Plot Synopsis:
After O'Brien is accidentally hit with a burst of ionizing radiation, he starts to experience five-hour jumps into the future. In the first of these jumps, he witnesses himself talking to future Quark about some visiting Klingons' trashing of the holosuites. In the second of these jumps, he witnesses a bar fight between the aforementioned Klingons and a Romulan delegation that has come to DS9 to gather intelligence on the Dominion. Both of these incidents come to pass. Dax theorizes that O'Brien's time traveling may have something to do with the lingering radiation in his body and agrees to probe the matter further. She eventually discovers that a small quantum singularity is orbiting the station and concludes that the interaction between the ionizing radiation and the singularity is causing the future jumps.
In the meantime, these jumps take a turn for the disturbing. After the predicted bar fight does indeed occur, O'Brien has a flash in which he witnesses his future self being killed by a booby trap in a wall panel. Odo puts this wall panel under surveillance, and sure enough, he detects a low level transporter beaming a device into the panel a few hours later. With some clever sleuthing, Odo discovers that the booby trap is in fact a Klingon surveillance device and that the Klingons on the station work for the Empire's intelligence agency. Their mission? To spy on the visiting Romulan delegation. Odo takes the Klingons into custody.
In O'Brien's fourth flash, he finds his own body lying on an autopsy table. When future Bashir walks in and sees O'Brien standing there, he urgently tells O'Brien to inform the Bashir of the present that he needs to conduct a scan on O'Brien's basilar arteries. When O'Brien returns to the present, he does exactly what the future Bashir instructed, and the present Bashir is able to save his life. (With all these references to the present and future versions of these characters, I can already feel my brain starting to hurt.)
In O'Brien's fifth flash, he sees his future self evacuating the station in a runabout with a group of frightened civilians. Before O'Brien returns to the present, he witnesses the collapse of the wormhole and the implosion of the station itself. Uh oh. Determined to stop this impending disaster, O'Brien agrees to undergo a controlled burst of radiation to force a jump three hours into the future so he can determine the cause of the coming destruction of DS9. He arrives in his own quarters three and a half hours later and learns, with the help of his future self, that the station will soon be attacked by the Romulans (the quantum singularity orbiting the station is in fact the engine core of a cloaked Romulan warbird). Then he is overcome by radiation poisoning. Realizing that he will not be able to survive the trip back to the present, he convinces the future O'Brien to go in his stead. The future O'Brien warns Sisko and the others about the duplicity of the Romulans, and the attack is averted.
Overall: 6.7
This is a pretty standard Trek episode.
Writing: 7.0
John Shirley and Ethan Calk have not written a bad episode here. The characters are treated reasonably well, and the later flashes O'Brien experiences are genuinely disturbing. Witnessing your own death is certainly something to chill the bones. In the end, however, I agree with Ira Steven Behr's critique of this episode: Romulan scheming aside, the tech-the-tech that drives this plot is something that could've easily been done on any other Trek. Though it is rescued from true mediocrity by the bits of character-based humor that pepper the episode, there's just nothing distinctly DS9 about the future-flash concept.
Acting: 7.0
Colm Meaney is probably the most talented member of the regular cast, but he isn't given a whole lot to work with here. Thus, what we get is a wholly respectable - but not earth-shattering - performance.
Message: 6.0
I'm afraid I don't have much to say on this front either. There is a subtle acknowledgment here that our free will matters - no one behaves as if the future is chiseled in stone - but that's about it. This is standard high concept sci-fi, not a thematic goldmine.
Highlights:
QUARK: I just don't see the appeal of this game. No lasers, no holograms, just steel tips and feathers.
O'BRIEN: It's a game of skill, Quark. And it's not easy. Go ahead. Try and get one in the bulls-eye.
(Quark throws all the darts at once.)
O'BRIEN: No!
(Two of the darts land in Morn's padded jacket.)
QUARK: Now what if one of those darts had gotten into his eye? Do you realize I'd be liable for that? Do you know how much money an eye costs?
O'BRIEN: You're not supposed to throw them like that! You throw them gently, one at a time! (LOL!)
BASHIR: Well, the pain you experienced appears to be a muscle spasm caused by a sudden decrease in your serum calcium levels. It's a common side effect of radiation poisoning. I'm giving you some asinolyathin for the pain.
