Although we are done with DS9 and are now in the Delta Quadrant with Voyager, that doesn’t mean you can’t go back and catch up on the episodes you missed. You can find the rest here!
Chief Miles O’Brien finds himself leaping into the future, striving to put right what will go wrong and hoping that his next leap, will be the last. Originally airing on February 27,1995 this is Quantum Leap Visionary.
The Episode:
Station Log Stardate Undetermined: Visionary
Miles O’Brien begins experiencing leaps into the future after receiving a minor dose of radiation poisoning while a Romulan delegation arrives to receive intelligence on the Dominion.
The Breakdown:
Chief O’Brien awakes in ops to find himself being treated for radiation poisoning just as a Romulan delegation arrives for a briefing on the Dominion. Assigned to light duty by Commander Sisko, Miles departs to get some relaxation at Quarks Bar by setting up a dart board. Just as they begin to test the board out, O’Brien has a vision of the future where Quark is complaining about Klingons destroying the holosuites. As soon as the vision clears, O’Brien collapses on the floor.
After being checked out by Julian, the Doctor tells Miles to get some rest and his hallucinations are not unexpected with the radiation. Just as Miles returns to duty, he encounters Quark who complains about the Klingons just as O’Brien had seen in his vision. Looking over, he and Quark see another O’Brien watching them from across the promenade. Reporting the incident to Sisko, Dax finds that there have been minor temporal fluxes around the same time as O’Brien visions. Just as she is giving his report, he finds himself in the middle of a bar fight where he saves himself from being killed by a Klingon warrior. Returning to the past, O’Brien promptly passes out. Back in the infirmary, the Doctor informs him that the time shifting may end up causing his death. Dax is on the job to discover what is causing the shifts.
As O’Brien is dealing with Time Jumps, Sisko and Kira are dealing with a rather uncooperative group of Romulan delegates. Determined to get the information on the Dominion they were promised, the Romulans become more and more aggressive in their demands, even asking for personal profiles on all of the crew. Soon they find themselves at odds with Kira who finds herself more than fed up with them.
O’Brien finds himself in Quarks Bar expecting the fight to break out at any time. Concerned, he is assured by Bashir that nothing will happen. Soon the Klingons encounter a group of Romulans and start the very fight the Chief warned them about. Once again, Past O’Brien arrives just i time to save himself. Suddenly O’Brien has a vision that shows the Chief being killed by a phaser blast after opening a panel in one of the hallways. Awaking in the infirmary once again, he warns everyone of what he has seen.
With Odo in the lead, O’Brien and team investigate the panel the Chief saw in his vision only to find the panel free from any weapons or booby-traps. Setting up a surveillance on the panel, Sisko and O’Brien are summoned to Ops where Dax has found traces of low level tetryon emissions that may be the cause of the Chief’s time jumps. Bashir soon believes that he can help prevent the time leaps but it will take some time.
Kira informs Sisko that the Romulans have been moved to new quarters, quarters that just happen to be right across from the panel that killed O’Brien in his time leap. Concerned, Sisko asks Odo to check the surveillance they set up only to find that someone else has installed some surveillance of their own using very delicate transporter work. Odo believes that the Klingons are involved but plans to investigate all options, even Quark. They soon locate the place the transport was completed and discover that someone has tampered with a replicator in order to transport the device from within the station itself. It seems that the device used was by the Klingons and the Klingons on the station are part of a Strike Force used by the Klingon Empire. It seems that Gowron has sent a group to watch the Romulan delegation. Odo plans to hold the Klingons until the Romulans depart the station, preventing the death of Chief O’Brien.
Back in Quarks bar, O’Brien soon finds himself leaping forward again only to get a vision of his own dead body in the infirmary. There he encounters Bashir who informs past Miles what has killed him, indicating that the radiation ended up killing him unexpectedly as the Doctor missed the damage done to the basilar arteries in his brain stem. O’Brien returns to the past and collapses once again. Awakening again in the infirmary, O’Brien informs Bashir that he needs to run a Basilar scan and fix the problem or Miles will die.
Just as things look good (after Julian runs the Basilar Scan), Miles has another vision of the future where the station is exploding with future Miles rescuing a small group of people via a runabout. Just as the station explodes, the wormhole vanishes. Miles returns to the present and informs the ops team of his vision of the future. Miles volunteers to visit the future to discover what caused the station to explode even though flooding his system with radiation could kill him. Sisko reluctantly agrees with his mission and informs them that they have two hours to accomplish their mission before he begins an evacuation.
Miles and Julian send the Chief into the future where he meets himself before the explosion. Miles informs his future self about the explosion and asks for help. The two of them go to work on the situation and report to ops only to find themselves under attack by a Romulan Warbird. They discover that the singularity that has been orbiting the station is the Warbird and Miles must go back in time to warn the crew. Past Miles realizes that he can not make the return trip without dying and send Future Miles back to complete the task. Future Miles returns and tells the crew what to do. Sisko raises the shields of the station and prepares for an attack.
Sisko confronts the Romulan commander as to his plans to collapse the wormhole. He informs them that should they not recall their Warbird, they will destroy it. The Romulans leave, clearly having been caught in the act.
Julian is shocked to learn that Miles is not the same Miles that left him. He is from a slightly different timeline and feels that he doesn’t quite belong, even though he did save the station from destruction.
Is this a ‘Good’ Episode:
This is another example of the Miles Must Suffer story lines we see during the course of Deep Space Nine. Every so often bad things happen to the crew and, most time, the writers choose our very own Chief of Operations to take the brunt of it. It’s not a bad thing per-say but he does get picked on quite a bit over the course of the seven seasons.
That being said, this is a pretty solid time travel story that really uses the trope in a very effective and mostly original way. Most of the time, visits to the past or the future are fraught with the ‘we are changing history’ issue but this time, in the fashion of the series itself, the crew just charge forward determined to do what they can to save the lives of everyone on board. It is a refreshing take on the time travel trope and that makes this a story worth telling.
One interesting thing though, the Miles that is in the series from here on out is technically not the same Miles that we have had in the series so far. In fact he is several hours older and from a different time frame. The Miles of our timeline died in the future of radiation poisoning. I wonder if this is something he will ever even try to explain to Keiko…
Gleanings and Cool Bits:
- Once again we are reminded of Odo’s love for Kira.
- This is the beginning of the classic Miles and Julian dart games at Quarks Bar, something we will see again.
Thanks for reading the Retro TV Review, I look forward to discussing the rest of the series with you, one episode at a time every Monday, Wednesday and Friday! Next Review: Distant Voices
If you would like to read more reviews I have a weekly series called Key Movies Of My Life that comes out every Thursday and for more retro TV goodness check out the rest of the Retro TV Reviews here.
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Late To The Game 6/6/2021 (Originally published 7/17/19)
Special Thanks to Memory Alpha as they are one of the best sources for details on Star Trek information available. Although I have a pretty deep knowledge on the subject, they have proven invaluable as a regular resource.
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