Bashir has to prove his loyalty to the Federation
I never once questioned Bashir’s loyalty, and as a result this episode did very little for me. The reveal that ‘it was the Holodeck all along’ did very little for me – very little in the episode really required that up until the final act. And Bashir is so clearly ‘good’ that it seems silly.
But imagine if on the other hand they’d done the same with Odo. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to have some doubts about whether he really repented back at the end of the recent DS9 occupation? Or how would we even know he was Odo, rather than some other shape shifter? That could’ve been a really interesting episode. The one they actually did wasn’t.
517 down, 220 to go.