Red Squad cadets are the best of the best. Just ask them!
Nog and Jake are heading to Ferenginar with what Jake suspects is a proposal for an alliance against the Dominion. Unfortunately they stumble across a wing of Jem'Hadar attack fighters, but just before their runabout can be destroyed, they are rescued by a Defiant-class starship, the USS Valiant. There, they find that the crew is entirely composed of cadets from Red Squad, an elite training unit from Starfleet Academy that Nog idolized and wanted to join. The captain, Tim Watters, takes an immediate liking to Nog, as he's the only actual Starfleet officer on the ship. Meanwhile, Chief Petty Officer Dorian Collins is befriended by Jake.
The two reveal to Jake and Nog the backstory of the Valiant: it was a training ship built solely for Red Squad, and while on a mission to circumnavigate the entire Federation, the Dominion War broke out, and they became Trapped Behind Enemy Lines. While engaging a Cardassian cruiser, all the commissioned officers were killed, leaving the cadets in command. Watters reveals to Nog what are, ostensibly, their orders: to gather intelligence on a new Dominion battleship. However, their inexperience has left the Valiant unable to catch up with the enemy ship. Being an Operations division ensign, a star-struck Nog is immediately given a field promotion to lieutenant commander and put in charge of engineering.
Jake gets Collins to open up, revealing her backstory and how she misses her family. This is brought before Watters and executive officer Karen Farris, who lash at Jake for "emotionally compromising" a member of the crew and order him to stay away from Collins. Jake is taken aback at this, seeing that while the cadets are highly trained, they are still New Meat and unfamiliar with how to truly handle themselves in war. Meanwhile, Nog manages to solve the vessel's propulsion problems, allowing them to track the battleship.
Watters and Farris assemble the crew and reveal that their scans depict a weakness in the ship: a flawed antimatter storage system that can be easily ruptured with the right type of attack. Watters announces that they will stage the risky attack themselves. Jake tries to talk them out of it by saying that his own famous father, Benjamin Sisko, would not take on a mission this suicidal. Of course, Red Squad can do anything, and he is ignored. Jake tries to talk sense into Nog, who has let his new rank go to his head and for this, Jake is thrown in the brig.
After a good ol' Lock-and-Load Montage and a Rousing Speech, the Valiant finds and engages the battleship. They barely manage to launch their specially modified torpedo, which appears to destroy the ship. But their celebration is premature, as the Dominion ship No Sells the attack and emerges unscathed. With a Mass "Oh, Crap!", the cadets try to regroup, but Watters, Farris, and most of the crew are killed in rapid succession. Nog realizes the ship is lost and escapes with Jake and Collins. The Defiant picks up their distress signal and rescues them. Afterward, Nog apologizes to Jake and asks what he'll write about the ordeal. Jake blames Watters for the catastrophe, but Collins insists that the crew let Watters down. Nog tells Jake to write it all down and let people decide for themselves, but he himself has no doubts: Watters may have been a hero and a great man, but he was a bad captain. Nog returns his Red Squad pin to Collins.
This episode provides examples of:
- Abandon Ship: At the climax, at least four escape pods deploy but most of them are either destroyed by the Jem'hadar or caught in the Valiant's explosion. Only Jake, Nog, and Collins survive the attempt due to the same explosion concealing them.
- All for Nothing: Red Squad spent almost a year behind enemy lines, holding off the Dominion and gathering intel. They finally get a mission that would provide crucial information for the war effort. But Captain Watters' arrogance and misplaced confidence convinces the crew to take on a battle they can't win, and gets practically all of them killed.
- Alpha Bitch: Commander Farris, very much so, though somewhat subverted as she is still the Number Two to Captain Watters.
- Ambiguous Situation: The episode doesn't specify exactly why Red Squad's plan to destroy the Dominion warship failed, and the characters aren't given a chance to ponder it before the warship retaliates. It could be that Red Squad made a miscalculation somewhere or that the Dominion had already anticipated the vulnerability and compensated for it, but it's ultimately left unsaid.
