[9.7/10] Most great Star Trek episodes do one or two things really well. A top tier installment might have a strong high concept premise. It might feature a strong emotional story. It could have a great sci-fi plot. It might advance the characters and their relationships. It could offer a piercing moral thought experiment. It might advance some of the major arcs of the show. It may be well-directed with engrossing visuals. It could say something worthwhile about the characters and about what’s important to us.
Do just a couple of these things with success and style, and you’ll end up with something superb. Do more than a handful, and you may have something truly outstanding.
“Children of Time” does them all. And it does them all brilliantly. It is a minor miracle, a true series highlight, and one of the best things Star Trek has ever done.
The idea is deceptively simple. Dax wants to explore a Gamma Quadrant planet with some typically atypical weird energy with the rest of the crew of the Defiant. When they get there, they find something bizarre and unexpected -- their great great great great grandchildren. Turns out that trying to escape the planet's peculiar field of temporal energy left our heroes stranded two hundred years in the past, where they founded this colony now run by their descendents.
It’s a brilliant premise, because it allows Deep Space Nine to do a clever sci-fi “What If?” story, one that provides us hints and glimpses of our characters’ futures, without resorting to alternate dimensions or dream sequences. Sisko and company learning who ended up with whom, who started this tradition or that one, who passed away in the centuries since the colony was founded, creates a stunning opportunity for them all to reflect on where their lives might be headed.
And like “The Visitor”, one of DS9’s other high water marks, it blends the engrossing science fiction premise with a series of deeply personal and emotional stories on that account.
The biggest of these is Kira meeting none other than a future Odo, who has survived those two-hundred years and is ready to share his feelings in the way our Odo never has. It is a truly stunning development that the show plays perfectly.
For the make-up team, Odo’s more refined features help us to visually distinguish the planet’s incarnation of Odo from the one we know and love. In terms of performance, Rene Auberjonois kills it, as always, conveying the sense of a more open-hearted, downright romantic version of the character who nevertheless feels of a piece with the Constable we know and love in his mannerisms. You get the sense of him simply allowing the things our Odo feels on the inside to reach the outside.
That’s an extra thrill because of the writing. This is a sneaky yet powerful way for Kira to finally understand how Odo feels about her. It allows Odo to confess his feelings in a true and vivid way without it being our Odo who quite reaches that breakthrough, without it ever feeling like a cheat. That’s because there’s a plain reason for the change -- not just the two-hundred years that the Changeling has had to evolve and reflect, but the fact that Kira is the only member of the crew who died in that temporal accident two-hundred years hence.
He’s had all these years to consider what he might have said if he’d only had the time, to imagine what their lives might have been if he found the courage to express his feelings, to plan for the day he knew Kira would return to him. Having this Odo deliver the earth-shattering news to her is a unique end-run around the usual narrative trajectory, but one that lets the show play fair, while still earning the emotion involved, given how much of the episode is founded on the unfortunate fact of Kira’s death in the time-defying crash that kickstarts the colony.
Because that’s one of the most fascinating parts of this episode -- the eternal question of how you weigh lives against one another, blown up to fantastical scale. The core dilemma at the heart of “Children of Time” is how you balance the lives of the eight-thousand colonists who’ve made their homes on the planet, versus the continuing lives of our heroes with their friends and family aboard Deep Space Nine, and the continued existence of Kira in particular.
But for that dilemma to have visceral weight, and not just be an academic discussion, you have to make the audience care about the strangers on the planet, and something they achieve in flying colors. It is a thrill to see the workaday workings of this community founded by the people we’ve gotten to know over these past five seasons.
There is an automated math program designed with Quark as its virtual guide. There are a line of Bashirs who revere Julian as their primogenitor. There is a child who has Benjamin’s eyes whom he holds with joy. There is a young O’Brien girl who has the Chief’s spunkiness and wit. Half the fun of this one is looking at this flourishing civilization, built on the ingenuity, kindness, and principles that the main cast has embodied since DS9 began.
