History Recap / StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS05E04NorTheBattleToTheStrong

* ContinuityNod: The ship that was sent to relieve Ajilon Prime, [[FightUnscene but was intercepted and destroyed by the Klingons prior to reaching the colony]] was the Nebula Class USS Farragut, one of three ships that [[Film/StarTrekGenerations picked up the surviving crew of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D]].

'''Jake:''' Forget it, okay?! What's done is..is done. ''(voice-over)'' I couldn't stand hearing him apologize to me like that. Not after what I'd done to him.

Jake makes it back to the hospital and learns that Bashir heroically recovered the generator himself. Ashamed, Jake lies about what happened to him while cursing himself inwardly for his cowardice. He passes the soldier who wounded himself and commiserates him, understanding the terror they both felt when confronted by mortal danger. The battle is turning dire, and the medical staff start joking about how the method of death they'd most prefer, causing Jake to shout at them and leave. Bashir, how fully healed, tries to get Jake to talk. As much as Jake inwardly wants to confess his actions, he refuses and leaves to cry by himself.

Jake is on the way back from a medical with Bashir while writing an article about him. Bashir is excitedly babbling medical jargon at him, causing Jake's internal monologue to lament how boring his article will be. Suddenly they receive a distress call from Ajilon Prime. A Federation colony there is under attack from Klingons now that the ceasefire has been broken. Jake presses Bashir to answer the call in spite of the danger, eager to cover some action for his article.

Jake is on a runabout with Bashir after having followed him to a medical conference to write an article about him. Bashir is excitedly babbling medical jargon at him, causing Jake's internal monologue to lament how boring his article will be. Suddenly they receive a distress call from Ajilon Prime. A Federation colony there is under attack from Klingons after an end to the ceasefire. Jake presses Bashir to answer the call in spite of the danger, eager to cover some action for his article.

The pair arrive in an underground hospital on the colony amid a sea of casualties. Bashir leaps into action tending to the wounded while Jake tries to stay out of the way. Quickly he's recruited as an orderly and becomes overwhelmed by the slaughter. One patient admits to shooting himself in the foot with a phaser to take himself off the front line. He talks about the soldier with Bashir, who notes that no amount of psych tests and battle simulations can predict how you'll react to actual combat.

Things are going normally on the station. Quark gathers everyone to try out a non-caffeinated raktajino for the pregnant Kira, but it's disgusting. Sisko later meets with Odo, who admits injuring himself during a foot chase when he instinctively tried to shapechange. Sisko learns about Jake entering war zone and grows concerned about his son.

Jake learns that the hospital is not safe from Klingon attack and wonders how the other medical staff remain so calm. When the power gets cut, Bashir volunteers himself and Jake to run to the runabout a fetch its generator. As they get close to the runabout, the Klingons start shelling their location, and Jake runs away in fear. He bumps into a dying Federation soldier who held off a Klingon advance to cover the escape of his comrades. Jake believes that rescuing the man will atone for abandoning Bashir, but the man is mortally wounded and criticizes Jake with his dying breath.

On the station, Sisko is trying to keep busy to distract himself from his concern over Jake. Dax tells him a story about how her previous host Audrid dealt with the illness of her child, and Sisko is glad that the story has a happy ending, though Dax admits that Audrid became estranged with her daughter a few years later. Sisko decides that's enough stories and goes to continue making repairs.

Jake makes it back and learns that Bashir heroically recovered the generator himself. Ashamed, Jake lies about what happened to him while cursing himself inwardly for his cowardice. He passes the soldier who wounded himself and commiserates him, understanding the terror they both felt when confronted by mortal danger. The battle is turning dire, and the medical staff start joking about how they want the Klingons to kill them, causing Jake to shout at them and leave. Bashir, how fully healed, tries to get Jake to talk. As much as Jake inwardly wants to confess about his actions, he refuses and leaves to cry by himself.

Explosions rock Jake awake. The Klingons have advanced into the caves. Jake flees with the rest of the medical staff but gets pinned down by Klingon soldiers. As the other Federation soldiers have been gunned down, Jake grabs a phaser and begins wildly firing at the ceiling, causing the caves to collapse. Jake gets buried by debris. He awakens to Bashir and Sisko standing over them. Federation reinforcements have arrived and the ceasefire has been resumed. Jake's cave-in sealed off the hospital and saved everyone. He's a hero, but Jake doesn't feel like one.

Jake writes his article and comes clean on the whole story and his role in it. Sisko reads it and says that anyone who has been in battle can relate to Jake's feelings, and it took courage to bare his soul to his readers. Sisko says he's proud of his son, and they embrace.

* DirtyCoward:

** The Klingons eagerly attacking a hospital full of wounded can be seen as this, especially as it happens shortly before a cease-fire that occurs the moment Starfleet reinforcements arrive.

* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: Burke's death is rather gruesome by the standards of Star Trek. In a franchise where people tend to simply be vaporized and fade away (or at least take an energy-based InstantDeathBullet and die straightaway), Burke [[BloodFromTheMouth chokes to death on his own blood]] after getting shot.

** The doctors quipping and partaking in GallowsHumor is also a fairly heavy pull from ''Series/{{MASH}}'', right down to the "Pass the salt" joke.

The pair arrive in an underground hospital on the colony amid a sea of casualties. Bashir leaps into action tending to the wounded while Jake tries to stay out of the way. Quickly he's recruited as an orderly and becomes overwhelmed by the slaughter. One patient admits to shooting himself in the foot with a phaser to take himself off the front line. He talks about the soldier with Bashir, who notes that no amount of psych tests and battle simulations can prepare you for actual combat.

