Fascination

Lwaxana Troi comes to DS9 for a Bajoran festival and kicks off some farcical shenanigans.

DS9 is generally a dark show and it needs infrequent lighter episodes to give its audience relief. This one has a good premise with the 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' tribute, but for me the comedy mostly fails, due to a lack of timing and an over reliance on individuals behaving out of character.

The humour is generally quite farcical and although certain situations should be quite funny, I find it difficult to let go of the actors usual portrayals to accept their characterisations here. In fact it is difficult to take certain individuals (like Bareil) seriously again in his other episodes. I think the writers are guilty of going over the top with the amount of characters behaving the way they do. I do not think it needed Bashir, Kira and Quark to be infected, when there were so many already.

The best scenes for me involved the O'Briens, as their dialogue exchanges were quite recognisable in interactions between couples. I've had a few like that myself!

All actors do their best with the material and it is a memorable story, but unfortunately one I would rather forget.

I appreciate that comedy is very much in the eye of the beholder and others may enjoy it.