- Artistic License – Gun Safety: When Shepard and an unnamed fellow officer arrive outside the engine room to arrest Jake, both of them point their hand phasers right in his face. Not only is this dangerous in the event of a misfire, but The Undiscovered Country, released a few years prior, also established that even when set on stun, a point-blank phaser hit to the head is fatal.
- Artistic License – Military:
- Invoked. In modern military protocol, being a commissioned officer, Nog would have immediately outranked everyone on board the Valiant. However, Ron Moore based his writing on 19th century naval tradition, where an acting captain could only be removed from command by a flag officer, a tradition also followed in the TNG episode "The Arsenal of Freedom", where Geordi refused to cede command to then-Chief Engineer Logan.
- Nog is "promoted" by Watters to Lieutenant Commander but only has the insignia of a junior-grade lieutenant.
- Ascended Fanboy: In-Universe — it's no secret that Nog was a Red Squad fanboy at the Academy, and now he gets to be one of them. Too bad it doesn't last.
- Attack Pattern Alpha: Used in the skirmish with the first Jem'Hadar fighter.Watters: Helm, initiate Attack Pattern Sierra-4.
Shepard: Sierra-4, aye, sir! - Awesome Mc Cool Name: The USS Valiant. Jake certainly thinks so, right until a console explodes in his face."Valiant? Great name, and I hope they tear that Jem'Hadar ship apart piece by—" (BOOM)
- Back for the Dead: Cadet (acting Lieutenant) Riley Shepard first showed up as part of Red Squad in the fourth season episode "Paradise Lost". He returns, still in Red Squad, but dies in the final battle.
- Bait-and-Switch: As the Valiant is finally getting destroyed, the view of the outside of the ship focuses in on two escape pods launching from near the vessel's bow, but both get blown to bits by the Jem'Hadar battleship. Then two more escape pods launch from aft of the bridge, although one of them gets caught in the continuing explosions. The surviving escape pod (the third out of the four we see launching) is the one carrying Jake, Nog and Collins.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Nog has wanted to join Red Squad since he first heard of them. He finally gets his wish — and it goes terribly, horribly wrong.
- Believing Their Own Lies: Watters believes that Red Squad was destined for something great in the Dominion War, and taking on a battleship ten times their size is just the thing that will propel him to legendary status. Nog also starts doing this even as Jake tries to snap him out of it.Nog: I am chief engineer of the starship Valiant!
Jake: I'll have them put that on your tombstone. - Blind Obedience: The entirety of Red Squad (including Nog once he drinks the Kool-Aid) has absolute loyalty to Watters, with Collins even refusing to consider that he sucked as a captain after the plan fails horribly and Watters dies in the process, followed by the rest of the crew.
- Break the Cutie: Dorian Collins gets this from start to finish. By the time Jake and Nog come aboard, she's already depressed and deeply homesick. By the end of the episode, she's had what confidence she had as a Red Squad member downright pulverized, while all of her shipmates were killed around her and the Valiant itself, presumably her first space assignment, was blown to pieces in a Curb-Stomp Battle.
- Broken Pedestal:
- Nog's admiration for Red Squad is shattered.
- Subverted with Collins. Even after all that happened, she refuses to blame Watters, claiming they all failed him.
- Call-Back: Odo teases Quark, saying he's in love with Jadzia after Quark fusses over her doing lowly tech work. Quark immediately denies it. Similarly, Quark knew Odo was in love with Kira back in "Crossfire" and pushed him to confess while Odo angrily denied it.
- Captain Smooth and Sergeant Rough: Watters and Farris, especially in their interactions with Jake, such as in the ready room.
- Characters Dropping Like Flies: Near the end of the episode, when the Dominion battleship deals a fatal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to the Valiant. And what would you expect, with a name like Red Squad?
- Continuity Nod:
- The USS Republic, the ship that Kirk served on as a cadet, is implied to still be doing duty as an academy ship — though given that it's over a century old by this point, it hasn't left the Sol system for several decades.
