“Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang” is episode fifteen of season seven of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Bashir and O’Brien are in Vic Fontaine’s, asking him if he remembers the Alamo. Which he does, but he’s talking about a cinematic version. What Julian and Miles want to know is if Vic fancies joining them in their Alamo programme in another holosuite. He declines, but says he will sing them a song to get them in the mood. Then the club changes, both in clientele and character, and strange women appear on the stage. Then someone enters who Vic apparently knows. Someone, called ‘Frankie Eyes’, who sounds like a mobster, says he has bought the hotel, and that Vic is fired. O’Brien tries to delete the mobsters, which doesn’t work, nor does trying to freeze the programme. There would appear to be a problem.
Shutting down the programme manually will delete Vic’s memory since he was activated. Vic doesn’t like that idea. Julian says he will talk to the programme’s designer, Felix. Nog, who got rather close to Vic in “It’s Only a Paper Moon” is annoyed and promises to hurt anyone who hurts Vic. Worf doesn’t see why they are so attached to a holosuite character. According to Julian, what happened is a jack in the box, a surprise in the programme designed to shake things up and make them more interesting.
Everyone was pretty happy the way thinks were, and they can return to normal if they get rid of Frankie Eyes. It’s a period programme, so it needs a period solution – and shooting Frankie with a period gun will cause the mob to retaliate against Vic, and him dying in the programme will mean that his matrix will be permanently deleted. Vic changed Kira, Nog – and Odo’s – lives, so they want to help him. They just need a plan.
Sisko didn’t realise how popular Vic’s was until Kassidy brings it up. Sisko has never been to Vic’s (he objects to the unrealistic portrayal of the 1960s in Vegas).
The others – Kassidy, Ezri, Odo, Kira, Julian, Miles and Nog – plan to help Vic out. Sixties style. They need to get Frankie in trouble with the mob, and the way to do that is… to rob a casino. Kassidy talks Sisko around, so the rest of the episode is taken up with a casino robbery. Which, of course, does not go quite to plan.
An unusual episode – which ends with Sisko performing a duet!