It turns out that Worf has been accused of murder by the Klingon Empire after a space battle gone wrong. Worf was commanding the '"Defiant'', defending Cardassian freighters from a Klingon attack, when he fired upon a civilian transport ship that accidentally decloaked in the middle of the fight. A Klingon advocate, Ch'Pok, has arrived to demand Worf be extradited to the Klingons to stand trial. Admiral T'Lara sits in judgment of the hearing, with Sisko as Worf's defense. Ch'Pok does not dispute the facts of the case but intends to show that Worf was acting as a Klingon warrior rather than a Starfleet officer when he ordered the attack, requiring him to be tried in a Klingon court.
As his first witness, he calls Dax, who recounts how she and Worf spar but always maintain suitable safety and control. However, she's forced to admit that Worf enjoys a particular holosuite program in which he replays a historic battle as a conquering general who orders an entire city's population slaughtered, including the civilians. Worf last played the program on the day before the battle. Next, Quark recounts how, before the escort mission, he overheard Worf say that he hoped to engage Klingons in battle. Worf is looking more and more like a bloodthirsty and vengeful Klingon.
O'Brien is brought up to recount the details of Worf's behavior during the attack. He explains how Worf saw a pattern in the Birds of Prey's cloaking and uncloaking. When a ship uncloaked right where he expected, he ordered O'Brien to fire before confirming that it was an enemy. It turned out to be the civilian transport ship, which apparently got lost. O'Brien insists that he stands by his commander's order in the moment but admits that he would not have made the same decision.
Things are going pretty poorly for Worf. Between sessions, Ch'Pok gloats to Sisko that Worf's eventual conviction will grant sympathy to the Klingon Empire and give them leeway to annex more territory from the Cardassians, bringing them right to Deep Space Nine's doorstep. This has been all too convenient for the Klingons, and Sisko has been having Odo dig for clues about the Klingon transport vessel, looking for some evidence that it was intentionally sacrificed, but so far, no luck.
It's time for Worf to testify. Sisko asks him if he would make the same choice as he did before, and he affirms he would, as any hesitation would have put his ship and subordinates at risk. Under cross-examination from Ch'Pok, Worf bristles at accusations that he would let his rage and urge for revenge over his exile cause him to attack defenseless targets. Ch'Pok further antagonizes him, saying that his son Alexander will soon learn that his father is a coward. Worf breaks down and decks Ch'Pok, unwittingly proving that he would attack an unarmed target after all.
Worf's fate is looking grim as Admiral T'Lara withdraws to deliberate, but finally, Odo has brought Sisko good news. Sisko has the hearing reconvened and brings Ch'Pok to the stand. He hands the Klingon a datapad and asks him to identify its contents, and Ch'Pok recognizes the names of the 400 victims of the destroyed transport vessel. Sisko counters that it's actually the manifest of a different civilian transport ship that crashed on Galorda Prime. The Klingons claimed that everyone survived the crash, but what are the chances that every single passenger would reconvene aboard another transport ship and die? It's clear to everyone that the Klingons have falsely tried to use the casualties of a previous accident to pin on Worf, and the ship he destroyed was actually empty.
Worf is exonerated. Sisko comes by to collect him for his victory celebration. Worf is embarrassed by his behavior, and Sisko agrees he was out of line. The commander also chews Worf out for making the wrong call in battle. He shouldn't have fired without confirming his target. Putting yourself in harm's way to protect civilians is part of the job. However, Sisko has full confidence that Worf will someday make a great captain and wish he'd gotten into botany instead.
Tropes
- Ambiguous Situation: It's not clear whether Ch'Pok is in on the scheme to frame Worf. He's well aware of how valuable this case is for the Empire. However, he seems confused when Sisko starts revealing the true nature of the victims and is forced to admit that Sisko has a point.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Ch'Pok has O'Brien on the stand, and tells him to imagine that he was in command instead of Worf during the same situation. Would he also give the order to open fire? O'Brien says he wouldn't, but also points out that he wasn't in command (and, being a non-commissioned officer, couldn't have been unless things had really gone to hell) and that it's easy to throw stones after the fact.
