This week in 1998, fan-favorite “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” debuted in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s seventh and final season, in which a Vulcan captain and Academy rival of Captain Sisko, Solok, challenges the DS9 senior staff to a baseball game. Sisko, who has an adversarial relationship with Solok due to the Vulcan’s efforts to elevate the superiority of Vulcan logic over human emotion, becomes increasingly obsessed with beating Solok and proving a point.

Each member of the station’s senior staff, including Quark, Leeta, and Rom are roped into playing for the DS9 team, the Niners. However, Sisko’s grudge and growing obsession with defeating the smug Vulcan Solok drives a wedge between him and the senior staff, especially over his treatment of Rom.

However, following a meltdown on the field and an ejection at the hands of the umpire Odo, Sisko realizes the importance of team and family over victory. While the Niners are not able to best the Logicians on the baseball diamond, Rom makes a crucial play that allows the Niners to score and keep their dignity.

“Take Me Out to the Holosuite” has absolutely no bearing on many of the larger narrative arcs of the final season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but it is one hell of a fun character episode. It was also, incidentally, my first exposure to baseball, and I have to say that even though it was not the episode’s intention to teach the audience the game of baseball, I learned a lot.

It certainly served me well when I moved to America a decade ago, given the number of baseball idioms present in everyday and workplace conversations.

You might wonder – as I once did – why is there a baseball episode of Deep Space Nine? According to showrunner Ira Steven Behr, the decision to make this episode was in tribute to series co-creator Michael Piller, whose favorite sport was baseball and who initially gave Sisko his love for the game, he told Star Trek Monthly magazine.

One of the things we wanted to do, and one of the many things that we wanted to do over the years on the series, was bring baseball back into the 24th century. Baseball is Michael Piller’s favorite sport, but in the first episode he ever wrote for Star Trek [TNG’s “Evolution”], he killed baseball [in the 24th century].

Why, we still don’t know, but we thought we owed it to him to bring baseball back, even though he had chosen to kill it.

The episode’s outdoor scenes were filmed at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, and the cast featured several talented players. Most amusingly, the cast member with the most talent was the character with the least – Max Grodenchik (Rom) had considered a career in professional baseball after high school. He was forced to play left handed in order to convincingly appear not to be good at the sport.

“Take Me Out to the Holosuite” provides one of the final opportunities of the series for the whole cast to shine on screen together. While there were plenty more episodes left in season seven, groups of characters would begin to split off and pursue divergent storylines.

After the excitement of the end of season six and the opening of season seven, this episode provides a good opportunity to pause and allow the whole cast the opportunity for some fun before continuing forward with the final season arc.

Though the episode is a fun standalone character piece, there are a number of big ideas that underpin it that have a bearing on the larger Star Trek universe, and on Deep Space Nine:

Family is More Important than Victory: A common theme throughout the Star Trek franchise, which is reinforced in this episode, is the importance of family. Not necessarily family by blood relation, but the kind of family developed through shared triumphs and hardships.

This episode leans hard into that theme, which reappears throughout each of the six live action series, as Sisko ultimately gives up his obsession with beating Solok in favor of enjoying the experience with his crew. Their final celebration is not because they won the game, but because they beat their own expectations for themselves.

The Federation Still Has Work To Do: This is controversial, but a core idea pushed by the writers of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and most importantly Ira Steven Behr, is that the Federation is not as perfect as everyone believes it is. During the later days of his life, Gene Roddenberry pushed a vision of the 24th century in which all of the problems of humanity had been solved.

And while DS9 holds onto that general sense of that idea, it probes it and tests it to its fullest. The animosity between Sisko and Solok – based on their racial and cultural differences – demonstrates that the work of self-improvement and enlightenment is never quite over and cannot be taken for granted.

Strong Character Episodes Bring a Welcome Pause to Dramatic Narrative Arcs: As previously stated, this episode does very little to advance the narrative arc of the series, particularly given that it is so close to the series finale. However, in being such a fun character episode, the larger Dominion War arc is not needed to support and advance the episode as a whole.

Though modern-day Star Trek, in its latest incarnation of Discovery, has fewer episodes to work with, it seems like season two might be on track to have more episodes that diverge from the arc of the season in order to explore the characters more.

“Take Me Out to the Holosuite” is one of Star Trek’s most successful humor episodes. It’s concept is fun, and it was executed really well. This episode is a highlight of Deep Space Nine’s final season. Now that IS a Fancy Dan!