Open on a meeting between and O’brien, Dax, and Sisko, they had found the Cardassian prefect’s files, of which there is one on Kira. Kira comes in just as they are mentioning her. Sisko gives her the file to look at. Bashir calls Sisko to come down to Airlock 14. There’s a riot going on. No wait, that’s cell block number nine. The Kai is here, and they’re giving her a tour. Sisko decides to take her, Kira, and Dr. Bashir through the wormhole for her enjoyment. She sees O’Brien and “senses” that he has a child and asks O’Brien to give her a piece of her jewelry for her. Strangely, no explanation is offered. They take off and we are treated to the intro.
They proceed through the wormhole and receive an unknown signal, and check it out at the Kai’s insistence. They find a moon being orbited by satellites, and some life signs on the moon. They suffer a hit of some kind of energy pulse and are forced to crash land on the moon. The Kai is fatally wounded in the crash, and some people bearing phasers find them. Cut to commercial.
We return to the station, and Odo, Dax, and O’Brien are scrambling to find out what happened, as Sisko is late to return. Cut back to Sisko’s party. They are negotiating with their captors/finders/potential benefactors, and are informed that they are on a penal colony of some sort. Some people show up and start attacking. Kira takes some of them out by creating a rock fall. Then the Kai walks in.[1] Dun dun dun! Commercial break.
We return to see them cleaning up the mess of bodies from the attack and rock fall. The Kai’s vitals appear normal, but her physiology has been radically altered, sounds like nanites. One of the other dead victims of the attack comes back to life. Cut to a runabout with Dax and O’Brien. They’re tracking them down. Cut back to Sisko’s party. everyone is coming back to life. There’s some sort of curse upon them, in that the leaders of their planet forced these warring groups off to a penal colony to fight each other more or less for eternity. Sisko offers to take them all off the moon when their rescue party arrives. Commercial break.
We return to O’Brien and Dax in the runabout tracking them down, “a needle in a haystack, what we need is a magnet!” Hero O’Brien MacGuyvers a new invention, a differential magnetomer to track them down! Back to Bashir getting the runabout’s computer online so he can make some medical calculations. Back to the Kai and Kira talking about Kira’s bloodlust. This situation is highly reminiscent of Israeli conflict in the middle east, which was a huge topic at the time. This was a couple months after the World Trade Center bombing. Back to Dax and O’Brien in the runabout. they pick up something on the 3rd planet that as one moon, oddly coincidental to earth. Back to Bashir. They are holding a sort of summit near the crashed runabout. The summit does nto go well and they all sart fighting. I laugh and start singing the tune from Amok Time, as their weapons are very similar to the ones used in the Kirk/Spock fight.
Bashir has discovered that they cannot afford to die here, not even once.
Commercial.
Return to the runabout. O’Brien and Dax are finding them, O’Brien is being the engineering hero and figuring out what’s going on and devising a way to get in contact with the downed crew with a 1% opportunity. Cut back down to the planet where Bashir tells Sisko that removing anyone from the planet who has died there will kill them. They then receive transmission from O’Brien and Dax. Sisko asks for an alert when O’Brian is ready to beam them out. They have to let the Kai know, but she already knows she’s staying. While O’Brien and Dax work on a plan to open the hole in the satellite network, I have a nice hit of nostalgia for flashing scientific lights in the dark, astronomy, and travel. Dr. Bashir suggests the possibility of disabling the nanite microbes, but that plan isn’t feasible as the warring factions just want to use it wipe each other out (why not just take them all off the moon instead?). The beam off, leaving the Kai, but her Pa and Sisko’s will cross again. She has work to do to heal these warring people. The end.
Final grade: C-
This episode raises some interesting issues, and does some interesting things with the characters. The techno babble wasn’t too far off the mark, either. Kira realizes for the first time that she is needlessly defiant, and the Kai goes on an interesting mission of healing, but the concept of this mission is from a rather quixotic viewpoint that the world can be healed.
1. Yes, I remembered this episode enough to know that was going to happen.