Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 2.13

Armageddon Game

Chief O'Brien and Doctor Bashir help the T'Lani and the Kelleruns, two races that have recently ended a war that lasted for centuries, destroy the Harvesters, their most deadly weapons. They are ready to celebrate when two armed Kelleruns break into the facility where the work was done and kill everyone except O'Brien and Bashir, who just barely manage to beam out of there.

O'Brien and Bashir beam down to the surface of T'Lani III because they are unable to contact the Ganges, the runabout in which they traveled to the T'Lani system. The planet is abandoned but it was once inhabited. They take shelter in a building and immediately take start trying to contact the T'Lani.

Commander Sisko is informed by E'Tyshra and Sharat, representatives of the T'Lani and Kellerun respectively, that O'Brien and Bashir are dead. They claim that a security device killed everyone in the room where the work was being done. Sisko is given a faked video of the incident to prove that they were actually killed. He accepts their explanation, watches the recording and then shares it with Keiko.

O'Brien is working on restoring a broken communications device when Bashir discovers that the chief is sick. He was infected by something in the room where they were working before they had to flee. Bashir takes over fixing the communications device with some help from O'Brien.

Keiko feels that something is off with the video. She shares what she sees with Sisko. It is enough for him to head to T'Lani III with Dax to investigate. They find further proof that all is not as they were told by E'Tyshra and Sharat. 

Thoughts

I could not get over the crazy looking hair that the T'Lani sported. I learned, after watching it, that it was nominated for an Emmy award for hairstyling.

Odo, Quark, and Kira were only in this episode very briefly. Jake was not in this episode.

This isn't a great episode. It had potential to be better than it was. It isn't a bad episode but it also isn't a must watch episode. The centerpiece is the banter between O'Brien and Bashir and that was passably good but nothing to write home about.

This is the sixth of 13 episodes of this show directed by Winrich Kolbe. He also directed 16 episodes of The Next Generation, 18 episodes of Voyager, one of Enterprise.