The Defiant has arrived at Earth for a conference. Odo, Kira and O'Brien stay on board while Sisko, Bashir and Dax beam down to San Francisco, but a teleporter accident intervenes, and the computer says they never materialized where they were supposed to.
Sisko and Bashir find themselves lying on the street in 2024 San Francisco. They are promptly robbed of their combadges, and some police arrive to roust them as vagrants. As they're hustled away, we see that Dax was unnoticed in a nearby stairwell. She lucks out, being discovered by a nice fella named Chris Brynner, who offers to assist her in getting a new ID.
While O'Brien pieces together what happened in orbit, Sisko and Bashir are shoved into a Sanctuary District, the place where the jobless, homeless and general unfit for work types are crowded into. They find the situation rather distressing. Residents of the Districts have been reduced to three categories: "gimmes", those who actually want to work and need help finding jobs; "dims", the homeless and hopeless, often mentally ill but unable to afford the necessary treatments that would allow them to be normal; and "ghosts", those who hadn't "integrated well" into the population, and have become bullies and thugs.
While waiting in a huge line for help, Sisko notices the date on a nearby wall display — August 30, 2024, mere days away from the infamous Bell Riots. The San Francisco Sanctuary District will rise up and take hostages to call attention to their plight, led by a man named Gabriel Bell. Hundreds of people will die, including Bell, but the nature of Bell's death — sacrificing himself to save the lives of hostages — will make him a hero, and the incident will set the groundwork for massive social reform. Sisko realizes they can't interfere with such a historically significant event. Bashir isn't happy, but he agrees. Lacking any money or resources, Sisko and Bashir are forced to sleep on the streets.
Meanwhile, Dax finds out that Chris is pretty well off for a 21st century guy. He's head of Brynner Information Systems, and genuinely nice. When she tells him that she arrived with two friends, he helps her deduce that they must have been found by less friendly parties and dragged off to a Sanctuary District. They don't know which one, but Chris has plenty of connections, and he'll help Dax find them.
Back aboard the Defiant, O'Brien has finally discovered that Sisko, Bashir, and Dax were accidentally warped into a different time period, but he does not yet know which one.
Sisko and Bashir conclude that as long as they can avoid the ghosts and stay out of the rioting, they'll be okay. They see a ghost named B.C. rob a man and then taunt them to do something about it, but they avoid the incitement. After trading their uniforms to get into a building, Bashir helps treat an injured boy. His wounds aren't serious, and their assistance nets them a new friend: his father, Michael Webb, a gimme.
While warming up around a barrel fire, B.C. shows up again and starts a fight with Bashir and Sisko. A random man (who bears some resemblance to Sisko) intervenes and tries to help, but winds up stabbed for it. Sisko and Bashir attempt to treat his wounds, but they prove fatal. They're left with the man's ID... and it says Gabriel Bell. Bell's death has immediate effects on the timeline. Back in the 24th century, Starfleet is gone, though thanks to some Techno Babble, the Defiant is immune to the changes. Odo, Kira, and O'Brien realize that finding out where Sisko, Bashir, and Dax were sent to is now of utmost importance.
Back in 2024, the riots have begun. B.C. has several hostages at gunpoint, the ones Bell is said to have defended. History hinges on those hostages surviving. And Sisko knows what he has to do. He promptly announces: "The name is Bell. Gabriel Bell."
Tropes
- Alien Sea: To Dax and Kira, Earth's blue sea is rather odd (apparently, Trill's ocean is more purplish, while Bajor's is more green).
- Armor-Piercing Question: After confirming that Sisko and Bashir are in the Sanctuary District, Brynner tries to assure Dax that they'll be fine, since it's just there to provide people with food and a place to stay. Dax asks why, in that case, does it have a wall around it. Brynner clearly has no answer to that.
- Badass Bookworm: B.C. picks on Bashir because he seems to be the meek one, compared to the more obviously dominant Sisko. However, when an all-out brawl breaks out Bashir lays out B.C. with just two punches, and does quite handily against a second goon who comes in to try to back B.C. up. It ends up taking three dudes to bring him down.
- Butterfly of Doom: Without Bell around to protect the hostages, Earth's entire future is changed: Starfleet and the Federation no longer exist (and there are no longer any satellites orbiting Earth, suggesting humanity has either lost space travel or gone extinct) and the Romulans have apparently reached Alpha Centauri.
- Casting Gag: John Lendale Bennett, the real Gabriel Bell, was a stunt and scene double for Avery Brooks.
- Crapsack World: The United States in 2024 has essentially washed its hands of the problems of poverty, unemployment and homelessness, choosing to "warehouse" people suffering from them in Sanctuary Districts instead. Comments also indicate that conditions elsewhere on the planet aren't much better.
- Damsel in Distress: Chris name-drops the trope, admitting that he's eager to help such a damsel when assisting Dax.
- Dead Person Impersonation: After realizing the man killed trying to help them was Gabriel Bell and the riots may go dramatically different without him, the end of the episode has Sisko take on the role and call himself Bell to try and keep things on track.
- Dogged Nice Guy: Chris is obviously bending over backward to help Dax because she's a beautiful woman, and he's got a crush on her.
