Quodo in Every Episode discussion: "Necessary Evil"

[chacusha]

This week we're discussing... episode 2x08 "Necessary Evil"! (This is the last episode we're discussing before going on our first mid-season break, by the way!)

Episode synopsis: A woman pays Quark to bring her a box hidden in a shop on DS9; Quark is shot and put into a coma after peeking at its contents, which have now gone missing. Odo flashes back to the first case he was ever asked to solve on Terok Nor, which he was never able to close: the murder of the woman's husband, a Bajoran chemist on Terok Nor. In both cases, Kira's involvement forces Odo to choose between truth and justice.

What The Boys are up to in this episode: Odo is the main/POV character of this episode, but the events are instigated by/centered around Quark. Quark meets with Pallra, breaks into a room with Rom, and then is shot and spends the rest of the episode unconscious in the infirmary. In the past, Quark is interrogated by Odo regarding Kira's alibi. Over the whole episode, Odo is solving two cases: one in the past involving murder and sabotage and talking to Dukat, Pallra, Kira, and Quark, and one in the present involving blackmail and attempted murder and talking to Rom, Pallra, Kira, and Sisko.

One screencap from this episode:


Transcript: http://chakoteya.net/DS9/428.htm

Quodo fics tagged with this episode: There are predictably quite a few Quodo fics in the tag for this episode, although some of these are tagged with multiple episodes and probably don't count:
1) https://archiveofourown.org/works/63259720
2) https://archiveofourown.org/works/49491202
3) https://archiveofourown.org/works/43625370
4) https://archiveofourown.org/works/41650548
5) https://archiveofourown.org/works/12680085

Tell us:
- What did you think about this episode?
- Have you written a fic set during/after this episode?
- Have you read any of the fics linked above? Let us know if they fit! 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:

- Ferengi noir time lol. Quark is getting so much tail in season 2.

- Lol, I love Rom casually breaking into Quark's storeroom and vault. Is this episode the beginning of engineering-whiz!Rom?

- Of course Quark opens the box. He's such a sketchy person.

- Rom is great in this episode. I like Odo desperately trying to get any helpful information out of him. XD

- Meet cute! Meet cute! I like how moments after meeting Quark, Odo is manhandling him. Begin as you mean to go on, I guess!

- "Nobody ever had to teach me the 'justice trick.' That's something I've always known. A racial memory from my species, I guess." -- Odo's noir detective lines in this episode are just so funny. I love them.

- I discussed this earlier, but apparently there's a deleted scene in the script of this episode:

Odo comes out of a turbolift... moves down the corridor... stops at a corner as he hears voices:
PALLRA (O.S.) Goodnight.
GUL DUKAT (O.S.) Trust me. You have nothing to worry about.
Odo peeks around the corner to see Gul Dukat is standing at Pallra’s door... kissing her... Odo moves back behind the wall, reacting. ANGLE - ON DUKAT AND PALLRA as they break their kiss, Dukat smiles and she goes inside... he walks toward Odo, turns the corner and as he passes where Odo used to be, there is now a picture on the wall of Dukat and it’s crooked... he walks by it, then stops, looks curiously at the picture, straightens it and leaves.

While I think it was good to cut this scene (not necessary, and gives more hints about what is going on in this episode than you need), I 100% buy that this scene actually happened offscreen, lol. You know Dukat was sleeping with Pallra in the sleaziest and noiriest way possible. Also, I'm just now realizing that the script specifies that Odo took on the form of a painting of *Dukat* in particular. What a funny detail!

- This bit from the DS9 Companion about Max Grodenchik doing a Ferengi scream in this episode is also adorable:

Even Max Grodénchik got to do an homage -- to Armin Shimerman. "When I come to the Infirmary to see Quark, there's that guy about to kill him, and I do Armin's Ferengi scream. Of course, Armin is the best at doing those things, by far. He can get up higher and shriller than anybody." And, in fact, on the day Grodénchik shot that scene, the call sheet included a note for a copy of "Invasive Procedures" to be ready on the set, cued up to "SC. 59 -- Int. Surgery -- Quark in pain" and "SC. 63 -- Quark groans horribly." Inspiration, no doubt."

I feel like Max is being modest here -- his Ferengi scream is so good! Also, I know there are people out there who don't like the Ferengi but I just don't understand why! They are so cute and funny. Armin, Max, and Aron are out here putting their whole heart into playing them with depth and charm!

