This episode was recorded on July 6, 2025.
We recap "Children of Time" and discuss privileging the lives of a select few over the many, time-travel genocide, serial killer alternate Odo, and the challenges of staying a Ben Sisko fan during a rewatch with a Leftist lens.
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Transcript
[Note: Transcripts are autogenerated and may contain errors.]
This is Southpaw Deep Space Nine Season 5. We are your hosts, Scott and Sam. On this start date, July 6th, 2025, we are discussing Children of Time, a time travel episode, as the name basically describes. Scott, can you tell us about this episode?
Yes. So... Odo, Kira, Jedzia, and the team arrive home after a mission on the Defiant. It turns out that Kira broke up with Shakar after going to a Bajoran seer who said they weren't compatible. Odo gets emotional and takes a walk, because as we know, Odo has feelings for Kira.
Miles tells Kira about making a dollhouse for Molly, who he loves very much. As they're returning, Jadzia gets a scan that there might be a planet which is through an energy field to see possible phase-through people and quantum fluctuations and all that to get them through. Kira gets energy zapped.
They go through, and the ship needs to recharge. Ben is upset at Jadzia for being nosy. And they get hailed by some humans who clearly know who they are. And they explain that they are in their, like, great, great, great, great, great grandkids. That when the Defiant tries to leave,
they will time travel to 200 years ago and not be able to get home. And, like, basically... some weird time shit. Yedrin Dax and Merida O'Brien claim to be the progeny of Jadzia and Miles, respectively. Again, 200 years down. And there's like 8,000 people. Jadzia is dubious But scans Yedrin and Dax is in his body.
And then this is like the third or fourth Dax. And Miranda is definitely related to Miles. And Benjamin is still dubious. So he asks... Yedrin to tell him something that only he knows or Yedrin says that, whatever. And he is about to tell a Curzon story, which sounds naughty. And Ben's like, okay, okay, you're Dax.
They go to a meeting hall. The kids are using a teaching program. Cork is teaching math. Molly has become a popular name amongst the O'Brien clan on the commune. The kids love Worf. And we find out that Kira will die in the future past. But Ben still wants to repair the Defiant.
Ben feels knowing the future may prevent the past. Worf believes that they would destroy the past. Because this is the time travel logic they're using in this episode. You know, Star Trek uses... They're flimsy with their time travel explanations from time to time. Yejin says he has a plan. But it hinges on Kira.
The energy burst created a subspace doubling effect. And he believes that if they do that for a moment, every molecule in her body will create a quantum twin. And if they tweak the defiant just right, they could make quantum twins of the whole entire ship. And one will go back in time.
The other will go through the barrier. and you know there's logs about the defiant that hits that hit a temporal anomaly 39 hours after orbit all this is all true there's 8 000 people here and he believes it's the only way they can do this ben tells jadzia to take a look at the science
Yedrin thanks Ben for considering it and he says he calls Yedrin old man which is a you know a thing that Ben calls the Daxes because his best friend was Curzon as he got ready Bashir does some scans Kira doesn't feel sick yet and Bashir says she
will but he's going to try to help and Bashir is very excited to meet his progeny and then we meet a 200 year old odo he's better at shape-shifting he's very happy to see kira he tells kira that odo and this odo have loved her for a
very long time so the truth is out there now um kira tries to understand how this was odo expresses that he hid his feelings as much as he could And Kira, in a very emotionally intelligent way, says that must have been really hard for you. Especially when you give me advice on my love life.
Kira asks why he never said anything. And Odo said that future Odo says he didn't want to ruin their friend. Future Odo doesn't expect her to love on him. but just requests two days to spend with her before he never sees her again. On the planet, Ben is playing with his grand-grand-grand-grand-grandbabies with glee.
