God Fucking Damn, "The Search"

I have watched a lot of Star Trek in my 35 years on this earth.

Admittedly, that means a lot of Star Trek becomes kind of a blur to me. I remember a lot, but that's just my kind of brain damage—certain plot points, certain weird aliens or funny moments, certain line readings ("The Kazon-Ogla, who are the KAY-zon OHgla?" is the moment I fell in love with Kate Mulgrew's Captain Janeway).

But while I have the broad strokes of seasons or major plot points locked down in my grey matter (especially for the newer shows and their shorter seasons), more often than not it will take me actually re-watching an episode to remember, "Oh, right, this does just happen to be one of the best Star Trek stories in the franchise."

Forgetting that occasionally you're going to be hit with the critical nuke of an all-timer because it's replete with them comes up a lot when I watch some Deep Space Nine, as it did this week. I have rewatched a lot of the first few seasons of DS9, because I am a purist who believes they actually have plenty of fantastic episodes in them and not someone who just wants to watch the Dominion War stuff, but on a whim I decided to put on the start of season three the other day just to watch something.

"'The Search' is a good one," I thought. "It's the one they get the Defiant in, and the Defiant rules, so that's why I must remember 'The Search' being good."

Reader, it turns out the Defiant ruling is maybe a good seventh on the list of top ten reasons why "The Search" is so incredibly good. Maybe even eighth.