(I took a long break to not watch star trek after finishing series 6 of ds9 so now dumping a bunch of thoughts about some episodes in it. Here's the first.)
When TNG hit its sixth year it was at its most competent and I was at my most bored. The show refused to budge from its solid status quo, so characters didn't really develop and stories rarely took risks. And hoo boy did DS9 reject that strategy when it hit the same milestone.
Quick aside: how far did I get with Voyager? Well, they did a script where Kes experiences a possible future where Tom Paris has successfully boned every woman in the main cast, and Harry Kim has boned his and Kes's then-two-years-old daughter to have a kid of his own. And that's considered one of the show's better episodes. So I'm done with Voyager. Fuck Voyager. Arse show.
'Rocks and Shoals' is, in my small opinion, on balance, probably, might be, mmm, overall, yeah, for me, the best bit of all of Trek, in part because of how well it goes against the Trek status quo.
As the second episode in the six-episode arc, it's saved from the burden of expositing A-plot and B-plot situations and resolving them. Its cold open is extremely tight, giving us what we need to know about who's involved and how fucked they are, and its final shot of their plummeting ship is surprisingly beautiful for a '97 TV episode. Its resolution is short, sweet, and grim, missing the usual "rounding off" closing scene that serves all too often to weaken the prior 40 minutes by way of a hamfisted summary. They did write one – Worf comes down to celebrate the 'glorious victory' – but the on-location heat kept melting the aliens and it was abandoned, and we're all the better for it. New character Keevan is left hanging around, but no matter, because it's DS9 and we'll just see him later, so he doesn't need rounding off either.
Kira's arc is a welcome change for a character that's been dawdling somewhat in the last couple years – the internal troubles of Bajor were put aside as the show turned outward, leaving her with little to do and few places to go. Getting Sisko off the station allowed her to come into her own again, and this story gave her great justification.
Her arc is kinda similar to Kino's arc in Andor, but there's this one spicy difference. During episode 9 (of Andor) Kino is established as the good citizen who disagrees with what's happening but is convinced playing it out is the best approach. His confidence is shaken when he hears of a mass killing of inmates, and his mind changed when he finds out the folks in charge are lying about their chances of getting out. Andor is hardly "fun", but there is something exciting about Kino's panicked "this is just another day, another shift" speech and the "never more than twelve" closing line had me cheering. Kira's story has none of that – there's no missing information for her, so she knows exactly what's happening, but she's staying put nonetheless. Yassim's protest provides not resolve but guilt, and then she tries to perform her usual morning routine with that guilt, and she breaks, and there's no triumphant line (or any dialogue at all) to release the tension.
I guess that's the thing that I truly love about this episode. Both plots play on the theme that it's impossible to keep yourself clean in war, and both plots deny the viewer any kind of closure that would allow them to feel good about the victory achieved, because both plots are centred around the preventable deaths that put/kept our heroes on the right track. That right there is some risky storytelling that casts a shadow on a lot of our characters: Cap'n Sisko tries and fails to have his cake and eat it, and he finishes the episode killing people; Kira shuts down protest and someone else pays for it with their life; Jake Sisko is pissing about playing reporter, completely unaware of the seriousness of the situation, and then is the first to sheepishly look away when Yassim dies and the penny finally drops. None of these characters can go back now either: Sisko's solidified now as a solider, Kira's got some terrorism to do, and Jake's going to do something to help.