- Jack (Tim Ransom), a manic Jerkass
- Lauren (Hilary Shepard), a nymphomaniac
- Patrick (Michael Keenan), an elderly Manchild
- Sarina (Faith C. Salie), a mute and withdrawn young woman
Loew announces that she's recruited another genetically modified person, Dr. Bashir, to try to connect with them. Bashir arrives, and Jack is immediately combative, criticizing how Bashir was able to cut a deal to maintain his position in Starfleet, a job usually prohibited from those with genetic modifications. After a relatively unproductive meeting, Bashir leaves to have dinner with senior office staff, where they debate the morality of the Federation's laws against genetic modification. Before tempers can flare, they all agree that it's a complicated issue with no perfect solution.
Bashir rejoins the group to watch an announcement from Gul Damar, in which the new Cardassian leader states his intention to negotiate for peace. The group draws some astute deductions about Damar's state of mind and his intentions, so when Cardassian and Dominion delegates arrive on the station to negotiate the peace treaty, Bashir pulls strings to ensure that his talented charges can watch via hologram. The group rapidly deduces that the Dominion is trying to acquire a seemingly innocuous planet in the Kabrel system. Detached from the others, Sarina figures out the reason why the planet is useful and pulls it up on a tablet.
Bashir brings the group's analysis to Sisko: the Dominion is trying to gain access to certain chemicals that would enable them to produce ketracel-white on this side of the wormhole. Figuring this out just saved the Alpha Quadrant. High on success, Bashir begins to glorying in the long-repressed advantages that his genetic modifications grant him. As a result, he starts to develop a condescension toward "slow" people and nearly sparks a quarrel with O'Brien over his behavior. However, Bashir's optimism vanishes after he looks at the group's latest war projections: the war against the Dominion is doomed.
Bashir comes to Sisko with the analysis and argues that the Federation needs to surrender rather than face the appalling losses of a futile war, but Sisko won't hear of simply lying down. Bitter and depressed, Bashir plays dabo to demonstrate the futility of trying to win against odds stacked against you. When he tells the others of Sisko's decision, the group reasons that they must provide information to the Dominion to help them win the war quickly to limit the loss of life. Bashir objects, but Jack knocks him out. When he awakens, Bashir convinces Sarina to spill the group's plans, having deduced that she's fallen in love with Jack and doesn't want to be separated from him if he's arrested for treason.
The group's plan is thwarted before they can hand the data over to Weyoun and Damar. Jack is furious at being stymied, arguing that Sisko has doomed hundreds of billions of lives. Sisko counters that the group's projections could be wrong. After all, they didn't anticipate Sarina's betrayal right under their nose. The four are allowed to return to their clinic with no charges filed. Before they go, they ask permission to continue sending Bashir their analyses on how to defeat the Dominion, and Bashir gratefully agrees.
Tropes
- A God Am I: Downplayed slightly during an argument between Bashir and Jack:Bashir: It's not our place to decide who lives and who dies! We're not gods!
Jack: Maybe not, but we're the next best thing. - All Girls Want Bad Boys: Sarina has a crush on Jack, a hyperactive, anti-social Smug Super who threatens to snap her neck to get a minor annoyance taken care of. Averted with Lauren, who has zero interest in Jack (much to his frustration).
- Anti-Villain: Even though Jack tries to deliver classified Federation intel to the Dominion to help them win the war (a clear act of treason), he does so because he genuinely believes that this will result in fewer Federation casualties than allowing the Dominion to steamroll the Federation with brute force.
- Artistic License – Statistics: If Bashir and the genetically engineered quartet really are super-geniuses, they should know right from the start that they can't make accurate predictions on the outcome of the Federation/Dominion war based on the limited data they have. But in order for the aesop to work, they need to be ignorant of this at first, so that they can all learn a lesson by the end of the episode. The most obvious is that they didn't even consider that the Dominion might be able to do the same math and alter their plans accordingly (which the audience knows they did several episodes earlier).