- Artistic License – Law:
- Many of Ch'Pok's questions would not be allowed in a court of law on the grounds they are blatantly loaded or leading questions. While this could be chalked up to Sisko not being familiar with law himself and not knowing he can object to such questions, Admiral T'Lara ought to know better.
- Ch'Pok badgers Worf, even directly shouting insults at him, for some time before T'Lara steps in. When he continues going after she warns him to stop, and clearly provokes Worf into attacking him, neither of them suffer any consequences that are mentioned.
- Sisko taking the stand to testify as a witness when he's also Worf's defense is a clear conflict of interest. This even comes up during the hearing when T'Lara notes Sisko is acting as both, and invites him to speak freely to add anything to the record he likes.
- Worf is being held under guard while awaiting trial, but during the hearing itself, there is no guard or bailiff for the court room. This is particularly noticeable when Worf attacks the prosecutor, and there is no one to handle the matter.
- Artistic License – Military: It's stated that O'Brien would have been next in line to command the Defiant, but he's a non-commissioned officer, presumably having been appointed as the Executive Officer with positional responsibility giving him that position in the chain of command. Normally he'd be much further down the chain of command. Even Kira's there and she has got involved in giving orders when required, and she's not even in Starfleet.
- Batman Gambit: The Klingon plan required Worf to notice a consistent pattern in their attack, predict the most likely position of the Bird-of-Prey when it decloaks at exactly the right moment, and open fire before completely identifying his target.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The witness flashbacks speak directly at the camera.
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Broken Aesop: Sisko's lecture to Worf about how Starfleet never puts civilian lives at risk even for self-defense falls apart since the Defiant was protecting a civilian convoy; had they been destroyed, the convoy would've been next, and the people they were trying to help would've also died. - Bullying a Dragon: Ch'Pok verbally hammers on Worf's honor and pride until Worf rises from the witness chair and knocks him to the deck, to prove that Worf is capable of attacking anyone if sufficiently provoked.
- Call-Back: In "Return to Grace", Bashir mentioned that the Cardassians were suffering from numerous epidemics. One such plague is what led to the humanitarian convoy that Worf and the Defiant were escorting.
- The Chains of Commanding: Sisko gives a lesson recap on them to Worf at the end of the episode.Worf: Life is a great deal more complicated in this red uniform.
Sisko: Wait 'till you get four pips on that collar. You'll wish you had gone into botany. - Comically Missing the Point: Quark is more concerned trying to figure out who was sitting at the bar than remembering what Worf was doing there.
- Continuity Nod:
- Worf and Dax's sparring sessions are seen again.
- It's mentioned that O'Brien has been in over 200 battles according to his record, which is another allusion to O'Brien being a veteran of the Cardassian wars, something first introduced in TNG.
- Courtroom Episode: Most of the episode takes place during Worf's hearing.
- Debate and Switch: The situation regarding firing on a civilian ship ultimately goes unresolved (though Sisko, at least, believes Worf was wrong to be so quick on the trigger), as the situation is proven to have been deliberately set up to disgrace Worf.
- Derailed for Details: Quark's testimony. He keeps interrupting himself by trying to remember which dabo girl Julian was hitting on, and when he finally remembers that it was actually Morn doing the talking, Ch'Pok tells him to just skip ahead to what Worf told him.
- Don't Answer That: When Ch'Pok asks for Worf's permission to use information gathered from an unsanctioned search of Worf's personal database.Sisko: (whispering, to Worf) Don't play his game.
Worf: I have nothing to hide. - Dream Intro: Involving Worf and a bunch of other Klingons on the Defiant.
- Fantasy Conflict Counterpart: The episode was inspired by the Iran Air Flight 655 incident
where, during the Iran–Iraq War, the USS Vicennes shot down an Iranian airliner that was misidentified as an Iranian Air Force F-14 on an attack run. - Frame-Up: The entire situation was a ploy by the Empire to disgrace Worf. The transport ship was totally empty, and its "passengers" had already died in a horrific crash in the not-too-distant past.
- Ham-to-Ham Combat: With Sisko and two Klingons in the room, this is pretty much inevitable. No wonder they need a Vulcan admiral to keep everyone under control.
