There are many nice elements in this episode, but the ending is simply awful. OK, the crew landed on a planet with an illydic community formed by their own descendants and were told that they were fated to crashed back 200 years when they depart. After a lot of argument and soul-searching the crew accepted that history must repeat and bravely flew to their fate, only to find that ... Odo (of the originally crashed crew) sabotaged the plan to let them go, essentially wiping out the community, because he didn't want Kira to be killed in the crash once more??? What the hell? Doesn't he feel any connection to all those people he knows since 200 years? How does he expect Kira to live with the knowledge that to save her life 8000 people disappeared?
However there are some very touching elements about the community - I liked the idea of Dax's guilt that she was to be blamed for the crash and lived with it for 200 years; I liked the idea that Klingon identity had become a cultural definition and one could be Klingon by birth or by choice; the cute Quark program teaching maths; and most of all the day when the settlers believed that the crew (ie their ancestors ) would not want to repeat history and calmly carried on with the last day of their existence. And I guess there could be a different way of ending the episode - the community ending up disappearing is not a problem, but it could be written as a matter of fate ?
For example, the Dax settler could have acted in good faith when he suggested that they could calibrate the departure in a specific way that creates a duplicate of the Defiant so that one could go home and the other leaves behind to preserve the community history line - after all he's had 200 years to figure it out and there was that Thomas Riker precedent. However it could turn out that the crew having gained the knowledge has already changed history (after all would you fall in love the same way with the person having already met your great great great great grand daughter?), and they could realise that something's wrong when the supposed day of the crash turns out to be sunny when according to history it should have been stormy. The crew could be anxious of racing against time to find a way to recreate the original condition before sunset so as save the settlers, even that would mean they wouldn't be going home ; but the settlers could convince them that this is all part of the Path laid out by the Prophets; and what matters is that they have existed and will be remembered by friends --something their Kira taught their ancestors before she died. Then they could spend the day together plowing and planting as in the episode... That would leave a more bittersweet ending and an experience the crew (and the audience) would want to remember rather than forget, no?
However there are some very touching elements about the community - I liked the idea of Dax's guilt that she was to be blamed for the crash and lived with it for 200 years; I liked the idea that Klingon identity had become a cultural definition and one could be Klingon by birth or by choice; the cute Quark program teaching maths; and most of all the day when the settlers believed that the crew (ie their ancestors ) would not want to repeat history and calmly carried on with the last day of their existence. And I guess there could be a different way of ending the episode - the community ending up disappearing is not a problem, but it could be written as a matter of fate ?
For example, the Dax settler could have acted in good faith when he suggested that they could calibrate the departure in a specific way that creates a duplicate of the Defiant so that one could go home and the other leaves behind to preserve the community history line - after all he's had 200 years to figure it out and there was that Thomas Riker precedent. However it could turn out that the crew having gained the knowledge has already changed history (after all would you fall in love the same way with the person having already met your great great great great grand daughter?), and they could realise that something's wrong when the supposed day of the crash turns out to be sunny when according to history it should have been stormy. The crew could be anxious of racing against time to find a way to recreate the original condition before sunset so as save the settlers, even that would mean they wouldn't be going home ; but the settlers could convince them that this is all part of the Path laid out by the Prophets; and what matters is that they have existed and will be remembered by friends --something their Kira taught their ancestors before she died. Then they could spend the day together plowing and planting as in the episode... That would leave a more bittersweet ending and an experience the crew (and the audience) would want to remember rather than forget, no?