Time's Orphan

DVD, DS9 S6 (Time's Orphan) (2)

Molly stabbed the alien in its gut with a broken bottle… Not a sentence you ever expected to play out on screen, but that's the main reason this episode draws you in so effectively (not for Molly stabbing an alien in its gut with a broken bottle), because it does what science fiction does best with a 'what if…?' tale that plays on the themes of loss of childhood and innocence, and the grief that brings, and whether it's fair to take one life in exchange for another (and in the Trek realm, that life can be one and the same person). I hear a lot of negativity in podcasts about Keiko and the O'Brien family, but I've never found them annoying, quite the opposite, in fact - they helped to ground the series in the 'TNG' reality which was all about families, except that on 'DS9' they were in the midst of uncertainty and danger in a way that they were generally protected from on the classy, comfortable Enterprise-D. I also love that they continue that tradition of family, since we saw their conception (literally in Molly's case), on 'TNG,' then development and use as part of ongoing stories thanks to 'DS9.' But with the Dominion War splitting up families and breaking up even what little normality and comfort there was on the station, O'Brien's clan left for Earth back in Season 5 so the Chief wouldn't have to worry so much and could concentrate on his job. I'm sure the family's safety had something to do with it, too! This episode brings them all back together and, as with other characters in these later episodes, sows the seeds of future decisions when he makes the rather rash promise not to send them away again.

You'd think Miles had been all the way to Earth to pick them up, the number of episodes he'd been missing from lately, and who's to say he didn't! He's not above nicking a Runabout for personal use when the mood takes him, as we see here (and we see the Defiant's sickbay for once!). Of course the Chief's family has always been the most important thing to him, but Keiko knows his purpose and usefulness finds greatest outlet in Starfleet's service, and he becomes miserable if he can't do what he's good at. This is, I would say, the reason why he accepted the uncertain and risky proposition of a posting to DS9 in the first place, despite Keiko not being entirely happy with it, but the absence from his family has given him new resolve to put them ahead of his career, and he says he'll ask for a transfer if the war heats up, rather than be parted from his fledgeling clan, which would eventually happen in the final episode of the series. As much fun as it's been seeing O'Brien have fun with Julian, or go undercover for Starfleet (and get Chester the cat, who appears again here, though Keiko gives the impression of hating it - she should be glad her husband had company, but perhaps it urinated on her bonsai or something?), without having to worry about Keiko being concerned about his absence, I love seeing the O'Briens together, as they used to be, particularly in the first two seasons. Like Jake and Nog, the O'Briens were part of that community fabric of continuing drama, and so it's with some sadness that we realise this is the last O'Brien family episode, just as it's the last Worf and Dax family episode.

This realisation evokes added poignancy to what is already an across-the-board affecting episode. Even though I love the O'Briens, and always appreciate the use Trek makes of the great outdoors, I still wasn't ready for the flood of powerful impressions this episode punches you with. It's a surprisingly emotional piece that relies heavily on a guest star, but Michelle Krusiec gives not only a guest star performance, but a star performance, making you believe this really is a Molly aged ten years in a wild and lonely place, alone, having adapted and survived, with the roller-coaster of confusion and utter bewilderment at the many strange experiences she's suddenly thrust into. It says a lot about Molly that she could survive as a child on an alien world for so long - she must have her Father's genes for ingenuity and her Mother's confidence in nature for her to have done so well. One thing I never thought about until right now is where older Molly got her clothes from. I'm tempted to say a time-travelling T'Pol from 'Enterprise' stumbled upon the wild adolescent and gave her one of her castoffs (seriously, the catsuit she wears looks like the Vulcan's - they must have used the same material when they were designing T'Pol's outfit for that series), but it could point to there being some other active technology on this long-abandoned planet. If these aliens hadn't been around for a couple of millennia, yet their time portal still functioned (could it have been an Iconian gateway - it was like a cross between that and the Guardian of Forever?), it's not a stretch to suggest Molly had access to some kind of alien Replicator.

