This episode has a lot going for it as a stand alone Star Trek episode. However it completely ignores important events going on elsewhere with the characters as central key players - like the Dominion wars and the prophets/pah wraiths conflict.
It chronicles how the crew comes to the decision to voluntarily crash land on a planet in the past in order to result in the settlement in the present day of their descendants. When the crew sees the settlement and learns of the accident that will leave them stranded - they figure out pretty quickly that now that they know what happened they can prevent the accident. They resolve to return to the future. Then there's a plot where the Dax descendant convinces them that they can create a quantum split involving doubles of the ship and crew - one returns home and the other crash lands - creating the settlement. But that is discovered as a lie. Naturally Sisco and the crew agree they can't just the stranded there and abandon their families and duties - and resolve to leave - until Kira (the only one who dies resulting from the crash) decides it's her fate to die there and have the settlement remain. Long story short - the rest of the crew eventually agrees and they decide to crash land. But the version of Odo that was left stranded sabotages their plans. He sets the ship to automatically swerve out of the way of the anomaly and the ship goes home in the present day.
I have a few issues with this episode. One - the crew keep saying that they "know their families at home are alright" - but they are at war - they actually don't know for sure and have no reason to think their families are not facing danger in the future from war.
Another thing is Kira and Sisko ignoring that Sisko is the Emissary. Kira makes her decision to stay because she reasons her fate was to die there. It's very hard to believe she would feel the same way about Sisko not making it back to bajor and the prophets. Even Sisko had come a long way towards accepting his role as emissary at this point.
They knew about the Pah Wraiths attempting to kill the prophets at this point. They were right in the middle of the war with the Dominion. It's very difficult to believe their "greater good" calculation would end up being to stay there to make sure those people exist as opposed to going back to fight.
Then the idea that this is basically in service of the romantic subplot of Odo and Kira really just kind of makes it not very good.
It was a good stand alone episode with good moral quandaries but poorly timed and way too stand alone - it just doesn't make sense in context of the rest of the season.
It chronicles how the crew comes to the decision to voluntarily crash land on a planet in the past in order to result in the settlement in the present day of their descendants. When the crew sees the settlement and learns of the accident that will leave them stranded - they figure out pretty quickly that now that they know what happened they can prevent the accident. They resolve to return to the future. Then there's a plot where the Dax descendant convinces them that they can create a quantum split involving doubles of the ship and crew - one returns home and the other crash lands - creating the settlement. But that is discovered as a lie. Naturally Sisco and the crew agree they can't just the stranded there and abandon their families and duties - and resolve to leave - until Kira (the only one who dies resulting from the crash) decides it's her fate to die there and have the settlement remain. Long story short - the rest of the crew eventually agrees and they decide to crash land. But the version of Odo that was left stranded sabotages their plans. He sets the ship to automatically swerve out of the way of the anomaly and the ship goes home in the present day.
I have a few issues with this episode. One - the crew keep saying that they "know their families at home are alright" - but they are at war - they actually don't know for sure and have no reason to think their families are not facing danger in the future from war.
Another thing is Kira and Sisko ignoring that Sisko is the Emissary. Kira makes her decision to stay because she reasons her fate was to die there. It's very hard to believe she would feel the same way about Sisko not making it back to bajor and the prophets. Even Sisko had come a long way towards accepting his role as emissary at this point.
They knew about the Pah Wraiths attempting to kill the prophets at this point. They were right in the middle of the war with the Dominion. It's very difficult to believe their "greater good" calculation would end up being to stay there to make sure those people exist as opposed to going back to fight.
Then the idea that this is basically in service of the romantic subplot of Odo and Kira really just kind of makes it not very good.
It was a good stand alone episode with good moral quandaries but poorly timed and way too stand alone - it just doesn't make sense in context of the rest of the season.