#your use of 'prev tags' is unauthorized and doomed to fail

[jimintomystery]

DS9: "Civil Defense"

ATTENTION BAJORAN WORKERS: The crew of Deep Space Nine has inadvertently tripped a Cardassian failsafe left behind by Gul Dukat, the former prefect of the station. To prevent a Bajoran uprising, key systems will require Cardassian access codes. Any attempt to bypass these codes will activate security countermeasures, including the self-destruct sequence.

For my money this is one of the better episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Most of the superior candidates are entrenched in long-term storytelling, but if you just want to kill an hour with the DS9 gang in a very DS9 story, you can't beat "Civil Defense." I like when a Star Trek show does stories that wouldn't work on the other Star Trek shows, and this premise gets right to the heart of "we moved into a secondhand space station without kicking the tires."

The problem-solving here is top-notch. I especially like that Commander Sisko almost immediately tries to convince the program that the "Bajoran workers" have surrendered, because why not? Another great bit is Jake Sisko panicking while trying to find a way out of ore processing, and his father calmly advising him to relax, even as the room is about to be flooded with poison gas.

Of course, things really get cooking once the real Dukat answers his own prerecorded distress signal. This is the first time we've seen Dukat since "The Maquis, Part II," when the Cardassians threw him under the bus and he owed his life (and a chance to salvage his career) to Sisko. Evidently he's recovered from all that, to the point that he feels comfortable swaggering onto the station looking to take over. A bit jarring, but totally worth it when he activates another failsafe his boss left in case he tried to desert his post. The look on Dukat's face when he realizes he just played himself is priceless.

The solution is a little flimsy, but I'll accept it. I don't understand how overloading the power supply grid would turn off the force fields but somehow turn on communications. But I like the poetic justice of thwarting Dukat's program by using a different lethal security measure that's unaffected because Starfleet disconnected it when they moved in. And instead of the usual race against time to abort the self-destruct sequence, Sisko ends up letting it happen but redirecting the energy into the station's shields (which are active for some reason). I assume that means Dukat's program released its lockouts, because it thinks the station is destroyed, or something like that. But a win is a win.