THE SEARCH, PART I (*3.1)

•teleplay by Ronald D. Moore
•story by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
•directed by Kim Friedman
•music by Jay Chattaway
•stardate 48212.4:
•notes: The name Defiant for a federation starship was first mentioned in TOS: "The Tholian Web".

Preparations are being made aboard DS9 for an inevitable visit from the Dominion, but no one can escape the fact that the station would wither under an attack from the Jem'Hadar. Commander Sisko, having gone to Earth for Starfleet briefings on the threat from the Gamma Quadrant, arrives in the experimental Federation vessel Defiant, a small ship originally created to do battle with the Borg. Carrying more firepower than any other Starfleet ship and a cloaking device loaned by the Romulans, the Defiant is to go to the Dominion before the Dominion arrives in the Alpha Quadrant; if need be, the ship is also to take the fight to the other side of the galaxy. Another innovation brought about by Starfleet Command is the transfer of a Starfleet security officer to the station, relieving Odo of all but station-bound security matters. The shapeshifter withdraws in anger while Sisko assembles a crew for the Defiant's mission to seek out the Dominion for negotiations, but joins the Defiant crew at the last minute. A trade contact of Quark's offers some information but little help in the search for the Founders of the Dominion, but does point the crew out to a planet through which most Dominion communications pass. When the Defiant arrives there, Dax and O'Brien beam down and find the possible coordinates of the Dominion command center - and are captured by the Jem'Hadar, who have also arrived in force in orbit. The Defiant manages to take out only one Jem'Hadar ship and barely survives the withering assault of the remaining attackers. The Defiant is boarded and Kira is blasted unconscious in the ensuing melee. Odo takes her and evacuates in an escape shuttle, heading not back to the station, but to a planet in the Omarian Nebula with which he has been preoccupied since arriving in the Gamma Quadrant. The planet turns out to be the home of a race of life forms very like Odo himself, one of which welcomes him home.
 
THE SEARCH - part II (*3.1)

•teleplay by Ira Steven Behr
•story by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
•directed by Jonathan Frakes
•music by Jay Chattaway
•stardate not given:

Odo has arrived on his home world, greeted by his fellow shapeshifters. He at last learns of his origins - he, along with hundreds of other newly-formed shapeshifters, were dispelled into the far reaches of space and genetically programmed to return home with their knowledge later; Odo is the first to make it back. But his homecoming is not without its complications - his fellow shapeshifters consider him tainted by the many years he has spent in the comapny of "solids," and he has much to learn about his heritage. In the meantime, Sisko and Bashir, having escaped the Defiant in a shuttle, are picked up by Dax and O'Brien, who return them to DS9. Negotiations are now apparently underway between the Dominion and the Federation, but some of the proposed treaty's stipulations have sinister undercurrents; the Romulans are being excluded from the talks, though the Cardassians, Ferengi and Klingons are being welcomed, and it is revealed to Sisko that the station - and Bajor - are being handed over to the Dominion. As the Jem'Hadar being walking over the station's inhabitants, Sisko and his crew - and unlikely ally Garak - take up arms to try to take DS9 back from its new owners. Meanwhile, on the planet of the shapeshifters and unknown to all, the Founders lie in wait, conducting a terrifying experiment.

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THE HOUSE OF QUARK (*3.2)

•teleplay by Ronald D. Moore
•story by Tom Benko
•directed by Les Landau
•music by Richard Bellis
•stardate not given:

A drunk Klingon named Kozak tries to kill Quark in a dispute over his bar tab, and winds up falling on his own knife by accident. Quark, attempting to boost business, tells Odo that he bravely killed Kozak in self-defense. Odo warns that Kozak's family will come after Quark to claim the right of vengeance, which springs to mind very quickly when a new Klingon arrival who claims to be Kozak's brother D'Ghor accosts Quark on the station. But D'Ghor doesn't want revenge, he wants Quark to keep quiet about the true nature of Kozak's death to avoid dishonoring his family.

 
 
 
 
 

EQUILIBRIUM (*3.2)

•teleplay by Rene Echeverria
•story by Christopher Teague
•directed by Cliff Bole
•music by Jay Chattaway
•stardate not given:

During an informal home-cooked dinner held by Sisko for the senior staff, Dax picks up a musical instrument of Jake's and begins to pick out, seemingly at random, a tune which she becomes preoccupied with, and it follows her into some disturbing hallucinations of masked figures. A medical checkup reveals some deficiencies in the chemical links between Jadzia and the Dax symbiont, necessitating a trip to the specialized medical facilities on the Trill planet. Though she shows favorable response to her initial treatments, Dax goes into shock when the computer aboard the Defiant displays a picture of the Trill composer of the song that has been on her mind. Sisko and Bashir try to seek out the mysterious link with the long-dead musician and Dax only to have all the official channels closed in their faces to protect a devastating secret, the cost of which will be Jadzia's life.

