Worf: Yes.
Kid: Is it true that you can kill someone just by looking at him?
Worf: Only when I am angry.
Everyone is aboard the Defiant and eager to return home from a weeklong mission into the Gamma Quandrant. Kira lets slip that she ended her relationship with Shakaar after a priest told her that they were not destined to be together, a revelation that leaves Odo rattled. Later, Dax convinces Sisko to delay their homecoming just long enough to investigate a habitable planet. They pass through some unexpected interference that shocks Kira, but she recovers quickly. On the planet, the crew discover a small colony of people who seem to know all about them. The colonists explain that in two days, the Defiant will pass back through the interference around the planet and become stranded 200 years in the past. The colony is made up of their descendants.
Having become storied figures as the founders of the colony, the crew learn all about how they fared in the past. Most married other crew members, including O'Brien and Bashir. Worf married Dax and inspired a group of "Klingons" who follow the Klingon way of life. The Dax symbiont assumed leadership of the colony over the years and is now Yedrin Dax. Kira, however, died only a few days after the accident due to the shock she received, which could not be treated by the ship's equipment. Sisko wonders how he can take his crew home and save Kira without erasing the colony from existence. Yedrin explains that the crew can create a quantum copy of themselves as they pass through the interference, splitting themselves into two independent time lines.
Odo is unable to assume a solid form due to the planet's interference, but Kira gets visited by the colony's version of Odo, now 200 years older and able to shapeshift more effectively. He admits that he's always loved Kira and has been looking forward to meeting her again for 200 years. They spend some time together and visit Kira's grave. Kira remarks at how much Odo has grown and become able to express his feelings.
As the crew make preparations for their return, Dax reveals to Sisko that Yedrin's plans won't work. They confront him, and Yedrin admits that the only way to preserve his colony's existence is for the crew to go back in time, so he lied to make sure they did. Sisko sympathizes with the colony's plight, but he can't ask Kira to sacrifice her life or his crew to abandon their families. Kira does some soul searching and decides that she's willing to die to save 8,000 lives. Sisko still refuses for the sake of the rest of the crew.
The colony learns of Sisko's decision and decide to go ahead with their traditional day of planting, knowing that they will stop existing before sunset. The whole crew turns out to help them finish before sundown, and Worf convinces the farming-averse Klingon faction to help them combat the "enemy of time." By the end of the day, the whole crew cannot bring themselves to let the colony disappear, so Sisko agrees to voluntarily pilot the ship back in time. On board the ship, Odo gives one final plea to Kira to save herself, but Kira is prepared to face her destiny. They share a kiss before he departs.
When the time comes, however, the ship's systems automatically pilot it around the temporal anomaly, averting their trip into the past and causing the colony to vanish. Stunned, the crew determine that only someone familiar with the ship's systems could have reprogrammed it. They guess it must have been Yedrin. Later, our own Odo arrives to admit to Kira that the elder Odo joined with him and shared everything that had happened, including the fact that he tampered with the ship to save her. Kira asks if he thinks the elder Odo's love for her made his actions right. Odo replies that he doesn't know, but the elder Odo thought so. He departs, leaving Kira to silently process it all.
This episode contains examples of
- Always Save the Girl: The future Odo changes the Defiant's course heading at the last minute, which saves Kira's life at the cost of erasing the entire settlement.
- Applied Phlebotinum: Discussed and averted. The "two Defiants" escape, in which one would escape and the other would crash and create the colony seemed like a typical Star Trek "Deus Ex Phlebotinum" solution — only it turns out it was completely false, forcing the crew into an actual hard decision. Kira even Lampshades it during her You Can't Fight Fate speech, feeling like it's "cheating".
- Artistic License – Biology: Falls into the typical problems surrounding the Adam and Eve Plot in that 48 people is nowhere near enough to create a stable population of 8,000. And any handwave involving Starfleet's medical technology falls by the wayside as we are told that all they managed to salvage from the wreck of the Defiant was a couple of cases of equipment.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: The Sons of Mogh tell Worf they'd rather be ritually killed than have a "dishonorable" death by simply vanishing from reality. Worf manages to Take a Third Option by giving them a "battle" to fight in their final hours so they can live to the end and still die with honor.
