A bad O’Brien episode? Let’s discuss it.
Plot:
Hours later, they are able to track her down and beam her out…but she is now ten years older and is suffering from the effects of living alone all of that time. The O’Brien’s attempt to assimilate her back to her old life, but the results do not go very well. Especially when, in a rage, Molly attacks and nearly kill someone.
O’Brien decides the only fair thing to do is let Molly go back to where she came from, even if it means never seeing her again. They manage to get her off DS9 and to the planet, where they send her back to the time window. However, just before O’Brien is about to destroy it the young Molly emerges, and all is well.
Things I Hated:
Ok let’s discuss the one thing I did not like in ths episode. That B story! I didn’t mention it in the synopsis so here it is. While The O’Brien’s are dealing with Molly, Worf and Dax watch over the baby. It should be noted they are married at this point. The problem? Besides the fact it’s boring, it’s just so cliche! Worf thinks he can handle the baby, then he has trouble and doubts himself…I saw this all on an episode of Night Court! Of course the baby gets hurt, sor of…hey, let’s do all the cliche’s! I’m sorry but if I want cliche sitcom garbage I’ll watch an old episode of Family Ties. That is not what I expect from DS9. The best part? After all this talk about the two having babies, Dax will be killed off a few episodes later!
You may be wondering, why didn’t they just send her back into the window and try to get her out at a closer point to when they lost her? It’s a time window right? Well it does come up, and it gets hand waved by Keiko who says that it’s not fair to rob her of those ten years she lived. Ok, that seems like a reasonable argument. Until you realize that’s exactly how the episode ends! Oh sure it’s a coincidence, but old Molly rescues young Molly and old Molly vanishes since she will never exist. Ugh. You can’t hand wave away something and then use it as your deux ex machina to restore the status quo!
And speaking of that, why did they cop out on the ending? They were on the way to having a big event happen to the characters, losing a child, and they totally cop out on it. Not really sure why, maybe not to piss off the fans? It’s not as if O’Brien hasn’t suffered enough on this show. In the end of the episode everything is as it was in the beginning, did the two even learn anything? The TNG episode “Dark Page” handled the loss of a child much better, and the death was not waved away which is why that episode worked (among other reasons).
So Molly gets sent 300 years into the past, when there was no one around at all. Odo confirms this, she would have been totally alone. Here is my question, how did an eight year old girl survive??? We have to assume there were animals of some kind for her to live off, ok fair enough, but who taught her how to attack and kill them? The reason why The Jungle Book and Tarzan work is because the two characters learned from the animals, hence why they acted like animals when they encountered humans. You could argue that’s what happened to Molly..except she doesn’t act like an animal so much as someone who has experienced extreme isolation. Except for the fact she learned how to climb tress, we get nothing. It would have been nice to established what happened to her more, then maybe we could agree with The O’Brien’s decision at the end. The way the episode works instead it almost looks as if Miles and Keiko are just abandoning their child to be alone the rest of her life.
Things I Liked:
Adult Molly was handled pretty well. We really could see the affects that…whatever happened to her had on her. And the story hits on all the main points I think. She slowly recognizes her parents, her favorite doll. You can almost see her start to remember her past life (though you could argue it happens kinda fast) but then reject it because it’s been so long. There is also probably anger at her parents for abandoning her, but the episode never gets into that. Then we get to her freak out at Quark’s where she goes nuts and even injures a guy. This is all reasonable behavior for someone in her situation. And even if it makes no sense, that last scene when the old Molly finds the young Molly is pretty well done.
The O’Briens are what sell this episode. We have been with Miles and Keiko the whole way, literally if you watched TNG, and so to see these two characters go through something as painful as this means more because we know them and Molly. Heck we were there when she was born! By the way nice of the episode to forget Worf delivered her, but whatever. So they react believably. The final decision they make is a hard one. She would have been sent to a “special school” so to speak and never be happy in their world. So they decide to send her back where they found her, where she is used to living. Now forgetting the gripes I mention and looking at it just from Miles and Keiko’s points of view, I get this choice. They would rather she ne happy even if they lose their daughter as a result. I don’t know, sounds like a parent to me.
Some character moments just really work. Kira playing with the baby, Bashir comes off competent and understanding. I like Odo in this episode, allowing Miles and Keiko to steal the shuttle and get Molly off the station. It’s little touches like that which makes these kind of episodes work. I see a lot of people comment this felt more like a TNG episode. You know what, I agree with them. Either that or maybe an early series episode. Oh and in case you’re wondering how old Molly ran into young Molly, they speculate that when they reset the time window it re-set all the way, and she was sent back to the same point she arrived the first time. Eh……that’s kind of hard to swallow but the family is reunited, so who cares?
Fast Forward Moment:I already talked about it, that nonsense with Worf and Dax. I guess this episode happened during a quiet period during the war
Final Thoughts-This was a filler episode plus a rewrite of a previously rejected idea. The episode reflects that, the idea is there…. I think if you turn your head off and leave your heart on, you may find the episode isn’t that bad.
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