Whatever resources she used to survive her new environment in 'The Jungle Book' or Romulus and Remus manner (the Roman legend rather than the planets), though we assume she had no animal assistance, she was able to thrive and grow into a healthy, and active young woman. Then this woman, who has had years of solitude and learnt to understand the rocks, trees and grass, finds herself ripped away from all she knows like the El-Aurians from the Nexus, via a Transporter beam, the first disorienting encounter with technology, but not the last. You could even suggest the episode almost subliminally presents the idea that for all this wonderful Starfleet technology, what is really needed for health and wellbeing is grass, trees and the fresh living of a natural environment, though whether this was intentional, or just an alternative reading, I couldn't say. But if you look at all the trials and frightening new experiences they throw at Molly in an effort to accept her and try to get her to accept who she was to them, she is only truly free when frolicking in what she thinks is Golana, the world she'd lived on. This was a planet I assumed we'd heard of before, since it's said to be a Bajoran colony, and young Molly has a nice moment with baby brother Kirayoshi, telling him the last time they were there he was in Mummy's tummy, so it's obviously a place she knows well and has visited, but this is the only episode in which it's mentioned.

So the older Molly already had an affinity for the planet, which probably aided her will to survive more than if she'd found herself alone on a Planet Hell environment - if you're going to be marooned somewhere, you want it to be a place you're already accustomed to and love, so she scored on that front. Unfortunately, her parents, while eschewing the experts of Starfleet for some reason, seeing them as the big bad authorities that will eventually come to haul their bedraggled daughter off to be dissected (or you'd think so from the way they react!), aren't child psychologists and cause her untold damage. They do try, oh how they try! That Transporter beam to grab Molly from the other side of the portal was necessary, and they do go to all the trouble of setting up a Cargo Bay full of plants and rocks so Molly feels more comfortable (how did Sisko manage to get that tree in there - cut a hole into the floor below for the root system?), but it still has four walls and a ceiling, Molly can't see the stars. And when they eventually realise that Molly wants to go home, they misunderstand and take her to their home, hoping the memories will acclimatise their daughter back to her old life, but instead it frustrates her even more. After initially gazing in wonder upon the vista of space (she later indicates that her parents home is in the stars, while hers is on the planet in a touching moment of childish understanding of the concept of home, without the context of space stations and starships), her old room is too small, as are its contents - one item we'd see again is the doll's house which Sisko somehow ended up with in Season 7! Maybe he visited once, saw it, and realised that was the house he wanted to build on Bajor, O'Brien donating it to him when Molly grew too old for it?

Wanting the best for their 'child,' the O'Briens make the mistake of indulging her, but only for a short while, taking her to a Holosuite recreation of Golana - it's very accurate, as if they were really there! They must have made a holographic record of their favourite picnic spot as a matter of course, a bit like taking a holo-picture as the Doctor used to as a hobby on 'Voyager.' It's amazing that those rocks weren't real, and I don't mean they were holographic, but in production terms were fabricated and taken to the location, as there weren't any there - they look as if they'd always been part of the landscape. The high of Molly's absolute joy in being back in what has become her native environment is intoxicating, her happiness absolute, but this only makes calling time on the program a much harsher pulling out the rug from under her simplistic understanding. She's already been beamed away from the place once, into a cave full of half-remembered strangers, so it wouldn't seem so strange for her to be suddenly back on the planet, distance and time not something she'd likely fully comprehend. You'd think that special allowances would have been made for the family as it was such a unique and difficult situation, but although Quark is apologetic, he has to turf them out in favour of a couple of Klingons, and Sisko apparently didn't even give the Chief time off as he complains he's falling behind in his repair schedule for watching Molly, indicating he still has a repair schedule! I know we're in a time of war, but even so…

