DS9: “Children of Time” and “Blaze of Glory”

Date: August 5, 2020

Season 5, Episodes 22 and 23

Musical Accompaniment: The dulcet tones of a dear friend who needed to talk because they’ve been without power for over 24 hours now. After we finished, I dived back into iTunes and I’m onto songs that start with the letter ‘J’.

Interstellar News: The Kickstarter I posted about the other day has already met its goal and is almost on its FIFTH stretch goal, you should totally back it too!

Favorite Quote from “Children of Time”:

Gabriel: Is it true you can kill someone just by looking at them?

Worf: Only when I am angry.

You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry… oh wait.

So what had happened in “Children of Time” was…: The Defiant is heading back from a week long mission in the GQ when Kira discloses she and Shakaar have ended things and Dax finds some unusual readings. They go to investigate and encounter their descendants because, apparently, when they were here the first time they entered a temporal disturbance and traveled 200 years back in time and were stranded on the planet they call Gaia. We find out that Worf and Jadzia got married, O’Brien eventually moved on with an ensign from engineering, Bashir shacked up with a new transfer, Odo got really good at shapeshifting, and Kira died.

Our crew knows what happens and wants to avoid it but Yedrin Dax has a plan. The problem is the plan is a phony and, despite objections from Worf and Kira, Sisko plans to avoid the trip through time even if it means the lives of the 8,000 inhabitants. Everyone participates in the “planting day”, even the Klingons, and they all realize they have to repeat history and can’t let these people disappear. They set the ship to autopilot but it moves at the last minute and they realize everything and everyone is now gone and Gaia no longer exists. Odo visits Kira and explains that Gaia’s Odo linked with him before he left and was the one that changed the autopilot because he couldn’t bear for Kira to die again.

“You don’t look busy.”: There is a lot to unpack in this episode. Of course there’s baseball on Gaia it’s a wonderful legacy for Sisko. It makes sense for Kira and Worf to be on the same page as they are the ones who are most spiritual, just as it makes sense for Dax to feel responsible for the entire community and for O’Brien to just want to go home and feel uncomfortable about the whole thing. Bashir was the one who surprised me since he has made it clear he doesn’t want children and I’m curious if he investigated how his genetically engineered self fared with procreation. I loved the children but my favorite were the Klingons because they were a group that didn’t discriminate. If you wanted to live life as a Klingon but weren’t born one, that’s fine… you’re family now. It reminds me a lot of the LGBTQ community and also how I have my chosen family that is different than the one I was born into.

The signs are there all along, however, when you really look for them. You never see Gaia’s Odo interacting with the others and why would he? He cannot reproduce and the only woman he loved on the ship died, so it makes sense for him to bide his time, get super good at shifting, figure out how long changelings live for, and try to reverse history the first chance he gets. It doesn’t make the ending any less heartbreaking but it wasn’t a huge shock either. This also allows the Kira/Odo will they/won’t they to be back on the table, but adds just a bit of complication because Gaia’s Odo messed with the will of the prophets. Speaking of the prophets, I’m pretty sure Kira forgot that Sisko was the Emissary and if he’s stranded 200 years in the past on some random GQ planet, he can’t be leading Bajor and doing Emissary stuff. Many thanks to the husband person for planting that bug in my ear. Overall, a super interesting time travel-ish episode with 8 smart fungi.

Favorite Quote from “Blaze of Glory”:

Nog: Now either move or I’m going to have to place you under arrest.

Martok: You are either very brave or very stupid, Ferengi.

Nog: Probably a little of both.

Martok: Indeed. Courage comes in all sizes. But don’t tempt fate.

Nog finally figuring out how to deal with Klingons.

So what had happened in “Blaze of Glory” was…: Sisko cooks dinner for Jake and Nog and finds out Nog is having a hard time with his time in Security, mostly because the Klingons don’t take him seriously. He has a few false starts but eventually is able to win the respect of General Martok. Martok reports to Sisko that they intercepted a Maquis transmission about missiles heading to Cardassia and that could lead to war with the Dominion so Sisko goes to visit Eddington in jail. Eddington just wants to die in peace but Sisko thinks that Eddington doesn’t have a death wish. Eventually they work together to escape the Jem’Hadar and get to the launch site but it was really an excuse for Eddington to get the help he needed to free any remaining Maquis. Eddington makes up for lying to Sisko by dying for what he believed in.

“For a dead man, you talk a lot.”: The end to the Maquis and Eddington, though I hear there’s more for me to look forward to in Voyager. I’ll put my likes first. I liked that Morn apparently lost it, attacked Quark, and was naked in the Bajoran shrine but I hate that they didn’t do anything more with it. Sisko adding pureed tube grubs and Jake’s reaction was fantastic and reminds me of the story about my father in law hiding lima beans in pb&j sandwiches… which is for another time. I loved Nog earning the respect of the head Klingon himself, another Ferengi making an impression on an important Klingon by way of hubris. As someone who has been short all of their life, I really feel for Nog. It’s hard to get people to respect you instantly when you are not physically assuming, but it’s certainly not impossible and much easier when you have a quick wit and a sharp tongue. I absolutely loved, loved, loved all of the banter between Eddington and Sisko and will admit I was taken by Eddington’s misdirection and lies. Every time the two of them interacted it was fantastic and was played so beautifully.

Now that that’s all out of the way, here’s my problem with this whole thing… I don’t care about the Maquis. There were two not-so-terrible solutions to the redistricting of the borders: relocation or changing sides. If you didn’t want to move, like we saw in “Journey’s End“, you could just petition to be Cardassian citizens instead of staying with the Federation. If you wanted to stay with the Federation, they were happy to help you relocate. If you didn’t like either of those options then the only choice was to fight, which is what the Maquis did and that was just fucking stupid. I will admit that I’m not from a culture where the land is super important to me and I’m also a super ambitious person and have made my start over many times, but it still never made sense to me how all of these people just decided to become terrorists because the lines got drawn a little differently. It’s a fitting end to Eddington and the Maquis and I give it 7 cloaked missiles.

TA Out!