Plot Summary: Bashir awakes one morning, ready to go on a trip to a medical conference, when all of a sudden an Internal Affairs operative, Inspector Sloan, makes an appearance on the station and confronts him with the allegation that he is a Dominion spy. Sloan does everything he can to get Bashir to admit that he's a Dominion operative. At the moment Sloan is about to arrest him , Bashir is beamed off DS9 and on to a Dominion ship. There Weyoun tries to get him to remember how they turned him into their spy. Bashir realizes that both Sloan and Weyoun are trying to convince him the same thing, and makes the assumption that they are working together. At that moment Kira and Worf beam aboard and rescue him. When they return to the Defiant, Bashir tells Sisko his revelation about Sloan and Weyoun. The entire crew then turns against him and he soon realizes that something is amiss. Then everything around him disappears, leaving him alone on a holodeck with Sloan. Sloan reveals that he is with Section 31, not Internal Affairs, and that he had beamed Bashir of DS9 in his sleep the night before. Now that he knows Bashir is innocent, innocent, innocent, he wants Bashir to join Section 31, a secret branch of Starfleet that searches for potential threats and deals with them quietly. Bashir refuses and is sent back to DS9.
Sub-Plot: None
My Opinion: While I was first watching this episode I thought to myself, "How are the writers going to get themselves out of this one?" I should have known. This was one of those "Surprise None of This Really Happened!" episodes. In this case everything that occurred was just Bashir on a holodeck. I found this pretty disappointing. However the writers redeemed themselves by throwing in a nice topic to think about after the simulation was over. I am referring to section 31, the "Men in Black" of Starfleet. The fact that Starfleet has an underground that operates above the law is surprising. It turns out that Starfleet isn't made up only of goody-two-shoes and their Prime Directive.
Wrap-Up: Despite a "This All Happened on a Holodeck" ending, "Inquisition" was quite a good episode. The intrigue and possibility that Bashir was a Dominion Spy seemed very real, and the whole holodeck story was extremely entertaining. The added idea of Section 31 made this episode even better. I give it three stars.
Review by
05/22/04 01:00:00 AM
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