He's so happy about these little kids, and they really hope that Yedrin's plan will work. Worf is getting things ready, trying to make sure there are enough supplies for them, and then the Klingons, who are both... like genetic people coming from Worf, and also people that just like the Klingon way of life. They are naturalists, they hunt,
they gather, they don't really hang up the town, and they want to have a party for Worf that night because they're happy to see them. And it's not totally explained why some of the Klingon Some of the descendants are Trill, and some of the descendants are Klingon, because if Worf and Jadzia had kids,
I don't know exactly what they'd look like. But it is what it is. And Dax and Dax talk about getting ready, Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man. And explains that Worf and Jadzia did get married, did have a family, and promises Jadzia that they do figure out how to be with each other and get over their quirks.
And Bashir is loving these kids because they're all brilliant. Miles is not. Miles loves Keiko. Miles is a family man. Miles is distraught that he would lose everything. He is not feeling it. On a hill, Kira is praying at her own grave and finds it
To be a singular experience and feels weird and wonders if it's harder for destiny. Future Odo is just happy that they can loophole the timeline. And future Odo is pleased that this Kira won't die. As he really cares about past Odo. Kira is very moved by this emotionally intelligent future Odo,
who says maybe past Odo can become emotionally intelligent with time. Kira feels very strange about two of her happening. Ben plays catch with his kiddos. Jadzia realizes that Yedrin lied. This ain't gonna work. Yedrin is tricking them to secure his timeline. At the meeting hall, Yedrin explains he had to do it. 8,000 people.
Has to save the 8,000 people. Jadzia asks, you know, what will happen to Kira and Yedrin fires back. You know, is one life too much for 8,000 lives? Ben snaps, demanding how he... would say something like that. And Yedrin again says,
he has to make up for the fact that this all started because Jadzia wanted to go to the planet. And she admits that she hoped for a big discovery and in Dax fashion, didn't quite think it through. The choice sent all of them back, cost fewer her life, and left all these people stranded.
Yedrin says that he's, through Dax, has been feeling guilty for 200 years. That's some big guilt. The colony feels he is responsible, and Dax, the symbiote, has seen it grow for 200 years. Ben's like, I hear you, but you don't get to decide someone else has to die. Doesn't matter.
Later, Worf and Kira talk about being sad about this choice. They both feel that 8,000 for one is not fair. Kira leaves and Worf is sad. And the children are confused because the adults are not telling them what happened because they've been told that they're going to disappear tomorrow.
The children of Mo come to Worf with no feast because they are in despair and they sit with Worf. Worf is really moved by the Klingon in them and that they lived off the land. And he just regrets to, you know, not getting to know them better.
And they are sad because if they disappear, they will not die. Therefore, they will not go to Stovacor, which is Klingon Valhalla. And the Klingons have decided that If this is going to happen, they just want Worf to kill them. And Worf says, I'll do it tomorrow.
At Kira's grave, Kira wonders if this is true to her faith and her fate. And she's like, knowing Kira and her character, she would choose 8,000 over 1. Kira and Jadzia... They realize that this is the fate. Miles wants nothing to do with it. Worf says that it must be destiny, and it is okay to do this.
And Ben says, no, they are 8,000 for one. In the light, as they get ready, the future people plant things. Because even though they know they're going to cease to exist, they always plant on this planting day. And Ben and the squad help to plant. And Ben decides he's okay with this plant as well.
Miles comes and says they're ready to go. Miles reluctantly plants. Even the Klingons come and Worf says the honorable battle is to help the planting. Miles talks to future Molly and realizes that the right thing to do is to do this. The colony thanks them.
Old Odo begs Kira not to do this and asks if he had said something back in the day, would he have a chance? And she's like, maybe. And they share a kiss. And it's nice. The squad records their goodbyes to send to people. But as they go through the anomaly, an autopilot stops their trip.
And they fly through, and the 8,000 disappear. Whoever did this was either the crew or maybe Yedrin, Jadzia. laments that these people never were, and Ben says, if they remember, they will live in their hearts. Regular Odo, who was not present the entire episode,
comes by and explains that old Odo showed up and emerged and knows what Kira knows, and now they might need some space with all this. And then we found out that it was old Odo that changed the flight plan so Kira wouldn't die. One life for 8,000.
