At the end of a lengthy mission, the mood is irritable on the Defiant, particularly between Sisko and Kasidy. They pick up a distress call from a female Starfleet captain who is marooned on a barely habitable planet and begging for a hero to rescue her. Sisko announces that they will be her hero and orders O'Brien to establish communication with her. As O'Brien works, he listens to the woman's ongoing narration of her predicament and seems to connect with her. When Kasidy arrives to get O'Brien's advice on why Sisko seems to have a problem with her on the ship, their conversation gets overheard by the marooned captain. Two-way communication has been achieved.
The captain is Lisa Cusack, who's been out of the Alpha Quadrant for eight years and is now running out of tri-ox treatments for the poisonously high CO2 levels on the planet. Bashir tells her to cut her usage in half so it will last long enough for the ship to reach her. Until then, she's got nothing to do, so she asks that the crew keep talking to her to keep her morale up. Sisko decides that the crew will take shifts and volunteers to go first. After learning about the Dominion War, Lisa starts delving into Sisko's romantic problems.
Others on the ship take their shifts. O'Brien discusses his previous war experience and how different it is this time. Bashir initially doesn't pay Lisa much attention, but she calls him out on his lack of interest by playing a prank on him, and they soon warm to each other. Everyone seems to enjoy talking to her and having her as a confidant. But her tri-ox treatments have run out faster than expected. Even after Sisko recklessly orders more power to the engines, Lisa has already lost consciousness by the time the ship arrives at the planet and has only 45 minutes to live before she asphyxiates.
While all of this going on, Quark has noticed that the love-smitten Odo loses interest in hassling him whenever Kira is around. Quark convinces the constable to take Kira on a date for their one-month anniversary and sells some Denevan crystals to a criminal while Odo is distracted. Jake talks Quark into letting him observe the plot as inspiration for a novel. However, the constable throws a monkey wrench in things by changing the date to Sunday. Quark can't contact his buyer to stop him from arriving on Saturday, so his illegal deal will no doubt get discovered. Odo overhears Quark lamenting to Jake that helping the changeling find love has spelled his ruin. Odo mercifully changes his date back to Saturday to allow Quark to make his deal.
When the Defiant arrives at Lisa's planet, they find it surrounded by a strange radiation field, forcing Sisko and a rescue party to fly down to the surface in a shuttle. There, they discover the badly decayed body of Lisa Cusack, who has been dead for about three years. The planetary radiation had caused their communications to time-shift by three years. They take her body back to the station and hold a wake for her, where her three main confidants each act on the lesson they learned from her: Sisko schedules a dinner with Kasidy to explain his behavior, Bashir tells his friends that he cares for them, and O'Brien resolves to appreciate his friends because someday he could lose them without warning. They then all raise a glass "to Lisa, and the sweet sound of her voice."
This episode provides examples of:
- All for Nothing: Zig zagged. Lisa has been dead for three years, so the crew's efforts never would've made a difference. On the other hand, the fact that Lisa believed she would be rescued, plus having people to talk to, likely made her final days a little easier. Additionally, the experience has taught Sisko, Bashir, and O'Brien not to push others away during the rough times.
- Batman Gambit: Quark has a deal in mind and seeks to arrange things so Odo is busy in a holosuite on Saturday.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Odo speculates that falling off a bar stool could result in injury to three or four of Morn's lungs.
- Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Inverted in the B-plot. Quark feels this way about Odo, but just for once, Odo lets him get away with smuggling when he realizes how much Quark has done for him over the years, feeling that he owes him a favor after all that.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Defied. When Jake asks to tag along and see how a nefarious criminal acts so he can get material for his novels, Quark points out that he's a businessman and no one ever thinks of themselves as nefarious.
- Child Hater: Lisa states that she can't stand children, that she knows everybody loves them, but not her.
- Continuity Nod: Quark and Odo recall how Quark urged Odo to express his feelings for Kira and how Odo's first date was a disaster, but their first kiss the next day was better. All of this happened in "His Way."
- Dead All Along: Lisa was already dead by the time her communications caught up with the Defiant.
- Distress Call: The Defiant picks up a general distress call from a Starfleet officer in the Rutharian sector.
- Due to the Dead: When Lisa's body is found, O'Brien says they should bury her. Sisko agrees, but not about doing so on this barren planet; he wants to take Lisa's body back so that she can get a proper burial and be among friends.
- Foreshadowing: The episode ends with O'Brien telling the main cast that any one of them could die without warning. This is foreshadowing for the events of the next episode (particularly in just who the camera first focuses on when he says this).
- Holding the Floor: Capt. Cusack ends up doing a non-political version of this, first over her open distress call, and then with multiple main characters one at a time once O'Brien establishes contact from the Defiant. It's justified, as the DS9 crew are trying to keep her morale up until they can rescue her, but she can also come across as a Motor Mouth just of her own volition — and occasionally emotionally manipulative for the sake of attention, as she gets at one point when Bashir becomes bored and uninterested and focuses on his medical work instead.