- Bittersweet Ending: Leaning heavily towards the "bitter". The crew of the Defiant get to go home and Kira lives, but the 8000 colonists cease to exist as a result, and while Kira now knows Odo's feelings for her, they both have to live with the knowledge that Odo's alternate timeline self is the reason that those people were wiped from existence.
- Bruiser with a Soft Center: According to Yedrin, Worf's voice shook with emotion when speaking his vows to Jadzia.
- Defiant to the End: The colonists plant their crops despite knowing they'll be non-existent. Worf tells the Sons of Mogh it's "a battle against time", convincing them that this symbolic fight against the inevitable is as noble as any battle.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave:Sisko (after they somehow clear the barrier): Scan the surface.Kira: No sign of the settlement. Or the inhabitants. Everything's gone.
- Family of Choice: The Sons of Mogh aren't exclusively blood descendants of Worf, but they all choose to identify with his Klingon lifestyle.
- Fling a Light into the Future: More like fling a light into the present; the crew of the Defiant prepare a probe with messages to their families and information about what had happened and launch it, programmed to transmit its location to DS9 as soon as they are sent into the past ... but in the end it proves sadly unnecessary.
- Funny Background Event: When Yedrin starts to tell Sisko's story about an exotic dancer and gets cut off, Jadzia can't help but grin because she also knows what happened.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- The colony's Odo believes he is doing this so that Kira may live, but subverted as said sacrifice doesn't just cancel out his own existence, but thousands of innocent people. Odo does argue that thousands of people wouldn't exist because the crew didn't return safely to Deep Space 9, though it's doubtful that's his reason for changing the flight plan.
- Kira is willing to die if that is the fate laid out by the Prophets, and the knowledge that the colonists only exist because of her death only solidifies her resolve. Despite making it out of the episode alive, she's in no way convinced that it was worth it.
- A non-fatal example; the crew of the Defiant is ultimately prepared to accept the crash-landing, never seeing their friends and families again, if it means that the colony can continue to exist. Like Kira's sacrifice, this ultimately doesn't happen, and the aversion leaves a bitter taste in everyone's mouth.
- Internal Reveal: Kira finally learns of Odo's long-concealed feelings for her.
- It's All My Fault: Dax, as both Jadzia and Yedrin, blame themselves for the crash because they were so enthusiastic about investigating a planet without any real precautions.
- The Lost Lenore: Odo apparently spent 200 years pining for Kira and sacrifices everything to save her.
- Love Confession: Once the Defiant arrives at the planet, a 200-years-older Odo wastes no time in beaming up to the Defiant and making one of these to Kira. Doubles as a Wham Line.Odo: I love you, Nerys. I've always loved you.
- Mandatory Line: Quark briefly appears as a computer program teaching math to the colony's children, something Dax says he would be well-suited for.
- Meaningful Name: The survivors name their planet "Gaia," the Greek goddess of the earth.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Kira experiences this when she remembers how often she’d asked Odo for relationship advice, realising how painful that must have been for him in light of his Love Confession.
- My Greatest Failure: According to Yedrin, the Defiant becoming trapped in the past was this for Jadzia."Because of me, Kira died, and 48 people were stranded here. You don't know what it was like to live with that. For years, Benjamin, every time I looked at you, all I could think about was Jake and how, because of me, he would never see his father again. Eventually, I had to accept the fact there was nothing I could do to change things; I couldn't bring Kira back. All I could do was look to the future, Benjamin, and make sure that we survived here—no matter what."
- The Needs of the Many: Examined from several different perspectives.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Jadzia admits she was in such a rush to make a discovery that she didn't properly scan the barrier surrounding the planet.
- Noodle Incident: Yedrin convinces Sisko by beginning a story about a certain exotic dancer. Sisko believes him and all but begs Yedrin to stop.
