History Recap / StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS02E11Rivals

* TheLadysFavour: Before Miles' big rematch with Bashir, Keiko places a silk scarf scented with her perfume around his head and gives him a MotivationalKiss.

* TheLadysFavour: A friendly racquetball rivalry between Chief O'Brien and Dr. Bashir results in a charity match between the two, with Bashir as the heavy favorite. As O'Brien prepares for the match, his wife Keiko, who had previously been mildly amused by her husband's obsessing over beating Bashir, stands behind him, assuming the attitude of a samurai's wife preparing her husband for battle. She then presents him with a silk scarf scented with her perfume, wraps the scarf around his head, kisses him, and whispers, "Kick his butt."

* MartialArtsHeadband: Before Miles' big rematch with Bashir, Keiko places a silk scarf scented with her perfume around his head and gives him a MotivationalKiss.
* MotivationalKiss: Keiko ties a MartialArtsHeadband around O'Brien's forehead, kisses him, and whispers, "Kick his butt."

* ShoutOut: Dax's remark on how something is "[[Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy not impossible, just very, very improbable]]."

* MotivationalKiss: Keiko ties a MartialArtsHeadband around O'Brien's forehead, kisses him and whispers, "Kick his butt."

* BlackBox: Martus got the original device from some unknown alien in Odo's cells and had the replicators scan it and made larger ones. He doesn't know how they work, or even how to turn them off, and it's never explained how they influence neutrinos and/or luck. In keeping with [=DS9=]'s slightly unusual priorities (for Starfleet), the resolution sees the devices phasered into dust without any further investigation (or even much curiosity).

Martus keeps playing the game and keeps winning. In every other respect, Martus has become a winner. Quark takes an interest in his game, offering him huge sums of money to buy it from him, but Martus sees through his eagerness and keeps it for himself. He meets another widow named Roana who is closing up her shop because she has no one left to run the business with. Martus convinces her to become her partner, and the pair open up a casino right across the hall from Quark's, using jumbo-sized versions of his game like slot machines.

Martus keeps playing the game and keeps winning. In every other respect, Martus's has become a winner. Quark takes an interest in his game, offering him huge sums of money to buy it from him, but Martus sees through his eagerness and keeps it for himself. He meets another widow named Roana who is closing up her shop because she has no one left to run the business with. Martus convinces her to become her partner, and the pair open up a casino right across the hall from Quark's, using jumbo-sized versions of his game like slot machines.

A handsome El-Aurian man, Martus, is laying the charm on a wealthy widow named Alsia who can't help but spill the beans on the investment scheme she's cooking up that will reap a fortune. But Odo swoops in and arrests him before he can make his move. It seems that Martus is a conman who exploits his natural aptitude for listening, and his previous victims now want justice. He's tossed in jail cell with an old alien bearing a handheld game device. The man claims to have once been a huge success but lost all his fortunes, and it's all due to this little game. He demonstrates it by playing a round, and the thing lights up. He rejoices at finally winning the game... and promptly dies. Martus takes the game and plays a round for himself, winning just the same way. Odo returns shortly thereafter to announce that Martus's victims have decided not to press charges. Martus is a free man.

* GoldDigger: Martus uses his empathic listening abilities to work on old women with money to spare -- the episode starts with Alsia bearing her heart to him, telling him about her secret plan to buy an {{asteroid min|ers}}ing claim. Later he moves on to a Bajoran widow, a shopkeeper named Roana, whose storefront he uses for his club...only for her to pull the rug out from under him after catching him making time with a dabo girl, throwing him out as the lease is still in her name. Finally inverted -- Martus invests in Alsia's venture, hoping to recoup his losses after his luck turns, but it turns out ''she'' was conning ''him'' and there was never any mining concern to begin with.

* BlackBox: It's never explained how the devices work, Martus got the original from some unknown alien in Odo's cells and had the replicators scan it and made larger ones. Even he doesn't know how they work, or even how they turn them off. It's also not explained how they influence neutrinos and/or luck. In keeping with [=DS9=]'s slightly unusual priorities (for Starfleet), they're phasered into dust without any further investigation (or even much curiosity).

An El-Aurian conman, Martus, has come to [=DS9=]. While being held for investigation into one of his schemes, his cellmate inexplicably dies after "winning" a handheld game device he has with him. Martus takes the device and, finding it fun, replicates large versions of it and opens a bar across from Quark's. Quark loses all his customers to Martus and his new gambling machines, until he hits upon the idea to harness the racquetball rivalry between O'Brien and Bashir to get the customers back by betting on their game.

Meanwhile, many members of the crew seem stricken with runs of good or bad luck -- Kira's console self-destructs and destroys a report she was working on and all its back-ups, while Dax somehow finds a program she's been searching for for weeks. When Sisko orders an investigation because this is too much of a coincidence, and Dax discovers odd behaviors in the neutrinos aboard the station, and wonders if there's a connection.

During O'Brien and Bashir's game, he notices he seems unusually skilled, and halts the game to bring it to Sisko and Dax's attention. Dax theorizes that something aboard the station is changing the laws of probability, causing unlikely events to become much more probable. They track the source of the neutrino behavior to Martus' machines and destroy them, and everyone's luck returns to normal.

* ContinuityNod: Quark references Sisko blackmailing him in the very first episode when he demands that Sisko get rid of Martus.

* FamousLastWords: "I won!" from Martus' cellmate. He dies with a smile on his face.

* YouKeepUsingThatWord: Martus and Rom have an argument when Martus says that Rom's share of the profits is calculated after expenses are subtracted, not just straight income. This is presented as him trying to cheat Rom, but it's literally what the word "profit" means. (He is cheating Rom, just not that way).