- Fan of the Past: Sisko proves to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the 21st century conflicts, and realizes from the date they are on the cusp of the Bell Riots. This is contrasted with Bashir who describes the time period as too depressing.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: All three officers must acclimate to being in hundreds of years in the past, when things weren't so utopian. For her part, Jadzia almost instantaneously figures out how to fit in, calling her communicator a "brooch" mere seconds after waking up.
- Former Teen Rebel: Chris, if the story about the badass Maori tattoo he used to have is any evidence.
- Formal Full Array of Cutlery: Referenced. O'Brien mentions "a different fork at every meal" as one of the reasons he hates officers' parties.O'Brien: That's why I stayed an enlisted man. They don't expect me to show up for these formal dinners.
- Future Slang: Names of different types of vagrants get bandied about: dims, gimmes, and ghosts.
- Hand Wave: One of the biggest ones in the entire franchise. Time Travel is explained as chroniton buildup in the Defiant's cloaking device caused the transporter to deliver the team to another time period and handily gave the ship a pocket bubble that kept the ship crew with Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory as well, allowing them to fix the problem.
- Head-in-the-Sand Management: America of the early 21st century dealt with its social problems by shoving the unemployed and mentally ill into walled districts so they wouldn't have to look at or think about them anymore, rather than try to help them in any meaningful way.
- Innocently Insensitive: The social worker uses insulting period slang around Sisko and Bashir, calling them "gimmes," "dims" and so forth. She apologizes afterward, saying that she knows it's a bad habit.
- Instant Death Stab: B.C. uses a small knife or dagger to stab Gabriel Bell in the abdomen. Bell's eyes roll back and he wordlessly falls back dead. Although Doctor Bashir tries to revive Bell, the way he mutters, "he's gone" while giving CPR makes it clear that Bell died instantly.
- Law of Time Travel Coincidences: Sisko, Dax and Bashir beam down to earth and accidentally end up in the then-past just before the major then-historical event of the Bell Riots. When Bell himself is killed protecting Sisko and Bashir, the two of them must ensure these riots follow the historical record to prevent history fron changing.
- Mandatory Line: A really glaring example has Quark deliver a plot-irrelevant message to the crew at the very beginning of the episode, since he can't be fit into any other aspect of this two-parter.
- Missed Him by That Much: After Sisko and Bashir are taken away, the camera pans to show that Jadzia was near them in the stairway of the subway entrance.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: The Sanctuary District personnel, though not by choice. They're just so badly underfunded and under-staffed that they can't possibly help everyone who needs it.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Sisko looks at the calendar in the processing center and realizes that he and Bashir have been transported to the day before a riot in which hundreds of people will die.
- Later, after Sisko and Bashir escape from the authorities after a man that saved them from B.C. was stabbed to death, Sisko learns from the victim's ID that the man they just watched die was Gabriel Bell.
- San Dimas Time: When Gabriel Bell is killed in the past, Starfleet disappears in the present, though by rights it should have happened immediately after they traveled into the past. That said, it was explicitly Bell's death, not the mere presence of the main characters, that causes the timeline-wide changes.
- Shout-Out: The names of the 21st-century characters are all references to The Magnificent Seven (e.g. Chris Brynner).
- Subtext: Sisko and Bashir, who are dark-skinned, are treated with suspicion and taken into custody. Jadzia, who is white, is treated kindly and given assistance. The story never points this out explicitly, but the choice was an intentional one. In classic Star Trek fashion, both the haves and the have nots are shown as being of multiple different races throughout the episode (rather reflective of real life San Francisco). At the same time, Sisko and Bashir are men, while Jadzia is a woman by herself.
- Totally Radical: Future slang like "dims" and "gimmes" — not to mention new technology like "credit chips" and "the interchange" — are tossed around gratuitously. The show at least bothers to explain the meaning of the slang, making it easier to track the linguistic evolution.
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The episode is set in 2024, 29 years after its original air date of 1995. Projectile-based shotguns are still the firearm of choice, San Francisco's homeless problem since The '70s has spiraled out of control, most business is apparently conducted over the internet, there's a new socialist government in France, and the fashion sense of the time seems to have shifted to something resembling the turn of the 19th century.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: We meet the real Gabriel Bell for a few moments... before he's fatally stabbed trying to protect Bashir.
- Wham Line: At the end of the episode:Sisko: ...The name's Bell. Gabriel Bell.
- What Year Is This?: Sisko asks this after hearing the term "Sanctuary District."
- You Will Be Beethoven: Gabriel Bell is killed because of Sisko and Bashir's presence. When the riots begin, Sisko decides it's his responsibility to take up Bell's name and place to ensure history proceeds as written.
- Zeerust: 2024 looks a lot like a 1990s conception of the future. The computers have large CRT monitors with low resolution. The fact that they are touch-screen is supposed to be futuristic, but they require styluses, which had fallen into niche uses almost a decade before this episode takes place. And, despite the existence of miniaturized computers during The Original Series, nobody correctly predicted the handheld computers we today call "smartphone," and only one character (who doesn't appear until the second episode of the two-parter) even has a mobile telephone. The episode is, however, just new enough to call that major transactions will be conducted over the Internet.