- Cadet Riley Shepard is still with Red Squad. He dies along with everyone else.
- Crazy Enough to Work: The Plan to destroy the Dominion battleship requires an Airstrike Impossible on a specific component that they have to close to within 300 meters to hit due to the modified torpedo lacking a guidance system. All while a ship ten times as powerful as their own is shooting back. Subverted as it doesn't work.
- Critical Staffing Shortage: One reason why Watters is eager to have Nog as part of the crew, as the cadets are lacking in both numbers and competence.
- Curbstomp Battle: Even before the torpedo failure, the Jem'Hadar ship thrashes the Valiant. And after it fails, they really let them have it.
- Curb-Stomp Cushion: Jake and Nog's runabout is clearly overmatched by the Jem'Hadar fighter, but they manage to score a few hits before the Valiant arrives in the nick of time to finish off the Jem'Hadar.
- David Versus Goliath: The small Valiant against the gargantuan Dominion battleship. This time, Goliath wins.
- Deconstruction:
- Of the entire concept of the "plucky young band that overcomes a great evil" found in so much of adventure fiction (e.g. Star Wars or Space Battleship Yamato). The cadets are inexperienced and overworked, leading to a series of poor decisions that get almost all of them killed.
- Also of technobabble and hare-brained schemes saving the day. This time, the Dominion evidently anticipated the problem, and the ship survives the failure of that specific component.
- Didn't Think This Through: If Watters wants to call himself a captain, it's his job to not only weigh the risks of failure, but also to ask whether the rewards of success are really worth it. In his best case scenario, the Valiant would succeed in destroying the battleship and return to Federation space crowned with glory - but his actions would alert the Dominion to the flaw in their battleship and prompt them to correct it, making the intelligence on its "weakness" useless by the time these ships appear on the battlefront; at best, the Valiant might cause a slight delay in these ships being deployed. Watters and the crew would have been left with nothing but the glory of their derring-do effort, and a severe reprimand from Starfleet Command for going AWOL. Watters didn't even stop to consider the worst-case scenario, which ended up being the one that happened.
- Dirty Coward: Subverted. Red Squad views Jake as one for questioning their plan and calling it suicidal, with Nog chewing him out for it. Jake is, of course, absolutely right.
- The Dissenter Is Always Right: Jake is the only one on the Valiant who thinks that attacking the Dominion battleship is a really stupid idea. He's proven right when the Valiant is blasted to pieces.
- Downer Ending: Red Squad and the Valiant get absolutely annihilated by the Jem'Hadar ship. It's a miracle that Jake and Nog even survive, much less Collins. And to rub salt in it, Collins still refuses to acknowledge her Captain's utter failure.
- The Dreaded Dreadnought: The Dominion battleship, one of the largest warships in the franchise.
- Elites Are More Glamorous: Deconstructed. The elite Red Squad eventually reveal themselves to just be terrified kids who are well out of their league. In fact their "elite" status actively works against them; they've been so ingrained with the idea that they're the best of the best of all the cadets that they lose sight of the important fact that they still are inexperienced cadets.
- Emergency Trainee Battle Deployment: Subverted, while the crew of the Valiant are cadets in a combat situation, they are mostly there because acting Captain Watters won't admit he is out of his depth.
- Ensign Newbie:
- Captain Watters. He obviously doesn't want to go back to being a cadet, even though they are in a war and advancement could be quick.
- The rest of the cadets as well, most of whom are doing jobs that would normally take years of service to be promoted into. Watters actually boasts about this fact, and it flies over his head that they're too incompetent to properly repair the vessel they're in charge of precisely because they lack the experience Nog has accumulated by putting the work in.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: Nog telling Collins that their attack has failed and everyone else is dead when she tries to suggest they continue to fight a hopeless battle.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: Of everyone on the Valiant in the episode, only Jake and Nog — two series regulars — manage to survive, along with the sole survivor Collins.
- Explosive Instrumentation:
- During the attack on the runabout, a console explodes in Jake's face. Fortunately, he's a main character, so he only ends up a little dazed and burnt on the arm.
