History StarTrekDeepSpaceNine / TropesEToL

** Odo gets saddled with an overseer goldshirt named George Primmin. The character lasted 3 episodes before vanishing, eventually being replaced by Eddington (whom Odo equally hated).

* EvilutionaryBiologist: The Founders took control of the Gamma Quadrant through their keen use of genetics. Their foot soldiers, the Jem'Hadar, are rapid-aged to adulthood and fully-programmed with battle prowess. The Vorta lack a sense of taste, restricting their diet to roots and berries (the food they ate before the Founders revamped their DNA). And any culture that opposes the Dominion is treated to an outbreak of the Blight.

* TheIntern: Bashir, for the first season or so. He's in charge of the infirmity because they're so short-staffed and nobody wanted the job, anyway.

* IronyAsSheIsCast: Baseball players in "Take Me Out to the Holosuite". Aside from Avery Brooks (Sisko) and Cirroc Lofton (Jake), the actors playing the Ferengi were the best baseball players in the cast. The [[ButtMonkey Ferengi]] being who they are, however, forced them to play left-handed and employ other tricks to look horrible on film.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Gagh, the Klingon worms, were called Racht in the first two seasons.
** Gagh had already been established on TNG.

* FiveManBand
** TheHero: Sisko
** TheLancer: Kira and later Worf
** TheBigGuy: Odo
** TheSmartGuy: Jadzia Dax and Bashir
** TheChick: Ezri

* ExploitedImmunity: In the episode ''For The Uniform'', Eddington bombs Cardassian colonies with chemicals that are harmful to them, but not humans. In response, Sisko bombs Maquis colonies in kind, to force Eddington to surrender.

** Dukat envisions himself and Sisko as something like this in the episode "Waltz". The truth is he's just nuts and running out of self-delusions

* EarnYourHappyEnding: Played ''very'' straight by Nog and Jake in "In the Cards", with hilarious consequences. They go through a ''lot'' to get that baseball card. But by the end, everyone on the station feels better, not just Sisko. They also do tons of wheeling and dealing to get five bars of latinum in "Progress", while Nog does the same solo in "Faith, Treachery and the Great River" (at the risk of poor O'Brien almost getting his head taken off by Kira, Worf and Martok).

* HotSkittyOnWailordAction: In some of the FanFiction, Odo and Nerys's relationship gets this treatment. Odo's species being shapeshifters, it's speculated by some that he brings [[NaughtyTentacles certain special skills]] to the bedroom.

* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Li Nalas.]]

** The Changeling race serves as this for the Female Changeling. [[spoiler: In the series finale, she calls off the Demonion offensive and surrenders in exchange for Odo curing the Great Link of the virus and returning to the Great Link, making true a past claim she had once made to Weyoun that she'd give up the Alpha Quadrant itself if it meant bringing Odo home.]]

* GovernmentDrugEnforcement: The Founders used Ketracil White, an addictive performance enhancer and vital nutrient supplement, to control their Jem'Hadar supersoldiers. Without it, they will die--but not before going into an uncontrollable beserker rage.

* InTheBack: As Garak points out, it's the safest way to shoot someone

** "The Assignment" appears to be a generic MonsterOfTheWeek story at first. However, it introduceds the Pah-Wraiths, the enemies of the Bajoran Prophets, who eventually become a key part of the main plot.

* InterspeciesRomance: Since the cast is comprised of several different species, there are a ''lot'' of these. Jadzia is fancied by both Quark and Bashir, and ends up marrying Worf; [[spoiler: Ezri, in turn, eventually enters into a relationship with Bashir.]] Dukat has a thing for Bajoran women - he had several Bajorn mistresses and has a half-breed daughter in the form of Tora Ziyal - and he lusts after Kira. Odo's been in love with Kira for quite a while as well. Quark has a brief marriage and recurring relationship with Grilka, a Klingon woman, as well as an old flame in the form of Natima Lang, a Cardassian scholar. Rom pines after and eventually marries Leeta. Ziyal has a crush on Garak, who possible reciprocates, and Garak has''something'' that's never quite made clear with Bashir. ''Phew.''

** [[spoiler:Damar]] kills [[spoiler:Ziyal]] for betraying Dukat and not siding with the Dominion. Then, in the series finale [[spoiler:Damar himself is killed because he rebelled against the Dominion.]]

** In Season 2's "The Maquis", the Badlands are introduced with Sisko noting that a number of ships have been lost in the plasma storms over the last year. The mystery of the missing ships foreshadows the events of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''.

** In ''Sacrifice of Angels'', the Prophets tell Sisko that he will find no peace on Bajor, and the female Founder suggests that Odo will one day join the Great Link again. [[spoiler:Both of these predictions come true in the series finale.]]

** It's uncertain whether the writers had already decided that Dr Bashir [[spoiler: was going to be a secret genetically engineered human]], but it certainly appears to be hinted at in the fourth season episode 'Our Man Bashir' when he [[spoiler: calmly and effortlessly shoots Garak's neck, resulting in a flesh wound that could well have been lethal if he'd intended, but instead merely clipped the flesh.]]

* FindTheCure: Section 31 creates a disease designed to annihilate the Founders in order to bring down the Dominion and end the war. In order to transmit the disease to the Founders, they use Odo as a carrier. This leads to three episodes of this for Dr. Bashir.

* KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter: The prototype TR-116 Rifle. Designed to operate in environments where energy weapons are unable to function, less unwieldy than a phaser and can be easily modified with a transporter to allow it shoot ''through'' walls. Starfleet apparently refused to mass-produce the weapon because it actually ''[[AwesomeYetPractical worked!]]''

* ImperiledInPreganancy:

** A rare case of two simultaneous examples occurs in "Our Man Bashir". Bashir and Garak are stuck on a JamesBond style holodeck novel with the safeties off and the rest of the crew trapped inside. Garak wants to leave the holodeck but Bashir shoots and just clips him. As a result Garak agrees to continue having seen Bashir's determination to save the rest of the crew. However, when Garak calls for the door to leave he does it in an unnecessarily long winded way which gives Bashir time to shoot, showing that Garak was testing how far Bashir would go and if he would be prepared to kill him. On the other hand, as we later find out, Bashir is [[spoiler:genetically modified and clipping Garak was an easy shot for him.]] So Bashir was fully in control of the situation and only made Garak ''think'' that he was prepared to kill him. Fridge Brilliance all around.