In The Next Generation episode The Best of Both Worlds, Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Enterprise-D is kidnapped from his own bridge by the Borg. Assimilated and techno-surgically altered as Locutus, the former high-ranking Federation officer leads the Borg in battle against an assembled Starfleet armada trying to stave off their invasion of Earth. Near the star Wolf 359, less than eight light-years from Sector 001, thirty-nine starships and more than eleven thousands lives are lost in a catastrophic defeat. In the Deep Space Nine premiere episode Emissary, Lt. Commander Benjamin Sisko, played by Avery Brooks, his wife Jennifer Sisko, played by Felicia M. Bell, and his nine-year old son Jake Sisko, played by Cirroc Lofton, are aboard the U.S.S. Saratoga during the battle of Wolf 359. After the Miranda-class starship’s shields are drained by a Borg tractor beam, the Saratoga experiences a direct hit. Barely surviving a violent explosion on the bridge, First Officer Sisko fights his way through corridors of fire and smoke to get to his personal quarters, only to find them decimated. His wife’s lifeless body lies buried under the rubble, but Sisko is able to bring his unconscious son to safety. Faced with an imminent warp core containment failure, the ship’s remaining personnel leave in escape pods. The blazing radiance of the Saratoga’s final burst of destruction is reflected on Sisko’s despondent face.
Three years later, after a tour of duty at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards on Mars, Commander Sisko reluctantly accepts his assignment to take charge of the former mining Space Station orbiting the remote planet Bajor. Following the withdrawal of the occupying forces of the Nazi-like Cardassians, the Federation has been called in by the Bajoran Provisional Government to provide protection and assistance to a people making its first steps towards recovery from sixty years of brutally repressive colonial rule. The Cardassians have all but used up the once-plentiful uridium mineral resources of Bajor, leaving the natives with virtually no way to sustain themselves economically. After decades of unity in the resistance struggle against their oppressors, the Bajorans have regressed to factional infighting. The technologies on Deep Space Nine (as it has been redesignated by Starfleet) are of alien origin and currently in poor condition. The “bloody Cardies,” as Chief Operations Officer Miles O’Brien racistly calls them (in the original script), cannibalized everything when they left. Transporters, food replicators, and defense and other vital systems are not working properly. The elaborate shopping mall-like Promenade, home to many commercial outlets and services, is in shambles. From his command post in the Operations Center (Ops), Chief O’Brien, who was previously Transporter Chief on the Enterprise-D, supervises the major structural repairs underway on the Station.
Arriving with his son Jake, Commander Sisko meets other members of his senior staff. His First Officer is Major Kira Nerys, played by Nana Visitor, the attaché of the Provisional Government. Kira has fought for years for Bajoran independence and has been in a refugee camp. The shape-shifter Constable Odo, played by Rene Auberjonois, is the Chief Security Officer. Odo was found alone in a ship in the Denorios Belt near Bajor thirty-two years ago, and knows almost nothing about his origins. The Starfleet Science Officer is Lt. Jadzia Dax, played by Terry Farrell. Jadzia is a member of the Trill joined species, and carries in her abdomen the wormlike symbiont Dax. Benjamin Sisko was an old friend of Curzon Dax, played by Frank Owen Smith, who was Jadzia’s predecessor as Dax’s host. Sisko meets Starfleet Medical Officer Dr. Julian Bashir, played by Siddig el Fadil. Quark, played by Armin Shimerman, is the Ferengi bar and gaming establishment owner whom Sisko would like to be a community leader and rebuilder of sorts. Gul Dukat, played by Marc Alaimo, is the former Cardassian Prefect of Bajor, now the commander of a warship.
Bajorans believe deeply in their religion, which is the “only thing that holds my people together,” as Major Kira Nerys explains. When Commander Sisko walks past the monastery on the Promenade, a bearded monk stares intensely at him and inscrutably says, “the prophets await you.”
