Quodo in Every Episode discussion: "Change of Heart"

[chacusha]

This week we're discussing... the episode right before last week's episode AKA episode 6x16 "Change of Heart"!

Episode synopsis: Recently married, Worf and Jadzia are sent on a critical mission to rendezvous with a defecting spy. Worf has to make a decision when Jadzia is severely injured by a Jem'Hadar weapon and unable to continue with the mission. Meanwhile, Miles recruits Julian to break Quark's tongo win streak.

What The Boys are up to in this episode: Quark appears in the opening scene, playing a game of tongo with Dax. He then appears later in a game vs. Bashir, where he distracts the doctor with thoughts of Dax's marriage to Worf and what that means for Bashir's love life, in order to pull out a win. Odo doesn't appear in this episode.

One screencap from this episode:


Transcript: http://chakoteya.net/DS9/540.htm

Quodo fics tagged with this episode: None (https://archiveofourown.org/works?work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=Episode%3A+s06e16+Change+of+Heart+%28Star+Trek%3A+Deep+Space+Nine%29&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&commit=Sort+and+Filter&tag_id=Star+Trek%3A+Deep+Space+Nine)

Tell us:
- What did you think about this episode?
- Have you written a fic set during/after this episode?
- Do you know of any other fics set in or that build off this episode that weren't linked above?
- What do you see as the Quodo potential for this episode?

Anonymous comments are on, so feel free to chime in even if you don't have a Dreamwidth account! If you prefer, we are also available on Discord:
https://discord.gg/VaCnMYvKu6 (18+ proship Quodo Discord - there is a dedicated channel for this event)
https://discord.gg/Htz4crCdCt (general Quodo Discord)
Event info & rules
Fic masterlist

Comments

[chacusha]

Random thoughts:

- This is a good episode for referencing the game of tongo, if you ever want to feature it in a fic.

- I always just think of this episode as the Jadzia death fake-out episode. It so much seems like they're ready to write her off in this one, which is what they DO end up doing at the end of this season, but in a more rushed manner. It's kind of hard to say how I feel about this episode, because I feel it's neither good nor bad, and it's interesting but without being VERY interesting. Like, it just everywhere feels like an episode that could have been an A episode, but which ended up being, like, B- instead.

- I never really know what to think about Bashir's loss here. On one hand, I like Quark getting the win and Bashir is someone who is a bit immature, so the way in which he loses seems plausible to me. On the other hand, I feel like it's kind of frustrating seeing Bashir fall for such an obvious ruse, and also, this foreshadows the dynamic Bashir and Quark will have re: Ezri (which I do not like). It's like a minimally functional/plausible way to make Bashir lose without being particularly dynamic or fun. IDK, this is pretty representative of my feelings about this episode as a whole. Just a lot of really odd choices that I can't really disagree with, BUT...

- I do like Jadzia and Worf getting an episode dedicated to them, how Jadzia looks when injured (she does look like she might plausibly die in this episode without urgent treatment), and the way she reacts when Worf confesses he did not complete the mission. In general, I think one of DS9's strengths is that it's not afraid to feature long-term relationships/marriages prominently (even if uh, they don't last very long).


Quodo potential:

- Looking at some of the Garashir fics for this episode, it seems like people sometimes write Bashir as mooning over a *different* person he never managed to get with. I wonder if you could basically do the same with Quodo and have Quark talking about Jadzia but thinking about Odo. It would be funny to me if both Quark and Bashir mistakenly think the other is thinking about Jadzia.

- Or I feel like you could write Odo a plotline in this episode. Like maybe he is also watching Quark play tongo and betting on the outcome too, or he's part of the scheme to break Quark's win streak, or he also learned how to play tongo and plays it with Quark sometimes.