* ADayInTheLimelight: Jake Sisko.

* SpecialEffectsFailure: Jake and Bashir are bombarded by tiny explosions meant to be artillery fire. [[note]]Although the size and innaccuracy of the bombardment suggests mortars rather than field guns or howitzers[[/note]]

* WholePlotReference: To ''Literature/TheRedBadgeOfCourage'', about a soldier in the American Civil War who runs from his first battle and struggles to redeem himself when a wound he picked up causes his regiment to think he heroically fought to the last.
** The doctors quipping and partaking in GallowsHumor is also a fairly heavy pull from ''M*A*S*H'', right down to the "Pass the salt" joke.

* AsTheGoodBookSays: The title of the episode is an abbreviated quote from Ecclesiastes, Chapter 9, Verse 11.
-->''I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to the intelligent, nor yet favor to men of knowledge; but time and chance happeneth to them all''

Jake is exposed to the horrors of war as Bashir reluctantly takes the young writer to the front lines of a battle between Klingons and a Federation outpost.

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: The Klingons deliberately target hospitals and kill wounded enemies in their beds. They honestly think they're doing them a favor by giving them an honorable death.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Bashir's OffscreenMomentOfAwesome below, where he hauls a generator a kilometer by himself -- a generator that is supposed to be too heavy for one man to carry. [[spoiler: [[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS05E16DrBashirIPresume Later this season]], he's revealed to be genetically enhanced.]]

* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: Burke's death is rather gruesome by the standards of Star Trek. In a franchise where people tend to simply be vaporized and fade away, Burke [[BloodFromTheMouth chokes to death on his own blood]] after getting shot.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Bashir's OffscreenMomentOfAwesome below, where he hauls a generator that is supposed to be too heavy for one man to carry, a kilometer by himself. [[spoiler: [[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS05E16DrBashirIPresume Later this season]], he's revealed to be genetically enhanced.]]

* InternalMonologue: Jake has one that runs under most of the episode. This turns out to be the narrative of the story he wrote about the events after the fact (the one that Sisko reads in the final episode).

** Jake sees himself as a coward after running away and leaving Bashir during the attack. Eventually he comes to realize that the line between courage and cowardice is far thinner than he ever realized.

* ObliviousGuiltSlinging: When Jake returns to the hospital, he's told that Bashir (despite being wounded and abandoned by Jake) still retrieved the generator they were sent to get (despite it supposedly being too heavy to be carried by one man). When a guilty Jake visits Bashir in his sickbed, Bashir is furious...at ''himself'', for bringing Jake into a war zone in the first place. This only makes Jake feel worse.

* WholePlotReference: To ''Literature/TheRedBadgeOfCourage'', about a soldier in the American Civil War who runs from his first battle and struggles to redeem himself when a wound he picked up causes his regiment to think he heroically fought to the last.

** Jake sees himself as this partway through the storyline. Eventually he comes to realize that the line between courage and cowardice is far thinner than he ever realized.

--> '''Bashir:''' Jake! Oh, thank God. I thought you'd been killed. Once the shelling had stopped and I couldn't find you, I assumed the worst. I am so sorry.\\

'''Bashir:''' No. No, it isn't. I should never have brought you here in the first place. Now we're stuck here, the Klingons are massing to attack. What was I thinking?\\
'''Jake:''' Forget it, okay! What's done is done. ''(voice-over)'' I couldn't stand hearing him apologize to me like that. Not after what I'd done to him.

--> '''Bashir:''' I am so sorry.\\

* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: After Jake ran away, Bashir managed to make it to the runabout and somehow hauled the generator a kilometer back to the hospital all by himself, picking up serious disruptor burns along the way.

* SeenItAll: Three veteran doctors are unfazed when Jake has a vomit attack during lunch.

* ObliviousGuiltSlinging: When Jake returns to the hospital, he's told that Bashir (despite being wounded and abandoned by Jake) still retrieved the generator they were sent to get (despite it supposedly being too heavy to be carried by one man). When a guilty Jake visits Bashir in his sickbed, Bashir is furious...at ''himself'', for bringing Jake into a war zone in the first place. This only makes Jake feel worse

* {{Technobabble}}: {{Lampshaded}} by Jake during one of his inner monologues while Bashir's babbling about...whatever.

* ObliviousGuiltSlinging: When Jake returns to the hospital, he's told that Bashir (despite being wounded and abandoned by Jake) still retrieved the generator they were sent to get (despite it supposedly being too heavy to be carried by one man). When a guilty Jake visits Bashir in his sickbed, Bashir doesn't even think of recriminations because he's just glad Jake is alive.

* SpecialEffectsFailure: Jake and Bashir are bombarded by tiny explosions meant to be artillery fire.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Bashir's OffscreenMomentOfAwesome below, where he hauls a generator that is supposed to be too heavy for one man to carry, a kilometer by himself. [[spoiler: [[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS05E16DrBashirIPresume A season later]], he's revealed to be genetically enhanced.]]

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Bashir's OffscreenMomentOfAwesome below, where he hauls a generator that is supposed to be too heavy for one man to carry, a kilometer by himself. [[spoiler: [[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS05E16DrBashirIPresume A few episodes later]], he's revealed to be genetically enhanced.]]