- Awesomeness by Analysis: The group is able to utterly dismantle the Dominion's negotiation efforts simply by observation. Jack especially has a crowning moment by analyzing a recording of Weyoun: Because the Vorta language is heavily-inflectednote , much of the real meaning of Weyoun's remarks are lost when translated into English by the Universal Translator. Jack instead listens to him with the Translator disabled, and is able to deduce from his word tense and case alone that the Dominion is trying to pull a fast one in their negotiations. The group's analysis discovers that a seemingly inconsequential world the Dominion is requesting to trade for would actually enable them to produce Ketracel White in the Alpha Quadrant, depriving the Federation of one of its major advantages.note
- Badass Bookworm: Jack doesn't look or act like a physical specimen, but he can do a standing backflip and knock Bashir out with a single punch because of his physical enhancements.
- Beware the Superman: Bashir's group makes for a very compelling case for why the Federation government is afraid of genetic engineering. They're smart and helpful, but they almost cause the Federation to lose the war because of their arrogance. However, this is explicitly because the ban meant they received badly done black-market treatments that affected their mental states and they face open persecution out of fear.
- Blatant Lies: When Odo catches Weyoun and Damar at the rendezvous, they claim that they got lost. Odo doesn't bother to dignify that with a response.
- Call-Back:
- To "By Inferno's Light"—Dukat's and Damar's speeches end the same way:"This I vow with my life's blood...for my sons... for all our sons!"
- Also to "A Time To Stand" where the Dominion's plot to secure the Kabral system to obtain vital ingredients for Ketracel White means that the Dominion's own White supply is still affected by Sisko's bombing of a Ketracel White Depot during that episode.
- To "By Inferno's Light"—Dukat's and Damar's speeches end the same way:
- Continuity Nod: Their predictions state that the eventual Alpha Quadrant Revolution will begin on Earth... which is the same conclusion that Weyoun and Dukat came to back during the Occupation of Deep Space Nine, and also why they wanted to exterminate the population of the planet.
- Defiant to the End: Sisko makes it very clear to Bashir that he will never surrender to the Dominion, no matter what predictions the group makes.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Bashir's group predicts that a few generations after the Dominion's victory, a revolt will overthrow the Dominion and establish a stronger Federation to rule for millennia. Subverted in that an earlier episode had revealed the Dominion had predicted the same thing and was already planning drastic measures to prevent it.
- Easily Forgiven: The four patients are allowed to return to the institute with a slap on the wrist, even though they assaulted Bashir (a Starfleet officer and their designated guardian during their stay on DS9) and attempted to give classified Starfleet intel to Damar and Weyoun, which was an act of attempted treason during wartime! Although to be fair, it's implied the Institute is little more than a comfortable prison anyways, so there's not much the Federation could do to them.
- Establishing Character Moment: Each member of the group gets one. Lauren's obvious sexual interest in Bashir from just his file photo, Patrick's child-like begging for Dr. Loews not to leave him, Sarina just standing around like she's not really part of what's going on, and Jack deliberately injuring Dr. Loews by handing her the PADD with broken glass on her palm, then offering an obviously insincere apology.
- Everyone Has Standards: Jack is manic, cruel, and so unstable that he threatens to break Sarina's neck if he doesn't get his way, though he claims he didn't mean it later. Even still, he's appalled by the idea of hundreds of billions of people losing their lives for no reason and tries to stop it. Whether he's right or wrong, you wouldn't expect that kind of moral stand.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: The four patients are examples of what happens when genetic modification goes wrong. All had their intelligence increased, but each was left with severe psychological problems - Jack's hyper-aggressive and anti-social, Lauren's sex drive was amplified and her inhibitions are nearly non-existent, and Patrick has the emotional maturity of a 5-year-old. Sarina's was the worst, with her brain working at speeds her body couldn't catch up with, leaving her cut off from the world.
- Homage: Jack is based on Dean Moriarty from On the Road.
- Hopeless War: According to the group's long-term projections of the Dominion War, the Federation has no chance of victory, with a prolonged conflict resulting in billions of casualties. As such, the only smart move would be to surrender and hope that future generations can rise up and overthrow the Dominion. Of course, Starfleet doesn't buy it for a second.
