"The Alternate" (season two, episode twelve; 10 January 1994): Wikipedia-link.
Commentary: "The Alternate" is a monster story, a bug hunt. We meet Doctor Mora Pol, the Bajoran scientist who worked with Odo after the infant Changeling was first discovered in the Denorios Belt—& inspired Odo's hairstyle & thus the hairstyle of all Changelings in their "default" humanoid form.
"The Alternate" also features something I wish we'd seen more on Deep Space Nine: exploration of the Gamma Quadrant. A weakness of the first two seasons is too much sitting around the station waiting for new life & new civilizations to come through the Bajoran Wormhole/Celestial Temple. Here, Lieutenant Dax, Constable Odo, & Doctors Mora & Weld visit a planet in the Gamma Quadrant to follow up on D.N.A. signatures similar to Odo's, take samples of metamorphic life, & then flee from poisonous volcanic gas, returning to the Alpha Quadrant & Deep Space 9 were the satsifying monster-of-the-week story happens. More of that type of story would have been welcome. I like the mystery of the Dominion, but I think the sudden, aggressive appearance of the Dominion at the end of the second season would have been even more effective if our characters had already been more invested in & familiar with the Gamma Quadrant.
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