 
 
 
 
 

SECOND SKIN (*3.3)

•written by Robert Hewitt Wolfe
•directed by Les Landau
•music by David Bell
•stardate not given:

Kira sets off for Bajor when it is revealed that her memories of a specific event in the Cardassian occupation differ with the official records of the Bajoran central archives. She never makes it to the archives, however, because she is captured and transported to Cardassia Prime, where she wakes up with the features of a Cardassian. She is told time and again that she is, in fact, a Cardassian by birth whose deep cover spying assignment necessitated her cosmetic alteration to look like a Bajoran rebel named Kira Nerys who was captured and killed. But she begins to worry when the Cardassians' efforts to make her believe this story seem to go above and beyond their normal brainwashing techniques, including the arrival of a high-ranking Legate who claims that Kira is his daughter. Kira doesn't have any information that the Cardassians would go to these lengths to retrieve and begins to wonder if perhaps the history of which she has just learned is true.

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THE ABANDONED (*3.3)

•written by D. Thomas Maio & Steve Warnek
•directed by Avery Brooks
•music by Jay Chattaway
•stardate not given:

Quark obtains the salvaged wreckage of a ship from the Gamma Quadrant and discovers an alien infant in some kind of container. The child is handed over to Bashir, who finds that its metabolic rate is incredibly accelerated. Within hours, the child seems to be at least eight years old and can already talk to and understand others. Later, as the boy evolves even more rapidly, it is discovered that he is an infant Jem'Hadar - and a chance encounter with Odo reveals that the boy is genetically programmed to respect changelings. Odo hopes that he can demonstrate to the boy that, just as Odo is not the same as the Founders of the Dominion, the child does not have to follow in the violent footsteps of his fellow warriors.

 
 
 
 
 

CIVIL DEFENSE (*3.4)
 
•written by Mike Krohn
•directed by Reza Badiyi
•music by Jay Chattaway
•stardate not given:

O'Brien accidentally triggers an automatic security program in one of the defunct ore processing plants. The pre-programmed subroutine was programmed by Gul Dukat to halt any uprising by the Bajoran slave workers years ago, but its countermeasures are still potent, ranging from force fields and bulkheads to deadly gas. When these obstacles are thwarted by the crew, "Dukat" has an ace up his sleeve: the station's self destruct routine. Dax discovers that only Gul Dukat himself can abort this program. It just happens that Dukat has learned of the situation aboard the station and has decided to pay a visit so he can gloat over Kira. But when he tries to leave DS9 to its fate, he finds that his superiors predicted that Dukat would try to flee the situation, and he too is trapped on the doomed station.

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MERIDIAN (*3.4)

•teleplay by Mark Gehred O'Connell
•story by Hilary Bader & Evan Carlos Somers
•directed by Jonathan Frakes
•music by Dennis McCarthy
•stardate 48423.2:

Exploring the Gamma Quadrant, the Defiant arrives at a planetless star just in time to see an entire planet appear from nowhere. Its inhabitants seem friendly, and invite Sisko, Dax and O'Brien to beam down and visit. They discover that the planet Meridian and its peaceful inhabitants spend sixty years in a non-corporeal form, and emerge into solidity for only a few days at a time. The crew sets about trying to find out why Meridian disappears, and discover a possible way of keeping the planet around longer the next time it reappears in physical form. During the extended visit, Dax falls in love with Daral, but Meridian will be gone again before its existence in either plane can be stabilized, and Dax wants to stay with Daral - whether it means him leaving Meridian, or Dax shifting into a non-corporeal life form with the rest of the planet's residents.

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DEFIANT (*3.5)

•written by Ronald D. Moore
•directed by Cliff Bole
•music by Jay Chattaway
•stardate 48467.3:

DS9's crew welcomes Commander Riker aboard, stopping off at the station en route to Risa. He gets a tour of the station from Kira, ending up at the Defiant - which he hijacks, with Kira as his prisoner. This "commander" is Thomas Riker, now a member of the Maquis on the run from Starfleet. His target is a secret Cardassian installation which, as Gul Dukat and Sisko find when they go to Cardassia to coordinate the search for the Defiant, is apparently an operation of the Obsidian Order, Cardassia's widely-feared secret police and intelligence wing. Kira doubts that Riker's motives are the same as those of the Maquis, but are instead sparked by an obsession to dinstinguish himself in the annals of history from the Enterprise's first officer. In the meantime, Riker's discoveries in the secret depths of Cardassian space surprise everyone, including Dukat.

