DS9: “Time’s Orphan”, “The Sound of Her Voice”, and “Tears of the Prophets”

Date: August 22, 2020

Season 6, Episodes 24, 25, and 26

Musical Accompaniment: Instrumental Rat Pack music, in honor of Vic Fontaine and old blue eyes himself (who was also born on 12/12).

Interstellar News: We are now at the end of Season 6. One more season to go, one movie, and then I’m off to Voyager land. This is also the last week to support the “LD/WW” Kickstarter

So what had happened in “Time’s Orphan” was…: Keiko and the kids are back and the O’Briens plan a picnic. Molly falls into a time portal and, with the help of Dax and others, they get her back but at age 18 instead of 8 and more like a cavewoman. Worf babysits Kirayoshi to prove to Dax that he’s a worthy father, and it’s adorable. On the station a cargo bay is converted to help Molly acclimate, and the O’Brien’s try to help her but she’s not really happy unless she’s back “home”, the planet where she was lost. They recreate it in a holosuite but she reacts badly when they have to leave and stabs a man in Quark’s. Sisko says she’ll need to be taken to a facilty but the O’Briens plan a jailbreak to put her back through the portal and then break it so no one can find her. They send her through, she meets 8 year old Molly and sends her back, and all is right in the world… except O’Brien has to face a trial.

Favorite Quote:

Dax: Worf, you’re exhausted. Get some sleep.

Worf: No. I am a Klingon warrior and a Starfleet officer. I have piloted starships through Dominion minefields. I have stood in battle against Kelvans twice my size. I courted and won the heart of the magnificent Jadzia Dax. If I can do these things, I can make this child go to sleep.

Oh poor, sweet, naive Worf.

“The rattle is like the baby’s first bat’leth kind of thing.”: First, I absolutely need someone to write “Baby’s First Bat’leth”. Second, I absolutely love Worf who is trying so fucking hard to be worthy in Dax’s eyes. He wants to be a worthy friend who you can trust with your child and he wants to be a worthy mate who will take care of any offspring. This Worf is in love but still totally him and it’s wonderful to see, and you can tell Dax thinks he’s totally adorable. I also find it funny that Kirayoshi is no longer soothed by Worf like he was in “Business as Usual“, proving how fickle children are. One of the best parts, though, is when half-asleep Dax asks Worf if he tried feeding, changing, singing, reading a story, etc. to Kirayoshi to get him to sleep and Worf’s replied just keep getting more exasperated.

The meat of the story is not just one O’Brien suffering, but literally the whole family. Kirayoshi wants his mommy but he’s stuck with Worf, Molly falls down the well, O’Brien has to work on technology he doesn’t understand, and Keiko is living every parent’s nightmare when you look away from your kid just one second. The most GIGANTIC problem is when they say they can’t take those 10 years away from older Molly… to hell you can’t, she was alone for ten-fucking-years, do it again until you can grab her earlier. The work they do with Molly is great until the decide on using the holosuite, what the fuck did they think was going to happen? Also, the part where they drag her out and then are just SHOCKED that she caused a ton of damage and attacked someone… just a bad idea all around. I love that Keiko is the good mom who packs all of the essentials: a blanket, Molly’s doll, a knife. The O’Brien’s were just trying to do what they thought was best for their child, even if it was illegal, and Odo even helps them… which doesn’t wholly make sense. There were bits that were really good and some that were really bad, but overall not the worst time travel episode. I’m also sad that Keiko isn’t a cat lover, sigh. It wasn’t the best “O’Brien must suffer”, even though everyone was involved, so this earns 5 round of “gung gung gung”.

So what had happened in “The Sound of Her Voice” was…: On the station, Odo is giving Quark a hard time until Kira comes in and he’s totally distracted. Quark decides to distract Odo by having him pick out a gift for he and Kira’s one month anniversary, and then plan a night in the holosuite so he can do something not so above board. Jake is “observing” Quark “do business” as part of his “research” into a character he’s writing and stuck on. He tells his partner to arrive on Saturday, but Odo wants to celebrate the first kiss instead of the first date, so Quark moans to Jake about how, if it wasn’t for Quark, Kira and Odo wouldn’t even be together. Odo overhears and decides to throw Quark a bone, so he and Kira show up on Saturday and Quark believes he’s finally beaten Odo.

The Defiant is on its way home when it hears a distress signal from a Captain Cusak, they’re six days away and she’s on a Class-L planet. O’Brien is finally able to communicate with her and the crew takes turns talking to her; first Sisko, then Bashir, then O’Brien, and so on. Sisko is awkward with Yates who is along as a liaison to the convoy and they have to take the phasers offline in order to go faster to rescue Cusak. They make it to the planet, take a shuttlecraft through the barrier and find the cave, but she’s already dead. She’s been dead for three years because SCIENCE, so they decide to give her a proper burial via an Irish wake on the station.