Commander Sisko visits the devastated capital city of Bajor on the planet’s surface. He meets the reclusive Kai Opaka, played by Camille Saviola, the spiritual leader whom many regard as the only person who can reunify the fragmented Bajoran community. Sitting in an inner chamber of her sanctuary, Kai Opaka tells Sisko that his “arrival has been greatly anticipated.” She asks if he has ever explored his pagh or life-force, which is “replenished by the prophets.” She performs a strange ritual with him, running her finger along the edge of his ear, grasping his earlobe, and telling him that he is destined to be the Emissary. In a secret cavern, Kai Opaka shows Commander Sisko the sacred Bajoran Orb or Tear of the Prophet, housed in an ark and shielded by a forcefield. The Orb is hourglass-shaped and emits a yellowish-green luminosity. It is more than ten thousand years old, and one of nine such artefacts in existence. The others were taken by the Cardassians when they left Bajor.
The blinding light of the Orb suddenly expands and physically encompasses Commander Sisko. It transports him back in time to fifteen years earlier, when he had just graduated from Starfleet Academy. It is the crucial biographical scene of his meeting his future wife Jennifer for the first time at Gilgo Beach. After this experience that demonstrates the staggering power of the Orb, Kai Opaka tells Sisko that he “must find the Celestial Temple” and warn the prophets. The Cardassians’ scrutinization of the eight Orbs they have stolen could lead to the spiritual disintegration of Bajor and the destruction of the Celestial Temple. For the sake of the planet he has been designated to defend, and for his own pagh, Sisko must embark on a “journey you have always been destined to take.”
Commander Sisko instructs Science Officer Jadzia Dax to have the computer search the Bajoran historical database for supernatural occurrences recorded in Bajoran mythology associated with accounts of unexplained Deep Space phenomena. The charged plasma field known as the Denorios Belt occurs several times in the query’s result set. “In the twenty-second century, a ship carrying Kai Taluno was disabled for several days in the Denorios Belt, where he claims he had a vision,” reports Jadzia Dax. At least five of the Orbs originate from the same area in space. There have been twenty-three incidents of “severe neutrino disturbances” in the Denorios Belt.
Commander Sisko and Lt. Jadzia Dax depart in the runabout ship U.S.S. Rio Grande to investigate the Denorios Belt. Sensors detect an unusually high concentration of protons, and rapidly increasing wave intensities. Scattered blue light gives way to an awesome illumination as the runabout plunges into a rip in the fabric of spacetime. The Rio Grande disappears from the visual instruments of those monitoring it at the Space Station. Inside the disruption phenomenon, Sisko and Jadzia Dax witness an “incredible light show.” The vessel reemerges in calm open space, and the wormhole disappears behind it. The ship’s computer reports that the star closest to their current location is Idran, “a ternary system consisting of [a central supergiant] and twin O-type companions” that was identified in the twenty-second century by the Quadros-One Deep Space probe. They are in the Gamma Quadrant of the galaxy, seventy thousand light-years from Bajor! Jadzia Dax says that the passage they just traversed does not emit the standard “resonance waves” of a typical wormhole. Sisko hypothesizes that “we might have just discovered the first stable wormhole known to exist.” If this conduit is the means by which the Orbs arrived in the Bajoran system, then the wormhole has existed for at least ten thousand years.
Turning the Rio Grande around, Commander Sisko and Lt. Jadzia Dax try to make their way back through the wormhole. An unknown powerful force brings the ship to a halt, even though its impulse engine is on overdrive. Sisko and Jadzia Dax step out of the hatch onto what seems to be the surface of a planet with life-sustaining atmosphere. The two Starfleet officers perceive entirely different physical realities around them. Sisko sees a nighttime rugged terrain with rocky cliffs, and is menaced by electrical storms. Jadzia Dax sees a beautiful garden with colorful flowers and bountiful plants. A flying Orb appears in front of them and scans them with a green ionic beam. It envelops Jadzia Dax. Acting as a container, it carries her out of the wormhole to Alpha Quadrant space near Bajor. Chief O’Brien beams the mysterious object to a transporter pad on Deep Space Nine. The Orb rematerializes and vanishes, leaving Jadzia Dax standing alone and unharmed.
