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 EPISODE REVIEWS | ||
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Children of Time Airdate: Week of
May 5th to May 9th, 1997
Written by: René
Echevarria (Teleplay);Gary Holland and Ethan H. Calk (Story)
Directed by: Allan
Kroeker
In-Short:
Slightly cumbersome in its setup and the way it played out as
well as stirring up the Odo/Kira relationship adversely,
Children of Time was not at all what I was expecting.
(I'll tell ya why below!)
Brief Summary:The
crew discovers a settlement of 8000 people on a planet who are
descendants of the crew after an anomaly sends them back in time
two-hundred years. Now they must decide to avoid the accident or
commit themselves to be marooned and thus preserve the timeline
of these so-called children of time.
Review
Well folks...
prepare for a ride on the dangerous side.
I do, of course,
refer to the widespread acclaim that Children of Time
has been receiving from fans all over the 'net. Some have named
this show Season five's best, or ranked it up there
with The Visitor, and some have even called it one of
Trek's all-time best. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say
that I disagree. Why? While entertaining to watch, mainly because
of the Odo/Kira interaction, the setup was cumbersome in many
ways that took away from the over all power that the
script was intending to conjure.
Let's start with
the initial setup. My first qualm regarding this story is the way
in which it is presented. I shudder at time-travel stories in
which the core of the plot revolves around the intent to invoke
emotional involvement from a situation that only occurs if an
event that hasn't happened yet makes an event already have
happened. (Yes, there will be a test on this later...) This is
precisely what Children of Time dives right into. For
instance, Dax reported life signs from the planet before they
entered the electromagnetic field (or whatever it was), but were
the 8,000 colonists on the planet at that time? The answer, I am
forced to conclude, is 'no'. According to Yedrin, the Defiant
crash landed on the planet, in the past, when she tries to leave
passing though the field a second time. This means that if the
Defiant had never gone to investigate, she wouldn't have tried to
pass through the field a second time and the crash wouldn't have
occurred; thus the colonists would never have existed. This
concept is never dealt with very well in Trek, a trend that
continues here.
This flaw is
blatantly obvious throughout the show when numerous characters
refer to the results of avoiding fate as causing the
death of the 8,000 inhabitants. They weren't going to
die, nor be killed; this dilemma is what
the entire story relies on. The show was about whether or not to
cheat fate and avoid the accident- a decision that
wouldn't need making if the Defiant had never strayed or the crew
realized that avoiding the accident would not kill
the people, only undo their actions leading to the
creation of the colony.
Now, granted it is
almost moot to dislike the show because of this issue since the
point of the episode was the decision that had to be made. It's
just that in my mind, the decision is simple: since no one can
deem which timeline is correct and must continue, I
simply conclude that going back to the point when I strayed from
the timeline only restores that timeline which I came from. At
this point, everyone says to me: Well Steve, how do YOU
know if you have strayed? How do YOU know that the accident
wasn't supposed to happen anyway? To them I can only
respond by saying that with such a temporal paradox I cannot
speak to that point mainly because I denounce the idea that the
future already exists and that each individual has a
predetermined destiny which cannot be avoided. In the
words of Guinan:
All I know
is that THIS IS WRONG.
-
Yesterday's Enterprise, the episode that made
temporal paradox stories popular in the post-TOS universe.
In that famous TNG
story (which I regard as the best of all-time by the way), Guinan
articulates perfectly that there is no way to KNOW which timeline
is CORRECT, only through intuition. My thoughts exactly.
All that being
said... the way in which the moral dilemma was set up and
presented was cumbersome and too reliant on the reset-button.
Whew! (Everyone take a deep breath, please.)
Now, assuming I
don't know anything about that... methinks I'll discuss the other
problems I had with the show. Two major threads were integral to
this story. The first being that a crewmember must die, and the
second being the explanation of the descendants. The former was
realized during the teaser. Kira is shown existing
out-of-body as the Defiant passes through the
barrier, and frankly you had to have missed the visual entirely
to not know then that SHE would be the one to die. This annoyed
me. I was hoping for a little surprise. The same irritation
occurred when in the teaser AGAIN, the mystery of the colonists
was revealed in a few lines of dialogue. Again, I grant that the
story wasn't ABOUT Kira's death, or discovering the nature of the
colonists, but this clunky way of spilling the beans just felt
sooooo unnatural. This happened again when Yedrin and the woman
(her name escapes me at the moment) informed the Defiant crew of
exactly what was going to happen to them. (Which brings something
else to mind: since they told Sisko et al what was GOING TO
happen, it hadn't happened yet, so shouldn't the colonists not
exist yet? But if so, wouldn't the original Defiant have run into
the same situation and then ended up avoiding it because of the
old Odo? Uhhh... my head's starting to hurt.)