And the peculiar joy of the situation, as Sisko and company are respected and admired as the equivalent of Founding Fathers, makes you want to hold onto these people and their society. They are the product of, and the inheritors of, so much good work following the example set by the Deep Space Nine crew. How would we not value and admire what they’ve built all the same?
The episode smartly forges connections between DS9 and the planet’s population. One of the most conceptually interesting are the Sons of Mogh, an order founded by Worf, that exists apart from the main group. It is populated partly by his descendants, but partly by those simply drawn to his way of life, regardless of their heritage. It is a wonderful tribute not just to Worf’s steadfast devotion to Klingon ritual and tradition, something which survives him in this branching timeline, but also his inclusiveness and willing to extend its blessings to those beyond his biology, much as similar blessings were extended to him by his human parents, Federation colleagues, and Trill partner. It’s hard to imagine a happier sort of ending for him.
That Trill partner survives to the present, after a fashion. We also meet Yedrin Dax, Jadzia’s descendent who carries on the Dax symbiont. It’s a clever choice from René Echevarria and the writing staff, because it gives the DS9 crew an honest broker who can substantiate what the colonists are saying, and it gives the audience an entry point character to represent the community in personal terms whom we know as well.
Guest star Gary Frank does terrific work as Yedrin, convincingly portraying that sense of familiarity with Benjamin, seeming connected to Jadzia in attitude and spirit, while also having a distinct presence all his own. What’s more, this character from “the future” also allows the show to comment on the Dax/Worf pairing, acknowledging that things will continue to be rocky, but that the couple will bend toward one another until marriage, and a beautiful life together, is in the offing. As with Kira and Colonial Odo, it’s a nice way for the episode to gesture toward what could be without having to pull the trigger just yet.
And yet, there’s part of me that wishes they would, if only because there is something magnetic about seeing Kira and (an) Odo together with open affections. This is a gorgeous episode to look at overall, but the cinematography is particularly eye-catching in bucolic, sunlit scenes of Colonist Odo and Kira in the countryside. Their shot in gauzy hues, with heartfelt dialogue that make these interludes feel the closest Star Trek’s ever come to a stately but passionate BBC literature adaptation.
Part of that vibe comes with the emotional attachment checked by what amounts to ideological disagreement. Odo is driven to forge a life he himself will never see, taking comfort in the mere expression of his love, even knowing that if his pleas work, it’s our Odo, not him, who’ll reap the benefits. The poignancy of that, of wanting the romance you imagined to take root, even if it’s not quite with you, being satisfied to simply have your feelings known, is wondrously romantic in ways I struggle to articulate -- a blend of self-sacrifice and satisfaction that moves the heart.
For her part, Kira is overwhelmed by all this: finding out that a dear friend is in love with her, worrying that her conversations about Bareil and Shakaar may have hurt him, having the surreal experience of praying over your own grave, wondering what it all means when your religion teaches you that the gods have but one path, and seeing a technological solution that seems to blasphemously create two. Who wouldn’t be affected by that?
And yet, therein lies the wrinkle. Yedrin promises our heroes that in the two-hundred years since their ancestors first landed here, Dax has been concocting a typical reverse-the-polarity-through-the-main-deflector-dish solution that will theoretically allow one version of the Defiant crew to head back to DS9, while another version continues through history as the colonists know it. A little visual flourish with Kira seemingly duplicating for a moment in the teaser helps give the idea credibility with the audience, not to mention Yedrin Dax’s status as a seeming honest broker.
The twist, then, is that he’s lying. And I love it because it makes this choice harder, not easier. Sisko and company can’t have their cake and eat it too. They must decide what’s right and which is worth more -- the eight thousand colonists who’ve made their lives here, or the forty-nine Defiant crewmembers who’ve made their lives aboard the Deep Space Nine. And there are no easy answers.