The ground beneath Commander Sisko’s feet breaks apart. He is abducted by the aliens that reside within the wormhole. He is in a strange altered limbo state, surrounded by nothing but white light, and seeing images of his whole life flashing before his eyes: his wife Jennifer at the beach where they first met, his devastated quarters on the Saratoga during the battle of Wolf 359 when he found Jennifer’s lifeless body, the birth of his son Jake, baseball at-bats, and his meeting with Kai Opaka.
Commander Sisko experiences a series of virtual reality and time travel scenes from his biographical past, magnified from his mind’s eye, with individual wormhole aliens substituting for the significant others of his deceased wife Jennifer, his son Jake, Locutus of Borg, Kai Opaka, and others. He is on Gilgo Beach fifteen years ago, but with an alien replacing the love of his life. He is at Jennifer’s bedside in the hospital room where Jake was born. He is with the Bajoran spiritual leader Kai Opaka in the concealed monastery. The aliens “poke and prod” Sisko, in particular dissecting his memories and consciousness. They study and observe him, and contemplate killing him as an optimum conclusion to the encounter. The wormhole life-forms are noncorporeal and inhabit a reality removed from time and space. The “linear time” that structures our existence is totally foreign to them. The concepts of past, present, and future are seemingly beyond their comprehension. It is the radical otherness of Sisko’s linearity that makes them fear him as a mortal danger, and instinctively want to destroy him. When Sisko tries to convey the human sense of loss by clarifying that “we can’t go back to the past to get something we left behind,” the aliens react with suspicion. “It is inconceivable that any species could exist in such a manner,” they initially declare. “You are deceiving us.”
An impassioned speech by Commander Sisko persuades the aliens to make the effort to reach reciprocal understanding. He tells them that he is not hostile, and asks for the chance to prove it. If Sisko can symbolically explain to the wormhole aliens what linear being is, then they will have no reason to fear him for his otherness.
Major Kira Nerys, in temporary command of the Space Station, convenes a meeting of the senior staff in Ops. Lt. Jadzia Dax has determined that the lack of quantum fluctuation patterns around the space anomaly indicate that it is a technological construction or artificial wormhole. The same species created the wormhole and the Bajoran Orbs. Kira Nerys correctly assesses the potentially enormous commercial value of a shortcut route between the Alpha and Gamma Quadrants. She orders Chief O’Brien to devise a way to quickly move the Space Station to the mouth of the wormhole. “That wormhole might just reshape the future of this entire Quadrant,” says Kira Nerys. “The Bajorans have to stake a claim to it.” Since Gul Dukat’s Cardassian warship is already on its way to the wormhole, O’Brien must act with urgency. The Cardassian ship eventually goes through the passageway to the other side, but is left stranded in the Gamma Quadrant after the wormhole (which is stable but perpetually appearing and disappearing) collapses behind it. O’Brien transfers energy from the inertial dampers to the deflector generators, and modifies the latter’s subspace output to create a low-level warp field around the Space Station. This decreases Deep Space Nine’s mass and allows the few available power thrusters to accelerate the Station to a velocity enabling it to travel the 160 kilometer distance to the newly discovered wormhole in less than a day.
The aliens interrogating Commander Sisko believe that species living in temporality have no regard for the effects of their deeds. Sisko points out that the dynamic relationship of action and outcome is paradoxical for humans. Although we are aware that every choice has consequences, and are aided by past experiences in making decisions, we do not know in advance exactly what the consequences will be.
