Never liked this episode, and doubt I ever will. It's dull and treats Odo's character in a peculiar way. Honestly, I kind of switched off and had it on in the background. I was also heavily distracted by the fact that Odo has nipples... why would he bother? Arissa is an incredibly arrogant character, too ("the only thing I've ever been admired for is my looks").
All of the scenes that don't involve Odo/Arissa are pretty great. I love Kira and Jadzia gossiping, Julian's holosuite adventure and I can't help but think that O'Brien's line about always playing the bad guy is a reference to Colm Meaney's movie career at this time (he played a lot of evil henchmen).
This episode was really quite boring. The Odo/Arissa stuff was super cringy.
Everyone says "O'BrIeN mUsT sUfFeR" when all characters in the show do. Kira having her love die, Jadzia Dax finding out the real reason Curzon was a dick to her, Sisko having his wife die and then having yates be the very thing he didn't want to accept, etc.
I find the O'Brien focus stupid and dismissive of the episodes that make characters "suffer". This episode is a perfect example of someone who never lets their guard down, finally doing so, only to have nothing go with right. Andrew Bloom is right that, so far, every time we see something bring joy to Odo, it only serves as a literary device, and not for character development.
All romances that were told in just one episode are bad in DS9. (Long-term romances are told nicely though. As proven by all Kira and Odo interactions in this episode). Plus, this is so not Odo. I don't buy that he's now the great protector of fallen girls. She's a suspicious girl after all. I don't like this story. It's inconsequential kitsch. Plus, who would ask Bashir for relationship advice. Not even the detective story is any good. Mostly boring. Even the great twist, that she has her memories purged to become a spy, is exactly what happened (supposedly) to Kira in a episode before.
And although those scenes are cringe AF, the only thing I'm interested in, is definitely the sex thing. How does he do that? How has he practiced that? How does this actually work? Is he literally flowing into her? How does he emulate taking his clothes off? What does he feel when he's doing it? And what's that story about intermingling with another changeling? I'd like to hear more of this...and does that mean we have already watched him having sex? I understand that's perhaps a bit to much ask for syndicated 90s US TV but more dirty details probably could have saved this episode.
I wish I could watch Bashir's spy novel instead of the A-plot. Or listen to Kira and Dax gossiping while Worf feels very uncomfortable.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2023-09-12T01:14:29Z
[6.2/10] I’ve talked about the other character corollaries to “O’Brien Must Suffer”, and I think one of them is “Odo Must Have His Heart Broken”. He finally meets his people, and they turn out to be cruelly dismissive of solids and lack his sense of justice. He finally gets up the nerve to spill his guts to Kira, only to get a preemptive, “I love you like a brother” comment after gushing about her relationship with Shakaar. He raises another baby Changeling like it’s his own child, only to watch it die in his arms. The poor guy can barely make a close connection with anyone without having it crumble before his eyes.
“A Simple Investigation” is another one of those. Odo finds himself in a bit of mutual attraction to one of the station’s travelers named Arissa. The two find themselves getting closer and closer until Odo allows himself to get close to her, even becoming intimate with her. And once he’s taken that giant leap, he finds out that, unbeknownst to her, Arissa isn’t really Arissa. She’s an intelligence agent who submitted herself to mind-swap to establish a new identity so she could infiltrate an Orion syndicate.
There is something admittedly tragic about that. I’m always interested in stories that can only be told through science fiction. The notion of falling in love with someone, only to find that it’s an implanted identity, is the sort of thing that could only come through in speculative fiction. There’s shades of Vertigo here, and hidden identities are common in the noir genre Deep Space Nine pays tribute to with this episode. But the idea of giving your heart away to a ghost, someone whose existence is evanescent, without you knowing until it’s too late, is poignant in a way only this type of story can offer.
There’s just one problem -- I never really buy Odo and Arissa. The actors have some chemistry. The script includes some legitimate reasons for the pair to gravitate toward one another. If this were the beginning of something -- rather than the beginning, middle, and end -- I might be on board with it.
But “A Simple Investigation” never achieves the kind of transcendence necessary to make you buy that this is something truly special, something that would allow Odo to open himself up in a way we’ve rarely, if ever, seen before. Failing to meet that standard is no sin! DS9 has bungled these quick-fire romances in similar terms with Sisko, Dax, and Bashir. In fact, the only one that’s really worked is Jadzia and the widow of a prior host, which came with some unique facets to the romance. So it’s no sin to stumble here.
Maybe DS9 shouldn’t keep attempting it though, especially given how important Odo’s romantic feelings have been to deepening him as a character for the last four and a half seasons. Full disclosure -- I’m an inveterate Odo/Kira shipper, so that might be coloring my views. But part of why that relationship, with all its teases, works so well is that it has history. It has steady development over the course of years. We get to see them coalesce into friends and maybe more, rather than having it shotgunned at us in forty-five minutes. You can’t expect any single-serving story to be able to match that.
So I don’t know. I don’t necessarily mind the attempt. Lord knows The Next Generation, Voyager, and especially The Original Series were rife with one-episode romances. It can one-hundred percent work with the right story and the right performances. (See: TNG’s “Half a Life”) It’s practically in the DNA of the franchise. I can’t slate DS9 for going out of pocket here.
And yet, wasting something like Odo making himself vulnerable enough to let someone in, to become intimate with a solid for the first time, to expose a side of himself he’s never shared before, on a disposable love interest rather than someone whom the show can build on that with, feels almost criminal. I don’t care that Odo lost his V’ger card. I do care that he took this big step with someone the show will barely ever reference again.
I can, nonetheless, appreciate what “A Simple Investigation” is trying to do here. Despite the muted sparks between Odo and Arissa, you can see the way the script and the performers are going for a certain Batman/Catwoman vibe between them, which isn’t a bad approach to a romantic partner for Odo. The idea that Odo goes out of his way for Arissa not just because she likes him, but because he knows what it’s like to work for the wrong people, and he admires her for having the courage to try to walk away that he never did, is a good hook.
The episode simply can’t deliver on the promise of those concepts. The sparks simply aren’t there between the characters. The proceedings come off dull or awkward rather than passionate and engrossing. And the attempt to do a noir pastiche with gangsters after a macguffin and law enforcement coming in to save the femme fatale lacks the sort of flair and stylistic choices that elevate the best works of that genre. Something so personal and so theoretically dangerous shouldn’t feel so boring.
The irony, of course, is that Deep Space Nine has already done this and done it well. Season 2’s “Necessary Evil”, featuring a flashback to Odo on Terok Nor, is another noir pastiche. It’s another episode where our favorite Constable works to do his job while also protecting a young woman in need. It also features him having to use his detective skills to sniff out a dangerous conspiracy, eventually learning a shocking twist in the present.
And that was better for a multitude of reasons, from the more compelling mystery, to the added spark of giving us a glimpse of the station when it was run by the Cardassians, to the personal reveals that complicated the relationship between Odo and Kira, something that helped account for the growing but complex bond between them.
Odo suffered there too. He realized that he’d make a mistake, and that one of his dearest friendships began with a lie. As sad as it is sometimes, I don’t mind one of my favorite characters on DS9 continuing to suffer setbacks of the heart. But they need to be founded on something real and piercing, rather than flat and formulaic. And if they allow our favorite Founder to deepen the strong relationships he’s developed with the crewmates, instead of jettisoning the connection du jour out the proverbial airlock, so much the better.