Special mention of the scene in the cold open where Sisko and O'brien greet the Cardassian arrivals. One of the worst directed scenes of the show ever. Awful staging, embarrassing blocking, static camera, no coverage, eye-lines all wrong, occasional glances off-stage (cue cards?). This must have been either a tagged on reshoot or was simply done in 20 minutes at the end of a day. It's like it's part of a completely separate show. Seriously, go back and just watch that scene in isolation - it's staggering.
This was an enjoyable episode. Solid writing and a cohesive, complete story made a welcome return after the recent quality drought. Also some great performances from our regular cast and garak, although they're occasionally hampered by some not-so-great guest stars who vary in quality scene to scene.
I really like Garak. His showdown in sisko's office is brilliant. I also really like his extremely dry line delivery throughout the episode - "you've never been right about anything" was especially good in the finale.
I do find that his shop is very distracting as a location, though. It, and other station shops, are always so barren. It'd be a lot of costume design required to fill it, but then maybe don't make him a tailor if you don't have the resource to fill a tailor's shop.
Armin's ability to play scenes so sincerely through the makeup is amazing. He carries the absolute crap out of a lot of this episode. Many highlights, but in particular his impassioned plea to odo to help him save Natima. Just a top actor doing great work through a rubber mask. The fact the romance scenes work at all is a miracle, but they do. You buy it completely.
Cardassian necks and Ferengi ears get some serious rubbing which did distract a bit from the emotional core.
I mentioned it was nice to see a complete story again, but I do have to question what happened after the showdown. There's a heavily armed warship expecting 3 prisoners that somehow disappear. Surely Sisko and odo will face some serious diplomatic heat over this - shouldn't we see that?
Nonetheless, it's a really good episode overall. Probably a 7.5, but not an 8.
