A good teaser should make you eager to see the rest of the episode. If, even with my project to watch everything, I very nearly turned the episode off after the teaser then clearly things have not gone well.
The only thing that was keeping me watching by the time Odo says “please refrain from using your imagination” was the alternate-Dax, and poor old Bashir’s fantasies made into the best awkward moment Star Trek has managed. The other ‘imagination’ creatures are dull or annoying, missing out on a chance to tell us something about the other characters on the show.
Great Star Trek moment: this episode is the origin story for Sisko’s baseball, which will play in quite a few future episodes.
272 down, 465 to go.