I liked this episode a lot for its execution, the characters are all strongly characterized, they really seem like themselves here. And the premise is intriguing. As a sci-fi plot that speaks to our lives through metaphor, one sees parallels with how we wrestle in the real world about unwanted pregnancy, the undesired life changes that come with it, and with our ability to sometimes control it at the cost of a road not taken and a life not lived.
While the characters and themes are firing well, the plot threw me out of it, and I think most thoughtful people will suffer that problem as well. And that's because it's a time travel plot, and like most time travel plots it's got paradoxes and leaps in logic that don't work. Which is maybe why in the real universe you aren't allowed to time travel.
During the episode the first thing I thought of after they meet the time traveling male Dax is that he should have experienced all this before as Jadzia. I was kind of thinking maybe that's where the episode was going, that Sisko and crew just didn't think about the fact that he had total foreknowledge of how things played out... but no. Actually the first time they got to the planet there were no colonists. So this is definitively the second time history has played out. Not the third time, not the millionth time, not the trillionth trillionth time, the second time. If you ask a team of physicists about it, doubtless they'll come up with 20 paradoxes as to this form of how time works, but what really threw me was, they didn't explain this. So I was left wondering what time traveling Dax had in store, but he was out of the plot after his initial scheme was discovered, it was just about the crew then deciding they couldn't snuff out these people from existence (though why they'd HAVE to be snuffed out from existence with this form of time travel doesn't necessarily follow).
I did appreciate time traveling Odo making the smart point that by not returning to the station they would be denying the lives of all the descendants they would have while not being stranded on that planet (and all the people they save... better hope Sisko wasn't as necessary to saving the Alpha Quadrant from the Dominion as the last season makes him seem!). So that no matter what they did, they were wiping somebody out from the timeline. But this is just one line, and Kira is like, "I don't care," so the thought isn't explored.
What they DIDN'T address was that since each iteration of the crew showing up on the planet was different, that means that their descendants would have to convince the crew to stay and crash land, a literally infinite number of times in order to continue to exist. Their rules, not mine. And since we know that an infinite number of times will allow for ALL possible outcomes, and the crew not staying is shown to be a definite outcome, then it doesn't matter if they choose to stay or not. Those 8,000 people are doomed to being snuffed out of existence either way, because eventually, if not on the second try (as happened on the show) then maybe on the trillionth, trillionth, trillionth try, somebody will say the wrong thing and make Sisko realize this is a bad idea, or the navigator will input the coordinates to crash wrong and they'll all die when the ship hits a mountain, or literally any of the infinite number of ways it can go wrong, will cause things not to go right and they'll all be erased from time. They're doomed no matter what by the show's own sci-fi logic.
Which if it were just an ice-box nitpick wouldn't be so bad, but because it's a science fiction show with a time travel plot, all that was brought to the fore in my mind as I was watching the show, distracting me and making me think about the meta elements of the plot.
Also I wasn't in love with the tone of the ending, the whole Odo/Kira thing felt awkward tonally, very off, and that also severely undercut the emotion the episode was building to. I can't say it deserves more than a 7 on the whole.
While the characters and themes are firing well, the plot threw me out of it, and I think most thoughtful people will suffer that problem as well. And that's because it's a time travel plot, and like most time travel plots it's got paradoxes and leaps in logic that don't work. Which is maybe why in the real universe you aren't allowed to time travel.
During the episode the first thing I thought of after they meet the time traveling male Dax is that he should have experienced all this before as Jadzia. I was kind of thinking maybe that's where the episode was going, that Sisko and crew just didn't think about the fact that he had total foreknowledge of how things played out... but no. Actually the first time they got to the planet there were no colonists. So this is definitively the second time history has played out. Not the third time, not the millionth time, not the trillionth trillionth time, the second time. If you ask a team of physicists about it, doubtless they'll come up with 20 paradoxes as to this form of how time works, but what really threw me was, they didn't explain this. So I was left wondering what time traveling Dax had in store, but he was out of the plot after his initial scheme was discovered, it was just about the crew then deciding they couldn't snuff out these people from existence (though why they'd HAVE to be snuffed out from existence with this form of time travel doesn't necessarily follow).
I did appreciate time traveling Odo making the smart point that by not returning to the station they would be denying the lives of all the descendants they would have while not being stranded on that planet (and all the people they save... better hope Sisko wasn't as necessary to saving the Alpha Quadrant from the Dominion as the last season makes him seem!). So that no matter what they did, they were wiping somebody out from the timeline. But this is just one line, and Kira is like, "I don't care," so the thought isn't explored.
What they DIDN'T address was that since each iteration of the crew showing up on the planet was different, that means that their descendants would have to convince the crew to stay and crash land, a literally infinite number of times in order to continue to exist. Their rules, not mine. And since we know that an infinite number of times will allow for ALL possible outcomes, and the crew not staying is shown to be a definite outcome, then it doesn't matter if they choose to stay or not. Those 8,000 people are doomed to being snuffed out of existence either way, because eventually, if not on the second try (as happened on the show) then maybe on the trillionth, trillionth, trillionth try, somebody will say the wrong thing and make Sisko realize this is a bad idea, or the navigator will input the coordinates to crash wrong and they'll all die when the ship hits a mountain, or literally any of the infinite number of ways it can go wrong, will cause things not to go right and they'll all be erased from time. They're doomed no matter what by the show's own sci-fi logic.
Which if it were just an ice-box nitpick wouldn't be so bad, but because it's a science fiction show with a time travel plot, all that was brought to the fore in my mind as I was watching the show, distracting me and making me think about the meta elements of the plot.
Also I wasn't in love with the tone of the ending, the whole Odo/Kira thing felt awkward tonally, very off, and that also severely undercut the emotion the episode was building to. I can't say it deserves more than a 7 on the whole.