5.22 – Children of Time – DS9 Review
With “Children of Time,” Deep Space Nine does a TNG-style episode … and does it very, very well. This is a solid sci-fi story, designed in such a way as to explore some deep, meaningful questions. There are some issues in terms of story decisions and character motivations. And there are those ever-persistent paradoxes that tend to crop up with “time travel” stories. But on the whole, this is an episode with the potential to be affecting on both thoughtful and emotional levels.
While returning to DS9 from a reconnaissance mission in the Gamma Quadrant, the Defiant stumbles across a strange planet. At Dax’s urging, the crew head off to investigate. Once they pass through a strange anomaly surrounding the planet, they make a shocking discovery: the planet is colonized by 8,000 people … all descendants of almost everyone on board the Defiant, crash-landed on the planet almost 200 years in the past.
And so we have our paradox. As soon as the Defiant tries to return to DS9, it will run into a temporal anomaly that will send it 200 years back in time, they will crash, and the survivors will build a thriving colony. All of this is nicely revealed as Sisko and crew encounter their descendants. Also, Odo survives and Dax is still alive — in a host named Yedrin. These opening scenes are breezy and enjoyable. There’s a sense of wonder and joy at these meetings. Even Worf gets a chance to crack a joke. When a young child asks if Worf can kill by looking at something (a legend about The Son of Mogh), Worf quips, “Only when I’m angry.”
The good vibes continue as Yedrin proposes something that would allow everyone to go on their merry way. You see, the crew of the Defiant would much prefer to go back to their original lives (Miles, for example, has his wife and two children, Sisko has Jake, waiting back at DS9). But if the Defiant successfully leaves the planet … the 8,000 colonists will cease to exist. Yedrin’s plan is to use some technobabble to create *two* Defiants — one that would journey home to DS9 and another that would be thrown 200 years into the past crash on the planet as it should.
Of course, not all is as it seems. Yedrin hasn’t quite been truthful. He’s acting purely in the interests of the colonists and his plan is a fraud — if Sisko and crew follow it, they’ll simply crash land in the past. This then sets up the episode’s central moral dilemma: Does the Defiant return to DS9 and sacrifice 8,000 colonists, as well as their rich history? Or do they willingly crash in the past? To complicate matters, Kira won’t survive crash landing on the planet (she even visits her own grave). And so she must decide whether or not she ought to sacrifice herself for the colonists.
When Kira decides that she *does* want to sacrifice herself, the stakes are raised even higher. Sisko is unwilling to order his crew to what is, essentially a life of exile. But how does one also effectively order the extermination of an entire colony? These are tough questions and, in typical Deep Space Nine fashion, they are handled from a number of different angles.
One such angle involves Odo. Through a nifty plot contrivance, the Odo on board the Defiant is unable to hold his shape because of the strange anomaly surrounding the planet. But the older Odo has learned to hold his shape. And, so, he is able to reunite with Kira who, for him, has been dead for two centuries. It’s a fantastic exploration of these two characters. And it holds another layer to the overall dilemma over what the Defiant ought to do. Odo confesses his love for Kira and his desire that she live. In essence, he’s the polar opposite of Yedrin.
Even more interesting is what the colonists choose to do when they learn that Sisko plans to successfully leave orbit. The decision essentially dooms them. And this raises the question: if you know that life will end within hours, what do you do? The colonists’ answer is poetic: they decide to go on with their lives and actually *plant* trees — a literal act of hope. It’s touching … and it touches the crew of the Defiant. And it’s a bit profound, too. Deciding to live, right up to the end, is an important lesson.
Of course, we all know that the crew will ultimately survive — how can they not? — and so the questions remain: how will they survive, and what will happen to the colonists? As it turns out, just as the Defiant was about to meet the temporal anomaly, the ship veered off course. Why? The older Odo. His love for Kira, his desire to see her live and to have a chance for his younger self to be with her, trumped his loyalty to the colonists. Indeed, his actions doomed them. After the Defiant leaves orbit, there is no trace of the colonists.
What’s left is for the crew to remember the colonists and for Kira and Odo to find a way forward.
“Children of Time” is a very good episode. Individual scenes such as: Kira and Odo at Kira’s grave; Worf meeting the Sons of Mogh; the Planting Day activities; the Sons of Mogh joining those activities; the many meetings of crew and family members; all of these are indelible and enjoyable. The episode certainly has the potential to move viewers on a visceral level. It just isn’t one of the best DS9 has to offer. The pacing is just too slow. And the overt confession of love from older Odo to Kira just doesn’t ring true. I understand his joy at seeing her again, but knowing the possible future, how could he just blurt out such important information. And, too, old Odo’s justification for killing not just himself, but 8,000 colonists should be under some scrutiny. And, finally, there’s that whole time paradox: even if the crew *had* gone back in time, how could the colony have been built as-is with the foreknowledge the crew had of where things should be built and how and when they were to have kids, and so forth. That foreknowledge surely would have changed *something* in the timeline, wouldn’t it?
Filed under: Deep Space Nine
One of the great things about this episode is that while it may have all of the elements of a typical “reset button” show, it refrains from using said button. There are real emotional consequences both for the characters (particularly Odo and Kira) and for the audience. Some may see Odo’s actions as a bridge too far, but that, I think is what the writers were trying to convey.
In a way, Odo did what Harlan Ellison had originally wanted Kirk to do at the end of “City On The Edge Of Forever,” only to be overruled by Gene Roddenberry. Odo sacrificed everything and everyone for the love of a woman. The difference is that Kirk’s decision to save Edith Keeler – had he made it – would have been somewhat impulsive. Odo had lived with 300 years of unrequited love, not to mention deep sadness over Nerys’ death. He had time to weigh the consequences and when he was presented with the opportunity to save Nerys, he ultimately he did the selfish thing and doomed the colony to non-existence.
Harlan Ellison’s rather petulant and loudmouthed objection to how Roddenberry had changed his ending to “City” is quite famous in Trek lore. He originally wrote Kirk as so head over heels in love that he damned the consequences and desperately tried to save Edith at the last second from a fatal car accident, only to have the ever logical Spock intervene in order to preserve history. Roddenberry changed it so that McCoy, unaware of the paradox, is stopped from saving the girl by Kirk. Because saving her would have meant the end of history as we know it and that the Enterprise – James T. Kirk’s one true love – would have never existed.
Gene Roddenberry made the right decision for his character and the DS9 writing staff made the right decision for Odo in “Children of Time.” It’s clearly established at this point that Odo is fiercely loyal to Kira and, despite the seeming closure of recent episodes, he is still hopelessly in love with her even 300 years later. He would do anything to save her and he did.