In the abstract, it’s a hell of a thought experiment. Can you just count heads and decide the interests of the greater number of colonists win out? Can you impose that choice when some of your crew might agree with it and some of them might not? Is making a choice where some people will never have existed the same as killing them? What responsibilities do the people alive now have to later generations, and what sacrifices should they be expected to make? How do you measure the right to pursue your own passions or projects against a moral obligation to see to the welfare of those down the line? There’s no good or simple answers to these questions, which makes for good conflicts and thought--provoking ideas.
But this is also a personal story, and what I particularly appreciate is how well-motivated everyone is in where they stand.
The people who have families, like Sisko and Miles, are reluctant, if not downright hostile, to the idea of abandoning their partners and children in favor of the colonists. I love the contrast between bachelor Bashir, who contemplates asking the recent transfer out since he discovers they eventually marry on the colony, and family man O’Brien who’s downright horrified at the idea of losing his wife and children and starting anew somewhere he’ll never be able to see them again. Yedrin Dax talks about having kept Sisko away from Jake, one of the most palpable connections that would be severed if they go along with Yedrin’s own plan to see that history continues as he knows it.
Yedrin’s position, however deceptive, is also comprehensible. Dax feels responsible for this colony, since it was Jadzia’s insistence that they check out the weird energy planet that got them stranded there in the first place. This colony is his baby, in some way, and part of exercising the guilt is ensuring that it wasn’t all for nothing, that they will build on these two-hundred years of progress and prosperity, not see it wiped away by a flourish of temporal mechanics. Jadzia herself feels betrayed, but also understands.
And then, most notably, the people who make the case for staying are those who are religious, and with that, believe in destiny and a universe where everything happens for a reason. Worf sees the Sons of Mogh as an honorable legacy. He believes that this is meant to be, and Kira agrees with him.
Kira’s agreement is the most powerful, because she has the most to lose. Yes, she believes in the same sense of fate that Worf does. When Miles rightly slates Worf’s blase attitude about severing family ties given Alexander’s conspicuous absence, Kira shoots back that the Prophets will care for him and for the O’Brien family on the station. She thinks this has been ordained, and more than that, would not credit her own life against the eight thousand who have thrived here. That is true faith, true devotion, true belief, and even in the humanistic world of Starfleet, it’s hard not to admire it in these terms.
But even if it’s a choice Kira can make for himself, it’s not a choice Sisko feels he can impose on everyone. So they resolve to leave. It is a hard choice, but an understandable one, which gives it extra force.
The decision provides one of the most powerful sequences in the episode and also the show. The colonists know they are doomed. Yet, they do not despair. They plant. They till. They work. They commune. They relish. This is a communal last meal, a tribute and triumph to all this society has achieved in the last two centuries.
It is some of the most lavish cinematography and touching scenes Star Trek has ever done. The vision of this community banding together against annihilation, hands meeting hands in the soil, parents reassuring children with the rhythm of the day, a Buddhist sand painting of labor destined to be washed away but that much more vital and vivid because of its impermanence. As Worf tells his sons, time is the enemy now. Let us band together and fight in vain against it.
When Chief O’Brien takes part in it, even he cannot deny the transcendence of what has been built here. He cannot destroy it, even if it means sacrificing all he knows and loves.
And that is that. In one of the most heart-rending choices of DS9 the crew collectively decides to recreate the accident that was the catalyst for this community, because it is too beautiful, too full of the love and values that they themself radiate, to rend asunder.
And then it is rent asunder. Our heroes record their goodbyes. They prepare to commit to this life. And at the last moment, the autopilot ticks them off the course, sending them free of the anomaly du jour, and blinking the colony from existence. “Children of Time” spends so much making us, and them, love this place and these people, and then it rips it away from both. It is devastating, in the best way.
I knew the who and the why from the moment it happened. The episode offers a feint, with Sisko voicing the notion that Yedric had a change of heart. But there was only one answer, what’s always been the answer. Colonist Odo loves Kira. He cannot endorse a choice that would kill her. He cannot allow a choice that would rob the universe of the possibility of love blossoming between her and our Odo. After two-hundred years of waiting, of holding onto that hope, it would be a loss too great to bear.
