Headscratchers / Star Trek Deep Space Nine S 03 E 08 Meridian

• Nobody on the planet or the ship considers the possibility of evacuating Meridian — a possibility that would definitely be the first choice if the "locals" were actually stranded there.
  • Given that Dax's presence on the planet caused it to be unable to shift properly, it is possible that the inhabitants are now bound to it and that leaving the system would be bad for them.
  • There is also the issue that the only ship available is the Defiant an unspecified distance from the wormhole; the ship likely just isn't large enough to take Meridian's entire population somewhere else before the planet phase-shifts again, and they have no way to call another ship for help in the available timeframe.
    • Meridian's entire population is about 30 people. Defiant is listed on Memory Alpha as having a crew complement of about 50 and usually runs with a tiny fraction of that. And this is an exploratory run under the threat of Dominion interference, making it unlikely that they would be venturing great distances from the wormhole. Apart from the doom some centuries in the future, they have a very good existence on Meridian - they may just really want to exhaust options a bit more before evacuating, even more if they could hope for help with the problem by the Federation having decades to work on it while Meridian is over there.