- During the Valiant's failed attack on the Dominion battleship, the explosive consoles take out one Red Squad member after another.
- Expy: Tim Watters is basically Nick Locarno 2.0 — he's the charismatic leader of an elite group of Starfleet cadets, and he talks them into pulling a super risky stunt under the belief that they can do anything. It goes horribly wrong, with even more fatal results than the Kolvoord Starburst.
- Field Promotion: The entire crew of the Valiant, due to the senior officers being killed in the line of duty. Captain Ramirez, while dying, gave command of the ship to Cadet Watters, who in turn promoted the rest of the cadets. "Captain" Watters even gives Nog a field promotion to lieutenant commander, due to his experience with the Defiant.
- Get Out!: Nog says this to Jake, when Jake calls Red Squad "a bunch of delusional fanatics looking for martyrdom".
- Glory Hound: Watters and the rest of Red Squad, pursuing a massive Jem'Hadar battleship instead of taking their undermanned and damaged warship back to rejoin the rest of Starfleet.
- Gunship Rescue: The Valiant rescuing Jake and Nog.
- Heroic BSoD: Red Squad is so surprised and horrified that the battleship shrugged off their precise attack that they are too stunned to properly escape afterwards. The counterattack quickly defeats the Valiant.
- Watters in particular is speechless, even as Shepherd appeals to him for orders.
- Hope Spot: The crew of the Valiant get this when The Plan appears to work on the Dominion battleship. Which degenerates into a huge Mass "Oh, Crap!" when it doesn't.
- Hubris: The whole crew succumbs to this, but Watters most especially. He's completed his mission of gathering intel, and the rational thing to do is to take this intel back to Starfleet so it can be analyzed in detail by a team of experts. Instead, Watters decides that their own quick overview of the intel is sufficient to warrant a solo attack using quickly-improvised technobabble. We've seen this sort of solution work before on Star Trek many times — by teams of officers with years or decades of experience in the field, many of whom have additional advantages like being a sentient computer (Data), having advanced mental discipline and a brain with superhuman computational speed (Spock), access to the Borg Collective's vast technical library (Seven of Nine), a genetically-enhanced intellect (Bashir), or seven lifetimes of accumulated knowledge (Dax). This time, we see the result when a few students who haven't even graduated from the Academy yet take the "brand new technobabble on the fly" path.
- Ignored Expert: Jake isn't Starfleet, but he does know his father better than anyone. Nonetheless, his insistence that his father would never attempt the cadets' plan is completely ignored (even by Nog, who has served under Sisko).
- Insignia Rip-Off Ritual: After the fiasco is over, Nog ditches his Red Squad pin, giving it to Collins as a Tragic Keepsake.
- I Reject Your Reality: Jake makes an appeal to Watters and the Valiant crew's reason, pointing out that no matter how good Red Squad may be, they're still just cadets, and the Valiant, despite its extra firepower, was originally designed as an escort vessel. Jake argues that even the most experienced officer (like his father) with a full crew complement wouldn't try taking on a battleship even larger than a Galaxy-class, much less the Defiant. Watters dismisses him out of hand.
- Jerkass: Most of the Red Squad crew, but especially Karen Farris. In her attempt to assert authority to Jake, she comes across as an arrogant bully. She even sarcastically says he's not been invited to the bridge, even after Watters invited him to watch "their story" unfold.
- Killed Mid-Sentence:Watters: Lay in a new course! 127-mark — (BOOM)
- Know When to Fold 'Em: Jake points out that even his
Memetic Badass father would not engage the Jem'Hadar battleship if he didn't have to and that there's no shame in running from a battle you can't win. None of the Red Squad cadets listen and they pay the price. Nog heeds that wisdom after Watters is killed and the battle is already lost, ordering what few crew remain to abandon ship.Collins: Auxiliary power's offline. But I still have phaser control. Shall I return fire? Sir?
Nog: No, it's over.
