For a bottle episode Duet manages to be more intense than most of the rest of this season. Also to be honest it is really nice to see Kira be wrong about something. There is nothing more dull than a character who is always right and up to this point she has been pretty much that. And she isn't wrong about wanting to avenge what happened to her people, but she does need to keep a check on her desire to just get revenge on any Cardassian who comes along. I also don't think I have ever thought that I should look into the Nuremberg trials but I can't help but wonder if something like this ever happened.
The episode opens with a freighter arriving and docking at the station. They have a passenger who is having a medical emergency though so the passenger is beamed directly to the infirmary. The specific disease, Kalla-Nohra syndrome, gets Kira's attention as it is only found in Bajoran's and Cardassian workers at a forced labor camp. She arrives in sickbay and finds a Cardassian who she immediately demands be arrested. Sisko is somewhat hesitant to detain someone with no actual charges but he is quickly called by the Bajoran minister of state who tells Sisko to detain the man to determine if he is a war criminal. The Cardassian claims to not have had anything to do with the camp but to have rather been a file clerk. The Bajoran's on the station are increasingly getting worked up about the man being held. Investigation proves that the man does have Kalla-Nohra which proves he was at the camp and he admits he was at the camp, as a file clerk. He also seems to be doing everything he can to piss off Kira.
At first Sisko refuses to let Kira be in charge of the investigation, but she insists as his friend that she will do a professional job of it and he agrees. The Cardassian government sends their only known picture of the man being held but it doesn't match him. The picture also has the camp administrator in it, and he is a dead ringer for the man they have in custody. He admits to being in charge of the camp and even brags to Kira about how proud he is of the atrocities. She buys it so completely that she misses that he mentions the name of the specific resistance group she served with. She talks about it with Odo and he notices it immdiately and points it out to her. She confronts the Cardassian about it but he claims her name range a bell based on the excellent records of the filing clerk he had been pretending to be.
Odo starts a parallel investigation first having Bashir look into the mans medical records while he contacts Gul Dukat who is stunned to hear they are holding the administrator since he died years ago. Dukat even attended his state funeral and knows where his monument stands to this day. He agrees to let Odo have access to files which will prove it. Kira is in Sisko's office demanding the prisoner be turned over to the Bajorans now when Odo comes in. He tells them what he learned about the administrator being dead. Kira refuses to believe it but then Bashir arrives with evidence the man had surgery to look like the administrator and it all clicks. Kira realizes he was the file clerk and confronts him. He denies it at first but breaks down and admits he was and feels incredibly guilty for what he did and was hoping to be held accountable to get Cardassians to see what their empire stands for. Kira releases him but he is stabbed to death right outside the jail by a Bajoran.
Review: I heavy episode that deals with serious issues in a serious way. In TNG Q is always demanding humanity answer for its sins, and sure we have a lot of sins. But has he ever bothered to maybe to hassle some Cardassians about their sins?
7 out of 10
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