Commander Sisko explains being in linear time to his enigmatic captors through the metaphor of baseball. Images of ball games (mainly from the pitcher’s point of view) are prominent in Sisko’s mind, and the aliens at first think that the sport is a sign of humanity’s aggressive nature. The senior Starfleet officer counters that baseball is a ludic competition and communal ritual that speaks volumes about time. “Every time I throw this ball, a hundred different things can happen,” Sisko elucidates. “He might swing and miss. He might hit it. You try to anticipate, set a strategy for all the possibilities as best you can.” With the sequence of one pitch after another, and the consequence of each, the game progressively takes shape. But “the game wouldn’t be worth playing if we knew what was going to happen.” Human existence, as Sisko expounds, is defined by its open-endedness towards the future. We are constantly searching for new answers and new questions.
The still skeptical wormhole aliens have Commander Sisko revisit the traumatic memory of the Saratoga inferno four years earlier, when he lost his beloved wife to the belligerence of the Borg. “But this is your existence, you exist here,” one of the aliens declares. “If all you say is true,” it says to Sisko, “then why do you exist here?” Sisko has been systematically avoiding this corner of his soul, and pleads with his interlocutors to take him somewhere else. The alien participating as the Kai Opaka avatar speaks: “We cannot give you what you deny yourself. Look for solutions from within.” Watching the scene before him, Commander Sisko has the realization that he was preparing to die with his wife when his shipmate – the Tactical Officer, played by Stephen Davies – pulled him out from the half-demolished, imploding room. He has “never left this ship.” He never grieved. “I exist here,” he admits, fighting back tears. Sisko’s journey through time did not continue because he never figured out how to live without Jennifer. Bent over her expired body, he speaks. “Every time I close my eyes, in the darkness, in the blink of an eye, I see her like this.” He feels his pain, and the alien in the role of Jennifer feels empathically with him. It touches his right cheek with its hand. “None of your past experiences helped prepare you for this consequence,” it says with cross-species understanding as Sisko holds the hand of his war casualty spouse in the time travel reenactment. “It is not linear.” The Commander finally begins to grieve. Flow My Tears, The Alien Said. The alien substituting for Jake Sisko offers a compassionate nod. This is First Contact. The two species have genuinely learned from each other, and mistrust is laid to rest.
Three huge Cardassian warships approach the relocated Space Station. Their commander Gul Jasad, played by Joel Snetow, accuses Major Kira Nerys of destroying Gul Dukat’s ship. He threatens to annihilate Deep Space Nine unless Kira Nerys unconditionally surrenders. The Major bluffs back that the Station has acquired a stockpile of potent defensive weapons from Starfleet. She has Chief O’Brien fire the only six photon torpedoes they in fact have at one of the menacing ships. The Cardassians unload multiple rounds of phaser blasts at the Space Station. Chaos ensues on the Promenade, and many civilians are wounded.
Lt. Jadzia Dax detects a massive neutrino disturbance as the wormhole suddenly reappears. The small runabout Rio Grande is towing Gul Dukat’s mammoth warship into Alpha Quadrant space with a tractor beam. Sisko docks his vessel. The wormhole aliens “have agreed to allow safe passage for all ships traveling to the Gamma Quadrant,” as he records in his Station Log. The Enterprise-D arrives, and Captain Picard meets with Commander Sisko. “You’ve put Bajor on the map,” Picard tells SIsko. “This will shortly become a leading center of commerce and of scientific exploration.” World governments of many planets in the region start negotiations for trade routes through Bajoran space.
While respecting their mutual otherness, a true symbolic exchange between Commander Sisko and the wormhole aliens has taken place. Sisko has given the aliens comprehension of linear time, and assuaged their dread of corporeal life-forms in our universe of spacetime physical laws. The elusive extraterrestrials in turn give Sisko the understanding that he needs to let go of Jennifer and mourn. They offer him the insight that important aspects of human existence are nonlinear. This symbolic exchange precedes and is the essential prerequisite of the economic exchange of the Deep Space Nine commercial hub of recombinant commodities.
