L.J. Writes

After the high of 1.06 "Captive Pursuit" the episode "Q-Less" was a bit of a letdown. I mean it was fine on its own: the central character was interesting (and hot), and the interplay between her and the cosmic annoyance of Q was fun to watch. At the end of the day, though, the episode didn't have anything to do with much of anything in the show at large. As a follow-up to relevant TNG plots it worked; to someone who doesn't have a background in that show it's mostly meaningful in showing that Deep Space Nine is the kind of place where weird crap happens.

Of course, the fact that weird crap goes down on DS9 was pretty much the aspect that excited me about 1.03 "Past Prologue," but "Past Prologue" worked for me where "Q-Less" didn't because "Past Prologue" said concrete things about the setting while "Q-Less" just seemed to up the level of randomness for the sake of whimsy. My verdict for the episode is "Meh." At least we know Sisko can throw a mean punch.