Odo tries to make excuses for this, but Kira, a freedom fighter, is aghast.
So here I was thinking this was going to be a silly and cute little time travel episode. Yeah. Here we go again. Time travel again. What now? Then it got weird and creepy. Once the alternate Odo showed up, and I'm going to call that Odo alternate Odo just for me to make it easier for me
to keep track because of the time travel stuff is always complicated. But once the alternate Odo showed up, I got psychological thriller vibes like those movies from the 90s right instead of thinking like oh cute little time travel DS9 episode it felt different and that
this Odo is some stalker serial killer that I'm familiar with because growing up in the 90s there was a lot of movies like this where it seemed like it was like kind of a romantic movie then it switches or it seems like it's a One genre and then the genre switches because no, it's actually a psychological thriller.
Then I was like, maybe I was wrong. Maybe this is a whimsical episode and they're going to do some sciencey stuff and figure this all out. Then I was like, nope, I was right. So first I noticed no one ever mentioned Odo.
Despite him being there for centuries, he was never in scenes with other people from the colony. He was mostly on the ship, but seemed to avoid being in the town center or with the townspeople. He was actually avoiding even crew members. Also,
it was solely the duty of Yedrin Dax to be in charge of keeping the course of history on track, even though Odo was always there as well. Why aren't they working together if they both have historical memory, if they both remember everything from the past? In fact, Odo has more direct historical memory.
Yedrin keeps talking about the past, but leaves Odo absent. He talks about legacy, but no mention of Odo, which is why the rest of the crew didn't even know he was alive. In hindsight, only Kira might have known. This is why at the end,
Sisko and Jazia Dax thought it might have been Yedren Dax who had a change of heart because the symbiote might still remember things about the Defiant and was able to change things. But we as the viewers know, Yedren was never on the Defiant. The alternate Odo was.
But there was never any sign that the crew members knew about alternate Odo. Only Kira interacted with them, which made me for a wild thing. Is this Kira's hallucination because she got shocked and like she has brain damage, which she does in this episode? And I don't know if that was intentional on that,
but that also cohesively makes sense until the very end, right? It could have been a hallucination. So when at the end, when alternate Odo killed everyone for Kira without anyone's consent, because at that point, everybody's like, nope, we're going to do the plan. We're going to save all these people.
So even Kira knowing she would die also is like, nope, this is my body. That's what I want to happen. So when at the end, when all that happened, when that consent was violated, and then that Odo told Kira about current Odo's feelings, also without current Odo's consent,
and then linked with them without consent and told that Odo everything, it all made sense. It must have been alternate Odo has been spiraling for centuries and he never cared about any of the colonists. Only Kira. This series has time and time again always made the argument that the many are more important than the few. Yep.
Even Quark a couple of episodes ago was like, you know what? I'm willing to die to save millions of people. So they were even making that argument in this episode. And there was consent given to the right timeline. Everybody was consenting, okay, we're going to make this timeline right.
So that all made alternate Odo's actions that much more sinister and come off creepy and wrong. We now know a version of Odo will go to extreme and murderous lengths for Kira. And then I thought about, wait, this alternate Odo linked those feelings with current Odo. Why did the alternate Odo even link with Odo?
What did that do to Odo? And so when Odo talked to Kira about this, he said he needed time to process. And he was even taking that alternate Odo's side, which, because of his rigid sense of right and wrong, seemed unusual. And I wonder if the link was to pass on alternate Odo's willingness to do anything
for Kira and to ensure the other Odo maintains that with him to be Kira's scary protector who will protect her at any cost. Her own consent be damned. Because we got to remember all of this violated everyone's wishes. Yep. And if alternate Odo disappears, right? If I'm that alternate Odo with that psyche, man,
what better way for me if I disappear to ensure Kira's safety and have some kind of like stalkerish protector on her than to make sure current Odo becomes more like him? And as far as consent, we know about the main crew, but we don't know how the rest of the Defiant crew felt.