O'BRIEN: What about the vision I had?
BASHIR: Well, mild hallucinations are also a fairly common side-effect of radiation poisoning.
O'BRIEN: It was anything but mild. I really felt I was standing on the Promenade watching myself talking to Quark.
BASHIR: What was the conversation about?
O'BRIEN: He was complaining about some Klingons. He said they'd damaged two of his holosuites.
BASHIR: Well, you do have one problem. If all you can hallucinate about is Quark's maintenance problems, you have a sadly deficient fantasy life.
O'BRIEN: Oh. Well, thank you for your professional opinion. (Heh.)
SISKO: The Romulans generally prefer to sit back and pull the strings from a distance if they can.
KIRA: This is one puppet who doesn't like her strings pulled.
SISKO: I know. But like Ruwon said, they've lived up to their part of the bargain. We have to do everything we can to live up to ours.
KIRA: All right. I'll draw up a schedule of interviews, and I'll tell everyone to cooperate.
SISKO: And Major, when you're in with the Romulans, try to be diplomatic.
KIRA: (breezy) I'm always diplomatic.
(Next scene.)
KIRA: (failing to be diplomatic) That is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard, and I resent the implication!
RUWON: You seem very agitated for someone who's proclaiming her innocence.
KARINA: Indeed, your emotional state would seem to indicate that our theory is correct and you did abandon the Defiant prematurely when it was attacked by the Jem'Hadar.
KIRA: When the Defiant was attacked, Odo and I were trapped below decks. There was a hand-to-hand fight in the corridor. I was wounded, and I lost consciousness. When I came to, Odo had already put me aboard the shuttle, and we had escaped. I did not abandon the ship prematurely!
RUWON: Why didn't Odo try to help the rest of the Defiant's crew?
KIRA: Well, I'm sure he wanted to, but there was no way to get to the Bridge and -
KARINA: Why were you in Odo's Quarters when the ship was attacked?
KIRA: We were talking.
KARINA: About what?
KIRA: It's personal.
RUWON: Do you often have personal talks with the changeling?
KIRA: What business is that of yours?
RUWON: We're trying to determine the nature of your relationship.
KARINA: You are the only member of the Defiant's crew who was not taken prisoner. Why? Did the Founders believe Odo would react badly if you were harmed? Did they think you held some kind of attraction to him?
RUWON: Has Odo ever shown some kind of physical interest in you, Major?
(This is the last straw.)
KIRA: That's it! You can rip the cloaking device out of the Defiant right now. I am not answering any more questions. And I suggest you avoid asking Odo those questions, or you just might find yourselves on the other side of that bulkhead floating home! (Okay, so the cut in this sequence is an old TV trick, but it's pretty funny here. Oh, Kira, I heart you!)
SISKO: Ah. They realigned the matter-energy conversion matrix.
ODO: Turning it into a small transporter. A very sophisticated, very professional job.
SISKO: So now we know how they did it, the next question is who?
ODO: I think I have an answer to that as well. This device is manufactured on Davlos Three, a planet on the Klingon border. In fact, Davlos does over ninety percent of its trade with the Klingon Empire.
SISKO: That's still very little evidence to make an arrest.
ODO: Yes, it is. But then I contacted a friend at Starfleet Intelligence who used to be assigned to the Federation Embassy on the Klingon Homeworld. He put me in contact with a former Klingon operative who's out of favour with the current administration. This former operative sent me a series of reports -
SISKO: Odo, cut to the chase.
ODO: The three Klingons now on the station are part of a covert strike force that reports directly to the Klingon High Council.
SISKO: Why didn't you just say so?
ODO: Sometimes I have to remind you just how good I am. (Another heh.)
O'BRIEN: Listen to me. I've jumped ahead and seen your future. Don't ask me how, it'll take too long to explain. There's going to be a disaster. DS9 will be destroyed.
O'BRIEN 2: Destroyed? How?
O'BRIEN: I don't know. That's why I'm here. I have to find out what's going to happen and then travel back into the past and prevent it.
O'BRIEN 2: You look pretty bad.
O'BRIEN: It's the radiation.
O'BRIEN 2: But if you feel bad and you're my past self, shouldn't I feel bad too?
(A beat.)
BOTH in unison: I hate temporal mechanics. (LOL. As do we all!)
No comments:
Post a Comment