63. Visionary

Summary

The Chief is accidentally struck down while repairing a plasma conduit and is ordered to take it easy while a delegate of Romulans, led by Ruwon and Karina, board the station for intelligence briefings about the Dominion as part of the agreement involving the Defiant's cloaking device. Odo is bothered by three Klingons on the station and Sisko orders him to keep them away from the Romulans. The Chief begins to experience strange time-shifts where he jumps five hours ahead in time, stay for a few minutes, then jumps back to the exact moment he left. When he sees himself killed by a device inside a wall panel, Odo and Sisko realize that someone is spying on the Romulans...namely, the Klingons. Dax and Bashir locate the source of O'Brien's timeshifting as a quantum singularity orbiting the station but they can't pin it down. When one of O'Brien's timeshifts reveals the destruction of the station, he and Julian find a way to modify the timeshifts so the Chief can jump ahead and find out what causes the destruction. When he arrives, he and his future self realize that the orbiting quantum singularity is actually a cloaked Romulan warbird that suddenly decloaks and fires on the station, destorying it. O'Brien, weakened by the radiation that his timeshifting causes, sends his future self back in his place and the destruction is avoided.

Analysis

Although this episode has many flaws...it's a standard Torture O'Brien plot, many of the timeshifts are pointless, the entire Klingon subplot goes nowhere...I gotta say I love it. I don't know why, I just love this episode. Even though the plot isn't the tightest piece of writing in the known universe, the dialogue is sharp and the pace is lively. By the third time or so that O'Brien finds out that he's dead in the future we're not exactly holding our breaths that he'll cheat the Reaper one more time, yet we still wonder what his next timeshift will reveal! Anyone who saw TNG's "Timescape" knows that Romulan warbirds use a quantum singularity as their warp power source so the eventual denouement comes as no real surprise...the only real surprise is that the Ops crew didn't think of Romulans before that, after all, there's a bunch of them on the station. There's more indications of Miles and Julian's friendship, which has been developing steadily since Armageddon Game, and I love any scenes that feature Odo and Sisko...I love how those two interact and I wish we saw more of it. The Romulans are pretty one-dimensional with the paranoid interrogations...their questioning of Kira is definitely memorable (see Classic Scene and the O/K Status Report below)...and as I said, the entire Klingon-strike-force thing is completely irrelevant and goes nowhere. But what can I say...I still love this episode.

Rating: 7.5

Memorable Quote:

"If all you can hallucinate about are Quark's maintenance problems then you have a sadly deficient fantasy life." --Julian to Miles

Classic Scene:

After being advised by Sisko to be diplomatic, it's no surprise that Kira completely loses control during her Romulan debriefing when she's accused of having betrayed the Defiant, among other things. Nice to see she's got that temper of hers nicely reined in.

Sexually Slanted Line 'O the Episode:

"Sometimes I have to remind you just how good I am." --Odo...oh, remind me, remind me!

The O/K Status Report

Ahem. Well. In the aforementioned Romulan interrogation, one of the things that piqued Kira's anger was Ruwon's insinuation that Odo was physically interested in her, which was their explanation for how the two of them came to be in a runabout while the Defiant was captured (see The Search, part I). She immediately goes to Odo and shares this information...when she tells him what Ruwon said, he retorts "he said THAT?"...but the look on his face is more of a "oh boy, I'm busted" expression. He agrees with her that the idea is ridiculous, but the entire conversation is...interesting.

Special Alerts

1