1-SENTENCE PLOT SYNOPSIS:
A disabled Star Fleet ensign makes a go on DS9 and Quark faces a guy with a beak and a grudge.
VIEWERS TAKE NOTICE:
*Weird creatures abound with a lot of weird make-up and muppet-like prosthetics.
*The disabled ensign Melora Pazlar could not have been more annoying as a character if she had tried. From the moment she agonizingly grimaces & staggers into the first scene as a "don't feel sorry for me just because I'm disabled" character (Sarcasm alert: Good Lord....we need way more scripts with that plot point!) to her final scene holding hands with the doctor on the promenade, watching her on screen had all the joy of getting a cavity filled. Apparently the DS9 creative powers-that-be were contemplating making Pazlar a series regular. Viewers can thank the Star Trek producers with deciding to not.
*If this episode was written with the intention of encouraging viewers to feel empathy toward those with disabilities, the failure is massive and complete. It mostly felt pushy, preachy, pathetic & patronizing.
*Apparently Beak Man's race are attracted to female mammary glands just like human males (approx time: 14:43).
*A Klingon restaurant on the promenade? Really? DS9 moves into the realm of farce with that idea. The chef nonchalantly tossing his own dinner ware around was....stupid silliness.
*Doctor Bashir's kissy-poo scenes with Pazlar were not convincing at all. Uncomfortable is more like it.
EPISODE SUM-UP:
Just...bad. Not convincing or interesting in the slightest. Attempts at humor, romance, action and in eliciting sympathy for disabled individuals was horrible. Those who green lit and wrote this episode should be tossed from an airlock for making us suffer. It is 50 minutes of our lives we will never get back.