‘CHILDREN OF TIME’ (DS9)
Please feel free to comment on my review.
This ‘DS9’ episode might be a little confusing for some people. The first time I saw this ‘DS9’ episode was when I was on holiday in Scotland in the summer of 2005 with my parents. I enjoyed seeing it. 🙂
At the time, I hadn’t seen much of ‘DS9’ by then and had only seen the original ‘Star Trek’ series and ‘TNG’. It was fascinating to watch this ‘DS9’ episode, getting to know the characters that starred in it.
I knew Worf and O’Brien already from ‘TNG’, but didn’t know any of the other characters yet. I was so looking forward to see more of ‘DS9’ when I got around to purchasing the seven seasons on DVD.
Anyway, in the episode ‘Children of Time’ (not the Children of Time from the ‘Doctor Who’ story ‘The Stolen Earth’/’Journey’s End’ by the way), the Defiant investigates this rather unusual planet. 😐
It’s surrounded by an unusual energy barrier. Jadzia Dax wants to investigate, but very soon, the crew get into trouble. Before visiting it, the planet was uninhabited. Passing through the barrier, it is.
The planet is now inhabited by 8,000 of the Defiant crew’s descendants. The Defiant crew are surprised. The descendants’ history began when the Defiant would escape the planet two days later.
Instead of passing through the energy barrier, the ship was thrown back in time 200 years ago. It crashed with no hope of contacting the Federation or repairing the ship. This is all very complicated.
Thankfully, I didn’t find this episode as complicated as a Steven Moffat timey-wimey ‘Doctor Who’ tale. 😀 Faced with the reality of no return to DS9, the stranded crew decided to establish a society.
This includes Sisko, Jadzia, O’Brien, Worf and Bashir. Sadly, Major Kira died a few weeks later after the crash. This is due to the neural damage she got when the ship passed through the energy barrier.
Bashir didn’t have the medical equipment on the Defiant that would cure her. This is very sad. It also adds to the personal stakes that involve Kira’s life and the people not meant to exist on the planet. 🙁
Apparently, two members of the Defiant crew still exist in the colony. This includes the Dax symbiont passed onto its new host, Gary Frank as Yedrin Dax. Not certain how that worked, but there you go.
There’s also Odo who has a greater longevity than the others due to his Changeling physiology. The original Odo is apparently trapped in his gelatinous state whilst ‘older’ Odo visits Kira on the Defiant.
It’s here that older Odo confesses to Kira that he loves her. This comes as a surprise to Kira since she had no idea Odo had feelings for her. Odo hid his feelings well from Kira when they were together. 😐
I should also point out that Kira has ended her relationship with Shakaar by this point. This comes as a surprise to Odo. I’m sure many audiences were surprised at this too since the break-up occurred off-screen.
The Defiant crew face a dilemma in the episode. In order to leave the planet safely, they’ll never have travelled back in time and the community on the planet will be cancelled out from existence. 😐
But if they allow history to repeat itself by crashing to the planet in the past, they’ll never see their homes and loved ones again. Kira will also die in a few weeks. O’Brien wants to return home himself.
Yedrin Dax tries to show them a way out by using the quantum bubble to duplicate the ship and crew so they can make both choices at once. But this happens to be trick as Yedrin wants to survive.
To make a long story, the Defiant crew join the community’s planting festival before they decide to repeat the crash by entering the time barrier. But it’s prevented. Someone changes their flight plan.
It turns out that older Odo loved Kira so much that he would rather prevent her death than allow the 8,000 colonists to survive. Odo secretly changed the Defiant’s flight plan and thus the crew escapes.
Thus the colony vanishes from existence. The original Odo tells Kira this after receiving a mental link from the older Odo. Kira is shocked at this since she believes it was not the older Odo’s right to do that.
Overall, ‘Children of Time’ in the ‘DS9’ series is a complex but intriguingly enjoyable episode. It might take a while to get your head around it after a few watches but I found this satisfying for the characters.
‘Children of Time’ (DS9) rating – 8/10
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