- Idiot Ball: Starfleet giving extremely sensitive classified information to a group of institutionalized people? What Could Possibly Go Wrong??
- I'm Standing Right Here: Worf makes a remark about genetic enhancement being a bad idea (he notes that allowing genetically enhanced children to compete in certain fields would just encourage more parents to have their children illegally enhanced) while sitting right across from Bashir. His attempt to apologize, describing Bashir as "an exception" doesn't help, and Worf regrets saying anything to begin with.
- Instant Expert: The group all become expert strategists overnight, at least according to them.Bashir: Since when did you learn to speak Dominionese?Jack Since this morning.
- It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: Sisko defending the Federation's No Transhumanism Allowed decision.
- It Will Never Catch On: Bashir and the augments predict that even an Anti-Dominion coup on Cardassia won't be enough to turn the tide of the war.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: The group basically works like this. Yes, they're geniuses but all that knowledge fails to consider the unpredictable factors that make their "perfect" calculations futile. The best example is how they say a Federation surrender will lead to Earth leading a rebellion against the Dominion generations later...unaware the Founders have done the exact same calculations and are planning on wiping out Earth first.
- Lady in Red: Lauren. She's got the dress, the hair, the makeup, the attitude, and is quick to flirt with any guy who crosses her path.
- Large Ham: Jack. Good grief, Jack. Mix Genki Guy, Motormouth and No Indoor Voice, shake and enjoy the raw pork.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In what can only be described as tongue-in-cheek in-universe Genre Savvy, Bashir's patients accurately analyze Damar's personality and motivations by likening him and everyone in the Dominion to Character Types (albeit transplanting them as Fantasy characters). They even refer to events the viewer has recently seen in prior episodes as "Not a bad story. Epic, really."Jack: Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
Patrick: He's sad.
Lauren: Ashamed is more like it.
[...]
Lauren: Looks like a man who doesn't sleep.
Jack: "Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more!" Damar does murder sleep.
Patrick: He's killed someone!
Lauren: Someone close to him.
O'Brien: How could they know that?
[...]
Damar: (on viewscreen) As your leader—
Jack: Pretender! You don't belong on that throne and you know it.
Patrick: Someone's making him say all this. He doesn't want to.
[...]
Bashir: Did any of you know who Damar was before today?
Jack: No, no, no, but it's obvious who he is. The Pretender who killed the king and seized the throne.
Lauren: Not the king. He's still alive.
Patrick: The queen, maybe, or a princess.
Bashir: Yes, Ziyal. That's Gul Dukat's daughter.
Jack: And now the Pretender finds himself in league with a, a Dark Knight that he can't control.
O'Brien: Weyoun?
Jack: It's not a bad story. Epic, really. - The Main Characters Do Everything:
- Even Damar wonders aloud why he and Weyoun are meeting informants in person.Damar: This is ridiculous. Sneaking into a storage bay for a secret meeting. I'm not some agent of the Obsidian Order, I'm the leader of the Cardassian Empire.
Weyoun: Don't let it go to your head. You serve only at the Dominion's pleasure. Besides, I think it's exciting. - The Federation orders Sisko to conduct the Dominion peace negotiations alone, instead of sending an admiral like Ross or a team of diplomats.
- Even Damar wonders aloud why he and Weyoun are meeting informants in person.
- Manchild: In spite of being the eldest of the group, Patrick behaves like a young child and is extremely sensitive.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The man himself doesn't let it show, but the group's analysis of Damar includes the theory that he's wracked with guilt over Ziyal's death.
- Neck Snap: An aggravated Jack threatens to break Sarina's neck when bothered by a noise only the Augments can hear.
- Parental Substitute: Dr. Loews acts like a surrogate mother to her patients, being comforting to the frightened Patrick and stern to the demented Jack.
- Prescience by Analysis: What the group pride themselves on. Subverted, however, as Jack fails to predict that Sarina would derail his plan to give secret information to the Dominion.