Collins: The Captain wanted us to—
Nog: The Captain is dead, Chief. They're all dead. The ship is lost. There's no need for us to die here too. - Lock-and-Load Montage: Before the battle.
- Macross Missile Massacre: The Dominion battleship really doesn't pull its punches against the Valiant.
- The Main Characters Do Everything: Some examples in the Valiant's crew: Collins takes Jake to sickbay and heals his burns; Shepard is the helmsman yet also gets tasked by Watters with apprehending Jake; and Farris is not only the first officer but operates the ship's weapons systems and receives Damage Control reports. Justified, to an extent, because the Valiant is lacking all of the commissioned Starfleet officers (and probably a few of the cadets as well) that the ship started off with, leaving them undermanned.
- Mandatory Line: Everyone who's not Jake or Nog appears either at the very beginning or the very end of the episode. Except O'Brien, who gets mentioned but doesn't appear at all.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": When the explosion clears and the Jem'Hadar ship is without a scratch, all the cadets' bravado vanishes and they look like the terrified kids they really are.
- Meaningful Name: "Red Squad", when the elite cadets at the Academy were being groomed for futures in command — and Command division officers wear red. Also out-of-universe, in that they end up a bunch of redshirts.
- Mighty Glacier: The Dominion battleship is much larger and slower than their battlecruisers but has much greater firepower. The Valiant starts off this way, unable to go at a reasonable warp factor, because the engines aren't configured properly for the ship type; doing so actually breaks quite a few Starfleet regulations, but Nog points out the necessity, and also points out that the Defiant hasn't had any problems due to this configuration.
- Miles Gloriosus: Watters is taking stimulants to stay awake; judging by his initial reactions to Jake and Nog he's a sycophant, and judging by his later reactions he's a fragile egotist. Several times throughout the episode, when interacting with Jake (and to a lesser extent Nog), all the named cadets demonstrate that they're not the seasoned officers they're pretending to be (you can't imagine even TOS-era officers treating a nosy civilian how Jake is treated here) at Watters' urging, and some of them can't even see how poorly Watters led them, even when recovering from serious injuries after being pulled from an escape pod. Watters even seems to believe his own bullshit, right up until they catch their prey, when he's among the first to realise that they now have no choice but to go through with the plan, and if it goes wrong they'll all die. And they do.
- Mood Whiplash: When the Dominion battleship is seemingly consumed by explosions, the mood on the bridge is triumphant — and then the battleship emerges unscathed and the triumphant mood collapses. Cue the Sad Battle Music as the Valiant gets curb-stomped.
- Morton's Fork: Jake and Nog find themselves in this situation when the Jem'Hadar first attack the station. Nog immediately tries to warp to safety, but a single fighter pursues them. The runabout isn't fast enough to outrun it to begin with, and in his haste Nog has pointed them directly at Jem'Hadar-controlled territory. If they try to change course, the fighter will catch them that much quicker, but if they do nothing they'll either be intercepted eventually or another ship from another direction will see them. Once the former enters weapons range, Nog drops out of warp to fight back, figuring a lopsided battle on their terms is better than nothing, giving the Valiant the chance to pull a rescue.
- Mr. Fixit: Nog can get the Valiant's engine working properly because he's had field experience working with Chief O'Brien on the Defiant, whereas the rest of the engineers haven't had that opportunity.
- The Neidermeyer: "Captain" Watters and executive officer "Commander" Farris. Farris is a bully barking orders like a bad parody of a Starfleet officer. Watters lets his ego blind him to the fact that he's way out of his depth in a fashion not unlike Nick Locarno. The crew was the best: special missions, training, even their own ship. But they were still cadets, and furthermore were following terrible and idiotic orders.
- Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Zig-Zagged by Nog in one sentence when talking about the late Watters:"He may have been a hero; he may even have been a great man ... but in the end, he was a bad captain."
- Oh, Crap!: Watters (and several other cadets) has a silent one when the Valiant approaches the Dominion battleship and they all see it directly for the first time. His expression is one of silent awe and horror and it's clear he is seriously reconsidering trying to fight it, but at this point it's too late to back out.