- Offscreen Breakup: Kira. After dating First Minister Shakaar for about a year, they visited a shrine and got a prophecy saying they weren't meant to be together.
- Proud Warrior Race: More like Proud Warrior Philosophy. Worf's descendants have split off from the main colony to live a more martial lifestyle in keeping with Klingon traditions of honor and courage, but humans can also join (and have) if they prove themselves worthy. They all call themselves "the Sons of Mogh."
- Put on a Bus: Shakaar is effectively written out of the show by the revelation that he and Kira broke up. The actor was not available for return appearances, so they just killed the relationship.
- Really 700 Years Old: The only real visual difference between our Odo and they colony's version is that the latter, having gotten better at shapeshifting over 200 years, has a more defined face.
- The Reveal: Yedrin didn't sabotage the plan to have the Defiant fulfill destiny — Odo did.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The entire episode involves the crew deciding whether or not to do this: Do they use their new-found knowledge of the future to avoid the temporal barrier and save Kira, or do they follow the same course of events as before, crash-land on the planet, and save the existence of their descendants living on Gaia? In the end, the crew decides to do the latter, but the 200-years-older Odo, who can't bear the thought of losing Kira again, changes the course heading at the last minute so the Defiant misses the temporal barrier, effectively setting right what once went wrong.
- Shrouded in Myth: Worf to the crew's descendants.Gabriel: Are you the son of Mogh?
Worf: Yes, I am.
Gabriel: Is it true you can kill someone just by looking at them?
Worf: Only when I am angry.- As is Bashir, who delights in his own fame.Bashir: Apparently that planet is full of Bashirs!
Kira: That's why I'm staying up here.
- As is Bashir, who delights in his own fame.
- Status Quo Is God: No, the crew do not spend the rest of their lives on a tiny colony in the Gamma Quadrant. However, Kira has finally learned about Odo's secret crush on her.
- Take a Third Option: What Yedrin proposes - use the anomaly to create two Defiant ships - one that escapes, the other crashes. Unfortunately, it's a lie that Jadzia catches on to.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: Don't think too hard about the time travel. The colonists give no indication that their founders met their descendants and knowingly chose to get stranded in the past. This implies that they didn't, so we're not dealing with a Stable Time Loop. Yedrin also seems to think that, unless he lies to the crew, they won't do what they already did, further evidence that this time line isn't stable. But if that's true, why does Yedrin also think that his colony will cease to exist unless the crew he meets also gets stranded in the past? He's already seen the same moment in time play out differently, so he knows that multiple timelines exist.
- Trapped in the Past: In the original time line, this happened to the Defiant crew.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist:
- Yedrin Dax is willing to lie to and manipulate the crew of the Defiant (all of whom, thanks to the Dax symbiont, he remembers as his friends and comrades) in order to ensure the existence of his colony.
- The colony's Odo sacrifices his own existence and his colony of 8,000 people in order to save Kira. How well-intentioned he was is debatable, as the driving force of his decision was his love for Kira, rather than a sense of altruism.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Kira lays a huge one on Odo when she finds out the colony's Odo sabotaged the plan to crash the Defiant so Kira could live at the expense of 8000 colonists.Kira: I can't believe it! 8000 people?!Odo: He did it for you, Nerys. He loved you.Kira: That makes it right?!
Odo: I don't know. He thought so. - Yank the Dog's Chain: After everyone, including the crew of the Defiant and the Sons of Mogh, help the colonists plant their crops one last time, even O'Brien, the last holdout, is convinced they have to do something to preserve these people's lives. And then someone rewrote the autopilot instructions to make the Defiant not crash...
- You Can't Fight Fate: Kira strongly believes this. So much so that a plan to "split" the Defiant crew into two seems to her like a "cheat". She's almost relieved that the plan is false, and decides she'd rather die than erase 8000 colonists from existence. Meanwhile, O'Brien is willing to "cheat his way back to the station". Worf responds by accusing Miles of being "afraid to face your destiny."
