7x20 The Changing Face of Evil

An episode with a little bit of everything. Big space battle, intrigue, marriage problems, murder, betrayal, and Julian and Miles playing games. Quite epic in its ambition, even if it has to suffer naturally by being a middle part in an ongoing story. But it somehow manages to remain focused even with all these different aspects. Also, RIP Defiant.

WEYOUN: "I'll order the destruction of all those escape pods immediately."
FOUNDER: "No. The main characters are in them."

• I wish they had a bigger budget. Earth is attacked and that's all they got? It's a bit disappointing. I don't blame writers. These are the constraints of a 90s TV show with a weekly airing scheme.
• The Bashir/Ezri part is also disappointing. Worf is right: it's childish. It's certainly not the start of a romantic lovestory.
• The Rasputin story slowly meanders. It isn't exciting.

As I said before, this is the middle part of a longer story arc and thus it's hard to judge it as a standalone episode. That's the reason why previous episodes were a 7/10 in my books, although they were mediocre when judged w/o keeping the longer story arc in mind. Now it would have been time to change pace though. For the most part, The changing Face of Evil is the third aimlessly meandering episode in a row and that's one too many. Only the action in the end (and a fantastic Damar) are exciting. This bumps it up to 7/10 again.

Why do they keep bringing her back! Well at least it's over soon.