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FASCINATION (*3.5)

•teleplay by Philip Lazebnik
•story by Ira Steven Behr & James Crocker
•directed by Avery Brooks
•music by Dennis McCarthy
•stardate not given:

The annual Bajoran Gratitude Festival brings mixed feelings for all. Jake's girlfriend has given him up to enroll at a science academy, O'Brien is nervous about Keiko's first visit to the station in two months, Kira eagerly awaits Bareil's arrival, and Odo is filled with utter dread when Lwaxana Troi boards the station just to visit him. O'Brien's situation worsens by the minute when Keiko just wants to rest, and Odo simply can't escape Lwaxana. And neither can anyone else. Thanks to a slight telepathic ailment being suffered by the Betazoid ambassador, her feelings for Odo are projected onto others, amplifying some subconscious attractions. Jake tries to woo Kira, who is busy wondering why Bareil has apparently left her for Dax, who's hot on Sisko's trail...

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PAST TENSE, PART I (*3.6)

•teleplay by Robert Hewitt Wolfe
•story by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
•directed by Reza Badiyi
•music by Dennis McCarthy
•stardate 48481.2:

The Defiant ferries Sisko and his senior staff to Starfleet HQ on Earth for a Gamma Quadrant symposium. A strange phenomenon intercepts the transporter beam carrying Sisko, Dax and Bashir to Earth, sending them into the early 21st century, though they still arrive in San Francisco. Sisko and Bashir are picked up and sent to a sanctuary district, a large high-security ghetto occupied by the unemployed, homeless and mentally ill. Dax befriends information mogul Chris Brynner, who assists her in the search for her friends. Sisko and Bashir learn that they have arrived mere days away from a historical event known as the Bell Riots, sparked when a violent uprising in the San Francisco sanctuary district was quashed with even more force by the National Guard, though the hostages taken by the sanctuary dwellers were kept safe by a man named Gabriel Bell. Trying not to interfere, the two time travelers stumble into the street brawl that initiates the riots - and due to their presence, Gabriel Bell winds up dead trying to keep Bashir from being hurt. The violence escalates, and the sanctuary's residents begin their rebellion. Hostages are taken from the local government office, and only one man can keep them from harm at the hands of the angry sanctuary denizens: Commander Sisko, assuming the role of Gabriel Bell.

PAST TENSE, PART II (*3.6)

•teleplay by Robert Hewitt Wolfe & Rene Echevarria
•story by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
•directed by Jonathan Frakes
•music by David Bell
•stardate not given:

"Bell" takes charge of the hostage situation, insisting that the sanctuary's residents demand more than just a way out for themselves. He meets with a government official and demands that employment acts be reactivated that would allow the unemployed to be productive members of society, eliminating the need for the sanctuary districts. In the sanctuary, tensions rise between the hostages and their captors, and Sisko and Bashir have to keep both parties in check. When the government storms the sanctuary district, Sisko finds himself in the same position as Gabriel Bell did, according to the history books - he will mostly likely be killed in the raid and become a martyr.

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LIFE SUPPORT (*3.7)

•teleplay by Ronald D. Moore
•story by Christian Ford & Roger Soffer
•directed by Reza Badiyi
•music by Dennis McCarthy
•stardate 48498.4:

Vedek Bareil is severely injured in an accident aboard a Bajoran transport ferrying him and Kai Winn to groundbreaking peace negotiations with the Cardassians. Bareil dies, but Bashir is able to jump- start the Vedek's brain again, reviving him with some very unconventional surgical techniques. Winn needs Bareil's advice, as only he is fully conversant with the treaty being discussed, but the prospects of keeping Bareil alive without putting him in stasis are not hopeful, and despite Bashir's strictest protests Bareil will not rest or allow himself to be put into stasis. As the peace talks reach a critical stage, the only option left to keep Bareil's knowledge of the treaty available will rob him of his humanity and eventually his life.

 
 
 
 
 

HEART OF STONE (*3.7)
 
•written by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
•directed by Alexander Singer
•music by David Bell
•stardate 48521.5:

Odo and Kira pursue a Maquis raider into the Badlands, eventually landing on a remote planet to search for the Maquis on foot. Chasing their target through a quake-prone cave system, the two run into a snag when Kira's foot is caught in a strange crystal which seems to be spreading. Despite making every effort with the equipment at his disposal, Odo is unable to free Kira from the crystal, which eventually traps Kira's entire body. The situation becomes hopeless, and Kira will be completely encased within the crystal in only a few hours - and with nothing left to lose, Odo professes his unsung love for the major.