Favorite Quote:

Quark: It’s your anniversary. You have to do something special.

Odo: I bought her a gift.

Quark: Have it your way, but if it was me and I had found true love after a lifetime of searching, every month would be worth celebrating.

Odo: All right. Let me look at those programs. Come on.

Quark really knowing how to push Odo’s buttons.

“I think my best option is panic.”: Why didn’t they just look up when the Olympia left? It would have made a hell of a story if they were trying to keep her company while she was dying and then we could have heard her interactions with Yates, Dax, or Worf instead of the phaser argument. I also would have been okay if they just didn’t make it there in time… that they can’t always be heroes and make it just in time. I think this is literally the first time I’ve heard anyone utter the phrase “Beta Quadrant”, but because I know my Greek alphabet I figured it was just unspoken. I absolutely loved the conversations with Cusak and the Irish wake though Bashir and O’Brien’s speeches were a littler weird, but I disliked the “oh the barrier made our voices times travel”.

The Odo and Quark bits were adorable because it starts out with them being their usual antagonistic selves and then Odo does a 180-degree turn and is all super mushy with Kira. Quark and Jake both see an opportunity to advance themselves and, as it turns out, they inadvertently help Odo win boyfriend brownie points. Just as we’ve seen the softer side of Worf as he fell in love with and married Dax, we’re seeing Odo really does have the capacity for love even if he doesn’t have a heart, so to speak. I wanted more, though, from both parts but this episode has earned itself 6 shots for Lisa Cusak.

So what had happened in “Tears of the Prophets” was…: Starfleet is finally going on the offensive and ask Sisko to plan the invasion of Cardassia, he asks the Klingons and Romulans to join him. Worf and Dax are thinking about having kids and Quark and Bashir are beside themselves so much that they drown their sorrows at Vic’s. Jake begs to come along as a reporter, which Sisko agrees to, but then Sisko gets a vision from the Prophets that tell him leaving the station will be bad. Ross tells Sisko he has to choose, be the Emissary or be a Captain, so Sisko chooses Starfleet and leaves Dax and Bashir on the station.

Damar deploys unmanned weapons stations to supplement for not having enough ships, but they aren’t online right away. O’Brien finds the power source and tricks the stations into firing at it and therefore shutting themselves down. Dukat shows up in Cardassia and is hellbent on revenge. He finds a Bajoran artifact, cracks it open, and taken over by a pah-wraith. On the station Bashir tells Dax her fertility is looking good for when Worf returns, so she heads to the Bajoran shrine to thank the prophets (Kira prayed on their behalf) when Dukat/wraith shows up and attacks her. He then opens the Orb, the pah-wraith heads through, and suddenly the wormhole closes. Bashir is able to save the Dax symbiont but nothing can be done for Jadzia, so Worf loses another lady love. Sisko is hurt by the sudden closure of the wormhole and the darkening of the orbs, so he and Jake head to his dad’s restaurant in order to think during his leave of absence.

Favorite Quote:

Dax: Did you hear that? We have the Prophets on our side.

Worf: According to Doctor Bashir, we need all the help we can get.

Dax: Just remember, when you get back, we have a lot of work to do.

Worf: I don’t consider that work.

Dax: I wish I was going with you.

Worf: You are. In here.

Dax: I love it when you get romantic.

The last conversation between husband and wife.

“His baseball. He took it with him.”: There are some good bits here. Odo trying to figure out how a humanoid relationship works is adorable and Kira is super patient with him. Ross continues to prove he’s not an asshat of an admiral, but he also forces Sisko to choose. It’s always good to see Martok and it’s also wonderful to see snarky Romulans, because they’ve been super absent and they shouldn’t be. The whole “moon being a power source” thing made me think “that’s no moon” and then when they tricked the platforms into blowing up their own power source made me think of when they had the AT-AT’s shoot at each other, so all kinds of Star Wars references. There’s a wonderful conversation between Damar and Weyoun about superstition and gods, though since the Founder created the Vorta and the Jem’Hadar you could say they are more god-like than not. I feel most bad for Dax, Worf, and Sisko… well and all of the Bajorans. Dax is so happy she’s practically skipping through the Promenade and, of course, she gets killed. At least she gets to say goodbye to Worf and her symbiont will live on in some other Trill. Worf has the worst fucking luck with women and, of course, just as he is starting to settle into married life his wife dies. Sisko has been balancing the Emissary/Starfleet thing since the very first episode, aptly titled of course, and now he’s not sure about anything. We’ve seen how much the war has taken out of him and his resolve was already wavering, this was just the last of many things that caused him to lose his faith in everything. When the episode was over, however, I went “huh, that’s it?” and didn’t feel like it had as much punch as some of the other season finales. Interested to see where they go from here, 5 Orbs that are actually lit for this episode.

TA Out!