Oh Kay Garak

Somehow, I had forgotten that Andrew Robinson was the fellow playing the excellent Garak on DS9. He's the guy who played the serial killer in Dirty Harry, and also the evil father in Hellraiser; he seems to get a lot of 'affable and functional --> dangerous crazypants' roles, and DS9 does not go against this trend.
In the relatively sterile world of Star Trek, the Cardassians as a race are a brilliant invention; fascist military fanatics with lots of clandestine spying and backstabbing. They are sort of what the Romulans wanted to be, only better fleshed-out and more solid. I thought Gul Dukat was fun as a Starfleet foil until Garak came along and showed us all how it should be done. (The episode we're up to is The Wire, but that's not even his best.)