 
 
 
 
 

DESTINY (*3.8)

•written by David S. Cohen & Martin A. Winer
•directed by Les Landau
•music by Dennis McCarthy
•stardate 48543.2:

The first joint scientific venture between Bajor and Cardassia is to be a communications relay satellite placed at the Gamma Quadrant end of the wormhole, and two Cardassian scientists - with an observer from the Obsidian Order not far behind - arrive on DS9 to deliver the payload. As if the unease about the new Bajoran-Cardassian peace accord isn't enough, Vedek Yarka arrives from Bajor to inform Sisko - still regarded as the Emissary in Bajoran culture - that prophecy predicts the Cardassians' presence will result in calamity, not the least of which will be the closure of the wormhole. As the mission progresses, it all starts adding up as prophesied, including the appearance of a comet which could damage or destroy the wormhole.

 
 
 
 
 

PROPHET MOTIVE (*3.8)

•written by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
•directed by Rene Auberjonois
•music by Dennis McCarthy
•stardate not given:

Grand Nagus Zek arrives on the station a changed man. He's written a book of completely new Rules of Acquisition and intends to reform the entire Ferengi way of life. Quark refuses to accept the sweeping change proposed by the Nagus, discovering that the pinnacle of Ferengi avarice acquired a missing Orb from the wormhole and then visited the wormhole itself, making contact with the aliens there who were reviled by Zek's greed and reverted him into an earlier, kinder and gentler stage of Ferengi development. Quark wants the Nagus to be returned to his old, greedy, disgusting mannerisms right away!

 
 
 
 
 

VISIONARY (*3.9)

•teleplay by John Shirley
•story by Ethan H. Calk
•directed by Reza Badiyi
•music by Jay Chattaway
•stardate not given:

As preparations are being made for an arriving party of Romulans, O'Brien is the victim of a power conduit explosion in Ops and suffers some mild radiation poisoning. An unexpected side-effect of this - which even Bashir cannot explain - is a series of apparent trips into the not too distant future. At first, his visions predict relatively innocuous events, such as a conversation with Quark and a bar brawl between visiting parties of Romulans and Klingons on the Promenade. But when O'Brien experiences such events as the sight of his own death and the evacuation and destruction of DS9, the whole crew takes notice.

 
 
 
 
 

DISTANT VOICES (*3.9)

•teleplay by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
•story by Joe Menosky
•directed by Alexander Singer
•music by Dennis McCarthy
•stardate not given:

On the eve of Bashir's 30th birthday, a Lethian tries to buy medical supplies from him, a deal Bashir refuses to make. Later, the doctor returns to the infirmary only to find the Lethian raiding his supplies and is attacked viciously. When Bashir comes to, everything seems amiss - the station is abandoned and wrecked, what few members of the crew can be found are acting wildly out of character, and Bashir's age is increasing rapidly.

 
 
 
 
 

IMPROBABLE CAUSE (*3.10)

•teleplay by Rene Echevarria
•story by Robert Lederman & David R. Long
•directed by Avery Brooks
•music by David Bell
•stardate not given:

An explosion in Garak's clothing shop brings the attention of Odo to bear on the usually elusive Cardassian tailor. One lead indicates it could be the work of a Flaxian assassin, but the moment Odo tails the suspect's spacecraft, it is destroyed by the Romulans who claim he was on their wanted list. Odo takes a solo trip to a rendezvous with a Cardassian who gives him some information - that the attempt on Garak's life is part of a much larger plot, and that other former members of the Obsidian Order have not survived similar attacks on the same day. Odo and Garak now set out to find ex-Obsidian Order mastermind Enabran Tain on Garak's hunch that Tain may also be an assassin's target, but they are intercepted en route by a Romulan ship carrying Tain as a passenger. Tain invites Garak to rejoin him on a joint mission of the Obsidian Order and the Romulan Tal Shiar to attack the Founders of the Dominion on their own turf - and Garak accepts.

 
 
 
 
 

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (*3.10) mirror episode

•written by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
•directed by Winrich Kolbe
•music by Jay Chattaway
•stardate not given:

Sisko is kidnapped by O'Brien's counterpart from the parallel timeline visited by Kira and Bashir a year before, and is cornered into assuming the role of his violent, lascivious alter-ego who has died while fighting for the Terran rebellion against the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance. His mission - to get aboard Terok Nor and contact turncoat human scientist Jennifer Sisko before she can develop a new sensor array that will mean the end of the rebellion. Though his fellow rebels feel Jennifer could be assassinated as easily as she could be liberated, Sisko must do everything he can to keep the alternate timeline incarnation of his wife alive while not betraying the rebellion.