The suddenness of Molly being jerked out of her reverie sends her back to square one - anyone unpracticed in the art of the Holosuite would find it unnerving for reality to suddenly disappear and shrink to a small, dark room with lots of piercing lights. And then to be dragged through the bar, full of scary alien faces and unfamiliar noises panics her into a wild frenzy, hence the bottle stabbing incident. I liked seeing another 'fish-man' alien (as I dubbed them for their Pike-like appearance), otherwise known as a Markalian, a familiar race on the station, but he's later referred to as a Tarkalean, another well-referenced race (for Tarkalean tea), only ever seen in 'Enterprise' ('Regeneration'), although I was getting confused and thinking of Idanians, another culinary referenced race (for Idanian Spiced Pudding), seen in Season 5's 'A Simple Investigation.' Even accounting for the dim light in the bar, you couldn't mistake a Markalian for either the bumpy-foreheaded, cowl-wearing Idanians or Tarkaleans, except in the phonetic similarity, so this is either a script error, or this particular Markalian had been adopted and raised by Tarkaleans! It's not like Sisko and Odo to make a mistake about something like that, so we'll have to give them the benefit of the doubt - I wonder if they'd fix that sort of thing in a remastered 'DS9'? I hope not, because it's these ephemeral little oddities that I thrive on and enjoy spotting. The terror doesn't end for poor Molly, as she's trapped in a Holding Cell, which is even worse than the Cargo Bay, and, like others before her (Tom Paris in 'Threshold;' a Joran-possessed Sisko in 'Facets,' to name but two dramatically similar moments), she repeatedly flings herself at the forcefield, not to damage herself intentionally, but in a lack of understanding, a tragic, disturbed figure hoping to break through.

The irrational fear Miles and Keiko seem to harbour against Federation institutions seems out of kilter with what we've seen of the organisation in the 24th Century. In Kirk's time you had madmen running asylums and getting away with it (until he intervened, of course), but the very fact that 'TNG' had a counsellor on the bridge should point to mental health being much better understood and dealt with in a careful and understanding way, as part of normal life. I suppose it must be the natural desire of a parent to protect their young, even though they weren't doing a great job with her when you look at it objectively, so perhaps the best thing was for Molly to have that specialist care. There's no reason to think she'd have been studied like a lab animal, but perhaps dealing with the shadier sides of Federation life, such as Section 31, gave O'Brien cause for concern. I don't entirely see why it's any of Starfleet's business to interfere with a 'child' like that anyway, except for the fact that the 'Tarkalean' was pressing charges so there were legal hoops to be negotiated. Would the young Molly face charges when they eventually got her back to 'DS9,' as it's a pretty farfetched loophole to get out of a criminal prosecution by reverting to a younger version of yourself - the court case alone would have made compelling viewing! Then again, despite Molly having physically aged she would surely still be considered a minor, mentally, so I don't think they had anything to worry about. If only Samuel T. Cogley was still alive…

Once again O'Brien has to steal a Runabout in order to 'save' a member of his family, just like in 'The Assignment' when Keiko was possessed by a Pah-Wraith. The stakes might not be so high this time, but Odo wasn't going to get in his way twice (especially after the last time, when the Chief belted him!). Good old Jones, the stalwart member of Starfleet security who's so often there in the background, gets a line for once, although his trust in Odo probably went down a notch when he told him to go and check on Deputy Pinar (pronounced 'panar' which instantly made me think of Pa'nar Syndrome - two T'Pol references in one episode, three years before she first appeared, is this some kind of conspiracy?), the guy on duty at the Holding Cells who gets a neck-full of knockout juice from O'Brien's hypo. I'd love to know how Odo explained his complicity in allowing the Chief to walk off the station like that. If there was a hearing he should have been in the dock too! And with that they're off back to Golana with the strange plan to send Molly back through the portal to an unknown home, with unknown dangers, and seal it up so she can never get through again? All because they think she's going to be locked away. It's not the best reasoning, but it had the result of giving young Molly a chance to return, even if her parents had no idea. It was a hard decision, and slightly bonkers, to give up their child hoping she'd survive, but it's no less touching for that. Most touching of all is older Molly finding her young self shocked and alone, realises it's her, and gives her the Lupi doll (could be Ktarian, but more likely Bajoran), before sending her back through.