- Hit-and-Run Tactics: The Klingon attack on the convoy. One ship de-cloaks, attacks, and re-cloaks while another ship de-cloaks and does the same thing.
- Hollywood Law: By the episode's own admission, there are no current diplomatic relations between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, which ought to mean that the Klingons have no standing to demand the extradition of an active-duty Starfleet officer for actions carried out in the performance of his duties (particularly duties in combat against the Klingons). However for some bizarre reason the Vulcan judge finds it logical to not only allow the extradition hearing to proceed, but allow it to proceed under Klingon legal norms.
- Invisibility Flicker: Worf's battle plan is to shoot at whatever starts to decloak—just as the Klingon Empire wants.
- In Medias Res: The episode starts on the night before the trial. We progress through the trial and get flashbacks to what led up to it.
- Klingon Scientists Get No Respect: Deconstructed. The Klingon lawyer explicitly approaches his scholarly profession as metaphorical combat, seeing each case as a battle and each line of questioning an attack. However, there's no indication that actual Klingon warriors are appreciative of that outlook.
- Know When to Fold Them: When Sisko reveals the highly suspicious nature of the supposed victims, Ch'Pok admits on the stand that his case is lost.
- Moral Luck: Worf is exonerated when it is revealed the transport he accidentally destroyed was deliberately planted by the Klingons and had no passengers aboard, but ultimately subverted when Sisko reminds Worf that he lucked out and should never have fired on an unidentified ship in the first place. While it's unlikely that a real civilian ship would suddenly decide to decloak in the middle of an active battlefield (or even be near one, for that matter), Sisko says that's beside the point. Starfleet doesn't take risks with the lives of non-combatants, however small, for the sake of tactical expediency.
- Murder Simulators: While Dax is on the witness stand, Ch'Pok questions her about a holodeck program Worf ran shortly before the escort mission, which casts him in the role of one of Klingon culture's greatest heroes, who ordered an entire city put to death after he conquered it. He uses this as evidence against Worf by forcing Dax to acknowledge that Worf does give the order to slaughter the inhabitants, and she is overruled when she tries to point out that this is required in order to finish the program. The argument is presented in much the same way that Moral Guardians use to attack violent video games today.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Everyone's reaction when the transport blows up.
- Proud Warrior Race Guy: Ch'Pok may be a lawyer, but he proves he's still a Klingon by treating the trial as a fight.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Ch'Pok isn't evil; he's just doing his job, and even offers to defend Worf himself if the ruling is for extradition. How much he knew about Worf being set up is never totally clear.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: When Sisko confronts Ch'Pok with the evidence that Odo found, saying "Tell me, advocate. Isn't. It. Possible?"
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The episode completely falls apart when you factor in that Space Is Big. There is no sane reason for a civilian ship not part of the convoy to come within an astronomical unit of the battle in the first place (much less de-cloak right in the middle of it), which should have clued people in that there was more going on.
- Series Continuity Error: Ch'Pok states that fate is not a Klingon concept. Yet in "Sword of Kahless," two Klingons sure talked a lot about fate and destiny.
- Stepford Smiler:Sisko: Part of being a captain is knowing when to smile. Make the troops happy, even when it's the last thing in the world you want to do, because they're your troops, and you have to take care of them.
- Too Dumb to Live: Subverted. Decloaking in front of an active warship in mid-battle may seem stupid, but considering the Klingons were actively trying to get Worf to blow up the transport, not so much.
- The Voiceless: Morn. Even in flashbacks, he's not allowed to speak on-screen.Quark: And he was the one who turned to [Rolidia] and said—
Ch'Pok: Can we get back to the matter at hand, please? - What the Hell, Hero?: Sisko chews Worf out for shooting at something before making sure it's a legitimate target. He then treats it as a potential Career-Building Blunder by assuring Worf that he'll still make a great captain someday.
- Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Sisko makes it clear that a Starfleet officer never fires at a target unless they are absolutely sure it is a hostile, even if it means hesitating will cost them their life. (Of course, nobody apparently told that to Jim Kirk...)
