If you have not yet been beaten over the head yet with the foreshadowing one of the crew is going to die in the season finale, this episode should more than compensate.The bone weary crew of the Defiant, who have been on convoy duty for days, receive a distress signal from a Lisa Cusak, a Starfleet captain who is the lone survivor of a deep space mission. Her ship hit some sort of energy whatsis and was destroyed. She got to an escape pod, but is now stranded alone on a hostile planet. Since the Defiant is the only ship close enough to make the six day journey, they have to take the mission to rescue her.
Along the way, he command staff takes turns taking to her in order to keep her conscious. Conveniently, she is taking injections to prevent the atmosphere from poisoning her, but they keep her awake constantly. She discusses Sisko’s complicated relation with Kasidy, Bashir’s workaholism, ad o’Breien’s pushin away of friends because he ears they might die during the war with the Dominion.
Her advice: Relationships are everything. Drop whatever you aredoing and tell everyone you love and tel them so, because tomorrow may be too late.
Oh, yeah--Dax is sooo dead tomorrow.
The trick is they discover Cusak’s communications were caught in a time warp due to the energy thingamajig that destroyed her sip. She has actually been dead for years, but the communications were being transmitted as though in real time. They give her a funeral with full honorsand Sisko gives aspeechabout how they may be standing there again with one of them missing one day soon.
He means you, Dax.
The B-story involves Quark taking advantage of Odo’s lovebird status with Kira to complete a smuggling job, but both Odo and Kira are up to him and stop it. Nothing but filler made more annoying by the irritating romance between the two. I will never get accustomed to that.
Not bad for a bottle episode, but not as poignant as intended. I will have liked for Cusak’s conversations with the crew to have been more psychoanalytic as opposed to bracing us for the loss of Dax. It is entertaining, but I feel like it could have been far more.
Rating: *** (out of 5)
