JENNIFER: My mother warned me to watch out for junior officers.
SISKO: Your mother is going to adore me.
I mean, who wouldn't?
OPAKA: Tradition says the orbs were sent by the Prophets to teach us. What we have learned has shaped our theology. The Cardassians will do anything to decipher their powers. If they discover the Celestial Temple, they could destroy it.
I think "understanding the Orbs" and "discovering the wormhole" are two unrelated things.
QUARK: What'll you have, Commander?
SISKO: How's the local synthale?
QUARK: You won't like it. I love the Bajorans. Such a deeply spiritual culture, but they make a dreadful ale.
You make synthale by hand? I thought that's what replicators are for.
Station log. Stardate 46390.1. The Enterprise has been ordered to the Lapolis system. They're scheduled to depart at zero-five hundred hours after offloading three runabout class vessels.
Danube-class, grrr.
If you're wondering where the word "runabout" came from, it's a real word, unlike "Puddle Jumper" over on Stargate. A runabout boat is a motorboat with a flat bottom to allow for skipping on the water (some modern jetskis are also called runabouts). Runabout cars are light cars meant for short errands only, based on older horse-drawn buggies of similar purpose. The word is still used in the United Kingdom today to describe a small car meant for local use only.
SISKO: He's a little young for you, isn't he?
DAX: He's twenty-seven, I'm twenty-eight.
SISKO: Three hundred twenty-eight, maybe.
This seems odd. We know that Sisko has met other Trill in the past, and must therefore know that such maturity arithmetic doesn't work the same way as with humans. The idea that joined Trill can only have relationships with other joined Trill is frankly disturbing.
BASHIR: This'll be perfect. Real frontier medicine.
KIRA: Frontier medicine?
BASHIR: Major, I had my choice of any job in the fleet.
KIRA: Did you?
BASHIR: I didn't want some cushy job or a research grant. I wanted this. The farthest reaches of the galaxy. One of the most remote outposts available. This is where the adventure is. This is where heroes are made. Right here, in the wilderness.
And the creators wondered why viewers hated Bashir at first. This guy is really supposed to be genetically enhanced?
DAX: Computer, create a data base for all historical references to the Orbs, including all reports of any unexplained phenomena in Bajoran space.
COMPUTER: Time parameters?
DAX: Ten millennia.
COMPUTER: Initializing data base. Requested function will require two hours to complete.
One wonders how fast the Enterprise computer could do it.
PICARD: This is your favorite transporter room, isn't it?
O'BRIEN: Number three. Yes, sir.
What makes one transporter room different from another?
DUKAT: Excuse my presumption, but this was my office only two weeks ago. I'm not used to being on this side of the desk.
I do wish the writers put more thought into the sequence of events. Quark couldn't find a way off the station in two weeks?
COMPUTER: Idran is based on the analysis conducted in the twenty-second century by the Quadros-One probe of the Gamma Quadrant.
The expanded universe makes clear that this was a Starfleet probe, but knowing what we know now of the Enterprise days, I doubt that Starfleet at that time had deep-space exploration in mind. This seems more like a Vulcan thing. Their lifespans would also allow them to wait the decades required to hear back from these probes.
(Sisko sees a vicious, rocky, lightning-ridden alien planet, but Dax sees they're in a beautiful garden.)
DAX: It's beautiful.
SISKO: You have a strange eye for beauty, Dax.
DAX: You don't think this is one of the most idyllic settings you've ever seen?
SISKO: We are standing on a rock face. Do you see the storm?
DAX: It's as clear as a summer's day.
What was the point of this?
KIRA: Mister O'Brien, what would it take to move this station to the mouth of the wormhole?
O'BRIEN: This isn't a starship, Major. We've got six working thrusters to power us and that's it. A hundred sixty million kilometre trip would take two months.
31 km/s is a thousandth of full impulse. That's really slow.
At least 160,000,000 km isn't unreasonable for the distance from Mars to a point halfway across the asteroid belt.
KIRA: That wormhole might just reshape the future of this entire quadrant. The Bajorans have to stake a claim to it. And I have to admit that claim will be a lot stronger if there's a Federation presence to back it up.
I'm pretty sure that anything inside a solar system is the property of the inhabitants of that solar system. And remember that the Barzan wormhole was merely in the same sector as Barzan.
DAX: Couldn't you modify the subspace field output of the deflector generators just enough to create a low-level field around the station?
O'BRIEN: So we could lower the inertial mass?
DAX: If you can make the station lighter, those six thrusters will be all the power we'd need.
Before you mention "Deja Q" I need to point out that that was a warp field, not a deflector field. I'm pretty sure the station doesn't have any warp coils.
JAKE PROPHET: What comes before now is no different than what is now, or what is to come. It is one's existence.
I always hated this "the Prophets have no concept of the passage of time" thing. Over and over again they show that they know what "before" and "after" are. Furthermore, why do they care about Bajor if humanoid behavior is incomprehensible to them?
JENNIFER 2: I've heard Starfleet officers don't want families because they complicate their lives.
SISKO 2: Starfleet officers don't often find mates who want to raise families on a starship.
I thought that only the Galaxy class was designed for families and large numbers of civilians. The Miranda class was a workhorse, how is there room for families?
PICARD PROPHET: It is terminated.
SISKO: Terminated?
PICARD PROPHET: Our existence is disrupted whenever one of you enters the passage.
This is where the "wormhole travel hurts the Prophets" thing comes from. And you may have noticed that a Prophet just admitted to an if-then sequence of events, i.e. the PASSAGE OF TIME. Grrr....
JAKE: You value your ignorance of what is to come?
SISKO: That may be the most important thing to understand about humans. It is the unknown that defines our existence. We are constantly searching, not just for answers to our questions, but for new questions. We are explorers. We explore our lives, day by day, and we explore the galaxy, trying to expand the boundaries of our knowledge. And that is why I am here. Not to conquer you with weapons, but with ideas, to co-exist and learn.
Time to link to the
Explorers video again.
SISKO: I never left this ship.
JENNIFER PROPHET: You exist here.
SISKO: I exist here. I don't know if you can understand. I see her like this every time I close my eyes. In the darkness, in the blink of an eye, I see her like this.
JENNIFER PROPHET: None of your past experiences helped prepare you for this consequence.
SISKO: And I have never figured out how to live without her.
JENNIFER PROPHET: So you choose to exist here. It is not linear.
SISKO: No. It's not linear.
As much as I HATE the Prophets (I really do, and we'll be discussing them in depth during the retrospective), this is a lesson that Sisko needed to learn.
CARDASSIAN 3: They were using a Thoron field to block our sensors but we were able to penetrate it.
JASAD: What are their defences?
CARDASSIAN 3: According to our scans, an estimated five thousand photons, integrated phaser banks on all levels.
JASAD: When did they receive these armaments? And how did they install them without our knowledge?
A very good question. I'm pretty sure that installing this stuff would necessitate creating scaffolding and equipment outside the station. Stuff that long-range scans would notice. You just can't do the job with workbees (which we know DS9 has).
Station log, Commander Benjamin Sisko, stardate 46393.1. The lifeforms who created the wormhole have agreed to allow safe passage for all ships traveling to the Gamma Quadrant.
When did that happen?