but i remember when i found out that he did not have one i was concerned for my action man, why does he not have a little soldier like the rest of us boys? Never trusted action man after that, anyhoo slight distraction to my review / comment there but in a slightly altered reality it is all totally relevant. Thankfully a good Quark episode next if anyone out there like myself who has to watch them in sequential order for the good and the bad.
by Rob UK | 11/23/2013 at 2:35 am