“A Simple Investigation” is episode seventeen of season five of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
This episode opens with an Idanian being questioned, and then accidentally killed by a couple of people who broke into his quarters. He apparently had something they wanted, and was planning to meet with a woman.
In Quark’s, Odo intervenes to stop Quark hassling a woman who is waiting for someone. It’s no great stretch to realise who she must have been waiting for. To a degree, she and Odo seem to hit it off.
When the woman, Arissa, is caught trying to break into the security computers, Odo has a chat with her. She says the Idanian had information on the location of her daughter. Of course, that’s not actually true, and Odo follows her.
It turns out that she’s a member of the Orion Syndicate who’s trying to escape from it. The Idanian apparently had something that would help her, although she has no idea what it is. A crystal is found, but no-one can manage to get into it to discover what information is being stored on it.
Odo puts Arissa in protective custody, and becomes involved with her – which causes quite a bit of gossip on the station, as the news gets passed around, as this is the first time Odo has got involved with any woman.
Can he help her escape from the Syndicate? Is he setting himself up for heartbreak?