This episode sets up or reinforces the long-standing relationships between several characters: Odo and Quark, O'Brien and Keiko, Sisko and Dax, and even the friendship between Dax and Bashir (poor Julian). It's a nice bit of character development that I've always liked. It also sets up a theme that runs through the entire series: governments are useless.
Situation: A con-man named Ibudan comes aboard the station. Odo threatens to throw him out the airlock, and they get in a fight.
What Sisko does: Give Odo a sharp dressing-down: the Federation is ruled by law, not by lone vigilantes.
What I would do: The same thing. However, as we will see in the future, Odo's not entirely wrong on this one: governments are hopelessly useless in the universe of DS9. The Bajoran Provisional Government is completely dysfunctional; the Federation is hopelessly out of touch; the Cardassian High Command is more concerned with placating the Feds than with protecting their interests, and even the Romulan government is drifting aimlessly. When the time comes to defend the Alpha Quadrant, it's entirely up to Sisko and Odo personally, and to the KGBs of each of the stellar governments (oh, Starfleet has one too, don't be fooled) to get the job done.
Situation: A bunch of angry citizens confront Sisko and Kira in Ops, complaining that Odo, the chief suspect in Ibudan's murder, is also in charge of the investigation.
What I would do: Instruct my security personnel to politely turn the angry citizens away from the elevator that leads to Ops, and direct them to Greeting Room A.
What Sisko does: Welcome the angry mob into Ops, the command and control center for the entire station, because everyone is welcome in Ops.
At the end of the episode, Sisko shows Odo the benefits of the rule of law: it protects Odo himself even when he's out of power, just as it protects everyone else. As far as Star Trek's moral messages go, this one was surprisingly subtle and even reasonable.
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