It's sad that this older version of Molly ceases to exist, vanishing away like a wisp before our eyes, but like the older Jake in 'The Visitor,' it's a sacrifice that the younger version will benefit from and has some beautiful connotations, even if in this case she didn't know she was going to de-exist. If they'd knowingly planned to exchange Molly two for original Molly there would have been implications: is it fair to give up someone who has ten more years of life, for the same person to live that time over again with her loving family? Didn't this older Molly have as much right to exist as the younger? And yet, if she hadn't returned (and she would have had a good chance of survival if she hadn't vanished away), young Molly would have been left scared and alone. But then she'd have turned into that older Molly, and… it starts to hurt your brain. As it was, it was pure fluke that O'Brien didn't destroy the portal before his little daughter came back through. I suspect Starfleet might have court-martialled him (if they can do that to non-commissioned officers), if he had knocked off the portal, as it's potentially important technology to be studied, but all ended happily. You could say it was a pointless experience, a waste of time, a standalone episode in the midst of far more important continuing events, but you'd be dead wrong - these are the vital ingredients of which Trek is sculpted: family, character, tough choices, and bold self-sacrifice, and if there's a happy ending it can be just as satisfying as a surprise or shock conclusion.

It's amazing the B-story of Worf's acceptance of the challenge of baby Kirayoshi, was a last-minute addition to 'pad' the episode, as it's almost as great as the A-story, especially considering the doom of impending events. It was important to have scenes between Worf and Dax while there was still time, and it shows up the couple's characters so vividly: Dax won't admit until the end that she doubted Worf's ability as a Father, and he himself, in true Klingon tradition sees it as something to be overcome. Just as all Ferengi see opportunity in everything, Klingons see challenge and battle in everything! As Worf says, in one of my favourite lines from the series, "I have stood in battle against Kelvans twice my size… If I can do these things, I can make this child go to sleep." It's one of those innocuous little references to 'TOS' that the 'DS9' writers were so good at, and opens up a whole can of worms about when and how the Kelvans returned to our galaxy (there must be a comic or non-canon novel that dealt with this, surely?), since they were from the Andromeda Galaxy and their natural form was giant squid-like creatures, which would seem to suggest they didn't bother coming back in humanoid guise this time, after their first attempt in 'By Any Other Name,' since Worf is of not inconsiderable height, which would make beings twice his size pretty gigantic. But it's his feelings he battles with most, still having guilt over his parenting of Alexander, undeserved as he turned out fine, if a little clumsy. But Worf feels he failed his son, Kirayoshi and his Dax' future children, in typical Worf fashion taking things too seriously and setting impossibly high standards to live up to.

What it really does is bring him and Dax even closer, if that were possible, and cements the tragedy to come. But future events can't detract from the charm of this B-story, and the two sides complement each other perfectly, as both sets of parents and potential parents deal with their problems. It's much harder on the O'Briens as they battle with teenager issues from a unique perspective, losing someone then getting them back, then giving her up, and getting her back again. I don't think young Molly would have felt much trauma, there's nothing to suggest she was gone too long, as older Molly was sent back to the same time period that she was, so although the story takes place over several days it could have been mere minutes for her. Even so, minutes for a scared child can be a long time, and it's nice to see young Hana Hatae coming along as an actress in the scenes she has: confidently talking to her younger brother, and looking shellshocked at the end when she's trapped alone until the other Molly appears to send her home. It may not boast space battles or sweeping drama, and for some, perhaps that made it feel like an anomaly in this season amidst such big issues and stories, but such character episodes are just as important, if not more, and for me, the episode is summed up wholly by the final words of Keiko: "it's lovely, just lovely."

*****