That too is a complicated choice. If you love someone, and want what’s best for them, does that give you the right to override their autonomy? To overrule what they themselves believe in? To let thousands perish for their benefit? Kira is rightfully aghast at it. Our Odo, who knows what his colonial counterpart knows thanks to a timely link between them, is understandably shaken by what he missed when bottled up to protect him from the local radiation, but he also realizes it isn’t so simple.
And even if it wouldn’t endorse Colonist Odo’s choices unreflectively, love is an awing thing, and in the right circumstances, or the wrong ones, it can make us willing to let the whole world crumble to pieces if it saves the ones we care about. That too is a kind of faith, a kind of a devotion, a kind of belief. I don’t know the right answer, but I understand why everyone here feels the way they do and makes the heart-rending choices they make. That is all I can ask from Star Trek.
“Children of Time” is not a perfect episode of television. The colonists seem pretty blase about whether telling their ancestors about the future might change it, in a way that seems un-Trek-y. Even if Yedric’s original “plan” was above board, none of the Defiant crew seems concerned about whether they or their sci-fi duplicates would be the ones returning to the station or the ones trapped on the planet. And there’s small shortcuts for convenience, like the forty-three others not at the debate table not really having a say in what happens, that require some willing suspension of disbelief at the shorthand.
But the episode does so many things right. It plays with our emotions, our loyalties, our intellectual engagement, our conscience, our sense of excitement, our empathy, our hearts, our minds, our eyeballs, so expertly. You can understand why Star Trek has returned to this sort of premise again (Enterprise basically does it twice), given the chance to deliver a vision of possible future and a meditation of what the present is worth.
“Children of Time” is the peak of that idea. It is a love letter to what the officers aboard Deep Space Nine represent and believe in, a vision of their perfect community lifted up and then ripped away, and an affirmation of the love between and among them in the here and how, that makes the choice to hold onto such possibilities as profound as it is heartbreaking.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2023-09-18T01:02:43Z
[9.7/10] Most great Star Trek episodes do one or two things really well. A top tier installment might have a strong high concept premise. It might feature a strong emotional story. It could have a great sci-fi plot. It might advance the characters and their relationships. It could offer a piercing moral thought experiment. It might advance some of the major arcs of the show. It may be well-directed with engrossing visuals. It could say something worthwhile about the characters and about what’s important to us.
Do just a couple of these things with success and style, and you’ll end up with something superb. Do more than a handful, and you may have something truly outstanding.
“Children of Time” does them all. And it does them all brilliantly. It is a minor miracle, a true series highlight, and one of the best things Star Trek has ever done.
The idea is deceptively simple. Dax wants to explore a Gamma Quadrant planet with some typically atypical weird energy with the rest of the crew of the Defiant. When they get there, they find something bizarre and unexpected -- their great great great great grandchildren. Turns out that trying to escape the planet's peculiar field of temporal energy left our heroes stranded two hundred years in the past, where they founded this colony now run by their descendents.
It’s a brilliant premise, because it allows Deep Space Nine to do a clever sci-fi “What If?” story, one that provides us hints and glimpses of our characters’ futures, without resorting to alternate dimensions or dream sequences. Sisko and company learning who ended up with whom, who started this tradition or that one, who passed away in the centuries since the colony was founded, creates a stunning opportunity for them all to reflect on where their lives might be headed.
And like “The Visitor”, one of DS9’s other high water marks, it blends the engrossing science fiction premise with a series of deeply personal and emotional stories on that account.
The biggest of these is Kira meeting none other than a future Odo, who has survived those two-hundred years and is ready to share his feelings in the way our Odo never has. It is a truly stunning development that the show plays perfectly.
For the make-up team, Odo’s more refined features help us to visually distinguish the planet’s incarnation of Odo from the one we know and love. In terms of performance, Rene Auberjonois kills it, as always, conveying the sense of a more open-hearted, downright romantic version of the character who nevertheless feels of a piece with the Constable we know and love in his mannerisms. You get the sense of him simply allowing the things our Odo feels on the inside to reach the outside.
