At the time this episode was broadcast it was one of the highest rated stories of season six. In fact, Vic Fontaine was so popular that they made him a regular character for the rest of the show. This contradicts the several one-star blatherings down at the bottom of this review section.
Star Trek had been experimenting with "self-aware holograms", ever since Daniel Davis showed up as Moriarity in "Elementary, dear Data", and then later in "Ship in a bottle", and finally just recently in an episode of Picard. And then Robert Picardo was the emergency medical hologram, who did not even have a name until the very last episode of Voyager. And he had similar talents to Vic Fontaine. An opera singer, a piano player (a very good piano player actually). And this, in fact, relates to this episode here.
Bringing in James Darren not only revived that actors career, it gave DS9 a buttocks-kick with great music. The band accompanying Mr. Darren was actually, literally playing the music that we heard. And then we would hear strains of the orchestra playing the deep space nine soundtrack, and it would mix in perfectly with whatever song Fontaine was singing.
This was an opportunity to go all out, showing us all about intelligent holograms.
But the ironic thing here is that Odo decides to get advice about his forlorn love life from Mr. Fontaine. This is the proper use of irony, in comedy.
This episode had me in stitches as we see Odo trying to make heads or tails of Vic Fontaine's 1960s Las Vegas slang. And if I had not spent as much time there, myself, I would have been scratching my head as well.
But we forget that Odo is a shape shifter. A changeling. When he becomes a rock, he becomes a rock, and even a microscope would not allow you to see the difference. The same thing when he becomes a tree, fog, or, another person. Which he was not as good as the female changeling at doing. But we saw that he had the potential to get better with his impersonations of other people as the show progressed. Even though they don't really show him impersonating somebody until season seven.
So we know that changelings have the ability to become a thing. To see a thing is to become a thing, to understand its function, to know its form.
And so we quite literally see Odo becoming a piano player. I believe that Odo was letting the piano play originally, but if a changeling where to impersonate a talented musician, would they not also have the ability to learn how to play exactly like that musician? In deep space, nine, there was more attention on the changelings ability to totally fool us, once they got settled into their "part". The Martok changeling had all of the Klingons fooled, and a changeling was pretending to be Dr. Bashir for at least four episodes. And we did not even know? This was one of the best reveals of the entire show, when we meet the real doctor Bashir at the dominion prison camp. And then we realize, even as the changeling Bashir was helping Odo try to save a baby changeling, we were being suckered, we were being fooled.
Because a changeling must have the ability to eventually become any person that they are impersonating. Of course, when a changeling first makes the impersonation, they are not going to get it right, which explains their appearance in Picard, when they are pretending to be somebody, and they don't get it quite right. Of course, they need to spend time as that person, eventually, you will never know the difference.
And this includes going from pretending to play the piano to actually being able to play the piano.
This is just a theory of mine about the character only, Odo must have been able to do this.
I mean... Odo starts singing, as he's walking around doing his work... for the first time ever, we see him starting to enjoy himself. And he does not even know that he is enjoying himself.
But then he returns to Nanook of the north mode, becomes self-conscious, and then he just reverts to his ice cold Odo form. Because that has been a part that he had been playing ever since the pilot episode. It is what we have learned to expect from him. He finally realizes that he is expressing himself, and revealing his private desires, so we had to roll back into his snail shell.
So there is nothing really wrong with this episode at all- it introduces a great new character, and it opened up new potential for the Odo character.
Odo always considered himself a second rate changeling, but this episode shows, he had the ability to become a much better changeling. And by doing so, become a much better person. Which he does for the remainder of the series. And all it took was Vic Fontaine.
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