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5.0 out of 5 stars
change your neutrinos, change your luck, November 7, 2004
This review is from: Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 31: Rivals [VHS] (VHS Tape)
This episode would be more aptly titled, "Don't BS a BS-er." Martus Mazur (Chris Sarandon - former husband of Susan Sarandon) is a species of listeners - they listen and people spill their beans. The listeners take advantage of the spilled beans and run off with the profits. As he sweet talks an elderly widow, Odo arrests him for fraud after he has bilked an older couple out of their life savings.
He is put in a cell with an elderly alien. Kinda odd - you don't normally see any Star Trek episode (of any series) where different people are put in the same holding cell unless they are married or something. The alien is sick and spills his beans to Mazur - he has pretty much gambled his life away by trusting in this little sphere of sounds and lights which looks like a Hasbro combination of "Magic Eight Ball" and "Simon Says."
The alien croaks right there in the cell and Mazur relieves him of his toy and starts playing with it. Soon after he "wins" when playing with the sphere, the charges against him are dropped and he is released from his cell.
He tries to get Quark to partner with him, offering Quark the ability to use these spheres as new gambling tools, but Quark laughs him out of his bar. By conning another widow, this one a Bajoran (played by Barbara Bosson - of "Hillstreet Blues" fame), he opens up a gambling establishment right across the promenade from Quark's, using larger replicated versions of the orb he stole from his cellmate.
Things start going whacky all over the station. People lose files, and everyone seems to be having runs of extraordinarily bad luck or good luck. The infirmary is full of scrapes, cuts, bruises and turned ankles from just careless accidents. Bashir & O'Brien are playing a futuristic version of raquetball and Julian wipes the floor with O'Brien. O'Brien designed the court himself and used to play 5 hours a day and can't seem to get a point off of Bashir. After all bar traffic ends up in Mazur's new gambling place, Quark gets desperate. Without their permission, Quark does a Don King and sets up a competition between O'Brien and Bashir. This time, O'Brien is the one kicking butt and Bashir is tripping over his own shadow.
Dax starts investigating and finds that the majority of the neutrinos on the station are spinning counterclockwise, when 50% should be doing so, and the other 50% should be spinning clockwise - like the laws of probability: flip a properly balanced coin 500 times and statistically you should get tails 250 times and heads 250 times, but this isn't happening on DS9. What's next, flying pigs?
The tables turn on Mazur and you don't feel bad for the coniving bastard after he breaks the heart of the widow. The elderly couple he swindled have reconsidered and are now pressing charges against him, so back to the brig he goes. The first widow he was trying to swindle tried a swindle herself - on Mazur and on Quark and while she swindled Mazur, Quark was far more adept at swindling and got her sent to the pokey as well... all while the tables of luck turn on neutrinos.
A fun episode, especially the dialogues between Miles and Keiko concerning his raquetball performance. For the only time, we see Miles take off his shirt and see the sweaty, somewhat overweight and very normal man he is as he throws a fit about the defeat that the younger Bashir delivered to him. Miles looked normal while playing - but Bashir was wearing this bizarre lycra body suit which only ascentuated his wiry, dainty visage. I don't know what wardrobe was thinking - he looked like a cross between a rubber band and a Powder Puff Girl. O'Brien's imitation of Bashir's accent and attitude to Keiko was hilarious and this just helped to further develop their characters.
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