That’s an extra thrill because of the writing. This is a sneaky yet powerful way for Kira to finally understand how Odo feels about her. It allows Odo to confess his feelings in a true and vivid way without it being our Odo who quite reaches that breakthrough, without it ever feeling like a cheat. That’s because there’s a plain reason for the change -- not just the two-hundred years that the Changeling has had to evolve and reflect, but the fact that Kira is the only member of the crew who died in that temporal accident two-hundred years hence.
He’s had all these years to consider what he might have said if he’d only had the time, to imagine what their lives might have been if he found the courage to express his feelings, to plan for the day he knew Kira would return to him. Having this Odo deliver the earth-shattering news to her is a unique end-run around the usual narrative trajectory, but one that lets the show play fair, while still earning the emotion involved, given how much of the episode is founded on the unfortunate fact of Kira’s death in the time-defying crash that kickstarts the colony.
Because that’s one of the most fascinating parts of this episode -- the eternal question of how you weigh lives against one another, blown up to fantastical scale. The core dilemma at the heart of “Children of Time” is how you balance the lives of the eight-thousand colonists who’ve made their homes on the planet, versus the continuing lives of our heroes with their friends and family aboard Deep Space Nine, and the continued existence of Kira in particular.
But for that dilemma to have visceral weight, and not just be an academic discussion, you have to make the audience care about the strangers on the planet, and something they achieve in flying colors. It is a thrill to see the workaday workings of this community founded by the people we’ve gotten to know over these past five seasons.
There is an automated math program designed with Quark as its virtual guide. There are a line of Bashirs who revere Julian as their primogenitor. There is a child who has Benjamin’s eyes whom he holds with joy. There is a young O’Brien girl who has the Chief’s spunkiness and wit. Half the fun of this one is looking at this flourishing civilization, built on the ingenuity, kindness, and principles that the main cast has embodied since DS9 began.
And the peculiar joy of the situation, as Sisko and company are respected and admired as the equivalent of Founding Fathers, makes you want to hold onto these people and their society. They are the product of, and the inheritors of, so much good work following the example set by the Deep Space Nine crew. How would we not value and admire what they’ve built all the same?
The episode smartly forges connections between DS9 and the planet’s population. One of the most conceptually interesting are the Sons of Mogh, an order founded by Worf, that exists apart from the main group. It is populated partly by his descendants, but partly by those simply drawn to his way of life, regardless of their heritage. It is a wonderful tribute not just to Worf’s steadfast devotion to Klingon ritual and tradition, something which survives him in this branching timeline, but also his inclusiveness and willing to extend its blessings to those beyond his biology, much as similar blessings were extended to him by his human parents, Federation colleagues, and Trill partner. It’s hard to imagine a happier sort of ending for him.
That Trill partner survives to the present, after a fashion. We also meet Yedrin Dax, Jadzia’s descendent who carries on the Dax symbiont. It’s a clever choice from René Echevarria and the writing staff, because it gives the DS9 crew an honest broker who can substantiate what the colonists are saying, and it gives the audience an entry point character to represent the community in personal terms whom we know as well.
Guest star Gary Frank does terrific work as Yedrin, convincingly portraying that sense of familiarity with Benjamin, seeming connected to Jadzia in attitude and spirit, while also having a distinct presence all his own. What’s more, this character from “the future” also allows the show to comment on the Dax/Worf pairing, acknowledging that things will continue to be rocky, but that the couple will bend toward one another until marriage, and a beautiful life together, is in the offing. As with Kira and Colonial Odo, it’s a nice way for the episode to gesture toward what could be without having to pull the trigger just yet.
And yet, there’s part of me that wishes they would, if only because there is something magnetic about seeing Kira and (an) Odo together with open affections. This is a gorgeous episode to look at overall, but the cinematography is particularly eye-catching in bucolic, sunlit scenes of Colonist Odo and Kira in the countryside. Their shot in gauzy hues, with heartfelt dialogue that make these interludes feel the closest Star Trek’s ever come to a stately but passionate BBC literature adaptation.