Okay, there is a lot to like about this episode overall -- Odo, Quark, and Kira backstory! Glimpses of Terok Nor! Over the top noir tropes! Rom being absolutely hilarious throughout! Getting to see prefect!Dukat getting to do some stuff! That said, there are some things that frustrate me a little bit. The plot seems crazy convoluted. In particular, one thing that isn't resolved and I just don't get is the bit about Ches'sarro dying under mysterious circumstances shortly after the list is stolen. Like... is the implication here supposed to be that Kira informed her Resistance friends and they did a revenge murder or something?? Or is Pallra/one of her hitmen supposed to have done it?? Or did he commit suicide?? Given what information is dropped in this episode, the first option seems the most likely one but is completely WTF given the state of Bajor and the fact that Kira faces NO consequences, and Odo doesn't even seem to acknowledge how fucked up it is that he leaked that information to Kira and someone ended up dying for it?? So probably not that, maybe? The second one has fewer wider implications but just makes no sense given Pallra was trying to use those collaborators as an ATM, basically -- just no motive at all to kill the people she was trying to blackmail. The third one has neither of those issues but is just not set up at all. Like, it is conceivable that a secret collaborator might choose to commit suicide if it became public knowledge they were a collaborator, but this is not clarified or established anywhere in the episode and, to the contrary, the rest of the episode sets up his death as suspicious and there is no indication that his status as a collaborator became known to anyone EXCEPT Kira (and presumably her Resistance buddies). Just a weird dangling plot thread that is a consequence of the plot being a bit too over-complicated (too many murder investigations going on in this episode to resolve them all! 😂).

Similarly, there is also another unexplained minor plot hole in this episode, which is that Odo comes in to solve this case, does a bunch of asking around and then basically comes back to Dukat with the answer, "Yeah, nope, no idea who did this murder. 🤷" and then... gets hired as a permanent security officer and eventual chief of security aboard Terok Nor?? Like, is the implication supposed to be that Dukat had larger objectives that bringing in Odo served (and so this case was basically just a ruse to reach out to Odo) and so basically ended up being OK with this murder not being solved despite claiming it was important for Odo to solve this for him? Is Odo meant to demonstrate how you can totally fail upward in Cardassian regimes? XD Or did the writers just not really think about how to make the whole timeline make sense... And also, why did ODO come to believe this was useful and valuable work for him to do, if his first case ended up as such a failure? It's just bizarre. Too complicated by half.

Anyway, I still love this episode for the Quark/Odo/Kira backstory and impeccable noir vibes, but I feel like it probably needs a bit of massaging before you can fit it into canon/the timeline.


Thoughts on Quodo potential:

Lots of Quodo potential in this episode!

- Basically, you can just make the subtext text -- there are jokes in this episode about how Odo cares about Quark (his "best friend"). You could have Odo finding himself unexpectedly motivated to find out who (almost) killed Quark. You could have him having complicated feelings about Quark having finally gotten what was coming to him and having to untangle them. You could contrast Rom's reaction to Quark's coma with Odo's -- maybe Odo has a moment of realization (mirroring "A Man Alone") where he realizes he's the closest thing Quark has to an ally or best friend too.

- Or in Quark and Odo's first meeting, you could definitely explicitly make it so that Quark's offer for "companionship" is a come-on.

- You could have Quark and Odo having a conversation in the past shortly following Odo wrapping up this case, or Quark following up on their earlier conversation.

- In the present, Odo's response when Quark recovers and is discharged from the infirmary? What kind of conversation would they have?

- In line with noir vibes, while Pallra is a femme fatale to the various other characters in this episode, I feel like Quark makes for a good femme fatale character for Odo.

Regarding the fics tagged with this episode, I went through the fics linked and I added one and was unsure about a couple:

Clearly fits and added to masterlist:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/43625370

Unsure:

Focused enough on 2x08 but borderline because it's an AU:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/12680085

Pre-canon and features part of 2x08, but largely focused on different parts of the pre-canon timeline:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/63259720

Rejected:

I already added this one to the masterlist under episode 1x10 as it occurs right after that episode and only briefly references this episode:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/41650548

Already rejected this one because it features multiple episodes as part of a single story (i.e. the different episode-specific segments don't make sense on their own):
https://archiveofourown.org/works/49491202

I'm also making a note to take a look at pre-canon Quodo fics in general:
https://archiveofourown.org/works?work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&include_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=25659846&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=Pre-Canon&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

So far, I think this one might count as there are references to 2x08 and it seems to occur shortly afterward:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/25896526

Most of the works so far have just been generic pre-canon fics with no clear timeframe and no significant references to 2x08, so it is unlikely that I will include them.