Night Tremors

Story: Extreme Measures
Written By: Bradley Thompson & David Weddle
Series: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Year: 1999

“Extreme Measures” is not only the weak link of this whole final arc, but it is also a terrible episode on its own. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the story in this arc. It is also the only episode that disrupts the rest of the story. Even the production team admits they faltered here.
Essentially they tried to accomplish two things, to bring Section 31 into the arc and bring some closure there, and to focus a story in this arc about the friendship of O’Brien and Bashir. They failed. The Section 31 thing worked on a level, getting a cure for the disease they put into Odo, but what they do is capture Sloan, and use Romulan mind probes to get the information, then it all ends up being a story about Bashir and O’Brien walking through Sloan’s memory to find a cure and talk about their relationship.

We don’t get much else in terms of the rest of the ongoing story, Dukat and Winn aren’t really featured, Kira and Odo have a moment but we lose sight of them quickly…it just stops the action and unfortunately it isn’t even that entertaining to watch…which is really rare in terms of O’Brien and Bashir. They do cure Odo though, so at least that’s done.

Shame, everything else in this arc worked, but I guess having so many writers trying to bring closure to so many things you can expect a little bit of faltering.

NEXT TIME: The Fate of the Ferengi Alliance