Time's Orphan

Season six of "Star Trek: Deep Space 9" was odd. While there were many great episodes, there also were a far larger than normal number of bad episodes...really, really bad episodes. Try watching "Resurrection", "Statistical Probabilities", "His Way", "Valiant" and "Profits and Losses" and you'll see what I mean! Yup, there were some pretty bad season six entries and "Time's Orphan" might just be among the worst.

The show begins with the O'Briens off world for a picnic. While scampering about, Molly falls into a hole and enters a temporal distortion (and temporal episodes are usually quite bad). When they manage to get her back, she's 10 years older--and a wild maniac of a child. Can they get the original Molly back or will they have to take her out of pre-school and get her a kennel instead?

While you must suspend disbelief to enjoy sci-fi, this one required you actually turn off your brain. The worst parts clearly are at the finale--as the O'Briens' behaviors make little sense. Overall, pretty weak and one you would just as soon skip.

Every shows hits its weak phase - and Deep Space Nine started struggling around this time. The previous (very weak) comic Ferengi episode was followed by this very serious Molly O'Brien episode.

So much of it is rushed and shallow. The O'Brien's give up on getting back "their" Molly after a 20 second existential discussion on the nature of being - which they adjust to with little emotional consequence. Ultimately they decide to send her back to her primitive world 300 years previous, alone, with little or no discussion of whether they should all go as a family, or if they could settle on another uninhabited planet s a family. Just send her back to her cavewoman life - end of discussion.

All the while, Worf's inferiority complex about being a good father is thrust upon the viewer as a subplot with very little setup or explanation. At first it seems like it is going to be for comic relief - then it turns very soap opera like.

DSN is a great show, and had more great story lines subsequent - but there is a string of episodes at this time that show how dry the creative well had run.

The premise is actually interesting, but instead of diving into the trauma, ethics, or even the sci-fi potential, the episode opts for melodrama and half-baked emotional beats.

While Rosalind Chao and Colm Meaney give it their all, even their seasoned acting can't make up for a script that treats time displacement like a bad case of summer camp. The emotional stakes feel oddly low, the pacing drags, and somehow the solution to this temporal tragedy is something that I as a parent would never ever do.

Decisions with potentially devastating consequences are made on a whim, and more often than not I completely fail to understand the characters' actions. The ending comes off as a cheap escape from the and emotional ethical dilemma. Nothing has consequences here.

Worf's sub-plot about proving himself as a dad is kinda heartwarming though. I'm giving this episode an extra star just for that.

A number of highly unlikely things have to go wrong for this episode to begin another amount for the ending and in the middle the seemingly worst parents ever.

Would you quit your job to be with your daughter? O'Brian thinks theres a better way..

Just watch it for how bad it is.

With so many possibilities open to the fantasy/science fiction writer, I wonder why so many scripts tend toward the prosaic.

On the surface, it's a sentimental concept based on time travel: Colm & Chao's cute 8-year-old kid accidentally falls through a time portal and when they rescue her she's aged 10 years. Now Molly's back and she's become a wild child -after being alone on a deserted planet surviving for 10 years. She can't relate and complications due to her violent behavior turn the show into melodrama. It's irritating to watch, as the script piles it on the poor kid. The contrived sort of-happy ending is utterly phony and illogical. A subplot with Worf is pure soap opera, too.

Basically this is a stupid sci-fi riff on either Franocis Truffaut's "Wild Child" or Werner Herzog's "Every Man for Himself and God Against All".