BACK
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

THE DIE IS CAST (*3.11)

•written by Ronald D. Moore
•directed by David Livingston
•music by Dennis McCarthy
•stardate not given:

One of the first priorities of the alliance between the Cardassian and Romulan secret police is to extract whatever information on the Founders that Odo may possess. At the wormhole, they briefly appear to the crew of DS9 as they decloak; Starfleet orders Sisko to keep the Defiant at the ready in the event of Dominion retaliation against the Alpha Quadrant. Starfleet is also sending more ships to the station as well. Sisko, however, deducing that Odo and Garak are aboard one of the ships, decides to leave DS9 ahead of schedule and retrieve Odo. What he does not know is that the Dominion has planned for the Cardassian-Romulan assault for a long time, and that he's about to take the Defiant into the biggest space battle the galaxy has seen since Wolf 359.

 
 
 
 
 

EXPLORERS (*3.11)
 
•teleplay by Rene Echevarria
•story by Hilary J. Bader
•directed by Cliff Bole
•music by Dennis McCarthy
•stardate not given:
•notes: In "Accession" a Bajoran sailship with onboard a long ago disappeared Bajoran is seen once again.

On a visit to Bajor, Commander Sisko has uncovered records of a Bajoran sailship which somehow traveled to Cardassia in ancient times. He tries to enlist Jake's help in his quest to construct a working replica of the sailship from old Bajoran blueprints and recreate the journey, but Jake is oddly reluctant. Sisko also receives a strange warning from Gul Dukat that the journey is too hazardous simply to satisfy curiosity. Despite all these odds, the commander is determined to chart a trail that was blazed centuries earlier, but even he doesn't realize what surprises he'll discover along the way.

 
 
 
 
 

FAMILY BUSINESS (*3.12)

•written by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
•directed by Rene Auberjonois
•music by Jay Chattaway
•stardate not given:

Quark's bar is audited by the Ferengi Commerce Authority when he is charged with negligence in taking care of his mother. As it happens, she has made profit on the Ferengi homeworld, a capital crime in their male-dominated society, so Quark and Rom head home to deal with the problem. While Rom can't help but admire his mother's lobes for business, Quark is prepared to stop at nothing to wring a confession out of her. If she doesn't surrender her profits, Quark will have to pay.

 
 
 
 
 

SHAKAAR (*3.12)

•written by Gordon Dawson
•directed by Jonathan West
•music by Paul Baillargeon
•stardate not given:

Word reaches the station that Bajor's First Minister has died, and Kai Winn has put herself in a position to take that office in the upcoming election. One of Winn's first acts as head of the provisional government is to ask Kira to retrieve soil reclamators from the D'Kor province. Kira will have to deal with Shakaar, the former leader of her resistance cell during the occupation, and he is unwilling to surrender the equipment. Winn declares martial law and Shakaar and Kira, along with several others from the D'Kor farming community, become outlaws

 
 
 
 
 

FACETS (*3.13)

•written by Rene Echevarria
•directed by Cliff Bole
•music by Dennis McCarthy
•stardate not given:

Quark's ongoing efforts to prevent Nog from joining Starfleet Academy are interrupted by a call to attend a meeting being held by Jadzia. She is about to undergo a ritual in which the memories of each of Dax's past hosts is telepathically transferred to another person so she can come to understand them better. Problems are anticipated when it comes to encountering Joran, the mentally unstable host preceding Curzon who was a murderer, but no one expects that Curzon himself will cause any problems. However, once the mind and memories of Curzon Dax find themselves a new home in the form of Odo, Sisko's crusty old mentor doesn't have any intention of relinquishing his new body.

 
 
 
 
 

THE ADVERSARY (*3.13)

•written by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
•directed by Alexander Singer
•music by Jay Chattaway
•stardate 48959.1:

The party surrounding Sisko's promotion to Captain is cut short when a Federation ambassador brings disturbing news regarding the Tzenkethi, former enemies of the Federation. According to the ambassador, a change of government within the Tzenkethi could spell trouble for Federation outposts along their border, and the Defiant is ordered to patrol that area to show the Federation flag. But en route, O'Brien finds that the Defiant has been sabotaged, and someone else has pointed the ship toward an attack on the Tzenkethi. The crew learn that their saboteur is a changeling on a mission to spark a war between the Federation and the Tzenkethi, thus keeping those two powers too busy fighting each other to defend against a Dominion invasion. Naturally, the task of tracking down and fighting the intruder falls to Odo, who will become the first changeling to break with a sacred tradition and harm one of his own kind.

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