- The Only One: Valiant is apparently the only ship still caught behind enemy lines. Part of Watters' reasoning for taking on the battleship is to prevent someone else from getting that glory.
- Only Sane Man: Jake tries to reason with the cadets, and all it gets him is thrown in the brig.
- Outrun the Fireball: The escape pod with Jake, Nog, and Collins does this as the Valiant explodes. Another pod isn't so lucky.
- Planet Terra: Of the "calling the moon 'Luna'" variant. Jake thinks his grandfather (who lives on Earth) is old-fashioned for calling it "the moon, like it's the only one or something," but apparently nobody who lives there calls the moon "Luna" either.
- Plot Armor: It's such a given that our heroes are in the only escape pod to survive that once it's rescued by the Defiant, there's no big reveal as to who was inside. Jake, Nog and Collins all show up in later scenes with no fanfare.
- Point Defenseless: Red Squad tries to pull this off. It turned out that the Dominion ship's antimatter storage system was better-protected than they thought.
- Radio Silence: The USS Valiant is operating under radio silence behind enemy lines of the Dominion War. When Watters takes it over after the adult Captain is killed, he conveniently continues operating this way, thus Starfleet doesn't have to know the cadets are now running the ship.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Nog gives Jake one for thinking about his own survival instead of being willing to risk his life in battle against the Dominion battleship. Nog's drunk the Kool-Aid at this point so he's thoroughly in the wrong.
- Redshirt Army: The group is called "Red Squad." They really should've seen it coming.
- Repeat to Confirm: The Red Squad kids do this a lot, more so than more seasoned officers. It serves as another way of demonstrating that they lack the experience they should have to be doing this job.
- Rousing Speech: Watters makes one talking about how important their mission is and how they're Red Squad, and Red Squad can do anything. It backfires spectacularly."This is the captain. We are about to engage the enemy. For eight months, I've told you to stay focused on one thing. Your duty. But now, I want you to step back from your duty. Take a look around. And I don't mean look at the walls. I want you to look at this moment in your life. Take it in. Appreciate the fact that you are on this ship, with this group of people, at this point in history. But understand one thing above all else. This moment will never come again. Hold on to it. Savor it for as long as you can. You're Starfleet, you're Red Squad, and you're the best. Now, let's get that battleship and we can all go home. Captain out."
- Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale: The cadets' original mission was supposedly to circumnavigate the entire Federation. Just getting from one end of it to the other in a straight line would take years. Circling the perimeter would take decades.
- Short Teens, Tall Adults: To convey the youth of the cadets, they're all average to below average in height, which is especially noticeable when Jake towers over everyone in the room.
- Sigil Spam: The Valiant, assigned to Red Squad, has the group's emblem all over the ship. It even has red trim along the walls that doesn't appear on the Defiant.
- Sink the Lifeboats: The Jem'Hadar don't even spare the escape pods after the Valiant goes down for the count. Only one escape pod with the main characters aboard escapes because the explosion of the Valiant hides it.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Played for Drama. Watters and Red Squad's belief that they are truly the best of the best when they're really a bunch of stressed out rookies led by a very much in over his head Glory Hound only serves to make the fully predictable conclusion to them deciding to stage a suicidal assault on a much more powerful enemy ship all the more tragic and horrifying.
- Sole Survivor: Collins is the only member of the original Valiant crew to escape the ship before the Jem'Hadar destroy it.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: This Crazy Enough to Work plan is too crazy and doesn't work.
- Stealth Insult: Upon meeting Jake, Captain Watters snidely points out that he didn't follow in his father's footsteps of joining Starfleet.