- Hope Spot: The ship arrives with 45 minutes to spare, seemingly able to beat the Race Against the Clock. Then the away team finds Cusack's body, and finds out that due to temporal displacement of the transmissions, they were years too late.
- I Owe You My Life: Played with. Odo tells Kira that he does owe Quark one ... but just this one.
- Insignificant Anniversary: Invoked. Quark needs to distract Odo, so he asks about Odo's plans for his one-month anniversary dating Kira. Odo is incredulous at this notion but is convinced to go through with it.
- Interspecies Romance: Lisa mentions dating an Andorian for six years.
- Irony: O'Brien admits that he felt even lonelier than Lisa despite being surrounded by friends.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Quark rants to Jake about how Odo is an Ungrateful Bastard who is determined to arrest him despite all he has done for Odo over the years. Odo, who had been listening in on the conversation, seems to agree with him and lets him get away with his scheme for the day.
- Meaningful Funeral: When the senior staff hold a memorial service for Cusak, they also come to terms with the fact that the war with the Dominion had caused them to grow more distant from each other, and reaffirm their friendship.
- Mood Whiplash:
- Odo is all stern as he's bringing the hammer down on Quark, but he immediately acts all smitten when Kira appears and asks him out to lunch. Quark notices this, which sets off his B-plot.
- While talking to a disinterested Bashir, Lisa pretends that she's being attacked. Serious stuff, until she imitates an alien claiming to have just eaten her.
- Negative Space Wedgie: The planet has some kind of subspace barrier around it that causes the woman's distress signal to travel over 3 years into the future, and the Defiant's answer to travel into the past.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Quark says this of the grief he gets despite being there for Odo during his anguish over seeing Kira with Shakaar. He even says this trope is the 285th Rule of Acquisition.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: In the teaser, Odo harasses Quark over a laundry list of trivial code violations, obviously more interested in causing the barkeeper difficulty than actually believing that the codes are important.
- Oh, Crap!: One played for laughs in The Teaser. Odo cites the backless bar stools as dangerous to public safety—listing the various injuries Morn could experience if he were to suddenly slip and fall. A worried Morn stands up at that.
- Open Secret: Kasidy Yates knows full well that the U.S.S. Defiant is a warship, despite her being a civilian and the Federation using euphemisms to describe its warships — to wit, Defiant-class starships are still officially designated as "escorts", and the U.S.S. Prometheus computer described the vessel's design to the Doctor as being intended for "deep space tactical assignments". This continues Starfleet's efforts to avoid all military parlance, with what their primary mission is supposed to be as an exploration and scientific agency of the Federation.
- Pet the Dog: After hearing what Quark said, Odo decides to let him get away with his latest scam.
- Police Are Useless: Quark says he can easily handle Odo's deputies.
- The Power of Friendship:
- Quark points out that for all his scams, he's been there for Odo when he really needed help (such as Odo's misery when Kira got together with Shakaar), but he gets no regard, gets hassled over minor infractions, and would be sent to prison without a second thought. Odo overhears this, though, and takes it to heart.
- Sisko, Bashir, and O'Brien take turns talking to Lisa. Each bonds with her in their own way, which makes the reveal sting even harder.
- O'Brien's speech at the wake reflects how the group needs to be close and be there for each other again.
- Properly Paranoid: Quark is certain he can't pull off his scam unless Odo is preoccupied. He's right; Odo was secretly observing things right where Quark was storing his goods.
- Race Against the Clock: The crew have to get to Lisa before she no longer has the means to stave off carbon dioxide poisoning. It turns out they never had a chance.
- Recycled Premise: This episode shares a lot with the Voyager episode "Eye of the Needle," in which the crew spend most of the episode talking to someone far away who turns out to be from the past and already dead.
- Sole Survivor: Capt. Cusack was the only (temporary) survivor of the crash of the U.S.S. Olympia on a desolate planet within a few days' warp range of the Defiant.
- Spanner in the Works: Just as Quark thinks his deal for Saturday is all set, Odo tells him he wants a holosuite for Sunday rather than Saturday.
- Talking to the Dead: Literally due to a Temporal Paradox. The Defiant receives a distress call in the middle of an interstellar storm and alters course to the planet in order to help. During the trip, they hold a conversation with a Starfleet officer who only managed to keep herself alive thanks to the recommendations of rationing what few medical supplies she had. By the time the crew finally reaches her on the surface, they find that she had been dead long before the Defiant got the distress call.
- This Cannot Be!: Sisko's reaction to seeing Lisa's corpse.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: The Teaser highlights how Bashir has become more impersonal, while Sisko isn't just joking when insulting him behind his back. While talking to Lisa, O'Brien admits he's been putting on a good front, but he secretly distances himself because people around him might soon die.Kassidy: Time was, you couldn't get [Bashir] to shut up!
Sisko: I think I prefer him this way.
Kassidy: That's mean.
Sisko: I'm just kidding!
Kassidy: No. You weren't. - The Voice: We only hear Lisa Cusack's voice. The closest we get to actually seeing her is a half-obscured shot of her long-decayed corpse.
- You Are Not Alone: Part of the reason Sisko wants two-way communication with Lisa.