Part of that vibe comes with the emotional attachment checked by what amounts to ideological disagreement. Odo is driven to forge a life he himself will never see, taking comfort in the mere expression of his love, even knowing that if his pleas work, it’s our Odo, not him, who’ll reap the benefits. The poignancy of that, of wanting the romance you imagined to take root, even if it’s not quite with you, being satisfied to simply have your feelings known, is wondrously romantic in ways I struggle to articulate -- a blend of self-sacrifice and satisfaction that moves the heart.
For her part, Kira is overwhelmed by all this: finding out that a dear friend is in love with her, worrying that her conversations about Bareil and Shakaar may have hurt him, having the surreal experience of praying over your own grave, wondering what it all means when your religion teaches you that the gods have but one path, and seeing a technological solution that seems to blasphemously create two. Who wouldn’t be affected by that?
And yet, therein lies the wrinkle. Yedrin promises our heroes that in the two-hundred years since their ancestors first landed here, Dax has been concocting a typical reverse-the-polarity-through-the-main-deflector-dish solution that will theoretically allow one version of the Defiant crew to head back to DS9, while another version continues through history as the colonists know it. A little visual flourish with Kira seemingly duplicating for a moment in the teaser helps give the idea credibility with the audience, not to mention Yedrin Dax’s status as a seeming honest broker.
The twist, then, is that he’s lying. And I love it because it makes this choice harder, not easier. Sisko and company can’t have their cake and eat it too. They must decide what’s right and which is worth more -- the eight thousand colonists who’ve made their lives here, or the forty-nine Defiant crewmembers who’ve made their lives aboard the Deep Space Nine. And there are no easy answers.
In the abstract, it’s a hell of a thought experiment. Can you just count heads and decide the interests of the greater number of colonists win out? Can you impose that choice when some of your crew might agree with it and some of them might not? Is making a choice where some people will never have existed the same as killing them? What responsibilities do the people alive now have to later generations, and what sacrifices should they be expected to make? How do you measure the right to pursue your own passions or projects against a moral obligation to see to the welfare of those down the line? There’s no good or simple answers to these questions, which makes for good conflicts and thought--provoking ideas.
But this is also a personal story, and what I particularly appreciate is how well-motivated everyone is in where they stand.
The people who have families, like Sisko and Miles, are reluctant, if not downright hostile, to the idea of abandoning their partners and children in favor of the colonists. I love the contrast between bachelor Bashir, who contemplates asking the recent transfer out since he discovers they eventually marry on the colony, and family man O’Brien who’s downright horrified at the idea of losing his wife and children and starting anew somewhere he’ll never be able to see them again. Yedrin Dax talks about having kept Sisko away from Jake, one of the most palpable connections that would be severed if they go along with Yedrin’s own plan to see that history continues as he knows it.
Yedrin’s position, however deceptive, is also comprehensible. Dax feels responsible for this colony, since it was Jadzia’s insistence that they check out the weird energy planet that got them stranded there in the first place. This colony is his baby, in some way, and part of exercising the guilt is ensuring that it wasn’t all for nothing, that they will build on these two-hundred years of progress and prosperity, not see it wiped away by a flourish of temporal mechanics. Jadzia herself feels betrayed, but also understands.
And then, most notably, the people who make the case for staying are those who are religious, and with that, believe in destiny and a universe where everything happens for a reason. Worf sees the Sons of Mogh as an honorable legacy. He believes that this is meant to be, and Kira agrees with him.
Kira’s agreement is the most powerful, because she has the most to lose. Yes, she believes in the same sense of fate that Worf does. When Miles rightly slates Worf’s blase attitude about severing family ties given Alexander’s conspicuous absence, Kira shoots back that the Prophets will care for him and for the O’Brien family on the station. She thinks this has been ordained, and more than that, would not credit her own life against the eight thousand who have thrived here. That is true faith, true devotion, true belief, and even in the humanistic world of Starfleet, it’s hard not to admire it in these terms.