- Straw Civilian: In-Universe, Jake is viewed as one by the Red Squad cadets for not going along with the plan to attack the Jem'Hadar battleship. Watters, in particular, shows disdain for Jake not joining Starfleet like his father. Turns out that in this case, Strawman Has a Point. More so because Jake actually got to experience the actual horrors of war a season earlier.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: A charismatic cadet in command of an elite squad of cadets, who through his overconfidence gets people killed. Didn't we see this kind of guy expelled from Starfleet in Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 5 episode "The First Duty"? Or for that matter, wasn't a similar guy on Star Trek: Voyager? (Played by the same actor, Robert Duncan McNeill, no less.)note
- Tagalong Reporter: Jake, who initially tries to get the scoop on what Nog's "secret diplomatic mission" is about. Watters initially wants him to sit back and watch Red Squad fulfill their destiny, at least until Jake tries to convince them that their attack plan is suicidal.
- Teenage Wasteland: There are no adults on the Valiant anymore, all of them died in a previous attack. The ship is entirely crewed by teenagers.
- Tempting Fate: In one of his first meetings with Jake, Watters tells him that he's about to witness one of the biggest stories of the entire Dominion War. Which Jake does, just not in anything like the manner that Watters was hoping for.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Valiant has been shot to hell, her shields are down, weapons disabled, power has failed, almost the entire crew is dead, and all of her systems are inoperative. For all intents and purposes the Jem'Hadar have rendered her a lifeless hulk in space. Yet they continue to pound away at her with torpedoes until every last nut and bolt still holding her together comes undone and she disappears into a rapidly-expanding ball of gas and fire. Then, just to Kick the Dog, they mercilessly gun down every escape pod they can see trying to flee from the disintegrating ship, with the escape pod containing Jake, Nog and Collins only getting away because it was apparently obscured by the explosion.
- This Is Reality: For the last eight months, the Valiant has been living in its own little bubble of space, with the cadets relishing their roles as the actual crew of an actual starship. Then their heroic gambit fails miserably, leaving them all a moment to wake up to the inescapable facts that they are one undermanned ship, deep inside enemy territory, cut off from home or help, facing off at point-blank range with a very large, very pissed-off Dominion battleship, and the suddenly real possibility that their young lives could come to an abrupt, violent end - which they do.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- Watters. At no point does he consider that the intel they've gathered on the battleship, which was specified in their supposed orders, won't do Starfleet any good if they don't survive to bring it back.
- Red Squad on the whole. A combination of inexperience, stress and misplaced bravado leads to a stupid plan that fails miserably.
- Undying Loyalty: Collins has this for Watters, claiming that Red Squad failed him. It's not presented in a positive light.
- War Is Glorious: Watters seems to think so, reminiscing very fondly of the Valiant's first battle with a Cardassian cruiser. He also pushes for Red Squad to take on the battleship with the justification that if they don't, someone else will claim the glory of destroying it.
- Well-Trained, but Inexperienced: The cadets may have special training and have been fighting for eight months, but they also lack the many years of experience that actual Starfleet officers would have taking their roles. Nog notably recalls working under the veteran Chief O'Brien when discussing his knowledge of Defiant-class engines.
- Wham Shot: Amidst the bridge crew's cheers, the Jem'Hadar battleship emerges from the fireball, completely intact. The stunned silence is then punctuated by the Wham Line:Watters: Did we miss the target?
Farris: No, sir, it was a direct hit. It just... it didn't work. - What Happened to the Mouse?: Jake and Nog's original mission to Ferenginar, an important but far less dangerous mission that the Valiant could still carry out, is never mentioned after the first act.
- The Worf Effect: The Defiant-class ship was specifically built to kick ass and has consistently done so. This episode, however, proves that this breed of Pint-Sized Powerhouse is not, in fact, invincible. While its crew manages to take down a Jem'Hadar fighter with minimal damage, against the much larger battleship, they get obliterated in minutes.
- You Are in Command Now: In a Call-Back to the talk with Chief O'Brien in "Behind the Lines", Nog receives command of the Valiant after Watters and Farris are killed. But by then, nearly the entire bridge crew is dead and the ship is about to be blown to hell, so all Nog can do is order the surviving crew to Abandon Ship.
- Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb: Red Squad, a group of Starfleet Academy cadets in their early twenties, believe their youthful zest and elite status makes them practically invincible. Reality bites them hard and doesn't let go.