- Properly Paranoid: When Jack decides to give classified information to the Dominion to shorten the war, Bashir notes that his attitude, looking down on normal people and making galaxy-altering decisions out of arrogant assumption is exactly the reason laws were passed against genetic engineering.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: To celebrate Starfleet accepting the group's first set of recommendations, Bashir orders the computer to play music. "Make it grand," he says. "A waltz," Lauren adds. Just based on that, the computer chooses the "Blue Danube Waltz" by Johann Strauss der Jüngere.
- Puppet King: Although he's now the head of the Cardassian Union, Damar is clearly under Weyoun's control; the peace talks he initiates were dictated by the Dominion. After the debacle of Dukat's leadership cost them victory in the war, Weyoun is clearly much less willing to give Damar any such leeway. He doesn't even humor Damar the way he did Dukat.Damar: I'm the head of the Cardassian Empire.
Weyoun: Don't let it go to your head. You serve only at the Dominion's pleasure. - Sherlock Scan: The group immediately and accurately details Damar's back-story after a single viewing of an unrelated speech he gives.
- Smug Super:
- Jack, who maintains that he and the others were locked up for being "too smart".
- Bashir briefly becomes this when trying to convince Sisko and O'Brien that the Federation should surrender to the Dominion based on nothing but the group's calculations, acting condescending to them not accepting the Augments' greater intellect.
- Someone's Touching My Butt: When Julian accepts Lauren's invitation to dance, she grabs his ass as they come together. Julian moves it to his shoulder.
- Spanner in the Works: Sarina manages to ruin Jack's entire plan. Bashir subsequently references this trope to point out that if they couldn't even predict something as simple as a single person derailing their plan, maybe their predictions aren't as set in stone as they thought.
- Spotting the Thread: Patrick notices that Damar and Weyoun avoided looking at the Kabrel system during the recording of the peace summit, letting the rest of the group (notably Sarina) deduce the real reason behind the Dominion's peace offer.
- Too Clever by Half: The main thrust of the episode. Basically, they forget that other people are also allowed to analyze things and make their own moves. The most immediate result is that their attempt to turn over intelligence is instantly discovered and prevented. The one that they never found about (but we the audience learned a few episodes prior) is that the Dominion also predicted the Earth-based rebellion the group think is the only hope and plan to sterilize the planet to prevent that very thing. They also don't know (and neither does anybody else for at least another year) about the Changeling virus that Section 31 created, which will play a surprising role in the outcome of the war.
- Translation Convention: Inverted—Jack turns off the translator and uncovers a key point in Weyoun's proposal that got lost in translation.
- Verbal Tic: Jack has one, hmm hmm hmm.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The group's plan to give classified information directly to Damar and Weyoun is based on a desire to shorten the war and minimize the number of deaths because of it.
- What the Hell, Hero?: O'Brien gives Julian one for advocating surrender and not accepting any other course of action. It's relatively mild as far as a "The Reason You Suck" Speech goes, but still jarring.O'Brien: The way you're acting, you think that nobody with half a brain could possibly disagree with you.
Bashir: Frankly, I don't see how anyone can.
O'Brien: Well, I can see two possibilities: either I'm even more feeble-minded than you ever realized, or you're not as smart as you think you are. - Whole-Plot Reference:
- The episode was inspired by the use of psychohistory in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.
- Ira Steven Behr has stated that one of the influences on the Dominion's development during Season Two was the Foundation Trilogy. So in a sense, this episode's arguably DS9 coming full circle with the basic storyline that inspired its Big Bad in the first place.
- You Are in Command Now: After Dukat's breakdown and capture, Damar has taken his place as head of the Cardassian Union. The group notes Damar's discomfort with how he got the job, and Weyoun makes it clear that Damar has a lot less autonomy in the role than Dukat did.
- You Can't Fight Fate: The group firmly believes that The Federation is fighting a Hopeless War and that no matter what happens, the Dominion will win. However, after Sarina surprises them all by turning them in, Bashir decides that our heroes can still Screw Destiny.