But even if it’s a choice Kira can make for himself, it’s not a choice Sisko feels he can impose on everyone. So they resolve to leave. It is a hard choice, but an understandable one, which gives it extra force.
The decision provides one of the most powerful sequences in the episode and also the show. The colonists know they are doomed. Yet, they do not despair. They plant. They till. They work. They commune. They relish. This is a communal last meal, a tribute and triumph to all this society has achieved in the last two centuries.
It is some of the most lavish cinematography and touching scenes Star Trek has ever done. The vision of this community banding together against annihilation, hands meeting hands in the soil, parents reassuring children with the rhythm of the day, a Buddhist sand painting of labor destined to be washed away but that much more vital and vivid because of its impermanence. As Worf tells his sons, time is the enemy now. Let us band together and fight in vain against it.
When Chief O’Brien takes part in it, even he cannot deny the transcendence of what has been built here. He cannot destroy it, even if it means sacrificing all he knows and loves.
And that is that. In one of the most heart-rending choices of DS9 the crew collectively decides to recreate the accident that was the catalyst for this community, because it is too beautiful, too full of the love and values that they themself radiate, to rend asunder.
And then it is rent asunder. Our heroes record their goodbyes. They prepare to commit to this life. And at the last moment, the autopilot ticks them off the course, sending them free of the anomaly du jour, and blinking the colony from existence. “Children of Time” spends so much making us, and them, love this place and these people, and then it rips it away from both. It is devastating, in the best way.
I knew the who and the why from the moment it happened. The episode offers a feint, with Sisko voicing the notion that Yedric had a change of heart. But there was only one answer, what’s always been the answer. Colonist Odo loves Kira. He cannot endorse a choice that would kill her. He cannot allow a choice that would rob the universe of the possibility of love blossoming between her and our Odo. After two-hundred years of waiting, of holding onto that hope, it would be a loss too great to bear.
That too is a complicated choice. If you love someone, and want what’s best for them, does that give you the right to override their autonomy? To overrule what they themselves believe in? To let thousands perish for their benefit? Kira is rightfully aghast at it. Our Odo, who knows what his colonial counterpart knows thanks to a timely link between them, is understandably shaken by what he missed when bottled up to protect him from the local radiation, but he also realizes it isn’t so simple.
And even if it wouldn’t endorse Colonist Odo’s choices unreflectively, love is an awing thing, and in the right circumstances, or the wrong ones, it can make us willing to let the whole world crumble to pieces if it saves the ones we care about. That too is a kind of faith, a kind of a devotion, a kind of belief. I don’t know the right answer, but I understand why everyone here feels the way they do and makes the heart-rending choices they make. That is all I can ask from Star Trek.
“Children of Time” is not a perfect episode of television. The colonists seem pretty blase about whether telling their ancestors about the future might change it, in a way that seems un-Trek-y. Even if Yedric’s original “plan” was above board, none of the Defiant crew seems concerned about whether they or their sci-fi duplicates would be the ones returning to the station or the ones trapped on the planet. And there’s small shortcuts for convenience, like the forty-three others not at the debate table not really having a say in what happens, that require some willing suspension of disbelief at the shorthand.
But the episode does so many things right. It plays with our emotions, our loyalties, our intellectual engagement, our conscience, our sense of excitement, our empathy, our hearts, our minds, our eyeballs, so expertly. You can understand why Star Trek has returned to this sort of premise again (Enterprise basically does it twice), given the chance to deliver a vision of possible future and a meditation of what the present is worth.
“Children of Time” is the peak of that idea. It is a love letter to what the officers aboard Deep Space Nine represent and believe in, a vision of their perfect community lifted up and then ripped away, and an affirmation of the love between and among them in the here and how, that makes the choice to hold onto such possibilities as profound as it is heartbreaking.