So that troubled me as well. But the way the episode proceeded would make sense if everybody was on board with this. So not going to lie, this episode kind of creeped me out. And now I'm wondering, what's up with Odo? Is he going to break bad?
You know, how many more loose cannons on the ship do we have? Because we now have Klingons on the station as well. Which, speaking of Klingons, the thing I enjoyed the most about this episode, which also made me sad, was this alternate Klingon society made in Worf's image. Yep. Rather than Klingon blood, like you mentioned,
Klingons are a tribe where anyone who has the Klingon spirit is allowed in. They also didn't come off as toxic as Klingons usually do or as braggadocious or arrogant. But instead, stoic, kind of matter-of-fact, chill, work-the-land naturalists. Also, their idea of the warrior isn't about war or killing the townspeople or going to war with them.
They mean hunting and providing, being protectors. It's a different definition of warrior. And this type of warrior is still peaceful and cooperative with the townspeople. They're non-adversarial. A new Klingon tribe that could have been. Yet that alternate tribe that was probably one of the most egalitarian societies we've seen in Trek also disappeared. Like, what?
We can't meet them again? They, to me, were so interesting. And a nice surprise all of a sudden when they showed up. I wanted more episodes to learn about their societal structure. We just got a glimpse of it. But nope, it's gone now. But that glimpse,
it was clear to me that somebody has spent a lot of time thinking about that, how to make this consistent and logical and make sense. So Scott, I shared my feelings about this episode. I had a lot of feelings about it. But how did you feel about this episode? What was your read?
Again, this is an episode that I probably would have skipped in the last rewatch because I, you know, It's not really a mythology episode. I really liked it, even though it really upset me. I really enjoyed these characters. I thought they were interesting. All except for future Odo.
I thought he was really creepy and came off as a good guy, but was really manipulative. Yeah, just really sick. Yeah, something you notice is like you never see him with the people. So who even knows what he was up to in the past, you know, 200 years. And I think, you know,
being alive for 200 years and being lonely could make you a little, you know, might create some mental health challenges. And so, which unlike the Dax, they're, they're with people. So they had a really meaningful time together. And I thought future Odo was really sick and it wasn't fair to pass Odo to, you know,
sort of tell Kiwi that stuff. And it's really messed up. to kill 8,000 people for one person to live. It reminds me of, of some present parallels that I don't really feel like getting into at this current second, but you know, the whole, like certain lives are worth more than other lives.
And Ben was going to let 8,000 people die. Cause that's Ben. I'm starting, you know, Ben, on the rewatch, I have some challenges with. But the episode is a solid four, and I really enjoyed it.
And I'm glad you brought up that thing about Ben, because I want listeners to really take note of that, because this Ben that came off in this episode, the way he came off, that's important for the read of the next episode. Yep. But before we wrap this up, I just wanted to bring up something I noticed.
I wanted to know if you noticed it also was I saw somebody, a reviewer, say this was one of the must-watch episodes because it's really a romantic episode. And I'm like, no, I think you missed the whole thing about this episode. And I don't even think the writers were trying to make it romantic.
Yes, there were romantic elements, but that's because of that intensity. passion feeling that alternate Odo has. But I don't feel like I'm reading into this because even the way Alternate Odo was acting right when we met him. What did he do? He got right in Kira's space and started touching her and touching her face.
And we were like, is this Odo going to kill her? And that was very intentional. They could have done other takes like that was intentional to tell us a lot, to reveal a lot and foreshadow this character. So I don't think this character was meant to be some kind of romantically character.
I think, yeah, the way alternate Odo just came off right away like that told us a lot. And then it made sense at the end.
Yeah, it did. And Odo can be capable of some really gross stuff.
I know it's not mythological, but now... it does make me wonder, okay, what other surprises does Odo have for me?
What it does do is establish to Kira to know that Odo loves her. And she doesn't know what to do with that. And Odo doesn't know what to do with, you know, being found out.
Can you tell us about the next episode?
The Maquis are back.
Until then...