The only reason
that I tended to like watching this show somewhat despite these
pestering paradoxical discrepancies was the development between
Odo and Kira. I had been wondering for a long time how Kira was
going to find out about his feelings. The way in which the
writers chose to do it was very unique and opened the door to
such a great change in their relationship. Unfortunately, the
writers chose to miss the boat on this, and
practically ruined the development that had been created. By not
letting young Odo know that Kira knew, the relationship between
the two could've taken on such a diverse facet. The chemistry
would've been so enhanced by having the audience know that each
knew about Odo's feelings, but instead, they decided to make both
know that the other knew, and then tried unsuccessfully to make
us think that Kira now holds adverse feelings towards Odo. This
almost destroys the chances for anything to develop between them
in the future. Not that I have any desire to see the two
transformed into some Worf & Dax-ish couple, but the
chemistry has been so negatively altered. Especially because we
know that this isn't the end of the thread. I mean c'mon! You
know it'll be brought back just as soon as the writers make Kira
forget about hating Odo. Therefore, the primary plot of
Children of Time is resolved by setting the reset
button and the idea of Kira being angry with Odo will also be
reset sometime soon.
[My head is really
starting to ache... please forgive the wordiness]
Another thing that
bothered me is how the shown ended. After Sisko realizes the
quantum duplicate idea of Yedrin to be false, he
adamantly decides to go back. But the problem starts with Kira's
arbitrary move to not allow herself to be responsible for the
non-existence of 8,000 people.
First of all, the
attempts to make me feel for the colonists via scenes
with children in them just didn't work. So did the attempt to
invoke power from Yedrin's claim that he was trying
to right a wrong. This just didn't cut it. The
discussion scene between the main officers regarding Kira's
concerns about cheating fate was very well done. The
dialogue here was the best in the show, and this scene invoked
more power than any other did. The differences between the
characters really showed themselves, culminating in an excellent
performance by Colm Meany and Sisko's announcement that Kira's
plan wasn't being considered anyway. O'Brien's down-to-earth
statement that he doesn't believe in your [Kira's]
Prophets exemplified these ideological differences
perfectly. I really identified with O'Brien here mainly because I
too do not believe in a predetermined fate.
This relates to
the end of the show because I felt so cheated by O'Brien and the
Sisko. The planting-day scene was emotional (partly
because of the usage of good music, and again, children), but
nothing can make me think that Miles would suddenly change his
mind and then that Sisko et al would just decide to just up and
sacrifice themselves and Kira. Sorry, but a commercial break
doesn't convince me one bit. The second part of the end, dealing
with Odo and Kira, I've already discussed partly. It just wasn't
necessary to let Odo know that Kira knew. Plus the way too
predictable realization that the older Odo was responsible for
altering the flight path was just too obvious. Then Kira is
surprised by it? I don't think so. Sorry. Not buying it.
The very end
confirms that there are no colonists on the planet. Interesting
how in the beginning there were lifeforms on it. But
at the end, it is clearly confirmed that the colony is gone. This
was just a nice way to confirm that there were no colonists there
to begin with, but if they had said that then more people
might've thought about the discrepancy I discussed early on. (Not
going through it again, please refer to top) The bottom line is
that this story is a reset-button baby right from the start. The
writers try to avoid the actuality that the colonists never
died by never mentioning that they didn't exist
before the Defiant traveled through the barrier, and it just
doesn't work.
Now Some
Quicker Observations
- If Worf taught
the Klingon ways to posterity, I still don't see how his
followers ended up separate from the colony. Certainly Worf lived
with Dax and the others. Also, since Worf is the son of Mogh,
shouldn't his followers be the Sons of Worf? I won't
even mention the lack of Trill attributes in the Sons of
Mogh or the lack of Klingon features in Yedrin... but the
tale about Worf killing people just by looking at them was one
nice touch.
- The Quark school
program and Bajorian grave were also nice touches, as well as the
Molly and baseball traditions.
- The way Sisko
changed his tune as soon as O'Brien (assumed to last to agree to
stay) did belittled his comment that the decision had already
been made and that everyone's concerns were only being discussed,
not considered. Which brings to mind, whatabout the other Defiant
crewmembers?
- Does the phrase
Don't put all you senior officers in one
shuttle-craft mean anything to anyone? Why where they all
there?
- I liked Bashir's
bachelor attitude towards the whole situation.
- How come Kira
showed relatively no emotion towards the knowledge that she was
going to die?
- Finally, the
older Odo was probably the most delightful part of this show,
even if his kiss and exchange with Kira ended up less meaningful
than it should've been.
Writing:
Overuse of temporal anomalies to spur emotional situations. The
power just wasn't there. Also, Children of Time
contradicts what the Trek universe set forth as the right
decision is Yesterday's Enterprise. (but
different writers, different outlook I suppose)
Directing:
Nothing notable in my opinion.
Acting:
Colm Meany definitely shined, as well as the brilliant
performance of the older Odo.
Rating: 4
out of 10
Quote
You cannot
cheat fate.
Well I
wouldn't mind cheating fate all the way back to the
station!
-O'Brien expresses
the less subliminal attitude towards his situation.
Next Week:
I hope Blaze
of Glory
effectively ties up the events of For the Uniform.
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