They had to avoid hitting pot holes while transporting a crock pot of chili. It's wrapped in technobabble, but it's relatable.

I love that the voles look like little ferrets with Cardassian foreheads

This may also be my favourite glimpse into Trill culture, outside of Facets. Arjin expects a joined Trill to be calm and wise all the time, but symbionts mostly want new experiences. Drinking, gambling, 'wrestling' Jadzia is operating entirely within the expectations of her role.

I genuinely love the vole subplot in this. I love the gag with the butts, I love Quark bit, I love O'Brien calling the Cardassians for advice and the guy being sublimely smug about how it's O'Brien's problem now, and I love Bashir giving him a flute. A very well done comedy background plot.

You can't drink all day if you don't start early.

Dax seemingly goes out of her way to appear cosmopolitan and adventurous for her trainee, and it feels like she's imitating the way Curson treated her. It parallels the way we often reenact the behaviors of our parents when we raise our own kids. We don't get to choose the ways we are like our parents, or our previous hosts.

Damn bruh Keira and O'Brien got back. 😂

Dat thumbnail.

"Take those phasers off stun, Chief. No more Mister Nice Guy."

My favorite line in all of Star Trek: You got the station, you got the voles.

I think about it daily. Maybe because the delivery is perfect.

The Quark Argin conversation in the bar, when Quark shares his backstory, is a highlight of the episode for me. Armin Shimmerman's delivery is fantastic and Jeffrey Blake's reaction shots are pitch perfect. 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Starfleet hq reviewing the events: "Wait, did we have a vacuum decay event almost occur that would destroy the universe?  Ugh, gotta stop exploring these subspace pockets."

The closest this Gen Xer had to avoiding landmines was all those quicksand pits we had to avoid as a kid.

I get your point about technobabble, but I feel like a lot of my job as a programmer sounds exactly like that to others. Just today I had to fix a missing dataset by restarting the feeder and updating the solr index on one of the nodes in the cluster.
I always imagined that people in the future just solve problems on their computers instead of using other tools. I like attempts at realism, but I also like when the resolution of a story feels earned.

I always remember this one because I used to catch re-runs of DS9 on Sky 1 in the UK when I was a teenager, and they didnt really show anything earlier than season 2. So, I got used to Jadzia in her usual characterisation.

Then, when someone gifted me the first six seasons on DVD, I started watching from the beginning and was confused to why Jadzia was acting so differently. And then I got to this episode and it all made sense: they'd called an audible!

1:50 I'm less worried about that dumb thing on his head and more worried about the weird warty/ spiky thing on his shoulder. If it's changed appearance in the past 6 months, he should get it checked out.

Also, you can easily catch space voles with space peanut butter in a have-a-heart space trap. Then be sure to release the space vole at least 2 parsecs from your space station, or it will come back.

And fwiw, I'm pretty sure I'm stuck in the wrong universe, too. How do I get back to the sane one? Do I need technobabble? I'm technobabble challenged.

I really love your explanation of technobabble solution vs relatable solution.
Sure, it's still SciFi BS (not even sure veteron particles are a thing in RL), but it makes sense as you explain.

Nice review. Thanks.

Dax is my fav character on DS9.

I love retro reviews. For this one thank you for reminding me the episode exists

.This episode reminds me a lot of COSM by Gregory Benford, with the same "We've got this baby universe that's growing + will eventually displace ours" dilemma, and I think the scientists in COSM found a way to communicate with their mini-universe's inhabitants too, but when I looked it up PLAYING GOD predates COSM's publication by 5 years. So maybe DS9 inspired the book. Then again Dr. Benford is literally a cosmologist so he probably thinks about this kind of stuff all day...

2:49 Behold the conjunction of the Twin Moons of Bajor 😜

Great review. A very Season 2 episode of DS9: a slice of life on the station as seen from a young Trill lad, the fun side of Jadzia continuing to emerge this season, a rodent infestation keeping everyone busy, and then a sm0l babby OOniverse turns up.