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Time's Orphan
(Star Trek - Deep Space Nine episode production code 548)
story by Joe Menosky
teleplay by story editors David Weddle & Bradley Thompson
This episode has a really good idea behind it. It just made so
much sense to explore O'Brien's family, who had largely been
ignored this season, and put such a fascinating twist into it.
Of course, the writers here are making their usual mistakes
with time travel, but at least keeping them largely unobtrusive
this time. The usual Starfleet belief comes out of Dr. Bashir
this time, as a quick rebuttal against the obvious fix.
At this stage, it is just character belief, with Starfleet remaining
true to itself.... sad but necessary, because this motivates
the story, and without the O'Briens trying their best to work
with this new Molly, we would never find out what the ideal
resolution for her would be.
The end actually went up a notch in coolness, as the older Molly
comes face to face with her younger double.... and we do here
mean double as the term is used in
"Sliders", as we are not just dealing
with travel through time, but also separate universes branching
off all of the various choices that the characters are making.
In fact, this story would only have to lose the end of one shot
to align itself with good time travel theory, and that is the shot
of the older Molly vanishing in a magical effect. She is free
to continue to exist in this universe now parallel to the one she
grew up in, although she will see it go through the same ten
years she saw before, and watch events among the plants and
animals and weather patterns play out somewhat differently.
Too bad no one thought to take the bloody reset button and
erasers out of the Trek writers' hands. Oh well, at least
they didn't mess up more than that one last shot, and for the
most part gave us a thoroughly enjoyable episode with its drama
sourced in proper ideas. Thus, this story is much better than
last year's
"Children of Time",
despite making pretty much the identical mistake.
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Region 1, NTSC, U.S.
Region 1, NTSC, Canada
Region 2, PAL, U.K. (regular)
