Sisko, Dax, Odo and Garak return from a conference on the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, where Garak got flak for his pro-Cardassian bias, and Odo is uncomfortable with his own reputation as a hero.
They’re in a runabout, so it’s no surprise that a plot contrivance particle field hits them before the opening credits. This time, our characters have somehow been transported to pre-liberation Tarak Nor, where they find themselves dressed as and being treated as Bajoran slave laborers.
The B plot establishes that they are actually unconscious and having a shared hallucination, but the hand-waving does’t really try to hide the fact that we’re watching a morality tale, a la Twilight Zone.
Dax find herself in the personal quarters of Gul Dukat, who assures he simply wants someone to talk to. He seems perfectly sincere, even vulnerable. We’ve already seen Kira reject Dukat’s toxic boy-man self-pity routine, but perhaps this is a Dukat who hasn’t yet committed the atrocities that shaped his character. It’s a chilling scene because it’s so uncertain.
Odo seems unusually distracted and evasive, but admits that he recognizes the names of the men that he, Sisko and Dukat are apparently role-playing. They were, he tells us, accused of an attempted assassination of Dukat, and they were executed in public even though they were innocent.
Quark of the past hires them to work in his bar, and though he’s clearly taking advantage of them, we can see why anybody would rather work for him than for the Cardassians.
Given how reliable Odo’s memory usually is, Sisko is very slow to react to Odo’s vagueness, or how little Odo seems to care about the scheme that Quark is apparently up to. A shot of Odo reacting to a vision of blood on his hands makes sure that the audience gets what’s going on.
The assassination attempt and false accusations happen just as Odo predicted. He makes a solid, evidence-based case to the Cardassian security chief, who is unmoved and doesn’t even bother to corroborate Odo’s claims. Just when Dax seems to be saving the day, a disorienting reset happens, and Odo realizes he must witness, along with his companions, the true sequence of events.
Bashir has a semi-plausible medical technobabble explanation for everyone when they wake up from participating in the scenario that was somehow generated by Odo’s unresolved guilt.
Not one of the best episodes, but I did enjoy spending time with familiar characters and watching the puzzle pieces refuse to fit.
Despite the shaky premise, the story offers good world-building and the finale is good character development, as Odo admits to Kira that he is not sure whether this is the only time he failed to prevent the death of innocent people.
