The Neutrinos are Rigged

I like weird stories about luck, I'm not sure why they seem to be so rare. One of the reasons Deadpool 2 is my favourite of the three is that Domino's luck power is so much fun. I guess it's basically like the reverse of the bad luck in the Final Destination movies. If the writers can be truly creative in how the weird luck manifests, I really get into it.

"Rivals", a 1993 episode of Deep Space Nine, is another weird luck story. It guest stars Chris Sarandon, brother of Susan. He's best known for playing Humperdink in The Princess Bride and he was the voice of Jack Skellington (Danny Elfman provides the singing voice). On Deep Space Nine, he belongs to an entirely human looking species whose power is listening. There's not much supernatural about what he does so I'm not sure why they called it a special ability. He cons a woman out of an addictive gaming device and opens a casino to compete with Quark, unwittingly magnifying the device's power to warp the laws of probability throughout the space station.

I really like how it influences the subplot about Bashir and O'Brien playing racketball.

On a lot of shows, this setup would lead to maybe O'Brien celebrating an incredible victory or finding the grace to admit he's out of his depth with Bashir. Instead, it gets weird as the ball starts to favour O'Brien. Bashir's racket even just breaks at one point. It's Star Trek so they call the science officer and start analysing it. It's nice to think about a future where the pursuit of truth takes precedence over petty rivalry.